open. Next, in Julia’s bedroom, I put on her Roxy Music LP. Julia’d go ape. I turned up the volume, dead loud. Dad’d go so mental his head’d blow up. I sprawled on Julia’s stripey sofa, listening to this kazookering song called ‘Virginia Plain’. With my big toe, I flicked the shell-disc wind chime Kate Alfrick’d given her a couple of birthdays ago. Just ’cause I could. Then I went through my sister’s chest-of-drawers looking for a secret diary. But when I found a box of tampons I felt ashamed and stopped.
In Dad’s chilly office I opened his filing cabinets and breathed in their metal-flavoured air. (A duty-free pack of Benson Hedges has appeared since Uncle Brian’s last visit.) Then I twizzled on Dad’s Millennium Falcon office chair, remembered it was April Fools’ Day, picked up Dad’s untouchable telephone and said, ‘Hello? Craig Salt? Jason Taylor here. Listen, Salt, you’re sacked. What do you mean, why? ’Cause you’re a fat orgasm, that’s why. Put me through to Ross Wilcox this instant! Ah, Wilcox? Jason Taylor. Listen, the vet’ll be around later to put you out of our misery. Bye-bye, Scumbag. Been nasty knowing you.’
In my parents’ creamy bedroom I sat at Mum’s dressing table, spiked my hair with L’Oréal hair mousse, daubed an Adam Ant stripe across my face, and held her opal brooch over one eye. I looked through it at the sun for secret colours nobody’s ever named.
Downstairs, a wafer of light from where the kitchen curtains didn’t quite meet sliced through a gold Yale key and this note:
Wow. My very own door key. Mum must’ve decided to leave it for me at the last minute this morning. Normally we hide a spare in a welly in the garage. I dashed upstairs and chose a keyring Uncle Brian gave me one time, of a rabbit in a black bow tie. I hung it on my belt-loop and slid down the banister. For breakfast I ate McVitie’s Jamaican Ginger Cake and a cocktail of milk, Coke and Ovaltine. Not bad. Oh, better than not bad! Every single hour of today is a Black Magic chocolate, waiting in its box for me. I returned the kitchen radio from Radio 4 to Radio 1. That fab song with the dusty flute in it by Men At Work was on. Three Marks Spencer’s French Fancies, I ate, straight out of the packet. Vs of long-distance birds crossed the sky. Mermaid clouds drifted over the glebe, over the cockerel tree, over the Malvern Hills. God, I ached to follow them.
What was stopping me?
Mr Castle stood in a pair of green wellies, washing his Vauxhall Viva with a garden hose. His front door was open, but the hallway was dead dark. Mrs Castle could’ve been in that dark, watching me. You hardly ever see Mrs Castle. Mum calls her ‘that poor woman’ and says she suffers from Nerves. Is Nerves infectious? I didn’t want to dent the morning’s shine by stammering, so I tried to slip by Mr Castle without being seen.
‘Morning, young fella!’
‘Good morning, Mr Castle,’ I answered.
‘Off anywhere special?’
I shook my head. Mr Castle somehow makes me nervous. Once I heard Dad telling Uncle Brian he’s a freemason, which is something to do with witchcraft and pentangles. ‘It’s just it’s a’ (Hangman blocked nice) ‘a…pleasant morning, so…’
‘Oh, isn’t it just. Isn’t it just!’
Liquid sunshine streamed down the car windscreen.
‘So how old are you now, Jason?’ Mr Castle asked this like he’d been discussing it with a panel of experts for days.
‘Thirteen,’ I said, guessing he thought I was still twelve.
‘Thirteen, are you? That a fact?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Thirteen.’ Mr Castle looked through me. ‘Ancient.’
The stile at the mouth of Kingfisher Meadows is the source of the bridlepath. A green sign saying PUBLIC BRIDLEPATH with a picture of a horse proves it. Where the bridlepath officially ends is miles less clear. Mr Broadwas says it fizzles out in Red Earl Wood. Pete Redmarley and Nick Yew said they went rabbiting with their ferrets up the bridlepath one time, and that it’s blocked by a new estate in Malvern Wells. But best is the rumour that the bridlepath leads you to the foot of Pinnacle Hill, where, if you pick your way through toothy brambles and dark ivy and vicious stingers, you’ll find the mouth of an old tunnel. Go through that tunnel, and you come out in Herefordshire. Near the obelisk. The tunnel’s been lost since olden times, so its discoverer’d make the front page of