Here was a pruney man in a turquoise smock, about twenty paces up the bridlepath. The pruney man gazed up from the bottom of a well of brightness and buzzing that, we saw, was made of bees.
‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Moran.
Praying, I nearly said. ‘No idea.’
‘A wild hive,’ Moran whispered, ‘above him. On that oak. See it?’
I didn’t. ‘Is he a beekeeper, d’you reckon?’
Moran didn’t answer at first. The bee man didn’t have a beekeeper’s mask, though bees coated his smock and face. Just watching made my skin itch and twitch. His scalp’d been shaved and had sort of socket-scars. His torn shoes were more like slippers. ‘Dunno. Think we can get past him?’
‘S’pose,’ I remembered a horror film about bees, ‘they swarm?’
This half-path snaked off the bridlepath right where we were. Moran and I both had the same idea. Moran went first, which isn’t as brave as it looks when the danger’s behind you. And after a couple of twists and turns he spun around, anxious, and hissed, ‘Listen!’
Bees? Footsteps? Growing louder?
Definitely!
We ran for our lives, crashing through wave after wave of waxy leaves and clawed holly. The rooty ground rocked and tilted and rose and fell.
In a boggy pocket smothered by drapes of ivy and mistletoe, me and Moran collapsed, too knackered to take another step. I didn’t like it there. A strangler’d take someone there to strangle and bury, it was that sort of edgy hollow. Me and Moran listened for sounds of pursuit. It’s hard to hold your breath when you’ve got a stitch.
But the bees weren’t following us. Neither was the bee man.
Maybe it’d just been the wood, scaring us for its own amusement.
Moran snorted the phlegm back from his nose and swallowed it. ‘Reckon we lost him.’
‘Reckon so. But where’s the bridlepath gone?’
Squeezing through a missing slat in a mossy fence, we found ourselves at the bottom of a lumpy lawn. Molehills mounded up here and there. A big, silent mansion with turrety things watched us from the top of the slope. A peardrop sun dissolved in a sloped pond. Superheated flies grand-prixed over the water. Trees at the height of their blossom bubbled dark cream by a rotted bandstand. On a sort of terrace running round the mansion were jugs of lemon and orange squash just left there, on trestle tables. As we watched, the breeze flicked over a leaning tower of paper cups. Some bowled across the lawn in our direction. Not a soul moved.
Not a soul.
‘God,’ I said to Moran, ‘I’d die for a cup of that squash.’
‘Me too. Must be a spring fête or somethin’.’
‘Yeah, but where’re all the people?’ My mouth was salty and crusted as crisps. ‘It can’t’ve started yet. Let’s just go and help ourselves. If someone sees us we can act like we were going to pay. It’ll only be two pence or five pence.’
Moran didn’t like the plan either. ‘Okay.’
But we were so parched. ‘Come on, then.’
Druggy pom-pom bees hovered in the lavender.
‘Quiet, ain’t it?’ Moran’s murmur was too loud.
‘Yeah.’ Where were the fête stalls? The spinning wheel to win Pomagne? The eggshell-in-sand-tray treasure hunt? The lob-the-pingpong-ball-into-the-wineglass stall?
Up close, the mansion windows showed us nothing but ourselves in the mirrored garden. The jug of orange squash had ants drowning so Moran held the paper cups while I poured the lemon. The jug weighed a ton and its ice cubes clinked. It freezed my hands. There’re tons of stories where bad things happen to strangers who help themselves to food and drink.
‘Cheers.’ Moran and I pretended to clink our cups before we drank.
The squash turned my mouth cold and wet as December and my body went, Ah.
The mansion cracked its sides open and men and women spilt through the doors after their own babble. Already our escape route was being cut off. Most of the mansion were dressed in turquoise smocks, same as the bee man. Some crunched-up ones were being pushed in wheelchairs by nurses in nurse uniforms. Others moved by themselves, but jerkily, like broken robots.
With a shudder of horror, I got it.
‘Little Malvern Loonybin!’ I hissed at Moran.
But Moran wasn’t next to me. I just glimpsed him, across the lawn, as he squeezed back through the missing slat. Maybe he thought I was right behind him, or maybe he’d left me in the lurch. But if I tried to scarper and got caught, it’d mean we’d nicked the squash. Mum and Dad’d be told I was a thief. Even if I didn’t get