shock the baby pops out too early. Then the kid might be a retard like Squelch and it’d be my fault.)
‘So you’re still sure she’s a girl?’
‘Eleanor in Accounts, right, she did her test. Looped my weddin’ ring through a strand of my hair and hung it over my palm. If it swings, yer baby’s a boy. Mine loop-the-looped, so she’s a girl.’
‘So that old one’s still doing the rounds, is it?’
‘Eleanor says she’s never been wrong yet.’
(My Casio said my time was nearly up.)
The game of Twister collapsed into a mound of crushed bodies, bent arms and wriggling feet. ‘Look at that rabble!’ Squelch’s mum tutted, pleased.
‘Ben’s so sorry his mate in the warehouse at Kay’s Catalogues said no, Mum. About when Merv leaves school, I mean.’
‘Can’t be helped, love. Nice of Ben to try.’
(Time, throbbed my Casio, time. I care too much, that’s my problem. The whole point about being a Spook is that you’re so hard you don’t care.)
‘I do worry what’ll become of Merv, though. Specially when Bill and I, y’know, well, aren’t around any longer.’
‘Mum! Will you listen to yourself?’
‘Merv can’t think of his future, can he? Merv can’t think past the day after tomorrow.’
‘He’s always got me and Ben, if it comes to it.’
‘You’ll have three of yer own to look after soon, won’t yer? Merv’s gettin’ more of an handful as time goes by, not less. Did Bill say? Found him in his bedroom one day last week flickin’ through one o’ them Penthouses. Bare naked ladies and that. That stage.’
‘I s’pose it’s only natural, Mum. All boys do it.’
‘I know, Jacks, but in, y’know, an ordinary boy, that sort of thing, it finds an outlet. Courtin’ girls and that. I love Merv but what girl’ll want to walk out with a lad like him? How’d he support a family? Merv’s neither fish nor fowl, see. Ain’t backward enough when it comes to allowances and whatnot, ain’t quick enough on his pegs for jobs like shuntin’ boxes in Kay’s Catalogues.’
‘Ben said that’s only ’cause they ain’t hirin’. The recession and that.’
‘Tragic part is, Merv’s craftier by half than what he makes out he is. It suits Merv to act the village idiot, ’cause all the other kids expect it.’
A moon-grey cat crossed the lawn. The chimes’d start any second.
‘Ben says the pork scratchings factory down Upton’ll have anyone. They even took Giles Noak, after his old man got sent down.’
(I’d never thought of that. Squelch was just this kid you laugh at. But think about Squelch aged twenty, or thirty. Think about what his mum does for him, every single day. Squelch aged fifty, or seventy. What’d happen to him? What’s so funny about that?)
‘I dare say the pork scratchings might, love, but that don’t change—’
‘Jackie?’ The young dad called out from the French windows. ‘Jacks!’
I squeezed between the trellis and the wall.
‘What is it, Ben? We’re up here! On the bench.’
Roses, thorny as orcs, sank their teeth into my chest and face.
‘Is Wendy with yer? Merv got too excited again. Had one of his little accidents…’
‘A whole ten minutes,’ mumbled Squelch’s mum. ‘Must be a record. All right, Ben!’ She got to her feet. ‘I’m comin’!’
When Squelch’s mum and his pregnant sister were halfway to the house, St Gabriel bonged the first chime of nine o’clock. I dashed to the wall and bounded on to the compost heap. Instead of springboarding up, I sank into the rotting mush right up to my middle. There’s a type of nightmare where the ground’s your enemy.
The second chime bonged.
I struggled out of the compost heap and over the last wall, dangled in limbo as the third chime bonged, then dropped on to the drive that runs down the side of Mr Rhydd’s shop. Then, in my soggy compost-covered jeans, I legged it over the crossroads and qualified for Spooks with not two minutes to spare but two chimes.
As I knelt at the feet of the oak, my breathing grated like a rusty saw. I couldn’t even pick the thorns from my socks. But right there, right then, I felt happier than I could remember being. Ever.
‘You, my son,’ Gilbert Swinyard slapped my back, ‘are one boney fider Spook!’
‘No one ever cut it that fine, mind!’ Grant Burch did a goblin cackle. ‘Three seconds to spare!’
Pete Redmarley sat cross-legged, smoking. ‘Thought you’d bottled out.’ Pete Redmarley is never shocked and he’s already got a half-decent moustache. He’s never told me he thinks I’m a gay snob