wrote his full name and the essay title, which accounted for eleven words.
James started off his first paragraph:
During Victorian times there was loads of sewage running everywhere in the streets of London. People were getting sick with diseases we donut do not hardly have anymore like malaria, plague, bowleg and typhoid which were rampant. As time went by it got better because the Victorians built sewers and made the water more cleaner.
James counted sixty-five words, including his name and the ones he’d crossed through. He scribbled out plague and changed it to the black death because that made two extra words. With one thousand four hundred and thirty-three words to go, James got the awful feeling that he’d already written everything he knew about Victorian sanitation.
He realised that his best option was to steal something off the Internet and he was going under his bed to grab his laptop when the doorbell rang.
It was Hannah, dressed in white tights, long grey skirt, a pale green blouse and striped tie.
‘Let me in fast,’ Hannah squealed, barging past James and shutting the door.
‘What’s the panic in aid of?’ James asked.
Hannah didn’t answer. ‘You don’t have a girlfriend do you, James?’
James shook his head. ‘What’s going …’
Before he finished, Hannah put her arms around James, went up on tiptoes and started snogging him. It lasted half a minute before she pulled away.
‘What’s the matter? What’s with the weird uniform?’
Hannah spoke hurriedly. ‘I hate wearing this. I got suspended from my old school after Will died and my parents made me go private. What’s your mobile number?’
Hannah wrote the numbers on her wrist as James recited them.
‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you in class today, James. The way you defended us on Saturday was amazing. But my dad went nuts after he collected me from the police station and I’m so grounded. He hates me hanging out with the kids around here and I don’t think I’ll be able to wriggle out of it for at least a week. But I’ll try calling later for a chat, OK?’
James smiled. ‘Yeah, sure.’
Hannah gave James another kiss. ‘If my dad catches us, you can always break his arms.’
She picked her backpack off the floor, twirled around in her pleated skirt and headed along the balcony towards her flat.
*
James went for an after-school kick-about with Max and Charlie and got invited to the Tarasovs’ for dinner. After his previous experience of a four-course Russian meal, James turned down all Sacha’s attempts to make him eat extra helpings.
When he got home, Dave and Sonya were watching TV in the living-room, though mercifully they had their clothes on for once. James went to his room and noticed there was a text on his phone:
DO YOU SUFFER FROM VERTIGO? HANNAH :)
James thought it was a weird message and replied with
NO Y?
Hannah was confined to her bedroom with her phone right beside her, so she replied instantly. DO U WNT 2 PLAY A GAME?
James was intrigued: YES
It took Hannah a while to type the next message. GO 2 2ND FLR TURN LFT. WALK 2 END OF BALCONY. TXT WEN U GET THERE.
James had no clue what Hannah was up to, but he wanted to play along. He grabbed his door keys and phone and headed out the front door and up the concrete steps to the top floor.
ME HERE, James typed as he headed along to the concrete wall at the end of the balcony. His phone rang a few seconds later.
‘Hannah?’ James grinned. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Can you see the emergency exit door?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Go through the door.’
‘Hannah, what the hell is all this about?’
She giggled. ‘Go through the door and you might find out.’
James held the phone to his ear and stepped through a graffiti-sprayed door into a concrete stairwell.
‘Christ,’ James gasped. ‘It reeks of piss in here.’
‘Go up the ladder and through the hatch.’
James looked at the aluminium ladder bolted to the wall and the hatch in the ceiling above it.
‘Hannah, there’s a dirty great padlock on it.’
‘Climb up and push hard,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ve got to go, I’m nearly out of calling credit.’
James heard the call go dead. He pocketed his phone and clambered up the ladder. He couldn’t see a way past the padlock, but he pushed as instructed and a crack of sunlight opened up. James realised the screws had been removed from the hinges opposite the lock. He shoved the flap all the way open, then pulled his body up through the opening and out on to