Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,19

nothing left to lose. What more could they do to me than they were already planning?

I checked my watch, still working despite a cracked face: twenty to seven in the morning. I unpeeled my stiff legs, got to my feet, and picked my way across the floor. Then out onto the landing and carefully downstairs. I swigged some orange juice from the carton and stuck some bread in the toaster; then, when it popped up, slathered on some peanut butter and walked out, eating as I went.

Not many people around, although that background buzz was there. It’s always there in London. I nipped up someone’s front path and grabbed a pint of milk sitting outside the door in the cold: something to wash down the toast.

I felt better than I had in a long time. I knew that sooner or later they’d catch up with me — lecture me, confine me, move me — but for now, for this moment, I was free.

I took my pint of milk down to the canal and drank it, perching on the sleepers where I’d had my first conversation with Spider. Light started seeping into the edge of the sky. As it started to spread, everything was gray: the buildings, the walls, the water, the sky. You could take a color photo and it would be the same as a black-and-white one. It matched my mood — I was calm, muted, living in the moment, just hanging.

When I’d finished the milk, or nearly, I put the bottle on the edge of the canal bank and scooped up a handful of stones. One by one, I aimed them at the bottle. Some went past, you could hear them enter the water — plip! When they hit the target, it wobbled, threatened to fall over the edge, but didn’t quite do it. I scuffed the ground with my sneaker, looking for bigger stones. I found a couple and concentrated hard. The first one missed, plopped into the canal. The second one got it right on the neck, took it over the edge, just like that, hitting the water with a smack! I got up and peered over. The bottle was bobbing about on its side, the dregs of the milk still slopping around, moving slowly to the left, heading for the Thames. I thought, I should have put a message in it. For some reason, that tickled me: the thought of some kid in France or Holland wading out into the sea to get my bottle and pulling out a bit of paper to find my message: Up Yours. Greetings from England.

The bottle was a good sixty feet away from me now. I had half a mind to follow it, see where we both ended up, but that wasn’t how I wanted to spend my last few hours of freedom before they picked me up. I wanted to say good-bye to my only friend; so instead, I turned back up the path to the shops and headed ’round to Spider’s house. It was still only half past seven and there were no signs of life. I went up to the front door and my hand hovered over the doorbell. I felt unsure, like I’d look a bit desperate, needy, just showing up like that, so early. I gently tried the door, just in case. It moved beneath my fingers, and a wisp of smoke came floating out through the gap.

I pushed the door open and went in, and there she was in the kitchen: Val, on her perch, with a cup of tea in one hand and a smoke in the other. Damn, did that woman sleep there?

“Alright, love?” she said, like she’d been expecting me. “Come in.” I went farther into the room. “You’re an early bird. You in trouble?” I nodded. “There’s some tea in that pot. Get yourself a cup from the sink, love, and come and sit down.”

And that’s how Spider found us when he emerged at about nine: me and Val side by side at the breakfast counter, second pot of tea on the stove, mound of cigarette ashes on the saucer between us. He shambled into the kitchen with some track pants and an old stained T-shirt on, eyes sort of small and puckered, like he’d been asleep for a hundred years. He looked a mess at the best of times, but this was something else, like someone had crumpled him up and thrown him away.

“What’s all this?” he asked,