The Swap - By Antony Moore Page 0,4

looking for some way back to that. All roads for a long time had seemed to lead backwards. So he told Josh to go fuck himself.

'So maybe you'll go back and you'll meet Bleeder there.' Josh smiled encouragingly, making Harvey grimace, not least because it saddened him to think that his shop assistant knew this boy's playground nickname from his schooldays well enough to use it in conversation without pausing to think. They had had this conversation before. But not for a while and Josh was suddenly animated. 'I mean, he hasn't been back to any of the other reunions, has he? But this one is twenty years. People get more sentimental as they reach middle age, maybe he'll feel the time is right.' He spoke with all the wisdom of the young and Harvey shook his head, wincing slightly at the words 'middle age'.

'I doubt it,' he said. 'You really don't listen, do you? Bleeder had a shit time at school, I've told you that. Every day of every term he had a shit time. Everyone took the piss, all the time. That's how it was. Why would he want to come back and see everybody again? He'd have to be mad.'

'Well, why did you pick on him?' Josh blushed, making Harvey wonder, not for the first time, if perhaps he had suffered at school.

'Because he was odd. I've told you before. He was weird and everybody knew it. He didn't have any clothes other than these sort of weird mismatches from the charity shop. And his hair was cut short by his mum. And he talked funny, sort of high-pitched and freaky, like a kind of girlish voice. And he wasn't into anything. He didn't know music, or comics, or sport, and, of course, he didn't stand a chance with the girls 'cause of, well, all of the above. And to top it all he was ginger. And gingers are by definition fair game. In fact, in some parts of the world they are legally hunted.' He sipped the last drops from his glass and noticed that Josh wasn't smiling. 'Look, he took shit, OK? Every school has one and he was ours. I didn't like it, didn't do it much, didn't encourage it in others. If I thought about it, which I didn't very often, then I thought it was harsh. But it happened. And if it had happened to you would you go back to see all those lovely people who made your life hell for a get-together? No, of course you wouldn't. So that's why he's never there.'

He spoke clearly and with confidence, but in his mind there was already forming a picture of Bleeder standing in the school hall where the reunions always happened. He was looking a bit downtrodden and sad and pathetic but Harvey was going up to him and shaking his hand. And Bleeder was smiling and saying there was no hard feelings and then he was telling Harvey: 'Oh that old comic, oh no we burned that years ago' and the two of them were having a laugh about those strange times and that strange day of the swap and that funny length of plastic that Bleeder was carrying and Harvey was saying 'If only we had that comic now we'd both be rich' and they were laughing and shaking their heads over the inequities of fate and then it was over and Harvey was getting on with things, getting on with his whole life, in fact, without thinking about something as pathetic as this all the time.

That it was such a fully realised fantasy sweeping so swiftly through Harvey's mind is explained by the fact that it had done so many, many times before. 'I'd love to see him,' he said meditatively now, 'just talk it over with him once. I've thought about phoning him a million times. Or phoning his mum anyway, getting a number for him, assuming he isn't still living at home.' He sniggered before remembering that Josh lived with his mother. 'Getting hold of him and just having a chat, you know. Seeing what he's up to, how he's doing ...'

'Seeing if he's still got the Superman One. Seeing if you can have it back'. Josh was not in forgiving mood.

'No. Well, yeah, why not? Who knows what people keep, you know? Half the world doesn't know the value of what it's got in its attic. I've probably got a Rembrandt, or a rare stamp