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I downed the rest of my orange juice and took my empty plate and glass to the sink. My appetite for more was gone.

  seven. Tobey

  The summer morning was already blindingly bright and blazing hot with a promise of a lot more sunshine to come. A heat haze rose up from the pavement, creating a muddled urban mirage of shimmering skyscapes and flickering, glistening buildings. To be honest, I was already sick of the heat. Roll on autumn. I pulled the strap of my rucksack further up my arm to rest upon my shoulder. The thing was heavy and uncomfortable and made me walk with my whole body tilted to one side. But that wasn't why I was in a bad mood.

  Breakfast with Mum and Jessica had been bad enough. But then Callie had let me down. She must've decided to walk to school by herself today, in spite of telling me last night that she'd knock for me. I was so used to going to school with Callie that when it didn't happen, it felt strange, like I'd set foot out of my house and forgotten something vital.

  But I shouldn't have been surprised. More often than not these days, Callie was a silent companion. Since her nana had died, she'd changed. According to the newspaper reports, some anonymous Nought guy had died in the explosion as well. The authorities didn't seem to be straining themselves to establish his identity. Or maybe it'd been reported on page thirty-odd of the dead guy's local newspaper and hadn't managed to make it any further up the 'does-anyone-give-a-damn?' scale.

  What had happened in that hotel the day Jasmine Hadley died? Was she really so unlucky as to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was life really that arbitrary? It would appear so.

  An executive jet-black WMW – known as 'white man's wheels' – pulled up alongside me, its back window gliding down in expensive silence.

  'Tobey Durbridge, isn't it?'

  I stepped back, pulling my rucksack closer to my side. The WMW before me was almost limousine-like in its proportions. It had to be custom-made. The alloy hubcaps had been polished to a high shine and I could see my distorted reflection in them. I took another step back, as did my reflection. We both had the same idea.

  A Nought man's face moved into view. I recognized him at once. Alex McAuley. Aka Creepy McAuley (only ever said behind his back) or Softly McAuley (occasionally said to his face by close friends only) because he could be kicking your head in and he'd never once raise his voice. No one – as far as I knew – had ever heard him shout. He didn't need to. His dark-grey suit covered a middleweight boxer's physique. He was still in shape, even though he was in his mid thirties. He wore his blond hair swept back off his face. His light-brown eyebrows framed hard, ice-blue eyes. The single yellow diamond stud he wore in his left ear twinkled like a giggle in the morning sunlight. He smiled at me, pulling back thin lips over perfect, high-price, sparkling white teeth. I fought my natural instinct to take another step back or, better still, do a runner. It wouldn't do any good anyway. I saw the silhouette of another Nought man in the back seat of the car next to McAuley. Between them was a state-of-the-art laptop, McAuley's no doubt, with a memory stick attached. The driver and the guy in the passenger seat were also looking at me. McAuley's car was full. The rumours were true. He never, ever travelled alone.

  I answered the expectant look on his face. 'Hello, Mr McAuley.'

  'Ah. So you know me?' he replied, his tone soft and lilting.

  I didn't bother responding to that one. If he needed his ego stroked he'd have to find someone else to do it for him.

  'I've been hearing a lot about you, Tobey Durbridge,' he said.

  My heart flipped like a pancake. Didn't like the sound of that. Not one little bit.

  McAuley raised his eyebrows when I failed to reply. 'Aren't you going to ask me what I've heard?'

  I shook my head.

  'You're not the least bit curious?'

  'If it's bad, it'll crush my ego, in which case I'd rather not hear it. And if it's good, it'll make my head swell, in which case I'd better not hear it.'

  McAuley considered me. I was pinned by his gaze like a lepidopterist's butterfly. 'Curiosity moves us forward,' he said.

  Around McAuley, curiosity could also move you under – buried two metres under, to be precise – but I decided to keep that to myself.

  'You know when to keep your mouth shut, don't you?' McAuley smiled, even though there was nothing to smile about. Mind you, if I'd forked out the kind of money he must've spent on all those porcelain veneers, I'd show them off too. 'Tobey, how would you like to work for me? I could always use a smart boy like you.'

  I'd rather have my toenails extracted one by one without benefit of a general anaesthetic, but McAuley was just the man to make that happen.

  'Well? I asked you a question, Tobias.' McAuley's eyebrows began to knit together and, if anything, his voice grew quieter.

  'I'm still at school, sir.'

  'I have little jobs that need doing over the odd weekend and a couple of evenings a month – nothing onerous. And I'm very generous, as you'll find out.'

  I'm a fish and he's the fisherman and he's got his hook in my mouth. My silence will let him reel me in. Say something, Tobey. Godsake! Speak.

  'I'd rather not, sir,' I replied quietly.

  Inside McAuley's car, his crew began to laugh.

  'You're very polite, aren't you? "I'm still at school, sir." "I'd rather not, sir,"' McAuley mimicked. 'Three bags full, sir.'

  A single line of sweat trickled down from my left temple in front of my ear, but I didn't dare wipe it away. My heart was a punching bag being viciously pummelled over and over.

  'Tobey, you don't want to say no to me,' McAuley said softly. 'I don't like that word. I mean, I really don't like that word.'

  A children's book. A first reader. My photo, legs pumping, terror on my face. See Tobey run. Run, Tobey, run.

  I stood still, my feet glued to my shoes, my shoes glued to the pavement. My useless frickin' body. Adrenalin coursed through me. Fight or flight? I couldn't do either. Useless.

  'I'm a good man to work for, Tobey.'

  Why can't I just slide away on McAuley's oily smile?

  'I'm a loyal friend and I look after my own. Ask anyone who works for me. Ask your friend Dan. But I think you'll find I'm also a—'

  'Tobey! How come you didn't wait for me?'

  Callie's voice reached me before she did. That girl had the ability to go from mute to surround sound in less than a second. She trotted up to me, to stand between me and McAuley.

  'You were supposed to wait for me, toe-rag. Thanks for making me run after you. Now I'm all sweaty.'

  I pulled at her arm and stepped in front of her.

  'What's wrong?' Callie frowned.

  My eyes were still on McAuley. His gaze swept over Callie then back to me.

  'This your girlfriend then, Tobey?' he asked. 'She's very pretty.'

  'No. We're just . . . we walk to school together, that's all,' I replied.

  'And we'd better get going, Tobey. We're going to be so late.' Callie grabbed my arm and pulled me after her. I had to trot to keep up. I trailed in her wake, forcing myself not to turn round and look into McAuley's glacier-cold eyes. Half a minute later, his black limo slid past us, the tinted windows now up. Callie and I carried on jogging until the car turned the corner. Callie let go of my arm and dropped her rucksack to the pavement, trying to drag air back into her lungs in rushed gasps.

  'Tobey, are you OK?'

  'Yeah.' I shrugged.

  'You left without me.' There was no mistaking the accusation in her voice.

  'I thought you'd already gone to school, that's why.'

  'You can knock for me once in a while, you know. It doesn't always have to be me running after you. Would it have killed you to check?' Callie looked up and down the road. 'What did Creepy McAuley want?'

  'He offered me a job.'

  'Hellfire!' Callie turned to stare at me. 'You didn't say yes, did you?'

  'I'm not entirely stupid,' I replied. 'Although saying no to that man might just be the stupidest thing I've ever done.'


  'People who work for him usually end up in prison or dead,' said Callie.

  Tell me something I didn't know.

  'Which is why I said no, Callie.'

  'D'you think he'll leave it at that?' Callie's teeth worried at her bottom lip.

  I shrugged. 'Who knows? No point losing sleep over it. We'd better get going.'

  I picked up Callie's rucksack and handed it to her. We walked to school without saying another word. Callie kept stealing glances at me, but I wasn't in the mood for conversation. She had known me long enough to figure that out for herself.

  McAuley knew my name.

  Worse than that, I was now a blip on McAuley's radar. It was hard to say which was spinning harder, my mind or my stomach.

  'Tobey, you can't work for that man. You just can't.' Callie finally broke the silence between us. 'The Dowds run things around here. If they hear you're working for McAuley you won't be able to walk from your house to school without slipping.'

  Slipping. The technical term for entering enemy territory. If I ever agreed to work for McAuley, it was only a matter of time before the Dowds got to hear about it, and then my house and my school and all the routes in between would mean I'd be slipping daily. That's what it was all about in Meadowview. The streets didn't belong to the government or the local authority; they'd been fought over between the Dowds and McAuley's mob. The Dowds ran practically every crooked operation on the east side of Meadowview. McAuley had carved out the west side for himself. He'd established his turf by speaking softly and ensuring that no one but himself and the few good men in his car knew where the bodies were buried. People who opposed him had the habit of 'disappearing' – including two of the Dowd family before an uneasy truce was brokered between them.

  Now McAuley wanted me to work for him, even though he knew I lived on the Dowds' patch. And I didn't like what he said about asking my friend Dan for a reference. Surely Dan wasn't stupid enough to talk to McAuley about me? If McAuley didn't have any problem telling me that Dan worked for him, who else had he told? Dan only lived two streets away from me – in Dowd territory.

  Damn!

  How on earth was I going to extricate myself from this one? Dan might be one of my best mates, but he was stupid as a bag of rocks to get involved with McAuley. Now that I'd seen the man up close and personal, I'd have to try and persuade Dan to get out and stay out of McAuley's clutches. But most important of all, I had to make sure that McAuley kept his eyes off Callie.

  Nothing bad was going to happen to Callie Rose.

  Not on my watch.

  eight. Callie

  Tobey remained taciturn all day. It wasn't like him at all. He laughed everything off, never took anything seriously. But not today. After break, we sat together for our double science lesson, but try as I might I couldn't get him to open up to me. After the umpteenth mumbled monosyllabic response, I conceded defeat. Tobey stood over me as I put my stuff in my locker before lunch. We walked into the food hall together, but we peeled off in different directions once we'd got our lunch. I sat with Sammi and some of my other friends. Tobey sat by himself, but not for long. Some of his mates joined him, but from what I could see he still wasn't saying much. Tobey was a strange one. He didn't have many close friends, but that seemed to be by choice rather than design. He chose his friends carefully, but once he was your friend, he was your friend for life. And the mates he had were fiercely loyal in return. And I'm one of them. Every time I looked up, I caught Tobey watching me. I smiled a couple of times, but he immediately looked away.

  For heaven's sake! I wanted to invite Tobey out for a meal or something the following night, but it was hard when he would barely speak to me. I mean, I didn't need three guesses to figure it out why. He was worried about McAuley. And I couldn't say I blamed him. But why take it out on me?

  McAuley was a lowlife, just like the Dowds. They climbed high up life's ladder by stockpiling the misery of others beneath them. Even the Liberation Militia were aware of their activities in Meadowview. At least, they were when I was a member. The Liberation Militia didn't bother with them over much. The L.M. considered themselves above that kind of petty wheeling and dealing. Drugs, prostitution, loan sharking, extortion – those kinds of criminal activities were left to the hag fishes, as McAuley, the Dowds and all other 'common' criminals were known within the L.M. – with the emphasis on common. The L.M. considered their cause more noble. They believed themselves to be freedom fighters. Their objective? Equal rights and equal justice for Noughts. And the means? By dispensing their own brand of justice to those they believed deserved it. And if you were innocent and got caught up, then tough luck. The world according to the L.M. The kidnap, torture and murder of the L.M.'s enemies was, in their eyes, honourable. If the government and the Cross-owned media didn't see it that way, if they chose to call the L.M. terrorists instead of freedom fighters, then so be it.

  I wanted no part of any of them, not the L.M., nor the hag fishes. Never again. Uncle Jude was the worst. A hag fish masquerading as a warrior fighting for the greater good. The only greater good Uncle Jude had in his heart and his mind was getting revenge on my mother. So many things I knew now that I wished I'd known a few years ago. Even now my blood ran cold at the thought of what I'd almost done so that Uncle Jude could have his revenge. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  But I'd been snatched back to sanity before I could fall irrevocably to Uncle Jude's scheme. In spite of knowing it was pointless, I still hated my uncle. And my loathing grew with each passing day. He was dead and I was still here, but it didn't make any difference. Each angry thought revolved around him. Uncle Jude was evil incarnate. He was so full of hatred that he could experience nothing else. The messages each of his senses sent to his brain were somehow transformed into one hundred per cent hate and nothing else. That was all his brain could register. When Nana Jasmine died, my uncle had died with her. I wondered about his last thoughts as the bomb he'd instructed me to make went off. That split second before his death, who had occupied his thoughts? Mum? Callum, my dad, and his brother? His family? His wasted life?

  I knew it wasn't me, unless it was to curse me for fouling up his plans. I don't want to end up like him – but it's so hard. 'Cause Nana Jasmine isn't here any more. Where was the justice in that?

  Mum and Aunt Minerva are going to talk to Nana Jasmine's solicitor, Mr Bharadia, again next week. They need to find out when they'll be able to hear her will and get probate, though it could be weeks still before that happens. When will it all be over?

  It's taking so long because of the way Nana died and the length of time it took to prove conclusively that it really was Nana Jasmine who died in the explosion at the Isis Hotel. And then there were a number of other matters concerning her death to be sorted out first like the postmortem and the authorities releasing the body so that Mum and Aunt Minerva could arrange the funeral. And after the funeral, thank God for Tobey. Like Mum, he always seemed to be there when I needed company. I really don't know what I would've done without him.

  I can't help wishing . . . but what's the point? Tobey is always going to treat me like the younger sister he never wanted. I'll just have to get used to it. I had hoped that maybe our kiss in his bedroom meant something to him. It meant something to me. But that's just me daydreaming. I all but held up a placard to tell him how I feel about him. I practically threw myself at him. For a moment there, when he pulled me closer, I could've sworn . . . Wishful thinking again. The best thing he could find to say about me was that I smelled of biscuits.

  Biscuits! I ask you.

  I was wearing the perfume he gave me last Crossmas and he thought I smelled of biscuits. I hope he didn't see how much that hurt. Biscuits . . . I'm not going to forget that one in a hurry.

  It's funny, though. Even when I'm mad at him, I'm not really mad at him. Thinking of Tobey clears my head of other bitter thoughts. Thinking of him makes me smile. Maybe that's why I find myself thinking of him more and more often.

 
Maybe that's why . . .

  nine. Tobey

  'Happy birthday, Nana.' Callie kissed Meggie on the cheek and handed her a birthday card and a gift-wrapped box. At least, that's what it looked like from where I stood hovering in the doorway.

  'What is it?' Meggie asked, putting the box to her ear and shaking it.

  Callie teased, 'When you open it, you'll find out.'

  Meggie smiled and began to carefully peel off the wrapping paper from one side of her present. Now if that'd been me, I would've just ripped the paper off. But according to Meggie, if it was removed with care, then 'the wrapping paper could have a repeat performance. Maybe several.' Godsake! It was only wrapping paper. Mind you, my current finances were such that I couldn't even afford to buy wrapping paper, never mind a present. I hadn't given Callie a present two months ago when it was her birthday and I still couldn't afford to buy her one. That really burned me. I wanted to buy Callie anything she wanted, but with what?

  I looked around the sitting room, trying to find something to take my mind off the empty state of my pockets. I'd been in this room countless times before, but it never ceased to interest me how the room was a strange mix of old and new, past and present, Nought and Cross. Photos in frames lined the window sill and any available horizontal space. Photos of Meggie's family from a long time ago and another world away. Callie's Aunt Lynette occupied one photo by herself. I'd never heard anyone but Callie talk about her. Callie's aunt had died before Callie was born in some kind of road accident. Another photo on the side table showed all Meggie's children together – Lynette, Jude and Callum. They were all sitting right back on a sofa, none of their legs long enough to reach the floor. Callum couldn't've been more than two or three. It was kind of weird to think that that toddler in the photo was Callie's dad. There was a photo of Meggie and her husband Ryan together, their arms wrapped around each other as they both smiled at the camera. They looked so happy. I didn't know much about Meggie's life, but I knew she'd been through a lot and lost much – her husband Ryan and her children Lynette and Callum were now dead. It showed on every line on her face.