The Chaos (9 page)

‘I’m not going to. I’m not going to take anything. I’d just like to be able to sleep, that’s all. A proper night’s sleep, without dreaming.’

‘Why don’t you draw it?’

‘What?’

‘Your nightmare. If you draw it, get it out of your system, it might go away.’

I’m scared. It feels as though I’m bringing it into the light. It will take up my day as well as my night. But who am I kidding? I think about it anyway, so Vinny’s right, I might as well draw it.

I find a fresh roll of wallpaper and I start to draw. But pencil’s no good. I ask Vinny to fetch me some charcoal. It needs dark lines. It feels right to be drawing with something
already blackened by fire. My hand’s shaking as I start to sketch. I can’t do it. I close my eyes and I’m back there again. It’s in my head, filling me up, and then it spreads through me – the light and dark, the faces, the fire, the fear. I start drawing with my eyes still closed, and when I open them, there’s a face looking back at me from the paper.

A man is holding a child in his arms.

It’s him.

It’s Adam.

Chapter 17: Adam

T
hey take it – my book. They take it and they won’t give it back. Junior starts looking through, flicking the pages. 

‘What’s this? Your little black book? You’ve not had all of these, have you? Dirty bastard.’

‘Shut up. Give it back.’

‘It’s boys
and
girls. I knew there was something sick about you. You’ve not had all these, not in a million years. But maybe you want to …’

I try to grab the book back, but he whisks it up above my head and dances away with it.

‘Junior, it’s private. Give it back. Don’t you have anything private?’

‘I have now. I’ve got your book.’

‘Give it back, you moron. It’s nothing to do with you.’

I’m desperate. He mustn’t look at it. I’d rather it was torn up, destroyed. The adrenalin surges through me. There’s four of them and one of me, but it don’t matter. I’ve got to get the book back and I will. Junior’s twenty metres away now, and
his mates are blocking me in. I shove them as hard as I can, get my elbows in there. I take one of them out, but the others are in my way. Beyond them, I can see Junior’s stopped. He’s leafing through more slowly now. If I don’t get to him in the next couple of seconds, I’m stuffed. He’ll see the column headings, he’ll read the descriptions. He’ll find names he knows. He’ll find himself.

I head-butt the tallest guy and knee the other one in the balls, then barge past them and run straight at Junior, tackling him round the stomach, taking him down. We hit the tarmac together.

‘Get off, you mental bastard!’

He’s still got the book. I get hold of his fingers and bend them back one by one. He starts screaming like a girl, not such a big man without his mates. Three fingers in and he lets go of the book. It falls next to us, and I scoop it up and scramble away from him. Back on my feet, I stuff the book down my trousers. He’s still on the ground, holding his fingers with the other hand.

‘You’ve fucking broken them, you dickhead. You’ve broken my fingers!’

Someone must have called security, because all of a sudden we’re surrounded by them. One kneels down next to Junior and starts looking at his hand, while two guards grab me under the arms and frogmarch me into school. My feet hardly touch the ground. As we head towards the door I can hear one of Junior’s mates doing a number on me.

‘He just attacked us. He went mad. Like an animal. Like he’s on something.’

I’m put in the interview room and the first thing they do is search me. I’m thinking they won’t feel the book – it’s so flat, I should get away with it – but, of course, they do. They
ask me to take it out. I don’t want to. Then they tell me if I don’t, they will. So I reach down my trousers and pull out the book. It’s a bit crumpled and it’s moulded to the shape of my bum.

‘Put it down on the desk.’

I’ll put it down, but I won’t let them look in it. It’s not theirs. It’s private.

‘That’s not a schoolbook. What is it?’

‘A notebook.’

‘A notebook,
what?
‘

‘A notebook, sir.’

The guy reaches forward to pick it up, and I’m there before him, snatching the book up. 

‘Put the book down, Dawson.’

‘No, sir.’

He starts quoting from the school rules.

‘Pupils shall not bring any personal property into school that is not required as part of their studies. If such property is …’

I hear the door open behind me. Someone else is coming into the room. I don’t even need to think – I lurch round and make a break for it. Seconds later alarm bells start screaming, and my ears are rattling. The whole place is on red alert. How the hell am I going to get out of here? The interview room is near the main entrance, but the doors are tight shut, and there’s no way they’ll open with my ID card. The receptionist is watching open-mouthed as I throw myself down the corridor towards her. She screams when I vault over her desk.

‘Which one?’ I shout in her face. ‘Which button does the doors?’

She don’t answer, but when I look, it’s pretty obvious.
There’s a square black button on the left. I press it and the doors slide open. At the same time, she presses another one – her panic button – and another alarm kicks in. But I don’t care. I’m out. I’m away.

I run full pelt down the road. The school’ll get the police looking for me, and it won’t take them long to find me. I’m chipped, aren’t I? So all it’ll take is a check on their satellite or a call to one of the drones buzzing around the skies over London all the time. They’ll pick me up all right. But I don’t want anyone getting their noses into my book any more. It’s getting too hot to handle. I’ve got to destroy it or hide it.

I’m still running when I get to Nan’s. I swing round the gatepost and up the path. She’s standing in the doorway, with her coat on. She holds her hands out in front to stop me crashing into her.

‘I was just coming to see you. Got a phone call from the school.’

I can’t speak yet, need a minute to catch my breath, but I’m thinking we might only have a minute before the cops get here. So I push her indoors, and close the door behind us.

‘All right, all right, no need to shove. Fighting again, was it?’ says Nan. ‘I told you about that, didn’t I?’ 

I’m still out of breath, but I can’t wait. 

‘I’ve got to hide something,’ I gasp.

‘What is it?’

I pull the book out of my pocket. 

‘Aah, your book.’

‘You know about it?’

‘I might be old and daft, but I’m not blind. Give it here.’ 

I hesitate.

‘You can trust me, Adam. I’m on your side. I know you
don’t think I am, but I am.’

There’s a knock on the door and a shout. 

‘Police! Open up!’

She holds her hand out towards me. 

‘Trust me, Adam.’

I hand her the book. She turns away from me and stuffs it down her top.

‘No one’s been down there for thirty years. Safe as bloody houses, that is.’

Then she walks past me and goes to the door. 

‘Mrs Dawson?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re looking for Adam Dawson. Is he here?’

‘Yes, he’s here.’

‘We need to take him down to the station.’

‘That’s fine. He’ll come. And I’ll come with him. I’m not letting him out of my sight.’

We spend five hours there. Lots of questions, about me and Junior and the book. I don’t say a thing. Not a thing. And I don’t look at anyone, neither. They want me to ‘fess up, say I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry and I’m not crawling to anyone. And through it all Nan plays a blinder.

‘He’s sixteen,’ she keeps saying. ‘Sixteen. He got in a ruck at school, that’s all. I daresay you did an’ all, once or twice.’

They’re talking about charging me with assault, but instead they make Nan agree to bring me back to the station in a week’s time. Let me stew for a bit, see if I change my mind about talking. She signs the papers and we make our way home.

It’s after ten when we get back and there are two envelopes on the mat inside the front door; one addressed to Nan and one to me. Nan’s is from the school. I’m excluded for six
weeks. At the end of that, I’m to go in for an interview with the Head to see if they’ll let me back in. Screw that. As far as I’m concerned, I’m out of there now.

I open the letter to me in my room. I don’t recognise the writing and, just for a moment, I think it might be from Sarah. I hold my breath as I open it.
Let it be from her. Let her be all right.
It’s not signed, but it don’t need to be.

‘Dear Loser, I know whats in yur book you sick bastard you got my name an you got a date for me but its not me you need to worry about fuckface its you 6122026 C U then.’

It’s there again, the smell of sweat, the searing pain, my eyes flooding red, the taste of blood. Is it my blood? Is it?

Chapter 18: Sarah

I
 take off my clothes and look at my reflection in the mirror. From the front, I still look like me, pretty much. My stomach hasn’t spread sideways, so my outline is still the same. My boobs have swollen up, though, and they’re sort of wider. My ankles are getting thicker too.

I turn to the side. My belly’s huge. It hardly changed when I was at home – it was easy to hide it under my clothes – but since I’ve been here you can almost see it grow. The skin’s stretched so tight, I can’t believe I can get any bigger.

Vinny brought me a book. It’s full of pictures, what a baby looks like as it grows from a few cells to a sort of tadpole and then into a tiny thing that starts to look like a person. I’ve read it from cover to cover. I read the birth bit twice. I never really thought before about how this baby is going to get out. I can’t go to the hospital, because they’ll need ID and then they’ll tell my family and I’ll be trapped. And I don’t want my daughter chipped either. That’s what they do these days, inject a microchip soon after they’re born. They used to do
it to dogs – ours was chipped – but now they do it to people. Gives me the creeps.

So I’ll have to do the birth here, on my own. I look down at my stomach. The baby’s moving – I can see a knee or an elbow moving under the surface. She’ll be here soon. How the hell is that going to happen? It’s like getting a ship out of a bottle. It’s impossible.

I’ve got goosebumps all over me. It’s too cold in this room to be naked, but I’m not ready to get dressed yet.

Look at me, the state of me. How did I get like this? Of course, I know how. I never fought Him off – I should have. Kicked Him, hit Him, bitten Him. I never even said, ‘No’. He’s a big man, so I could say I was frightened of Him, and I was when He was like that, at night, in the dark – switched off, impersonal, not like my dad at all – but it wasn’t fear that stopped me from crying out. It was love. He was my dad and I loved Him. And He loved me.

Only I never asked for that sort of love. Now here I am. Pregnant. Alone. He did this to me. He’s a twisted, sick man and I hate Him. People should know what He’s like. He should go to court, be named and shamed. He should rot in prison. And yet … and yet … I know I would never do that to Him, because He’s still my dad.

Maybe I’m as sick as He is.

I look back at my reflection. The body has changed, but the face in the mirror is the face He saw when He was with me. The hair is the hair that He touched. Suddenly I don’t want to be that person any more. I don’t want to look like her.

I’m shivering now, and I reach for my clothes. When I’m dressed again, I go into the bathroom, find some scissors and
hack at my hair. It falls onto the sink, the floor, all around me. I turn on the tap and swish the hair down the plughole, then I put the plug in, and put a towel round my shoulders. When the sink is full I lean forward and dunk my head. Then I rub shampoo in to what’s left of my hair, pick up a disposable razor and I start to shave my scalp. I leave a stripe in the middle, a Mohican. I’ll ask Vinny to get hold of some dye tomorrow; pink, green, black, I don’t mind. Something different.

So when I look in the mirror, I won’t see the old Sarah. I’ll surprise myself, do a double-take. 

I’ll be a new person tomorrow.

Chapter 19: Adam

H
ow do people sleep at night? How do they close their eyes, relax and give in to it? When I close my eyes, I see numbers, deaths, chaos. I see buildings falling around me, feel water forcing its way into my lungs, see flames all around me. I hear screams, people crying out for help. I see the flash of a blade, feel it slip between my ribs, know that this is it, the end.

I can’t bear it, being alone, in the dark, with just the things in my head for company. Everything’s bigger in the dark, louder, more urgent. I lie here and I can’t get away from it all. My legs twitch, ready to run, but I’ve got nowhere to go. My heart’s thudding in my chest; my breathing’s fast and shallow. My hand gropes around, finds the light switch and I sit up, rubbing my eyes until they can cope with the brightness.

I look round the room. This is my world now. I don’t go to school. I don’t go out. I stay here, day and night, night and day, listening to next door’s dog yapping away, twenty-four seven.

I tried to get some better information for Nelson. He was right, I needed addresses, postcodes. I needed to know where people lived, not just where I saw them out on the street. You can do it two ways; start somewhere busy and follow people home or wait outside flats, houses, whatever, and write down the numbers when they come out. Either way you get picked up by the police.

I start off thinking this is something I can do – I can treat it like a job, going to work in the morning. After three days and three arrests, Nan grounds me and I don’t want to go out anyway. The local filth has me on their radar, programmed into their searches. As soon as I’m out of the door, they know about it and they’re tracking me. Only takes half an hour on the third day before I hear the whine of the drone over my head.