31
Because Daniel had never seen this bus driver before, he tried to make a good impression. He held up his pass right in front of him and said, ‘Hello, Mr Bus Driver. My name’s Daniel Timpson and I need to get off this bus when we get to Askew Drive, opposite Asda.’ His mum had told him to introduce himself that way, because drivers were usually helpful. This one wasn’t. This one just shook his head and scowled, making Daniel wonder if he’d said the wrong thing.
He craned his neck in search of a seat. He liked to sit at the front, but those benches were occupied. It was pretty full downstairs, but he never ventured upstairs – not since that time he was teased by some girls.
He moved along the aisle. Only one unoccupied seat. Well, actually it was occupied by a woman’s bag, but he knew that bags don’t get their own seats because they don’t buy tickets.
‘Excuse me,’ Daniel said. ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’
He put it as politely as he could, but the woman glared at him as if he’d just spat on her.
She picked up the bag, placed it on her lap, sighed heavily.
Daniel lowered himself onto the now-vacant seat. He tried as hard as he could to obey The Rule, but he was large and it was a tight space, and when he did accidentally brush against her, she tutted loudly and shuffled closer to the window.
Daniel didn’t get his Adam-9 comic out. He was too worried about knocking against the woman again. Instead, he sat in silence for the whole journey and thought about what his life was like now.
It made him miserable.
For one thing, it hurt that his father had lied. And it wasn’t just a little lie, not like that time he had an injection and his dad said it wouldn’t hurt and it did. This lie was about saying a man was alive when he wasn’t. Joseph Cobb was dead all along, and his dad had known it.
And if he could lie about that, then maybe he’d also lied about cutting Joseph Cobb into tiny pieces. He’d told Daniel he hadn’t done it, but that’s not what he’d said when Ronan Cobb had asked him.
He didn’t want to believe that his dad could do something like that.
And then there was the money.
His dad had said he was going to give Ronan money so that he’d never come back and frighten them again.
But what money? Daniel’s parents were always complaining that they didn’t have any. His dad had said the same thing to Ronan (unless he was lying again). So where would they get it from?
Ronan had talked about twenty-five grand. Daniel didn’t know how much that was, exactly, but he was convinced it was a lot.
There was also the bad feeling at home.
Mum and Dad snapping at each other. Both of them snapping at him. He couldn’t recall a time when it had been as bad as this. Everyone angry and upset.
He just wanted it all to go back to the way it was.
Why hadn’t he walked up the stairs of Erskine Court like he always did, instead of listening to his dad? And why did Joseph Cobb have to get into their lift?
When Daniel rose to leave the bus, the woman next to him slammed her bag back onto his seat. He felt awful for making her so annoyed.
As the bus squealed to a halt and the doors opened, Daniel turned to issue his customary thanks, but the driver stared straight ahead, not acknowledging his presence. Daniel closed his mouth without a word, then stepped down onto the pavement. Behind him, the doors slapped shut so quickly they almost trapped his briefcase.
On the busy main road, he felt the eyes of other pedestrians on him. As though they were thinking he’d committed a terrible crime.
Like killing a man.
Anxious to escape the crowds, he hurried onto Marlborough Road. It was quieter here, and he was able to think, but actually he didn’t like the thoughts that were racing through his mind. They frightened him.
He was so preoccupied, he forgot to cross over before he reached Dirty Man’s house. The man’s dog – a small, scruffy amalgam of fur and teeth – ran straight out at Daniel, yapping and snarling, and Daniel had to hop out onto the road to avoid it, even though he knew it was a dangerous thing to do, but probably not as dangerous as the dog. Dirty Man was in his doorway, leaning against the jamb, a cigarette in his hand. He was grinning, and Daniel could see the glint of one gold tooth.
As he marched more quickly down the street, his heart pounding furiously, all he could think about was Perry – the dog that had frightened him that other time, the dog he had killed – and that made him even more upset.
He turned right onto Pickford Avenue. Mrs Romford was out again today, cleaning her car. She was bent over, her head inside the vehicle as she ran a hand-held vacuum cleaner over the driver’s seat. Daniel decided to walk straight past. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want to get into a conversation with her today.
He was only a couple of metres ahead of the car when the vacuum cleaner was turned off and Mrs Romford called out to him.
‘Yoo-hoo! Daniel!’
Daniel halted. He knew he couldn’t keep walking because that would be rude and it might upset Mrs Romford and it would be just another bad thing for him to think about.
He turned and said, ‘Hello, Mrs Romford. How are you today?’ And he said it in the brightest, breeziest way he could muster because he knew that it usually made people happy, even though it hadn’t worked on the bus earlier.
‘I’m fine, thank you, Daniel. And how’s your dad?’
Daniel opened and closed his mouth a couple of times as he considered and rejected replies. His immediate urge was to say something like, Well, my dad’s not very happy because he had to get rid of a dead body and I think he might have chopped him into pieces and now the dead man’s brother wants money from my dad, and he hasn’t got any. He didn’t say any of that because his parents had made it clear that they didn’t want him to tell people, but at the same time he didn’t want to lie to Mrs Romford, and so he said simply, and after a long delay, ‘He’s very busy.’
‘I’ll bet he is. And what about you? You must be very excited.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a little bird told me that it’s someone’s birthday soon.’
This puzzled Daniel for two reasons. First, he didn’t understand how a bird could tell her anything, and second, he’d already told her that it was his birthday very soon. He distinctly remembered doing so when she was polishing her letterbox.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ll be having chippy chips.’ He’d already told her that too, but her memory didn’t seem to be working very well.
