‘I’m telling you the truth,’ he insisted. ‘We don’t have any leads.’

‘Why are you doing this to me? Why don’t you want to help me? I’ve just started this new job. I could do with something like this. This would be really good for me to get the exclusive on this.’

‘You’re overreacting.’

‘No, I’m not. You’re the one lying to me, keeping stuff hidden from me. Who else have you told about this? Who’s been flirting with you for the information?’

‘You mean like you used to?’

She lashed out at him. A little kick on the thigh, like a hammer swinging down. It was only small, and didn’t hurt him in the slightest, but there was intent behind it. And he was immediately reminded of why he didn’t get into long-term relationships. His previous two had been similar. His first girlfriend, Kasia’s mother, had verbally and emotionally abused him, constantly undermined him and made him feel small. His second official girlfriend, who had turned out to be a serial killer, had, aside from the killing aspect of her personality, been neurotic, jealous and a little psychotic. It was all he’d ever known. All he’d ever been used to. Perhaps he had a type – a type that made him feel tiny and useless.

‘You’re overreacting,’ he repeated.

Another kick. Harder, this time.

‘No, I’m not. We need this story, Tomek. Today, we ran a front page, a breaking news story about a group of kids from London who took a crab on the train all the way to Southend seafront so it could “live its best life”.’

‘And did it?’

Another kick. This time misfiring and narrowly missing his groin.

‘That’s the sort of shit we’ve been running recently. A fucking crab! Scraping the bottom of the fucking barrel.’

Tomek sniggered. ‘Where’d they get the crab from?’

‘Really? You think it’s funny?’

‘I can’t believe you don’t.’

‘This is my fucking job we’re talking about, and you’re just laughing about it. I can’t believe that’s the first thing you think of. This is my career. If you can’t take me seriously, then who the fuck will?’

Maybe the crab, Tomek thought, but kept it to himself. Instead, he went back to thinking about buildings and being underwater, and how, in that moment, he felt like he was struggling to come up for air.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Liam Dennis had never felt so alive, so full of adrenaline. He wanted to run through walls, jump off buildings, dive across the train track. His teenage body didn’t know how to handle it, how to process it. But James and Ethan did. They had experience with this sort of thing, knew what they were doing. Were able to control themselves. They had suggested it to him that afternoon at school: slipping out in the middle of the night while his mum and dad were asleep, breaking in, putting his art skills to good use, then making it back home again before anyone woke up. Like nothing had happened. The risk Liam had was running into his dad. He always woke up super early for work, and Liam was paranoid he would come home at the wrong time, fully clothed, out of breath, his hands covered in spray paint. But Ethan had told him not to worry, that it added to the experience, heightened it somehow.

Liam wasn’t entirely sure how, but he took Ethan’s words at face value. He was in no position to do otherwise.

It was a little after two am. It was pitch dark outside, and everything was silent, save for the sound of the wind picking up leaves and dropping them a few inches away to a new resting place. It was the quietest he’d ever heard it. No traffic, no trains, not even the sound of the Thames Estuary reached them.

Ethan anticipated they would need no more than half an hour, and fully clothed, with their hoods pulled low over their heads, they started towards the location. They had agreed to meet on the other side of the train track that cut through the landscape towards Southend high street. It was more convenient for Ethan, and as the unofficial leader of the group, what he said went.

Their first obstacle was the train track, with seven hundred and fifty volts coursing through it. Liam had never crossed a train track before, never had the need to. But he’d read the horror stories. Of suicides, of kids jumping them in the middle of the night and getting seriously injured.

But not him, not tonight. He would make sure nothing happened.

Because it was his first night out with them, Ethan and James had decided he needed to go first. That it was only fair. An initiation, a chance for him to prove himself. And so, in the darkness, the only source of illumination the low sodium lights in the distance, Liam stepped onto the gravelled surface beside the live tracks. In the silence, he could hear the electricity raging through it, and he felt a buzz in the air, pressing against his legs like a force field. Carefully, he lifted his leg high into the air, like he’d been taught at karate, swivelled his hips, and then lowered it, dropping into a deep sumo squat. Then he repeated the process for the second portion of the track. High, swivel, drop, squat.

High, swivel, drop, squat.

High—

It wasn’t until he was at the third track that he heard another sound. Just as he was about to swivel his hips, he saw Ethan and James sprinting across the gravel, hopping over each metal snake with ease, as though it was as easy as jumping over a stone on the ground. The two boys laughed at him when they reached the other side, cajoling him, the sound of their laughter absorbed by the surrounding trees and hedges.

‘Fucking hell,’ he said to himself, as he looked down at the metal pylon immediately in front of him. ‘Come on. You can do this. Like jumping over a slide tackle.’

He lowered his leg, retreated a few steps, and steadied his breath, legs shoulder-width apart, arms by his sides, breathing deeply – his best Cristiano Ronaldo free kick impression. Then, when he felt confident enough, he sprinted towards his friends. One track. Two tracks. The sound of the canisters in his backpack rattled in his ears.

And he was there. Done. Easier than he’d thought.

He looked back at the sleeping snakes, at the distance he’d covered, his body swelling with pride. He felt invincible, the adrenaline reaching a new high.

‘Come on, dickhead,’ James said, slapping him on the back. ‘Let’s go!’

The boy grabbed his bag strap and pulled him up a slight incline, through a thick row of hedges. Liam winced and protected his face as thorns and stinging nettles lashed at him, cutting into his knuckles and forearms. A few painful moments later, they breached onto a residential street, filled with houses much too posh and expensive for his liking. He was used to the estate; here he got a sense that nobody talked to each other, nobody said anything. Not like at the estate, where everyone knew everyone – even if that wasn’t such a good thing at times.

They paid little heed to the houses, however, because the treasure chest they were looking for was only a short distance away.

He had never heard of Park Road Methodist Church until lunchtime. He had no idea what it was used for, no idea how long it had been there, just that it had been empty and boarded up for years. Nobody ever went there, they’d told him, which was what made it the perfect place to go.

They kept their heads down as they traversed the quiet residential streets. Several of the driveways were filled with at least two cars, while the remaining vehicles spilled onto the street. There were no lights on in any of the houses, and the only source of light across the entire stretch of road was a single streetlamp that flickered intermittently.

A minute later, they arrived at the Methodist church. It was much more impressive than Liam had been expecting, but as he stared at it, he felt an overwhelming urge to run away; that it was tainted by evil spirits, haunted by the devil. He wasn’t a religious or spiritual kid in the slightest, but an ominous premonition had suddenly crept over him and told him this was a bad place to be. That they should turn and leave, run away and never come back. But he couldn’t say that. Not when James and Ethan were there. Not when they would tell the entire school and rip into him tomorrow. Maybe it was doubt, maybe it was fear calling him back. But he’d experienced those emotions before, and this was nothing like that.

‘What you waiting for, mate?’ Ethan asked.

Liam was surprised to see that both of them had made it to a side entrance, a wooden door with a flimsy padlock as a last line of defence.

‘Ain’t scared, are ya, bruv?’

Liam shook his head, trying to control the lump in his throat. ‘Nah. I was just… I was just looking at it.’

He didn’t want to be there.

He didn’t want to be there.

Saying nothing else, he silently joined the two boys, huddling closer than he usually would. In his backpack, Ethan had brought a pair of bolt cutters. Where he’d got them from, Liam didn’t know, but as he opened the handles to feed the bolt into the teeth, he paused.

‘S’matter?’ asked James.

‘It’s unlocked. It’s already been cut.’

He didn’t want to be there.

He didn’t want to be there.

‘Maybe someone’s already done it,’ James said.