There was no way I could know for certain if Charlie really had killed his dog. It wasn’t the kind of incident that would have been reported in the news or made its way into the school’s grapevine of gossip. But Goodbold did seem hurt to me. When I saw his face in unguarded moments, it was as though some cruel damage had been done to him and he couldn’t understand why.
And so, while there was no way I could know for sure, I did.
Because I saw Charlie and the others watching Goodbold too. That first day he was back, I remember seeing the three of them sitting on a bench together at break time. While I’d done my best to avoid them since yesterday, I was near enough to see Goodbold walking past on playground duty, and then what happened as he reached their bench.
James was staring down at the ground. Billy was looking off to one side. But Charlie was staring straight at Goodbold the whole time, watching him as he approached.
I saw Goodbold glance indifferently at them.
Then back again more intently.
And then he came to a halt.
Because Charlie was smiling at him. It was a knowing smile—one that was easily deniable, but which communicated just enough of a message for Goodbold to understand what lay behind it. To let him know it was Charlie who had done this terrible thing to him, and that there was nothing he could do about it.
The moment seemed to last for an age. It felt like my heart stopped in my chest as I wondered what was going to happen. Whether Goodbold might approach Charlie and challenge him. Or perhaps even lose control and attack him.
And yet Goodbold did none of those things.
He just stood there. But the expression on his face changed. It was as though he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing—as though even if, right then, he understood the what of it, he couldn’t make sense of the why. And in those few seconds I saw the man in a different light. I remembered the occasions when I’d seen him walking his dog in Gritten, and I found myself picturing a lonely home life, and the frustrations and disappointments of his everyday existence. I imagined him waking up the previous morning and coming downstairs, stepping out into his yard, and seeing what had been taken from him. And despite all the indignities he’d forced on us over the months, I felt sorry for him.
Then he turned from Charlie and walked away.
* * *
And life carried on for all of us.
Over the weeks that followed, it was easy enough to avoid James. The town was small, but there were routes through it that avoided his house on a morning. I found it easy to ignore him during the wait at the bus stop. On the journey itself, he sat in the front and so was always ahead of me by the time I disembarked. On the way home, I’d often see him stalking across the bridge over the main road, his head bowed and his hands stuffed in his pockets, slumped and walking too quickly, as if he were trying to escape from something.
At school, I imagine the three of them spent most of their time in Room C5b, and I had no reason to go there anymore. Likewise the woods. On weekends I kept well away from the Shadows. I had no desire to encounter the three of them out there in the wilds, making their stupid plans, buying into each other’s fantasies, and communing with the monster from their dreams.
I couldn’t get away from them entirely, of course. I saw them in classes, and occasionally in the playground. While I did my best to ignore them, it was always uncomfortable, because I had the impression they weren’t ignoring me—or at least that Charlie wasn’t. Every now and then my skin would crawl and I’d look up to see the three of them nearby, Charlie with a smirk on his face, a sly and victorious expression.
You might have removed yourself from the game, he seemed to be saying. But the game isn’t finished with you yet.
And each time, I would look away and wonder why I had ever been friends with him at all. It had been because of James, of course. But I never saw James looking at me. He would always be staring at the ground instead, embarrassed and awkward, and I remember thinking he seemed increasingly out of sorts with the other two. There had been shifting power divisions between the four of us as a group, but my presence had balanced things out a little; it seemed like, without me around, Charlie and Billy had grown closer again, and that James was being dominated.
There was one lunchtime when I was at the edge of the playground and I saw the three of them in the distance. James was walking between the other two, and he looked so broken down that he reminded me of a prisoner being led somewhere against his will.
But he had made his choice, hadn’t he?
I stared after them for a moment, telling myself I didn’t care, and that I didn’t need him.
Fuck him.
Then I hitched my bag up on my shoulder and walked past the construction site toward the tennis courts and the bench.
Because I had someone else to spend my time with.
TWENTY-FOUR
NOW
I’m surprised you didn’t opt for a hotel.
That was what Amanda had said to me yesterday. The comment had thrown me at the time. It had never occurred to me to do that, and I wondered why I hadn’t. It wasn’t a matter of money, so perhaps a part of me had wanted to punish myself. Or possibly, thinking about the way my life had faltered and failed over the years in the shadow of what had happened, maybe on some subconscious level I’d decided it needed to be done—almost like a dare to myself.
See? Everything is okay.
If so, the delivery of Charlie’s doll changed that. There was no way I was going to stay in the house that night. I packed my things, including the boxes my mother had kept, then got into my car and drove back to Gritten. I found the cheapest hotel I could and checked in, deciding that I would figure out what to do in the morning.
But I’d never been able to sleep well in hotels. And even there, away from the house, I still had the same sense of threat and foreboding. The knocks on the door might have been a prank, and the figure I’d seen in the woods a stranger, but there was no way of rationalizing away the delivery of the doll.
Someone was out there. Someone was targeting me.
And however much I told myself it was impossible, I couldn’t escape the feeling that Charlie was behind it. I tossed and turned as morning approached, remembering the way he’d looked at me in the weeks after I left the group. The sense I’d had back then that things were not over.
The game isn’t finished with you yet.
The early hours found me outside, walking the streets of Gritten.
At this hour, the world was quiet and peaceful. There was no breeze, just the push of cool air against me, an almost welcome sensation in advance of the heat I knew would come later. Ribbons and threads of clouds hung low in the dawn sky. They were so close that they seemed like spirits that had descended to peer at me, and so still that it was hard to imagine them ever moving on.
I wandered down roads I remembered well. There were endless rows of anonymous red-brick terraces squashed uncomfortably against each other. Back then, there had been clotheslines strung across the streets above, with laundry hanging down from them like tattered flags. The streets had changed a little, but they remained familiar. And while I told myself I was walking aimlessly—just drifting—I knew that wasn’t true, and eventually I found myself at the top of a hill I knew better than most.
Jenny’s old house was just ahead of me.