Sure! He pictured the tent being unpacked in the front garden during their practice run yesterday, the way the
poles had clattered onto the lawn with twangs and thuds,
as metal hit metal and made him flinch.
‘We have to lay all the poles out and fix them together.
The narrow ends slide into the wider ends. They only
fit one way so we can’t go wrong.’ And just like that
he remembered the man’s instructions, verbatim. It felt
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good, as if his mates were right to place their faith in his
leadership.
‘Hello, boys!’
Nick looked up to see Eric walking around with two
large bread rolls snaffled from the food bag, held up onto
his chest. He laughed loudly.
‘My name is Veronica!’ Eric said in a high-pitched
tone, ‘and I’ve got enormous boobies!’ Eric waggled the
baps up and down. It might have been the giddiness of
being out here alone or it might have been that Eric was
genuinely funny; either way the three collapsed in fits of
giggles that gripped them so badly, Nick had to run away
a little and wee into the scrub. He laughed again when he
thought of his sister’s face when matched by Eric, made
all the funnier when he realised he was thinking of it
while peeing, standing up.
The tent was up. Kind of. The poles had slotted to-
gether easily enough and had gone into the right eyelets,
sliding into position. The canvas had been pulled taut and
the flysheet attached with little knots. Their triangular
home for the night was vaguely tent shaped and would
certainly provide shelter of sorts. The only problem was
that somehow, in a way the boys couldn’t quite figure, the
whole structure was twisted slightly, as if a giant hand and
come along and put a kink in the middle. They pulled
the guy ropes and secured them with the metal pegs,
taking it in turns to wield the solid lump hammer onto
the heads, driving them into the hardened, rain-deprived
soil of the moors. Apparently the drizzly weather at the
latter end of the summer was not enough to compensate
for the good baking of the first few weeks. The three
piled in through the unzipped door and lay looking at
the blue ridge of the roof. It felt like some achievement.
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‘We can do whatever we want, no grown-ups!’ Alex
laughed.
‘Yeah like swearing, I can shout out SHIT!’
Nick took up the verbal baton passed by Eric: ‘Yeah,
SHIT!’ he shouted, a fantastic grown-up word, all the
funnier for being yelled into the quiet.
‘SHIT!’ It was Alex’ turn.
‘SHIT IT!’ Eric embellished.
‘SHIT BALLS!’ Nick matched him and they laughed
until tears ran.
‘SHIT STICKS!’ Eric triumphed. ‘Shit sticks’ was
undoubtedly the funniest thing they had ever heard. It
took a good few minutes before they all caught their
breath and were able to talk.
‘I’d quite like to live in a tent.’ Eric kicked his foot
against the side.
‘What, instead of going to Derby?’ Alex raised the
terrible topic.
‘Yep. Then I wouldn’t have to live with any stinking
baby!’
‘What stinking baby?’ Alex asked.
Nick liked that he knew about this already. It made
him think, not for the first time, that whilst they were
a gang of three, he and Eric were bestest best friends. It
made the thought of him going even harder, as if being
left with Alex were some sort of consolation prize.
‘My mum’s having a baby.’ Eric sighed, as if even
having to say the words out loud was a little more than
he could cope with.
‘Is Dave the dad?’
Nick turned his eyes to Alex. What a ridiculous thing
to say! Didn’t he know that Eric’s mum was married to
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Eric’s dad? How could Dave be the baby’s dad? He smirked
at his friend’s ignorance and rolled his eyes.
the side of the tent.
Nick sat up and looked from one to the other. He was
confused and embarrassed in equal measure and wished
his mum were close by so he could ask her how this was
even possible. He knew the word sex and knew that babies
came from your mum’s tummy, but he also knew with
certainty that babies were made when people were married.
Eric almost whispered now, ‘When I have a son …
I’ll never make him go and live in some rubbish place
that isn’t Burstonbridge.’
Nick joined in: ‘I’ll never let mine go camping without
staying and making sure the tent is properly up.’
Alex sighed. ‘I’ll never call mine a little poof, just be-
cause he put his mum’s nightie on to see what it felt like.’
There was a moment or two of silence until laughter
again erupted from them.
‘God, Moira! What are you like?’ Eric shouted.
‘MOIRA!’ Nick screamed.
Even Alex joined in: ‘Holy shit sticks, Batman!’ was
his contribution. Nick loved to laugh like this and knew
that no matter that Eric was going to move away and his
mum was having a stinking baby whose dad might actu-
ally, somehow, be Dave, this was and always would be
what he remembered about the summer: laughing like
this. Laughing so hard he needed to pee.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ He jumped up and burst through
the door onto the moors where adventure awaited.
The three wandered down the slope in their shorts and
wellington boots, getting the feel of their surroundings.
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Each had their precious puncture repair kit in their pock-
ets, though Half Bike had been left at home, and in his
other pocket Nick kept the multi tool. Even though it was
still light, Alex carried the bulky torch into which Nick’s
dad had put new batteries. Eric, of course, brandished
a long stick, with which he cleared the path ahead. He
worked in the way a jungle explorer might, jabbing into
the scrubby heathers looking for venomous snakes, and
beating the dried, thirsty fronds of bracken in case they
harboured deadly spiders.
‘My dad told me that there’s a giant black puma that
lives around here.’ Alex lowered his voice, as if wary that
the puma might be within earshot.
‘You are kidding, right?’ Eric asked, wide-eyed, stick
in hand.
Alex shook his head. ‘It hunts like a tiger or a lion
and takes deer and sheep and stuff when it’s hungry, and
people find the dead animals with all their guts ripped
out!’ He demonstrated with his splayed fingers tearing
at his own rib cage. Nick swallowed, thinking that he
and his mates were not far off the size of deer or a big fat
sheep. He was glad they had the torch with them for t
he
night time, confident that no puma would dare approach
if they saw that sturdy beam of light.
The boys walked and chatted, devising a series of
calls and shouts to be used in an emergency. After much
debate and countless deliberations and demonstrations
without consensus, it was decided that in an emergency,
the best call to make was the shout of ‘SHIT STICKS!’
‘Or we could just shout out, “Help!”’
Nick stared at Alex, who was annoying him; his sug-
gestion was not in the spirit of things.
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‘We need to have a call that’s especially for camping, a
call that tells the others that the puma is around. I mean,
you can shout out “Help!” any time.’
Eric picked up the mantle. ‘Yeah like “Help! I’ve run
out of bog roll!”’
This made them laugh.
‘Or’ – Alex walked backwards, facing them – ‘like
“Help! My name is Will Pearce and I’ve wet my pants
again!”’
All right, Nick had to concede, that was funny.
The boys meandered to the right as the sun began to
dip and a cool breeze ran like nature’s hand over the tops
of the plants and shrubs, causing them to momentarily
lie flat as the wind caressed them.
‘I’m hungry,’ Eric announced.
‘You’re always hungry!’ Alex pointed out.
‘Yes, but I’m normally a bit hungry and then there
are times during the day when I’m mega hungry and this
is one of those times.’
‘Let’s head back.’ Nick turned and looked in the dir-
ection from which they had come. In his head he had
expected to see the track winding its way back to the top
of the hill where the blue tent was pitched. His heart stut-
tered when he saw clusters of bracken and heathers crown-
ing the undulating landscape, tufts of grass and patches
of soil. It all looked remarkably similar and there was no
clear or obvious clue as to where they had left the tent.
‘Which way?’ Eric asked.
Nick felt it was important to be decisive and pointed
to the right. ‘This way and then round a bit.’ His pulse
raced as the three began to climb with an increased pace,
seeming to sense, although unspoken, that the dark would
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be coming in and that Eric was hungry. Nick tried to
shut the thought of the black puma out of his mind, but
was convinced he heard a low growl coming from the
undergrowth.
The boys walked for longer than they had when trav-
elling away from their camp and there was no sign of the
blue tent or the particular hill next to the car track.
‘Where now?’ Alex asked, a little breathless.
In his head Nick shouted, How should I know? Why are
you asking me? He looked up and then around, and rather than admitting to the fact that they were very lost, he
tramped on, pointing ahead.
‘I’m hungry,’ Eric murmured again.
‘Shut up, Eric! We know!’ Nick snapped.
As they climbed higher, the narrow track turned into a
bigger lane and there in the distance was a walled building.
‘I think we have to go and ask someone in there if
they’ve seen our tent or can point us in the right direction.’
The boys stood and stared.
‘Supposing whoever is in there kidnaps us?’ Alex
whispered.
‘Then we use the call of “SHIT STICKS!” and stab
them with the multi tool.’ Nick remembered how they
had practised the Batmanesque move in his bedroom.
He sounded confident but his pulse raced just the same.
He wasn’t sure if the place was a hotel, a hospital or
a block of flats. It sat behind wide metal gates set in high
brick pillars, and on top of the brick pillars were two
stone lions. Again Nick thought about the puma.
A long sweeping driveway flanked by trees lead to a
building that looked like a doll’s house, but massive.
‘Who lives here?’ Eric curled his fingers around the
railings of the gate and peered up the driveway.
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‘No idea.’ Nick took a deep breath. ‘How do we get
to knock on the door?’
‘I don’t think we should.’ Alex spoke up. ‘I think we
should carry on walking.’
‘But we don’t know where to walk,’ Nick pointed
out, admitting defeat. ‘It’s going to get dark and we’ve
left the tent and all our stuff somewhere.’ The thought
of having to explain to his dad that they’d lost all the
camping equipment was more than enough to spur him
on. That and the prospect of spending the night wander-
ing in the dark at the mercy of the big prowling cat and
having to listen to Eric’s growling stomach. He scoured
the brick post and saw the brass sign, which read ‘Alston
Bank’, and there was a button set into a shiny brass panel.
Nick pressed it and tried to quell the nerves that made
his leg shake.
Eventually a male voice answered, ‘Yes?’ An authori-
tative voice that intimidated him.
‘Erm, my name’s Nick Bairstow and I’m here with
my mates and we are lost. We can’t find our tent and I
wondered if you could give us directions.’
‘Did you say Bairstow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any relation to Jack Bairstow?’
‘He’s my dad.’ Nick turned to the other two and pulled
a face; this was weird.
The man gave a small throaty chuckle. ‘I’m pressing
the button now to open the gate; come up to the house,’
he instructed, his tone softening, as they heard a buzz-
ing noise and the gates whirred slowly open. The gates
clunked shut behind them. The three tramped along the
gravel drive with unusual quiet, part in awe of the grand
place in which they found themselves but partly with
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naked fear. They were more than a little trapped. Nick
put his hand in his pocket and gripped the multi tool.
As they drew closer to the mansion a boy about their
own age came cycling along the drive, appearing from be-
hind an ornate circular fountain at the top of the driveway.
‘Hello!’ He seemed pleased to see them. ‘My name’s
Julian!’ He steered with one hand, a neat trick not lost
on the cycling novices. Nick stared at the mountain bike,
very different from their beloved cycle. The frame was
sturdier, wheels wider and it was customised with fancy
red fire flashes, all right if you liked that kind of thing.
Nick pictured Half Bike with its streaky green paint job
and felt a flare of affection for the precious item currently nestling in the garage. He looked forward to getting back
and cleaning it.
Julian pulled the bike to a stop and jumped off, letting
it fall to the ground, where it landed with a crash, lying
on its side with the back wheel spinning, while the boy
walked alongsi
de them as if they were mates, which they
most definitely were not.
Nick kept glancing back at the bike, abandoned. He
noted the mud-caked spokes of the wheels and the scuffed
ends of the once shiny chrome pedals. He hated the way
Julian had let the frame fall onto the small chips of stone
without a care for its welfare. Nick knew that letting the
bike fall like that would at best pit the paintwork and at
worst scratch it. He didn’t like the way the boy treated
something so new, shiny and he assumed expensive; it
seemed ungrateful and it bothered him more than it should.
‘Is this a hotel?’ Eric asked.
‘No! Why would you say that?’ Julian laughed. He
was a posh lad. ‘It’s our house!’
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‘Flippin’ ’eck!’ Eric gasped and Nick thought it was
the best thing to say, as it was indeed a house of flippin’
’eck proportions. He had never seen anything like it. He
knew that there were rich people and poor people, and
if he’d had to guess, he’d have said that his family lived
somewhere in the middle. This was the first time he had
ever been faced with such wealth and the reality that some
people had far, far more than they needed while others,
like Eric in his cold house where food was often slow
in forthcoming, went to bed chilly with an empty tum.
The thought was enough to make him miss his mum,
not that he would share this thought, of course, know-
ing that to do so would invite ridicule and being called
a name like Marjorie.
‘How old are you?’ Julian asked.
‘I’m ten,’ Eric answered sternly, as if he too mistrusted
the boy who was a bit overfriendly.
‘Ten,’ Nick offered.
‘I’m nine.’ Alex sighed at the injustice of having a
late birthday.
‘I’m nine too. What school do you go to?’ Julian kept
the questions coming.
The boys looked at each other, unaware that there was
any other school close by and also loath to think about
the fact that Eric would be going to a different one.
‘Burstonbridge,’ Eric answered proudly.
‘I’m at Ashbury House.’ Julian said the name as if it
should be familiar to them, which it wasn’t. ‘Do you like
rugby?’
‘Don’t know.’ Eric answered for them all. They only
played and supported football.
‘Do you ride?’ the boy asked.
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‘Yes, we share a bike and it’s really fast. Nick got her