Page 2 of Then She Vanished

He didn’t know what his dad wanted him to say, so he shrugged.

‘She’s a slag. She’s asking for it.’

‘Asking for what?’ He scrunched his brows.

‘Facts of life, Squirt.’

He toiled over whether to ask the next question, but it slipped out of his mouth anyway. ‘What’s a slag?’

His dad stared at the girl’s back until she turned a corner at the hardware shop. ‘One that does the facts of life with just aboutanyone. They wear those clothes to tell men they want us; that they want to do those things with us, like your rabbits. You get me, Squirt?’

Again, he didn’t, but he nodded anyway. ‘Yes, can we go home now?’ If that was his lesson for the day, maybe it was over now.

His dad smirked and let out a laugh. ‘No, this is just the start. Buckle up. You know how we play games at home?’

He nodded. ‘Like when we play chess?’

‘Exactly. But we can also play games with people. When we’re out there, we smile, we are polite. We are the inventors of how people see us.’ His dad paused and Albie frowned as he struggled to understand what his dad was saying. ‘Who am I, Squirt?’

‘The white knight.’ That’s what his dad always called himself.

‘And who are you?’

‘A pawn.’

‘That’s right, son, but what is even lower than a pawn?’

‘A girl.’

‘Clever boy. You’re learning fast. Life is a game and today starts a new game. Let’s play.’

ONE

Monday, 2 September

Joby hated that his dad had dragged him out of bed to help on the farm. He didn’t want to become a farmer. He hated driving a tractor as much as the early mornings. More importantly, he loved music, and songwriting was everything to him. His dad glanced across the yard at him, eyebrows raised as Joby chewed on a long piece of grass. ‘Get on with it. The fence won’t fix itself.’ His dad lowered his brows and smiled, telling Joby that he wasn’t being too serious.

He held a hand up and exhaled slowly through puffed cheeks. ‘Whatever, old man,’ Joby replied. His dad waved and began trudging back towards the barn.

Hoisting his tool bag off the ground, Joby loaded it onto the back seats of their muddy Land Rover. Gerty, their sheep dog, jumped on top of it, wagging her tail. ‘I guess you can come too.’

It was a good job they didn’t have sheep or any other animals, because Gerty was absolutely useless, but she was cute and Joby loved that she wanted to come along. He put the four-wheel drive into gear and it hopped down the mud path, all theway over to the barley and wheat fields. They would soon be harvesting the beets, which Joby didn’t mind. He got out of the car. It was easier to walk the rest of the way with all the trees ahead. He liked the walk through the woodland. It gave him the chance to work on his lyrics.

‘Gerty,’ he called, as he opened the back door and flung the tool bag across his shoulder.

Yesterday afternoon, his dad had been livid. It wasn’t the first time a careless driver had taken the bend at the edge of their land too fast and crashed through their fence, and it wouldn’t be the last. Joby wished they didn’t have to keep fixing it, but if they didn’t, the fly-tippers would soon pass the word along and their land would look like the local tip. There was still a lot of junk left from the last episode, and he had yet to finish loading it into the boot to take to their skip.

He escaped the morning sun under the trees. Snatching a long, gnarly stick from the mossy ground, he threw it as far as he could. Gerty ran after it, her tail wagging. She dutifully brought it back and he threw it again.

The sunshine cast dappled light across the woodland floor. A few trees had started to turn from green-leaved to an array of oranges with tinges of red. The large oak he walked under had always been his favourite. He remembered when he and his mates used to have a tyre swing attached to it and would spend hours there having fun. He thought back to those times in the hope he’d come up with some new lyrics. A faint melody came into his head, which he hummed.

No, the song and tune sounded naff, but then again, people liked that kind of thing. Look at all the mush over love and nostalgia – it sells, and that’s what he wanted.

He stopped and closed his eyes.

The scent of wood and grass tickled his senses, and the warmth, the birdsong… it was all too cliché. He needed to digdeeper, but his mind wasn’t really producing anything today. Maybe he needed to get angry at the world, the injustice of everything, and throw in some real angry emotion.

He knew why he was struggling – Gerty was nudging him. He opened his eyes and patted her on the head. ‘Maybe I should write my next song about you.’

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