Like This, for Ever

1
Thursday 14 February
    THE SADNESS WAS inside him always. A dull pressure against the front of his chest, a bitter taste in his mouth, a hovering sigh, just beyond his next breath. Most of the time he could pretend it wasn’t there, he’d grown so used to it over the years, but the second he felt his focus shift from the immediate on to the important there it was again, like the creature lurking beneath the bed. Deep, unchanging sadness.
    Barney waited for Big Ben to strike the fourth note of eight o’clock before pushing the letter into the postbox. The sadness faded a little, he’d done everything right. This time could work.
    Important task over with, he felt himself relax and start to notice things again. Someone had tied a poster to the nearest lamppost. The photograph of the missing boys, ten-year-old twins Jason and Joshua Barlow, took up most of the A4 sheet of card. Both had dark-blond hair and blue eyes. One twin was smiling in the picture, his new adult teeth uncomfortably large in his mouth; the other was the serious one of the pair. Both were described as 1.40m tall and slim for their age. They looked exactly like thousands of other boys living in South London. Just like the two, possibly three, who had gone missing before them.
    Someone was watching. Barney always knew when that washappening. He’d get a feeling – nothing physical, never the prickle between the shoulder blades or the cold burn of ice on the back of his neck, just an overwhelming sense of someone else’s presence. Someone whose attention was fixed on him. He’d feel it, look up, and there would be his dad, with that odd, thoughtful smile on his face, as though he were looking at something wonderful and intriguing, not just his eleven-year-old son. Or his teacher, Mrs Green, with the raised eyebrows that said he’d been off on one of his daydreams again.
    Barney turned and through the window of the newsagent’s saw Mr Kapur tapping his watch. Barney kicked off and in a steady glide reached the shop door.
    ‘Late to be out, Barney,’ said Mr Kapur, as he’d taken to doing over the last few weeks. Barney opened the upright cool cabinet and reached for a Coke.
    ‘Fifty pence minus ten per cent staff discount,’ said Mr Kapur, as he always did. ‘Forty-five pence, please, Barney.’
    Barney handed over his money and tucked the can in his pocket. ‘You going straight home now?’ asked Mr Kapur, his last words drowned by the bell as Barney pulled open the door.
    Barney smiled at the elderly man. ‘See you in the morning, Mr Kapur,’ he said, as he pulled the zip of his coat a little higher.
    There was a fierce wind coming off the river as Barney picked up speed on his roller blades and travelled east along pavements still gleaming with rain. The wind brought the smell of diesel and damp with it and Barney had a sense, as he always did, of the river reaching out to him. He imagined it escaping its confining banks, finding underground passageways, drains, sewers, and seeping its way up into the city. He could never be near the river without thinking of black water flowing beneath the street, an invasion so subtle, so cautious, that no one except him would notice until it was too late. He’d confided his fear once to his dad, who’d laughed. ‘I think you’re overlooking some basic laws of physics, Barney,’ he’d said. ‘Water doesn’t flow uphill.’
    Barney hadn’t mentioned it again, but he knew perfectly well that sometimes water did flow uphill. He’d seen pictures of London submerged by floodwater, read accounts of how high spring tides hadcoincided with strong downstream flows and the river’s cage had been unable to contain it. Given a chance of freedom, the water had leaped from its banks and roared its way through London like an angry mob.
    It could happen. There had been snow in the Chiltern Hills. It would be melting, the thaw water making its way down through the smaller tributaries, reaching the Thames, which would be getting fuller and faster as it neared the capital city. Barney picked up speed, wondering how fast he’d have to skate to outrun floodwater.
    When Barney reached the community centre the building looked deserted. No lights, so even the caretaker had gone, which meant it had to be after nine o’clock. With a familiar feeling of dread, he looked at his watch. He’d said goodnight to Mr Kapur just after eight o’clock. The newsagent’s was a ten-minute skate away. It had happened