Like This, for Ever

behind.’
    ‘Thanks, Miss,’ said Barney, because it would be impossible to explain that it was the being late, not the telling off, that bothered him.
    ‘Although I guess it’s the being late that bothers you. Go on, you funny boy. Get a move on.’

55
    ‘ YOU KNOW SOMETHING? Until I started seeing you, no one ever talked to me about what happened that day. The day it all started.’
    ‘Never?’ asked the psychiatrist.
    ‘Not once.’
    ‘Why do you think that is?’
    ‘They were just hoping I’d forget. Because I was so young, not much more than a baby, they all thought I wouldn’t remember anything about it. You’re not supposed to start remembering things until you’re quite a bit older than I was then. So I expect they thought, even if it’s in there somewhere, it’s buried so deep it will never find its way out.’
    ‘But you do remember? Some of what happened?’
    ‘I remember everything.’
    ‘Why don’t you tell me? Tell me what you remember.’

56
Thursday 13 March
    SIX CHILDREN SAT huddled beneath the corrugated-metal roof at the top of the skateboard ramp. Raindrops bounced from rooftop to ramp and caught the gang in the backsplash, but damp clothes and stiff bodies seemed a small price to pay for a few more minutes of freedom from adult control.
    ‘It’s five to nine,’ said Lloyd. ‘I need to go.’
    ‘We’ll all go together,’ replied Jorge. ‘At nine o’clock.’
    Barney, at the edge of the group, was watching the reflections of the streetlights on the rain-drenched ramp. One reflection, from the light immediately behind them, shone directly across the playground to the mural on the opposite wall. The large green crocodile with the alarm clock rammed between his teeth looked set to leave the brick wall and waddle along the orange path towards them. There was something rather menacing about that crocodile.
    A flickering streetlight caught his eye. It was just outside the old municipal building on the next street along. From the top of the ramp, Barney could see the second and third floors of the abandoned building. It was dark red, like the community centre, with ornate brickwork around the flat roof. Funny – two of the windows on the second floor were boarded up. He was pretty sure three of them had been the last time he’d looked.
    ‘Planet Earth to Barney. Come in, Barney.’
    Barney turned back to the others. He’d done it again, gone off into his own little world. He was tempted to ask how long he’d been zoned out, but didn’t really want to draw attention to the problem.
    ‘So what do you think, Barney Boy? Has he stopped or will he kill again?’
    ‘It’s been three weeks now,’ said Barney.
    Of the group, only Jorge openly registered that that wasn’t anything like an answer to the question. Had he stopped, or would he kill again? It was a question Barney asked himself several times a day. Since Oliver Kennedy had been found alive and well, he’d allowed himself to hope. Twenty-two days had gone by and nothing.
    Oliver Kennedy had been nowhere near his granddad’s boat. And if the boys weren’t being killed on the boat, what difference did it make that his dad had been there on the Saturday night they’d found Tyler’s body or on the Tuesday that Oliver had disappeared?
    Was it a coincidence, though, that in the last twenty-two days, when there had been no disappearances and no bodies dumped on the banks of London’s rivers, his dad had stopped leaving the house on Tuesday and Thursday evenings?
    ‘I can’t sleep with the light off any more,’ said Hatty. She was the only one who ever talked about the night they’d found the body. None of them ever mentioned it, unless Hatty did first, but equally, no one seemed to mind when she did. They’d nod understandingly, as though grateful to her for articulating what they all felt. ‘I keep seeing his face,’ she went on.
    ‘It was just decomposing tissue,’ said Lloyd. ‘If you see a dead fox or cat in the road, chances are it’ll be covered in maggots. It’s horrible, but it’s not scary. So why should a dead human be any scarier?’
    None of the others looked convinced.
    ‘I think he’s stopped,’ said Barney, and his right hand, tucked deep inside his coat pocket, had its fingers crossed. ‘We may never know why exactly, but just as there was a trigger that made him start, there was another that made him stop.’
    ‘He hasn’t stopped,’ said Jorge. ‘He’s just biding his