Like This, for Ever

said. ‘He’s mentioned you. I’m Jorge Soar.’
    ‘Can you think of anything, Jorge?’
    ‘We mainly meet here,’ said Jorge, nodding his head back towards the community centre. ‘I’ve just been in there now, checking it out.’
    Lacey turned to look at the old factory building with its high perimeter wall. Through the iron bars of the gates she could see the murals glowing in the lamplight. A forest gleaming green and silver. Shadowy figures that might have been Red Indians hiding behind trees.
    ‘It looks closed up to me,’ said Lacey.
    ‘It gets locked at nine,’ Jorge told her. ‘That’s when the caretaker leaves. But there’s a way in at the back. Can you believe Barney and Huck are both missing?’
    Barney and Huck. Lost boys.
    ‘Do you think they’re together?’ asked the boy, surprising her. She shook her head.
    ‘I hope they are,’ he said. ‘Barney’s sensible. He’ll look after Huck.’
    ‘You should go home,’ said Lacey. ‘I know you want to help, but it’s not a good idea for you to be out this late.’
    ‘I sneaked out,’ confessed Jorge. ‘Mum’ll kill me if she finds out. But Barney’s my brother’s best friend. He wanted to come too, I just didn’t think it would be safe for him.’
    ‘It isn’t. Not for you either. Do you want me to walk with you?’
    He shook his head. ‘We’re only five minutes away. You’re right, though, Gran’ll freak if she looks in my room and sees I’m not there. I hope you find him, Lacey. Huck, too.’
    At the corner of the street, when Jorge would have faded out of sight had it not been for his hair shining silver in the streetlights, he turned and waved. Then he was gone.

63
    ‘ OF ALL THE bridges, over all the rivers, in all the world, she had to walk on to …’
    Joesbury’s voice caught, like a jagged fingernail being dragged over silk, and he gave up the attempt at humour. He looked back down at the speeding water. Lacey approached slowly. His hair and jacket were soaking wet.
    ‘I’ve been looking for you all evening,’ she said. ‘The minute I stop, there you are.’
    Finally accepting that she was never going to find either Huck or Barney by running around London like a headless chicken, Lacey still hadn’t been able to go indoors. There would be something so final, somehow, about closing the door of her flat for the night, knowing the boys were still out there. Telling herself she’d think more clearly in the open air, that cold stimulated the brain, that the river always soothed her, she’d ridden her bike to the closest bridge over the Thames. Vauxhall.
    Traffic had quietened down for the night and the bridge was empty of pedestrians. Except one. At the apex, a tall male figure was leaning against the railings, looking downstream.
    When she was close enough to touch, Joesbury raised his right arm. Lacey moved into its circle and felt it close around her. The hand dangling over her shoulder showed the marks of a fresh wound. The skin was broken and puckered, the blood alreadycongealed. They looked towards the dancing, shining lights of the city.
    ‘Have they sent you to break the bad news?’ said Joesbury.
    ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t know anything.’
    Hardly true, but how could she tell him the MIT were following leads that would take them nowhere? And that it was her fault? As for the latest idea, she would just sound crazed. Peter Pan? Lost Boys? How did that help – really?
    Mark was looking at the display screen of his phone. ‘Dana’s phoned a couple of times. So has Anderson,’ he went on. ‘I can’t talk to them. If it’s happened, I don’t want to hear it. I want to stay here. Not knowing.’
    She reached her hand up, brushed her fingers gently over his, feeling him flinch when she touched the wound. ‘It’s not over yet,’ she said.
    ‘I did try to phone you,’ he said. ‘For some reason, you were someone I felt I could talk to. I got Number Unobtainable.’
    ‘My phone is wrapped in an evidence bag and filed away in a locker somewhere,’ Lacey told him. ‘I haven’t got round to replacing it yet.’
    His hand dropped from her shoulder and he reached inside his jacket. When he brought it out again it was holding a phone that she knew wasn’t his. A different make, very new model.
    ‘I bought this for Huck a couple of weeks ago,’ he said, balancing it in the palm of his hand and holding it out so the nearest streetlight shone on it. ‘I’ve been having an