Like This, for Ever

the glass.
    Concentrate on something. Don’t cry in front of a teacher.
    ‘What time did you go to bed last night, Barney?’ she asked him, in a low voice that told him she knew she was being nosy.
    ‘Half nine,’ he lied.
    Mum would have light-brown hair, wouldn’t she, like him? His dad’s hair was grey, but he’d seen photographs in which it had been darker. And his dad was tall. So was he. Did that mean Mum was too? Jesus, tall with light-brown hair, was that all he had?
    ‘Barney, Barney, you’re going to hurt your hands.’
    He was doing it again, that thing with his fingers, tracing a square pattern on the desk. He watched his hands jabbing and darting as though they belonged to someone else and then Mrs Green did something very odd. She reached out and stroked her own hands over his. Very lightly, first the left then the right, then the right and then the left again. Just like his dad did when he was trying to soothe him. Funnily, it worked better when Mrs Green did it. Must be her softer hands.
    Barney felt himself calming down. It was OK, there’d be a photo of his mum somewhere at home, he just had to find it; finding things was what he did, and what did it matter what she looked like? It didn’t matter what mothers looked like, you just loved them anyway.
    ‘Feeling better?’
    Barney nodded. He was.
    ‘Early night tonight?’
    He nodded again.
    ‘Off you go, sweetheart.’
    Mrs Green stood and pushed her chair back. As Barney walked past her she reached out a hand and stroked the top of his head. Teachers weren’t supposed to touch children. He could get her into trouble if he told on her. And he’d never heard her call another child ‘sweetheart’. He wouldn’t though, he decided, as he ran along the corridor to the playground. He quite liked the way Mrs Green’s soft hands had stroked over him.
    ‘Barney, over here!’ Harvey was by the playground equipment store with Sam. Harvey had been Barney’s best mate for as long as he could remember, but because Harvey was an August-born baby, whereas Barney’s birthday was in October, he’d always been in the year above Barney at school. The previous September, Harvey had started secondary school, but as the two schools shared the same site the two boys still saw each other most days. Harvey, loyal and independent-minded, refused to see a problem in being friends with someone still at primary school.
    Children from the secondary school weren’t supposed to come into the primary school playground, and both boys were keeping an eye out for prowling teachers. Harvey turned to Sam, as Barney got close. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘tell him.’
    ‘These kids on Twitter were talking about how they were hanging out at Lewisham College the other night, near where Ryan Jackson’s body was found, and they saw his ghost,’ said Sam.
    Barney screwed up his face the way his dad did a second before he’d say, ‘Barney, does my head look like it zips up the back?’
    ‘Straight up,’ insisted Sam. ‘He was as pale as anything and hehad this long white thing on and he was clutching his throat and moaning.’
    Barney shook his head. He liked a ghost story as much as the next guy, but come on!
    ‘We’re going up there tomorrow night,’ said Sam. ‘When it gets dark. See if he comes back.’
    ‘Knowing your luck, whoever bumped him off will come back,’ said Barney, and was suddenly conscious of Peter, crouching like a troll in the back of his mind. ‘And will your mum and dad really let you go down to Deptford Creek at night? I don’t think so somehow.’
    ‘Well, duh! We don’t tell ’em that. I’ll say I’m going to Lloyd’s and he’ll say he’s coming to mine. Jorge and Harvey are up for it.’
    The expression on Harvey’s face said that, actually, that might be pushing it a bit.
    ‘It’ll work,’ said Sam, ‘because Lloyd can’t play football tomorrow morning, so none of our mums and dads will be able to talk to him about it.’
    ‘We’ll still need to keep them apart on Sunday morning,’ muttered Harvey.
    ‘You need to watch the tides there,’ said Barney. ‘The Creek fills up quickly. People have drowned in it who haven’t known what they’ve been doing.’
    ‘How do you know?’ asked Sam.
    ‘We’ve got a boat there,’ said Barney.
    ‘No shit?’
    Barney nodded. ‘It was my granddad’s,’ he said. ‘He lived on it. Dad keeps saying he’s going to sell it, but he hasn’t yet. We go sometimes to check