Like This, for Ever

we’ll be on private property so we still have to be careful,’ he said. ‘Jorge, can you give us all a leg over?’
    One by one, the children stepped on Jorge’s clasped hands and scrambled over the railings. ‘What is this place?’ asked Jorge, when he’d joined them.
    ‘Creekside Educational Trust,’ said Barney. ‘They’re a sort of charity that look after the Creek. Be quiet – people live close by.’
    The children made their way down the side of the Trust building, past rubbish that had been pulled from the Creek over the years, including several rusting shopping trolleys, and down a path that led through a roughly tended garden. Slowly, the twin towers of the old railway-lift loomed above them.
    ‘What’s that?’ asked Hatty, eyeing the massive iron structure nervously. In the darkness it looked far bigger than it ever did in daylight, like a mechanical monster leering over them.
    ‘The railway-lift,’ said Barney. ‘It’s not used any more. In the old days, it would lift train carriages from one track and put them down on the other. This way.’ He led them across the grass until they could see down to the Creek itself.
    ‘Down there?’ asked Sam, staring down at the narrow, steeply sloping beach that led to the black slick of water. All around them, granite-black buildings loomed.
    ‘Down here,’ confirmed Barney. As he led the way, he had a sense of the others hanging back. Not that he really blamed them. The Creek was freaky, especially at low tide, especially at night. As they neared the water he stopped.
    ‘It’s like the friggin’ Grand Canyon,’ said Lloyd. None of the others spoke. They were all staring round at the massive river walls that soared seven metres high in places. Their construction was completely random, adding to the bizarre effect. Originally, they’d been built from vertical timbers, but many of those had rotted away, to be replaced by steel piles, or concrete sheets. There were even patches of brickwork. Dark, dank vegetation sprang from wherever it could, as though, despite man’s best efforts to colonize this stretch of water, nature was determined to claim it back.
    Above the walls, three- and four-storey warehouses and dockyard buildings stretched up even higher. The impression was of a dark and narrow tunnel between massive black cliffs.
    ‘It looks like this because the tide’s low,’ said Barney. ‘When it’s high the water will reach right up to where we’re standing. It can be seven metres deep. That’s why the walls have to be so high. When the tide’s completely out, there’s nothing but mud here. We can go a bit further, but be careful if you’re not in wellies.’
    The children crept forward, mainly keeping to the stones and gravel that lined the sides of the beach, only Barney and Lloyd sensibly enough shod to walk through the mud. ‘Yuck,’ complained Hatty, as the mud seeped up over her trainers and into her socks.
    ‘This is well freaky,’ said Sam, when they had gone as close to the narrow stream as they could. To their left, through the arch ofthe railway bridge, they could see the last stretch of the Creek before it joined the Thames. The huge iron lift looked alien and predatory in the poor light.
    ‘We need to stay together now,’ said Barney, spotting the others starting to drift off and feeling increasingly nervous. He’d never been in the Creek without a supervising adult before, and it had always been impressed upon him how dangerous it could be.
    The tall buildings around them kept out just about all light from the surrounding streets and the riverbed was black as pitch. Any of them could fall, get stuck. The tide was on its way back but tide was never the biggest danger in the Creek. Rain was. Heavy rainfall higher up the River Ravensbourne could wash down here at lightning speed, and once you were walking the high-walled channel, there weren’t many escape routes. It would be stupid to go any further.
    ‘So where was Ryan found?’ asked Lloyd.
    Barney looked beneath the arch of the bridge, and then down at his feet.
    ‘Just about here,’ he said.
    ‘Aw, Christ,’ said Sam, shuffling backwards in the mud, further up the bank.
    ‘The thing about the Creek,’ said Barney, ‘is that there’s practically no public access to it. Where we’re standing is one of the few points where people can actually get into it without climbing down a ladder. This is the only beach on the Creek.’
    ‘This isn’t a