One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

ball was in her court, the story was hers to own. She hurried back to Fairview and at 10 p.m. now knew that going to Archie’s home at the flats was not the cleverest idea she’d ever had. Still, she was on a mission. She ran past the kids crowding the footpath and up the four flights of stairs to Archie’s flat. She banged on the door, moving from foot to foot, wanting to do this all now, not wanting another day to be wasted. She cleared her throat. She heard someone do the same and when she turned to the right she saw the young boy sitting on the basketball.
    ‘Hi,’ she said.
    ‘Hi,’ he imitated her.
    ‘Is he in?’
    ‘Is he in?’ he repeated.
    She rolled her eyes. He did the same.
    She backed away from the flat and ran back downstairs, through the crowd of kids who jeered after her and she ran around the corner to Nico’s chipper. Monday night and there was a long queue ahead of her. She spotted Archie behind the counter flipping burgers.
    ‘Archie,’ she called, pushing her way through the queue to get to the counter.
    He turned around, giving her that familiar amused smile as if the joke was on her and she entertained him. ‘You’ll have to wait in the queue,’ he said, then turned back to his burgers.
    ‘I’m not here for food, I just want to talk to you.’
    She was trying to keep her voice down but even with the news report playing on the radio it was impossible not to be heard in the chipper. Archie’s colleague gave him a dark look and Archie was clearly annoyed. She was getting him into trouble.
    ‘Fine,’ she said, backing away from the counter. ‘Chips, please.’
    His colleague nodded and got to work, lowering a basket of chips into the hot oil. Her stomach rumbled. ‘And a cheeseburger,’ she added.
    Archie slapped another cheeseburger on the hotplate and it sizzled.
    Twenty minutes later she had made it to the cash register. Archie left his place by the hotplate to personally serve the food to her.
    ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you all day,’ she said, the excitement building in her again.
    ‘It’s a common complaint from women,’ he said, dousing her chips in salt and vinegar.
    ‘You have to help her,’ Kitty said.
    He looked up at her, finally met her eyes.
    ‘The woman in the café, you have to talk to her. Maybe you’re supposed to help her, maybe this is why it’s happening to you.’
    He looked at the others in the queue nervously, hoping they weren’t listening.
    ‘Five eighty,’ he said.
    She took her time searching for her money. ‘Meet me at the café again tomorrow morning. She’ll be there, won’t she?’
    He squared his jaw while he thought about it, then gave her a single nod.
    ‘Okay.’ She left the counter and pulled the door open.
    ‘Do you think it will stop then?’ he asked.
    ‘Do you want it to?’
    She left him with something to think about while she made her way in the cool night, the vinegar chips making her mouth water. Passing Archie’s flats she saw a boy cycling a familiar bike. She stopped, looking around to make sure he had no one to back him up. The crowd that had been hanging around were now gone, either on to a new destination, inside to their homes or were lingering in the shadows.
    ‘Hey,’ she said.
    ‘Hey,’ she heard a voice imitate her four floors up.
    Both her and the boy looked up to the source of the sound and then back at each other again.
    ‘That’s my bike,’ she said.
    ‘That’s my bike.’
    The boy cycled up the kerb to the footpath and circled her. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen yet he intimidated her.
    ‘If it’s yours, how come I have it?’
    ‘Because you stole it.’
    ‘I didn’t steal anything.’ He continued circling her.
    ‘I left it locked on the railings on Friday. Somebody took it.’ As soon as the words started coming out of her mouth they were immediately repeated by the freckled face boy on the basketball. He was speaking over her so that she could barely concentrate on what she was saying.
    ‘Must have been a shit lock.’
    ‘True.’
    ‘True.’
    He went down the kerb to the road, stood up on the pedals and braked hard, causing the back wheel to lift. He did a few more moves in the middle of the road.
    ‘Do you want it back?’
    ‘Well, of course. Yes.’
    She heard, ‘Well, of course. Yes.’
    He stopped abruptly and hopped off the bike. He stood a few yards ahead of her, holding the bike upright by the handlebars. ‘All you had to do was