The Power of Five Oblivion

be the one who finds him. You’re going to have to tell me everything he said to you, my dear. How did he get past the watchtowers? What was he doing at the church? Where had he come from?”
    “I’ll tell you everything,” I exclaimed. I was just glad it was her. Whatever rules I’d broken, I knew she’d be on my side.
    “Not just me, I’m afraid. They’ve called a Council meeting. They’re going to talk to the boy and decide what to do with him – and they want you there.”
    “At the Council?”
    “Yes. You don’t need to be scared. We just need to know the truth about what happened.”
    “What will they do to him?” George asked.
    “That depends on where he came from and what he was hoping to do. If he was sent to spy on us…” She left the sentence unfinished.
    “I want to come,” said George. “I don’t think Holly should go on her own.”
    “I’m afraid that’s not possible, George. Rita will come as Holly’s guardian. And I’ll be there, so you don’t need to worry.”
    “When is the Council meeting?” I asked. I expected it to be the following morning or maybe in the early evening, after work.
    “They’re already there,” Miss Keyland replied. “They’re waiting for you now.”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rita and John exchange a look. It was as if they’d just heard very bad news. People very rarely went out at night … and certainly not without the light of a full moon. It was only now that I saw how serious this was.
    “Well, we’d better go then,” Rita said.
    And that was it. She stood up. And we went.

THREE
    They were waiting for us inside the church, arranged in a semicircle, up near the altar with the cross and the stained-glass window showing the apostles St Peter and St Andrew fishing – although it was pretty much blank against the night sky. More candles and a couple of oil lamps had been lit so I could clearly see all the people who were waiting for me. I can’t say any of them smiled as I came in, but even so I relaxed a little. They might call themselves the Council with a capital C but these were men and women I had known all my life. At the end of the day, I hadn’t really done anything wrong. They weren’t going to hurt me.
    The vicar, Reverend Johnstone, was the first one I saw, with that long face he always pulled before one of his endless sermons. Mike Dolan and Simon Reade were next to him, enjoying their moment of glory. Then came Mr and Mrs Flint, a solid, ordinary couple in their fifties. They had the house at the bottom of the hill, overlooking the river, and although they had lost both their children, they always tried to be positive. Miss Keyland took her place next to them, sitting beside Sir Ian Ingram, universally known as “I. I.” (though not to his face), the chairman of the Council and the oldest, wisest, most serious man in the village. Nobody knew why he had been knighted. Indeed, we only had his say-so that he ever had been. But nobody would have dreamt of arguing. When I say that his word was law, I mean it quite literally. He had once been a barrister and he had set down in writing a lot of the laws by which we now lived.
    Jamie Tyler was sitting with his back to me, facing the altar. He was slumped in a chair; not tied to it, but looking too exhausted to move. He turned round as I came in and I saw that his face had been cleaned up and that someone had put a bandage on his forehead. They had also taken his shirt, and if he’d asked me when he’d get it back, I would have told him not to bother waiting. Once it had been washed, it would make a nice present for someone’s teenage son because it was almost brand new and still had its colour and all of its buttons. He would just have to make do with the ill-fitting and worn-out T-shirt with HEINZ 57 written on the front – which was what he had been given in its place.
    Our eyes met and for just a second I felt him trying to tell me something. I wanted to look away but somehow I found my gaze locked in place. George often did something quite similar at the dinner table – somehow signal to me not to repeat something he’d said or avoid telling Rita what we’d been up to during the day. But with Jamie it was much more than that. It was as if I could hear his voice whispering to me, right up against my ear.
    Don’t say anything…
    It was the weirdest sensation I’d ever had, and as I sat down next to him (not good – two chairs facing the Council, two of us