Belinda Bauer - Blacklands

The girl looked at him vacuously.

“This is Dartmoor.”

“I know. I want a postcard of Exmoor.”

She stared at the door as if a postcard of Exmoor was expected any second.

“Don’t we have one?”

Avery breathed steadily. Control. Patience. Valuable lessons.

“No.”

The girl tutted and jerked to her feet. Avery saw she was wearing skin-tight jeans on the thinnest legs he’d ever seen. And stupid little ballet shoes. She slouched past him without a glance and went outside.

He watched her as she turned the creaking carousel on its rusty spindle, her slightly bulging blue eyes frowning at the cards, chewing a ragged lock of her mousey hair.

She was too old for him. Her innocence was lost, or well hidden behind boredom or stupidity. It made him hate her more as she stood, hand on hip, looking at the postcards he’d already looked at.

“Can’t see one,” she said finally.

“No,” he agreed.

“Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry. He’d like to make her sound sorry—it would be so easy—but he didn’t want to waste his time.

He followed her back inside.

“Can you see if you have any in stock?”

“I don’t think we do.”

“Can you check for me?”

She tossed her hair by way of an answer. He mustered his reserves of self-control.

“Please?”

She made an irritable sound with her lips, and scuffed back through the interior door. He heard her ascending or descending some wooden steps, surprisingly heavily for such a thin girl. Letting him know she was put out.

He smiled, then leaned over the counter and hit the OPEN key on the dirty old till that was more like a fancy money box. There was sixty pounds in tens; Avery took three of them and a handful of pound coins. When he’d last been in a shop there had still been grubby green pound notes.

He noticed a pale green cardigan slung over the back of the chair and stuffed it into a plastic bag.

He filled the rest of the bag with Mr. Kipling cakes, peanuts, a couple of prepacked cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, and more water, then leaned out of the door to leave it just out of sight on the pavement. Then he picked up a chewed Bic pen from the counter and wrote on one of the Exmoor postcards.

He heard the girl stamping up or down the stairs again and slid the card of Exmoor back into his pocket as she reappeared.

“We don’t have any.”

“Oh well, I’ll take this one, then, please. And a first-class stamp.”

The girl served him sullenly and he paid for the sheep card with a single pound coin, putting his change in the RNLI box.

Outside, he tried licking the stamp, but found it was already sticky—an innovation he had to adjust to.

As he dropped the Exmoor postcard into the letter box, he noticed that the collection time was a mere half hour away. Avery was not crazy; he knew it didn’t mean God was on his side. But he also knew it meant God really didn’t give a shit one way or the other.

When he was a reasonable distance from the village he sat down on the sheep-shorn grass, ate three cherry Bakewell tarts, and drank a third of a liter of water. The sugar suffused his blood and made him feel strong and confident. The sun came out and warmed him and he lay back and stretched like a cat on a carport roof.

He lifted one hip, took one of the remaining Exmoor postcards from his back pocket, and unbuttoned his jeans.

Twenty minutes later, Avery stood up and focused on his surroundings once more.

He took no formal bearings. He didn’t need to. He felt a strange, inevitable tugging in his chest and could do nothing but follow it.

With the sun now warming his back, Arnold Avery, serial killer, quickened his pace and headed north.

BECAUSE OF THE VEGETABLE PATCH, STEVEN WAS LATE FOR SCHOOL and so missed seeing Lewis before the bell rang. They were not in the same classes and then, at lunchtime, Lewis failed to appear at the gym door, which was where they always met.

Steven huddled out of the wind and ate his cheese-and-Marmite alone, not knowing whether to wait for Lewis or to go looking for him. Both options seemed pathetic and neither gave him any clue as to how he should proceed once he and Lewis came face-to-face.

His mother had put a Mars bar in his lunch box; a real Mars bar—not some inferior generic copy of a Mars bar—and on any other day it would have excited Steven. The Mars bar meant that his mother was happy. Of course, it was Uncle Jude who was making her happy, not him, but they would all benefit in trickle-down. Lewis was not there to admire the Mars bar, and that took some of the shine off it. Still, Steven ate it while appreciating the silver lining—if Lewis wasn’t there to admire the Mars bar, at least he wasn’t there to eat half of it.

But once the thick, caramel sweetness had left his mouth, the bitterness of a friendship betrayed was still there.

He saw Lewis at the end of the day, jostling other kids as he hurried through the throng at the school gates, glancing around nervously as if he might be pursued. Steven ducked behind the canteen bins and stood there, staring at his cheap new trainers, already scuffed and breaking apart from a combination of poor workmanship and overactive boy.

He knew Lewis was looking out for him, hoping he wouldn’t catch him up on the way home. Steven still didn’t know what to say to Lewis, so he gave him a long head start and then walked home so slowly that Lettie tightened her mouth at him for the first time in days.

“You’re late.”

“I helped Mr. Edwards put the gym stuff away. The door was locked and he had to go to the office for the key.” Steven had thought of the lie during the interminable walk home. It sounded just fine coming out of his mouth, and Lettie’s lips loosened in acceptance, but Nan looked at him sharply and he felt himself grow warm about the ears.

Still, she didn’t say anything, and Uncle Jude came downstairs, whistling “There Is a Green Hill Far Away,” which was her favorite, and so tea unfolded without further incident, until Uncle Jude said: “Did you see the patch?”

Steven nodded noncommittally but didn’t look at him.

“Any idea what happened?”

He shook his head and put fake butter on a piece of bread, hoping his silence made the lie somehow less sinful.

Uncle Jude shrugged and sighed. “We can put the beans up again but we’ll lose a lot of the carrots and potatoes.”

Steven nodded.

“Do it after tea, if you like.”

He nodded more vigorously. The evening was calm and warm and the thought of repairing the damage was an attractive one. He’d been afraid Uncle Jude would lose interest; that the vegetable patch was a one-shot deal and it was over now.

“Wondered if your friend would like to help.”

“Who?” said Steven warily.

“The one who’s all mouth and no trousers.”

Steven flushed as he recognized Lewis, feeling laughter bubbling, but quickly tamped down with guilt and sudden nerves at ever seeing his best friend again.

“Why don’t you go and ask him?” Uncle Jude was studying him now with a careful look in his eye. Steven saw him exchange a small glance with his mother.

Uncle Jude knew. Somehow.

Steven looked at his fish fingers.

“I don’t think he’d like to. Digging’s not his thing.”

He held his breath, waiting for Uncle Jude to make him, or argue with him, or expose Lewis. But he didn’t.

“Just the two of us, then,” he said instead, and Steven met his eyes for the first time today, and smiled.