Sharon Bolton - Like This, for Ever

For one thing, there was that pressing cold weight in his stomach that told him he was alone in the house.

He realized then, for the first time, that he had no idea what time his dad returned home on his evenings out. The pattern they’d established was always the same. Dad went out at 7.30, immediately after dinner, and phoned on the half-hour, every hour, until 9.30pm when he checked that Barney was in bed and the light was about to go out. He always asked if both doors were locked and Barney always had to get up and check, even though he knew they were. When Barney woke again, at 4am, his dad was always back.

‘Dad!’ he called from the bathroom doorway. No reply.

Barney stepped out on to the landing. On the first floor of the house, the doors to his dad’s bedroom and study and to the two spare bedrooms were all shut. Barney had closed them himself on his way to bed as he always did when he was alone, because it was impossible to go to bed with open doors in the house. So there was really no way of knowing whether his dad was home or not.

Except he knew. Apart from him, this was an empty house.

‘Dad!’

No, don’t say that again. Too freaky to keep calling out for a parent who wasn’t there.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, something fell to the tiled floor. Dad was home, after all.

Except he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. The first floor and the ground floor were in darkness. Barney reached behind and pulled the drawstring that switched off the bathroom light.

It had to be his dad. Barney had locked both doors before he’d gone to bed. Both had deadlocks, and the back door that led to the garden had bolts top and bottom. The windows were locked – he had a ritual, he checked them every night, running his hand along the aluminium, making sure the lock was in place. And then he always got up to check after his dad’s last phone call. No one could have broken in.

Except someone was downstairs, he could hear footsteps. The gentle, stealthy footsteps of someone who didn’t want to be heard.

His dad would have switched lights on. His dad didn’t sneak around. Barney had a sudden flashback of the boy in the garden, the thin, pale boy, who was him and not him, slinking round the back of the house, looking for a way in, groping, feeling, pulling. Finding one.

OK, he had to stay calm. His dad’s study was the only room with a lock, he just had to get down the first flight of stairs without being heard and lock himself in. He’d phone Lacey. She could be here in seconds.

On tiptoe, Barney took the first step and then the second. There was definitely someone in the kitchen, he could hear a distinctive and familiar sound. That made him pause. Why would a burglar, let alone a phantom, open the door of the washing machine?

He reached the first-floor landing and stopped outside the study door. Lock himself in, or carry on down? Could he phone Lacey and say someone had broken in and was doing their washing? And what if the police did turn up, and found him alone in the house? They wouldn’t like it. They might take him away and put him in a care home like the two brothers who’d recently joined his school. They weren’t quite right, those two. They were way behind the rest of the class and had all sorts of what adults called behaviour issues. The rest of the kids had got the message loud and clear. Care homes were not the sort of places you wanted to be.

Barney left the door of the study behind and carried on down, knowing from years of practice how to walk at the left edge so that the stairs never creaked. From the hall at the bottom he could see that the kitchen door was open, and he knew it hadn’t been when he went up to bed.

A hand touched his shoulder and Barney screamed like the kid he hadn’t known he still was.

‘Barney, for heaven’s sake, it’s me.’

His dad, as startled as Barney, had stepped back and raised both hands in the air in a surrender gesture. His dad, looking different somehow. Flushed and excited and nervous. His hair was untidy, there was colour in his cheeks, his clothes looked dishevelled. There was alcohol on his breath, too, not the bitter smell of beer but the sweeter one of red wine. The bottom couple of inches of the left leg of his jeans were wet. He caught Barney’s eye and looked away immediately.

‘Why didn’t you put any lights on?’ asked Barney, whose entire body was still trembling with fright.

‘I didn’t want to wake you up.’

His dad’s right hand was tucked behind his back, as though he were holding something he didn’t want Barney to see. Then he shoved his hand into his jacket pocket. Whatever he’d been holding was now tucked inside. He raised his other hand and looked at his watch.

‘It’s gone midnight,’ he said. ‘Come on, back to bed.’

For some reason, his dad seemed to have trouble looking at him.

‘You’re wet,’ Barney said.

His dad looked down, saw the wet trouser leg. ‘Stepped in a puddle,’ he said.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Barney asked.

‘Working.’ His dad’s eyes drifted up to Barney’s face, then back down to the tiled floor. ‘You know I have to work sometimes.’

Till midnight? How many people worked till midnight? Barney wanted to say it, didn’t quite dare. ‘They found those two boys,’ he said instead. ‘They found them tonight. Did you know?’

Something that looked a bit like pain and a bit like anger crossed his dad’s face. ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen the news. Were you worried?’

‘No,’ said Barney. ‘Not till just now. I thought you were a burglar.’

‘Burglars can’t get in, we talked about that. Come on, up you go.’

Barney did what he was told. On the first landing, he looked back. His dad was standing at the foot of the stairs, in the still-dark hallway. His eyes were shining in the light from the street lamp outside and there was something about them that looked very different.

Back in bed, Barney realized he wasn’t getting back to sleep any time soon. He heard his dad draw the chain on the front door and climb the stairs. He listened to the sounds of the bathroom and then two doors being closed. Sometimes, his dad remembered Barney’s dislike of open doors at night.

As silence fell over the house once more, Barney got up. He could have another wee, he supposed, although he didn’t need one. Maybe get a drink of water. Then he would need a wee.

As he crossed the landing, he saw a light shining from his dad’s study. He’d have to be very quiet. He took extra care opening the door of his den and closing it behind him. The desk-lamp made no sound and he turned down the volume on his computer before switching it on.

He went to the news site first. The discovery of Jason’s and Joshua’s bodies was official now. There was even a photograph of the crime scene taken from Tower Bridge. You could see the police tent, the crime-scene tape, detectives looking as though they didn’t know what to do next. Barney wondered if Jorge and Harvey’s mum had taken it – it was typical of the sort of factual but, at the same time, slightly depressing and really rather hopeless pictures she always seemed to take.

He read that the twins’ dad had identified his sons’ bodies earlier that evening and there would be a press conference at Lewisham police station the next day.

Further down, the webpage carried pictures of all four boys, Ryan, Noah, Joshua and Jason, with details of their disappearances, including the dates they’d vanished and the dates they’d been found. Seven days, five days, two days, respectively, the boys had been missing. He was killing them faster. Barney sat back to think about that, and then immediately saw something else. He blinked, double-checked. Blimey, had nobody spotted that? It all happened on Tuesdays and Thursdays.