Chapter Two

Josh

It’s a weird place, this. Not weird weird, I mean, buildings are all right, it’s the people. Not all of them, some are okay, some are more than okay, but the rest? Just weird.

It’s like they don’t understand the birds. They seem to think we’re just some kind of tourist attraction thing, as if the birds fly to order to look pretty, draw in the customers, they don’t realise that these things are hunters, not decorations. That I’m here to try to show that, to try to stop people taking these birds and pretending like they’re pets, keeping them all shut up in cages where they can’t even stretch out their wings, let alone take off. I’m here to show that if you keep them right and train them right, then they’ll fly for you …

Well. Usually. Bane now, she’s a bit of a case, but she’s coming round, she comes back more often than not, well … more often than she used to, anyway. And there’s Skrillex, well, he’ll never fly ’cos owls and cars don’t mix and his wing’ll never be right but he walks pretty and does the eye thing and people like him.

And I know they think I’m weird too. Maybe that’s why I came here, because maybe weird attracts weird, but I know they’d never have found anyone else to live in this caravan, where the toilet is basically a bucket down the field and if you want a shower your best bet is to get your clothes off and hope for rain. But it’s a roof, and there’s a decent place for the birds, and the cafe’s always got spare buns hanging around, so, yeah, could be worse. Just wish I knew why all people want to do is sit around and chat about stuff that means nothing; the weather, what’s on TV, all things that we can’t do anything about. Why does nobody talk about the things we can change? About cruelty and loneliness and isolation and crap like that? It’s like they don’t want to mention anything that might want changing, just in case someone expects them to do something, but I reckon it’s enough just to acknowledge that there are things out there beyond Hollyoaks and if it’s going to rain at the weekend. But they all love to sit and chatter, all hunched up together like the rooks that sit in the high points of the trees.

Amy – she’s different. She doesn’t gossip with the girls who come in to clean, or the room guides that show the crowds around the old place. She keeps herself separate, she’s like Bane. Like she doesn’t need any of this stuff … So when I saw her running out of the house on the stroke of six just as I’d got the bike ready for a run into town, I didn’t think twice.

‘Jump on.’

‘Josh, I haven’t got a helmet.’

‘Private land and I’m not going to crash. Jump on.’

She hesitated, but I could see that look in her eye, that look that said she was panicked enough not to worry about how legal it was. Then she was climbing up behind me, all cautious in that Edwardian maid’s uniform that she and Julia wear in the cafe, I guess she was trying not to show her knickers to the world.

‘Put your arms round my waist.’

‘What?’

‘Otherwise you’ll tip off.’

She did it, but really slowly and all sort of loose, like she didn’t really want to make contact with the jacket or me, but once I kicked the bike on and it did the slide on the gravel as the wheels tried for grip, she grabbed a lot tighter. I throttled back, compensating for the extra weight and the way she couldn’t lean to counterbalance us and we crunched up the mile of drive that Monkpark is so proud of at no more than sixty. Over the cattle grid at the end, out onto the little country road linking us with the nearest town, then right and down the hill to the estate village. Geared down, braked and pulled up outside the cottage by the oak tree.

She gradually let go of the back of my jacket, sort of peeling off like she’d been sticking to me. Didn’t think I’d been that scary, it was a slow old ride with the grit and the grid and then the hills, but I guess if you’ve not been on the back of a bike before it’s a bit windy.

‘You’re home.’

‘Thank you.’ She sounded a bit breathless, and when I flipped the visor to look at her she’d got her hair all sticking backwards. She’s got that kind of half straight hair, where it goes all curly at the ends and all sort of thick and crazy, but now it looked more like it was trying to be released into the wild. ‘Seriously, thanks, Josh.’

I wanted to smile. Seriously, I wanted to give her a grin that said, ‘Any time, just ask,’ but she looked busy, like her mind was already on something else and I didn’t want to intrude on whatever it was. I know, with the birds, when they’re hunting they are so single-minded, so focussed that there’s not really any point in trying to call them in, and she looked like that. So I flipped down the visor and just sort of nodded. Felt a bit of a dick, really, I mean, could have said something, but what was the point? So I just gunned the bike and headed off to the supermarket.