‘I don’t know.’ I looked back into the blackness behind us. ‘Got spooked, I guess. Probably some sad old flasher.’

‘Well, that was fun.’ Mia looked pale, any aura of coolness dispelled. ‘Must do it again next year.’

‘Hah.’ John managed his laugh. ‘We settled one thing.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘You can’t be that sick, Hayes. You beat us both to the gate!’

And it was true; the pains that had seen me hobble to the river were gone, though whether it was the fear, the cannabis, or the strangeness of the night that had driven them away, I didn’t know.

CHAPTER 3

‘You’re still going?’

‘Yes, I told you.’ I carried on buttoning my coat.

‘You didn’t have any breakfast.’ Mother was wearing that tight, accusing look of hers.

‘I’ll get something at Simon’s.’ I snatched up my bag and reached for the door.

‘Nicholas.’ The full name. That always meant a lecture incoming.

‘I’m fine.’ A touch too harsh; I saw the hurt on her face. ‘If I don’t feel well, I’ll come home.’

‘I’ll come and get you if you ring—’

I closed the door on her and hurried out into the day, a cold one, brittle with frost. The pain was back, shooting along my limbs, grinding in my hips. I bit down and kept to a brisk walk. Aggressive. That’s how they described the worst cancer. Maybe I needed some aggression myself if I were going to win the fight.

It was a shock to find out how quickly I could be reduced to a shambling old man, moving cautiously around the set of aches and pains that now defined me. I wanted last month back. I wanted to marvel in the unappreciated joy of a pain-free body, to stride without a twinge or even the worry that there might be one. A month ago, I’d thought myself invincible. A few weeks on, a treacherous body I couldn’t trust or command, and it felt as if my youth had run from me. Milk from a toppled bottle.

I walked the streets of Richmond wrapped in my own thoughts, puffing frosty breaths before me. Last night’s smoke came to mind. The phantoms must have been the drug’s work. Who knew what shit got into the resin Mia’s ‘guy’ had supplied. The stalker? Well, he was just that. Or some old bloke out walking his dog. And why not? It was, after all, a free country.

I would be early to Simon’s, but I’d woken early, too, and had been unable to lie in.

On the corner of Broad Street I saw Michael Devis, just leaning there, against the wall, fag in his hand. I went round by Foss Way to avoid him. Devis was my almost-bully, always testing, not quite sure enough of himself to do the job the way you saw it in the films, but enough to make me miserable. Sometimes I imagined what it would be like to just punch the bastard in the face, full out. But I didn’t think I ever would. I’d tremble and stutter, and turn away like I always did, and it would be a toss-up whether I hated him or myself more. You would think that having cancer would override all those lesser fears; that I could stride up to Devis and poke him in the eye; that I could talk to Mia like she was a human being rather than some alien beamed down from the mothership. But life didn’t seem to work like that. Which was a bummer, really.

Devis had started to get on my case about two years earlier. It had been when I’d taken up Dungeons & Dragons with Simon and a couple of others. Devis had smelled weakness. Difference. It hadn’t been hard. I don’t want to attribute some sort of superpower to the git. Playing games at our age might have been enough on its own. Boards and dice are the accessories of childhood: Monopoly at Christmas; Cluedo with your parents; popping the dice bubble to take your turn at Sorry. Bring that into school as a teenager and you’re asking for trouble.

Lost in my thoughts, I almost walked right into Ian Rust. Maylert gets its pupils from all over London. I had to take the tube and change at Hammersmith. So, by rights, I could expect to walk down a street in Richmond without seeing any Maylert’s boys. Seeing one was unusual. Turning off one road to avoid the biggest bully in your year, to then run into the school psychopath was the worst kind of luck. Well. Not cancer-bad, but cancer is quiet, hidden, slow. A monster in your face, on the other hand, is more immediately terrifying.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Ian Rust was in the year two above mine. The fact he hadn’t been expelled yet spoke volumes about his ability to manipulate both authority and victims.

‘Sorry.’ I hadn’t bumped into him, but I’d been on course to. Now I tried to step around, but he blocked me, moving to the left, then the right, arms spread.

‘Where you going?’ A cruel smile. It was hard to imagine he had any other kind.

Ian Rust wasn’t big. I was taller. He was scrawny. He didn’t look a threat. Not until you looked him in the eye. They say he set an old homeless man on fire. That’s probably a lie. I didn’t see anything like that in the gazette. But you only had to spend a short time in his presence to believe that he would do something like that, just for fun. ‘Where you off to?’

‘Friend.’ My mouth had gone too dry for words. I kept swallowing. I wanted to piss. I was every rabbit in every headlight, waiting to be road kill.

‘You have friends?’

I don’t think Rust knew my name even, but he knew me by sight, knew I went to the school and was therefore part of the herd he preyed on. People think you need to be big to be scary. They see boxers, big muscles, long arms, huge guys, and think that’s what matters on the streets. What really matters in real life, though, is how far you’re prepared to go and how quickly. Most disputes work to a strict choreography of display and threat. The escalation proceeds through a series of steps agreed by silent tradition. Everyone knows what they’re getting into and both the exit and the stakes are clear.

What made Rust frightening was that he didn’t seem to understand those rules. Being strong is all well and good, but if one of the rugby team got in Ian Rust’s way, he would probably end up with a ballpoint pen in his eye before he’d even got to the shoving stage.

‘I . . .’ I could barely get a word out. Nausea bit deep, creating the real possibility I might vomit on him.

Rust simply watched me, delighted by my distress, and then, as if a light had been turned off, his smile vanished. He snatched the sports bag from my hand and unzipped it. A sneer. He tipped the contents onto the pavement: map and notes from the last game, my character sheet, dice, an apple that Mother had snuck in there last week, all bouncing on the paving slabs now, fluttering down into dirty puddles.

‘Piss off.’ He dropped the empty bag and carried on his way, kicking the apple ahead of him. Quite possibly he was off to meet with Devis on his corner in Broad Street. Devis was supposedly with Rust when he burned the tramp. A minion rather than a partner in crime.

I stood there, dismissed, full of fight-or-flight adrenaline, hating Rust and the way he’d made me feel. Angry, I knelt to gather my stuff. By the time I’d recovered all the pages and tried to wipe them down, he was long gone. I walked on, trying to shake away that mix of rage and terror, gripping my bag as if it might be Rust’s throat.

Before reaching Simon’s house I’d imagined half a dozen scenarios for how my encounter with Rust might have played out, all complex, visceral, and almost as scary as the real thing. And that’s what united the four weirdos who were about to settle around Simon’s gaming table and play out stories of magic and monsters. That’s the common thread running through all the diverse hordes of nerds and geeks who turned up to the conventions and gatherings, who queued outside Games Workshop for the latest rulebook. We were all of us consumed by our own imagination, victims of it, haunted by impossibles, set alight by our own visions, and by other people’s. We weren’t the flamboyant artsy creatives, the darlings who would walk the boards beneath the hot eye of the spotlight, or dance, or paint, or even write novels. We were a tribe who had always felt as if we were locked into a box that we couldn’t see. And when D&D came along, suddenly we saw both the box and the key.

‘Got some new orcs to show you.’

Simon left the door half open and headed for the stairs. He never once said hello when he opened the door. You’d knock, and he’d pull it back like he’d been stood there staring at it for an hour. Even when you were early. Half the time he would just pitch in with the next line in the last conversation you’d had, as if a day or a week hadn’t passed.

‘Hello, Nick, how’s it hanging?’ Simon’s mum called from the kitchen without showing her face. She had been a hippy in the sixties and didn’t seem to have ever let go of it entirely. I liked her a lot and had no idea what to say to her.