her. I’m not sure why, but I needed to see her, perhaps to tell her something. Maybe to thank her. Other than that, all I could remember about actually being there the first time was that it was dark, I was scared, and that fucking bird-faced cunt was tormenting us. I think he probably tortured us — abused us, or something.”
Brendan was nodding. “Yeah, yeah… that’s what I remember most: the torture.” He looked paler than ever, and his neck was scrawny, like that of a chicken. “It fucked me up, that torture. I don’t remember any specifics, but it left me with…” He glanced at the others, his eyes wet, on the verge of tears.
“Go on,” said Simon. “We won’t judge you. Not us.”
Brendan nodded. “Okay. Here goes. It left me with a kind of kink; a fetish, I suppose you’d call it. I read a lot of bondage magazines, watch the videos. I like to watch it happen to other people, to see them tied up and… and abused. Nothing bad, not real violence. Consensual stuff, light spanking, and that. I just like to watch.” The colour came back to his cheeks; he was blushing. “Jesus, it left me liking bondage…”
Marty turned to Simon. “What about you? What are your memories?”
Simon’s head dropped. He stared at a damp patch on the tabletop. “Not much. Not much at all. Just the grove of trees… and that’s about it. I remember everything before that, when we made that stupid den, and thinking we were heroes that night, tracking down some kind of beast. But afterward, when we went in there… there’s nothing. Nothing but the trees. The fucking trees.”
A silence elbowed its way between them at the table. None of them spoke for a moment or two, as if they were each afraid to shatter the quiet that had fallen across them. Background sounds swelled: the music, the chatter of the handful of people left in the bar, the barmaid’s soft, lilting voice as she continued to sing.
Then, finally, Marty spoke.
“Let me ask you something,” he said, clasping his hands together on the table in front of him. “Does this — any of this — feel weird to you, or does it feel… well, normal? Does it feel natural?”
“You mean us?” Simon glanced at the other two men, one at a time. “Meeting here again, after all this time?”
Marty nodded.
“Not weird to me,” said Brendan. “Not any more. I thought it did, at first, when it was just me and Simon. But now it’s just like you say — it feels natural, as if we never parted.”
“Yeah,” said Simon. “Yes, that’s exactly how it feels. It feels like–”
Marty butted in before he could finish: “It feels like we left each other yesterday, as children, and then met up again today as adults. It feels like no fucking time has passed at all.”
The quiet fell once again around their shoulders, covering their heads, their mouths. They all stared at each other, eyes flicking from face to face, seeing beyond the masks of age. For all intents and purposes, the men sitting around the table were once again little boys. They were young again. But this time they were not afraid.
“You know,” continued Marty, “I’ve always lived my life on the edge of glory. Never quite got there, just prowled around on the wrong side of the ropes, trying to fight my way in. Now I finally realise that’ll never happen. I’m not going to make it. But maybe with you guys I can still make a difference, even if it’s just to us. To the rest of our lives.”
The barmaid’s singing built to a small crescendo. The song was a sad one, and she knew the words by heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“WE HAVE TO go back,” said Simon, breaking the spell. “The three of us, all together… We have to go back in there and kick-start the whole thing, make it happen again. But this time we need to fight it, and beat it. This time, we stop it dead in its tracks.”
The other two Amigos said nothing, but the mutual consent was evident in their faces, the posture of their bodies, the way they each sat forward in their chairs, as if eager to meet something head-on.
“We have to go there now, before we change our minds. We can’t wait, not any longer.”
He could see in their eyes that they agreed, despite remaining silent. Their features were old, worn, and tired, but those eyes — they were young boys, peering out from behind the broken-down faces of men.
CHAPTER THIRTY
JANE WAS WORRIED. Brendan had called her half an hour ago and filled her in on the latest news.
They’d met up with Marty and they were going inside the Needle; all three of them, together again, to see what memories they could stir up. Jane was put in mind of three boys poking a wasp’s nest with sticks, and the wasps going crazy, their stingers dripping with poison. It was a stupid image, really — a ridiculous comparison — but nonetheless, she felt that her husband and his old friends were about to disturb things that might just be best left to rest in peace.
She moved around the house like a Prozac phantom, her mind in a haze, her eyes roaming across every surface, her gaze unable to settle in one place. She felt simultaneously energised and exhausted. It was a strange sensation, like running through treacle.
Harry was fine. The boy was sleeping soundly, oblivious to the concern he’d caused.
But she couldn’t stop checking on him; she’d been up there three times in the past hour and was, even now, turning to climb the stairs again. She grabbed the handrail and began to ascend, her mind floating ahead of her.
At the top of the stairs she turned and walked along the landing. The bathroom door was open. She could see the mirror through the gap; it was greyed-out, steamy with condensation. Had she taken a bath earlier? She must have done, but could not remember anything about it. Perhaps she’d bathed the twins — or maybe just Isobel, while Harry rested.
“Jesus,” she whispered. “I’m losing the plot.”
Written in the condensation was a nonsense word:
Jane stopped outside the twins’ room and waited. She didn’t know what it was she was waiting for, but the pause felt right. It seemed like the thing to do. She pressed the palms of both of her hands against the door, and then leaned in close, pushing the side of her face against the wood. She listened, but could hear nothing. Of course she couldn’t. Harry was asleep. Isobel was at school, and then later she was going to a hastily arranged sleepover at a friend’s house on Far Grove Way.
The twins used to share a room when they were very young. She’d tried to separate them when they got older, and it had caused an uproar, with stamping feet and infant tantrums. She’d relented, but eventually they’d have to be separated again, and she knew that it would cause more trouble. They hated being apart, even when they were asleep. All the things you hear about twins had proved to be true.
Not for the first time she wondered about the origin of the twins; how Brendan had almost been a twin, so the genetic makeup was there, in his DNA, that someone on his side of the family could produce a multiple birth. But wasn’t it meant to skip a generation? She supposed it had, in a way, because Brendan’s twin had died
But Jane didn’t believe in the soul. She was an atheist. The lure of religion had not drawn her to its flame, not in the way that it had her mother. Jane’s mum had seen God as a way out of an abusive marriage; Jane had seen God as a convenient crutch for the weak to lean on. Where had God been when her father had beaten her, trying so hard not to touch her in the same way that he’d touched her sister? Where was the Holy Ghost when she’d lain awake at night, listening to his footsteps as he roamed the house, drinking and muttering and talking himself out of raping his own daughter? Some might say that it was God who had kept him away from her, but Jane
