downstairs.
This was all madness. An ordinary life turned upside down.
I was going to have to improvise.
I sat down on my bed.
The sunlight coming through the window made my eyes hurt.
I stood up, went over to the window and opened it. My bedroom occupied the space directly over Dad’s study, with a view of a small front garden that nature was busy taking back from my parents.
My parents and Doctor Campbell were talking in the living room, which we called the front room even though, technically speaking, it looked out across the back garden. If they stayed there for a few more minutes, and if I was brave – or foolish – enough to climb out of my window, there was a chance I could be well away from the house before they even realised I was gone.
I sized up the drop.
It was somewhere between four and six metres, I reckoned.
Risk assessment: a broken leg at least, probably worse.
But if I lowered myself down, so I was hanging from the window frame with my arms fully extended, it would cut about two metres from the drop.
Risk assessment: still a possible broken leg; more likely a twisted or sprained ankle.
The problem with both of these courses of action was that I needed to be certain that I could still walk when I reached the ground.
The risk was too high.
Off to the right side of my window, touching the side of the house, was an old tree. In high winds the branches would often tap against the panes of glass in my window. The branches were a good metre away from me. I could, however, jump across and then climb down the tree.
A metre jump.
The simplest of leaps.
If I was on the ground.
But I wasn’t on the ground, was I?
I was four to six metres up and if I missed the tree, or missed getting a good grip, or got a good grip on a branch that decided to give way, I would fall the whole distance.
And get the ‘worse’ from the first risk assessment: broken legs, possible broken back, with the added chance of cuts, grazes and bruises.
A one-metre jump.
I took out one of the cans of Red Bull from my jacket pocket, opened it, downed it in one and then clambered out through the window.
I put my feet on the narrow, sloping ledge, had my bottom sitting on the frame.
The window opened to the right and was blocking any jump.
I took a deep breath and stood up, feet braced on the ledge, arms using the window frame to pull myself up and through. Holding on to the left side of the frame with my left hand, I used my right to grab the concrete base of the guttering that passed overhead and I turned my body through a hundred and eighty degrees, so I was facing back towards the house.
I used my left hand to close the window behind me.
I reckoned that I had just passed the point of no return.
Another deep breath, and I shuffled, bit by bit, to the ledge closest to the tree.
One metre. Easy on the ground.
The tree was an aging beech with rust-coloured leaves. It had branches pointing upwards from a thick, gnarled trunk that someone, many years ago, had stopped growing too high by sawing it off about three metres from the ground. It made a platform for me to aim at, if I could make it through the screen of branches that surrounded it.
One metre.
I held on to the gutter concrete with my right hand and shuffled my feet around so I was facing the middle of the tree; swallowed a ball of spit that felt about the size of a satsuma; gritted my teeth; bent my knees and then jumped.
18
My legs threw me forwards, and suddenly I was rootless, at the mercy of scientific forces like mass and velocity, resistance and gravity. It was terrifying and exhilarating. I threw myself at the tree and opened my arms to catch it.
I hit a tall, upright branch full-face, crashing into it, hard. It made me dizzy – the pain I ignored for now – and I felt myself starting to fall.
I thrashed my arms and clawed for the tree, feeling the hardness of the wood slipping from my grasp. Leaves and smaller branches whipped at my face as I started to tumble downwards. The moment stretched out in perfect slow motion.
I think it was that calmness that saved my life.
It allowed me to give survival one more go.
I made a last, deliberate grab for a branch and it felt as if my arms were being torn from their sockets. My head was thrown backwards and my back arched at a painful angle. Twigs slapped my face and I could taste leaves in my mouth.
But I held on, sweating and trembling, hugging the branch to my chest. My legs fought for even safer purchase and found it.
A few breaths to calm myself down, and to get my heart beating at a more normal rate, then I inched myself down the branch, towards the trunk. Evolution was all well and good, but a monkey would have made a far better job of this than me.
In time I reached the sawn-off ‘platform’ I had seen from my window and tried to lower myself on to it. The angle that the branch met the platform was difficult, but I adjusted my position on the branch and pretty much slid on to it. It was a small area, but wide enough for me to catch my breath and prepare for the next phase of my descent.
I was crouching there, braced on all sides by branches, when suddenly the front door opened and Doctor Campbell stepped out, on to the path, off to my left and only a short distance below me. I felt certain that he would see me, but there was no way to conceal myself further, so I waited with a leaden feeling in my stomach.
Doctor Campbell was speaking to one or both of my parents, who remained inside the house. His voice was loud enough for me to hear everything.
‘Make sure he stays where he is,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m sorry, but it is clear that he is one of the nought-point- four. There is nothing that can be done for him. He will have to be dealt with.’
My mother uttered a strange, strangled sound.
‘I will return soon,’ the doctor said, ignoring her. ‘Drug him if you have to.’
He turned and walked away from the house and his route brought him even closer to my hiding place. I crouched lower as if making myself fractionally smaller would stop him spotting me if he decided to look my way.
But he didn’t look my way, and I watched him go, and heard the front door of my house close. It sounded loud and hollow like the door of a tomb.
I was one of the
That was what Doctor Campbell had said: 0.4.
What on earth did that mean?
I waited a few seconds, slipped through the cover of branches and shimmied down the trunk of the old beech
