In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

that her usual offering was a packet of fig newtons opened without ceremony and tossed into the centre of the table while she was clearing the plates away-that quarter of an hour might stretch to thirty minutes, in which case Teddy would have plenty of time to watch the rest of The Incredible Hulk before his father shouted “Turn off that damn telly and get yourself out of the house right now! I mean it, Teddy. I want you out in the fresh air. Now. Now! Before I make you sorry I've had to repeat myself.”

Saturdays were always like that: a boring, daft repetition of every other boring, daft Saturday since they'd moved to the Peaks. What always happened on Saturdays was this: Dad clumped round the house at half past seven, bellowing about how fine it was to be out of the city at last and weren't they all just bloody delighted to have fresh air to breathe and open spaces to explore and their country's history and culture and tradition jumping out at them from every stupid pile of rocks in every dumb field. Only these weren't fields, were they? These were moors and weren't they all lucky and blessed and… oh, just bloody special to live in a place where they could set off north just beyond their own house and walk for six billion miles without ever seeing a single soul? This wasn't a bit like Liverpool, was it, kids? This was heaven. This was Utopia. This was-A place that sucked, Teddy thought. And sometimes he said it, which set his father off and made his mother cry and sent his sister into one of her fits where she started whingeing about how was she ever going to go to drama school and become a real actress if she had to live in the middle of nowhere like some sort of leper?

Which really set Dad off at full gallop. And took the heat off Teddy, who always used the opportunity to slink to the television and tune in to Fox Kids, which, at the moment, was featuring that always-wicked moment when pencil dick Dr. David Banner got his knickers twisted just enough by some ignorant yobbo that he went into one of those very cool fits where his eyes went backwards into his head and his arms and legs popped out of his clothes while his chest swelled up and his buttons flew off and he was beating the shit out of everyone in sight.

Teddy sighed with pure happiness as the Hulk made hash of his most recent tormentors. It was exactly what Teddy wished that he could do to those pea-brain twits who met him at the school gates every morning and shadowed him-taunting, poking, tripping, and shoving-from the moment he set foot inside the school yard. He'd beat them to puke and guts and shit if he were the Hulk. He'd take them one at a time or all at once. It wouldn't matter because he'd be more than seven feet tall and twenty-five stone of pure muscle and they wouldn't even know where he'd come from or why. And when they were sprawled out in their puke and their pee, he'd pick one of them up by his hair and he'd say, “You leave Teddy Webster be, you hear me? Or I'll be back.” And he'd thump that arsehole back to the ground and step on his face as he walked away. And then-“God damn it, Ted. I want you out of here.”

Teddy scrambled to his feet. So deeply into his fantasy had he sunk that he hadn't noticed his dad come into the sitting room. “It was nearly the end,” he said hastily. “I wanted to see how it-”

His father held up a pair of scissors. He grabbed the flex from the back of the telly. “I didn't bring my family to the country to have them spend their free time with their noses glued to the television. You have fifteen seconds to get out of this house, or the flex gets cut. Permanently.”

“Dad! I just wanted-”

“You need a hearing test, Ted?”

He shot towards the door. But there he paused. “What about Carrie? Why doesn't she-”

“Your sister's doing her school prep. Would you like to do yours? Or will you be going outside to play?”

Teddy knew that Carrie was no more doing her school prep than he was preparing to perform brain surgery. But he also knew when he was defeated. He said, “Play, Dad,” and he trudged outside, giving himself full marks for not sneaking on his sister. She was in her room mooning over Flicks and writing loony love letters to some loonier actor. It was a bloody stupid way to spend her time, but Teddy understood. She had to do something to keep the bats from her brain.

Telly did that for him. Watching telly felt good. Besides, what else was there to do?

He knew better than to ask Dad that question though. When he'd asked it at first-shortly after they'd moved here from Liverpool-the answer had been having a chore assigned to him. So Teddy no longer asked for suggestions when it came to free time. He took himself outside and shut the door, but not before he allowed himself the satisfaction of casting a baleful look over his shoulder as his father retreated into the kitchen.

“For his own good” were the last words Teddy heard from his dad.

And he knew-with despair-what those four words meant.

They'd come to the country because of him: a fat little kid who wore pebble specs, who had pimples on his legs and braces on his teeth and breasts like a girl, who got bullied in school from day one. He'd overheard the Big Plan when his parents were making it: “If he's in the country, he'll be able to exercise. He'll want to exercise-boys are like that, Judy-and then he'll lose the weight. He won't have to worry about being seen while he's exercising, the way he does here. And it'll be good for all of us anyway.”

“I don't know, Frank…” Teddy's mum was the doubtful kind. She didn't like disruptions, and a move to the country was Disruption Times Ten.

But Teddy's dad had his mind made up, so here they were, on a sheep farm where the sheep and the land were rented out to a farmer who lived in Peak Forest, which was the nearest thing to a town within miles. Except it wasn't a town, it wasn't even a village. It was a handful of houses, a church, a pub, and a grocery, where, if a bloke decided to sneak a packet of crisps for an afternoon snack-even if the bloke paid for them, mind you-that bloke's mum was sure to hear about it by six o'clock in the evening. And there'd be hell to pay.

Teddy hated it. The vast empty space that stretched into forever on every side, the great dome of sky that went pewter with fog on a moment's notice, the wind that whipped round the house all night and rattled his bedroom window like aliens trying to get in, the sheep that bleated like something was wrong but ran off the first time you took a step towards them. He just bloody hated the place. And as Teddy left the house and plodded into the yard, a piece of grit-shot by the wind like a missile-flew past his glasses, exploded into his eye, and made him yowl. He hated this place.

He removed his glasses and used the bottom of his T-shirt against his eye. It stung, it burned, and his sense of grievance grew. Blurry of vision, he stumbled to the back of the house, where the Saturday morning washing was flapping and snapping on the line that was strung from the eaves to a rust-eaten pole near a crumbling drystone wall.

“Pooey, phooey, poop,” Teddy muttered. On the ground near the house he found a long, thin branch. He scooped this up, and it became a sword. He used it as he advanced on the washing, a row of his dad's jeans his target.

“Stay where you are,” he hissed at them. “I'm armed, you lot. And if you think you can take me alive… Ha! Take that! And that! And that!”

They'd come from the Death Star to deal with him. They knew that he was the Last of the Jedi. If they could just get him out of the way, the Emperor would be able to Rule the Universe. But they couldn't kill him. AbsoLUTEly no way. They were under orders to take him captive so that he could be made an Example to All Rebels in the Star System. Well, Ha! And Ha! They would NEVER take him. Because he had a laser sword and swish swish lash and swish. But omigod. Hang on now. They had laser guns. And they didn't want to capture him at all! They wanted to kill him and… eeeeooooowww! He was completely outnumbered! Runrunrun!

Teddy turned and fled, waving his sword in the air. He sought the protection of the drystone wall that fronted the property and edged the road. With a leap, he was over. His heart pounded. His ears throbbed.

Safe, he thought. He'd gone into light speed and left the Imperial

Star Troopers behind. He'd landed on an undiscovered planet. They'd never find him here in a zillion years. HE would be an Emperor now.

Whoosh. Something whizzed by on the road. Teddy blinked. The wind pummeled him like an angry ghost's fists, bringing water to his eyes. He couldn't quite see. But still, it looked like… No. It couldn't