Osama

double agent’ – he almost spat it out – ‘working for the Americans…’

‘Reg, I’m sorry, mate. I’ve really got to be off.’

‘None as blind as them that can’t see,’ said Reg, ‘but you answer me this: what was he doing living where he was, eh? Right under everyone’s noses? You think the Americans didn’t know?’

Fortunately, Joe didn’t have to say what he thought, because just then Elaine walked back into the room. She put an affectionate hand on Joe’s shoulder.

‘Never mind Reg, love,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s always looking for someone to listen to his loony ideas.’ Reg shrugged, and belched again. ‘Now don’t you worry about Conor. They’ll have a lovely time. I’ve got fish fingers for their tea, and I’ll make sure they’re not too late… Oh, and I’ll bring him back round first thing after breakfast. We pass your place on our way to school. Now then, Reg, say bye-bye to Joe.’

Reg just raised his beer in Joe’s direction.

Joe couldn’t get away quickly enough. Guys like Reg were fucking everywhere, keeping the army surplus stores in business and boring everyone shitless about their knowledge of modern combat from the comfort of their armchair. Put a fat fuck like him within sniffing distance of a contact situation and he’d be browning his boxers before you could say RPG. But he was harmless enough, and Elaine would look after Conor.

He looked through the windscreen. Conor was at a window on the first floor. His pale face looked almost ghostly. Joe gave him the thumbs up, and the boy smiled unconvincingly back.

Joe checked the time: 1710 hours. With a nagging sense of guilt he reversed the car, drove away from the house and headed back to JJ’s.

It was growing dark when he got there. The sheep had moved from the hillside and a flock of noisy geese, silhouetted against the sky, were flying north-westerly in an arrowhead formation as he stepped out of the car. Their croaking echoed across the landscape. Once they had gone, everything was silent.

Joe looked at the house. There were no lights on.

Why the hell not?

Something was wrong.

He checked the long grass at the front of the house. He counted three sets of tyre tracks: arrival of the Mondeo yesterday, departure to Charlie’s, arrival just now. He located the indentation of Conor’s footprints from this morning. And nothing else.

But still, no lights.

He circled the house. The back garden was just as overgrown as the front. There was a modern, two-storey annexe here. On the ground floor was a kind of boot room, with a spiral iron staircase that led up to the landing on the first floor of the main house. But the rear door to the annexe was locked. Windows closed. No light. No sign of access.

A gust of wind picked up, carrying with it the bleating of a distant sheep.

Nobody knows you’re here, Joe told himself. He walked round the other side of the house, past the coal shed. The rickety wooden door was closed, the loose chain tied round its bolt in a figure of eight, just as he had left it. When he reached the front door again, the evening had grown a shade darker. And still there were no lights from the house.

He opened the door and slipped inside.

He was about to call Caitlin’s name, but something stopped him. The chill darkness of the hallway, perhaps. Or the silence, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock that Joe had wound that morning.

The kitchen: empty and dark, the remnants of their lunch still unwashed by the sink. The sitting room on the other side of the hallway: ditto. Joe headed silently up the stairs. The steps were nearly two metres wide, with a winding, burnished-wood banister. Joe walked lightly along the left-hand edge of the treads, to minimize the creaking. The staircase turned back on itself. The banister continued horizontally for two metres along the landing, overlooking the staircase.

At the top of the steps, he stopped and listened.

Silence.

He was on the verge of calling Caitlin’s name again. And again, something stopped him.

The landing was ten metres long and covered with a musty grey carpet. To his left, there was a closed door that led back to the annexe, with its spiral staircase down to the ground floor. At one end of the landing was a door leading to the bathroom. This too was shut. The room Conor slept in was at the far end on the right. His door was fully open but no light was on inside. Opposite this was the room he shared with Caitlin. The door was a couple of inches ajar, and from it emerged a faint, flickering glow.

A glow he hadn’t seen from the window that looked out onto the front.

He approached with care, treading lightly, the tip of his shoe checking for any looseness in the floor that might make a noise before the heel went down. It took him twenty seconds to approach like this. When he was just inches from the doorway, he stopped and breathed deeply.

Then he kicked the door open.

The flickering glow, he saw instantly, came from a single tea light burning on the chest of drawers by the door. Against the left wall was a wardrobe with two long mirrors on the double doors. Opposite it, just to the right of the window, where the curtains were closed, was an old four-poster bed without any drapes.

And on the bed was Caitlin.

‘Jesus!’ She had sat up suddenly when Joe kicked the door in. ‘Joe, what’s the… ’

Caitlin closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, then forced a smile to her face. She wasn’t wearing much. A satin vest that did nothing to hide the curve of her breasts; skimpy underwear.

Joe stood stupidly in the doorway. Caitlin approached him, took his hand and led him over to the bed.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered as he sat on the edge of the bed. She clambered up behind him and started massaging his shoulders. ‘Baby, you’re so tense. Take your shirt off.’

Joe removed his shirt; behind him, he could sense Caitlin taking off her vest. When she started massaging again, he could feel her breasts brushing against his back.

‘Lie down,’ she whispered.

He obeyed.

Conor placed his knife and fork together on his empty plate, the way his mum had told him. He didn’t really like fish fingers, but he’d eaten them anyway, as well as the potato waffles, both smeared with ketchup.

‘Looks like blood, doesn’t it?’ Charlie had said as he squirted his own plate. Conor had kept his eyes fixed on his food. Charlie’s dad, who was passing through the kitchen on the way to the fridge, had said, ‘Too thick for blood, sunshine,’ before his mum had asked them to change the subject. After that they’d eaten in silence. They weren’t really getting on, and Conor didn’t want to be there.

‘Half an hour’s telly before bed, boys,’ Charlie’s mum said as she gathered up their plates. They walked through into the front room, where his dad was sitting with a can of beer in his hand reading his magazine. He gave Conor the creeps, and he sat as far away as he could, at the other end of the sofa.

They watched Doctor Who on DVD. Conor found it scary, but Charlie was rapt and he didn’t want to look like a wimp. He was glad when Charlie’s mum came in and said, ‘Seven-thirty, boys. Time for bed.’

Conor slept on a blow-up mattress on Charlie’s floor. Or rather, he didn’t sleep. He lay there in the darkness, listening to Charlie’s slow breathing and the sound of the TV downstairs. Thinking of his mum, and how she put on a brave face when it was just the two of them, even though he knew how much she hated it when Dad was away. And thinking about Dad too. How he had been sitting in the bath with the water pouring over him. How he had ripped his Xbox away from the screen when he’d been playing Call of Duty – something he was only doing because he thought playing a game like that might make his dad think more of him.

Thinking how Dad was just different this time.

He didn’t know how late it was when he started crying. All he knew was that once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Joe and Caitlin lay together, naked. Spent.