Believing the Lie

Jesus, Tim thought. Where he went to school was the farmer’s business like it was his business asking Tim when his last shit had occurred. He said, “Not round here. Margaret Fox. Near Ulverston,” reasonably sure that the man wouldn’t have heard of the place and its reason for being. He added, “Independent school. It’s boarding but I don’t board.”

“What’s happened to your hands, then?” the farmer asked. “You don’t want them to stay like that.”

Tim gritted his teeth. He said, “Cut myself. Got to be more careful.”

“Cut? Those don’t look like you cut — ”

“Look, pull over,” Tim said. “You c’n let me out here.”

“This’s nowheres near Winster, boy.” True enough. They’d gone barely a mile.

“Just let me out, okay?” Tim’s voice was controlled. He didn’t want it to go fierce with all that fierceness revealed, but he knew that if he didn’t get out of the Land Rover now, he would do something and it wouldn’t be pleasant.

The farmer shrugged. He pulled over. He looked long and hard at Tim as he braked, and Tim knew that the man was memorising his face. No doubt he’d be listening to the radio news next time it came on, waiting to hear about a local burglary or a spate of malicious mischief that he could pin on Tim. Well, that was the risk he’d have to take. Better that than riding farther with the bloke.

“You take care, son,” the farmer said just before Tim slammed the door, hard.

“Whatever,” Tim replied as the Land Rover moved on. He tore at the back of his hand with his teeth.

His next ride was better. A German couple took him as far as the road to Crook, where they turned off in search of some posh country house hotel. They spoke good English, but all they wanted to talk about to him was “ach, such rain you have in Cumbria,” and when they spoke to each other — which was most of the time anyway — they spoke in German, rapid sentences about someone called Heidi.

Tim managed to get a final lift from a lorry driver just north of the Crook Road. This bloke was heading all the way to Keswick, so Windermere would be no problem, he said.

What was a problem was the driver’s intention of using their limited time together to lecture Tim on the dangers of hitchhiking and to quiz him about his parents and did they know he was out on the roads taking lifts from strangers? You don’t even know who I am, he announced. I could be Sutcliffe. I could be Brady. I could be some child molester. You understand that?

Tim bore all this without kicking the bloke in the face, which was what he badly wanted to do. He nodded, said, “Yeah,” said, “Whatever,” and when they finally reached Windermere, said, “Drop me off over there by the library.” This the lorry driver did, although not without saying it was lucky for Tim that he had no interest in twelve- year-old boys. Because this was truly and absolutely too much, Tim said that he was fourteen, not twelve. The lorry driver hawked a laugh and said, “You aren’t ever. And what’re you hiding under them baggy clothes? I reckon truth is you’re a girl, you are,” in response to which Tim slammed the door.

He’d borne just about all that he could. If he’d done exactly what he preferred to do at that precise moment, he would have gone into the library and ripped up a shelf of books. But that, he knew, would not get him an inch closer to where he wanted to be. So he bit down hard, harder, and then hardest of all on his knuckles till he tasted the blood and that helped a bit and made him able to set off towards the business centre.

Even at this time of year, there were tourists in Windermere. It was nothing like the summer, when one couldn’t move in the town without bashing straight into some fell-walking enthusiast with a bulging rucksack on his back and a hiking pole in his hand. Then no one local with any sense came into town since endless tailbacks transformed every street into nothing more than a car park. Now, though, moving about was easier, and the tourists on the pavements were of the who-gives-a-shit sort, kitted out in green plastic bedsheets with their rucksacks underneath making them all look like hunchbacks. Tim passed them by and followed the route into the business centre, where there was not a single tourist at all, tourists having no reason to go there.

Tim, however, had a very good reason and it was called Shots! This was a photographic developing service, he’d learned upon his only visit to the place, and its general purpose was to create super-enlargements for professional photographers who came to the Lakes to memorialise its grand vistas at all times of year.

In the window, samples of what Shots! was capable of producing stood on large easels against a black background curtain. Inside the shop itself, photo portraits were hanging on the walls, digital cameras were on offer, and a display of antique cameras was arranged in a glass-fronted bookcase as well. There was a counter and, as Tim knew, a back room. From this room a man emerged. He was wearing a white lab coat with Shots! embroidered on the left breast and a plastic name tag above it. When his eyes met Tim’s, his hand went quickly to that name tag. He removed it and shoved it into his pocket.

Tim thought once again how normal Toy4You looked. He was not at all what one would expect, with neat brown hair, roses in his cheeks, and wire-rimmed specs. He had a pleasant smile and he used it now. But what he said to Tim was, “This isn’t a good time.”

“I texted you,” Tim said. “You didn’t answer.”

“I had no message from you,” Toy4You replied. “Are you sure you sent it to the right number?” He looked directly at Tim, which was how Tim knew he was lying because that was what he himself had used to do until he’d understood how dead a giveaway it was to meet someone’s eyes like that.

Tim said, “Why didn’t you answer? We had a deal. We have a deal. I did my part. You didn’t do yours.”

The man’s gaze shifted. It went from Tim to the doorway. This meant he was hoping that someone would enter the shop so that the conversation could go no further because he knew as well as Tim knew that neither of them wanted to be overheard. But there was no one out there, so he was going to have to talk or Tim was going to do something inside the shop… like make a move for those old cameras in that case or one of the digitals. He doubted Toy4You wanted any of them destroyed.

Tim said, “I said-”

“For what you’re proposing, the risk is too great. I’ve thought about it, but that’s how it is.”

Tim grew so hot that he felt a fire being lit at his feet. It rose quickly and engulfed him and he breathed fast and hard because that seemed the best way to control it. He said, “We fucking agreed. You think I’m forgetting about that?” He clenched his fists, unclenched them, and looked around. “D’you even want to know what I can do to you if you don’t keep your promise to me?”

Toy4You went to a drawer at the end of the counter. Tim tensed, reckoning he meant to pull out a gun or something, which was what would have happened in a film. But instead, he pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He lit one. He examined Tim for a very long moment before he spoke. He finally said, “Okay. All right. But if you want it to happen, I need more from you than you’ve given so far. That’s the only thing that makes it worthwhile for me. A risk you take for a risk I take. Equality.”

Tim parted his lips to speak but he couldn’t at first. He’d already done everything. Every single damn thing. And now he was meant to do more? He said the only thing he could think of, “You promised me.”

Toy4You made the sort of expression one might make upon the discovery of a seriously soiled nappy in the front seat of one’s car. He said, “What’s this ‘you promised me’? Like some infant school pupils’ arrangement, that’s it? You give me your chocolate bikkie and I let you ride my skateboard? Only I eat the bikkie and then run off and you don’t get your ride?”

Tim said, “You agreed. You said. This is fucking unfair.”

Toy4You drew in long on the cigarette and watched Tim over its glowing tip. He said, “I changed my mind. That’s what people do. I’ve assessed the risk and it’s all on my part and none on yours. You want things done, you do them yourself.”

Tim saw a curtain of red fall between himself and Toy4You. He knew what it meant: Action was called for and Toy4You wasn’t about to call the cops to prevent him from taking it. But on the other hand, that would finish things between them and despite what he was feeling at the moment, Tim knew he didn’t want to start this process all over again, searching for someone else. He couldn’t face that: the days and weeks that it would take. So he said, “I swear to God, I’ll tell. And when I’m done telling… No. Before that, I’ll kill you and then I’ll tell. I swear. I’ll say I had to. I’ll say you made me.”

Toy4You lifted an eyebrow casually. “With the trail you’ve left on that computer of yours? I don’t think so, mate.” He glanced at a wall clock behind the shop counter and said, “And now it’s time for you to leave.”

“I’m staying.” Tim’s voice began to shake. The rage filled him with both passion and need. “I’m telling