MORNING SERIAL

IT doesn’t last long the song in the air and then all I can hear is the still house all around me, and past that, there’s nothing but houses and streets and hills and trees.

“Psychological! Torturer! Murdrer!” Cher pushes, past Efa, past the door, and up the stairs. She’s sniffing for air through all the crying she’s doing, as if it smells to breathe. But I don’t feel like laughing at Cher any more. Pigeon’s gone.

Now we’re face-to-face in the attic, closer than I’ve ever been to Cher. Cher’s very pretty. She also actually smells really nice, like open windows and fresh grass. But she’s crying, and saying “He’s taken him! Murdrer, sicko, torturer! He’s got Pijin!” although I’m telling her she’s “got it all the wrong way round” like as if Pigeon isn’t Pigeon and doesn’t have good ideas, and like Pigeon isn’t “cleverer than Gwyn and you and me and everyone else. Pigeon’s the one that got in the van himself. Pigeon’s the one.”

But Cher just says, “Same difference, stewpit,” and just when I’m starting to think a bit that Cher might be right and maybe Pigeon’s dead and Gwyn = murderer so Pigeon = gone forever; just then I remember the plan.

The brown bits of Cher’s eyes are two perfect rounds done with a compass and a sharp pencil when I tell her what we’ve to do next. While I’m talking I’m thinking Cher’s so perfect and Cher’s got the most perfect white skin I’ve ever seen, so smooth and pale it’s like candles.

Then Cher and me are out, with Efa running out the door behind us shouting, “Where the bloody hell are you off to?” her shout dangling in the air as we speed down the hill on our bikes, coats spread out with the wind, making two coloured flags against the grey of the hill the pebble dash and the tarmac.

Pedalling, I see Gwyn’s van ahead of us, at the bottom of the hill, where I always used to look left and right with Nain when we walked to school. I watch what the van does at the junction.

To the right is the road that goes down town. One grey, ugly road, and all the closed shops and the big kids and chewing gum on the floor on it, and Spar on it too, and at Spar that noise like dying they call ‘mosquito’, like a siren to keep kids out.