Whispers in the Graveyard. Theresa Breslin

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      Game show. Soap. Cartoons. Talk show. News.

      I flick back to the cartoons. I can watch them with the sound down.

      Bright colours like my comics. Fills my head. There’s light and dark and noise, movement and colour, quick and fast. It blots everything else out. Except . . .

      It’s better when you do it for yourself. Like . . . inside your head. You know. Make the story happen yourself. The way you want it to be. They spoil it on the telly sometimes, people don’t look right, make stupid remarks that don’t fit in. But words, words are different. I heard someone reading poetry on the radio once. The phrases stayed inside me for weeks, exploding in my head, thrusting and twisting in my gut.

      The noise from the kitchen is getting louder. Things are being thrown. I put my head in my hands. He is getting worse. Definitely. The weekend firecracker has usually fizzled out by Monday afternoon.

      There is an almighty bang from against the wall. I stretch over and turn the volume on the TV up a bit. I’m hoping the noise will cover me to get safely upstairs. I turn the door handle silently. Walking on the sides of my feet softly down the hall. Almost at the stairs now.

      The kitchen door crashes open.

      ‘You know where it is, don’t you?’ he demands thickly. His body fills the doorway.

      I breathe slowly. Once. Twice. My sludge-coloured day is streaked with blood-orange.

      ‘There’s none left. You finished it all.’

      I’m watching him carefully. My eyes on his hands. The trick is in the timing.

       Get ready.

      Knowing when to move is as important as knowing which way to go.

      ‘You’d better tell me.’ He points his finger in my face. His bulk has blotted out any light in the passageway.

      I shake my head slowly and move backwards. He comes at me then, arms swinging. I duck.

       Red alert.

      Sometimes being wee and skinny is a bonus. I’m round behind him and into the kitchen before he knows it. I grab my rucksack and scramble out the back door. A crashing noise behind me. Shattered glass showers the path.

      I make the lane and I don’t look back.

      Have to stay out for a few hours at least. I’ll go to Peter’s house for a bit. His mum will be at work.

      His two younger sisters are squabbling in the living room. We go into his kitchen to make sandwiches.

      ‘Where’d you end up today?’ he asks me. ‘I searched about for you at lunch time.’

      ‘Here and there.’ I’m offhand. No one knows my secret place. ‘How was your day with WW?’

      ‘The usual. He had Melly blubbing away ten minutes after you left.’ Peter pulls some slices of bread from the plastic-wrapped loaf on the work top. He stops, with his hand half out of the bag. ‘You know, copying my work, Sol . . . I don’t mind, but . . . you’ll never learn anything that way.’

      I take out two mugs, spoon in sugar and add milk. ‘Don’t care,’ I say quickly. ‘Was Watkins bothered that I didn’t come back?’

      ‘Na.’ Peter is smearing jam and peanut butter on the bread. He waves the knife at me. ‘I’ve told you before. He’s not supposed to send you out of class like that. He would get into trouble if he was found out. You should get your dad to report him.’

      His eyes meet mine. He must know. We only live a few streets apart. He hands me my piece, not looking at me now.

      His mum comes in lugging a supermarket bag full of shopping.

      ‘What a mess!’ she says, picking up our mugs and the jar of peanut butter from the kitchen table. ‘Come on, Pete, lend a hand.’ She gives him the potato peeler and a bag of potatoes.

      He mumps and moans a bit, but you can see that they’re used to working together. She clears the rest of the table and begins to set out plates and dishes. She takes the wrapping off a packet of cold meat and starts to put a couple of slices on each plate. Suddenly she stops and looks at me.

      ‘Oh,’ she says, hesitating. She reaches for another plate from the cupboard. ‘Want to stay for dinner?’ she asks.

      ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I can’t. My dad’s got something ready.’

      She shrugs. ‘Sure?’ she says. The plate is already back in its place.

      I nod.

       Bright smile, her. Bright smile, me.

      Her eyes meet Peter’s. They both look away.

      I leave Peter’s house and take the main road. There are still some crisps and biscuits in my bundle of stuff at the graveyard. I nip in through the main gate and along the edge of the wall.

      Evening is closing in. That kind of grey-blue slow gloaming that you get in Scotland at this time of year. Late spring melting into summer. In the kirkyard everything is settling down for the night. The midges in a dancing swarm beneath the old monkey-puzzle. The birds singing, warbling and fussing about. The leaves of the older evergreens are dark and leathery. Thistle and briar choke the little thickets clustered at the foot of the trees.

      The workmen have been back. Some of the horizontal slabs have been moved and stacked at one end. They are marked and labelled. I walk over to look at them.

      My footsteps scrape the gravel.

      I stop.

      I hear something.

      A soft movement behind me.

       CHAPTER VI

      A skitter of stones in the half dark. Shadows move towards me.

      God! What?

      Stupid. Stupid. Nothing.

      I hear the stumbling conversations of a group of teenagers. I glide quietly off the path.

      ‘Open a can, for f ’s sake.’

      I slide, cunning and sure of my own territory, behind an upright slab. Whatever they’re drinking or sniffing makes them cocksure. Confident but uneasy at the same time.

      ‘Can’t come here again. They’ve padlocked the gate.’

      They stop to light up. Right beside me. Gathered at my altar.

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