A bat flaps by, like it’s on a string in a naff vampire film.

“Not really, if I’m honest. The furthest I’ve ever been’s Ireland, to see my mum’s relatives in Cork.”

“What’s it like?”

“Different. It’s not all checkpoints and bombs like up north, though the Troubles are still in the air a bit, and it’s best to shut up about politics. They hateThatcher ’cause of Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers. I’ve got this one great-aunt, my mam’s aunt Eilнsh—she’s brilliant. She keeps hens and has a gun in her coal hole, and when she was younger she cycled all the way to Kathmandu. Really, she did. She felt that wanna-be-everywhere boomthing, for sure. I’ve seen photos and newspaper cuttings and stuff. She lives on this long headland near Bantry—the Sheep’s Head peninsula. It’s like the edge of the world. There’s nothing there, no shops or anything, but”—there’s not many people I’d admit this to—“I really loved it.”

There’s a moon sharp enough to cut your finger on.

We say nothing for a bit, but it’s not an awkward nothing. Then Brubeck says, “D’you know ’bout the second umbilical cord, Sykes?”

I can’t make out his face anymore. “You what?”

“When you’re a baby in the womb, there’s this cord—”

“I know what an umbilical cord is, thanks. But a second one?”

“Well, psychologists say there’s a second umbilical cord, an invisible one, an emotional one, which ties you to your parents for the whole time you’re a kid. Then, one day, you have a row with your mum if you’re a girl, or your dad if you’re a boy, and that argument cuts your second cord. Then, and only then, are you ready to go off into the big wide world and be an adult on your own terms. It’s like a rite-of-passage thing.”

“I argue with my mam, like, daily. She treats me like I’m ten.”

Brubeck lights another fag, takes a drag, and passes it to me. “I’m talking a bigger, nastier fight. Afterwards you know it happened. You’re not the kid you were.”

“And you’re sharing these pearls of wisdom with me why?”

He lines up his answer carefully. “If you’re running off because your dad’s a petty crim who beats your mum up and throws you downstairs when you try to stop him, then running away’s the clever thing to do. Go. I’ll give you my InterRail money. But if you’re sat on this wall tonight just because your umbilical cord got snipped, then, yeah, it hurts, but it had to happen. Cut your mum a bit of slack. It’s just a part of growing up. You shouldn’t be punishing her for it.”

“She slappedme.”

“Bet she feels like shit about it now.”

“You don’t even know her!”

“Are you sure you do, Sykes?”

“What’s thats’posed to bloody mean?”

Brubeck lets it drop. So I let it drop too.

·   ·   ·

THE CHURCH IS quiet as the grave. Brubeck’s asleep in a nest of dusty cushions. We’re up on this gallery thing along the back wall, so we won’t be spotted if any Satan worshipers drop by for a black mass. My calves are sore, my blister’s throbbing, and my mind keeps rewinding to the scene with Vinny and Stella. Wasn’t I good enough at sex? Didn’t I dress right, talk right, like the right music?

22:58, glows my Timex. The maddest minutes of the week at the Captain Marlow are right now: last orders on a Saturday night. Mam, Dad, and Glenda, who just works weekends, will be going full pelt; a roaring wall of drinkers flapping fivers and tenners through the fog of smoke and the racket of chatter, shouts, laughs, curses, flirting … Nobody’ll care where Holly’s ended up tonight. On the jukebox “Daydream Believer” or “Rockin’ All Over the World” or “American Pie” will be booming through the building. Sharon’s fallen asleep with her flashlight on under the blanket. Jacko’s asleep with people murmuring foreign languages on his radio. Up in my room, my bed’s unmade, my schoolbag’s slung over my chair. A basket of washed laundry’s just inside the door, where Mam puts it when she’s pissed off with me. Which is most days now. The big glow of Essex at night’ll be shining orangy light across the river, through my undrawn curtains, over the Zenyatt а Mondattaand The Smithsposters I scavved from the Magic Bus. But I’m not going to start missing my room now.

No fecking way.

July 1

TIN WHISTLES, SCRATTY NOISES, birdsong, and a stained-glass angel. The little church on the Isle of Grain, I remember now, lit by sun through the first crack of the day. Mam. The row. Stella and Vinny, waking up in each other’s arms. My throat goes tight. I s’pose if some man’s been inside you often enough, it’ll take a while to get rid of him. Love’s pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices. 06:03, says my Timex. Sunday. Ed Brubeck: There he is, asleep on his cushiony things, mouth squashed open, hair floppy. His baseball cap sits on his neatly folded lumberjack shirt. I rub the sleep from my eyes. I was dreaming about Jacko and Miss Constantin holding open a curtain of air, and stone steps going up like in an Indiana Jonesfilm …

Who cares? I lost Vinny. Stella stole Vinny.

Ed Brubeck snores like a bear. Brubeck wouldn’t two-time his girlfriend. If he has one. Most boys in my year drop hints ’bout losing their virginity at a mate’s party, specially boys who haven’t, stroking their bum-fluff moustaches … Ed Brubeck doesn’t do any of that, which means probably he has done it. If it was with someone at our school, I’d’ve heard. Dunno, though. He keeps his mouth shut.

Mind you, he told me quite a bit yesterday.

His dad, his family, everything. Why me?

Watch his sleeping, pointy, half-man-half-boy’s face.

And the answer’s obvious: ’Cause he fancies you, you prawn!

If he fancies me, why didn’t he make a pass at me?

He’s clever, I realize. First he makes you grateful.

Right. Of course. I do believe it’s time I was off.

DANDELIONS AND THISTLES grow along the cracked track and the hedges are taller than me. The early sun’s like laser beams. Dunno why I nicked Brubeck’s cap as I crept away, but I’m glad I did. He won’t mind, much. Should be able to cut across the fields to the main road to Rochester—six, seven miles away, I reckon. My blisters’ll take it. They’ll have to; I don’t have a first-aid box in my duffel bag. I feel a jab of hunger, but my stomach’ll just have to put up and shut up—I’ll find something to eat at Rochester. Perhaps I should’ve said bye and thanks to Brubeck but if he’d have answered, “No worries, Sykes, but are you sure I can’t give you a backie back to Gravesend?” all cheerful-like, I’d’ve found it too hard to say no.

Up ahead, I see the track ending at a farmyard.

I climb a gate and skirt round a field of cabbages.

Another gate. A hawk thing’s a speck in the sky.

Six days should do it. The police only get interested in missing teenagers once a week’s up. Six days’ll show Mam I canlook after myself in the big bad world. I’ll be in a stronger, whatchercallit?, a stronger negotiating position. And I’ll do it on my own, without a Brubeck to get all boyfriendish on me. I’ll have to be careful to make my money last. Remember that time I tried my hand at shoplifting?

One Saturday last year a bunch of us went to Chatham Roller Disco for Ali Jessop’s birthday, but it was so lame that me and Stella and Amanda Kidd sneaked off to the high street. Amanda Kidd said, “Who wants to go fishing, then?” I didn’t want to but Stella said okay, so I acted all cool too and we went into Debenhams. I’d never nicked anything in my life and really I almost peed myself, but I watched Stella. She asked the shop assistant something pointless and a bit later, accidentally on purpose, dropped two lipsticks from the cosmetics stand. When she bent down to pick them up she put one of them in her boot. I did the same with some earrings I liked, and on my way out of the shop, I even asked the assistant what time they were open till. Once we were safe outside, the world felt different, like the rules had been changed. If you keep your nerve, you get what you want. Amanda Kidd had got a pair of sunglasses worth a tenner, Stella had some Estйe Lauder lippy, and my fake diamond earrings sparkled like real ones. Next we went to the Sweet Factory, where me and Amanda Kidd stuffed sweets into our clothes while Stella told the Saturday boy she’d seen him here every week for ages, and even dreamt about him, and would he like to go for a walk with her somewhere private after work? Last we went to Woolworths. Stella and me drifted away to look at the Top 40 singles, innocent enough, but the next minute the manager and an assistant were walling us in, and this store-detective guy had Amanda Kidd—shaking and white as a sheet—by the arm and saying, “These are the two she came into the shop with.” The manager ordered us upstairs to his office. All my willpower and attitude withered away, but Stella snapped back, “By whomam I being addressed?” Her voice came out posh and sharp.