Twenty-Four Hours

Twenty-Four Hours
Margaret Mahy

Compelling drama in which 17-year-old Ellis comes to terms with the meaning of death…Ellis is an ordinary 17-year-old; someone who’s planning to finish school and go to university like any other teenager. The difference is that four months ago, his best friend Simon killed himself. Still – that was four months ago. Ellis has now ‘got over it’.Except, of course, he hasn’t. Returning to his home town, he gets drawn into a situation in which the ‘old’ Ellis would never have become embrangled. He gatecrashes a party and persuaded to ‘rescue’ two sisters – Ursa and Leo, driving them back to the Land of Smiles – the ex-motel where they live.From that moment on, nothing is the same again. The story is narrated hour-by-hour, as Ellis packs a life-time of experiences into the next twenty-four hours. Giving in to high spirits and booze, Ellis wakes next morning in a strange bed, with a stonking hangover and a shaven head! He learns that a child has been kidnapped, and is persuaded to help in her rescue…This is a bizarre, surreal and powerful novel in which the reader is taken on the same roller-coaster ride as Ellis.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

MARGARET MAHY

Contents

Cover (#u8e54bd92-3b95-5096-b1ff-15f15ad5bb50)

Title Page (#ub807994e-79a4-5b79-840c-d0d8a8a3416a)

Dedication (#u432696b4-9bfc-5581-8eb8-19f66a536873)

Part One (#ue888194b-c7cd-5d9a-8f67-7d77e45abad3)

5.10 pm – Friday (#u6fbea44a-b2ba-5c8c-8ad0-efbf76fa2d83)

5.20 pm – Friday (#uf13ac0cf-a4d2-52a5-a387-f3405867ac73)

5.50 pm – Friday (#u0739cec1-fcba-57ba-bab2-5270d4b44230)

6.30 pm – Friday (#ubb3f0744-4226-546e-ae4a-4c58b6d1d3c9)

6.55 pm – Friday (#ufc9c0b01-e919-5b2d-9f54-0c83ec7534ba)

7.30 pm – Friday (#u303a32db-1c41-56cc-9c52-3aa2736ab93e)

8.10 pm – Friday (#u0e167c2c-3249-5182-aa67-9cf6b761f1c7)

8.25 pm – Friday (#ua24b7412-475b-51ce-b7ae-4cc3deb71db9)

9.30 pm – Friday (#litres_trial_promo)

Time Stops (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)

9.00 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

10.00 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

10.20 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

10.30 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

10.40 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

11.10 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

11.40 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

12.40 pm – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

1.10 pm – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

3.10 pm – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)

4.00 pm – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Dedication (#uaeedd6f3-7b5e-5d6b-8bc4-41c0862a23b3)

TO CRAIG

In celebration of the number-one hair-cut.

MM

PART ONE (#ulink_fb0a09cf-cbe7-50b2-8ba0-5510af2e509e)

5.10 pm – Friday (#ulink_09030619-a544-5a2c-a422-3c9d7ead8892)

Home. Home from school. Holidays. And here he was – out on the town, but on his own. As he walked through the early evening, bright with midsummer light, Ellis saw the city centre glowing like a far-off stage. But, although the sunlight was finding its way so confidently between hotels and banks, shops and offices, the city was threatened by a storm. To the north, between glassy office buildings, he could see bruised clouds, polished by a lurid light, rolling across the plain towards the town.

Most of the other people in the street were going in the same direction as Ellis, probably making for the cinema complex that dominated the eastern end of the city centre. He looked with interest at the few faces coming towards him, half-hoping to see someone he recognised. However, as yet, he had not seen a single person he knew.

I can always go to a film, he thought, and patted his back pocket as if the money there was a good-luck charm.

The traffic lights changed. Glancing to the left as he crossed the street, Ellis saw the city council had installed new street lamps since he had last walked that way. Retreating, like precisely spaced blooms in a park garden, they rose on long green stems which curved elegantly at the top, then blossomed into hoods of deep crimson. Foley Street, announced brass letters on a black background. At the far end of the street he saw the old library he had visited regularly as a child, bracing its stone shoulders against a constricting cage of platforms, steps and orange-coloured piping. Wide dormer windows looked towards Ellis from under deep, dipping lids, tiled with grey slate. Several streets away, a new library, complete with a computerised issue system and a much-praised information-retrieval programme, would no doubt be working busily. But the old building was still there, transformed into apartments – one of them owned, he suddenly remembered, by country-dwelling friends of his parents. He guessed, looking at the scaffolding, that the company which had bought the old library must be adding a third floor to the original two.

More changes, thought Ellis a little ruefully, although he also wanted the city to surprise him in some way – to put out branches … break into leaf … burst into gigantic laughter.

Free, thought Ellis, and he might have skipped a little if it had not been such a childish thing to do. Well, not quite free. University next year – OK! OK! That was decided. But, after all, the university had a drama society and a proper theatre, so they must need actors. And he would have adventures, moments of revelation, sex, even love. The coming year, he decided, would be a year of transformation. I’m going to be an actor, said the voice in the back of his head. I really am!

“I am going to be an actor,” Simon had also declared last year, casually but quite definitely. And then, later … “Forget acting! I’m into sex these days,” he had said when Ellis, excited by the prospect of the Shakespeare Fantasia planned for the end of the year, had auditioned successfully for the part of Claudio in a scene from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. But, only two weeks after saying this, Simon had killed himself. He had, after all, been into something much more dangerous than sex. He had been in love, and love had failed him.