Lost Summer

‘Come on, Louise,’ he said, and reached for her arm as she swept past.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she yelled, yanking free. ‘Just leave me alone!’

‘It’s not a case of my work coming first, dammit. This girl …’

‘I don’t want to hear about her! I don’t want to hear about any of it. There’s always some girl, some parent, somebody. Anybody except me! Where do I come in, Adam? Tell me that. Where do I come into your list of bloody priorities?’

‘That isn’t fair,’ he started to say, but she shook her head and turned away. He watched her go, heard the slam of the bedroom door.

Out of guilt Adam called Morris and made an appointment for two days’ time. When he arrived at the door he suddenly wondered if there was really any point going inside. That morning he and Louise had argued again. Nothing unusual about that, but it had quickly become a bitter fight. Things had been said by both of them that wouldn’t easily be forgotten. The kind of barbed remarks that are designed to inflict maximum damage. He didn’t think she deserved that. He didn’t either for that matter. By the time he’d left the house they’d both been ashamed to look one another in the eye, and anger had been replaced with the dull knowledge that perhaps this was hopeless.

Deep down, however, Adam knew that Louise’s anger stemmed from her frustration with him and he felt badly about that. In the end he kept his appointment and presently found himself at the window while Morris sat behind him, his fingers steepled beneath his chin.

‘During our last session you were telling me about Castleton. You mentioned that you felt lonely when you moved there.’

Adam turned around. He’d been thinking about Liz Mount, wondering what his next move ought to be. ‘It got better after I started school.’

‘The boy you had the fight with went to the same school didn’t you say?’

‘Yes. His name was David Johnson. Nick and Graham, the other two who were there that day, went to the local comprehensive. David and I got to know each other. We ended up being friends.’

‘So, you felt accepted after that?’

‘Not exactly. Sometimes.’

When he looked back now, Adam didn’t think he’d ever felt accepted. Maybe if it had just been David, or even David and Graham it would have been okay. But Nick had never liked him. He tried to explain.

‘Graham was fairly easy-going. A follower I suppose. But when I came along Nick resented me. It didn’t help that David and I both went to the grammar school. David’s dad owned the local sawmill which had the contract for the wood on the estate, so he and Kyle had a lot to do with each other as well.’

‘Nick was jealous?’

‘Probably.’

‘And what was the effect of that?’

‘I think David felt caught in the middle sometimes.’

He recalled a time when they had arranged to go rabbiting. It was early and the town was quiet. They had arranged to meet at the church. Graham and David arrived a few minutes after Adam, but quarter of an hour later there was still no sign of Nick.

‘Why don’t we ring him?’ Adam suggested. There was a phone box on the other side of the square.

‘They haven’t got a phone,’ Graham said.

‘Let’s go to his house then. He might have slept in or something.’

‘It’s best if we wait,’ David said. ‘He’ll come when he can.’ He started idly scuffing his feet along the path between the gravestones while Graham began examining the palms of his hands.

‘I got these bloody blisters yesterday,’ he said, picking at the skin.

It was as if invisible shutters had closed. The subject wasn’t open for discussion but Adam felt excluded by his lack of understanding. He swallowed his frustration.

During that first year he’d lived in Castleton, Adam had never seen where Nick lived. He knew vaguely where it was; somewhere down past the council houses at the bottom end, close to the eastern edge of the wood, but he’d never been there. A faint air of mystery surrounded Nick’s family. Adam knew there was a younger sister who caught the school bus in the mornings and was as scruffy as Nick and just as sullen, and he’d seen their mother around town wearing a shapeless worn coat, her pale blotchy legs bare even in winter. But Adam had never seen Nick’s father, James Allen. Nick never mentioned him, and neither did David or Graham.

What little Adam had known he’d overheard in snatches of conversation between Kyle and his mother. Whenever there was poaching on the estate, or there had been an outbreak of theft, Kyle blamed Nick’s dad. He heard stories about Allen getting drunk in the local pubs and starting fights with men from the estate. Once he’d seen Nick’s mother in town with a black eye. Over time Adam had formed a mental image of the whole family living in Dickensian squalor, terrorized by an evil-tempered thug.

Eventually Nick had turned up that morning but he hadn’t offered any explanation for being late.

They rode their bikes out of town across the bridge and took the road that climbed steeply towards the fells. By eight the sun was already warm on their backs and the effort of the climb had made them sweat. At one point he and David had paused to rest. The others were still out of sight around a bend in the road behind them. On one side the road was bounded by a wall, and on the other by a thick hedge. A blackbird flashed by, chattering in alarm.

When the others finally appeared they were pedalling slowly. Nick’s bike was a big heavy machine that seemed to be made of cannibalized parts. He was wearing boots that looked too big for him, though the laces were undone. The leather was cracked, and the sole of one had come loose at the toe. It was flapping up and down, making a slapping sound as Nick struggled up the hill. The chain creaked with every turn of the pedals. Creak slap, creak slap.

When they finally caught up Nick dropped his bike on the ground and went to sit on the wall. He dumped the sack that was tied over his shoulder on the grass and it moved as the ferret inside poked and snuffled looking for a way out. Nick lit a cigarette butt he found in his pocket, though he was still panting. He coughed and spat then muttered something under his breath as he lifted his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, revealing for an instant his pale skinny body. There was a vivid purple black bruise the size of a melon across his ribs.

‘Bloody hell. What happened to you?’ Adam said without thinking.

He knew straight away he should have kept his mouth shut. The others were looking away as if they hadn’t seen or heard anything. Nick looked up in surprise, and some ill-defined expression briefly flashed in his face before it was quickly replaced with an angry glare. Abruptly he dropped to the other side of the wall and walked fifty yards up the hill where he sat down.

‘A few minutes later David and I started off again,’ Adam recounted. ‘Nothing was said but I knew I’d crossed a line. David gave me the cold shoulder all the way up the hill. I kept thinking about the look I’d seen on Nick’s face. It was shame. I’d embarrassed him.’

‘And you felt bad about it?’ Morris asked.

‘A bit I suppose. But I’d be lying if I said I was that worried. Nick made it clear he didn’t like me and the feeling was mutual. Somehow he always managed to turn things around. Like I said, it was mostly because of him that I never really fitted in.’

That day Adam and David had waited for the others at a place known as the Giant’s Chair. It was a rock formation that roughly resembled a huge seat. Local legend had it that a race of giants had once roamed the fells and this was all that was left of their existence. It was easy to climb to the top by the gently sloping grassy rise on one side, but once in the seat itself the drop was a sheer one. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. From there the road was visible, winding back down to the valley. The town was out of sight but parts of Castle ton Wood could still be seen. A pine forest lay to the north, and fringed inside its southern edge was Cold Tarn, a natural deep lake that even on a day like this, when the sun was beating down from a cloudless sky, appeared black. Sometimes they fished for pike and perch there, and in season wildfowlers stood in the reeds that fringed the shore to shoot ducks. Behind them, Cold Fell rose 600 metres above sea level at the northern extent of the Pennines.

Back the way they’d come two tiny figures were visible more than a mile away, moving slowly up the steepest part of the hill.

Adam had pulled a book from his pack and started reading while David sat with his feet dangling over the edge of the rocks, chewing on a stem of grass.

‘What’s that you’re reading?’ David asked after a while.

Adam silently held it up so that he could see the cover but he didn’t say anything.

‘The Crystal Cave? What’s it about?’

‘I’ll let you read it when I’ve finished.’ He was being sarcastic because David didn’t read anything unless it was about sport.

For a while David tossed small pieces of rock out into the open, seeing how far he could throw them. Eventually he stopped and said, ‘What’s up with you?’

Adam put his book down. ‘So, now you’re talking to me again, is that it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on. You haven’t said a bloody word since we left the others.’

David found another stone, and threw it hard out into the air where it dropped from sight.

‘I just said it without thinking,’ Adam said. ‘For Christ’s sake I didn’t mean to embarrass him or anything.’