Darkness Be My Friend Read Free Page B

five of us managed to disagree on every second answer. Homer and I managed to disagree on every answer.
    "There's a service station on the corner of Maldon Street and West Street."
    "Maldon and West? No, there isn't!"
    "Well, what is there then?"
    "I can't remember, but it's definitely not a service station. Which service station do you reckons there?"
    "You know, that old one, Bob Burchett or whatever his name is."
    "Bob Burchett? That's on the corner of Maldon and Honey, and it's Bill Burchett, not Bob."
    "Kevin, I'm right, aren't I? It's Maldon and West."
    It was like that most of the time and when we got back to our quarters Homer wouldn't even speak to me.
    Sunday a guy dropped in after lunch for no reason that any of us could quite work out. His name was Iain Pearce, he was in his mid-twenties, he was obviously something military—you could tell by the way he walked—but he was wearing jeans and a grey Nike T-shirt, and he just sat there chatting away like a new neighbour who'd come in for a cup of coffee. He had one of those honest uncomplicated faces, steady eyes, and a very straight black moustache. Kevin liked him at first sight, so for a while they did most of the talking.
And most of it was guy talk: rugby and cars and computers. It wasn't too interesting but I didn't have the energy to move, so I sat there half-listening, trying not to yawn. Fi was even ruder: she was reading a magazine called
Contact,
a newsletter for refugees like us who'd escaped to New Zealand. So she ignored them completely. Lee joined in a bit, but not Homer. Homer was still sulking, so when he talked it was in mumbles and grunts.

    Gradually, though, Iain turned on the charm. I think he must have done a PR course or something, because after he'd talked to Kevin for a while he went to work on the rest of us. I quite enjoyed watching him do it. First he asked Fi about the music she liked and, because Fi loves music, she couldn't resist that. Then he found out that Fi and Lee and I had gone to a new New Zealand movie called
The Crossing,
which he hadn't seen but he knew the guy who did the special effects—maybe I should have worked out from that what kind of work Iain was in—so we told him a bit about the film. And somehow a few minutes later the subject was pig farming and Homer, who's always been mad about pigs, was talking nonstop about how he wanted to build up a herd of Poland Chinas, a breed I'd never heard of.
    An hour later Iain had gone and we still didn't have a clue why he'd come in the first place.
    The fire was raging now, only we didn't know it.
    We knew it the next day, though. Oh boy, did we know it. The Monday. Black Monday. Fi and I had been for a run at about three in the afternoon. We went through the pine trees and along an old track to a hill that I always liked. There wasn't anything much up
there, nothing spectacular, but it was a nice round smooth soft hill where the grass was always wet and green, and the fences were exactly the same as a couple of our older ones at home: dry stone walls with a single strand of barbed wire on top.

    It's a hard run up there but easy coming back, except that Fi always cheats, cutting off the corners at every bend. I make it tough for myself by sticking to the track. I can still beat Fi, even when she cheats, but she doesn't really try; she mainly comes to keep me company.
    OK, be honest, she comes because I bully her into it.
    Anyway, this particular Monday we got back about half past three, a quarter to four, and there they all were: Colonel Finley, Homer, Lee and Kevin. They were standing in a circle, like mourners at a funeral, and the expressions on their faces were like mourners at a funeral too.
    When I found out what Colonel Finley wanted I realised they were at a funeral.
    Ours.
    Fi and I walked up to them quite innocently. I had my hands on my hips, I remember that. We were hot and red-faced and panting, but I soon forgot my lack of oxygen and my heaving