followed, that were smaller than seconds, smaller even than flickers, where Byron sought with his eyes for the child at the roadside and did not find her, he knew something terrible had happened andthat life would never be the same. He knew it before he even had the words.
Above the moor shone a dazzling circle of white light. Byron had been right about the sun. It would burn through any moment.
2
Jim
J IM LIVES IN a campervan, on the edge of the new housing estate. Every dawn he walks across the moor and every night he walks back. He has a job at the refurbished supermarket café. There is wifi access and a facility to charge mobile phones although Jim has no use for either. When he started six months ago, he worked in the hot beverages section but after serving cappuccinos with a raspberry twirl topping and a flake he was relegated to tables. If he messes this job up, there’s nothing. There isn’t even Besley Hill.
The black sky is combed with trails of cloud like silver hair and the air is so cold it pares his skin. Beneath his feet the ground has frozen hard and his boots crash over the brittle stumps of grass. Already he can make out the neon glow that is Cranham Village, while far behind car headlamps make their way across the moor and they are a necklace of tiny moving lights, red and silver, stringing the dark.
In his late teens, he was found up there in only underpants and shoes. He had given his clothes to the trees; for days he had been sleeping wild. He was sectioned on the spot. ‘Hello again, Jim,’ the doctor said, as if they were old friends, as if Jim was dressed, like him, in suit and tie. ‘Hello again, doctor,’ Jim had said to show he was not trouble. The doctor prescribed electroconvulsive therapy. It brought on a stammer and later a tingling in his fingers that even now Jim still feels.
Pain is like that; he knows. Somewhere in his brain what happened to him then has got mixed up. It has become something else, not simply the hurt he felt at the time, but another, more complicated one that is to do with over forty years ago, and all he’s lost.
He follows the road to the estate. There is a sign, welcoming visitors to Cranham Village and asking them to drive carefully. Recently the sign has been vandalized, along with the bus shelter and the children’s swings, and now reads Welcome to Crapham . Fortunately Cranham is the sort of place people visit only if their satnav has made a mistake. Jim wipes the sign because it is a shame to see it humiliated like that, but the ‘ n ’ will not come back.
The new houses are packed tight as teeth. Each has a front garden, no bigger than a parking space, and a plastic window box where nothing grows. Over the weekend many residents have strung their guttering with Christmas lights and Jim stops to admire them. He especially likes the ones that are flashing icicles. On the top of one roof, an inflatable Santa appears to be dismantling the satellite dish. He is possibly not the sort of man you want coming down your chimney. Jim passes the square of mud residents call the Green and the fenced-off ditch in the middle. He picks up some empty beer cans and carries them to the bin.
Entering the cul-de-sac, he looks at the house rented by foreign students, and the one where an old man sits every day at a window. He passes the gate with the dangerous dog sign, and the garden with the laundry that is never taken down. Ahead his van shines in the moonlight, pale as milk.
A couple of young boys whizz past on a bicycle, shrieking with excitement, one on the seat, the other balanced on the handlebars. He calls, Be c-careful, but they don’t hear.
How did I get here? Jim asks himself. There were two of us once.
The wind blows and says nothing.
3
Lucky Talismans
W HEN J AMES HAD first mentioned the addition of seconds to Byron, he had presented it as another interesting fact. The boys liked to sit outside the chapel during their lunch break while the others
Above the moor shone a dazzling circle of white light. Byron had been right about the sun. It would burn through any moment.
2
Jim
J IM LIVES IN a campervan, on the edge of the new housing estate. Every dawn he walks across the moor and every night he walks back. He has a job at the refurbished supermarket café. There is wifi access and a facility to charge mobile phones although Jim has no use for either. When he started six months ago, he worked in the hot beverages section but after serving cappuccinos with a raspberry twirl topping and a flake he was relegated to tables. If he messes this job up, there’s nothing. There isn’t even Besley Hill.
The black sky is combed with trails of cloud like silver hair and the air is so cold it pares his skin. Beneath his feet the ground has frozen hard and his boots crash over the brittle stumps of grass. Already he can make out the neon glow that is Cranham Village, while far behind car headlamps make their way across the moor and they are a necklace of tiny moving lights, red and silver, stringing the dark.
In his late teens, he was found up there in only underpants and shoes. He had given his clothes to the trees; for days he had been sleeping wild. He was sectioned on the spot. ‘Hello again, Jim,’ the doctor said, as if they were old friends, as if Jim was dressed, like him, in suit and tie. ‘Hello again, doctor,’ Jim had said to show he was not trouble. The doctor prescribed electroconvulsive therapy. It brought on a stammer and later a tingling in his fingers that even now Jim still feels.
Pain is like that; he knows. Somewhere in his brain what happened to him then has got mixed up. It has become something else, not simply the hurt he felt at the time, but another, more complicated one that is to do with over forty years ago, and all he’s lost.
He follows the road to the estate. There is a sign, welcoming visitors to Cranham Village and asking them to drive carefully. Recently the sign has been vandalized, along with the bus shelter and the children’s swings, and now reads Welcome to Crapham . Fortunately Cranham is the sort of place people visit only if their satnav has made a mistake. Jim wipes the sign because it is a shame to see it humiliated like that, but the ‘ n ’ will not come back.
The new houses are packed tight as teeth. Each has a front garden, no bigger than a parking space, and a plastic window box where nothing grows. Over the weekend many residents have strung their guttering with Christmas lights and Jim stops to admire them. He especially likes the ones that are flashing icicles. On the top of one roof, an inflatable Santa appears to be dismantling the satellite dish. He is possibly not the sort of man you want coming down your chimney. Jim passes the square of mud residents call the Green and the fenced-off ditch in the middle. He picks up some empty beer cans and carries them to the bin.
Entering the cul-de-sac, he looks at the house rented by foreign students, and the one where an old man sits every day at a window. He passes the gate with the dangerous dog sign, and the garden with the laundry that is never taken down. Ahead his van shines in the moonlight, pale as milk.
A couple of young boys whizz past on a bicycle, shrieking with excitement, one on the seat, the other balanced on the handlebars. He calls, Be c-careful, but they don’t hear.
How did I get here? Jim asks himself. There were two of us once.
The wind blows and says nothing.
3
Lucky Talismans
W HEN J AMES HAD first mentioned the addition of seconds to Byron, he had presented it as another interesting fact. The boys liked to sit outside the chapel during their lunch break while the others
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