The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [166]
‘What were you up to last night? Were you and your friends out near Alton Barnes, by any chance? Wearing black combats?’
‘All sorts of ways to celebrate Solstice,’ he says, standing up to light the candle on the mantelpiece, to ward off the gloom. ‘But let’s concentrate on the problem in hand.’ He stares into the cold fireplace. ‘You are such a pillock, know that? Why do you keep behaving like this? It’s like you have no respect for yourself.’
‘I–’ I can’t come up with an answer that sounds credible even to myself.
‘I’d like nothing better than to see you in a relationship. But you don’t do relationships. You do dysfunctional shags. Usually associated with an excessive consumption of alcohol, far as I can make out.’
‘Not this time.’
Tramadol, for God’s sake. Were you born yesterday? Thought I’d brought you up with a healthy respect for drugs.’
‘You’re not my father, John.’
He winces. ‘No. Maybe I should have behaved more like one.’ He starts tossing the pine cone again. It’s starting to remind me of a live grenade. ‘But my own dear dad wasn’t the finest role model. I’ve always tried to look out for you, though, haven’t I?’
‘Sorry.’ I take a sip of tea. It tastes awful, because I keep thinking of poor old Cynon, head crushed, according to Ed, and…
Get in the van, Indy
‘John,’ I say.
He puts the pine cone carefully down on the arm of the chair.
‘I think I need to talk about what happened to Mick Feather.’
CHAPTER 45
‘Once saw a film,’ John says, bringing two more mugs of tea from the kitchen, ‘in which someone had their memory wiped by a sinister corporation, and they keep getting inexplicable flashbacks and go round trying to get their memory back. Made me laugh like a drain.’ He sits down again next to me on the sofa and puts a fatherly arm round my shoulders, squeezing tight. ‘You don’t need a sinister corporation. People wipe their own memories clean, happens every day. You think I really remember what happened when I shot that Argie? It’s like in another life, someone else’s…’
The memories are there, locked into the crystals. All you have to do to release them is turn them the right way, towards the light. First come the sounds–
The sound of the wind in the trees over Tolemac. Lying in the van at night hearing it, hearing…
Keir’s breathing. Heavy, for a kid. His nose was always a bit blocked up. Not snores, baby snorts and sighs. He kicked in his sleep. He was a couple of inches shorter than me, and a few months younger. His father had fought for custody of him–his mother had a drug habit, but the courts still found against Mick. He stole Keir back, kidnapped him, and Keir’s mother never once came to look for him, though Keir was certain she would when she was better.
The sound of the wind across the fields and…
Who are we?
We’re the Barley Collective.
Calling in the fakkin’ Mothership. Riz, the bloke with the curls, the one who caught Keir and me in the church. I rode on Riz’s shoulders as we walked home along the Ridgeway under the bright moon, my legs either side of his neck, his hands clasped across my thighs to keep me steady. At the bottom of the hill, by the padlocked gate into Tolemac, he bent to let me slide off his shoulders. Then I felt his lips against my ear.
‘You goin’ to the party, Ind?’
‘What party?’
‘The one where your mum’s dancin’.’
‘Don’t know about that.’
‘Where is it?’
‘What?’
He patted my bottom, and I scrambled over the gate and ran towards the van under the trees. The back door opened. Mum stood there, in her jeans and a sloppy T-shirt. She smiled at me, but her eyes were like Keir’s when the grass was cut, puffy and red.
My eyes focus on John, the other side of the hearth.
‘Riz,’ I say. ‘Short for Rizla? Funny little bloke. Mixed race? We made the crop circle with him.’
‘Little shit,’ says John. ‘And not Rizla, Rissole, we called him, because somebody said his curly hair was like a plate of rissoles. He was a leech, clung on to whoever’d let him cling. Story was he’d been a Jehovah’s Witness for a while, then for a joke some chick invited him in, served