A Squeaky Trolley

7. A Squeaky Trolley

The neon glare faded into the soporific glow of Victorian style park lights, the layout of which was as sporadic as the trees and bushes. Yarborough Park was asleep, for the night and for the winter. The remnants of fallen leaves rotted into mulch underfoot, while the dead branches evangelically twisted up towards the moonlight. Only the public toilets by the picnic tables showed any sign of life: harsh light pushed from the translucent windows, the sound of young women cackling.

Michael drifted along the pathway with a light buzzing at the back of his head. He couldn’t tell if the path was straight or not, he just kept walking, one foot in front of the other. Gabriel had removed his hand from his back pocket and his head from Michael’s shoulder, but stayed closer than before, contentedly looking at the surrounding scenery. Michael could still feel the sting of Gabriel’s cold fingers on his cheeks, and feel the soft, warm sliminess of Gabriel’s tongue in his mouth and on his bottom lip. His brain shuddered every time he relived it in his head - which he did quite a few times, remembering new details, new sensations with each replay - in an effort to preserve the memory of his first kiss.

And then the fuzzy feeling began to fade… Replaced by nothing, numbness, and the creeping beginnings of fear. His legs didn’t drift anymore, they wobbled and faltered. The path ahead curved right, but Michael kept walking straight on, towards the bench with a steel plaque dedicated to someone he could neither read nor care about. He collapsed onto the damp seat and hunched over, head in his hands.

Gabriel carried on walking for a few paces along the path until he noticed Michael wasn’t there any more. He sat down next to Michael, leaning forward, mirroring him.

“What’s the matter?”

“Why did you do that?” Michael muttered, barely audible. He kept his gaze downwards, watching the shadow of a beetle scurry across bits of gravel.

“Do what? You mean, pretend to be your boyfriend?”

Michael could see Gabriel watching him out of the corner of his eye, but kept his head forward. He opened his mouth ready to say something, but no words would come, so he settled on a nod.

“What am I going to do at college? I can’t show my face there again. It’s gonna be a nightmare... What am I gonna do? They always take the piss out of me, but now… after that… Oh, God!”

Gabriel sat listening, nodding sympathetically to Michael’s ever increasing despair, before interrupting with: “Are you gay?”

Michael stopped mid-ramble, looked at Gabriel and for a second seemed about to say something, but then looked back down between the gaps in the seat. His eyes moved here and there in silent argument with himself.

“I mean,” Gabriel continued, watching Michael’s dark eyes flicker between invisible thoughts, “I just assumed you were, like when they were calling you names. And… I don’t know,” he shrugged easily, “I just, sort of, hoped you were. You are, aren’t you? I mean, you didn’t knock me unconscious when I slipped you the tongue, so I’m gonna take that as a sign of something…”

Michael glanced up to see Gabriel leaning forward and smiling encouragingly. “Maybe,” he murmured.

Gabriel chuckled. “Maybe? It’s fairly simple, you either like boys or you don’t! I like boys. I love boys! What about you?”

Michael kept his eyes down. He didn’t want to look at anyone while he said this, so he told it to metal plaque. “I think I might be…”

“You think?” Gabriel grinned, moving his head to follow Michael’s gaze.

“Alright,” Michael grumbled. He fixed his gaze on one spot without seeing what it was, took a deep breath, and stepped off into the abyss. “Yes, I’m gay.”

Before Michael could defend himself, Gabriel had pulled Michael’s hoodie off his head and proceeded to ruffle his hair. “Wasn’t so hard, was it?” he grinned, while Michael tried to flatten his hair back down. Michael was about to pull the hood back up, when Gabriel pleaded “Aw, leave the hood down, I can see your face better.”

“Keeps my ears warm,” Michael protested weakly.

“Here, I’ll keep them warm.” And with that, Gabriel reached over and placed an icy hand over each of Michael’s ears.

“Ah! Cold!” Michael squirmed backwards, but Gabriel leaned towards him, hands clamped.

“Warmer now?” Gabriel laughed.

Michael launched a counterattack, sticking his own freezing fingers down the back of Gabriel’s collar, his palm grazing the short spiky hair at the back of his neck. “Warm enough for you?”

Gabriel gasped and arched his back away, his warm shoulder blades squeezing Michael’s fingers. “Aaaaaaaaaaaa….!”

Michael relented, and relaxed back onto the bench with his feet up, facing Gabriel. Gabriel did the same, and for a while both boys sat intermittently warming their hands, ears and necks, and playfully threatening to launch another cold hand attack.

Michael left his hood down.

When the mischievous smiles had faded into expressions of contentment, Gabriel asked, “Have you told anyone else?”

It took Michael a few seconds to understand what Gabriel meant, but then he twigged. “No. Just you.”

“No one else knows?”

“Just Grant and the other dick heads.”

“Those people back there?”

“Yeah…”

“Well…” Gabriel shifted slightly on the bench, his trainer knocked against Michael’s. “It takes guts to say it. I think you’re brave.”

Michael’s cheeks went pink, but this time he had no hood to hide in. “I’m not brave…”

Gabriel shrugged. “I remember how hard it was when I first came out, a lot of…” His voice trailed off, he seemed to have second thoughts about saying what he was halfway through saying.

Michael filled the silence. “Why did you do that, back there? I mean, why did you kiss me?” His heart skipped at beat at the word ‘kiss’, and a taste of Gabriel’s mouth pulsed across his tongue.

“Why?” Gabriel tilted his head coyly. “Didn’t you like it?”

“No! I mean, yes! I, uh, I did like it and everything... it was…,” Michael fidgeted with his sleeve, “…nice…I just mean, why did you do it?”

“Well it shut those idiots up, didn’t it?” Gabriel’s eyes flicked between Michael’s, as if looking for something.

“I don’t mean that… I mean… I could’ve been straight. How did you know I was…you know…?”

“A poof? I think the crowd of people calling you ‘queer boy’ was a bit of a clue.”

“They call everybody that. They think if you don’t act like a caveman, you must be gay…” Michael bit his lip. “Do I seem gay? I mean, can you tell?”

Gabriel considered, evaluating the person in front of him like an antiques dealer. “If you’re asking if you’re a flaming queen, the answer’s no. To be honest, I wasn’t sure. I thought you were a bit borderline, but I sort of hoped you were… Then I heard the names they were calling you. That clinched it.”

“Why did you hope I was?”

This time it was Gabriel’s turn to blush, but he covered it better than Michael, shifting nonchalantly. “Well, I thought you were cute…” He shrugged dismissively. “Anyway, you won’t need to worry about college any more.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not going back, are you? You don’t need to worry about anything anymore.”

“Oh…yeah.”

Gabriel got up off the bench, and gestured with his head for Michael to follow. “Come on, don’t wanna freeze out here.”

Michael was about to ask something else, but decided otherwise. It could wait. Instead, he hoisted himself back onto his feet and walked side by side with Gabriel, close for warmth, shoulders pressed against each like a pair of conspirators.

The pair ambled through the park and past the cemetery, through the housing estate on the other side, where lights flashed rhythmically and Christmas trees scratched against windows. The conversation became easier, the silences more comfortable. The boys chatted festively about: school bullies; how Gabriel came out when he was thirteen, how Rachel Fosbury asked everybody in the class if they were gay after learning about lesbianism from a girls’ magazine, how he said yes; Michael’s English class; dealing with idiots - “They used to say ‘Gabriel likes it up the bum!’ so I just said ‘Yeah, I do’. They got bored after a while.”; Michael’s love of art; Gabriel’s love of the area behind the bike sheds.

Eventually, the red lights of Tesco rose up from a half-deserted car park. Beyond the lights, countryside rolled into a sea of darkness, like the end of the world. Last minute shoppers, insomniacs and people with nothing better to do parked close to the entrance to avoid spending more time than necessary out in the cold. A teenage trolley attendant on the night shift rubbed his gloves together and stamped down the chilly breeze.

Michael and Gabriel strode across the parking bay, Michael trying to explain that the ‘crazy dude with one ear’ painted more than sunflowers. Light beamed out from the glass automatic doors as though the shop contained daylight, ready to spill out. The doors glided silently apart in front of Michael. The sound of a Christmas jingle wafted out. He felt the warm, dry air blow against the top of his head, across his numb ears. But Gabriel wasn’t there.

Gabriel was standing three feet behind, teetering on the spot. He looked hollow, as if someone had just reached into his navel and yanked out his guts. Michael followed his gaze off to the right, to the stacked line of shopping trolleys. A woman in her forties was tugging at a shallow-type cart in an attempt at disengaging it from the rest. She was wearing a beige cardigan that fitted too loosely, pumps that slipped from her heels. Her hair was pinned up, but strands had escaped and dangled in the breeze. She finally prized the trolley free, and swung it round in a wide circle, facing the boys. From the front she had the look of a woman who had once been smart-looking, but had let herself go.

She stopped. Her eyes, tired and bloodshot, were bored into Gabriel’s. What little colour had been in her face quickly faded away. Her lip trembled and her knuckles gripped the bar of the shopping cart, bloodless.

Next to him, Michael heard Gabriel’s voice, little above a whisper, expressionless.

“Janet.”

The name sounded like the echo of a shout, far away.

The woman’s mouth opened, then abruptly closed. She seemed to gather the pieces of herself up. Her eyes switched from Gabriel over to the automatic doors, and she pushed the trolley past Michael with the determination of a soldier. The trolley wheel squeaked. A puff of warm air. The doors slid shut.

Michael turned to Gabriel. Little clouds of warm breath shook from Gabriel’s mouth. But before Michael could ask what had just happened, Gabriel took off, running back through the car park, past the trolleys to the houses and lawns.

Michael went after him. His trainers slipped on the glittering tarmac, he gulped lungfuls of stinging cold air. Lights flashed disorientingly around him. Eventually he caught up to Gabriel, halfway along the same road they had come. Gabriel had slowed to a march.

“Wait!” Michael called between breaths.

Gabriel turned round, stood waiting grudgingly. As soon as Michael had caught up, the marching continued.

“Who was that?” Michael panted. “What did you do to her?”

“What did I do to her?!” Gabriel burst out. He shook his head, kept trudging forwards, eyes fixed straight ahead. “What makes you think I did anything to her?”

There was a crackle in Gabriel’s voice. Michael recognised the sound.

“Why don’t we sit down. Over there,” he pointed to the bench on the corner by St Jude’s. He quickly added, “My legs are killing me.”

The clock face on the church was floodlit: 11:24. Now it was Gabriel’s turn to stare straight ahead. “I hadn’t seen her in a long while…”

Michael saw Gabriel’s eyes glistening. He kept looking up and blinking rapidly in an effort not to cry.

“You alright?” Michael ventured.

Gabriel nodded, then swallowed hard. The nod turned horizontal, into a shake. A fat tear dripped onto his cheek and started to roll downwards, before Gabriel brushed it off impatiently.
Michael felt awkward. No one cried in his family, no matter what happened. The only reaction he had ever got from crying was being told to pull himself together, or stop being silly. So when he came across someone who was really upset, he didn’t really know what to do. What was the etiquette? What was he supposed to say?

He gingerly offered an arm around Gabriel’s shoulder. Gabriel accepted it gratefully, and leaned closer. Michael tightened his hold, and rested his head on top of Gabriel’s.

After a few minutes in silence, warm stillness, Michael heard Gabriel mutter, “You’re alright, you are.”

Michael fought back a grin and gave Gabriel‘s shoulder a little squeeze. “You okay now?”

Gabriel nodded and sniffed. “Yeah, sorry about-”

“It’s okay.” Michael looked down at Gabriel’s hands, which were buried in his lap for warmth.

“Wanna go inside somewhere? Get something to drink? I don‘t know about you, but I‘m freezing.”

“Yeah, okay. Your place?”

The bottom dropped out of Michael’s stomach. “No! I, er… I mean… isn’t there anywhere else?”

Gabriel frowned in thought. “Oh yeah, I know somewhere.” He stood up, and Michael followed suit. “It’s not far from where I live. It’s nice in there.”

Michael followed Gabriel back to the park gates, into the gulf of plants and darkness.

“Wait, have you got any money on you?” Gabriel asked as they passed the tourist map of the park.

Michael instinctively patted along his pockets, then shook his head.

“Bank card, anything?”

“No, sorry…”

“Bugger. Look, I’m gonna have to make a little detour first, okay?”

Michael shrugged. “That’s okay.”

Gabriel smiled back.

There was something Michael needed to ask now, while Gabriel wasn’t upset, now they were in the chasm of privacy that was Yarborough Park.

“Gabe…?”

“Yeah?”

“...Who was that woman?”

Gabriel stiffened, and for a moment Michael wanted to push the words back into his mouth.

“That was Janet. My mother.”

And with that, Gabriel went back to strolling along the contours of the path, leaving Michael to realise how little he knew about him.

Porno Kiss No. 3

6. Porno Kiss No.3

In Brentwich, Burton Street is where you go if you need something: groceries, aspirin, a cup of tea and a bacon roll. Yarborough Road is where you go if you want something. The two roads meet in the centre of town, Yarborough tapping itself onto the middle of Burton like a leech on a vein, sucking out a steady trickle of people. It is altogether more pretty than Burton - none of the shops are closed down, the buildings have more charm. Yarborough generally attracts a younger, louder clientele.

At the junction with Burton are the shops. Not the practical kind, nor the trendy big businesses of the High Street, but quaint independent shops selling wooden toys, one-of-a-kind clothes, custom jewellery, second hand books. Eventually the shops give way to restaurants where couples meet on first dates, get engaged and celebrate anniversaries. A phoenix splashed over gold Chinese writing, wine racks behind counters, vines crawling up a staircase, the smell of garlic and ginger. Then bars of every type - trendy, smoke-filled, attic, brand name, cluttered, chilled. People outside on mobile phones calling taxis, looking for friends, shouting at boyfriends. Then the clubs: the neon throb of Mist; the red-carpet cheese of Jack’s; the blare of metal pounding from Cube. Bouncers stand superciliously beside each door, filtering in queues of over-friendly men and under-dressed, shivering women. By the exits, two girls are arguing about who met ‘him’ first, a young man is curled up in a foetal position vomiting black bile while his mates film it on their phones, and a young couple are grinding against an emergency exit door, her legs raised off the ground.

And then darkness. The glare and glow and sounds fade into a background thumping like an old headache as the buildings give way to Yarborough Park. Randomly planted trees and bushes beckon into darkness, lit only by the odd park light. Benches dedicated to forgotten men line a haphazard path that snakes under willow fountains and curves around crumbling bandstands. A deserted play area carpeted with scattered bark sits forlorn, the swings swaying gently to and fro, empty. And over the dry stone wall, a hundred ancient graves rise out of the ground like wonky teeth (‘In memory of… beloved husband and father… on the 22nd day of October 1846...’), all in reverence of the Church of Saint Jude, lit up from below like Boris Karloff. Beyond the churchyard, a small residential area, a supermarket, and then fields, fields, fields.

Now the road is bridged by a ceiling of Christmas decorations, not the faded tinsel and stars of Burton, but a flashing, pulsing sea of lights in gold, red, green, reindeers leaping from building to building, snowmen bowing from the rooftops, Father Christmases hauling sacks of toys. It is quite a spectacle if you take the time to stop and look up.

Michael and Gabriel did not take the time to stop and look up.

Instead they ambled along Yarbrough Road, past an art boutique, away from the waving fist of Ali Yusuf. Both walked with their hands buried deep in their pockets, Michael’s hood up, Gabriel’s mouth muffled under his jacket, clenching their arms inwards to fight off the bitter cold that was crystallising under their feet. They walked in silence. Not the companionable quiet of friends, but the awkward lull of two people that don’t really know what to say to each other. Gabriel considered raising the issue of aspirin again, but decided against it in case Mike got pissed off. For his part, Michael was wondering about Gabe’s apparent experience with shoplifting, but decided perhaps talking to someone about their expertise in breaking the law was a bit of a faux pas. But still, that awkwardness bore down relentlessly on them, and the snap of footsteps and the hum of distant bass seemed indecently loud.

Michael cracked first.

“So what now?” No one ever said Michael was a brilliant conversationalist, least of all himself. He hated that he was never able to think of something exciting, interesting or witty to say. But at least he’d had a go at chipping the wall of ice between him and Gabriel.

“Don’t know,” came Gabriel’s enthralling reply a few seconds later (he had been so surprised to hear Michael speak, his brain hadn’t registered the question at first). “We can’t really get any decent pills this time of night. Unless you fancy going back to Ali’s?” He flashed a grin to Michael, who smiled weakly back. “We could go to Tesco’s, it’s open late near Christmas. Might find something there. Razors maybe? Won’t be much, but we might get an idea.” He shrugged genially.

A pause.

“I’m sorry for getting the wrong type of medicine,” Michael murmured. “I mean, I didn’t realise what sort…. Sorry.”

“S’okay,” Gabriel shrugged again. “Honest mistake.”

A longer pause.

“I should just go home, you’d be better off,” Michael said, this time slowing down so he dropped behind.

“Don’t be silly, I like the company,” pleaded Gabriel, stopping in front of Pizzeria Italiano. Seeing Michael’s unconvinced expression, he tried another tack. “Look, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want, I understand. But why don’t you-”

“I do want to,” Michael interrupted. “I just…”

“Well then, come on.” Gabriel’s turn to interrupt, indicating the direction with a jut of his head.

Michael complied, and they both continued walking past Tequila Joe’s, a group of girls sitting by the window drinking shots like a synchronised team.

“And I do like the company,” ventured Gabriel.

A longer pause, one that slowed down time so the tapping footsteps and bass beats came in delirious stutters. Eventually, after an eternity of silence:

“Cold, eh?” Michael winced inwardly at resorting to that most English of conversation fillers, the weather.

“Yeah, freezing,” Gabriel replied, taking the bait. “Makes me wish I had a few more layers on. At least if worst comes to worst we could huddle for warmth.” He sensed, rather than saw, Michael tense up. “If only there were some Dalmatian puppies around…”

“You’d never be cold again,” Michael finished, almost laughing.

“And I’d look stunning,” chuckled Gabriel.

Michael laughed. “I didn’t realise I was with an evil puppy killer.”

“Oh I wouldn’t kill them, I’d leave that to my minions.”

“Meaning me?”

“I didn’t say that, but if you want to be my minion, I won’t stop you.”

“I’m nobody’s minion!”

They both laughed easy laughs, their arms loosening slightly. The ice wall was melted enough to punch a hole through, dripping onto the pavement.

“So where are you from, anyway?” Michael asked, emboldened. “Anywhere around here?” As he spoke, the sound of a glass bottle breaking shattered along the street.

“Near here. On Freedom Road, not far from the bridge.”

“Oh,” replied Michael, politely not commenting on the less than respectable reputation of that area. “You live with your family?”

“No,” replied Gabriel with a stiffness that carried more than just the word.

“You’ve got your own place? Lucky!”

“Yeah, it’s really not that impressive…”

“It is to me, I’d love my own place. I mean, you’re only - what? Twenty? ”

“Nineteen. It’s no big deal.” Gabriel moved on quickly, “How about you? You live around here?”

“Longsdale Square,” Michael muttered.

Gabriel knew of Longsdale Square. One of the few places in Brentwich where the streets were lined with trees. People there were respectable. They owned nice cars, and led happy, well-off lives.

Gabriel was disappointed.

“Aw, don’t tell me you’re one of them.”

“One of what?” Michael’s arms stiffened.

Gabriel sighed bitterly. “Emo rich boys. Have everything they ever wanted, but go on about how hard their life is. Then one day Daddy tells ‘em they can’t have a pony, and it’s suicide time.”

“I’m not an emo rich boy,” Michael grumbled, his pace slowing down threateningly.

“Yeah right,” Gabriel rolled his eyes to himself and turned to face his companion. “Longsdale Square? Look, I can tell you’re not serious. I should’ve known.”

The ice cracked into glistening splinters. “You are so up your own arse! You don’t know a thing about me!”

Gabriel, wide eyes, eyebrows cocked like a shotgun: “I know you’re not serious about killing yourself.”

Sometimes in life, Fate, the Divine, or Sod’s Law (whichever you believe in) will intervene and throw you a sign. For Michael, this came in the form of a black (or blue? Hard to tell) Ford Escort, making it’s way innocently down Yarborough Road.

“I’ll show you who’s not serious,” Michael muttered, and stepped out into the road.

Gabriel was unimpressed. “What are you doing?”

“Getting run over, what does it look like?” He stopped in the beam of the fast approaching car, opening his arms in a Christ-like pose and closing his eyes.

“Move you idiot!” Gabriel shouted, but this only made Michael more determined. “Mike, get out the road!”

It’s true what they say about car accidents: you do have to look. Gabriel heard the screech of tyres on a damp road, saw the driver wrestle with the steering wheel, noticed Michael flinch into himself as the car rocked dangerously into the other lane, narrowly avoiding the maniac in the road, and swerved back and forth in an equilibrium, beeping the horn and throwing a variety of swearwords from the rolled-down window.

Michael opened his eyes.

Gabriel felt something between relief , exasperation and anger. “For fucks’ sake, will you get off the road, you retard!”

Michael spun on his foot, embarrassed at the second failed attempt of the night, but with an air of triumph.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing!?”

“You think I’m just messing about? Well there you are! Haven’t seen you do anything like that!”

“That’s cuz I’m not a prat. You wanna end up in a wheelchair, fine by me!”

“Whatever! I don’t need you!” Michael crossed his arms. “I was fine before you came along!”

“Yeah, choking yourself on a bit of old string, good one!”

“Oh, go back to shoplifting!”

“Piss off!”

“Piss off yourself!”

An awkward pause. Both stood resolute, daring the other one to move. Michael cracked first, turning and stamping towards the park, shoulders in a determined slump. Gabriel hesitated, then began to make his way back towards Burton Street, not because there was anything there, but because the etiquette of arguing demands that both competitors walk in opposite directions.

Even in his irritated state, Gabriel couldn’t shove away that nagging thought that he had just blown it. What ‘it’ was, he didn’t know, but he was certain ‘it’ was blown, and suspected that, as usual, it was his fault. Maybe he had been harsh calling him a rich emo boy? Yes, that was definitely harsh, and he was right, Gabriel didn’t know him…

…but Mike had said Gabriel was up his own arse, which wasn’t exactly nice. And what was that, standing in front of a car, what was he thinking? Prick. But it didn’t matter, because chances are, he wouldn’t be seeing the ‘prick’ again, so well done Gabriel, bravo, pat on the back for you.

It was as Gabriel was strolling back past Tequila Joe’s, absent mindedly scratching a fingernail into his palm as punishment, that he heard the obnoxious call echoing down the street.

“Ey! It’s queer boy!”

Gabriel turned around, automatically assuming that he was the one being addressed. ‘Queer boy’ had not been a common name for him at school - most of the boys preferred Gay Gabe, or a drawn out Gayyyyybriel - but the sentiment was the same, and he prepared himself for the usual verbal barrage and maybe random punch to the stomach. Instead he saw a small group around the fire exit of Mist (the grinding couple had, at last, got a room), and beyond them, a figure in a black hoodie, head down and shoulders in.

“Backs against the wall lads, don’t want Mike on your arse!” guffawed Grant, the ringleader.

Gabriel could hear the group’s tide of laughter swelling, and saw Michael shrinking down inch by inch. He paused, his foot half-raised from the chewing gum-mottled concrete. Then he walked forward, head high and shoulders back, towards the mob.

Grant Everson was wearing a pink-printed designer shirt, trendy-scuffed jeans, and a new white pair of trainers that glowed red, green, blue under Mist’s neon lights. He was a tall, good looking boy with short hair, spiked stylishly, his smile charming. He was intelligent, good at English and the sciences, polite to teachers (to their face), good at sports. At one time - although he couldn’t remember it - Michael had quite fancied him, as most of the girls did. That crush had evaporated quite rapidly, however, once Michael had got to know Grant’s personality.

The first sign that Grant might not be a ‘nice’ person had come to Michael’s attention when he was twelve. A rumour had circulated around the students (as petty rumours often do in school) that Luciana Martinelli, a delicate girl with slightly buck teeth who sat at the front of class, ‘liked’ Grant Everson. The rumour had naturally gone full circle back to Grant, who showed his reaction by slapping Luciana on the buttocks before class, and telling everyone how he wouldn’t ‘have that’ in a million years. Luciana sat with her head down and didn’t look up until she was fifteen.

Then there was Kevin Wong, whose surname gave Grant a great deal of amusement. A speciality of Grant’s was speaking in a nasal Chinese stereotypical accent (despite the fact Kevin sounded more like a cockney) and stretching his eyes sideways into a grotesque mock-oriental shape. Kevin Wong changed schools.

Then came the GCSE years, and Grant was about to discover his greatest source of entertainment when he was placed in many of the same classes as Michael Clements. It was around this age that the word ‘gay’ went from being a general insult to Grant, to something more specific and sinister, and there was no better target for it than Michael. Michael didn’t have many friends, he never talked about girls, he was quiet, he was good at art, he wasn’t threatening: these facts formed conclusive proof that he was a shirt lifter, and ever since Grant had found amusement in Michael in the same way a small child finds amusement in poking dead jellyfishes at the beach. And best of all, Michael never said anything, he just lay back and took it like the bum boy he was. Even now, the last year of sixth form, there was still a nonchalant joy in insulting Michael whenever their paths crossed. It gave Grant a pleasant feeling, a pep for the day.

“Alright, shit poker?” Grant grinned, the pleasant feeling rising.

“Go away,” Michael mumbled feebly.

“Ooooooooh,” minced the stocky boy behind Grant, David Britton. “Somebody’s got his knickers in a twist!”

It was well known the David adored Grant (in a completely heterosexual way, of course), and anything Grant found funny, David was soon joining in with the jokes. He was in Michael’s biology class, his defining moment having been linking ‘homo erectus’ to ‘Mike in the changing rooms’, which made even the teacher smile.

With them was the rat-faced Tom Sweeny, whose freckles made him look as though he had been flicked across the face with a spatter of orange paint. He was a poor art student, but what he lacked in talent, he made up for in brown nosing. Tom never had the guts to insult Michael when he was alone, and Michael was grateful for the reprieve. Art was the only subject where he could concentrate on his work. Of course, he could always rely on Tom to recount anything he did or said in class, so he kept his head down all the same.

Standing behind the boys were two girls. Hannah Hughes was a pretty, round faced girl who was currently going out with Grant. As is so often the case with the girlfriends of not-very-nice people, she was quite pleasant, with a peaceful, mother-earth quality. Her hair hung in long waves, and she smiled at Michael if she crossed paths in the hallway (Michael didn‘t smile back). Whenever the boys ganged up on him, she stood arms folded with a look of distaste. But she never said anything. With her was her friend, Eliza Bennet, a black girl with very straight hair, underdressed and shivering, eyes looking around for someone to blame for the cold. Both girls looked unimpressed: Hannah out of mild sympathy, Eliza out of boredom.

“What are you doing out tonight?” Grant sneered. “Waiting for your boyfriend?”

It was during the ensuing laughter that Michael spotted the dyed-blond hair approaching, and felt his stomach drop.

“Mike, there you are!” Gabriel grinned, flashing a delicious smile. “I lost you for a minute!”

And before David could grunt that Mike’s boyfriend was here, Gabriel kissed Michael.

In Gabriel’s mind, much like the interior of a small warehouse, were shelves of filed kisses. Kisses for every occasion: seductive kisses, sympathy kisses, apologetic kisses, I-can’t-really-be-bothered-with-this kisses (there was an equivalent filing system for sex). This particular kiss was a speciality of Gabriel’s: Porno Kiss No. 3.

The whole purpose of the Porno Kiss was that it was designed for the enjoyment (or otherwise) of those watching. Gabriel reached up and held Michael’s face, in what looked to the casual observer as a show of tenderness, but which actually acted as a vice to keep Michael from pulling away. He leaned up kissed once, briefly, just lips, eyes open, then closed his eyes to deliver the climax of the show, his tongue sliding over Michael’s and lingering on his lips just long enough for anyone watching to see. Then he reached round to slide his hand into Michael’s back pocket, and leaned his head lazily on Michael’s shoulder.

It was a stunning performance, perfectly pitched at the two month stage where lust and intimacy overlap. Of course, he couldn’t choose his acting partner - Michael stood stock still throughout, still in ‘deer caught in headlights’ mode. The only problem with the Porno Kiss is, like it’s blonde, surgically enhanced, fake lesbian inventors, the performers are under the spotlight, and it’s very hard to enjoy a performed kiss.

“You must be Michael’s friends from college,” he smiled, and offered his hand to Grant.

Grant didn’t take it. Instead he stood open-mouthed, apparently trying to form some sort of verbal reaction, but finding himself momentarily incapacitated, a look of disgust pressing down on his forehead and flaring his nostrils. David and Tom, equally reviled, were lost without Grant’s example to follow. Behind them, both girls watched wide eyed and open mouthed at the happy couple, Hannah’s mouth curling up slightly at the sides.

Awkward pause.

Gabriel was unfazed. “Well, nice to meet you all,” he chirped, and guided Michael in the other direction, towards the park, giving his bum a little squeeze on the way.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Gabriel whispered up into Michael’s ear. “Sorry for calling you an emo rich boy.”

Michael, forcing himself to produce a coherent sentence, muttered, “I’m sorry for saying you’re up your own arse.”

Gabriel smiled to himself and leaned his head back on Michael's shoulder.

5. The Pills of Ali Yusuf

5. The Pills of Ali Yusuf

Ali Yusuf came to Britain twenty seven years ago. The timing was everything - in the forties and fifties, the waves of Indian and Caribbean exiles had been greeted far from enthusiastically. The dark skin and bright teeth could only be sinister, the strange lilting accents could only be full of connotations, and Mr. and Mrs. Concerned from Tunbridge Wells were left wondering how the government could have let in so many ‘pakis’ and ‘wogs’, and when exactly were they going to be sent ‘back home’.

So too had Ali missed the more recent exoduses from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Far East (and anywhere East of Kent was certainly trouble to a generation who had fought off Jerries, Japs and Commies). This latest wave gave the BNP a great deal of ammunition, passing leaflets through Ali’s letterbox warning how ‘they’ were taking all of ‘our’ jobs. He even found himself slipping in the length of his British citizenship at unlikely opportunities - ‘Yes, madam, I have been a proud British citizen for 27 years now, here is your change.’

Yes, timing for Ali had been very fortunate. He arrived in Heathrow from Istanbul in the early eighties, not the most profitable time for anyone in the cold grey country - and in those days it was always cold and grey - but for a man with a degree in chemistry, a lot of determination, and a slightly misplaced love of England, it was profitable indeed. The Indian immigrants had built their shops, their mosques, their restaurants, and sent their children to medical school or ‘back home’ for a proper spouse. The Caribbeans had founded their churches, exported their music, and even begun to appear on TV. In short, they were not going ‘back home’, and the natives of the island were, somewhat grudgingly, realising this was the case. So how was one more bright-teethed, darker-than-can-be-trusted-skinned man going to make a difference?

Ali had loved Britain for years before he had ever stepped foot on it’s cold grey earth. As a boy, he had watched dubbed Merchant Ivory films, flickering in a sweaty Anatolian cinema, and he had decided THAT is where he wanted to go, over there, where people spoke with just their mouths, and ladies kept their backs stiff when they walked, and no one ever shouted, and, and, and…. It was a much better place to raise a family than out here, where Jew killed Muslim, and Greek killed Turk, and everyone killed Kurds. That place, in the films, was a good, decent place to raise a family. And raise a family he did.

Ali married Pinar Adivar the next year. Pinar (Penny to anyone not Turkish) was a second-generation Turkish Cypriot who, having been brought up to believe all Greeks were out to kill her in her sleep, could not listen to Zorba’s Dance without getting a sweat. Nine months later, they were blessed with a son.

When Ali envisaged how his family would turn out, he had always imagined a well-turned out, quintessentially ENGLISH family. There was no Qur’an in the Yusuf house, no talk of foreign cultures (except for Pinar’s occasional rants against the Greek Devils), no hajib, no meze, no kebab… And yet… Ali’s oldest son, William, had a criminal record (driving without a license, driving without insurance, driving without an MOT, giving false information to a police officer). The second son, Harry, hung around with the black youths, wore gold jewellery, had a black girlfriend and called himself a ‘brutha’. His daughter, Diana, was seven months pregnant. And then there was the youngest son, Charles, whom most relatives kindly did not talk about. In conversation he was politely sidestepped, the way people will sympathetically not talk about a recently deceased child. Charles was at university. Studying fashion. Ali had, therefore, successfully raised a very ENGLISH family indeed...

His degree in chemistry (first class) qualified Ali to reach the heady heights of opening his own chemist’s. Windsor Chemist’s was the finest chemist’s in Brentwich. It was here that his family came in very handy indeed - they were his most loyal customers. They also gave him the idea that made Ali’s shop do so well. Staying open till late. You see, most chemist’s closed their doors by six. This, Ali knew, was their mistake. It was during the evening that an overstressed businessman was mostly likely to get a pounding headache, during the night that a red-faced and flustered young man would hurriedly pay for a box of Durex, and during the early morning that a tousle-haired girl with smudged eyeliner would want a morning-after pill.

Ali was helped in his business by William, whose task as first-born was to take over the family business one day (and with a criminal record and no GCSEs, there weren’t a great deal many other options), and occasionally by Pinar, who would sit and read Heat while painting her long, well-manicured talons, and sighing if anyone disturbed her from reading about the state of Brad and Angelina’s relationship (Angelina played a Greek once. Whore). In truth, Ali was more than competent enough to handle the shop by himself, and the Times crossword was more than enough company through the long night, but he needed someone to restock the boxes of Tampax. Women’s things were not for him.

On this night, Ali sat with the counter digging into the paunch of his stomach, the lights reflecting off his no-longer-quite-full head of hair, trying to think of a five letter word for ‘idolatrous sceptic’. Next to him, William pretended to be reading a copy of The Guardian, inside which was the far more interesting ‘Horny Asian Babes’. Had Ali looked up and through the plate glass windows at the other end of the shop, out onto the yellow-lit Burton Street, he would have seen two teenage boys, fists shoved in pockets, engaged in conversation just outside.

“Why me? Why can’t you do it?” asked Michael, his tone already slipping from forceful to resigned.

“I told you,” Gabriel reasoned, “I’m a regular, Ali’ll recognise me. He’ll just chuck me out.”

“But… I can’t, I haven’t done it before…” Michael was slipping, his glance darting back and forward between Gabriel and the door.

Gabriel seized the advantage. “Look, it’s simple. Just go in, find something strong, slip it in your pocket and walk out. I’ve done it loads of times, easy. Just act normal.” And then, seeing Michael teetering on the brink, he added his coup de grace: placing his hand on Mike’s arm, looking him dead in the eye, smiling his trust-me smile, he said “You’ll be fine, Mike.”

And with that, Michael lost the battle and trudged, vanquished, into Windsor Chemist’s.

Michael had always wondered whether late-night shops, hospitals and refrigerators shared the same light-bulb supplier. The white light bleached the colour from everything. He could almost see the smell of disinfectant. The chemist’s was long and thin, with an aisle each side of a single (white) shelving unit in the middle. Ali and William perched at the counter at the back, glancing curiously up when the bell above the door rang to announce Michael’s entrance, and then again every few minutes. They both seemed more interested in their reading material than their customer, which suited him fine.

Like any performance, acting normal is much harder than actually being normal. When you rumble a surprise Christmas present at the back of your parents’ wardrobe, it’s always impossible to judge what sort of reaction to make when you open it on the day. Too much surprise is just obvious, too little will disappoint the people who saved up for months and fought tooth and nail with a crowd of last-minute shoppers to get you the gift. You can never recreate the natural reaction you had when you discovered it.

The same principle applies to acting ‘normal’, except this performance is much more subtle, and far more difficult to capture. Michael had seen De Niro do ‘anger’, Streep do ‘misery’, Tautou do ‘joy’ and Hopkins do ‘creepy cannibal serial killer’, but he had not for the life of him seen anyone do ‘just browsing in a late-night chemist’s and certainly not looking to nick anything’. This was going to have to be an original performance.

Michael too-casually wandered along the aisle, not wanting to get too close to the counter, and too-casually browsed between shelves of incontinence pads, cough sweets and Vicks VapoRub, scanning for anything that said ‘warning - do not exceed dose’. Or maybe ‘deadly if swallowed’. Or even ‘taking too much of this product is a really bad idea’.

Ali took a furtive glance at the shifty-looking boy. There was no item of clothing Ali hated more than the hoodie. Hoodies meant gangs and knives and smashed glass and other things a darker than white person had to be careful of in this day and age. This one was a little different (and Ali considered himself an expert on the identification and classification of hoodie wearers). This one didn’t have the swagger, the lazy foot drag, the shoulders hoarded inwards, the constant scowl. So Ali gave him the benefit of the doubt, and took pity on his too-casual browsing.

“Condoms on the other side,” Ali muttered, eyes still on 7 down - ‘a lasting after-effect of trouble’.

Michael felt his cheeks grow warm. “Oh, I’m not… I mean, I don’t… I’m just…” he stuttered, letting his shaking head communicate more than his mouth could, and went back to too-casually scanning the shelves.

Ali shrugged without looking up. A pause. “KY Jelly on that side as well.”

Michael realised he had nowhere left to look but the aisle on the other side, and, cheeks glowing with humiliation, marched over to the aisle on the other side, spotting the shelves of pills and stopping in his tracks - not realising that he also stood directly in front of a rack of blue-tubed KY Jelly.

Ali glanced up and nodded sagely to himself.

Michael was much more interested in the boxes of pills. Pills of every kind for every ailment and every orifice, pills for headaches, pills for thrush, pills for the side effects of other pills. He was overwhelmed, his fingers reached out and danced in front of the boxes and packets and bottles. Something strong… something strong enough…

And there, in a bright yellow box, Anadin Extra Strong. Not just strong, but Extra Strong! Michael tentatively took hold of a large box, and the foil packets rattled inside. His eyes darted to Ali. Mistake.

If there is one thing Ali loathed in this world more than hoodies, black girlfriends and fashion students, it was shoplifters. He had built this business up with his own two hands, and no quick-fingered little buggers where going to take it away, not one packet of pills.

“You’d best be paying for that, Sunny Jim,” Ali murmured, laying down his crossword halfway through writing ‘cocktail’ - 15 across.

Michael froze. The expression ‘deer caught in headlights’ is an overused one but, in his mind, nothing could better convey the eternity squeezed into that two and a half-seconds, the box halfway to his pocket, Ali’s threatening gaze boring into him, and the immense and overwhelming feeling of ‘Oh. Shit.’ So he did the only thing he could do at that point: stuffed the box in his pocket and ran, the bell above the door ringing above his head like an alarm.

Ali was on his feet and round the other side of the counter surprisingly quickly for an overweight Turkish man. “What are you waiting for?!” he barked at his oldest son, smacking him round the back of the head and causing ‘Horny Asian Babes’ to slip onto the floor and land open at a particularly gynaecological spread of Mei-Lin from Taiwan (via Hackney). “Get after him, you lazy bugger! You expect me to run along after him?! He could have a knife! Now get your arse in gear!”

William Yusuf got his arse in gear, copping a quick glace at Mei-Lin (whose hobbies included traditional theatre) before following his father out the front door.

Gabriel, who had been pacing the street wondering how many pills exactly he was going to have to swallow, and what if he needed to drink a whole lot of water, and what if he pissed himself when he was passed out, managed to catch hold of Michael by the sleeve, swinging him round to a halt like a wrestler against the ropes.

“Whoa! What happened?! Slow down, slow down!”

Just as Michael opened his mouth ready to describe how he had been well and truly busted, the bell rang again, and two faintly foreign looking men - one middle-aged, stout and red-faced, one twenty something, lanky and languid, one in a tight shirt and trousers, one in Adidas trainers and a Ben Sherman coat - erupted onto the street.

One glance was all it took. Ali locked eyes on Gabriel and his expression flicked from recognition to complete contempt in record time. “You!” he hissed, his finger wavering at Gabriel, “I should have known, you bloody thieving little arse-bandit!”

“Alright Ali?” Gabriel grinned back, then turned in one fluid movement and ran off down Burton Street, dragging Michael along by the sleeve.

“Well, what the bloody hell are you waiting for?” Ali roared at William. “Orders from the Queen?! Go after them!”

Gabriel sprinted along the street for a good two hundred metres, past a halal butchers, a florists, two off licences and a Chinese takeaway, Michael struggling to keep up a couple of yards behind, their footsteps slapping and echoing through the silent town. Further back, Ali’s son was going through the motions of a chase, his Adidas trainers never having been used for the purpose of running before. At the first junction, Gabriel veered off to the left, down Yarborough Road, Michael almost losing balance at the abrupt change of direction. Further down Yarborough, and he slipped into crooked little side alley between two mock-Tudor shops (Crenshall’s Traditional Sweets and A.P. Lee Traditional Medicine), pulling Michael inside with him. It was black, narrow, and perfect for hiding from pursuing Yusufs. Gabriel crouched to the floor, signalling Michael to follow suit by tugging down on the leg of his jeans, and attempted to control his breathing.

Lucky for them, William wasn’t exactly enjoying his role as impromptu security guard. Michael heard the half-hearted slap of his footsteps, slowing from a jog to a grudging walk. Then he heard the a voice mutter ‘fuck this, he can go after the poxy little bum boys next time’, before the receding echoes of Adidas on concrete.

Michael breathed out long and hard, titling his head back and knocking it on the wall behind. Gabriel was already standing up, his silhouette peering around the corner, watching William traipse back. Michael pulled himself back up, and joined Gabriel, peering over his shoulder.

“Well,” Gabriel muttered, his voice smiling, “that was a bit of excitement, eh?” He turned round to face Michael, who backed off at the sudden face-to-face intimacy. “So, you get the pills then? Tell me you got the pills.”

Michael put his hand into the pocket of his hoodie and triumphantly revealed the box of Anadin Extra Strong. Gabriel’s eyes darted between the box and Michael’s face, his face twitching between bemusement and confusion, before he burst into a fit of giggles, doubled over like a saddle on a horse, laughing silently, the only sound the puffs of air wheezing in and out of his lungs. His legs gave way, and he crumpled into a hysterical heap at Michael’s feet.

Michael, looked down, not quite sure what he was supposed to be laughing at, but wanting in on the joke. “What?” he smiled, crouching down next to Gabriel. “What?!”

Gabriel tried and failed three times to explain, each time getting no further than indicating towards the box, before collapsing again in another fit of giggles. Eventually, between hiccups of laughter, he managed to say “Going to… need… bit more than that…!”

Michael looked dejectedly down at the box of aspirin. Then he threw it into the darkness. Below him, Gabriel wiped a tear out of his eye and sighed loudly, grinning up at him.

And despite himself, despite the disappointment, embarrassment and failure, Michael smiled back.

4. Scars

4. Scars

Gabriel looked down sympathetically at the boy in front of him, still on his hands and knees and gagging for air. The blue tinge on his lips was starting to fade, only to be replaced by a blush of pink across his cheeks and ears. The boy was making quite an effort of not making eye contact, instead focusing on the gritty concrete floor and panting like an animal.

When people imagine how they would want to die, it is usually in their own bed, surrounded by their loved ones. Maybe for those who die of illness or old age, this is the best way to go. Gabriel had read stories of passers-by coming across strangers who had been injured in accidents. They told how the dying person wanted nothing more than to hold their hand, to hear their voice, to know that as they crossed the boundary from Life into Death they were not alone.

Suicide is something quite different. The last thing anyone wants (apart from a few show-offs) is an audience as they end their own life. It is deeply private, the same instinct that compels animals to haul themselves off to a quiet corner to die in peace. That’s what amused Gabriel the most: more than anything, this other boy was embarrassed. He had been caught in an intimate time, as if his mother had walked in on him at a crucial moment of enjoying ‘Horny Asian Babes’ or perhaps - as Gabriel pondered hopefully - ‘Hot Euro Hunks’.

Gabriel edged closer. Too much and he might scare the boy away. Still no eye contact. He seemed to visibly crumple into himself, and Gabriel felt a pang of pity. No, not pity. Empathy. The dark haired boy looked how he had felt a thousand times. Anger, humiliation, and sheer, devastating disappointment.

“That was fairly brave,” Gabriel offered. The best way to break the ice, he had found, was to start with a compliment.

No response.

“I mean, hanging yourself can take a while, especially if the noose isn’t in the right place. It can take ages. And I’ve heard it can be quite painful. Unless you‘re lucky enough to break your neck, but that doesn‘t happen very often, apparently…”

Still nothing. Gabriel went for a different tack.

“I hear asphyxiation’s a turn on. You know, gives you a thrill. Some kinky bastards like it, can’t get hard unless they’re swinging from the rafters. Unless it goes wrong… Then the only thing that’s stiff is the perve himself. Personally, I think there are better ways to get off…” Gabriel accompanied this with a sly grin. It went unnoticed. This boy was hard work.

“Course, wouldn’t give you many points for execution. Hah, so to speak. I mean, nobody hangs themself with a tatty old bit of string. And this alley’s in plain sight, anybody could’ve stopped you.”

The dark haired boy began to move, shifting his weight back onto his legs. He stood, his leg muscles quivering like a newborn gazelle, and made his way in a not-quite-straight line back towards the street, deftly avoiding even acknowledging Gabriel was there.

Gabriel scrambled for something. “I saw you at the bridge,” he called to the boy’s back.

The other boy stopped mid-step, and Gabriel silently thanked whatever he believed in.

“Why are you stalking me?” the dark boy asked, turning back round so that it was now his eyes the purple fly-zapper flashed against. Behind him, a sports car screeched dangerously along the dark yellow street.

“I’m not stalking you! I was just curious,” Gabriel shrugged. Even as he said the words, the little mini-Gabriel in his head squeaked ‘You are such a stalker, you freak!’. “I mean, when I saw you standing there, I knew what you were there for. You wanted to jump, didn’t you?”

The boy’s guard seemed to be slipping. Gabriel could see him arguing with himself whether or not to answer. His mouth fought against itself to say, simply, “How did you know?”

Gabriel shrugged and took a step closer, like a pawn on a chess board. “I was there for the same reason. I wanted to jump. I want to kill myself.” Gabriel was sure to put that last sentence in the present tense.

Again, he saw the other boy struggle internally. Eventually he shook his head, “Whatever,” and turned back to the street.

Gabriel ran. He hated that he looked so desperate, but this chance was not going to pass him by so easily, not without a fight. He reached for the boy’s arm and pulled him around roughly. The boy protested and pulled his arm free. But he didn’t walk away. Gabriel quickly wrenched up the left sleeve of his zip-up, then rolled the t-shirt sleeve underneath into a bundle on his elbow. Then he held is arm straight in front, palm upwards.

On the smooth underside of Gabriel’s arm, roughly along the vein, was a smooth pink scar, five inches long. This was not a ‘cry for help’ scar, but one that said ‘I mean business’. It was raised slightly, and although well-healed, couldn’t have been more than a few months old. Goosebumps started to rise against the cold air.

Gabriel observed the other boy’s eyes trailing back and forth along it. It seemed to have convinced him that Gabriel was serious.

“I want to kill myself,” Gabriel repeated. “And from what I can see, so do you.”

The boy was silent, motionless. Gabriel rolled his sleeve back down as he spoke. “I can help you. I mean,” he motioned his head back toward the scaffolding, “you’re not exactly doing a good job on your own.”

The boy creased his forehead and fingered at the string around his throat. “Yeah, well, I’d say you didn’t exactly do a good job either, seeing as you’re still walking around and all.”

“Well, I’m not the one hanging myself with a shoddy bit of string,” Gabriel said, cocking up a thick dark eyebrow. “Here, let me help you get that string off.” He reached up to the boy’s throat.

The boy flinched and took a step backwards. “S’okay,” he mumbled, “don’t bother.”

“It’ll chafe. And it’s not really in fashion. Come on, I won’t shut up till you let me,” Gabriel grinned.

The boy slumped a little. “Fine…” he mumbled, and turned around.

“Don’t worry,” said Gabriel, reaching up to the back of the boys neck. “I won’t strangle you or anything. Unless you want me to?” Gabriel thought he heard what could have been a half laugh. The light was poor, and the boy was a couple of inches taller, so he leaned in close to see what he was doing.

“How… how do you want to do it..?” the other boy asked.

Gabriel’s fingers worked around the tight little knots. He could see the mist of his breath vanishing onto the boys neck. “Well, the bridge is out of the question, at least til morning. I’ve always fancied an overdose. I like the idea of just… going to sleep and not waking up, I suppose.” He kept pulling at frayed bits of plastic until the whole thing eventually slipped off, leaving a clear dark red mark underneath.

The boy rubbed the raw skin and nodded in appreciation. “So… why do you need me? Why don’t you just do it by yourself?”

Gabriel smiled enigmatically. “I uh, might have a problem getting the raw materials. You help me get the stuff, I help you not to wake up in the morning with a really bad hangover. Besides, what else you gonna do? Sleep in the park and freeze to death?”

The other boy looked down at his toes. “I suppose so…”

“Brilliant! We’ll get it done in no time, don’t worry.” Gabriel stuck out his hand. “My name’s Gabe by the way.”

The other boy hesitated for a beat, then shook his hand. “Mike.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, Mike,” Gabriel smiled.

Gabriel and Michael walked back out into the glare of the streetlights. “You know, if you don’t mind me saying,” Gabriel remarked, “it’s a shame you’re gonna be dead soon. You’re quite cute.”

Michael didn’t respond. Gabriel watched him rubbing his neck out of the corner of his eye, and caught a glimpse of a smile.

3. Blue String

3. Blue String

Life’s a bitch. This was something it had taken most of Michael’s adolescence to learn. People, naturally, were horrible - it didn’t take him many years of life to understand this concept. But the idea that Life itself, the whole great machine that controls every penny you find on the street and every whisper in the ear of a schizo, that Life was one enormous vengeful cow with a serious grudge - that was something Michael had learned through bitter experience.

Take school, as but one example. The fact that the toilet should have been clogged up by its previous mystery occupant, leaving no one to blame but Michael, earning him the nickname Mikey Poos-a-lot for the rest of Year 1. Or moving up to secondary school and a tiny mistake leaving him with an extra ‘a’ at the end of his name on the school register, much to the amusement of everyone else. How about GCSE classes? Every single class was inhabited by Grant Everson, David Britton or Tom Sweeny, or a combination of the three.

English classes were particularly unpleasant. Life had blessed all three with a talent for writing, and so they were all grouped together. Anytime the teacher was late, the trio would gather around Michael’s desk, sometimes bending over crudely and smirking ‘bet you want some of this?’, other times inventing as many synonyms as possible for the word ‘queer’ (it being an English class, they were particularly inventive. A+ for originality). And then Life’s piece de resistance, sending the same trio to the same sixth form college as Michael. That was a particularly low blow from Life. At sixth form, you are supposed to be able to make a new start, reinvent yourself. This was not easy with the English trio catcalling down corridors, breaking open lockers and drawing crude graffiti. So well done Life! Check mate to you.

This is why, walking back up Burton Street, Michael was not so much disappointed as completely unsurprised. Life wasn’t going to give up without a fight, not when there were so many more traumas to inflict on him. The fun had barely started. There were years of depression, bitterness and misfortunes still to come, and Michael simply did not want to experience them. A less sympathetic person might have told him ‘the hard times are what build character’ or ‘make you a stronger person’. Well Michael had had his share of hard times, thank you very much, and he was neither strong nor brimming with ‘character’.

Sylvie Bolton glanced at the dark lad sloping back past her café window. Her gaze followed him, so physically transformed from a few minutes ago, causing her to butter both sides of a slice of bread. She frowned, thought to herself ‘that boy needs a good shafting, that’ll set him right’, then began piercing a packet of Lincolnshire sausages.

What exactly was Michael supposed to do with all this excess time, stretching out into infinity? Go back home? The prospect appealed to him as much as a slaughterhouse would appeal to a vegetarian. Home was not a happy place. Go ‘out’? No, the music was too loud, the people too pissed. The was always the park. He could sleep like a hobo on the bench next to the swings. With luck, hypothermia would set in and he could drift off and never wake up.

This was Michael’s plan of action as he trudged back along the route he came, this time feeling much heavier. And then something caught his eye. A violet neon light flickered on the wall in one of the alleyways to his left, one of those fly zappers Michael had never seen work. But it wasn’t the light which caught his attention, rather the scaffolding next to it, from which hung a dangling piece of electric-blue nylon string. It was as though a giant flashing arrow was pointing to the string and saying ‘Death: this way!’. So he followed the arrow.

The string itself, weathered and frayed, was attached to one of the metal poles overhead. It dangled languidly in the cold air. Michael climbed up onto one of the old metal dustbins underneath, and grasped at it. The plastic felt smooth in the way that only manufactured things can. He checked its length, then began tying it into a loop with a loose knot. His nimble fingers, numbing to the cold, nevertheless worked diligently at the material, and he silently thanked all those long hours he had spent tying the knots on the back of his art coursework (a beautiful textile piece which Tom Sweeny had accidentally knocked a pot of black ink onto). He held the loop up for inspection, and was just as proud as he had been of the artwork. Then he gave the string a hard tug, making sure it was secure, before slipping the hoodie from his head and slipping the noose around his throat.

Michael inhaled. Then he dug his heel into the bin below, and pushed it forward.

The noise of the steel dustbin clanging onto concrete must have been considerable, and several of the occupants in nearby houses must have looked quizzically into the air, before, hearing nothing else, returning to whatever it is they were doing. Strangely, Michael heard nothing. It may seem an obvious thing to anticipate, but nothing quite prepared him for the shock of not being able to breathe. The string dug bitterly above his Adam’s apple. What felt so smooth before now felt rough and calloused as it scratched harshly into his neck like a scouring pad.

Against his own wishes, human survival instinct began to kick in. His fingers grasped around his neck, struggling unsuccessfully to get between the noose and his airway. Stars began to sparkle in front of his eyes, like when you stand up too quickly, followed by the same sense of light-headedness. But more than anything, panic. The blind sort of panic that you get when your head is stuck in a t-shirt with a neck hole that’s too small, or when that snotty-nosed boy at school threw a worm at you. That ‘I will do anything to get out of this situation’ sort of Life preservation. And so Michael struggled, his toes just a few tantalising inches from the ground, wriggling like a worm on a hook.

The next sensation he felt was dull knock to his knees, followed quickly by a scraping on his palms. Air rushed into his stinging lungs, only to be coughed and spluttered back out. He was vaguely aware of being back on the icy ground, next to the overturned bin. His fingers prised away at nylon around his neck, pulling it back from the raw skin underneath. He didn’t yet have the strength to pull it off, so it hung there, a perverse necklace. He concentrated on trying to breathe without throwing up. Eventually, once the stars had started to dissolve from his vision, Michael brought himself to look up.

There, standing five feet in front of him, with his arms crossed and that same amused expression, was that boy again. The purple neon flashed on a bright pair of eyes. His blond hair didn’t match the dark eyebrows that arched up in the middle or the dark sideburns that crept to the bottom of his jaw. Michael rubbed his eyes. The stranger offered his hand.

“Looks like the rope wasn’t strong enough.”

2. The Lonliest Place

2. The Lonliest Place

There were few things Gabriel Evans had control over in his life. He didn’t control the bills and taxes that bled him dry every month. He didn’t control his family, on the rare occasions he saw them. He didn’t control the fact that he had no foreseeable future, other than a soul destroying repetition of the present. So, he worked on the things he could control: he dyed his hair blond, painted over the cracks in his bed-sit and manipulated men into buying the drinks he couldn’t afford. And now, as a final attempt at asserting control on life, he was going to choose how and when he was going to die: tonight, at Jumper’s Hump.

Gabriel didn’t live all that far from the Hump (unlike Michael, who had to trek from the ‘nice end’ of town), so he was always one of the first to know when there had been a fresh ‘jumper’. Making his way down Clarkson Avenue, he took out a cigarette - something else he didn’t have control over - and strolled nihilistically to his destiny. There was no spring in his step. For Gabriel, this was not a glorious moment of triumph, but more akin to watching a film, realising you don’t like it, and turning the television off. Never really knowing what happens at the end, but without the curiosity to care.

Turning onto Freedom Road, Gabriel saw the carnival of the police barricade and groaned to himself. Someone else got here first. How’s that for control? Well, if he was going to drag himself out on a freezing night like this, he reasoned he may as well get the inside scoop on the details. So he walked to the other side of the street - still within earshot of the Father Christmas-like officer - hoisted himself onto the bonnet of a green (or blue? The light made it hard to tell) Citroen, stuck his hands into the warm creases of his zip-up and continued to suck in the warm smoke, swinging his legs off the edge.

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m afraid the bridge will be closed off for the rest of the night,” announced the policeman, who seemed to be rather enjoying his roll as envoy to the people.

The small crowd, none of whom were inconvenienced in the slightest, let out a collective grumble.

“Paramedics are on hand, and divers are on their way. We are doing everything in our power to retrieve the victim from the water,” PC Ho-Ho-Ho announced. Behind him, a group of his colleagues were standing in a circle sharing a hot drink from a flask. As they drank, clinging onto the polystyrene cups like precious stones, the steam rose in white billows up to their smiling faces.

“Did you see who it was?” asked one member of the crowd, a burley man in his fifties. The others muttered in assent. This is what they really wanted to know, the juicy details.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we can’t disclose details at this time,” the officer recited, sounding genuinely regretful.

“I saw it.” Like the Red Sea, the gathering parted and hushed around a little old woman, puffed up with as many layers as she could wear, a thick pair of glasses distorting her eyes into those of a Roswell alien.

Gabriel was not in the least bit surprised. In his experience, whenever someone else was having a bad day it was the little old ladies who turned up first, watching like vultures circle dying animals. The first time he was ever attacked it was in front of a tenement block with 300 lace curtains pulled slightly open, and 300 pairs of elderly female eyes watching.

“I saw what happened,” the extra-terrestrial little woman repeated. Everyone, including the police officer, listened intently. “It was a woman on the bridge. She looked foreign, one of them Islams I think.”

There was a murmur among the rabble, a collective ‘oh that explains it’.

“She couldna been very old, didn’t look more ‘n twenty. Course, she had one o’ them headscarves on, so it was hard to tell, what with my eyesight,” she continued, her voluminous eyes downcast. “She stood on the edge, up there, climbed over the railing. She just stood there for a good quarter of an hour, looking down at the river. Then she just jumped. That’s when I called the police.”

The others murmured at how she had done the right thing, and began recounting their own stories about jumpers, borrowed from a friend of a friend who was there. The conversations were filled with ‘oh dear’s and ‘such a shame’s, but the people were more animated than they had been all evening.

Gabriel smiled bitterly to himself, thinking of the poor bitch who had ruined his plans for the evening. He wondered if he had beaten her to it, would the crowd be talking about him instead? Probably. The same mantras of ‘such a waste’ mumbled again and again, heads down and shaking side to side. He sucked the last life out of his cigarette and spat the glowing stub down to the pavement.

That was when he noticed the other boy, apart from the crowd. All in black (Halloween’s over mate) and a jet bit of fringe coming out from under his hood. He was tall, slender, with pale cheeks bitten red by the cold. Call it suicidal intuition, but Gabriel recognised the way he was looking past the barricade, up at the top where dying flowers lay all year round. Looks like someone else had missed the bus tonight.

Gabriel watched him and made the same assessment he automatically made of any male that passed his way: Was he doable? In this case, probably. Minus points for the emo thing, but not bad all in all. As he was contemplating the second question however (how much?), he noticed the other boy had begun to slope off, back down Burton Street. Purely on instinct and curiosity, Gabriel slid off the car bonnet - knocking into the wing mirror so it pointed up at the moon - and began to follow this other lost soul for no other reason than because he had so much time and nothing else worthwhile to do with it.

1. Jumper's Hump

1. Jumper's Hump

The river Great Onsford snakes it’s way across three hundred and fifty miles of English countryside before it reaches the town of Brentwich, by which time it has gorged itself on several tributaries and has become quite torpid, no longer the fresh young stream of its youth, but a fat sludgy mass. In response to this quite unflattering visitor, Brentwich turns its back, growing and evolving away from the river, distancing itself as a teenager will their own parent so that the river flows only through the old industrial district, well away from trendy nightclubs and chestnut-lined avenues. To be fair, it’s not as though Brentwich has many of these - you far more likely to find an avenue lined with broken televisions and stained mattresses than you are one with chestnut trees - but the thought was there. Really, the river was much better left out of sight. The floating shopping trolleys only served to remind the inhabitants that theirs was a town with a great deal of rubbish. Not that it was only rubbish which could be found floating on the slimy surface. There were far less pleasant things to find.

There was only one main bridge which united the two halves of Brentwich’s industrial sector. This link curved up at the river’s widest point to a height of forty metres above the Great Onsford’s high tide, spanning over two hundred metres, a grand achievement of Brunel’s Britain. It was given the grotesquely absurd name of Freedom Bridge. Far more common among the local populace, however, was its affectionate nickname - Jumper’s Hump.

If you wanted to kill yourself in Brentwich (and chances are, if you lived in the town long enough, you probably would at some point) then Jumper’s Hump was simply the most fashionable way to go. In the past year alone, there had been twenty two jumps from the bridge, seventeen of which were ‘successful’. The most likely cause of death was internal bleeding - ribs shattering upon impact and piercing multiple internal organs. Drowning was secondary. Of those unfortunates who were unsuccessful , nearly all were shown to have smashed ankles and femurs, taking months of healing and rehabilitation to learn how to walk again (“Yes Mr Enslow, you can have another go at the Hump, but first we’ve got to practice our exercises, now haven’t we?”).

There were seasonal changes, of course. Summer was comparatively suicide-free. There was even a tally kept by locals as to how many days in a row Jumper’s Hump had gone without a jumper - ‘85 DAYS - NEW RECORD’. February was peak time, the seasonal equivalent of a bad hangover. Christmas was also especially prominent. There’s nothing like the festive spirit to drive someone over the edge.

And so it was on this night, at 10.04pm on Saturday the 23rd of December, that eighteen year-old Michael Clements arrived at the corner off Jumper’s Hump with the single, clear purpose of plunging himself into the blackness and ending his life.

The yellow-lit streets glowed with a crystalline sharpness Michael had never noticed before. He didn’t walk - he floated, just as he soon would along the river. What a wonderful feeling: for once to have a purpose; for once to walk out the front door of his family’s home and know he would never come back; for once to have somewhere he was supposed to be. He trembled with the anticipation. Michael Clements was going places - possibly all the way to the harbour.

In preparation for this momentous evening, Michael had actually taken care with his appearance, bathing himself with the same reverie in which a Muslim washes before prayer. He let the water turn cold, closed his eyes and slipped under the surface, pretending it was the Great Onsford and smiling at the safe, womb-like feel. Only his mother’s banging at the door - “Michael, hurry yourself up, Parkie’s on soon! Whatever are you doing in there?!” - forced him to wrench himself out like a newborn and take the first aching gasp. He fingered his black hair into place, put on his favourite black t-shirt and black jeans, and zipped up his best black hoodie. A dark priest.

“You going out somewhere?” Mother called, craning her head from watching Parkinson, her tone more surprised than questioning.

Michael nodded.

“Oh. Well, don’t be out too late, alright?”

Michael opened the door.

“Michael? Enjoy yourself.”

Michael closed the door behind him.

And now, as he walked/floated along Burton Street, for the first time in a long time Michael really was enjoying himself. Indeed, there was even a barely perceptible spring in his step, and an almost-smile kept twitching at the corners of his mouth which every now and again he gave into under the disguise of chewing his fingernails.

Working at her late-night café and half-way through pouring a cup of tea, Sylvie Bolton noticed with some amusement the black-clad youth bouncing past her window. She smiled to herself, Bet he just lost his cherry, then went back to milk and two sugars.

She was wrong, of course, but then Michael couldn’t have been more giddy as he neared the corner to Freedom Road than if he had lost his cherry, and the excitement was building up as he got nearer to the bridge. It was as though he had finally been dealt the card he wanted, ‘Go straight to the Bridge, do not pass Go, do not collect £200’. Just one more corner….

The first thing he noticed were the blue lights pulsing out at the yellow darkness. The second thing was the fluorescent yellow tape stretched across the road. The third was the small crowd gathering around the policeman at the front. Michael’s heart sank. Even though he knew life had thwarted him again, the message hadn’t reached his legs yet, which kept on going towards the barrier where the jolly policeman was explaining the situation (gossip) to the concerned (nosey) gathering.

Apart from Michael, only one other person stood apart, sucking on the stub of a cigarette and sitting on the bonnet of a car parked on the other side of the road, his silently amused face flashing yellow and blue.