The Fearful (4 page)

Her father was the Underbearer, the Mourner's right-hand man. And she was also in Jenny's class at school; they'd been best friends since they were little. She'd become Tim's girlfriend last of all, and that had been by accident. It was true he liked her a lot – she was pretty and clever and interesting, and they'd done more than just kiss. But the problem was, she was part of everything Tim wanted to get away from.

‘My dad asked if you'd call round to see him sometime today, Mr Milmullen,' she said to Bill, filling the awkward silence.

‘I can do that,' he said. ‘Everything okay?'

‘I think so. He was just saying he's not sure about everything that happens next week. If he has to do anything special when he becomes Tim's Underbearer.'

‘No problem. I'll talk to him.'

Sarah gave Tim an uncertain smile. ‘It'll be kind of weird having you as my dad's boss.'

Quite honestly, the thought frightened and appalled him in equal measure. ‘It's not really a
boss,'
he said. Only a couple of weeks ago Mr Gregory had gone mad when he'd discovered a love-bite the size of a 20p piece on his daughter's neck. He'd given Tim hell. He'd banned him from Sarah's bedroom, threatened to tell Bill, but Tim had practically
begged him not to. And a week tomorrow Tim was meant to be his boss? It made him shiver inside.

He met Sarah's eye and reckoned she was thinking something similar. She seemed to find it funny, however, and forced a cough, covering her mouth to stifle a giggle.

Jenny was watching her curiously, and Sarah recovered herself quickly to ask, ‘Have you seen what's happening at WetFun?'

‘What's Vic Stones up to now?' Bill grumbled.

‘I'm not sure,' Sarah said. ‘But when I passed on the way here I could see all these trucks and bulldozers there. Is he building a house?'

‘Not that I know of.' Bill caught his wife's eye.

‘He can't be,' Anne said. ‘We signed all of the forms making it clear we were against giving him planning permission.'

Bill didn't look happy. He abandoned his breakfast and headed outside to see what he could see.

Tim was quick to follow him. Anything that happened at the water-sports club had always been of the utmost importance to him.

‘You've got a guest, Tim,' Anne said reprovingly as he shoved his shoes on without untying the laces first.

‘I'm only looking. She can come too if she wants.'

He followed his father around the front of the house. It wasn't quite full light just yet – the sun was still climbing from cloud to cloud – but they could make out the buildings across the way.

There was a kind of love/hate relationship between Bill Milmullen and Victor Stones, who owned WetFun. Stones
didn't like the idea of the Milmullen family tradition because it wasn't always clever to tell his water-worshipping customers that a man-eating creature lived in the lake where they played. But many of those customers travelled a fair distance and needed somewhere to stay, and Mourn Home was the closest guesthouse to the club. So, on the other side of the coin, although Bill certainly couldn't approve of people being out on the lake and putting themselves in constant danger, he needed their custom. But it didn't mean he and Vic Stones had to be friends or anything.

The water-sports club itself was little more than a modern blot on the landscape. The main clubhouse was a lot of glass and neon, looking like a large aquarium to Tim's eye. Late at night there were often private parties in the bar, and from his bedroom he could see everybody drinking inside, having a good time. There were three grey metal sheds to the side of the flashy main building – storage sheds for the boats and equipment. Two narrow jetties shot out over the lake with dinghies and sailing boats moored close together. More small boats were pulled up on trailers on the shore.

It was in front of the storage sheds that the trucks Sarah had talked about were standing; construction trucks with breeze blocks and sand, a cement mixer and even a small JCB. There were workmen milling around. While Bill and Tim watched, Vic Stones himself arrived in his new silver BMW. He was a big man and the car rocked as he climbed out.

‘What's he building?'

Bill took several long seconds to reply. Then with a growl he said, ‘Bad news for us, that's what.'

THERE WAS A
fine rain on Tim's high window at the top of the house. Peering out he could see the two students making their way along the footpath that skirted the shoreline, heading for the water-sports club. Gully was tall and animated, enthusiastically waving his arms out at the lake as he spoke. Scott's hands were shoved deep in his pockets and he walked slightly hunched, as if up a steep slope, but his head was turned, his eyes watching the water. They followed the path all the way onto WetFun property, passed the trucks and the workmen, walking through the spaces where the walls of Vic Stones's brand-new hotel would soon stand.

Bill was on the phone downstairs, trying to get an answer to just why Stones had been granted planning permission for something that could spell the end of Mourn Home, even when he had so vehemently opposed it? Tim had heard the angry accusations of money greasing greedy palms as he disappeared up to his room. He watched the JCB lumbering into position and wondered how long it would take to build a whole hotel from scratch.

Longer than a week, probably
. Because that's all the time Tim felt he had left.

Jenny shouted from the bottom of his stairs for him to hurry up.

‘Yeah, yeah,' he muttered under his breath, finally turning away from the window to face his immediate problem this morning.

He sighed even louder at the sight of his desk. The mess was quite staggering. He didn't honestly think he could find what he was looking for, did he? He was frustrated with himself for letting everything get into such a state – again.

He insisted that it was
his
room,
his
space, and his parents respected the fact (albeit his mother rather reluctantly). But he could retreat here. It was up a different staircase to his parents' and Jenny's rooms, making him feel cut off from everything else that went on downstairs. Exactly the way he liked it.

He did try to be neat and tidy and organized, but stuff just seemed to
accumulate.
Most of it was crap, he'd admit that. There was age-old schoolwork buried amongst piles of comics and magazines. Half a dozen half-read books. Pages of stories he'd half written. There was a mug of cold tea and a dirty breakfast bowl; a couple of CDs out of their cases smeared with fingerprints; one empty can of deodorant and two still half-full.

He heard footsteps coming up the stairs and guessed his sister was wanting to chivvy him along a little. But it was Sarah who poked her head round the bedroom door.

‘Jenny says you've got to get a move on. She says she's fed up always being late because of you . . .'

He caught the look on his girlfriend's face when she saw the state of his room and cringed inwardly. ‘Tell her I've
just got to find my homework.' He did his best to block her view – but it was a big room. Usually he managed to shove things under the bed or into the bottom of his wardrobe when he knew she was coming round. ‘Say I'll be down in a minute, will you?'

Unfortunately Sarah didn't leave. She stepped over to him carefully, not treading on the dirty clothes strewn here, there and everywhere, obviously in awe of the mess.

‘I know it's a tip,' he said, embarrassed. ‘But you've got to admit, it's an impressive tip.'

‘How do you manage to find
anything
in here?'

‘Luck,' he told her with a straight face. He kicked a jumper and a dirty pair of jeans under his bed, picked up one of the piles of stuff to put it on top of another – as if that helped to make things look a little more respectable. ‘And patience.'

She laughed and took hold of his hand, squeezing it. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him quickly. ‘I've been wanting to do that all morning.'

‘Me too,' he said without meeting her eye.

More and more these days he felt strangely awkward around her, as though it was getting more and more difficult to find things to say to her. Talking hadn't mattered much at first; kissing and stuff had easily filled the silences – who needed to talk? Nowadays, however, he was seeing her less and less because even the kisses felt forced. He wished he could put into words what had happened. Being with her had lost its shine – was that it? He wasn't meaning to string her along – he knew he must be going mad because
she was beautiful and clever and cared for him. And maybe it was just a phase, maybe the ‘shine' would come back. He'd felt it once, so maybe he could feel it again.

He didn't have the guts to say anything to her about it, obviously. She was Jenny's best friend; her father was the Underbearer; she was pretty much a part of the family already. If he stopped going out with her everybody would want to know why and he didn't think he could admit the truth. It would be opening a far bigger can of worms than he reckoned he could cope with.

He'd thought about it often enough and decided that his perfect girlfriend would probably not even live in Moutonby. His perfect girlfriend would agree that being the Mourner was a crappy job and would want to escape with him to live on the other side of the world somewhere. It wasn't Sarah's fault, but she seemed happy here.

‘What homework is it?' she asked, ignoring the fact that he was tugging on her hand, trying to pull her towards the door.

‘Nothing much. Just some English for Mr Wing.'

She tugged back gently, slipping her hand free. ‘And it's definitely in here somewhere?'

‘Think so.'

She surveyed the disaster site in front of her. ‘Come on. I'll help you look.'

But the thought of having her rooting through his mess was too much. ‘No! No, don't worry. May as well just forget it.' He took hold of her wrist to drag her away this time. ‘Let's just go.'

‘You can't not hand it in. You know what Mr Wing's like.'

Jenny shouted from the bottom of the stairs again, threatening to leave without them, but only got halfway through what she was saying before suddenly falling silent. Tim guessed Bill must have snapped at her to quieten down.

‘Is my dad still on the phone?'

Sarah nodded. Then asked, ‘How bad will it be if Mr Stones builds a hotel?'

‘Are you kidding? My mum and dad are always going on about not having enough guests, and if everybody goes to Stones's hotel we won't have any at all. You can't run a guesthouse without guests, can you?'

‘Do you think you'd have to move?'

‘I don't know,' Tim admitted. There was a small part of him that wondered if this was how he avoided becoming the Mourner.
No Mourn Home, no Mourner.
Guiltily he forced the idea right to the back of his mind. Sarah was watching him closely; he avoided meeting her eyes. ‘Come on,' he said, pulling her towards the door. ‘Better get moving before Jenny—'

‘What about your homework?'

He shook his head. ‘Who cares? It'll just be a detention or something. But it's not as if it matters, is it?'

Sarah didn't answer.

‘What are they going to do? Kick me out?' He laughed quickly, tried to make it sound like he couldn't care less either way. ‘The teachers know I don't need to pass my exams to get a job or anything. I could drop out of school
after my Carving next Saturday if I really wanted to, and I doubt any of them would notice. It's not like I'm their star pupil or anything.' He didn't mean this to come out quite as sharply as it did, because they both knew Sarah
was
that star pupil. ‘You know what I mean,' he said.

She pulled a tiny smile.

‘I'm
Monster Boy
,' he told her, using the hated nickname lightly in an attempt to make her believe his false levity. ‘Who's going to argue with me?'

She smiled fully now, putting her arms around his neck. ‘You're
my
Monster Boy.' She put her head on his shoulder. ‘And I love you.'

He squirmed – just a little, not so she'd notice. He knew what she wanted to hear in return. But . . . He grinned his cheesiest grin. ‘I love me too.'

She didn't find it funny. She blinked quickly but wasn't quite able to hide the disappointment in her eyes.

He wrestled for something to say that would please her. He squeezed her hand and said the first thing that came to mind. ‘When are we going to get some time alone? You know, just me and you?'

‘Any time
you
have time, I suppose.'

The moment was uncomfortable. He said, ‘Why don't you come and stay over this weekend? Like we've said about before?'

‘My parents would never let me.'

‘Tell them you and Jenny are doing homework or something.' He felt it was a safe suggestion to make, didn't believe she'd actually go through with it. ‘I'll get a key for one of
the rooms, yeah? And we can spend the night together. Like we've always said we would.'

She nodded slowly. ‘I'll try. But you know what my dad's like . . .'

He hugged her briefly, pleased he'd kept her happy without actually committing to anything in his own mind. ‘Great. It'll be great.'

Sarah's mobile rang briefly. She dug it out of her pocket. ‘Jenny's sent a text.'

‘What's she say?'

‘“Bye.”'

‘We'd better go.' He reached for his coat.

‘Just one last kiss.'

He pecked her and ran.

It wasn't a long walk to Moutonby High, but it was uphill all the way. There was a cracking view of the small town from the playing fields.

Sarah was lively with chatter and gossip as they walked. Did you know about this, this, this? Have you heard about that, that, that? And Jenny did her fair share of joining in: Gully, Gully, Gully. Tim tuned most of it out. He reckoned he'd hear it all again on the downhill journey anyway. What concerned him more was the fact that the black holdall he had slung over his shoulder was empty of English homework. No matter what he'd said to Sarah he knew he'd have to hand something in, and was frustrated and angry with himself because it meant wasting break or lunch time having to do it all over again.