The Sacrifice Box Read online

  ‘Well, yeah. We’ve all got English together – it’s the only school on the island.’

  His mum peered into her mug. ‘Not everyone stays,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a full scholarship,’ said Sep after a moment.

  ‘You know I don’t care about the money, it’s just … boarding school? You could finish high school here, then go to uni on the mainland. Everyone makes friends at uni.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  She sighed.

  ‘I know school’s been hard, my brave boy. And you’ve always had itchy feet. You’ll go to the city and love it. You won’t be back.’

  Sep hated it when she called him brave. He wasn’t; he just endured it – brave as a rock stuck in the tide. But, more than that, he didn’t want to have to be brave – he wanted to live his life with effortless joy. Like everyone else.

  ‘It might not work out,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know.’

  She shook more pepper on her egg, but left her plate untouched. The silence between them was punctured occasionally by static from the walkie-talkie, and it felt as though her effort to contain her emotions had tightened the air around the table, like a wet rag wrung in strong hands.

  Sep ran his thumb over his Walkman buttons, then looked through the kitchen window. The sea’s flat edge was just visible between the tops of the trees, vanishing and reappearing as the branches were tossed by the wind. Beyond the water lay the mainland, a pale smudge of green and grey, with the blades of windmills backstroking their way across the horizon’s line. The city was invisible in the distance, its imagined weight pulling the landscape towards it like a stone on a sheet.

  He carried their plates to the sink, tipping the uneaten food on to a napkin and folding it into his pocket.

  ‘Do you want a lift?’ she called.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you want a lift to school?’

  ‘In a police car? I get a hard enough time, thanks.’

  She smiled, and Sep relaxed.

  ‘I could drop you off round the corner –’

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve got my skateboard.’

  ‘You know I don’t like you on that thing.’

  ‘So get me a moped,’ said Sep, lifting his sandwiches from the fridge.

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘Would you at least take your bike?’

  Sep thought of his old yellow Chopper, covered in an eczema of rust and four years of spiders’ webs.

  ‘No,’ he said, grabbing his bag.

  ‘Don’t you be feeding that fox!’ shouted his mum.

  The door banged shut behind him. Morning had yet to warm the island’s bones, and the air was cold despite the glow feathering through the trees. Sep felt the fresh, bright chill on his skin, and rubbed his arms.

  The fox was sitting on the path, its fur haloed in the morning’s gold. Sep put the napkin at his feet and stepped away.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘That’s all I’ve got. Come on, I’m late.’

  He took a step forward.

  The animal leaped back on scalded paws, then settled again before yawning, its sharp face tiny beneath enormous, black-tipped ears.

  Sep moved again and the fox skipped back, amber eyes flashing, its little body humming with wildness. It blinked and cocked its head.

  He reached out to touch the animal’s ears, and it darted out of reach, balanced on the edge of its paws.

  ‘Maybe one day you’ll trust me,’ he said.

  The fox waited until Sep was out of sight before it lifted the crabmeat in its mouth, then trotted into the trees.

  2

  Late

  Morning’s low sun spilled round Sep as he rolled downhill. Its light gathered like caramel in the island’s rock pools, burst like torch beams through the forest, and smashed hard and flat against the schoolhouse walls. The day began with the drone of flies and the rumble of working engines – and through it all time curled like a worm, bunching as it moved, alternately rushing and pausing and sometimes stopping completely.

  It had settled slowly on Lamb, kneeling at her mother’s cracked mirror as she brushed her hair and soaked in the past while Arkle – the hive of his mind buzzing with excitement and TV – felt it whip past in a distracted, hyper blur. It brushed lightly on Hadley as she floated through her sketches and scribbles, the coffee cooling in her mug as she sat on the stairs and inked the sides of her canvas shoes. It closed round Mack on his daily run past the river where the lost things of the town gathered: a rusting trolley, the urban scum of carrier bags, and the sack that had been full a few days before, but was now flapping empty in the flow. Minutes pressed on him like a deep-water squeeze as he ran back to a house of shouting and drink and slamming doors, where nothing ever changed and time seemed hardly to move at all.

  And now the seconds slipped from Sep before he could catch them, cool air swirling through his T-shirt as he coasted down the gentle slope, in time for nothing but another detention.

  The skateboard’s rumble unspooled behind the music in his headphones – a mixtape of early Bowie and The Cure, one side each. ‘Close to Me’ started as the road leaned to the left, the squat brick and glass of the school growling into view above the bay’s wide mouth and the stretching tongue of the old pier. The tide was high, the sea gripping the land. Wet stone gleamed as the waves withdrew, imperceptibly, like the shrinking of a dead man’s gums.

  Sep peered through the glare and found the mainland, only a green haze, but there, distant and solid – and everything the island was not. He had first been there when he was small, to visit family before his mum got sick, a few long afternoons reduced by memory to beaming relatives, tall buildings and the roar of streets. He wanted that life – the busy, vibrant anonymity, not the Hill Ford fishbowl – and the lodestar of the city’s engineering college shone with a bright heat that had burned through his other desires until it was all that was left: a steel chamber in his heart that beat with a single impulse.

  Leave the island.

  Sep rolled into the car park just as the bell stopped ringing, then rubbed his jaw. A strange feeling filled him – like a swelling in his ear tubes; like someone breathing just over his shoulder.

  He looked up at the sky. The moon was gone, the rock and ice of Halley’s comet somewhere beyond the light.

  Sep blinked away the pain and sucked his gum.

  The other stragglers – out-of-town farm kids, sleep-ins and smokers – melted away as he flipped up his board and passed through the doors. Scanning the foyer, he went to the vending machine, dropping his headphones around his neck. Another minute wouldn’t make any difference – he was already late, and he was top of the class in chemistry. Mr Marshall practically dribbled on his notebook.

  He bought a can of Spike and – the second he popped the ring pull – a sharp little hand fell on his shoulder.

  ‘Late again, Hope?’ whispered a reedy voice. ‘Every day this week. I’ll have your lunchtime for that.’

  ‘Morning, Mrs Maguire,’ said Sep without turning. ‘We really must stop meeting like this.’

  Maguire plucked the can from his hand and moved in front of him.

  ‘That smart mouth of yours …’ said Maguire. Her glassy eyes drilled into Sep’s. ‘I’ll have two lunchtimes, how does that sound?’

  ‘Of course, miss.’

  Maguire angled her head back, digging her bosom into Sep’s belly.

  ‘Why are you wearing those ridiculous “high-top” trainers again?’

  ‘To keep my socks clean, miss,’ said Sep, staring straight ahead.

  ‘Three.’

  Sep blinked.

  ‘But it’s Thursday,’ he said. ‘There’s only two lunchtimes left till the weekend.’

  ‘I’ll have Monday as well then, won’t I?’ said Maguire. She leaned up until her nose was almost touching Sep’s chin. ‘You know what your trouble is, Hope? You have no respect.’

  ‘On the contrary, miss,’ said Sep, leani
ng away from her coffee breath. ‘You’ve been on late-coming duty in the same school for thirty years. Of course I respect you.’

  Maguire’s eyes narrowed, and she moved her lips to Sep’s ear.

  ‘Let me give you some free advice, young man –’

  ‘That’s my deaf ear, Mrs Maguire,’ said Sep, turning his head.

  ‘– you might be as bright as a button, but you can’t outgrade a bad attitude. Colleges want rounded individuals, not just test scores. You need to get out from behind the books, make some friends – do something interesting. I know your application is incomplete …’ Maguire’s voice softened, ‘… what are you going to write about if all you do is study? What will you say when they ask about the relationships you’ve built here?’

  Sep stared past her head, towards the seniors’ common room.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Well, think on. Otherwise the only way you’ll get to the mainland will be to row there on your inflated ego.’

  ‘But, Mrs Maguire,’ said Sep, face wide and innocent, ‘the ego’s an abstract psychological concept. It’s not seaworthy.’

  Maguire allowed herself a smile.

  ‘Then you’ll sink, Hope. Get swimming.’

  She walked away, chuckling.

  Sep waited until she was out of sight, then pumped more coins into the machine and ran to class.

  He half dozed through double chemistry, even on the wobbly stool, his mind lulled by the familiar whisper of Bunsen burners. But third period on Thursday was history, and history meant Wobie.

  Wobie was old. His immense, sagging frame was a monument to threadbare tweed – his one tie lavishly stained with coffee and eggs. A big-band clarinet player in his youth, he’d lost a finger and a dream during national service: now he read the newspaper through every lesson and smoked little cigars out the window. Wobie never kept his promises and never checked homework. His breath was legendary – there was a long-standing rumour that one of his enormous sighs had blinded two third years.

  His classroom was the hottest place in the school, a painted-shut pit of brown walls and browner carpet, itchy with dust and lanced by sunbeams that burned the desks and dazzled the students. That the old man had not sweated to death was considered a modern miracle – his crimson face was permanently shiny, like a glazed pot.

  Sep, swinging on his chair at the back of the class, watched Wobie turn the huge pages of his newspaper with reverential care. Each time a page swished Sep clicked a button on his Walkman, letting the tape spool through the heads, tracking the fragments of time as they died around him.

  He swung forward, blinked rapidly and tried to concentrate – reread a page of his application form for the umpteenth time. The gears of his mind crunched as the words slipped past his eyes.

  Tell us about yourself outside school. Think about times in your life when you made successful connections with the people around you, perhaps as part of a group or team; or when you achieved something you’re proud of.

  Sep looked at the blank page for a full minute, then folded the form into his bag.

  Wobie was picking his teeth and ignoring Anna Wright, whose hand had been raised for several minutes. Eventually the broadsheet lowered and his poached-egg eyes dribbled over the top.

  ‘Yes, Miss Wright?’

  Anna dropped her hand and massaged her wrist.

  ‘Sir, I forgot my textbook, sir.’

  ‘Woe betide those who forget their textbooks,’ said Wobie, returning to his article. ‘If your illustrious neighbour, the Face and Hair of Stephen Ashton, has a copy, then you may share it. If not, the Corn Laws’ mysteries will remain forever opaque. And that, Miss Wright, would be a tragedy – the political machine has much to teach us of society’s cadence in centuries past, and of the transient nature of this fleeting bubble we call life.’

  ‘What?’ said Anna.

  Stephen slid his textbook across the desk towards her.

  There was a knock at the door, and the eyes of the class snapped gratefully towards the sound.

  ‘Enter,’ called Wobie.

  A fair-haired first-year girl stumbled into the room, Post-it note clutched in her hand, kitten badge pinned to her jumper.

  ‘Yes, small person?’ said Wobie.

  ‘Please, sir, it’s from Mr Tench,’ stammered the girl, handing over the note.

  Wobie took it and read, his mouth set in a toadish frown.

  ‘Master Hope,’ he said, giving Sep a disinterested smile. ‘It seems you have been summoned to the Lair of the Gangling Beast. Do you know what this concerns? Your famed tardiness perhaps?’

  Somebody whispered something, and there were sniggers.

  Sep shrugged.

  ‘Could be, sir.’

  ‘You were late this morning, I trust?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Begone then, and take your things lest you are detained past the ringing bell. Quickly now – woe betide those who disobey the headmaster.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And, Hope, stop shrugging – you look like a Frenchman.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sep, throwing his stuff into his bag. He felt the eyes of the class, but stopped at Anna’s desk.

  ‘Do you want this?’ he whispered, holding out his textbook. ‘Just for today?’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘Thanks,’ she whispered.

  ‘Freak,’ said Stephen, loud enough for the class to hear.

  A few of them laughed and Sep felt his cheeks burn.

  ‘A scholar and a gentleman,’ said Wobie, as he teased a cigar from its box and hung it in his purple lips. ‘So few of us left.’

  Sep felt the embarrassment lodge, heavy and familiar, in his gut as he closed the door behind him – and in its last sliver of light he saw white-haired, blank-faced Hadley, staring at him through her fringe.

  3

  Midtown

  She’d changed her mind when the rain started. Usually she walked everywhere – even in the dead of night, even in the rain, even if her swollen hip was causing its trouble – but when her long white hair had grown heavy with water she’d staggered into the subway’s steamy heat and shuffled into a corner to wait for the train home.

  There were only two other people on the platform at Midtown: a middle-aged white man with a weasel’s moustache and a nervous comb-over, and a young black man in a sleeveless Guardian Angel T-shirt. He had enormous sunglasses stuck in his hair, and tipped them at Shelley like a cap as she sank on to the bench.

  She tucked herself away behind her big coat and spectacles, feeling brittle and old as she watched the litter dance in a whirlpool of wind. After a minute or so the rusting, spray-painted train rattled into the station, howling through the dark with electric flashes that lit the graffitied walls like the swooping beams of a lighthouse.

  As it screamed to a stop Shelley had a sense of time shifting around her. The train seemed somehow larger than normal, and heavier – as though it was pulling at her with gravitational strength.

  Wings fluttered as she stepped unsteadily through the doors, and two crows hopped on to the waste bin behind her.

  She held on to the door, looking for a seat, but they were full of sharp-lapped stockbrokers and youths in open, studded jackets. One spike-haired boy had an enormous boom box between his knees, the speakers shaking with a thrashing sound. The carriage tasted rat-fur sweet, and it felt dangerous and tight.

  When the boy turned the boom box’s volume even higher and started banging on the windows with his studded gloves Shelley wondered whether she should have gotten a cab instead. She turned to go.

  But as she stepped from the train on to the platform her hair lifted in a gust of wind.

  And caught between the closing doors.

  ‘Oh!’ she cried, her head snapping backwards. ‘Oh, my! Help! Help!’

  The man in the Guardian Angel shirt rushed over to her.

  ‘It’s all right, ma’am!’ he shouted. ‘I’v
e got you! Just hold on to me –’

  The train began to move. Shelley stumbled into his arms.

  ‘Help! My hair! My hair!’

  People inside had seen what was happening and were pulling on the doors as the carriage wobbled into motion.

  ‘HELP!’

  The boy had dropped his boom box and was heaving at the space beside Shelley’s hair, trying to push it through to the other side as his friend pulled frantically on the emergency stop.

  As the train picked up pace the Guardian Angel lifted Shelley from the ground, running with her in his arms as she screamed and the people inside battered the doors: then the vehicle flew into the dark, dripping tunnel and Shelley was torn from the Angel’s grip. He knelt, looking at the blood on his hands as terror poured into his stomach and the sound of wings echoed on the wet tiles behind him.

  A third crow had appeared. Litter swirled round the birds as they watched, the electric light shining in their eyes.

  4

  Tench

  Mrs Siddiqui looked up as he entered the headmaster’s office, but carried on typing.

  ‘Late again, September?’

  ‘I don’t know – I just got a note to come down.’

  ‘So maybe no trouble for you?’

  ‘I was late today,’ said Sep, shrugging and pulling an awkward smile.

  ‘Don’t do that to your handsome face,’ she said. ‘And this hair, why be having it all over your eyes? How will you see your teachers?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sep, lifting his fringe.

  She nodded and ripped the paper from her typewriter.

  ‘So much better. Cheekbones – like your mother. And how is your mother? Anwar says she has not been to the restaurant for a little while.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Sep quickly.

  ‘Good, good. Now go in. He is doing nothing,’ she said. Then added darkly: ‘Thinking, probably, of fishing.’

  Sep thanked her and knocked.

  ‘Come in!’ came Tench’s earnest voice.

  Sep always forgot the full extent of the headmaster’s fish mania, and so was freshly amazed by the number of flies and reels mounted on the walls. Every frame was connected by a tissue of magazine cuttings, full of smiling, rubber-clad men. The room even smelled of fishing – the chemical tang of rubber boots, the tinny smell of water and the odour of drying socks – as though Tench had just stepped from a tinkling stream.