We Used to Be Kings Read online

Mum took off her cardigan and wrapped it around Jack, then kissed him, then me, then Dad.

  She walked away down the steps.

  I looked back up at the sky. The moon was nearly white with just a little dark patch of yellow on one side and a smaller patch at the bottom. I wondered why it was so big, why it was so white and why the stars seemed to hang from strings just like our planes from our bedroom ceiling. Jack made a groaning noise and rolled over.

  ‘It’s an elliptical orbit,’ Dad whispered, so close that his breath seemed to burn my ear. He leant closer. ‘That’s why the moon seems bigger.’

  A shiver grew inside me, made chicken bumps on my arms. I turned my head, felt him smile in the dark, and I wondered how he could watch the sky and read my mind at the same time. I kept staring at the sky, at the brightness of the stars, at the darkness in between, and I wondered how fast his rocket would go, whether I would be able to see him, what it would be like to float, and how long he would be gone for.

  ‘Seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour,’ he whispered. ‘. . . In the mornings on TV, in the sky at night. Don’t know . . . Oh, and I’ll be gone for twenty-eight days.’

  I asked him how he would breathe, how he would sleep and where he would pee.

  ‘Oxygen tanks. Strapped down. In my spacesuit.’

  I laughed. His body shook and made me laugh longer and when I stopped everything seemed quieter than it had been before. I rolled over, put my chin on his chest and asked him the question that had been bothering me the most, the question that had been in my head all week.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘what does T minus mean?’

  ‘It’s easy,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’

  He lifted up his hand and I followed his finger as he drew a big circle around the moon.

  ‘Imagine the moon is a clock,’ he said. ‘Imagine it’s a clock, an alarm clock inside your head.’

  ‘But the bell will never go off,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But my rocket will.’

  He put his hand under his elbow, pivoted his arm into the sky and told me it was the clock’s second hand moving backwards. He said every second it moved backwards was a second closer to lift-off, and when it reached sixty, the minute hand would tick back and it would start all over again. I told him I understood but that we shouldn’t tell Jack because he hadn’t learnt to tell the time forwards yet. Dad laughed and we put our heads back on the grass and looked up at the sky.

  Then he told me about the satellites.

  He told me about Echo, how it sends radio signals back from space. He told me about Tiros, that it takes pictures of all of the oceans and the wind patterns and then sends them back to Earth so we can predict the weather. And he told me about the militaries in America and Russia, how they tell everyone they are looking for new planets but really they are watching each other.

  ‘Like spies?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Are you going to be a spy?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep a secret.’

  I laughed. Dad sighed and everything went quiet again.

  My legs started to twitch, my back began to ache. I rolled over on my side and he hugged me so tight I couldn’t move. He told me that while he was gone the days would get hotter and longer and that he would spend them thinking about me and Jack. I told him twenty-eight days was a long time, maybe I could call him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There aren’t any telephone boxes in space.’

  ‘Walkie-talkies then?’

  He smiled. ‘No, they’ll be out of range . . . But I’ll have a radio.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  He screwed up his face and rapped his knuckles on his head. ‘Bugger it! Oops! Sporry . . . but I forgot, we’ll lose the signal when I go around the dark side of the moon.’

  He started to mumble. I couldn’t tell if I was meant to hear or if he was talking to himself. I felt him shake. I sat up and looked at him. His mouth moved but no words came out and I wondered how I would be able to communicate with him when he was 238,857 miles away, if I couldn’t understand him when he was by my side.

  An idea came into my head in the dark. I tapped my hand on his chest. ‘I’ve got it,’ I said.

  He jumped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How we can communicate when you’re in space.’

  He sat up, looked up and down the road, then back at our house.

  ‘Whisper it,’ he said. ‘We don’t want the spies to hear.’

  ‘Letters,’ I whispered. ‘We could send letters.’

  He bit his lip like he wasn’t sure.

  ‘I could send you one. You could send me one back. All we have to do is decide who writes first.’

  ‘You’ll be too busy writing your book to write to me.’

  I told him I wouldn’t, that if the days were going to get longer like he said, I would have time to write both. I laughed because he laughed.

  He lifted his hand and rubbed my head and I watched a million stars reflect in his eyes.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll write first. I’ll send you a letter from the moon.’

  Chapter Nine

  WE HEAR THE sound of tyres on gravel. The sun burns into our eyes and makes us blind. We smell petrol fumes, they burn up our nostrils into our head. Our stomach cramps but we have been sick so many times that there is nothing left inside.

  An engine revs as a lorry reverses against the wall where we ate and drank. We slide back down into the long grass as the driver kills the engine and climbs down from the cab.

  He’s wearing a balaclava.

  He’s got a beard that joins up with his hat.

  The driver walks to the side of the lorry, pulls back the blue canopy and ties it against the metal frame. A man in a checked shirt comes out of the pub. He shakes hands with the lorry driver, they walk across the yard and start to roll a barrel. They say something about it being hot, something about cricket and the driver says he’s glad this is his last call of the afternoon. Together they lift the last barrel up onto the lorry and then they disappear into the Black Swan.

  We stand up. Our head spins. We drop down to our knees and crawl through the grass.

  Like Marines.

  Like snakes.

  What are we doing?

  Hitching a ride.

  Shouldn’t we ask?

  Dressed like this?

  We look down at our clothes. Our shoes are dusty, our trousers are covered in sick and our T-shirt is splattered in blackberry stains and dirt.

  We run through the dust and climb into the lorry. It’s full of crates and barrels with ropes stretched across tying them together. We duck under and start to crawl, cold puddles of beer soak into our trousers and the further we go, the stronger it smells, the darker it gets. At the back of the truck we curl up on a bed of sacks and rags in the corner.

  Like a cat.

  Like a dog.

  We stink.

  I know.

  And I’m scared.

  It’s OK.

  We hear footsteps outside on the gravel. Everything around us shakes as the driver climbs in and starts the engine. The lorry lurches forward, a crate topples over, bottles fall out and smash on the floor beside us. We squeeze ourself into the corner. The lorry stops. We hear the door open and the driver say Fuck.

  !

  —

  The truck rocks like a boat as he climbs up.

  ‘Much damage?’

  ‘Two crates.’

  ‘Need a brush?’

  ‘I’ve one in the back.’

  We look around. The brush is beside us, jammed between crates and barrels.

  Shall we move?

  He’ll see us.

  Footsteps thud through the floor towards us. We slide the brush down onto the floor, pull a sack out from underneath us and put it over our head. It makes our head itch.

  It stinks of petrol.

  It smells of smoke.

  !
<
br />   We curl up in a ball and hope we don’t catch fire.

  The footsteps scuff closer.

  Pray.

  ?

  Pray.

  Our Father . . .

  In our head!

  Oops!

  —

  Shall I put our hands together?

  !

  The footsteps grow louder. We screw up our eyes shut.

  God, help me.

  God, help him.

  God, help us.

  The shuffle of shoes stops by our side.

  Oh no.

  Oh fuck.

  ‘Oh bollocks, I can’t find the brush . . .’

  —

  —

  ‘Use mine?’

  Use his.

  Use his.

  ‘Nah! I’ll do it back at the depot.’

  The footsteps move away.

  —

  —

  We pull the sack off our head and get our breath as the driver moves out of the darkness into the sun.

  The truck moves across the gravel and bumps out onto the road. The barrels rock, the crates shake and every time they do, we know we are turning another corner, travelling along roads that take us further away from the place where we were trapped for so long.

  We are tired.

  We are happy.

  Because we’re going to the beach to find Dad.

  Yes.

  —

  We just hope . . .

  What?

  We just hope we’re going the right way.

  Chapter Ten

  CAN WE PLAY We spy?

  —

  Can we?

  Do we have to?

  . . . We spy with our little eye something beginning with—

  Hedge.

  Yes. Your turn.

  —

  Your turn.

  . . . We spy with our little eye, something—

  House. My go.

  !

  We spy with our—

  Field. We spy—

  Horse.

  I don’t think this is working.

  No.

  Chapter Eleven

  WE HAVE BUMPED over bridges. We have slid on the corners. The engine has stopped now and the driver has gone. We don’t know how long we have been in here or how far we have travelled, only that the sun was shining when we left and now it is dark.

  We slip our bag over our shoulder and crawl like rats under the ropes. The wind blows, sucks the canopy in and out. We hold our breath and wait for it to stop. A line of light shines in, stretches across the floor and cuts the trailer in half. We peer through the gap and see lorries parked bumper-to-bumper across a yard. A forklift truck with its orange light flashing raises its forks and rests them against two wooden gates.

  To stop us getting out.

  To stop thieves getting in.

  But we’re not thieves.

  No.

  A man climbs out, lights a cigarette, then disappears through a little door cut in the gate. A car door slams shut, an exhaust rumbles, then fades away. We feel our heart beat and the cold of the wind on our ears. The light goes out and we are left alone with the moon.

  We jump down and walk between the lorries. Some of them are attached to trailers, some of them stand on their own, all of them have fluorescent numbers that float in the dark.

  Number twelve . . . number fifteen . . .

  We haven’t got time to count them.

  We walk towards where the light came from and climb the metal stairs up the side of a building—

  A bright light flashes. We put our hand over our eyes.

  Halt!

  Germans!

  Who goes there?

  We do.

  Put your hands up.

  No.

  Surrender.

  Run!

  Ha!

  ?

  We look up at the light. Night-bugs buzz as they fly around it, a little red sensor blinks by the side.

  Sensors.

  So it’s not Germans?

  No.

  !

  Ha!

  We walk along the platform, stop by a window, take off our jumper and wrap it around our fist.

  Ready?

  I thought we weren’t thieves.

  We’re not. We just want somewhere to sleep.

  We punch the glass. The window rattles but we haven’t even made a crack. We wrap our fist again and wonder why windows are so much easier to smash when we are trying to break out and not in.

  Maybe it’s because we don’t hit them hard enough.

  Maybe it’s because we hit them harder when we are being chased.

  We smack our fist again. The glass cracks loud like an iceberg. We lift the latch, climb through onto a table. Our hand knocks against a radio, our knee bangs against a typewriter.

  It hurts.

  Rub it.

  I am . . . Oh, a typewriter!

  I just said that.

  Can we type our names?

  No.

  J . . . J . . . I can’t find the J.

  !

  We drop our bag on the floor and stand in the middle of the room surrounded by darkness. We feel like we shouldn’t be here, like we are in a church or a classroom after the bell has rung and everyone else has gone home. There’s a kettle, mugs and half a packet of biscuits on top of a fridge and a big map of Great Britain pinned to the wall. We walk towards it, knock our leg against a table, kick over a bin. We jump.

  Sorry.

  Sorry.

  We stop and listen.

  What is it?

  Shush . . . It’s OK.

  The fridge switches on, rattles a spoon in a mug.

  We walk on and stand in front of the map. Little pins are stuck in all the big cities and ports with dotted lines connecting them to the centre of the map.

  Derby?

  That’s where we are, now all we have to do is find where we want to go.

  We hold up our hand, put our finger on Derby and follow a line across England and into Wales—

  Tom.

  We’re busy.

  But—

  Our finger stops on the pin stuck in the middle of Swansea with the number 9 written underneath.

  ?

  It’s the numbers on the lorries.

  So people know where they’re going?

  Yes.

  Like buses?

  Yes.

  Tom.

  What is it?

  Our hand’s bleeding.

  Shit!

  We turn around and walk back to the window. Blood oozes from a cut, trickles across our knuckles, glistens under the spotlight. We search the room for something to wrap it in, but all we find is a rag that smells of coffee and lots of paper and files.

  And three pencils.

  —

  And a stapler.

  —

  And a rubber . . . Can I keep—

  No.

  We sit on a table, wrap our hand in the sleeve of our jumper and squeeze it tight under our arm. It starts to throb. We rock backwards and forwards and try to make the pain go away. The wind blows through the window, blows the papers off the desk, rustles the map on the wall. The light goes out, all we can see are shapes and shadows. We shiver and try to hug ourself warm.

  It’s cold.

  Like every room we’ve lived in for the last six years.

  Except for the Harrisons’.

  —

  They had electric blankets.

  —

  The Harrisons were nice.

  They were like all the others.

  ?

  People we trusted who turned out to be traitors.

  —

  We lie back against the wall and think of all the other traitors we trusted. The Joneses—

  The Harrisons.

  We said them.

  The lady at the bus stop?

  —

  . . . And the man at the clinic.

  That was your fault, you shouldn’t have kicked
him.

  He said he was getting a plaster, not sticking a needle up our bum.

  —

  We keep thinking, and the more we think, the more we realise that we can’t trust anyone any more.

  Except Dr Smith.

  ?

  Do we think he’s a traitor?

  I don’t know.

  But he gave us a present.

  —

  Can we open it?

  We pick up our bag and try to open it but it’s hard to pop a popper when we can only use one hand. We pull it open with our teeth and turn our bag upside down. Our rockets and planes slide out onto the desk. We pick up the little box that Dr Smith gave us.

  Happy Birthday.

  Happy Birthday.

  Happy birthday to us. Happy birthday to us. Happy birthday dear—

  I think you can stop now.

  Because we haven’t got a cake.

  —

  Or candles.

  Because you’re giving us a headache.

  Shall I put the light on?

  No. It’s too risky.

  We wave our hand out the window.

  I said—

  The light comes back on.

  !

  —

  We bite the tape with our teeth and rip away the paper until all we are left with is a little white box.

  What is it?

  Don’t know.

  We lift the lid and look inside but all we see is pieces of tissue paper.

  It’s a hamster!

  —

  They never let us have hamsters.

  It’s not a hamster.

  We push the tissues away until we feel something hard and cold. We pick it up and hold it to the light. A tiny silver aeroplane shines between our fingers.

  It’s got a big nose.

  It’s Concorde.

  We turn it in the air, bank left and right, climb and dive.

  And fire the guns.

  It hasn’t got guns.

  —

  Just passengers.

  Oh.

  —

  Is that all there was?

  !

  We look back in the box and find a piece of paper folded to the size of our nail. We open it up and read the tiny scrawly writing.

  Dear Tom and Jack,

  Hope you like Concorde.

  Be safe, be careful, and stay out of the water.

  Dr Smith

  We think of Dr Smith and wish we could have met him before in a different place, because he didn’t just ask questions like all the others. He wasn’t a traitor who couldn’t be trusted. He listened to us, he told us to think, he told us to remember everything, every detail, that one day—