The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan Page A

a bikini on them, pasted a picture of Dannii Minogue’s face above. That night, in the beam of the lanterns, she had watched Christopher dry hump the tree while David told him to stop through his laughter. She could not remember ever having had so much fun.
    It was dark when she arrived at the campus, the only illumination coming from her headlights and a bulbous lamp placed in the path-side bushes. Christopher stood on the edge of the glow, shifting his weight awkwardly in the doorway and chewing the lip of his cardboard coffee cup. Three students taunted him. He tried to retaliate, but it only made them laugh.
    Maggie got out of the truck, felt the rain coming down the inside of her jacket, felt her endorphins firing up.
    ‘Erm. Why do you have to use such vulgar language?’ Christopher said. ‘Anyway, I haven’t got anything stuck in my, erm, brace.’
    ‘Your embrace ? What are you talking about?’
    Maggie noted the pun, the voice with all regional traces squeezed out of it. She knew this sort of student from her days working in colleges. They were the worst kind – the children of the governors, who would bully a kid half to death, then breeze into the disciplinary meeting with a haircut and a suit.
    ‘Hi, Christopher,’ she said.
    He crumpled out of the light when he saw her. ‘Erm. What are you doing here?’
    ‘Come to pick you up,’ she said, with an apologetic smile.
    ‘This your woman?’ one of the students asked.
    ‘No!’ shouted Christopher.
    ‘Go home, before I call your daddies to come and get you,’ Maggie said to the students.
    ‘Hey, steady on,’ one of them said. ‘You don’t know what happened here.’ The boy pointed to Christopher. ‘He said Mark had herpes.’
    ‘Christopher, that’s ridiculous,’ said Maggie. ‘Who’d shag him ?’
    She looked at the students, one of whom smiled. Christopher marched past her and got into the Land Rover. Maggie stepped closer to the group. ‘I don’t want to see you near him again,’ she said.
    ‘Are you sure? I would have thought you’d be delighted he had a few mates.’
    The comeback tripped her. She was out of practice.
    Another of them spoke up, his skinny jeans concertinaed about the knee, as though his legs were drinking straws. ‘To be honest, we’d be pretty grateful if you could keep him away from us .’
    The rain fell like splinters through the light. She looked at Christopher in the Land Rover. He stared ahead, chewing his coffee cup. She turned back to the students. ‘Just be nice,’ she said. ‘Have a think about what it’s like for him, eh?’
    ‘It’s not somewhere I want to go,’ one of the students said. Maggie realised it was a girl, her fringe pushing through the hood, her face plush and full in the cold.
    ‘That’s what I mean,’ Maggie said. ‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to say.’
    The group moved away slowly, a wet sheen coming off their pleather jackets. Maggie walked back to the truck and sat next to Christopher. ‘Alright, kiddo?’ she said.
    ‘Erm. Yes. Can we get chips and fishcake with curry sauce on the way back?’
    She saw a red wedge of coffee cup stuck between his brace and his teeth, but decided not to mention it. They drove on, collected chips, wound up the hill.
    ‘Did you go and see Louisa?’ she asked.
    ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘Nobody. I saw you walking over there. It’s absolutely fine. I’m pleased. Did you talk over what happened the other day?’
    ‘It’s, erm, classified information. What we talked about.’
    ‘I think she’s a good person to talk to. She knew your dad really well. Did you talk about your dad with her?’
    ‘Classified.’
    ‘Okay. Consider my memory wiped.’
    ‘It obviously is.’
    Maggie looked at him. It seemed like a cruel snipe, but he may not have intended it. Sometimes Christopher, in trying to be disagreeable, stumbled upon something raw.

S EVEN
     
    Louisa found a folded note in her letterbox:
    KNOCK-DOWN MEAT IN YOUR FREEZER,