The War Zone by Alexander Stuart Page A

outside. ‘Sure. Can I go?’ ‘It’s late.’
    ‘It’s the holidays.’ They’re going to go without me. I know it. ‘These roads aren’t safe. I don’t know.’ I stare at him, man to man, son to father, urgently. ‘Have you heard that thing? No one’s not going to know it’s coming. Anyway, the world’s asleep down here.’ He frowns. I’ve won—if they’re still there. ‘Do you have your phone?’ ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Does he have a helmet for you?’ I nod. ‘How long are you going to be?’ ‘It’s just a ride,’ I lie. ‘Just up the hill for a while, it’s such a beautiful night.’ We move to the door, me eager to finish this before we get outside—establish my independence and go. ‘Don’t go mad,’ he says. ‘And tell Jessica she’s got to come home too.’
    ‘I’ll tell her.’ We step outside. Nick’s out there, but John and Jessie have gone. And Toe-rag. But Colin’s there, with Caz stuck behind him. ‘Tom…’ Dad asks, looking at me differently as I turn to go. ‘Are you all right? You look a little the worse for wear.’
    ‘It’s my stomach.’ I hold it, or hold where it used to be. ‘I think it’s some crisps I ate.’
    ‘I wish—’ He breaks off, looks from me to the bikes and back. I want to say something to him, I want to touch him, it’s one of those weird pauses that feel like last-chance situations, except I don’t believe in last chances. He grins. Standing there, my dad looks like trouble—even in his white yachting trousers and summer shirt he looks like trouble, but the best kind of trouble, not some sick bastard who’s fucking my sister. Caz calls to me. The bikes rev. Dad nods his head to indicate that I should go. ‘I wish you weren’t bound to repeat my mistakes,’ he says. I don’t know specifically what he means by this, but it’s depressing advice. It’s like one of those double-think mind-benders: once said, you can’t escape it. ‘See you,’ I say and run and jump on Nick’s bike. Then, for a beautiful while, I stop thinking.

10
    On the beach I take Jessie aside and say something very strange to her.
    ‘It happened, didn’t it?’ I ask, because my mind isn’t working right any more, I don’t trust it, I can’t. ‘What I saw—in the bathroom. You and Dad. Just tell me, just let me know I’m not going crazy, because I don’t want to be imagining this.’ I should be asking her to deny it, I know, but I want her admission of guilt. I know what I saw, but I want to hear it from her mouth, then maybe I can shut it out of my mind. ‘And then—’
    She looks at me impatiently, water breaking at our feet, a rushing sound, a dragging back. This is the last thing she wants now. ‘And then?’
    ‘Then please make me believe it was only once, it was a mistake, it’s never going to happen again.’ I feel feeble asking this—I should be able to handle it—but I can’t. Can I trust her? Her eyes seem disappointed with me, glazed suddenly, distant. ‘Please!’
    But before that there’s the bike ride, fast, cooling in the heat, the speed wrenching away thoughts before they can form, like being part of your own dream, watching yourself move but with no way of getting off or out.
    Nick’s bike seems suddenly wider, heavier, taking the hills like a breeze, eating up gradients which have Dad’s Bentley wheezing. I’ve never done this: ride pillion on a motorbike through flashing hedgerows, dark and blurry, a wall of nothingness hurtling by on either side, like a mindblasting trip through a maze. The light beam ahead is a gunsight, a border patrol nightlight. We’re flying, feeling the bumps and falling into the curves, the machine noise and the speed drilling me hard, pumping my adrenalin. I’m in the helicopter napalming the geeks. There goes the village! There goes the whole of fucking Devon!
    Then it’s different. We’re in the trees, spiraling down toward Sidmouth, dropping on to a shadowy blanket of lights that cuts off where