Today Everything Changes: Quick Read by Andy McNab

Chapter One
February 1968
    The windows and doors of the building were boarded up and barbed wire was pinned to the top of the walls, but that wasn’t going to keep us out.
    A rusty sheet of metal nailed over a small door to the side was loose. I jammed a bit of wood into the gap, pulled hard and the nails gave way. Several hands gripped the metal and it folded back to make a hole that we could crawl through.
    Murky light spilt down from six or seven skylights in the flat roof ten metres above our heads. In the gloom I could see lumps of metal on the bare concrete floor but, apart from that, the massive old Maxwell’s Laundry was empty. There was a dank smell of mould, rotten wood and plaster. It was totally, eerily silent. If we had made any noise it would have echoed around the vast space. Maybe nobody outside would hear it and raise the alarm, but I didn’t want to take that chance.
    I looked at the others and nodded to the stairs at the far end of the building. As I moved forward my foot hit a tin can. It skidded across the floor and clattered into one of the lumps of metal. The four lads behind me jumped. ‘You dickhead, watch it!’
    I could see that the stairs would take us up to the offices, then up again to a hatch that was open to the sky. Once we were on the roof, the fun and games would start.
    It felt colder up there than it had done at ground level. I watched my breath form into a cloud and started to shiver. I walked to the edge of the flat roof and looked down at the lampposts and their pools of light. The street was deserted. There was no one around to see us. Or to hear the sudden crash of breaking glass.
    I spun around and could only see three figures standing near one of the skylights, which now had no glass covering it. I heard a thud from deep inside the building.
    ‘John!’ one of the lads whispered. ‘John!’
    I knew even before I looked through the hole that he would be dead. We all did. We glanced at each other and then ran back towards the stairs.
    John was lying very still. He was face down on the concrete, a dark pool of blood oozing fromhis mouth and the back of his head. It looked shiny in the dim light.
    ‘Let’s get out of here!’ someone shouted, and we scarpered for the door. I just wanted to get home and get my head under the covers. Then nobody would ever find out what had happened. That’s how you think when you’re just eight years old.

Chapter Two
    I’d never been so scared. It was the first time I’d ever seen a dead person, but it wasn’t the body that upset me. What would happen if I got nicked? I’d seen enough TV cop shows to know that everyone always gets caught in the end. I thought I’d spend the rest of my life in prison and knew I’d rather die than have that happen.
    The next day there were police swarming everywhere on the estate where I lived. We four lads met up to make sure we had the same story. We had no idea why John had gone up onto the roof. Of course we weren’t there when he fell through the skylight. We hadn’t seen him yesterday at all.
    Until then, I’d had an ordinary childhood. I wasn’t abused and I wasn’t beaten. I was just a normal, run-of-the-mill kid living on a council estate in south-east London. My parents had adopted me because my birth mother had left me in A and E at a hospital in London. They had adopted my older brother too, but he’d left home and was in the army.
    My parents were very busy trying to make a living so it was great having so much freedom. That was normal for my mates and me. Some kids had to go home when it got dark or had to ask their mums if they could leave the estate. They were the strange ones, the wimps.
    Mum and Dad, like all the people on our estate, spent lots of time looking for jobs and never had enough cash to get by. My mum’s latest job was in a chocolate factory during the week, and at weekends she did service washes at the launderette. The old man did any job he could find in the daytime,