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made me tell.’

Ten
    T he silence between them seemed to George like a solid thing. Across the room the computer game played out a fantasy battle, dramatic music sounding softly and then ceasing as George slithered off the bed and reached to put the game on pause.
    He wished that it was possible to put real life on pause. Stop it dead until you could figure out what to do.
    â€˜You went with him? Back to the old woman’s house?’
    â€˜Mrs Freer,’ Paul said. ‘Mam says she was called Mrs Freer. I never even knew that.’
    â€˜How did Mark Dowling hear about the gun? Paul, you gotta have said something to someone for him to know about it.’
    He turned, stared hard at his friend. Paul had his eyes closed but the tears still crept beneath the lids and he’d pulled his knees close to his chest, drawing in on himself.
    â€˜I never told no one,’ Paul blurted. ‘Someone seen us that night, when … when we broke in.’
    â€˜Jesus.’ George crossed back to the bed, curled himself at the opposite end, his tense body a mirror image of his friend’s. ‘Who? We didn’t see no one.’
    â€˜I don’t know. Mark just said someone seen us go in then seen us leave. He was laughing at me, running away from some old woman like … like … anyway, I got mad. I said he’d have run too.’
    â€˜Mark Dowling? He don’t run from anything. He’s an effing psycho.’
    â€˜I tried to take it back, George – tell him I didn’t mean nothing – but he wouldn’t believe me. He said he wanted to know what I meant and that he’d beat it out of me if he had to.’
    Looking at his friend, George figured that was exactly what Mark Dowling had done. He remembered the blows he had received at the hands of his own father, the way his dad thrashed his mum until she was begging for him to let up. He remembered how he’d stood there, watching, just too scared to intervene after that first time when he’d tried to protect her. Tried and failed. Tried and, as she’d later thrown back at him, just made it worse.
    George of all people could understand how Paul had frozen, been unable to intervene, but still he couldn’t stop the question falling from his mouth. ‘Why’d you go with him? Why didn’t you scarper, go and get help? Why didn’t you come home and call the police? They might have been able to …’
    He broke off; the bruising on Paul’s face seemed now to be darkening, pinching his face closed, contorting it with pain. ‘Don’t you ever tell my mam,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t you ever. I swear, you ever let on and I’ll …’
    George swallowed hard. ‘She’ll want to know something,’ he said softly. ‘Paul, she’s seen your arms, your face; she knows you never fell down the stairs. She knows something’s up. Besides, Mark Dowling went and killed that woman. We gotta tell someone that.’
    â€˜No!’ Paul almost shouted it. Both boys stared at the door, afraid the sound would have brought Paul’s mother up the stairs.
    â€˜No,’ he repeated quietly. ‘I’ll get blamed too, won’t I? You said yourself, I never done nothing to help. They’ll say I might have saved her. Might have stopped him.’
    â€˜But he
killed
her, Paul.’
    â€˜And he only knew about the gun because I told him and we only knew about it because … because of what we did, so it’s our fault too.’
    George closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. There was no denying their own guilt and, to be truthful, he could no longer be certain why the hell they had done what they had that night. ‘We were pissed,’ he said.
    â€˜That make it better?’
    â€˜No. Course it doesn’t, but that’s why we done it. Shaz Bates’s cider.’ Actually, George wasn’t too sure it had