No one was about, and he plunged into that dark river, floundering towards the tram-stop end, but before he could reach it, two kids suddenly walked in from the entrance. They halted when they saw him, whispering together, and the sunlight blazing behind made them seem like malevolent science-fiction figures. Seymour’s footsteps grew leaden and trembled to a stop. He glanced behind at the long stretch of flagstones leading back to the other main road, and knew that was a useless route of escape. The distance was too far. His own gate was too far away, so was Angie’s, and besides, she wasn’t there to protect him. After a moment he trudged on hopelessly, his throat tight with fear, until he was close enough to see their faces. Alert faces, full of latent mischief. They didn’t move, but stood casually in the centre of the alley, positioned so that he couldn’t walk between them. Seymour came to a halt, he couldn’t do otherwise.

‘Well, look who’s here. If it isn’t that kid we saw the other day, the one in the park with the grandpa hanky,’ one of them said. ‘Where’s he off to, then?’

‘Sunday School,’ said the other boy, grinning. ‘Boy Scout Jamboree.’

Seymour tried to keep his face neutral, but to his disgust found it slackening into a glib, ingratiating smile. A smirk, you could call it, nothing else. Something he’d read once crossed his mind, about the behaviour of wolves in a pack. How, if one were threatened by a more dominant wolf, it would lie fawning on its back, offering its neck to the threatening teeth, and its action would somehow defuse the situation. That’s what he was doing now, and he felt sickened by his cowardice, but couldn’t help it. Wearing the ghastly stiff grin, he tried to step around the boy by the right-hand fence, but that space suddenly vanished, so quickly it was hard to tell if it had actually been there at all.

‘I’m just…just doing messages,’ he stuttered. ‘Had to go into town for someone…’

His fear was as evident as scent, he could almost smell it in his own nostrils. Panicking, he tried to force a way through the two boys, but again the space moved and ceased to exist. Someone laughed—an unpleasant sound, not like laughter at all.

‘What you got in that bag? Let’s have a look…’

He jerked it back instinctively, his action springing from shame at being caught carrying a doll and the urgent need to get it to Angie before she left. Maybe the last thing he could ever do for her.

‘Pongy washing, bet that’s what it is,’ one of the boys jeered. ‘Off to the laundromat with his spare hankies…’