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Chapters (93)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Part One
  6. Chapter 1
  7. Chapter 2
  8. Chapter 3
  9. Chapter 4
  10. Chapter 5
  11. Chapter 6
  12. Chapter 7
  13. Chapter 8
  14. Chapter 9
  15. Chapter 10
  16. Part Two
  17. Chapter 1
  18. Chapter 2
  19. Chapter 3
  20. Chapter 4
  21. Chapter 5
  22. Chapter 6
  23. Chapter 7
  24. Chapter 8
  25. Chapter 9
  26. Chapter 10
  27. Chapter 11
  28. Chapter 12
  29. Part Three
  30. Chapter 1
  31. Chapter 2
  32. Chapter 3
  33. Chapter 4
  34. Chapter 5
  35. Chapter 6
  36. Chapter 7
  37. Part Four
  38. Chapter 1
  39. Chapter 2
  40. Chapter 3
  41. Chapter 4
  42. Chapter 5
  43. Chapter 6
  44. Chapter 7
  45. Chapter 8
  46. Chapter 9
  47. Part Five
  48. Chapter 1
  49. Chapter 2
  50. Chapter 3
  51. Chapter 4
  52. Chapter 5
  53. Chapter 6
  54. Chapter 7
  55. Chapter 8
  56. Chapter 9
  57. Chapter 10
  58. Chapter 11
  59. Part Six
  60. Chapter 1
  61. Chapter 2
  62. Chapter 3
  63. Chapter 4
  64. Chapter 5
  65. Chapter 6
  66. Chapter 7
  67. Part Seven
  68. Chapter 1
  69. Chapter 2
  70. Chapter 3
  71. Chapter 4
  72. Chapter 5
  73. Chapter 6
  74. Chapter 7
  75. Chapter 8
  76. Chapter 9
  77. Chapter 10
  78. Chapter 11
  79. Part Eight
  80. Chapter 1
  81. Chapter 2
  82. Chapter 3
  83. Chapter 4
  84. Chapter 5
  85. Chapter 6
  86. Chapter 7
  87. Chapter 8
  88. Chapter 9
  89. Epilogue
  90. Acknowledgments
  91. Reading Group Guide
  92. About the Author
  93. Copyright

Eric gave me an odd look—scornful, and yet somehow envious. “You always were an idiot, Straits,” he said, using my nickname for the first time in over twenty years. “You never could help jumping in with both feet, when you should have run like the wind.”

Later, I wondered what he’d meant. Was he accusing Harry? Was he, like the Chaplain, afraid that Harry might corrupt the boys?

I sometimes wondered what might have happened if I’d gone to see Harry that night. Could I have warned him, somehow? Or would that just have made things worse? Of course, there’s no way of knowing now. Hindsight is a cruel gift, always arriving much too late. And so, when Eric had gone, I did what I always did at that time of year: I started to prepare for the new term. Class lists; lesson plans; Sixth-Form essays to be marked. I did not forget Charlie Nutter—but I muted him, like a radio, while other things took precedence.

And then, on the third of January, came the call I’d been dreading. My father had been taken ill. Pneumonia, the doctors said; but I knew better. He’d given up. I’d known in my heart that it was the end as soon as I’d seen him at Christmas, and part of me was as relieved as the other part was guilty. I went at once to Meadowbank, where I waited with him for twenty-four hours. Typically, he chose to die during the fifteen-­minute break I’d taken to pick up some supplies—a toothbrush, a pack of Gauloises, a sandwich, the local paper—so that when I returned, it was over, and he was already cooling.

How very like my father, I thought. How like him to withdraw from even that small, final contact. Throughout his life, I could not remember him touching me, except to shake hands. And now that he was gone, I couldn’t find the grief that I was meant to feel: only a sense of deep fatigue and a headache that refused to shift.

I couldn’t face going home right away. I ate my sandwich (tomato and cheese), although I’d lost my appetite. I drank a cup of Meadowbank tea—which always tasted mysteriously of fish—and read the paper I’d just bought. And that was how I came to learn that a body had been found in one of the White City clay pits—the body of a young boy yet to be identified . . .

Chapter 2

2

January 1982