Free Above His Station by Darren Craske Page A

just my imagination. Or wishful thinking. Or more likely, a combination of both.
    The satchel’s strap slipped as my shoulders fell. Now I truly was alone. It felt horrible. A gaping wound in my stomach, an emptiness. A rat-shaped hole in my guts. Already my shoulder felt lighter, bereft of my companion as it was.
    I won fifty pounds on a lottery scratch-card once. I was over the moon coming back home from the corner shop with my winnings burning a hole in my pocket. Molly was watching Countdown (I never did trust that Carol Vorderman. No woman that stunning should be so good at sums). Molly almost choked on her Rich Tea when I told her the good news about my win. I felt positively weightless. That was exactly how elated I felt when I saw my little rodent friend come scampering across the road from the entrance to Burger King. The greedy little so-and-so had been in there the whole time! Stuffing its face with cheeseburgers, whilst I’d been stood out here like a lemon.
    But as weightless as I was, I soon gained ballast.
    It was not my friend at all but a plain, common or garden rat. It skittered over to me and took a brief sniff of my boot before scampering away. I was lost again. Alone and lost and still no nearer to making sense of anything. What exactly had I achieved? I knew the answer, though I dare not say it. As sparse a commodity as hope was, I didn’t want to tempt fate as well.
    As I’d told my absent companion, I knew the Metropolitan Police had a portable station located at Leicester Square, and there it was, right in front of me. A car had driven into the side of it, but it seemed to be mostly undamaged. The lights were still on inside, which was the brightest ray of sunshine that I’d seen in some time. There was a sign posted by the door that read “ Station manned Mon-Fri, 08:00-20:00 hrs ”, so I checked my wristwatch. Plenty of time. I tried the door and it opened without resistance.
    The station was little more than a porta-cabin, with that same uneasy feeling you get whenever you enter one, as if the floor might give way beneath you at any moment. A glass partition bisected the station in almost equal parts and I approached it, feeling apprehensive as I couldn’t see anyone behind the desk. But I did see something else. I’m sure I don’t really need to spell it out; it is becoming rather a theme.
    On the floor were two uniforms in untidy piles, as if their former occupiers had just faded away whilst wearing them and the clothes had fallen limply to the floor. I pressed my nose to the partition, spreading my face left and right, scanning every inch of the room beyond. No sign of anyone but the sound of static coming from a radio, all the computer screens turned on yet displaying nothing. No telephones were ringing off the hook, no policemen rushing about to and fro moaning about paperwork.
    In effect, this was the most stationary of stations.
    I leapt in shock as I saw movement beneath one of the piles of clothes. I was transfixed. Scared half to death too, but mostly transfixed. What sort of bird would come crawling out? An emu? A heron? A penguin, perhaps? I felt a rush of excitement as I like penguins. But what if it was something dangerous like an eagle? I prayed that the glass partition would hold. I jumped again as I saw something long and thin poke out from underneath the clothes and I tilted my head to get a better look. And then the long and thin thing became an almost trunk-like little snout. And then a head - swiftly followed by some eyes, a pair of tiny ears and a furry back! As the creature began snuffling around the carpet like a vacuum cleaner, I gave thanks yet again to Attenborough, because suddenly I put a name to the animal that I was looking at.
    It was an anteater.
    Actually, it was not. It was something remarkably similar to an anteater, belonging to the same family of mammals perhaps, but its actual name escapes me. Although, I did recall that you only ever found them in