Free The Judas Scar by Amanda Jennings

a boy on the other side of the room – a quiet, small boy who Will hadn’t taken much notice of – crept across the room. The boy stood motionless by Will’s bed for a moment or two. Then he glanced over his shoulder and thrust out a closed fist. Will didn’t move. Nor did the boy – he just stood there, unmoving, his arm held out towards Will. Will furrowed his brow and shrugged, unsure what he was mean to do. The boy sighed theatrically and leant closer.
    ‘Take it,’ he whispered. ‘It’ll stop the bum-sting.’ He grabbed Will’s hand and pushed something hard into it then closed Will’s fingers around whatever it was before silently slipping back to his bed.
    When Will opened his hand and saw what he’d been given his heart missed a beat. Two foil-wrapped toffees lay on his palm like gold coins. Will closed his hand and thrust it beneath his blanket. Sweets weren’t allowed. Sweets would get confiscated by the prefects, stolen and eaten, your things ransacked if there was even the smallest suspicion there was more. How had the boy got this contraband? Where had he hidden it?
    Will sat up in his bed and looked over at Luke who also sat up. His pale, thin face was lit in a shaft of fluorescent light from the corridor. He stared at Will, solemn and intense, nodded once then lay back down. Will pulled his grey, regulation blanket over his head and waited with bated breath, heart hammering, until the duty prefect had done his final rounds. When Will was sure it was safe, he undid the golden wrappers, coughing to mask any rustling, then popped both toffees in at once, almost too much for his mouth to hold. He sucked slowly, closing his eyes as the creamy sweetness ran down his throat. Luke was right; for a few glorious minutes his throbbing backside, the desperate homesickness, the injustice and loneliness – all of it was forgotten.
    In the morning, as they walked down the stairs on their way to breakfast, Will caught up with Luke.
    ‘Thanks,’ he said.
    Luke smiled, then neither of them said anything more.
    Will walked along the deserted back streets of Fulham. His stride was full and his rhythmic footsteps rang on the pavement. The houses were dark, their curtains drawn. He imagined the people who lived in them tucked up in their beds, quietly snoring, deeply asleep. He heard the startled screech of a cat or maybe a fox. He picked up his pace as his thoughts settled on the last time he’d seen Luke, the day he was expelled, both of them perched on hard wooden chairs in Drysdale’s office, which reeked of old leather, wood polish and mothballs. He remembered the look in Luke’s eyes, the way they’d welled with tears that spilled down his cheeks, and a thick nausea pooled in the pit of his stomach as he strode on.
    In the morning Will left their flat and headed up towards the North End Road, weaving in and out of the people on the busy pavements as he walked to the shop.
    ‘Morning, Frank,’ he said, as he pushed through the door, sounding the old-fashioned bell that hung on the back.
    ‘Morning, William,’ Frank said brightly.
    Will was fond of Frank. He’d worked for Will since he opened the shop a year earlier, using the small lump sum his father had left him when he died. Will had met him in the wine merchant’s he worked at after college, and as soon as he thought about opening his own shop, he knew he wanted Frank with him. He was great company, eccentric in a very British way, with a great sense of humour and an easy-going nature. He was a short man, and a little rotund, and always dressed in well-fitting suits with his grey hair slicked back with old-fashioned hair cream that he ordered from a specialist gentleman’s shop in Bristol. He lived in Chiswick with two Persian cats called Pie and Pinwheel and his elderly boyfriend, a writer of moderately successful science fiction, who was as wiry as Frank was portly. Frank loved wine with a passion, and was a walking encyclopedia when it came to