Free Fifty Fifty by S. L. Powell Page B

confrontational. Believe me, I’ve seen enough demonstrations outside my building in the last few years to know how violent and nasty it gets. It’s
not something that a boy of your age should be involved in.’
    ‘Dad, you haven’t got a clue. Like sitting in your office and watching demonstrations through the window makes you an expert, does it?’
    Dad looked at Gil with a strange expression on his face, as if he was listening to music from very far away.
    ‘I know a lot more than you think,’ he said. ‘From experience as well as observation.’
    ‘Yeah, sure.’
    ‘In fact, I met your mother on a demonstration. We were both members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and we took part in a mass attempt to break into a military base where nuclear
weapons were held. It got pretty unpleasant. We were arrested for criminal damage and trespass and ended up sharing the back of a police van.’
    Gil stared at Dad. He didn’t look as if he was joking.
    ‘I don’t believe you,’ Gil said.
    ‘We had to go to court for it. We both got fined – well, so did a lot of people. Then some of them, including your mother, refused to pay the fine and went to prison.’
    ‘Prison? Mum?’
    That was even harder to imagine than the idea of Dad on a demo. Mum, who drifted about the house and screamed with terror when she broke a plate – how could she ever have been tough enough
to survive prison?
    ‘For about a fortnight, yes.’
    ‘And what about you?’ said Gil.
    ‘I paid the fine at the last minute,’ said Dad. ‘I had an interview for a very important research post. If I’d gone to prison I might have missed my chance
altogether.’
    ‘So you let Mum go on her own?’
    ‘Gil, we hardly knew each other then. Anyway, we wouldn’t have been together. There are separate prisons for men and women. I did visit her, though.’
    Dad gazed through the bedroom window and Gil saw the faraway look come over his face again.
    ‘If you’ve been arrested yourself,’ Gil said, ‘how come you gave me such a hard time when I came home in a police car?’
    Dad immediately snapped back into the room. ‘That was completely different,’ he said sharply. ‘I was arrested for something I believed in passionately. We were trying to
prevent crimes against humanity. You were picked up by the police for littering in a public park.’
    Gil bit the tip of his tongue so hard that it hurt. ‘Why aren’t you still out there, then, demonstrating, or breaking into nuclear bases, or whatever it was you did, if you thought
it was so important?’
    ‘Things changed,’ said Dad. ‘I grew up. I discovered that not everything is as straightforward as it seems when you’re young. You will too, some day.’
    He walked out of the room, still holding Jude’s booklet.
    So this was what growing up was about, was it? thought Gil fiercely. You started out with principles. You had things you really believed in, things you would fight for and shout about. And then,
slowly, they started to fade. They shrivelled up and became unimportant. And eventually you turned into people like your parents – people who couldn’t be bothered to stand up for
anything any more, people who had terrible secrets that they hid from you for years, people who told you to do one thing and then did the opposite themselves.
    At that instant, Gil decided it was never going to happen to him. He was going to join Jude and stand shoulder to shoulder with him until they achieved something huge. It was a waste of time
waiting for the world to change. Gil would change the world with his own hands.

But just finding Jude, Gil knew, might be a task in itself. When Gil had met him he’d been living in a tree, and now even the tree didn’t exist any more. How did
you track down someone like that?
    After tea, Dad went up to see Mum again. Gil didn’t feel like asking if he could come too. Instead he sat in the front room looking at the silent television set and wandered