Free How the Trouble Started by Robert Williams Page B

they wanted to keep. The first time though, I still felt like a thief, but nobody shouted and ran from the house, and with the length of the drive I had about a two-minute head start on them anyway. As soon as I left Eastham Street I nipped down a track that leads through Moorland Wood, which eventually gets you to the quarry. It was easy enough to get to the haunted house with little chance of seeing anyone, and if someone did spot an overgrown teenager walking through the night carrying a lamp stand over his shoulder, they probably wouldn’t say anything, probably be terrified he would crack them one with it.
    The next time Jake was due to visit there were old school chairs, a white plastic garden table, a lamp stand and a little bedside table I thought we could leave stuff in. Of course there was no electricity, but the lamp fitted somehow, and the room looked good. Jake was made up with it when he saw it, and the first time we spent the afternoon there I had a fair job to drag him away and back to his mother’s. But that was something that had been happening before I’d done the room up. For the last few weeks he’d been a bit moody at the start of the afternoon, back to his usual self by mid-afternoon, then back to quiet when it was time to get him home. I thought it might be his mum, he had reason there, or something at school, but he shook his head at both of these things. Then I thought he might be getting bored with our Saturday afternoons, that he’d rather be off somewhere else, but when I broached it with him he shook his head again, and it was a relief to know that it wasn’t me causing the upset. It was clear that something wasn’t right though, and I wanted to help, but when I tried to get him to speak he would fall quiet and not say a word and the more I pried, the tighter his lips became. I didn’t push him too much. Instead I tried to cheer him up and get him back to the happy lad I knew from the first couple of weeks. Each Saturday I would attempt to make the day a bit special. I would spend the week thinking about it, thinking about things that might put a smile on his face, and I would plan the afternoon in my head like a vanishing. And it was like a vanishing, only now I had Jake and the house there was a real destination waiting for me, not something I’d just imagined out of thin air. I’d bought doughnuts and sweets, the odd cake. One week I even brought a football along. I thought that if he could practise his skills he might surprise the lads back at school and get to play with Harry again. But it was the blinder leading the blind, and we could barely get the ball from one of us to the other. I could see that he wasn’t enjoying it any more than I was, so I threw the ball into the overgrowth and we went back into the house and read one of the horror stories instead. But they didn’t appear to be working much lately either. I was stuck and the problem I had was I couldn’t ask for advice. What makes eight-year-old boys moody? was the question I needed answering. But it wasn’t a question I could present to Mum or ask at one of my visits to the library. I knew I would have to work it out for myself. The only thing I could think to do was watch him as closely as possible, keep looking for clues.

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    It might have helped if I’d encountered more of people’s problems and struggles, but other than Mum’s moods, which I’ve never found an answer for, I’ve had little experience. There haven’t been friends with problems that have needed sorting out; there haven’t really been too many friends at all. I’ve realised, over the years, that I have a face that lends itself to anonymity. Or perhaps my vanishings have been so successful I have actually started wiping myself out. It has felt that way at times. Mum says I don’t draw people; that I’m a dart that bounces back from the board, a magnet that won’t pull. She says it’s a characteristic inherited from her, which seems unfair