Free The Disappearance Boy by Neil Bartlett

itself is cold – there’s a weak March sun struggling to emerge through some clouds over his head, and it hasn’t quite made it yet. He wraps his jacket across his chest. The graves over here on the far side of the cemetery by the railway are relatively recent, and Reggie stops occasionally, looks around, and then stoops to inspect one of the bunches of flowers laid on or by the still-white stones. Several times, he just stops and looks around anyway.
    A small bunch of sugar-pink florist’s roses catches his eye – it’s the brightest thing here – and Reg kneels down to see if there’s a label attached to the cellophane. Just as he does this a young woman in a headscarf surprises him by coming round the corner of the gravel path, and as Reggie hurriedly stands up and brushes off his knees she gives him a brave little smile. Her coat is dirty, Reggie notices with some embarrassment. The bunch of daffodils jammed into the top of her basket is wrapped in newspaper, and the expression on her face makes her look as though she needs to hurry to get back to the house whose garden they came from and get everybody’s Sunday dinner on. Reggie returns her smile, keeping his teeth hidden, but the young woman doesn’t stop.
    Reggie watches her go, and then moves slowly on down his chosen row of stones. Three doors down (so to speak) from the grave with the bunch of roses, he comes to a halt. Once again, he stops and looks around, apparently checking to see if anyone is watching him. He stares at the stone, and seems to be on the verge of saying something; he rests a hand on it. But that exchange of smiles with the young woman in the headscarf has evidently unsettled him, and he doesn’t stay long. He limps on (how odd; his limp seems to be more pronounced this morning – perhaps it’s the cold), and right at the end of the path he’s chosen he arrives at what seems to be his second destination, a black-painted cast-iron bench almost hidden within a stand of overgrown holly. This seems to be more like it, and he relaxes a bit. From here, he can see all the way down the path should anyone approach, but no one can easily see him. A train goes past on its way round to Blackfriars and Farringdon, and as its sound dies away Reggie gets out a tin of tobacco and rolls himself a cigarette. He lights it, and then drags on it – like a schoolboy imitating somebody he’s seen at the pictures, he cups it in his right hand as if protecting his fag from the still-chilly air. Then he looks at his watch. He exhales a wreath of smoke, and jams his other hand into his pocket; he leans back, and lifts his face to the appearing sun – the clouds have just parted properly for the first time. He even closes his eyes. With both his legs stretched out for once and his left hand thrust deep in his trouser pocket, he looks as though … as though, I suppose, he just wants to have a quiet moment alone with his thoughts. That’s what benches in cemeteries are there for, after all.
    Two cigarettes later, the sun gives up and goes in again, and Reggie shivers and checks his watch. Hearing footsteps on the path, he quickly tucks his legs away under the bench, hiding his boot, and busies himself with rolling a new cigarette. The footsteps belong to a young man in a dark jacket, but Reg doesn’t look up as he passes. He hunches his shoulders, clearly willing whoever this young man is to walk on by. Only when the coast is clear again does he uncurl his legs and light his finished fag.
    A cemetery is a strange place to spend a Sunday morning, isn’t it? – especially a morning when the displays of spring flowers are coming into bloom in all the parks of London, and you could easily have a taken a bus to one of them instead. A strange place to sit on a cast-iron bench with your Sunday-best tie on, smoking, looking for all the world as if you were waiting for some stranger to come and find you.

8
    On his first day without work, Reggie spent the