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Jules
1. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
JULES
He did not like to be touched. They pushed too much, so he waited until
last, until all the others had left the classroom. He was always the last one to leave.
Jules needed a drink. He needed a coke. If he had not been so thirsty
though, he would not have had to walk that way. He would not have had to walk
past the boys. There were four of them standing next to each other in front of the
cool drink machine, staring at him, blocking his way.
He wanted to turn back, but the double doors had already closed behind
him, so he continued to walk towards them, slowly, not knowing how to escape.
Fear attacked him. It pounded inside his temples, a hot stone swinging
inside a boxing glove, bashing behind his eyes, muddying up his already muddled
brain. His thin body felt drained of strength. His knees turned soft, and his small
body shrank, a feeling of sinking down into his large shoes, which held his
extraordinarily big feet. He walked forward a few steps, then stood still, his head
down, looking at his feet, which poked out from under his over length trousers
like the big feet of a wader hesitantly scavenging for food.
Panicking, Jules looked for another way out of the narrow passage. There
was none. He had to walk past the boys.
He walked forward, slowly, his eyes fixed down on his embarrassingly big
feet. His mouth felt dry, his tongue thick and coated. He tried to peel his dry
gummy tongue away from a dry sensitive palate, then he bit the insides of his
cheeks to get some moisture. The blood tasted wet, salty and comforting.
He knew what was coming.
Butch the bully came walking towards him, slowly. Jules’ downcast eyes fell
on Butch’s doc Martins. Black leather. Thick rubber. Mean steel tips.
With long, sinewy arms stiff and jumpy inside his school blazer, Jules came
to a complete standstill. Wet with sweat, the nylon lining of his blazer clung to his
forearms, compressing them like vacuum-packed meat inside two airtight tubes.
Nervously he wiped a bony palm against his jeans. His hands were trembling.
Butch stood still, waiting menacingly. The other boys were quiet. His thick
neck bursting out of a tight, round necked t-shirt, Butch stood, looking at Jules
with small, close-set blue eyes. His thick, muscular arms were crossed over a
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2. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
broad chest. A smear flattened his broad lips over huge, even teeth.
‘Give a man a coke,’ Butch hissed through the smear of a smile stuck on
his lips, which were hardly moving. He stepped forward, forcing himself into
Jules’ space, a dart of spite hitting the boy in the face.
His cheeks stinging, Jules stepped back. With all his mind he kept his eyes
down on his feet, which had drawn themselves close together in fear.
Jules’ heavy glasses started to shift off his nose, riding down on a slippery
slope of sweat as his head sank further down in defeat. His shoulders sagged
forward as he let go even before the fight had started. He swallowed to calm the
scorching muscles in his throat. They burnt with dread and dehydration and his
bladder started screaming.
Butch came right up to Jules and pushed a fresh, wet can of coke onto the
boy’s cheek, the tin fizzing invitingly, drops of ice melting down the side.
‘Take it, fool.’ Butch kept his eyes on Jules and saw fear creep up in pink
blotches over Jules’ pale cheeks. A snigger from one of the boys slapped Jules in
the face.
He reached for the can. But one of the other boys stepped forward and
snatched it away before he touched it. Then he had to lift his eyes, which caught
Butch’s flat face, now only a few inches away.
At that moment Jules’ nose gave up and the heavy glasses slid down his
sweating nose. Instinctively he reached up to catch them with one hand, while the
other hand pushed forward, towards Butch. With bent elbow he tried to make
space between himself and the bully.
But his movements were nightmarishly slow. Butch caught his hand easily.
‘Shit!’ Butch shouted, pulling his hand away, shaking it. He moved hid
head up and around in a circle, his eyes following an imaginary arc from his hand
to the floor as he continued to shake his hand, is if water were falling from his
fingers to the ground.
Again, ‘shit!’ he shouted, this time looking at the other boys with a silly,
mocking smile, his eyes darting from face to face. He breathed in deeply,
extending his chest. His deep, exaggerated in-breath sucked explosive laughter
from the boys.
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3. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
Jules’ face filled up with blood. And more sweat.
‘He’s bleeding sweating with fear!’ Butch mocked.
With an open palm Butch hit Jules on his overloaded backpack, which
made the frightened boy stumble forward. His frozen legs suddenly thawed into a
microwave of activity as he was propelled forward by the weight of his backpack.
He ran.
With superhuman focus and every last ounce of strength, he ran, drowning
out the jeers, which echoed behind him along the passage. As he ran around the
corner, he saw his hollow cheeks and frightened eyes stare back at him from the
glass windows. He ran through the glass-panelled corridor to the double doors on
the other side. Short-sightedly, hurriedly, he bumped himself into, and through,
the swing doors, out into the sunlight.
By then he knew they were not following him, for he would have heard
them. But he kept running, across the yard, out through the big gates, and across
the park, while pressing a fist into his tummy on each in breath to stop the sharp
stitch which was paralyzing his insides.
§
The nightmares became worse after that, so bad that they persisted into his
days. A confusion of thoughts and voices jumped around in the boy’s head,
visions real and imagined, mixing nightmares and mashing up daydreams.
Eventually he was unable to tell them apart.
Jules stopped going to school.
§
Constable Dan Cope could easily have seen what was happening on the
bridge if he had looked out of the window. The top of the bridge was clearly
visible from the window where he had been sitting.
The velvet curtain kept the inside of the pub to itself over tightly closed
windows. This, despite the fact that it had been a hot day and the August evening
was sticky and humid.
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4. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
The pub was full and the queue at the bar counter five deep. Dan waited
patiently. He was in no hurry, for the day had been a long one. A boring Monday
of paperwork and irritable superiors.
As soon as he was given his pint, even before he had paid for it, Dan bent
down and sipped thirstily, his thoughts far away.
The pub door burst open.
‘Call the cops!’ a man shouted. Dan swung around and saw the man
hurrying out of the pub. He left his drink on the counter and rushed out behind
the man.
A small crowd had gathered outside the pub.
‘Police, excuse me, out of the way, please,’ Dan said as he forced his way
through.
A slightly overweight woman stood in the centre of the group, with a
young girl crying in her arms. The girl’s thin body shook as she tried to control
her sobs.
‘It’s ok, sweetheart,’ the woman said. She had both arms around the girl.
‘Tell me what’s upsetting you,’ she said, for the girl could not stop crying. The
woman glanced up over the girl’s head at Dan.
‘Police,’ Dan said, with a questioning frown.
‘The police are here,’ the woman said softly to the girl. This seemed to
have an effect, for the girl’s body stopped shaking and her sobbing subsided into a
tremulous in-breath.
‘Will you tell the policeman what happened?’ the woman asked softly.
Before the girl could answer they heard a loud shout from behind the
crowd, ‘Police here yet?’ A man’s deep voice, coming from under the bridge
somewhere. ‘Will someone please call an ambulance!’ the voice rose with hysteria.
Dan turned and ran across the road, down the steps, which led to the bank
of the canal under the bridge. As he came to the bottom of the steps, he saw
another girl lying on her back on the narrow canal pathway. Her left elbow was
folded under her tiny body, her long black hair a mess of congealed blood and
mud. A short, stocky man was on his knees by her side, his shabby black coat
soaking up the muddy water in which the girl lay.
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5. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
‘Police!’ Dan called as he knelt down next to the man, immediately
reaching out to feel the girl’s pulse.
He could not feel anything.
‘How long has she been lying here?’ he asked the man while bending
forward over the girl’s face. He did not hear the man’s reply. With an ear close to
the girl’s mouth, he reached to feel for a pulse in her neck. There was a very faint
pulse in her, and, deep down in her throat, he thought he heard a gurgle.
‘She’s still alive,’ he said as he glanced up. By this time two paramedics
were coming running down the steps.
Dan did not wait there. He ran back up the steps, back to the pub. The
woman was still there, outside, holding the first girl by the hand. They were sitting
on a small brick wall next to the pub.
‘She did not see how it happened,’ the woman told Dan before he had said
a word. The girl sat with her head down, straight blond hair falling over her
shoulders. She looked up as Dan came to stand in front of them. She had a pretty,
small, pixie face and a pert, freckled nose.
‘What’s your name, love?’ Dan asked. The hazel speckles in her eyes were
sparkling with tears.
‘Myra,’ she whispered.
‘Is the other girl under the bridge your friend, Myra?’ She nodded. Fresh
tears started out of her eyes. She did not blink, but kept her eyes on Dan’s face,
while the tears ran freely down her cheeks. She stared at Dan, not moving.
‘Were the two of you together?’ Another nod.
‘Was anyone else there?’ At first the girl shook her head, then she frowned.
‘Did you see anyone?’ Dan prompted.
Yes, she nodded.
‘A girl?’ Another shake of the head. ‘A boy,’ she whispered.
‘Do you know him?’
Yes. Another nod. Then she started sobbing again. She bent herself
double, dropped her face on her knees which she held tightly together, and
sobbed into her hands.
‘It’s ok, don’t worry,’ said Dan. ‘We won’t talk about it now. You go home
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6. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
and have a rest. I’ll come and see you at home tomorrow, OK?’
She nodded without looking up.
‘I’ll walk you home if you like,’ Dan said, reaching for her arm. She stood
up slowly, trembling against his hand.
§
‘I saw the boy there, on the bridge,’ Myra told Dan the next morning. She
looked much calmer, her long hair tied back in a tidy ponytail. But her thin face
was very pale, her eyes big and round.
‘Do you know the boy’s name?’
‘I don’t know what his real name is, but I think they call him Jules,’ she
said.
‘Where was he when your friend fell over the bridge?’
‘I never saw him before she fell over, but I’m sure he pushed her.’
‘Why do you think he pushed her?’
‘Coz she screamed before she fell and I came running back when she
screamed, and I saw him just after she fell.’
‘Where were you?’
‘On the other side of the bridge.’
‘Could you see her from where you were?’
‘No, I was too far away. But I heard her scream.’
‘And that was when you came running towards her?’
‘Yes. Then I saw the boy.’
‘Jules?’
Yes, she said. He was running away from Myra. He ran down the road, off
the bridge she told Dan.
He must have pushed her friend, Myra insisted. Today she felt angry. Her
friend was still unconscious, critically ill. She was sure that that weird boy, Jules,
had pushed her friend, she said.
‘He’s real weird,’ she told Dan.
‘What do you mean weird?’ Dan asked.
‘He looks strange like, you know?’ she said. ‘Always alone. Kinda sad, like,
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7. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
coz no-one ever talks with him at school. He mumbles to himself, acts crazy like.
And he smells. His clothes smell. It’s gross, the way he is. Scary-like,’ she said, no
longer crying, her lips pinching up as if the smell were there, coming from Dan.
§
The voices were all talking at the same time now. They were saying all sorts
of things. Important things, like that he should not desert his gran, that he should
look after her. He listened to them. He did look after her like they told him. He
did this very seriously, for she needed him, now, more than ever before.
That morning, as he had done for many days, he took his time, carefully
putting the ointment on her face for her. The ointment was meant for her hand,
he knew, but he had nothing else, so he offered to put it on her face, and she did
not object. He patted it on her cheeks, taking his time, for the skin was very
delicate and he could not rub it in without hurting her.
The bossy voice said, ‘Stop that, you silly ass. Can’t you see that she’s not
enjoying it?’ He looked up at her, wondering if she’d heard the voice too, but she
just kept her eyes closed, enjoying the way he gently stroked her cheek with the
ointment. He hated the bossy voice most of all. He ignored it, and he carefully
crooked his index finger and scooped up more ointment.
‘Turn this way, Granna, I can’t reach your throat,’ he said to his
grandmother. Gently, lightly, he turned her head to face him, and he thought he
saw a small smile on her lips while she kept her eyes shut.
A wetness returned on her cheeks. ‘Don’t cry, please Granna, don’t cry,’ he
told her softly, trying to wipe the wet away. With his little finger he lifted a wisp of
grey hair from her forehead and applied the ointment above her eyebrows. He
worked gently, taking his time, loving her.
The little voice encouraged him. Ask her to read you a story, it said. She
will do it for you, you deserve it, the way you are looking after her. Go on, ask
her. Bet she agrees, it whispered.
He bent down and picked up the open book and put it on her lap. Lightly
he lifted her hand and put it on the open book, to keep it in place. Her eyes were
still closed, her smile now faded as she went deeper into her silent world.
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8. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
‘Please read to me, Granna,’ Jule whispered, hoping she would open her
eyes and read to him. He, too, now closed his eyes and he sank back into the
corner on the floor opposite her chair, pulling his knees into his chest. He put his
head on his knees, his legs up in front of him, hugging his knees, as he used to do
when he was very little.
‘But Big Ears,’ his grandmother’s soft Noddy-voice drifted through his
comforting infantile world, ‘Mr Plod said that I should stay here with you.’
Jules kept his eyes tightly shut, savouring the sound. Although her voice
was soft, it still managed to block out the bossy voice and drown out the little
voice inside his head. Slowly he opened his eyes. He stretched his neck and peered
over his grandmother’s arm, at the picture in the book which lay open in her lap,
under her hand, just where he had place it.
He jumped up, shocked, as the doorbell rang.
His head hit against the door as he tried to get out of his confusion. He
stumbled forward through the door. He had still not got his glasses back, and he
could not see through the gloomy passage. He stopped, feeling disorientated, not
quite sure what to do, what had shocked him out of his half-sleep.
He stood with his back against the wall for a moment, breathing heavily,
blinking his eyes, trying to settle his jumping, confused mind. The voices were all
quiet now, nobody told him what to do.
The doorbell rang again, longer this time, insistently.
He could see the shape of the man through the lace curtain as he stepped
forward. He was two steps from the front door, but his legs would not take him
further. He stopped, scared, stiff, hardly breathing, hoping that the person would
leave.
But the doorbell rang again. This time it did not stop.
Slowly, heart pounding, he stepped forward. One step. A big drop of sweat
trickled down his spine. A second step and his underarm slid on the sweat in his
armpit.
He stopped. The bell had gone quiet.
Dan had stopped ringing the doorbell. Something looked very wrong, but
he did not know what it was. He knocked on the shiny green door, loudly. He
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9. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
opened the top button of his shirt, pulled at his tie, which had gone very right in
the hot sun.
From the corner of his eye he saw the lace-curtain fall back behind the
window next to the front door.
Everything was very still in the cul-de-sac. The little garden in front of the
green door looked tidy, but in need of water, for the flowers neatly bordering the
path looked withered. He raised his hand to knock on the door again. Just then it
opened, very slowly.
The young boy did not open the door very widely. Dan could just see a
thin nose through the opening, opaque eyes staring obliquely and short-sightedly
at him.
Jules tweaked the fine tip of his nose up. This made him look very young
and vulnerable. Sweat appeared like drops of water out of his waterlogged skin.
‘Yes?’ his voice squeaked in broken adolescence. He blinked up at the
policeman, into the bright sunlight behind his bigness.
Dan took off his hat. He opened his mouth, then shut it. The smell which
rushed out from behind the boy almost knocked him back into the street.
‘I must talk with you,’ Dan said. He did not wait for a reply, but stepped
forward and pushed past Jules, who did not resist.
The smell inside the tiny, dark passage was almost unbearable. Dan looked
at Jules, who hung his head, staring down at his oversized shoes.
‘You know what I’ve come about, don’t you?’ Dan asked the teenager.
Jules nodded. He did not take his eyes off the carpet.
‘Is your name Jules Delaney?’
‘Yes,’ Jules said, in a hoarse whisper, his eyes still down. He had not used
his voice for days. His breath smelt of rotting teeth.
Dan realised that there was something very wrong in the house. The boy’s
eyes darted from Dan’s face to the cupboard under the stairs, then back to Dan.
The door to the cupboard was slightly open.
‘What’s in there –‘ Dan said, pushing past the boy to the half-open door.
Jules jumped forward, trying to block Dan’s way. Dan grabbed him by the
arm and pushed past him.
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10. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
With incredible speed Jules turned around and kicked Dan in the shin.
Dan’s leg folded back and he tripped. His head hit the banister and he went flying
into the hall table, which the boy had pushed away from the wall as he ran out of
the front door.
It was not too difficult to catch Jules, who ran without energy, with the
listlessness of the hungry, as if he wanted to be caught. Dan grabbed him from
behind by his sticky neck and brought him down onto the pavement.
§
The decaying corpse was sitting tidily on a small armchair in the cupboard
under the stairs, an open book in its lap, held open by fermenting fingers. The
bulb above its head was yellow with age and gave very little light. It cast shadows
over the muddy cheeks, which were covered with a white ointment. The boy had
tried unsuccessfully, for days, to stop the flow of body fluid from the oozing eyes
which were closed, the mouth set in a rigid smile, congealed by death. Crusty
white layers of body fluid, slimy in places, which had flowed from the nose and
ears, had settled in the folds of her neck.
The boy had tied her to the stool, and the rope was hanging loosely around
her sagging body, looped through the drain pipe behind her against the wall to
keep her from falling forward. She had once been an obese person, for her rotting
flesh was hanging in empty, uneven, bags under her high-necked floral dress and
apron, from under which came the most suffocating stink Dan had ever smelt.
It was a long time before the police managed to get the boy to talk about
it. Under police guard, Jules slept for days, first with the drugs which the doctors
gave him, then in a semi-conscious, exhausted stupor.
His concern when he finally awoke was for his grandmother, his loving
Granna, whom he had found lying in the passage when he had come down from
his room for breakfast one morning, the nurse told Dan.
‘She doted on the boy,’ said a shocked neighbour. A thin, curious woman,
with widespread fingers covering a bony chest, she spoke with the sombre,
sanctimonious sobriety of the curious, all the while peering inquisitively over the
fence between their two houses. She was eager to speak.
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11. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
‘Brought him up from when he was four, when his mother left them. How
terrible. Just upped and left the child with the poor dear. They never got on.
Never heard from her again. That were nine years ago,’ she said.
Jules’ grandmother had died from natural causes, a heart attack, the police
doctors reported, while Jules lay in semi-consciousness avoidance.
He had found her lying at the foot of the stairs, Jules mumbled to the
nurse during a brief, reluctant bout of consciousness. Slowly the young nurse
pieced the story together while she tended to him over the next few days.
The harsh reality of his grandmother’s death eventually dropped like a
stone into his befuddled brain, starting fresh ripples of insecurity over an already
fragile life. He eventually started to speak his grief in broken tones, his cracked
voice splintering under the strain. Between freak outs and blackouts, voices and
dream attacks of steel blades ripping bloodless flesh into metal strips, Jules’ mind
relived his distress. The young nurse had a job piecing the story together, had a
worse time protecting the boy’s delicate personality from complete fracture.
His gran was all he had. Now she was gone, and his brain refused to accept
it.
His grief and fear had made it impossible for him to part from his gran, the
nurse reported to the police. The voices had told him to put her in the cupboard.
They had given him the strength to drag her there and pull her onto the small
chair, given him the super determination to do so. She would not sit up, so he had
tied her to the pole behind her, ‘..gently, I never hurt her,’ he made sure the nurse
understood - so that he could rub the cream over her face, the cream which the
doctor had given her for the cracks in her hands. This he knew.
His dreams had kept her alive for him. And the voices had assured him
that she was alright, as long as he stayed close to her. That’s why he dared not go
to school.
The doctors would not allow the police to question Jules for many days.
‘It might turn into a murder charge,’ Dan told them, for Myra’s friend was
slipping further into unconsciousness as the days went by.
On the fourth day Dan was allowed to interview Jules, with a nurse
standing close by.
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12. Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
The girls had not at first seen him, Jules said. In fact, he did not think that
they saw him at all, for he had stood out of their sight, under the bridge all the
time, while the two girls were playing around on the bridge. Even when Myra’s
friend with the white trainers had leaned over the railing and spat out her gum,
she did not see him, he was sure. He had watched the gum as it sailed down
slowly, as it took a turn and landed a foot away from his toes, where he had stood
behind the bush under the bridge.
‘I looked up,’ he mumbled to Dan, who listened intently, not wanting to
disturb the tenuous connection he had established with the boy by writing things
down.
Then one of the girls had raised the edge of her school skirt to wipe her
nose, Jules said. This detail he remembered, recounting it to Dan with clarity, as if
it proved his innocence.
He had watched the girl carefully. Myra was not there then. He knew
Myra’s name, but he did not know the other girl, the one who had fallen over the
bridge.
After that it had happened very quickly.
Someone must have walked up to Myra’s friend, he said.
‘Did you see anyone?’ Dan asked.
‘No, I never saw him, but I heard them talking with the girls on the bridge.
I think it is one of the boys from my school.’
Jules wanted to get away before the other boys saw him. He was just about
to step out from behind the bush where he was hiding under the bridge, he said,
when he saw Butch running under the bridge. ‘He ran past the bush and I waited
for him to pass. He ran past me. He did not see me,” Jules whispered, close to
tears. ‘He ran fast. He did not see me,’ he repeated.
He watched Butch scramble up the bank, onto the bridge.
Then Jules heard the girl scream, while he was still in hiding.
‘I was too scared to come out,’ he said.
Dan did not believe him. Myra had not said a word about anyone else
having been there. She had seen only Jules.
‘What did you do then?’ he asked Jules.
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‘Nuffink. I was too scared,’ Jules said from behind closed eyes. He had
withdrawn from Dan. ‘I heard the girl screaming. Then I saw her fall over the
bridge,’ he said, almost inaudibly.
He drew himself back deep into the bush under the bridge, he said. He
could see the thin girl’s legs and lower body lying on its back on the cement path
from where he was standing. Her legs were spread wide apart, and blood was
running from a gash in her leg, onto the pavement.
Everything went quiet on top of the bridge. The boys had run away, so he
came out and ran up the steps, onto the bridge and away.
‘He’s lying,’ Dan thought, watching the boy carefully, wondering what line
of questioning to follow next. He stared at the boy, who did not open his eyes
again.
‘Why should we believe you,’ Dan asked softly, almost to himself. The boy
had slipped away into his comfortable world and did not answer. Then, louder,
‘Why should we believe you. How do we know that you had not pushed her?’
From somewhere, from very far away, Jules heard Dan. And with Dan’s
voice came a vague memory. He tried to grab it, then it faded away, out of his
grasp. He frowned, and Dan knew that the boy had heard him.
Dan remained silent, watching the boy intently. Slowly Jules’ frown settled
and his face relaxed. The memory appeared again, further forward into the present
this time, and took shape in a reluctant cloud of fact. Jules pushed it forward to
the front of his mind with great effort, making it jump over other images, dart
between the voices which had started to mumble in the back of his life as they
ducked to allow the memory to flow over them and past jumbled thoughts, down
into Jules’ dry mouth.
‘Butch’s knife,’ Jules said.
‘What?’ Dan asked, caught by surprise.
‘Butch dropped his knife. I saw it. I kicked against it when I ran away. It
must still be there, next to the bush, under the bridge.’ His words collided over
each other excitedly. He opened his eyes, frowning at Dan accusingly.
As quickly as it had risen, the fight in Jules subsided. ‘The knife must still
be there,’ he finished weakly. What’s the use, they won’t believe you, the bossy
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voice clearly said, and that was that. Jules closed his tired eyes. The natter of the
voices increased and he went to join them, for that was where he received his
comfort, where he was safe. He ignored everyone else and slipped away back into
sleep, even while Dan and the nurse where still waiting for him to finish talking.
Dan nodded at the nurse and left the room quietly while the nurse drew
the curtains to allow the boy to enjoy, with undisturbed relief, his own world, the
only place which offered him safety from the other world of cruelty and loss.
‘What will happen to me now?’ he asked as soon as he woke up. The room
had gone dark. He had slept and slept. The sun was gone. The policeman had just
come back. He was standing at the door, talking to the nurse.
Hearing Jules, Dan turned to him.
‘You get yourself better, son. That’s what must happen next,’ Dan said,
glancing at the nurse as he walked out and closed the door quietly behind him.
Butches’ bloody knife was inside a plastic evidence bag in Dan’s pocket.
He signalled to the policeman on guard outside Jules’ hospital room and together
they walked out into the sunshine, out of the boy’s fragmented life.
end
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