Kieran.Stories

I had a friend at school, Martin. 

‘How?’ I asked. ‘That’s impossible!’

We were in a tunnel, inside Wacky Warehouse, above it all.   

‘Dad showed me,’ he said.  

Martin said he could tell me loads about insects. You don’t hear a lot about insects as an adult. It’s only when you become a parent they come out of the woodwork. Perhaps that’s an oversimplification. 

‘When we’re lining up, I’m gonna turn into a bee.’ 

You see, bees were my favourite, and this meant that he listened. I looked at him and thought, ‘I love you,’ and I felt a tingle on my neck. 

I loved his nose, and his floppy hair and blue eyes. I loved the way he put his hand up when he didn’t know the answer. Martin lived with just his mum, like me. But he had never turned into something as small as a bee and it frightened me.  

‘Are you scared?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, but, you like em.’ 

I kissed his cheek, so quickly that no one really saw. The bell rang. 

It might be hard to believe, but I forgot about Martin. Occasionally, my mum or my mum’s friends in the village would talk about him. I remember being at Karen’s house and hearing her and Mum talking about it in the kitchen. I hadn’t forgotten him then, but by the time I went to secondary school, there were other things to think about, and what had happened to Martin sunk into the background of my life, like a drone. When I got to university, it was something to tell new friends. I only started thinking about this all again because Sally is now the age Martin was when he vanished.  

‘Shall we get the boots out of the car?’

‘Let’s just leave them in there,’ I say.

Josh walks to the front door holding Sally’s hand. She’s too old for that now, or is that heartless of me? This is our home for the long weekend. Sally wanders round the corner. 

‘Not too far,’ I say. 

This garden backs onto a field, with Pendle Hill beyond that. I hear him saying behind me how nothing has changed, but then he spots something and says, that wasn’t there before, that’s new. 

Then, Sally screams. It happens like that. Sally screams. 

She falls to her knees on the grass, clutching her right arm. 

Josh flicks the bee off Sally’s arm. He stamps it out with the sole of his shoe. I flinch. As he consoles our daughter, I see him see me, and I have little to no idea what his look could mean.