All You Need is Love by Matthews Carole

Author:Matthews, Carole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carole Matthews INK Ltd.
Published: 2014-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifty-Eight

‘It’s not going well,’ Charlie said.

They were both sitting in Kyle’s bedroom. The window was open and Kyle dragged deeply on the cigarette; he passed it to Charlie who did the same. Simultaneously, they then wafted the smoke out of the window with frantic waves.

‘I had to go to an art gallery with them on Saturday.’

Kyle pulled a suitably appalled face.

‘What can I do?’

‘Child from Hell,’ Kyle reminded him.

‘I can’t,’ Charlie told his friend. ‘Mum’d kill me. And she really likes him.’ The thought made him take another worried drag on the cigarette. ‘We have to find a way to make her like Johnny more.’ He passed the cancer stick to his friend. ‘He painted a great picture on the wall outside our flats telling her that he loved her.’

Kyle stuck his finger in his mouth and feigned vomiting.

‘I know,’ Charlie agreed. ‘It’s a bit soppy, but grown-ups can’t help it. Even that didn’t work. I thought it might.’

‘Johnny does paintings?’

‘Yeah. He’s got a lock-up over the other side of the estate. He’s really good.’

‘Can we go and look at them?’

The boy shook his head. ‘I haven’t got a key.’

‘Since when did that matter?’

Kyle leaned out of the window and stubbed out the cigarette on the brickwork. Then he wrapped it in a piece of toilet paper that he’d purloined earlier for the purpose. The mummified butt then went into his pocket so that any incriminating evidence could be disposed of well away from the house.

‘Come on. Let’s go and look in the shed.’ Both boys jumped down off the bed and Charlie trooped after his friend, down the stairs, through the kitchen and down the worn scrap of grass that constituted the Crossman family’s back garden.

In the long-neglected shed, Kyle rooted through a motley assortment of rusted tools. ‘These all belonged to my real dad,’ he told Charlie as he passed one then the other to his friend for him to examine. ‘My current dad’s a useless fucker when it comes to DIY. That’s what my mum says, anyway.’

Charlie brushed away cobwebs as he tried to peer over his friend’s shoulder into the treasure trove. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘These,’ Kyle said and produced, with a theatrical flourish, a large pair of bolt cutters.

‘What are we going to do with those?’

‘Get into Johnny’s garage.’ His friend handed them over. ‘Put them up your T-shirt.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we don’t want to be seen with them, knobhead.’

Charlie put the bolt cutters up his T-shirt. They were dirty and the metal was cold against his skin and he knew why Kyle didn’t want to put them up his own T-shirt.

‘Bring a screwdriver too,’ Kyle said and, pre-empting Charlie’s next question, added, ‘In case we need one.’

A screwdriver joined the bolt cutters and the pair made their way out of the shed and back down the garden, carefully avoiding being seen from the kitchen window as Kyle’s mum was in there having a cup of tea with one of her mates before they went to Bingo.

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