Silenced by Simon Packham

Author:Simon Packham [Packham, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848122116
Publisher: Piccadilly Press Ltd.

You’ve got to believe me, Dec; all this stuff I’ve been telling you, even that thing with the rabbit, it really happened, I swear. I could be mistaken about a few minor details (maybe it was a robin not a blackbird; and Holly Hunt didn’t exactly cackle, she had rather a gentle laugh), but basically, it’s all true.

I’m trying to show that although what I did was stupid, dangerous and occasionally illegal, if you go through the story step-by-step, it does kind of make sense. So if the next little bit sounds like something from a straight-to-DVD sci-fi movie, I want to reassure you that I most emphatically did not make it up.

It was the first day back after half-term. I got to my tutor base early, kind of hoping to avoid Will Hunt until our first timetabled encounter in PE. Rob the Slob always arrived at the crack of dawn. He liked to run through his official engagements in the page-a-day diary he lugged around with him like a prehistoric iPhone. Luke Corcoran only turned up early when his dad was working nights. The days of the ‘Get Chris to talk’ game were long gone, so they both ignored me as I sloped over to a radiator and started warming my hands.

I’m not denying that I was still reeling from my recent discovery in the wetlands, and it’s true that later on I did sort of start seeing stuff, but I promise you, Declan, I know what I heard. Unbelievable though it might sound, Rob the Slob and Luke Corcoran were actually discussing theology.

‘So do you believe in God then, Slobber?’

Rob the Slob was underlining in red biro. ‘Depends what you mean by God.’

‘You know, geezer who made the world, wrote the Bible and that?’

‘I believe in order,’ said Rob the Slob, saving his place with a post-it note. ‘That everything happens for a reason.’

Luke Corcoran blew a thoughtful bubble. ‘Yeah, but if he’s, like, such a great bloke and that, why’s the world so full of crap?’

Underneath his buttoned-up exterior, Rob the Slob was actually quite a humorist. ‘I thought we covered all this in RE, Luke. Surely you remember Mr Willcock’s fascinating lesson on free will.’

‘Yeah, nice one, Slobber – you’re the man.’ But Luke Corcoran was in no mood to be fobbed off with cheap jokes. ‘But how come you’re you and I’m . . . me?’

‘Eh?’

‘Well, it’s not fair, is it?’ said Luke. ‘Kids like you are born lucky. I’ve spent my whole life being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘It’s not all luck,’ said Rob the Slob, carefully refolding his fragrant PE kit. ‘There is a certain amount of hard work involved.’

Luke Corcoran was cramming a lifetime of soul-searching into two minutes. ‘So what do you think happens to us when we die?’

It was a question I’d asked a lot since the accident, and I was anxious to hear our esteemed head student’s considered response. Rob the Slob was about to illuminate

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