Attica

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: YA Fantasy

Synopsis

A novel with echoes of timeless classics such as THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, THE BORROWERS and ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Garry Kilworth's ATTICA reveals a twilight world of forgotten wonders, and extraordinary adventures - all happening just above our heads. Join Jordy, Alex and Chloe as they cross the portal from our world to a strange and wonderful other place, accessible for just a moment in time through the trap-door of the attic in their family home. From hat-stand forests, to towering hills of old musical instruments, deserts of old books and a great water-tank lake, the vast continent they stumble upon is one of limitless surprises - and that's before they meet the inhabitants: strange clans of small and lumpen people who live in homes constructed from all manner of found things and drive vehicles powered by old sewing-machine parts. It is against this remarkable backdrop that the three children will embark on a spellbinding adventure to recover a prized possession, save a life, and - somehow - find a way back home.

Release date: April 4, 2013

Publisher: Atom

Print pages: 334

Sample

The attic smelled of dust and ages. Jordy peered through a shaft of sunlight speckled with motes to a dim network of beams and rafters. He reminded himself he was a boy who wasn’t afraid of eerie places. But the silence and the gloom of the attic, along with that atmosphere of dead air, were enough to disturb the most resolute of boys. A sound came from the depths. Were there birds up here, inside the roofing? Or worse still, rats? Who could tell? There could be rotted bodies in trunks, old festering secrets from bygone years, evidence of horrible crimes. Anything.

‘Jordy, come on, this box is heavy – my arms are falling off!’

He jumped at the sound, which seemed very loud to him.

‘Sorry, Clo,’ he said, reaching back down the steps for the box of oddments. ‘I – I was just …’

‘I scared you, didn’t I?’ cried his step-sister. ‘You jumped a mile then.’

‘Not scared, exactly,’ he replied through gritted teeth. ‘It’s just a bit spooky up here. Come and look.’

‘No, thanks. Too dirty. Just push the box in. You don’t need to go all the way up. Those places get filthy. My mum and your dad’ – none of the children had quite got used to the new arrangements yet, and were still awkward with what to call their parents – ‘will have to bring the heavy stuff up themselves.’

‘I’m quite strong.’

‘Me too, but not when it comes to lifting furniture …’

She continued talking, but Jordy wasn’t listening. He was staring into that half-lit world of the attic. You couldn’t see the walls: they were hidden in darkness. The pillar of light coming from a single window tile seemed to be the only substantial thing up there, and of course that wasn’t solid, it was just air, sunshine and swimming dust. He could see a pile of old clothes under a rafter, with what looked like a crumbling hymn book or Bible on top. The rags looked like the carcass of some grotesque animal, but he could see now that they were a soldier’s uniform, by the black buttons and the battered cap perched on top. Probably a long-dead soldier from a forgotten war.

Jordy shuddered and retreated down the steps.

Then, to rid himself of his dark mood, he put on a mock hoarse voice and said to Chloe, ‘Don’t go up there. It’s horrible.’

‘Oh, you—’ Chloe punched him on the shoulder.

They went downstairs together, to join the rest of the family.

They were in the front garden, staring at the furniture which was left over now that they had filled their new three-bedroomed flat. Not that it was much to look at, Dipa conceded. Most of it was junk. When two single parents set up home together, it resulted in the meeting of two great furniture tidal waves. The contents of two separate homes rushed together and formed a huge pile of tables, chairs, sideboards, dressers and other household goods.

It was Dipa who took charge as usual.

‘From what’s left we’ll keep our sideboard and your desk,’ she said. ‘The rest can go to a charity shop.’

‘What about my old piano stool?’ said Ben, sounding a little peeved. ‘I made that myself. Look, Nelson needs it.’

‘Nelson would sleep on a bed of glass if it was warm enough,’ snorted Dipa, ‘and you know it.’

Nelson, their three-legged ginger cat, was stretched out on the satin-covered seat in feline bliss, his warm furry body soaking up the sun. Nelson had lost a front leg in an uneven battle with a pickup truck. He now used his disability to attract sympathy when he wanted something, limping more than usual and letting out a pathetic yowl which soon turned to a rumbling growl if he didn’t get what he wanted. He could also move like lightning still, chasing the sparrows in the yard.

Smiling, Dipa placed a hand on her new husband’s shoulder. ‘Your woodwork skills are astonishing, darling, but we don’t have a piano.’

Ben sighed in resignation. ‘All right, one of each. That’s fair, I suppose.’

The three children, fed up and bored with moving difficulties, stood by and watched. Jordy was Ben’s only child: a tall lean boy with a languid air of superiority about him. Next came Chloe, very pretty, her pitch-black hair inherited from Asian ancestors. There was a defiant look which made you wary of upsetting her. Finally, two years younger, there was Alex, with a squarer build than the other two and a quieter disposition. Alex had dark eyes that looked out at you, but didn’t let you look in. You rarely guessed what he was thinking.

‘Can we go for a pizza now?’ asked Jordy. ‘You said we could have lunch out.’

‘Well, I’m certainly not cooking anything,’ Dipa said, ‘so you’d better. I’ll call the charity shop first, in case it rains and ruins all this lot. Ben, can you give the kids some money, then go and tip the removal men? They’re sitting in the cab of their lorry, waiting.’

Dipa didn’t stop for replies. She bounded through the front doorway and up to their first-floor flat. Their new home was in one of those big Victorian terraced houses which had been owned by a Mr Grantham before the conversion to two flats. Mr Grantham, a very elderly man, now lived on the ground floor, having sold the upstairs flat to the Wilsons.

Dipa telephoned a charity shop, told them where to find the furniture, then went to join Ben. The pair followed their children into the city and to a pizza place they had found earlier. Jordy, Chloe and Alex were in a much better mood now that they had fizzy drinks and food inside them.

‘Hey, here they are,’ cried Jordy, as Dipa and Ben entered, ‘fresh from battles with sofa and sideboard.’

Right at that moment Ben’s mobile phone rang: the theme tune from the TV programme ER. He answered it, then said, ‘Sorry, folks, gotta go. Stuart’s not turned up for his shift this afternoon. Sick or something.’

The children groaned, but they were used to this. Ben was a paramedic and Dipa was a doctor, so their parents were often called away. At least Dipa was not starting at the hospital until the day after tomorrow, so she was safe for forty-eight hours. She jammed a piece of Chloe’s pizza in her husband’s mouth and told him to get a takeaway later. Then once he’d gone she settled down with the kids to enjoy their company.

Mr Grantham was a solitary and distant person. In truth he was not a happy man, though his life had not been a terrible one. He had fought in the Second World War, had been married for fifty years, and had for most of that time been reasonably content. But now there was nothing to do but sit and think, and for some reason he could not dwell on happy times, but rather on those occasions when he was treated badly.

‘Noisy bunch,’ he muttered, as he heard his new neighbours going up the stairs. ‘No consideration.’

Then the television went on upstairs. Loud at first, but then turned down lower.

He had his own television of course, but he rarely switched it on these days. Half of it he didn’t understand: these ‘reality’ shows as they called them. Youths and girls draped over chairs, yelling at one another. The other half was full of very young, gaudy and loud presenters too full of their own self-importance. Every programme seemed to be crammed with confrontations. Mr Grantham didn’t much like his own company but he cared even less for the ghostly company of spiky-haired young men and bouncy, grinning young women. They didn’t even speak the Queen’s English, most of them. No, he preferred the radio these days.

Mr Grantham was not looking forward to sharing his house with these strangers, but financial difficulties had forced him into it.

Two weeks after the move a hot, bright day came to bless the Wilsons in their new home. It was the summer holidays. Jordy was playing a computer game in his bedroom, Alex was making a huge and complex kite out of a kit, and Chloe had decided to take a book to read outside.

The back garden was communal. Mr Grantham had retained the right to use it, while at the same time conceding that the new occupants would also like to enjoy it. Not that there was much to it, in the way of flower beds and shrubs. There was a rough-looking lawn of sorts, and apple trees at the bottom, and what used to be a vegetable plot. Mr Grantham’s back would no longer allow him to dig, though he still mowed the grass. He was out there sitting in a deckchair watching the butterflies and birds, when Chloe came with a canvas seat and plonked herself nearby.

‘Hope I’m not disturbing you, Mr Grantham?’ she said, flashing him one of her famous smiles. ‘I won’t make a sound, I promise.’

Nelson had followed Chloe out into the garden and sprawled himself on the grass next to Mr Grantham’s deckchair.

‘Suit yourself, young lady,’ grunted Mr Grantham. ‘It’s your garden too.’

‘Chloe,’ she said. ‘My name’s Chloe.’

‘And mine’s Mr Grantham.’

They settled into silence, broken only by the sounds of nature and Chloe’s pages being turned.

‘What’re you reading?’ asked Mr Grantham at length. ‘One of them Harry Potters?’

‘Not this time,’ said Chloe. She held it up. ‘It’s a book called Holes. It’s about a boy in America …’

‘Oh, don’t tell me the plot,’ said Mr Grantham quickly, waving skinny fingers at her. ‘Nothing so boring as hearing the plot of a novel second-hand. Drives you potty.’

Chloe refused to be annoyed by this old man. She always considered herself good at charming reluctant people and this was a challenge.

‘Harry Potty?’ she said.

Mr Grantham, despite himself, chuckled.

‘Very good, very good.’

‘I always carry a list of my top twenty favourite books,’ said Chloe, taking a folded sheet of paper from her jeans pocket. ‘Do you want to hear it?’

‘Not especially. Do you want to hear my life story?’

He was being sarcastic and was startled when Chloe replied, ‘Yes. I expect it’s very interesting.’ She put the book down in a deliberate way. Nelson gave a great big yawn and rolled over onto his back, his remaining three legs sticking in the air. His eyes were looking up at Mr Grantham’s face as if in expectation.

‘Well,’ said Mr Grantham, flustered. He waved away a wasp that came too near. ‘I don’t expect it’s that interesting, to a young person like you.’ He changed the subject. ‘This your cat? What’s her name?’

‘Our cat, and his name’s Nelson.’

‘Likes water and sailing ships, does he?’

Chloe smiled. ‘No, of course not, but he’s lost a limb – in the same place as the admiral.’

‘Oh, very good.’ Mr Grantham made an attempt at tickling Nelson’s tummy and received an indignant glare in return. ‘Where are you from, Chloe? You from India? Were you born out there?’

‘No, I’m from here. I was born in Portsmouth,’ she replied, without any asperity. ‘My dad was half-English – he wanted us to have first names which sounded British – but my mum’s parents came from Bengal. My brother Alexander was born in Brighton. Jordy was born in the West Country, I think. Minehead. He’s not my real brother, he’s my step-brother, but we get on OK. Where were you born?’

‘Funnily enough, India,’ he said. ‘My dad was in the army out there. So I first saw the world in the Far East and you’re from England.’ He turned awkwardly in his deckchair. ‘That dark-haired one. The smaller boy. He passed me in the hall without a good-morning or a how-are-you.’

‘That’s Alex. He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just quiet. Lost in a world of his own. He wasn’t being rude. Sometimes I get annoyed with him and yell at him to pay attention to me, and he simply looks startled – you know, like a rabbit with a fox or something. You can tell he’s somewhere else, on another planet. Some boys are like that. Most girls are like me though, aren’t they? Chatterboxes.’

She smiled, knowing by his amused look that she was charming the socks off Mr Grantham. He was a crusty old man, even Dipa and Ben had said that, but Chloe was good at getting under the armour of such people. When they had had their dog, the woman at the kennels had been regarded as a ferocious dragon, but Chloe had made her a friend.

Her new step-father had been an easy nut to crack at first, but she noted with some chagrin that now he was family he was not so swiftly charmed. Neither she nor Alex had liked him in the beginning, though that had not stopped her from being enchanting. Ben was not what they would have chosen for their mother as a second husband. He didn’t seem ambitious enough. Ben seemed happy to remain just a paramedic, which was not much different from a nurse, while Dipa was way above him as a doctor.

Their own father had been a businessman, full of drive.

‘Penny for ’em.’ Mr Grantham interrupted her thoughts. ‘’Less they’re private, of course.’

‘I was thinking about my dad.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Not the one you’ve seen, my real dad. He died of a heart attack two years ago.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘You have a new dad now, then?’

‘Ben’s divorced. His wife ran off with a neighbour.’

Mr Grantham’s eyebrows went up. ‘That’s a bit more information than I think I should have.’

‘Yes, sorry,’ said Chloe, biting her lip. ‘Ben’s all right, really. But he’s not my dad.’

‘Of course not. I expect he’d agree with that. At least you’ve got a family. All mine have gone.’

Things were getting a little gloomy.

‘Can I get you a drink or something?’ asked Chloe brightly. ‘A cup of tea?’

The words ‘cup of tea’ seemed to stir the old man’s energy levels and he perked up.

‘You wouldn’t mind? The back door to the kitchen’s open. I could really do with a drink and I can’t always get up once I’m sat down.’

‘I don’t mind.’

Chloe went into the kitchen, which was a mess. Nelson, limping badly and full of hope, followed at her heels making soft meows. Chloe ignored Nelson and found the teabags and the kettle. The milk was in the fridge. She gave Nelson the cream from the top in a tin lid. He lapped it up quickly then, sensing that was it, went back to Mr Grantham’s feet.

‘Do you take sugar?’ she called, and when he waved over the top of the deckchair, cried, ‘How many?’

He held up one finger.

The sugar was harder to find, but she tracked it down eventually. She made two cups of tea in rather dubiously clean cups and took them out to Mr Grantham.

He said, ‘Got yourself one, eh? Quite right and proper.’

He sipped the tea with thin lips, staring into the yards of the houses that backed their own. Chloe noticed that the backs of his hands were covered in dark nebulous islands like coffee stains. Blue veins stood out under the thin layer of skin. Mr Grantham was very, very old.

‘Were you married?’ asked Chloe, trying to spark off the conversation again. ‘Did you have a wife?’

Mr Grantham put down the cup with a shaking hand, making it rattle in the saucer.

‘I had a wife, a very nice lady,’ he said, his translucent blue eyes beginning to moist over. ‘She died several years ago. It’s becoming harder to remember her face now.’

‘You have photos though?’

‘Oh yes, I have lots of photos of Florrie. Of her, and other people. But they’re just ghosts now. It doesn’t seem real any longer, that old life. It feels as if I’ve read about it, in a history book. Funny how the mind works.’

The pair of them spoke no more that day. Chloe read her book and Mr Grantham read his memories.

Jordy teased her a little when she told him about her conversation with Mr Grantham.

‘I wouldn’t know what to say to an old guy like that,’ he said. ‘What’ve you got in common?’

‘Secrets,’ she said. ‘Girls just love secrets. To hear them and to tell them. Old men have got lots of secrets. Things we wouldn’t even dream of. You don’t know anything about girls, do you?’

‘Don’t want to,’ he said haughtily. ‘Especially if they support Manchester United.’

She said, puzzled, ‘I don’t support any football team.’

‘That’s even worse.’

A week after their first meeting, Chloe again found Mr Grantham in the garden, contemplating nature. This time it took quite a while for her to get him to open up, but once he did Mr Grantham was even less reluctant than before to share his thoughts with her. She asked him at one point if he had gone to university, as she was thinking of doing that one day.

‘University? No, no, never went there.’ He almost chuckled. ‘We didn’t do things like that in them days. I went to a village school. Left at fourteen. Never took exams or anything like that. Went to work in a grocer’s, behind the counter. Just before I was twenty, the war came along, and I joined up.’ His eyes narrowed at this point. ‘I was engaged to a young woman called Susan then. She gave me a silver pocket-watch before I left for overseas, with her photo in the lid which covered the face. It was musical. Played Frère Jacques when you opened it.’

‘Oh, were you very much in love?’ Chloe recalled that his wife’s name had been Florrie. ‘You didn’t marry in the end?’

His mouth formed a thin bitter line.

‘No, no, we didn’t marry. I came home after the war, from POW camp in Germany, and she’d run off. Married a much older man than me. They’d moved away, so I never saw her again.’

‘Oh, how sad.’

Mr Grantham rallied. ‘Probably for the best.’ But he didn’t sound as if he meant it. ‘I met Florrie a little later. She was a good wife. We loved each other.’

‘What about the watch? Have you still got it?’

‘I think it’s up in the attic somewhere. I chucked it there when I heard Susan was married to another man. This was my parents’ house, you see. I’ve lived here almost all my life, except for India and Germany.’

‘Don’t you want the watch?’

He humphed. ‘I’m too old to go climbing around in dusty attics. Much too old now. Pity though.’ His eyes became distant. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing that watch again. It would’ve hurt too much, earlier, but now – well, feelings get a bit dusty too, with time. I’ve not had a bad life, but I’ve been thinking more and more about how I cursed Susan for running away with that fellow Perkins. It sort of ruled my life for a few years and I got very bitter. Eventually I met Florrie and things came all right again, but it was a bit dark for a while. A bit dark. I’d like to make my peace with Susan’s memory now. Getting the watch back would help. I feel bad about chucking it aside like that.’ He gave Chloe a wry smile and nodded towards the heavens. ‘You never know who you’re going to meet up there, do you?’

‘I’ll ask the boys. They won’t mind having a look up there for you. Me too. I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You’re very kind.’

‘Rooting around in an old attic might be fun,’ said Chloe. ‘You never know what you’ll find.’

‘That’s very true. Treasure and trash, that’s what you’ll find in attics.’ He turned and stared into her eyes. ‘It would be nice to find treasure, wouldn’t it?’

Once Chloe had gone, Mr Grantham had a sudden flash of guilt. He liked Chloe. She was a nice girl. Since they had begun their infrequent conversations sprigs of apple blossom had begun to spring from the flinty beds of his thoughts. Should he warn her? He wanted to. But he just didn’t know.

What if harm should come to them? It hadn’t to him, but maybe he’d been lucky. Then again, you couldn’t live your life in perfect safety. That would be very dull and boring. You had to have some danger and excitement. That’s why boys bought motorbikes and girls backpacked around the world.

No, he wouldn’t warn them. Let them find out for themselves. They could always turn back, if they were too afraid to go on. It was that kind of place. It might make his old heart race and bang against his ribs to think about it, but theirs were stronger, stouter organs.

Later, while Dipa was preparing dinner in the kitchen, Chloe told Alex and Jordy about the ‘secrets’ she’d learned from Mr Grantham. Predictably, Jordy was a little scornful and said they weren’t exactly headline revelations. Equally as predictable was Alex, who was more interested in the pocket-watch than in any ancient love story.

Yes, he said, he wouldn’t mind helping Chloe look for the watch. ‘Those old watches with real brass works,’ he said reverently, ‘are ten times more interesting than modern watches. Digital watches are the worst, but the ones which try to look like old watches are just as bad. All they’ve got inside ’em is a chip. Just that. A rotten old computer chip. But just think of all the engineering that went into making an old watch! All those cogs and wheels, the hair spring, levers and – and,’ he said almost darkly, ‘there’s a thing called an escapement. If you didn’t have that, the whole works would go out of balance and tell the wrong time.’

Jordy stared at his normally quiet step-brother and said wonderingly, ‘Once you wind him up he just goes on and on, doesn’t he?’

‘Are you being unkind?’ asked Dipa, entering the room with a steaming dish of potatoes. ‘What’s all that about? Nelson, stop threading through my ankles or I’ll drop this dish.’

Nelson continued weaving awkwardly between her legs and then toppled over when he caught the edge of the carpet. He was a cat who refused to acknowledge that he had only three legs. Giving the carpet an aggrieved look, he jumped up into Dipa’s chair.

‘No, I’m not being unkind – at least I didn’t mean to be,’ said Jordy. ‘We were just talking about …’ he caught Chloe’s warning look just in time ‘about old-fashioned pocket-watches. Alex seems to think they’re cool. He thinks wrist-watches are naff.’

Dipa placed the dish on a mat on the table and stepped back to look at her youngest child.

‘Well, that’s because he’d look so smart in a waistcoat, wouldn’t you, Alex? With a shiny silver watch-chain dangling from the pocket.’

‘Nobody in this house understands me,’ Alex sighed. ‘It’s the works of a watch I like, not the watch itself. Wrist-watches are OK. But I know Jordy likes his because it looks snazzy on him and because it tells him the time to a hundredth of a second, even at ten fathoms under water. He likes it because of how it looks and what it does and what it’s capable of doing at the bottom of the ocean, though what use that is to him I’ll never know. I like watches because of how they’re made and what’s inside the case.’

Chloe said, ‘And I couldn’t care less about any of it. Can we eat now?’

Dipa returned to the kitchen to get the rest of the meal and Alex said, ‘Shall we all look for it? The watch, I mean?’

‘I’m going to,’ said Chloe.

‘Oh, all right,’ Jordy agreed, not wanting to be left out. ‘I’ll come too, but I warn you,’ he twisted his face into a mask, ‘it’s horrible up there!’

The three of them didn’t discuss why they didn’t let Ben and Dipa know they wanted to search the attic. It wasn’t that each of them didn’t think about it. Chloe certainly did. Jordy did too. (And who knew what was in Alex’s head?) But for some reason, unknown even to themselves, none of them mentioned it. Not that it was anything their parents would have objected to. They simply kept it secret. They deliberately waited for a Saturday morning when Dipa was working and Ben was going out to do the shopping. Chloe asked Jordy to go with her. Alex, however, was engrossed in making another kite and said he wouldn’t join them after all.

‘What’s that?’ Ben had asked, coming into the kitchen and catching the end of the conversation. ‘You lot going to the cinema?’

‘We might do later,’ Jordy had said. ‘Is it all right?’

‘What about lunch?’ Ben had asked. ‘Are you going to eat thin air?’

‘We’ll grab a bite in town,’ Jordy had said, and knowing Ben was disapproving of hamburgers added, ‘from the Italian sandwich bar.’

Once Ben had gone Chloe and Jordy found themselves at the trapdoor of the attic, climbing through, armed with torches. Once more the dust and dead air assailed Jordy’s nostrils, but this time he wasn’t so worried by it. He had a means of light with him and he had Chloe. Still, once he was standing on boards inside, shining the torch into the recesses of the attic, a strange feeling came over him. It was as if they were trespassing on the sacred burial ground of another culture. There was the sense, not of being watched, but of being felt by something or someone. The first step he took he walked into a cobweb and covered his face with sticky threads.

‘Urrgh!’ he grunted.

‘What’s wrong?’ Chloe was whispering for some reason. ‘Step in a cow pat?’

‘Very funny. There are spiders up here.’

Chloe said, ‘Don’t try to scare me. I’m not worried about spiders.’

‘I am,’ said a deep voice behind her, sending a shock wave through her. ‘I don’t like ’em.’

It was Alex, who had changed his mind after he’d accidentally snapped the spine of his home-made kite.

‘Don’t do that!’ she hissed at him. ‘You made me jump.’

‘Nearly gave me a heart attack,’ said Jordy, his voice coming out of the darkness.

Alex shone his torch around the rafters. The beam found some hanging flimsy cobwebs, grey as old bread. ‘They’re dead,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t mind dead ones.’

The three of them split up, each searching separate corners of the attic, ducking and weaving under rafters and stepping over beams. Jordy’s area contained the water tank and when he shone his torch in there he was disgusted by the dead insects floating on the surface. ‘We drink this stuff,’ he called to the others. ‘It’s filthy.’

‘No we don’t,’ corrected Alex, ‘unless you drink your own bathwater. That tank feeds the boiler.’

‘All right, I wash in it. It’s still filthy.’

They rooted around in the odds and ends that were up there, kicked aside old cardboard boxes, gingerly lifted clumps of dirty clothes with their torches. They were looking for that glint of old silver which would perhaps tell them they had found the treasure they were looking for. Now that they were up there, Jordy actually felt they were on a wild-goose chase. The watch could be anywhere, if it was there at all. Who could trust an old man’s memory? Mr Grantham might have thought he’d thrown it up there, all those decades ago, but maybe he threw it somewhere else? Or maybe the watch didn’t exist at all?

A beam of light came near him, as he turned over a cardboard box full of clothes with his toe. A woman’s mouldy hat lay flattened beneath it, the ribbon around the crown a sort of pale yellow colour.

‘Where’s Alex?’ asked Chloe, the person behind the light. ‘I can’t find him.’

Jordy shone his torch around the attic, finding different shapes, but none of them belonging to Alex.

‘Alex?’ called Jordy. ‘Alex?’

No answer. Suddenly his torch caught some bright shining eyes that looked up at him balefully. Jordy jumped back, alarmed. Then a familiar sound came from the creature who owned the eyes.

‘Nelson! What are you doing up here? How did you get up those steps?’ He stroked the cat’s back then said, ‘Did Alex go down again, d’you think? Maybe he got bo. . .