And somehow the way Maggie was looking at him made him feel she understood. That was one of her gifts. The way she could read the whole book of someone from a single page.
Dougie, meanwhile, was smiling a rare smile. Wilbur hadn’t caught that smile at the time but his ghost did now. It was an interesting character trait: that the closest Dougie ever got to contentment was when the trouble inside his head was aligned with the trouble he caused outside it.
‘You’re a dark horse, lad,’ he said, looking at Wilbur with the two girls, as both policemen dragged Dougie over to the door of number 77.
‘Ooh, we’re going to get a show,’ giggled Doreen, before getting a sharp elbow from Maggie. ‘A matinée.’
Wilbur and his ghost both felt the burn of shame and hurt astheir mother answered the door. She had been drinking the sherry she got cheap from the pub: her cheeks red and her expression dazed. This was a new development. Normally she only drank on her days off or after her shift, not before it.
‘Oh Christ, what’s he done?’
‘Look,’ said Wilbur, ‘you two better go without me. My mam will need me.’
Doreen giggled. ‘We can stay. This is fun.’
‘Reenie.’
And with that Maggie tugged at her friend’s arm to leave, and the Ghost watched his young self stare at them as they walked away, towards ice cream and milkshake and a jukebox.
But suddenly she stopped. Looked around.
‘I’m Maggie, by the way,’ she said. ‘Maggie Shaw. And this is Doreen but I call her Reenie. What do they call you?’
He stood there in his ragged uniform. ‘Wilbur. I’m … Wilbur.’
‘All right, Wilbur.’
‘Careful walking down there,’ he added, with genuine concern. ‘Someone’s smashed a bottle and there’s glass all over.’
‘I see it. Thank you.’
‘Knight in shining armour!’ laughed Doreen. ‘Ashamed of his brother, mind.’
And Maggie giggled a little as they went down the gentle slope of the hill, then turned back and smiled at him.
As he watched Maggie leave he felt embarrassed for her having got a taste of his chaotic life. She looked around once more, the concern and warmth clear and direct. It wasn’t love at first sight. But it was a kind of deep and instant friendship, an invisible thread in the air between them that he didn’t know how to hold on to.
‘See you around, Wilbur.’
Meanwhile the professionally solemn police officer was taking Dougie’s flick-knife out of his own pocket.
‘We caught him in town, Mrs Budd. Causing trouble with someother lads. He had this on ’im. They’re making it illegal just to own one of these. So, if he gets caught again, he could end up in the nick.’
And the Ghost knew what was ahead. He remembered the family argument that evening. He remembered his mam missing her shift and scratching her skin until the friction made a mark, and crying and becoming ferocious and calling his brother Satan and she seemed to believe it, and he remembered Dougie kicking walls and punching his fist through a window. He remembered lying on his bed trying to escape into his book but unable to concentrate on a single sentence. He remembered Dougie getting drunk on their mother’s sherry, and leaning over him and spitting on Wilbur’s forehead as he lay in bed.
‘You’re not better than me, Wilbur …’
But to his relief he didn’t need to relive all that because just then he heard the loud whistle of a steam train, ready to take him away.
The Portrait
The Midnight Train was going at quite a pace now.
It was hurtling towards its top speed. Although there was no rail track to speak of, there were the continual and ascending sounds any other steam train would make. The whistle, the mechanical chugging, and the brutal clatter of wheels.
Inside the carriage, though, it was quite refined. The green velvet and varnished wood panelling. The elegant carriage signs. There was even, between two of the windows, a framed portrait. A traditional kind of oil painting. Wilbur stood up now to go over for a closer inspection.
Up close, he realised it was a boy. A teenager’s face. His own face. The same face he had just seen, sitting on his doorstep, talking to Maggie. A studious, slightly troubled expression.
