Read The Bone Clocks for Free Online Page B

a chip. “If I
was
a detective, I’d suspect boyfriend trouble.”
    My voice goes sharp. “None of your business.”
    “This is true. But the tosser’s not worth it, whoever he is.”
    Scowling, I drop the dog a chip. He scoffs it so hungrily I wonder if he’s a stray. Like me.
    Brubeck makes a funnel out of his chip paper to pour the crispy bits into his mouth. “You planning on going back to town tonight?”
    I abort a groan. Gravesend’s a black cloud. Vinny and Stella and Mam are in it.
Are
it. My watch says 18:19 and the Captain Marlow’ll be cheerful and chattery as the evening regulars drift in. Upstairs Jacko and Sharon’ll be sat on the sofa watching
The A-Team
with cheese thingies and a slab of chocolate cake. I’d like to be there, but what about Mam’s slap? “No,” I tell Brubeck, “I’m not.”
    “It’ll be dark in three hours. Not a lot of time to find a circus to run away with.”
    The dune grass sways. Clouds’re unrolling across the sky from France. I put my jacket on. “Maybe I’ll find a nice cozy pillbox. One that’s not used to pee in. Or a barn.”
    Here come seagulls on boingy elastic, scrawking for chips too. Brubeck stands up and flaps his arms at the gulls like the Mad Prince of Allhallows-on-Sea to make them scatter, just for the hell of it. “Maybe I know somewhere better.”
    W E ’ RE CYCLING ALONG a proper road again. Big fields in the pancake-flat arse-end of nowhere, with long black shadows. Brubeck’s being all mysterious ’bout where we’re going—“Either you trust me, Sykes, or you don’t”—but he says it’s warm, dry, and safe and he’s stayed there himself five or six times when he’s been out night-fishing, so I’ll go along with it, for now. He says he’ll head off home after Gravesend. That’s the problem with boys: They tend to help you only ’cause they fancy you, but there’s no unembarrassing way to find out their real motives till it’s too late. Ed Brubeck seems okay, and he spends his Saturday afternoons reading for a blind uncle, but thanks to bloody Vinny and Stella, I’m not so sure if I’m a good judge of character. With night coming on, though, I don’t have much choice. We pass a massive factory. I’m ’bout to ask Brubeck what they make there when he tells me it’s Grain Power Station and it provides electricity for Gravesend and half of southeast London.
    “Yeah, I know,” I lie.
    T HE CHURCH IS stumpy with a tower that’s got arrow-slits and it’s gold in the last light. The wood sounds like never-ending waves, with rooks tumbling about like black socks in a dryer. ST MARY HOO PARISH CHURCH says a sign, with the vicar’s phone numberunderneath. The village of Saint Mary Hoo is up ahead, but it’s really just a few old houses and a pub where two lanes meet. “The bedding’s basic,” says Brubeck, as we get off the bike, “but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit handle security, and at zero quid a night, it’s priced competitively.”
    Does he mean the church? “You’re joking, right?”
    “Check-out’s seven sharp or the management get shirty.”
    Yes, he means the church. I make a dubious face.
    Brubeck makes a face that says,
Take it or leave it
.
    I’ll have to take it. The Kent marshes are not dotted with cozy barns full of warm straw, like in
Little House on the Prairie
. The only one I’ve seen was a corrugated-iron job a few miles back, guarded by two Dobermans with rabies. “Don’t they lock churches?”
    Brubeck says, “Yeah,” in the same way I’d say, “So?” After checking no one’s around, he wheels his bike into the graveyard. He hides it between dark brushy trees and the wall, then leads me to the porch. Confetti’s piled up in dirty drifts. “Keep an eye on the gate,” he tells me. From his pocket he digs out a leather purse-thing and inside’s a dangly row of spindly keys and an L-shaped piece of thin metal. One last look at the lane, then he pokes a key into the lock, and