Louder Than Words Read online

‘No. I’ve told you why before. It’s my space. I don’t like other people in it.’

  ‘Not even someone you love?’

  She went red from her neck to the roots of her hair. ‘No, not even then.’ She turned away from me and ignored me until she was nearly at her stop. ‘You should get some sleep when you get home anyway,’ she said as she stood up. ‘Just go to bed and ignore whatever’s going on.’ She bent and kissed me on the lips and then she got off the train.

  I sat stock still, the memory of her soft lips on mine, until at the last possible moment I made my decision. I got up and shot out of the train doors just before they closed. Lara was disappearing up the stairs from the platform. I followed her.

  She walked out into the street and looked at her watch. Then she got out her phone and sent a text. She waited, watching the screen. After some moments a response came back. She frowned at it and slammed her phone back into her bag, then she rammed her hands in the pockets of her parka and trudged off down the street.

  After a while of wandering up and down identical streets, I began to realise she wasn’t going anywhere in particular. I wasn’t even sure she knew this place well for when she spotted a coffee shop, she sighed with relief and picked up her pace.

  She got a seat inside by the window and I took up position in a bus shelter opposite, making sure I was out of her eyeline. I could see her checking her phone at regular intervals, but not much else.

  She was in there hours, buying one coffee after another, then a sandwich, then a cake, more coffee – anything not to have to walk the streets again. I was on the verge of storming in there and asking just what she was playing at when she got the text she’d obviously been waiting for. She got up and hurried back to the train station. I checked the train at the platform she went to – heading back into a different part of London – and followed her on to it.

  When she got off, I stalked her until she reached a rundown block of flats. She knocked on the door of a ground-floor one and it opened. I caught a quick flash of Tyler’s face before she went in.

  I went cold all over.

  I forgot how cold and hungry I was. And I waited and waited, hoping she would come out soon and it would all mean nothing.

  But she didn’t.

  In the end, it was Tyler who came out, leaving the door on the latch as he popped to the shop a few yards down the road.

  I took my opportunity. I dashed over and slipped inside.

  The flat was in darkness save for a dim light coming from under a closed door.

  I knew I shouldn’t, but I pushed the door with a shaking hand. It opened.

  It was a bedroom, a mattress tossed on the floor with a small bedside light beside it. And under the duvet, staring back at me, Lara and Dillon, naked together.

  My heart broke, Dad.

  I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

  With horrid warning gapèd wide,

  And I awoke and found me here,

  On the cold hill’s side.

  (John Keats – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’)

  CHAPTER 55

  It was Tyler who found me, Dad, sitting in a gutter, heaven knows where, beside a pile of my own vomit.

  ‘You OK?’ He sighed and sat down beside me, on the opposite side to the vomit.

  ‘How long?’ I asked in a dead voice.

  Tyler dropped his head on to his knees. ‘You know, I’m sick of getting landed with his dirty work. First Deef. I get stuck with the job of visiting my best mate in prison every week and having to tell him no, we’re not going to lift a finger to help him get out of there because lawyers cost money, and besides: free publicity, Deef! And I have to watch him getting lower and lower because he can’t stand being caged, and his hope’s gone. And now this . . .’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Look, they’ve always been together. Ever since you knew her.’

  ‘Then why . . . ?’

  ‘Dillon wanted to hack into the government networks. He saw what you did with that guy from Codes of War who made that website about his ex. Actually, man, that was my fault and I’m sorry – I play Codes and I saw what you were doing. I just mentioned it to him, just chatting, you know, said I reckoned you were local-ish. What you did on there was pretty epic. It got a lot of attention. Dillon saw that and it set him thinking that we could use some of that, if only we could get someone with those skills. He set me to work to track you down. I’m not you, but I’m pretty good with computers. And then me and Lara got down to the area on the ground and tracked you by following the girl. Dillon set Lara on to infiltrating your group, once we thought it was you for sure. You work the rest out – you’re smart enough.’

  He stood up and hesitated for a moment before putting an arm on my shoulder. ‘For what it’s worth, man, I’m sorry. I really like you and . . . I wish it wasn’t . . . it hadn’t . . . whatever . . . I just wish!’

  He ran off up the street, back to wherever that flat was.

  I sat there, the stench of vomit making me want to throw up again, but my legs felt too weak to hold me if I stood. I wished it would rain to wash the sick away, wash me away if that was possible. Right now I wanted to dissolve in the rain and cease to be.

  A lie. The whole thing was a lie. She was a lie, every last bit of her. The Lara I thought I knew would never have done this, never allow herself to be used in that way. Where had she gone? She had to be in there somewhere. No one could fake as well as that . . .

  But she’d faked loving me well enough to convince me . . .

  Not the other girls though. Rafi and Josie had suspected.

  Suddenly I knew what I wanted. More than anything I wanted to be home. Away from all of this deception.

  I got up, feeling stronger with the decision, and made my way down the street. I asked a man how to find the train station and walked back as fast as I could. My stomach was still churning. My clothes stank . . . not with the stench of vomit but of lies and lost hope.

  I got home a little before midnight. Rafi heard me stumble up the stairs and went out on to the landing. I held my arms out and she ran to hug me. She didn’t know what had happened yet, but my face told her enough of it.

  She made me hot chocolate and sandwiches and I ate them sitting on her bed. Then I told her all of it. Every last sorry word of the story. When I finished telling her, she gave me her marker pen. I got up and went to her wall:

  ‘Even though it hurts more than I thought it was possible to hurt, somewhere someone is fighting to live and this hurt is nothing compared to theirs.’

  I shrugged at Rafi. ‘She taught me that much, even if she is a fake. There’s more pain out there for other people than I can imagine. I’m not going to break apart over her, even though it feels like I am right now.’

  So there it is, Dad. And the girl I loved never really existed.

  Love, Silas.

  And this is why I sojourn here,

  Alone and palely loitering,

  Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,

  And no birds sing.

  (John Keats – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’)

  CHAPTER 56

  Josie was incensed. ‘So all the time she was with this Dillon guy? And they planned the whole thing to get Silas to do their dirty work for them, hacking into this government stuff. Is that girl insane? What kind of freak does something like that?’

 

  ‘Yeah, and obsessed with this Dillon from the sound of it. I mean, it’s just EVIL! But I feel so guilty. They found Silas because of what he did for me . . .’

  I shook my head. She was not responsible for what they did.

  I’d texted Josie early and she’d dressed and come round while Silas was having a lie-in. I made breakfast for us both and filled Josie in on what had happened. I had to write most of it, leaving out Silas’s feelings of course and sticking to the main events.

  ‘What now, then? Is he in trouble over this last thing he did?’

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  ‘Would he grass them up first?’

 

  ‘I could ask Dad but it’d be difficult without making him suspicious.’

  At that point, my mother walked into the kitchen. She had reached fairly comfortable speaking terms with Josie by now. ‘Good morning. What has you two looking so agitated?’

  I was surprised she’d noticed. Josie checked with me and I nodded. I knew she wouldn’t say too much.

  ‘Silas. He’s upset. His girlfriend has been cheating on him all the time he’s been seeing her.’

  We’d agreed it was best to tell her this much. I was doubtful, but as Josie pointed out, he was hardly going to be himself and if telling Mum meant she exercised some tact around him, all the better.

  My mother swore fluently and comprehensively. She said things about Lara that would make a feminist wince. I’d never felt closer to her than I did then.

  We dragged Silas out later for pizza and ice cream. Josie told him that’s what you did after a break-up. You got together with your girls and you hit the junk-food consolation parlour. Silas didn’t have the energy to protest with anyone so determined, but sitting in front of a computer screen killing things just reminded him of her now, and what else did he have to do? Besides, he’d been neglecting me and he knew it, or so he said.

  Josie made us see a film first and she’d picked it to appeal to Silas – some Terminator rip-off, but it was OK. Silas liked it, which was the main thing. He was quieter than usual during the food, but that might have been because Josie filled the silence non-stop.

  ‘I talk too much, I know,’ she said at one point.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said with an odd smile. ‘You know, really I don’t. It’s OK.’ It saved him having to think, he told me later. He said it was kind of irritating when most girls did it, but with Josie it was more funny. I got that – I felt it too.

  On the way home, Josie was still chattering away as we got off the bus and we didn’t notice the guy approaching until he was right in front of us. We all started back when we saw his face. It was Silas who relaxed quickest. ‘Sorry, you made me jump. Are we in your way?’ We were standing right in front of the bus timetable.

  ‘Remind you of somebody, do I?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Silas replied, ‘actually you do.’

  The guy was about twenty, six foot and skinny, with a drawn, sunken face. He had muddy blond hair and cat-shaped eyes and I knew exactly who he looked like though he didn’t have a beard.

  ‘He’s my brother,’ the guy replied in a quiet voice with a soft Cornish accent. He held out his hand to Silas. ‘I’m Deef.’

  Silas took it, but didn’t shake it, holding it as if he was in suspended animation. ‘But you’re in prison! Tyler said.’

  ‘Was. Tyler doesn’t know,’ Deef replied. ‘Out on parole as of today.’

  ‘And I didn’t know you were Dillon’s brother.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet Dillon didn’t tell you that. But then there’s a lot of things he didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Silas replied bitterly.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on her. She’s just a dumb kid who believes every word he says. Always has done. And he’s been stringing her along for years. Even when he was still with Katrin, he’d let her mope around in the background after him. He knew she had a crush on him, used to laugh behind her back about it. He’s a user, my brother. I reckon he thinks he’s still in love with Katrin, but he’s not. Just can’t stand seeing her with someone else. It’s like a continual bit of grit in his eye. But Katrin’s better with Jez. She’s all hair-trigger action and he’s so calm he tempers her fire in a way that Dillon could never do.’

  Silas nodded at the truth of it. But Katrin was Dillon’s ex? That was another thing he hadn’t known.

  Deef quirked his mouth in a quick smile. ‘He’ll get what’s coming to him and it’s long overdue. But you, kid, you need to look out for yourself. See, some people who’ve been looking very hard for my brother are about to find him and you need to stay clear. Tyler told me what he had you doing.’

  ‘Tyler told you?’

  ‘Yeah, he came to see me this morning before they let me out. I knew he was due so I asked them to hold off on the release – I don’t want my cover blown. I don’t need Dillon after me. Ty wants to bail. He told me you’d found out about Dillon and Lara, and I managed to con him into telling me where you lived. That’s the trouble with Ty – he’s just too trusting. That’s how come he’s put up with Dillon for so long, but he’s sick of him now. Says that Dillon’s so far from where he pretends to be that he’s lost the plot. It’s all about Dillon really, see. All about the power. He’s become what he says he’s fighting.’

  Deef clapped Silas on the shoulder. ‘You stay away from there, you hear? Don’t go back for her. She’ll never leave Dillon. Not until she grows up one hell of a lot anyway. And keep your head down. You don’t want the people who’re after Dillon now coming after you.’

  ‘But they’ll be after her too,’ Silas mumbled, as though he knew none of us wanted to hear that from him, but he couldn’t help it anyway.

  ‘And her rich daddy will buy her a good lawyer and they’ll get her off . . . good girl led astray and all that. Don’t worry about her.’

  ‘So that part was true, the part about her family?’

  ‘Sort of, but she bailed on them when she met Dillon and she shacked up at his place. Been living with him for four years, all the time he was with Katrin. And when Katrin left him, she finally got what she wanted.’

  ‘I see,’ said Silas. ‘These people looking for Dillon – how do they know where to find him?’

  Deef held his hands up with a laugh. ‘They were prepared to pay a lot for information. Not with money, but with a parole. He left me to rot in that prison. My own brother. I was his best man on the ground. Without me, there would have been no action on the streets. I trained Katrin up and I trained her well. But he never once came to see me. Just sent poor Ty to do his dirty work, and that’s Dillon all over. I needed to get out of there before it killed me. I’m not ashamed to say, kid, I couldn’t hack it, couldn’t stand being caged.’

  ‘What about the others though? You’ve grassed them up too?’

  ‘They’re not interested in the others. It’s Dillon they want. Without him, the others are just a bunch of amateur protesters. I didn’t give them much on the rest of the group and they didn’t ask. See – they don’t care. They asked about you though. You really managed to get them rattled with what you did.’

  ‘And what did you tell them?’ Silas’s face paled under the street lamps.

  ‘Nothing, kid, I told them nothing. Said I didn’t know who he’d got to do his hacking for him, but whoever it was wasn’t with them when I got arrested, so it was probably some poor sucker he’d hooked in with his lies. There’s no trail to you so keep your head down. If they do find you, play the innocent and you’ll get through it. That’s what I’ve come to tell you. Ty says you don’t deserve this and I don’t want to see my brother get away with screwing you over. But if they do find you, don’t hesitate to land him in it because believe me, he’d do it to you.’

  ‘OK, I hear you.’

  ‘My brother will never stop unless someone makes him. Never thought it would be me, but . . .’ Deef shrugged. ‘At two in the morning, he’s like me – wonders if he’s made the right choices. It’d be easier to live like all the others, content with the consumer conveyor belt, the capitalist dream, life on the inside. Instead, we chose this fringe existence, this half-life in the shadows. It worked for a while, but when we’re thirty, forty? What then? When Dillon went down this road, he thought they’d never get to him. He’d run in this direction until the day he died. Or he’d die trying. Me, I don’t have his ability to shit on my mates. And I guess I just don’t care as mu
ch as he does.’ He looked around us. ‘That’s not a bad thing – you can care too much and Dillon does.’

  ‘Yes,’ Silas said quietly.

  Deef gave my brother a swift nod as another bus drew up. ‘Look after yourself,’ and with that he boarded the bus. It pulled away into the night and he was gone.

  Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

  (Carl Jung)

  CHAPTER 57

  This time Silas did tell me he was going out to see Lara. He got a text from her – meet her at the bus station, she wanted to explain. I got a pad and paper straight away and told him he was all kinds of fool, especially after what that guy Deef had said.

  ‘Rafi, it’s OK. It’s not going to change anything. I just want to hear from her why she did it.’

  But she’s a liar.

  ‘I know, but I still need to hear it from her, lying or not.’

  Just please don’t believe her.

  ‘I won’t.’

  They met in the café at the bus station. What they didn’t know was that I got there first and positioned myself in a booth at the back with high-sided seats. I wasn’t going to leave him alone with that witch to get her claws back in him. I thought she looked a little less composed than usual, but otherwise there was no change. She’d taken my brother apart, but it obviously hadn’t affected her too much.

  I got lucky. They sat down a couple of booths away and there was no one else in there. I couldn’t see much without getting caught, but I could hear everything – a result I couldn’t have planned, but was very ready to take full advantage of.

  ‘So, you wanted to talk.’ Silas could sound calm even when his insides were a pit of writhing snakes. I always envied him that.

  ‘Tyler said you know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Strange now how her Ice Queen persona didn’t quite work, not after what we’d been told about her.