Chapter Fifteen

Chapters 1-14 on my other blog, here.

Generally speaking, babies do not talk.

There are a lot of things they don't do, to be honest. Walking, cycling, swimming, singing, contributing a little bit here and there to the household expenses... Babies don't do any of that stuff. They're like the worst kind of loser boyfriend, depending totally on you to do every last thing for them.

Keep me warm, they say with their too-large baby eyes, keep me safe. Clothe me in clean linen, sing to me when I feel sad, feed me every three hours.

Pay my rent, just this month. Lend me bus fare every morning so I can go to my minimum wage job and spend the proceeds on cider and computer games. Do my laundry, cook my tea, sort the bills out, clean the bog. Please? I've had such a long day and you do all that stuff better than me anyway. It's my go next time.

It's possible that babies, much like loser ex boyfriends, are incapable of any kind of rational thought process that might enable them to take charge of their own lives and do things for themselves.

However, unlike ex boyfriends, they are very small, and new to this being alive malarkey, which we all know takes a bit of practice. (The practice that the loser boyfriend never had to put in, because he is so mollycoddled by his doting mother that he thinks chips just come straight from the ground hot and covered in cheese and gravy.)

Anyway, babies are babies, not ex boyfriends. Well, some babies might be ex boyfriends one day, but I'm not going to wait about for that to happen. There's stuff to be getting on with.

So, we have established that babies probably aren't deliberately lazy and thoughtless. In fact, they might not be thoughtless at all. The fact they can't communicate it to adults does not mean in and of itself that they do not engage in a perfectly logical thought process of their own devising.

As such, Bracken's baby lay in its lumpy bed and thought,

"I wonder where Bracken is."

Then it thought,

"And Nicky."

Then it thought,

"I wonder where I am?"

"Maybe I did something bad? But that's not it. I'm too small for punishments."

The wean listened carefully. All he heard was silence.

"Maybe they did something bad and got taken away from me? But that doesn't make sense. Nicky and Bracken are stand up members of the local community. They don’t do crimes. They've got me to think of."

The wean wondered whether this was his own original thought. It sounded like the sort of thing he might have heard other people saying.

He looked around him.

He was lying in a cot with a lumpy mattress, located in the centre of a room with blue walls and an unusual smell. The only concession to the fact a child inhabited it was a picture of a Care Bear on one wall. It looked as though it had been cut out of a newspaper and stuck up as an afterthought, which wasn't all that surprising, because it had been.

"I'm hungry," thought the wean. "I wonder if I should cry."

It didn't usually work in this place, the crying till someone came thing. There were two meals a day, with a snack in the morning because the guard had muttered something to the woman in charge about weaning, and that was your lot.

The wean wasn't sure how he knew that the person in charge of the facility was a woman, but he didn't have any doubts about it. She went out of her way to disguise her identity with odd costumes and voices and the way she carried herself, and the whole bizarre act seemed to fool most of her employees, but the wean knew.

Perhaps children are more perceptive than adults. Or perhaps they are less conditioned into thinking that the bad guys are always men.

The wean assumed that although the boss lady was a lady, she didn’t have any children. If she had, she would be more inclined to feed him properly. Ladies who already have babies like other people’s babies. Sometimes they like them even more than their own.

He thought about him and Bracken’s trips to the library. There were always old ladies there cooing over him and looking disapprovingly or sympathetically at Bracken. He knew she found it discomfiting, but had noticed that she tended to laugh it off. This could have been for his sake, he thought, or possibly it was meant to maintain some semblance of dignity. Then she’d mumble something about how fast he was growing, even though he was small for his age, and sidle off towards the board books.

Like all children, the wean enjoyed the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The door of the small blue room creaked open, an hour ahead of schedule.

The wean turned to see who the intruder was.

It was one of the guards, the one with unusual purple markings on her face. It was a pretty colour of purple, but the wean couldn’t help thinking that the lady didn’t like it very much.

“Hello little one,” she cooed, much like the sort of ladies he remembered from his trips out and about with Bracken.

He gurgled endearingly for her.

“Aw,” she said, “coochie coo. This is no place for a little guy like you.”

She picked him up for a cuddle. The wean thought it would be odd, being hugged by a stranger in strange surroundings, but it was alright. Comforting, even. It felt like it had been an awful long time since he had been held by someone who wanted to pick him up.

He gurgled some more.

“I wish things hadn’t turned out like this,” the guard said wistfully. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

The wean pricked up his ears. This might be interesting, he thought. Although that didn’t really matter, given that he had no way of passing on any information he might get.

But then the door opened again, and the guard put him back down in the cot hurriedly, pulling the tatty blanket back across him.

She whirled to face the new visitor, her mind racing to come up with an explanation as to why she was breaking the strictly enforced ‘no contact’ rule.

The wean could appreciate that her body language was tense, she stood rigid and ready for confrontation. But then she recognized the other person, and sagged with relief.

“Oh,” she said, “its you. Thank goodness.”

“Yes,” the man replied, “but you ought to be more careful. We’re all under surveillance you know.”

“Not all of the time,” she pointed out defensively.

“I know,” he said gently, “but its still not safe.”

She pouted attractively, and picked up the wean once more.

“Is this another McCracken?”

“Yes,” she said, “or at least that’s the name we’ve got on his files.”

Cryptic, thought the wean, taking a moment to be impressed with himself for knowing the word cryptic. He hiccupped.

The man smoothed his hair back nervously, and tickled the wean under the chin.

“Hi little fella,” he introduced himself, “my name’s Bert. I’m –” he hesitated a moment here, “ – a friend of Nicky’s.”

The wean smiled at the mention of his favourite uncle. Nicky did finger painting with him every Tuesday and Thursday while Bracken was out lollipopping, and they got the paint all over the kitchen. The wean liked all the colours. He thought maybe Nicky liked winding up Bracken. She always pretended to be annoyed and then mellowed considerably when she saw all the pictures they had made for her. Pictures of the three of them living together in an enormous castle with orchards and ponies in the expansive grounds. Well, that was what the wean was going for. But it mainly looked like splodges. Bracken always said that she loved them though.

He sighed.

“Aw,” the guard said, “is oo hungry?”

“I’m alright thanks,” Bert joked.

“Not you,” she replied, missing the humour.

She produced a warm bottle from her pocket.

“I think he’s a bit big for bottles, but there doesn’t seem to be a blender in the kitchen so I couldn’t mash anything up for him.”

Bert nodded his assent, not really knowing what else to do.

“Sorry wee man,” she addressed the wean.

He didn’t mind in the slightest. Any food was good food, as far as he was concerned.

“So are you going to help?”

This was Bert speaking. The wean examined him as he drank his milk.

Bert was of average height and slight build, with a shock of white hair and movements a bit like a sparrow. He was dressed in a very white lab coat, with a blue spot where a biro had burst in his top pocket, and a white jumpsuit underneath. It was sort of futuristic as people thought the future might look during the 1970s. The wean had watched a lot of Buck Rodgers on daytime TV with Uncle Nicky, which was how he knew.

Bert also had a large amount of very white hair, which stuck up in tufts all over his head. He looked a little wild. The wean liked him.

“I’d like to,” she began, “but I’m worried about the repercussions.”

“If we move fast, there don’t have to be any. We can blow the operation wide open!”

“I don’t know,” she said, concentrating on the bottle, “the facility has people on every continent.”

“Yeah but if the boss is in jail the whole operation will fall apart.”

“No it won’t,” she said anxiously, “there’ll be a contingency plan. And who’d believe us, anyway? The whole thing’s just too bizarre. The Chamber, the medication, the –”

“Sssh,” he interrupted, putting a finger on her lips. “We don’t know who’s listening.”

She was silent.

The wean yawned. The milk was all gone and he felt relaxed and sleepy, although slightly concerned about all the ominous chat the adults were engaging in. He thought they’d probably sort it out though. That’s what grown ups do, isn’t it. Sort things out.

“He’s fallen asleep,” the scarred guard whispered, rocking the wean gently.

“Just as well he’s too young to understand all this. It’d be too much to take in. All these different people thinking they’re his mum, and him being taken away from the real one when he was too small to know the difference.”

Bert smiled sadly and put an arm around her shoulder.

“Let him go down for the moment, Patti,” he said soothingly. “You’ll have him back soon enough.”

Chapter Fourteen

Parts 1-13 here!

Nicky was lying uncomfortably on a rickety trolley provided by Bert.

"How old is this thing," he grumbled, more to himself than to his strange companion.

"Oh, bout a hundred and something years," Bert said cheerfully, "the boss likes period pieces."

As he spoke he was covering Nicky from head to toe with musty smelling sheets with the assured precision of a surgeon. It could have been his medical background, or he might once have worked as a chambermaid making beds in hotels - perhaps as a summer job during his studies. It really wasn't important - the main thing was that Nicky was disguised. As a cadaver.

Nicky wrinkled his nose distastefully. He'd had better smelling costumes. Like when he went to a school fancy dress party as a bunch of flowers, and his mum had sprayed the roses with rose water to make it more realistic.

He frowned. That didn't seem right. Mum never helped him with school stuff. And if Steve had seen him dressed up as a bunch of flowers, he'd either have dissolved in fits of laughter or skelped him. Steve was not a man of half measures.

"Are you ready?" Bert was asking from the relative comfort of not under an ancient sheet.

"As I'll ever be," Nicky replied through his nose, even though it sounded clichéd.

"Good. Now remember you will have to stay very still, and not speak or get up or sneeze or do a wee until I give the word."

"I'll remember," promised Nicky, although he doubted that such a promise was going to have much of an effect. He'd seen enough movies to be pretty convinced of their imminent capture and subsequent horrible murder. Not that he'd ever seen any evidence of actual violence with his own actual eyes, but the place just had that aura about it.

Bert nodded, then realised Nicky couldn't see him. He winked instead.

"You'll be alright, son," he said with confidence. It felt nice to be a dad, he thought. "Now, if we meet anyone of the other side of the door, I might say some things that sound a bit odd. But I need you to trust that I know what I'm doing. Can you manage that?"

Nicky thought he would probably find this quite difficult. There again, what choice did he have? Sit in the blue walled room waiting for something to happen, or take his chances with the crazy old guy. It was one of life's classic dilemmas, like daddy or chips.

"Yeah," he said eventually, "I can do that."

"Great," Bert grinned with a painful sounding crack of his jaw. "Ow," he added, rubbing it with his crinkly fingers. He had some ibuprofen in the car, it’d be fine.

He opened the door using a swipe card with a picture of a blue and white cat on it, and maneuvered the trolley out into the corridor. Nicky couldn't see this of course, but his new surroundings were made entirely from intricately sculpted, highly polished marble. There were even ornately carved Greco-roman pillars outside of Nicky’s cell.

"Three," Bert said in a low voice, swinging the door closed behind them, "two," he punched in a security code that exploded the alarm system in a shower of sparks, "one! GERONIMO!"

He took a run up and jumped on the back of the trolley, sending it hurtling down the corridor at the speed of a puma.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeee," he exclaimed with enthusiasm.

Still unable to see what was going on, Nicky clung to the sides of the trolley, closed his eyes, and prayed to Richard Dawkins for his survival.

“WHAT,” came a predictable voice only seconds later, “do you think you are doing, Doctor Sprinkler?”

“Bert Sprinkler?” Nicky thought, “that’s a weird and unusual name.”

“Sorry,” Bert said, catching his breath cheerfully, “I have always wanted to do that.”

Nicky could almost hear the stranger’s eyebrow raise.

“Who’ve you got on the trolley?”

“McCracken.”

“Which one?”

Bert showed no hint of surprise, although he was actually quite shocked.

“Come on man, which one? We have got three, after all.”

Nicky bit the inside of his mouth very hard, drawing blood. He swallowed it with a quiet grimace.

“Nicholas,” Bert replied evenly, smoothing first his tie and then his hair, because he felt he ought to be doing something with his hands.

He hadn’t known there even were three McCrackens. Was he father to them all?

“And what might you be doing with the unconscious body of Nicholas McCracken,” the other voice asked suspiciously. “He isn’t due in the chamber for at least another week.”

“Had word from her that it was time to speed things up,” Bert said ominously. “And you know how she reacts when you keep her waiting.”

“Don’t I just,” the voice said bitterly. Nicky decided it must just be one of the guards. Ha, just. Like they weren’t modeled on the Kathy Bates character in the film Misery. “You know how she likes her coffee at exactly 10:03? I once went in at 10:04, because my watch battery was running slow. She threw it in my face.”

“What, your watch?”

“No you crabstick, the boiling coffee.”

Bert examined the woman’s face. It bore signs of angry purple scarring underneath the eye mask that the guards were all forced to wear.

“That looks painful,” he said sympathetically.

“It was,” she reported. “Very.”

A look passed between them. Nicky tried very hard not to cough. It was the kind of look that might result in another subplot if things got too boring and he didn’t want to spoil the moment. Even though he couldn’t see it.

“Well,” she said, reddening slightly in a not completely unattractive way, “I’ll let you get on.”

He smiled sadly.

“Thanks,” he said, “I think.”

She swayed empathetically.

“Do you ever wonder whether what we do here is…” he began.

She started to say something in reply, but then looked up suddenly and a shadow passed across her brow.

“- in the name of science,” she cut across him instead, a warning note in her milky voice.

Bert turned, to see a familiar mink cloaked figure behind him.

His blood went cold, like that of an alligator, snake, or other reptile. Because he was a mammal, this was uncomfortable to him and made the hairs rise up on the back of his neck and the top of his head as if he had plugged himself into the mains.

“Does she ever wonder whether what we do here is…?” The figure repeated darkly. The weird voice box that he or she used to disguise his or her speech could not render his or her tones completely emotionless, Nicky noted. Apparently Bert’s doubts about the operation were a matter of concern.

“Go on, Bert. Finish your sentence.”

“Oh, I can’t remember what I was saying now,” Bert said airily, forcing a short laugh.

“Seeing you unexpectedly like this has completely put it out of my mind. I’m getting old, you see,” he added hopefully, knocking the top of his head in a comic fashion as if to suggest it was empty of thought.

“Yes,” the big boss agreed, “you are old. But not forgetful. It’s clear to me that you’re trying to hide something, and don’t think for a second that I’m not going to find out exactly what that is.”

Bert smiled coldly. His heart was racing like the clappers, but he maintained a calm outer exterior.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he replied demurely, accidentally fluttering his eyelashes. He made a mental note to stop watching BBC adaptations of Jane Austen novels to help him get to sleep at night. It worked, but there was some form of mental conditioning that went along with it which led almost exclusively to embarrassing consequences.

“You know exactly what I mean,” the caped authority snapped with an angry swish. “But never mind that now. Take Mr McCracken and go, before he wakes up.”

Bert narrowed his eyes. He didn’t have permission from the head honcho to take Nicky anywhere.

“At once,” he replied, bowing his head as if before royalty.

Nicky felt the trolley start to move, much more sedately this time. He did his best not to exhale too big of a sigh of relief. They weren’t out of the woods yet, metaphorically speaking as it were, and now would not be a great moment for the sheet to go flying off him and for them to see he was awake.

‘Although,’ he thought to himself, ‘I could always shut my eyes and pretend that I really was unconscious.’

He smiled. Maybe, if he kept his wits about him, escaping wouldn’t be so hard after all.

“Right Nicky,” said Bert very quietly and almost without moving his lips, “slight change of plan. I’ll have to actually take you to The Chamber right now, and I will need to leave you there alone for a bit.”

Nicky had no idea what that meant, but he guessed from context that it was bad.

Another door opened, and the trolley stopped.

He was alone once more, but this time he was also in the dark.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapters 1 - 12 in order can be located by clicking here.


Back in the library, you might remember that Aloysius had finished a flashback detailing certain points of his history heretofore unknown to us, with no regard for continuity or tenses.

The teenage girl had removed herself and her Gucci knock off shoulder bag from the counter, but this was less on his say-so and more because of events outside his control. In point of fact, if we were to be brutally honest, it was pretty much down to the drive by shooting that was going down.

You might think that libraries are quiet places, populated mainly by the very young (whose mothers need to escape the house, just for a bit), the very old (who need to escape the house, just for a bit) and students (who have missed the essay deadline and now have to do some frenzied last minute reading – just for a bit).

It is possible, too, that you may have a vague childhood memory of being asked to keep the noise down in your local library as you coloured in your Asterix picture with a particularly squeaky crayon, or turned the pages of your Sweet Valley Twins book too loudly.

This is not that sort of library.

The library of which we speak is at the centre of a community the bulk of whom are quite close to the poverty line. It is well used, but largely as a meeting place almost exclusively by the children and young people who have got themselves banned from the nearby community centre. Except of course when they are at school, at which point the aforementioned mums with under fives and older people rush in with shining eyes to pick up the latest Lee Child bestseller.

Anyway, there are a lot of kids and young persons milling about the place, and most of them are in gangs. Although I hasten to add that this is not in the way that the Secret Seven were a gang - these kids don't set out to solve mysteries. Some might be the perpetrators of mysteries, but they aren't really too excited by the prospect of finding and solving hidden clues, or unmasking criminals. After all, who wants to shop their own dad?

What makes them gang material is something of a pack instinct. They're pretty into defining themselves against who they are not, within the context of loosely defined geographical boundaries. Gangs are generally named for the couple of streets their members live on, and Thor help you if you try to say that ‘Mayfield’ isn’t big enough to constitute an area on its own and that if anything its part of the larger constituency of Newington. That’s actually a made up example, the gang around that bit is known as the EH8 Crew. I’ve seen it written on lamp posts in permanent marker.

If you aren't interested in being in the gang you are a tramp, reviled by most and treated with suspicion. As such the library, standing as it does between the stomping grounds of several gangs (and one or two groups of mates who like each other but have no official gang affiliations) can be the scene of some pretty fraught meetings.

This was one of those occasions.

The rain had come back on, so the building was busy - full of hyperactive, damp young people aged 7-17. They were mostly engaged in various non-traditional library activities that are the norm in this modern technological age - checking their social networking sites, playing on games consoles, making figures out of paper mâché, and beating the crap out of each other when they thought nobody was looking.

Aloysius has recovered from that odd, stream of consciousness style flash back – the one he had in front of a bemused girl who wanted to borrow change for the vending machine, or vendor as it is known.

Outside, the street was deserted.

"You didn't actually give her your own money," Adric asked in dismay in a way that was more a statement than a question.

He didn't get any further, because the glass in the front door made a cracking sound and the place erupted with the overexcited, e-numbered shrieks of a metric gaggle and a half of young persons.

Everyone in the building gathered round, in spite of Adric's protestations that there might be broken glass and danger underfoot. There was a small, round hole in the glass window of the door, and cracks spread out from its centre, like a beautiful spider web. Had it been frost, Adric would have taken a photograph on his phone to use as the library Christmas card.

"As soon as someone touches that, it's going tae go," the teenager who had borrowed money from Al proclaimed, tempting fate to some extent.

Al shook his head at her, wondering if she had done it on purpose or was yet to understand the contrary nature of younglings.

"Everyone away from the door NOW," Adric boomed, choosing the correct vocal volume for the occasion for a change.

Slightly cowed, the metric gaggle and a half of kids did as they were told. Adric knew he had only seconds to act before they were all back though, pressing their fingers against the fissures in the glass like they were the cast of Jackass.

"Al," he said, "call the window fixer guy. The number's in the diary.”

He cleared his throat, in a taking charge of the situation sort of a way. “Small child," he continued, directing his attention towards a small child with a gleam on his cufflinks, "pass me that cardboard box and some sellotape."

The child did, and Adric set about flattening the box so he could cover the damage with it until such time as the window fixer – or glazier – came to sort it out properly.

This was the point at which a small purple nova drove past, and someone in the passenger side wound down the window and produced a gun.

Almost in slow motion – which would be quite helpful if this was a film that needed to be fifty thousand seconds long, but unfortunately slowing things down doesn’t pad out one’s word count in the same way – Adric threw himself to the floor, pushing the small child out of the way as he went.

The pane of glass exploded behind him as the drive by took a turn for the more. Sparkling shards flew everywhere, cutting Adric’s favourite bow tie to shrebbons and lodging painfully in various parts of his arms, legs, torso and so on.

Blood happened.

“Ow,” he said, decisively.

“You touched that wee laddie,” said one of the teenagers, presumably referring to Adric’s daring rescue of the small child from being the one to get covered in broken glass. “That means you’re gay and a paedo. GAYDO. He should sue you. Hear that wee man? You should sue.”

The small child smiled obligingly, and stuffed an entire mars bar in his mouth sideways.

Adric took that as a sign he was undecided.

With a groan, he got to his feet. There was glass in his shoes.

“Right,” he said, “I think we’re going to need to close early today.”

“What do you mean,” Smokey Jones said smugly, “it’s already quarter past five!”

Adric groaned again, in frustration and pain and vowels.

“That means I’ve missed my bus. And it’s poker night tonight! Rubbish. They won’t let me play if I’m late.”

Al raised an eyebrow.

“I play with accountants, what can I say,” he shrugged apologetically.

“OK, everyone out the fire exit way,” he announced to the room, switching the lights off to emphasise his point. “Anyone who does the ‘we’re no leaving, hide and seek’ crap tonight will be locked in until we open up tomorrow. I will not be returning from my flat at the other end of town to let you out, and my telephone will be switched off specifically so my boss can’t make me.”

It was unnecessary to go into this detail, however, as most of the kids were itching to get out and see if the drive by guys were still around.

Unconfirmed rumours circulating amongst the young people implied that it was Jimmy Bob’s youngest brother, Bobby Jim, who had been driving the purple nova, and one of his mates from The Gang Who Must Not Be Named that had done the shooting.

The Gang Who Must Not Be Named were the arch nemesis gang of Smokey Jones’s gang, who were called the Snider Boys. The reason these two were nemeses was because they were the only gangs in the whole of Edinburgh not named according to the geographical criteria laid out by the author previously. They were vying for the headlines in the Evening News, but as yet had been pipped to the post on several occasions by other, worst gangs from other parts of the city. If only they tried to work together to out-gang all those other gangs, imagine what they could achieve.

But instead they fought with one another, and whenever The Gang Who Must Not Be Named heard that any of the Snider Boys was at the library, they headed down to enact some form of justice. Often there were fisticuffs in the car park, and wars of words happened almost daily, but it was comparatively rare that the building or its inhabitants were brought into the furore.

Adric speculated that the kid with the gun was probably new to The Gang Who Must Not Be Named, and that once the full effect of his initial militant stance had been smacked out of him by an indignant parent, things would go back to normal. The teenage girl with the knock off bag, meanwhile, proclaimed the mysterious gunman totally mint by the way, even though she hadn’t seen his actual face, which might be covered in pustules or anything like that. Love takes people in that way, sometimes.

Al swept up the broken glass as if in a dream, and taped the cardboard onto the door frame without saying a word. He was looking broody, Adric felt, and not in the way that meant he wanted to have a baby.

Ironically enough, one of the things Al had been brooding about was the possibility of finding and helping with the looking after someone else’s lost baby.

IT WAS BRACKEN.

It’s OK, Reader, I don’t expect you to follow the complexity of this plot all by your onesie.

“Shall we go for a pint?” He asked Adric, suddenly and uncharacteristically.

“I’d love to,” Adric replied, “but I think I had better go to the hospital first. I seem to have lost quite a lot of blood.”

And then he fainted.

Chapter Twelve

Link to each chapter in chronological order (rather than most recent first) here!


Bracken's feet were cold.

Grudgingly she opened her eyes, then wasn't sure whether she had quite managed to do it properly as all she could see was velvety blackness. It felt like a carpet of fur over her retinas.

Intending to investigate why her toes were so icy, she tried to reach down to touch her feet. This was the point at which she noticed that she was unable to move. Frowning deeply, she realized that she was strapped down. Furthermore, as she wriggled her toes with the determined ferocity of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, she came to the conclusion that some bastard had removed her shoes.

She gave a raw, gusty shout of frustration.

"What is going ON," went the shout that Bracken yelled.

"My bairn, my family, my flat, and now my fecking SHOES taken off me? In NOVEMBER?!"

Nobody responded. She seemed to be by herself, and by virtue of that fact, alone.

As someone in the distant past had taught her several years previously, Bracken took some deep breaths to calm herself, and thought hard.

It took some considerable effort, but eventually her racing heart slowed. She listened to the sound of her own breathing and heard the steady pulsating of her own heart inside her head. It felt claustrophobic, but she resisted the temptation to panic. That would mean that the forces of evil had beaten her, and she wasn't having that. At last, her pulse slowed to the point where it sounded like footsteps crunching in fake snow.

She wondered briefly whether the guys from the library had noticed anything unusual about her departure. Masked men, unmarked cars, that type of thing. It didn't seem very likely, she decided. They were nice enough chaps, but not very observant. Always had their noses in books.

Before falling into yet another reverie about the relative merits of Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe, she turned her attention to developing an escape plan. By this point she had established that her eyes were definitely open, and that wherever she was was totally dark. Unless she'd gone blind, she thought, but she quickly pushed that one away. Her gooseberry jam eyes were famed throughout the McCracken dynasty for their 20/20 vision. Or they had been, once.

But what dynasty was that, she wondered with another salient frown. There was just her and Nicky, Nige and the wean now. And her aunt, Neglecty McNeglectalot of the clan Forgetful of course. But where were all those short sighted McCrackens who envied her eyes?

She hovered on the cusp of a half remembered thought. Maybe it was some sort of dream she'd had once. A particularly vivid one, but a dream nonetheless. One where she was from an enormous dynasty that had crazy reunions that she loved but hated attending at the same time. You always had to wear smart clothes with itchy collars, like a child in a book by Edith Nesbitt.

A face from the dream popped into her mind's eye (which was transmitting in full colour and didn't seem to be at all bothered by the darkness). It belonged to a woman with dark curly hair and gooseberry eyes. She looked familiar, but Bracken couldn’t place her. Maybe she was one of the teachers at the school she lollipopped outside?

The oddly familiar woman’s mouth moved whilst Bracken watched her. It was almost as though she were talking, perhaps even trying to tell her something, but Bracken couldn't make out any of the words.

'Maybe I'm deaf too,' she thought, in a resigned sort of way. That would just be typical after everything else that had happened.

"You're not deaf," said a familiar voice somewhere to her right. She couldn't quite work out who it sounded like, but she knew she had heard them before. What a day for de ja vu this was turning out to be.

"You are blind though,” the voice continued airily. “But don't worry, it's only temporary. Sadly the medication we give to new arrivals hasn't been perfected quite yet. Still, at least we manage to get rid of the sickness and crippling headaches. And the stomach ulcers – they were the first thing we managed to fix. Too much sodium in the mixture, as it turned out."

"You give people stuff that makes them blind, without their permission, and call it medicine?" Bracken scorned like a particularly virulent teenager. "Are you mental? There was nothing even wrong with me before I got here."

"You wouldn't have come on your own," the voice said, "nobody ever does. So you had to be...” - there was an overly long pause, whether to wrack up tension or word count Bracken could not be sure – “Persuaded."

With the clear-eyed logic of the hostage she swiftly replied,

"Have you ever tried asking anyone?"

There was a further silence, thick as gingerbread milkshake and similar in colour.

"No-o," her captor admitted slowly. "But I'm 99% certain people wouldn't come if they knew why I wanted them here."

"And why DO you want to bring people here, Esmeralda?" for Bracken had recognised the voice as her senses began to wake up.

"Ah, you remember me," Esmeralda said in the manner of a Bond villain trying to eke out their role as far as possible.

"Well yeah, I saw you this morning."

Esmeralda was silent.

“You gave me a lift to the library? Then presumably snuck off to meet your goons so that you could lay in wait for me outside..”

"Touché," Esmeralda interrupted, trying to rescue the situation in favour of her looking at least a little bit cool.

"You can touché my arse,” Bracken snorted, “Where have you brought me and why, ya ringlet haired weirdo?"

"Questions, questions," Esmeralda said infuriatingly. Bracken could just hear the woman’s smug facial expression, taunting her like the playground bully she undoubtedly was throughout school.

She refused to lose her temper.

"Aye,” she said fiercely, “so how about you give me some answers, answers? Like, yesterday?"

Esmeralda smiled loudly.

"You gonnae make me, like?" she smarmed, convinced of her victory.

"I just might," Bracken retorted, "but have you ACTUALLY tied me down? What is this, cowboys and Indians?"

"Nobody gets tied up in cowboys and Indians," Esmeralda replied, slightly unsure of her position.

"They did the way me an' Nige played it," Bracken said grimly.

"But you probably thought yourself too ladylike for games like that. Do a lot of needlepoint as a kid, did you?"

Esmeralda considered the rows of cross-stitch scenes that littered her grandmother's summer home, all gifts from a sycophantic little granddaughter desperate for approval.

"No," she said, quite convincingly.

"More into watercolours, were you," Bracken guessed, without skipping a beat.

It would be fair to say that she had hit upon a raw nerve with this. Esmeralda had tried for years to get to grips with watercolours, the pursuit of all true ladies, but she'd never been very good. She liked her lines to be clean and straight, not soaking out into the paper every which way. There is not much room in the craft for technical diagrams, as her private tutor had dryly pointed out when she produced yet another cross section of an animal she had cut apart to try and see how it worked.

"I'm going to go away now," Esmeralda said, "and give you some time to reflect."

"Can you give me my shoes back first," Bracken asked, "my feet are cold."

Esmeralda considered the request. She obviously took too long, because Bracken continued,

"Why did you take them, anyway?"

"Well,” Esmeralda said with a reluctant swish of her left shin, “if you must know, I figured that with your background you'd probably have a flick knife in there, which would aid and abet your escape somewhat."

"What?!" Bracken didn't know whether to be offended or amused. "You dinnae ken anyhin about my background! What mums do you ken that go about wi a blade? What lollipop ladies have you seen stabbing folk up?"

Esmeralda thought.

"Nine," she said, but it had been a typo. She meant none.

Bracken shook her head in disbelief - well, she tried, but as discussed she was strapped down so she couldn't really move it.

"Have you strapped down my literal head," she asked, although it was more a rhetorical question given that was the only thing that could realistically have happened.

"Yes," Esmeralda said, "this is antique equipment from a Victorian insane asylum run by my great great great grandfather. There are more straps and buckles than I know what to do with and, I if I want can use it to run little electric shocks through you."

"That's inhumane," Bracken observed accurately.

"Well sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to get people to do what you want."

"Dude, seriously," Bracken replied wearily, "you need to try talking to people. This is last resort kind of territory, y'know?"

“Talking is for the weak,” Esmeralda blustered, although she really wasn’t sure about that, having never thought to try it before. How had she managed to miss that, after all this years of careful research into the manipulation of other human persons? It was ridiculous. Someone would have to be fired for not bringing it to her attention.

“What childhood trauma makes a bright, attractive woman with more surnames than is reasonable think that the best way to interact with folk is to bash them over the back of the head and whisk them away to a secret lab?” Bracken wondered aloud.

“Well, maybe I’ll tell you a bit later on,” Esmeralda said, “but as I mentioned a moment ago I am now going to leave you for a while to reflect on what you’ve learned.”

“I haven’t learned anything,” Bracken exclaimed, “other than you’re shit with people and possibly criminally insane – whether the latter is a direct result of the former I have yet to decide.”

“Surely that’s enough to be going on with?”

“Well no really,” Bracken said, “it’s not much is it? And where are you going anyway? Got other prisoners to confuse, or torture with your Victorian junk? What’s the matter, couldn’t afford up to date equipment?”

“I don’t actually torture people,” Esmeralda said stiffly, “I just said that I could.”

“Oh well, my apologies,” Bracken said sarcastically. “So what is it then, time for a cup of tea and a biscuit? Whilst I lie here strapped to a table wondering whether my eyesight will ever come back? That’s some life you’ve got eh.”

“Actually,” Esmeralda said quietly, “I just really need a loo break. I’ll be back really soon.”

“Oh well,” Bracken said, rolling her eyes without even realizing, “that’s fair enough. When you’ve got tae go you’ve got tae go, hen.”

Esmeralda chose to ignore the continued vein of sarcasm, nodded her thanks – redundant though that gesture was – and high tailed it to the ladies.

When she returned, Bracken seemed to have fallen asleep.

Esmeralda watched her flickering eyelids and the gentle rise and fall of her tracksuited torso with an emotion close to affection.

This would be her greatest experiment yet, she thought, with a whispered maniacal cackle. She’d show the world what modern science could – nay, should – truly be.

Chapter Eleven

It has been brought to my attention that anyone wanting to actually read this nonsense has an unreasonable amount of scrolling to do. With that in mind, this is a link to a list of each chapter in order. Hope that helps, although I should reiterate at this point that the point of NaNoWriMo is not to produce a good book. The aim is more to produce something resembling a first draft of what is probably a pretty bad one...

Aloysius stared wistfully after Bracken, little knowing she had just been bundled into the back of a car by a burly bunch of mystery miscreants.

Adric picked up an elastic band and pinged it at his head.

"Come on lover boy," he said, "you need to set up the Wii Golf Tournament in such a way that everyone gets a shot and no one kills anyone."

Aloysius nodded, not trusting himself to speak without the wobble in his throat betraying his lady like emotional state.

'She clearly thinks I'm with nigella, or esmeralda, or both,' he thought to himself in a tortured kind of a way. 'When all I want to do is buy her a day ticket for Lothian buses and help her scour the city looking for that little baby.'

He pressed a fiat to his temple in deference to iPhone's autocorrect feature, then followed it with an anguished fist. After all, he was a complex man, with convoluted emotions.

"What're you angsting about, Al-mate," asked one of the teenagers. He couldn't remember her name but she came in after school nearly every day, because teenagers hate to go home. It's just too uncool there.

"Oh, nothing," he replied, more melodramatically than he had intended.

She wasn't fooled.

"Aye right," she squeaked, "dinnae tell me then. Got any change for the vendor?"

"Why don't you go across to the shop? It's cheaper than that thing."

The library vending machine was notoriously overpriced, but for some reason very well used.

"it's raining," she offered, by way of explanation.

He searched the pockets of his well cut beige chinos for change. Having not done any laundry since his mother passed on, he was getting to the point where you have to wear your posh clothes to work.

The search brought forth a handful of change, half a packet of chewing gum and a slightly wonky paper clip.

"Here," he said, giving her a few coins, "that enough?"

"I only need 5p," she said, putting the rest into the charity box on the counter.

"oi," Al complained halfheartedly, "now I'm short for the bus!"

He poked at the box, although even if he'd known how it opened he would have refrained from doing so.

"That's despicable that you would want to take money off a charity," the teenager said with a laugh in her ears. "or do you think you're a charity case yourself?"

A cloud passed over the moon of Al's face at this, and he allowed himself to engage in a flashback to times of yore. And because this is a novel, we can follow him there using the power of words. Fantastic.

In the world of memory, a version of Aloysius around seven years younger than the incarnation we already know comes bounding down over the crenellations of his family home. He is skinnier than the Al who works in the library, and has an air of wealth and privilege.

“Mother,” he shouts, “I’m just going to take the jag into town.”

His mother appears through an ornate archway, dripping with jewels and walking upright like a full human.

“Darling,” she says, “have you forgotten? We’re having the Edgerton-Molasses round for tea.”

“I know,” he says, I’ll be quick. That car goes pretty fast you know.”

He gives her a peck on the cheek and struts away, throwing the keys up in the air and deftly catching them using his hands. His expensive Italian shoes click musically against the shining mahogany floorboards and he whistles a credit card jingle to match.

Young Al barely notices the priceless oil paintings lining the walls of the home he grew up in, or the chandeliers made from fresh cut diamonds, or the smell of frankincense wafting on the breeze. The Al of the present day gazes at the finery with regret. If only he had enjoyed it whilst he had the chance.

The memory shifts, like smoke on the water, to his return from town.

He is concerned that his parents will be angry, because he is late, and Mr Edgerton-Molasses will take this as a personal attack. They have some old fashioned notion that Al is going to marry Leilani Edgerton-Molasses one day, but this is unlikely to happen. For one thing, Leilani is madly in love with the beautiful but unattainable Portia Di Rossi. And for another, Al has fallen for a mysterious science student who is at university with him.

As he slowly brings the car up the curved driveway and the house comes into view, Al’s heart seems to stop beating. Don’t panic though, this is just a feeling – his heart doesn’t actually physically stop, or there’d be no future Al to remember it all occurring.

His extreme reaction is because the house he left just a few hours before is gone. In its place lies a pile of rubble, which looks as though some of its constituent parts – window frames, bricks and so on - might feasibly have belonged to a house once.

He steps out of the jag in slow motion and walks towards the pile. Without thinking he pulls his mobile from his pocket and dials the emergency services, although at this point it doesn’t seem there’s a huge amount they can do.

“Mother,” he whispers, “Father? Mr Edgerton-Molasses?”

He hears a groan from underneath an old oak door inlaid with gold. It used to guard the entrance to the dining room.

To get to it he has to wade through dust and bits of rock that reach up to his shins. His fancy shoes are ruined, but he doesn’t care. Future Al remembers how he breathed in the thick white dust and it stuck to the back of his nose and throat. He can taste it on his tongue, and coughs. So does Al from the past, but he battles through it to pull the heavy door off the originator of the pained moan.

It is his mother, lying all twisted up with her limbs pointing in different directions. Her jewels are gone, and her wig has fallen off. There’s blood on her too. She looks a bit of a state.

Al from the past can hear sirens in the distance, but doesn’t really register them. He falls to his knees, pulling the bits of debris away from her with his hands. Al from the present watches it all in slow motion, with tears in his eyes.

“What happened,” he asks, then, “no, don’t try to talk. The ambulance is coming. It’s going to be OK.”

She tries to move her head into nod formation.

“Don’t try to move,” he says, a little bit redundantly as she has worked this much out from the searing pain racing down her neck and back after trying to move.

“Your dad,” she whispers huskily.

“I don’t know where he is,” Al says, “was he with you?”

He looks fearfully at the rubble.

“Is he under there somewhere? Are the Edgerton-Molasses there too?”

An ambulance arrives, and the paramedics leap into action. His mother passes out.

Al wants to ride with her to the hospital, but is torn because he also wants to stay and help the fire service look for his dad. He takes the latter option, and future Al curses him for the decision. But it’s too late to change his mind now. She is carried off, frightened and passing in and out of consciousness, with nobody to hold her hand.

They search for hours, but Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe senior is nowhere to be found. The Edgerton-Molasses had cancelled at the last minute, so they were all at home without a scratch on them, although Mrs Edgerton-Molasses sustains a small paper cut on her left thumb whilst opening a bank statement the following morning. They send flowers of condolence to the hospital, and Leilani takes the distraction of this drama to come out.

A few days later, when Al’s mother has been told she will never walk again and his father has been declared missing presumed dead, it turns out that the house is not insured. To add insult to injury, all the family money has been frittered away on gambling and ridiculous investments like jam made from lunar rock. Rumours abound that Hunkington-Smythe senior wanted to cut his losses, so he blew up the house and did a runner. A warrant goes out for his arrest.

Al and his mother are shunned by the antique ideals of polite society because of the actions of a man they will never see again. The Edgerton-Molasses could have been killed in the explosion as well, and this is seen as an unforgivable slight. They demand the return of the condolence flowers. Al burns them in a fit of pique and shoves them through the letterbox in the middle of the night. Mrs Edgerton-Molasses’ shitzhu, Mimi, eats some. She dies the following day.

We fast-forward a year. Al and his mother have moved to Kent and are pretending that they are still rich. They can do this because news of Al senior hasn’t made it this far south, but are living on borrowed time. They are using credit cards and optical illusions to make people believe they are better off than ever.

Al is still haunted by the memory of the fantastically sexy science student from university, and one day he runs into her in a small village in Kent. They go on a date, and become lovers. It is a whirlwind romance, and they are very much in love, but for some reason Al never feels able to tell her about his rapscallion father.

Forward another year, and Esmeralda – for the sexy student is she – has left the country for several months to conduct research in foreign climes. When she returns she is different, somehow. Colder, and more detached. She and Al fight a couple of times, and he tells her he is destitute. His disgrace and penury are a combination of things that her family will never accept in a husband for their daughter, and Esmeralda turns out to hold similar prejudices. She leaves him forever.

The mists descend again and now Al and his mother are living in a rickety shack on a dark purple moor. The credit card companies found out the truth about them, and now they have nothing once more. They live on rabbits, caught by Al in a snare fashioned from an old snare, and various roots and berries found about the place.

“Please,” Al’s mother says, as she says every day when his brooding session is complete, “can’t we move back to a city and get jobs? The hospital said I would be eligible for disability benefits. It wouldn’t be like the old days but we could fashion some semblance of a life for ourselves.”

This time, Al takes on board what she says.

With a heavy heart, he goes to the only relative they know of who will still speak to them.

“You can start on Monday,” her whispery voice tells him.

He regards her office, a dark underground cave of a room littered with musty old books, cobwebs, and the past.

“Thanks,” he says, “I really appreciate this.”

“You’d better,” she responds in a menacing way. “Library jobs are like gold dust in this town. You put a foot wrong, and I will end you.”

He bows awkwardly and shuffles backwards out of the room, as though she were royalty of some kind.

This was the Aloysius of three weeks ago, about to embark upon the first proper job he has ever had.

Present Aloysius rubs his eyes.

“Hellooooo,” the teenager is saying to him, sitting on the counter and waving her hands in front of his eyes.

“Sorry,” he replies in a half whisper. “I was just… remembering.”

She snorts derisively.

“Pretentious, much?”

He scowls.

“And get down off the counter before I shove you off.”

“You cannae say that,” she giggles, delighted. “I’ll sue!”

“Sue away,” he says grimly. “There’s nothing left for you to take.”

Chapter Ten

Uncle Nicky awoke, as he had done every day for the past two weeks, in an uncomfortable bed in a small, windowless room with blue walls. It smelled of antiseptic and fear, with a hint of llamas.

Groaning loudly, he pulled himself into sitting position and gently rubbed the back of his head. The welt that had been there since poker night was almost completely healed. Nicky wondered whether it would leave an interesting scar that he could make up exciting tales of derring do about to impress ladies. Then he remembered that if he ever got out of this place, the real story of how he got it would be quite an interesting tale to tell, even without adding embellishments involving ninjas or sharks.

He stood up quickly, because he knew that if he didn’t move fast he wouldn’t get up at all, and then there'd be trouble. He waited for the head rush to subside before pulling his neatly pressed uniform off its brass hook. He put it on with a grimace, breathing in to suck in his tummy. It was too small, and he was glad nobody could see him wearing it.

"You put me in mind of a bag of porridge," his captor had said when he first put the thing on. "but it'll have to do for now. We haven't got anymore after-"

He or she stopped short. Nicky had no idea of the gender, nationality, or even favourite TV show of his host. Said host was always covered head to toe in a cloak of crushed mink, and when appearing in public he or she wore a series of masks, each more elaborate than the last. As to the voice, it was always disguised using some sort of voice box disguiser thingy, like they use on X-Factor but better.

There was a knock at the door. It would be one of the guards, Nicky knew - they always came round to ensure he was awake, although he wasn’t really sure why. They never let him out of his tiny blue room.

"McCracken, Nicholas," a gruff voice said from the other side of the door.

"Present," Nicky replied.

"Present, what?" the voice asked with a hint of annoyance.

"Present, sir," Nicky corrected, inwardly cursing his poor memory, lack of coordination and hairy back.

"That's better," the guard said, although he still sounded pretty annoyed.

Nicky waited till he heard the footsteps clicking away down the corridor before allowing himself to exhale.

The guards weren't as frightening as their leader in all that freaky carnival gear, but they were still pretty intimidating. There again, they probably had to be. Their hob, after all, was to prevent him - and maybe many others - from leaving some kind of under the radar prison organisation. Nicky was 99% sure he hadn't done anything that would get him this kind of treatment at the hands of official UK authorities, so this lot had to be something else.

Something altogether more sinister. Ergo, it made sense to employ big frightening bastards than namby pamby liberals who believe in free higher education and eating organic food.

As a general rule, a guard would do this preliminary visit, then leave Nicky to his own devices until around lunch time, when he would be given the first of two daily meals. He tended to use the time to imagine ingenious escape plans, but so far none of them had been very plausible.

It was difficult, he felt, when there was so little in the way of tech available – no paperclips for lock picking, nothing to use as a weapon, no possibilities for disguise other than ‘ghost’ (and even then we’re talking ghost as in ‘sheet over your head like a kid at Hallowe’en). Even if there had been materials to aid him in a MacGyver style break out, he had no idea what lay beyond the confines of the blue room. On the only occasion he had been allowed to leave, they had drugged him first and laid him on a trolley with a cover over his face.

Today, for the sake of advancing the plot and of course giving Nicky something a bit different to do, the usual routine was interrupted by a second knock on the door, hours before meal one was due to be delivered on its plastic tray.

“Er,” Nicky said, “come in?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said an old gentleman, bounding into the room with the endless vitality of someone who subsists entirely on a diet of tea and werther’s originals.

“Who are you?” Nicky asked, not really expecting an answer. Or at least, not a truthful one.

“My name is Bert,” said the old man, “but that’s not important right now.”

Nicky shrugged.

“If you say so. Bit hard for me to judge, mate.”

Bert looked around the room.

“Minimalist,” he observed.

“Yeah well, I just hate clutter, y’know,” Nicky told him sarcastically.

“I’m the very opposite,” Bert told him conversationally, perching on the end of the bed and swinging his legs too and fro. The rubber soles of his shoes kept scuffing against the floor, creating a high pitched squeaking noise. It was deeply irritating.

“Gonnae no dae that,” Nicky said sharply.

Bert stopped, surveying him thoughtfully.

“So,” he said eventually, “what are you doing in this place?”

Nicky frowned.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “waiting for death?”

“My my, what a pessimistic world view you have.”

“Well excuse me for being kidnapped on my way home from poker and not being told anything that’s going on,” Nicky responded with a petulant pout, “I’ll make a note in my diary that I must try harder when people ask me stupid questions.”

“You were kidnapped,” Bert said interestedly, “that’s interesting. Who by?”

“How should I know?” Nick was incredulous, and slightly angry. “You? Your boss? Who do you actually work for, Bert? Do you even know?”

“Well, how much can any of us ever really know of anything, in truth,” said Bert, attempting to appear sage like. He was more oregano, in truth. A little herb joke for you, there. Just to see who’s still paying attention.

Nicky tutted, and leaned back against the wall without saying any more.

“Tell me about your relationship with your muzzer,” Bert said in a slightly strange accent.

“My what?”

“Your mother. Apologies, I go a bit European sometimes. I’ve been trying to curb it by watching lots of American movies.”

“Why do you want tae ken aboot maw,” Nicky asked, suspiciously. “Do you know her?”

“As a matter of fact,” Bert said, “ I think I do. I have reason to believe that I am your long lost father.”

“I find that pretty unlikely,” said Nicky, “given I grew up knowing my dad. He used to take me every weekend to do fun stuff whilst mum painted her nails and acted like a strumpet. That’s my words, not his.”

“That was only the man you thought to be your father,” Bert said, “but you see, he was sort of right about the strumpet thing. She and I were planning to run away together, but when she fell pregnant with you she called it all off. I wasn’t ready to have children, not at the tender age of forty-two and three quarters. But she didn’t want to lose her chance to be a mother. She tried to convince – Steve, was it? – that you were his. I think he believed her, mostly.”

“Say for the sake of argument that I believed you,” Nicky said, “although I categorically do not – why are you here now?”

“To rescue you,” said Bert, “and to set things right.”

“I don’t care about the absentee father thing,” Nicky said, “ Steve was a great dad. One time he took me bowling. And another time, he let me stay up past my bedtime to watch the football.”

“I don’t mean that, Nicholas. I’ve made some professional faux-pas’s over the past few years and they’ve led to some pretty dire consequences. The establishment of this facility, for one.”

“What even is this place?” Nicky asked.

“I can’t go into that right now,” Bert replied darkly. “But it’s bad to the bone.”

“And what is it that you do that led to the establishment of an organization that kidnaps innocent people as they’re on their way home from poker?”

“That’s the least of what they’ve done,” Bert told him, sidestepping the question so smoothly that Nicky barely even noticed.

“Such as,” he prompted the older man gently.

“It’s too much,” Bert asserted, “we have to get you out of here. I’ll explain everything later.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“I am a doctor,” Bert began, “I have official access to most of the building. We will put you on a trolley and I will transport you to the exit, where a horse and carriage are waiting to whisk us to freedom. If anybody questions me I will dazzle them with my official looking ID and rapier wits.”

“Hm,” Nicky ruminated, “seems a bit thin to me.”

“Trust me,” Bert said with the misplaced confidence of a man who thinks he is always right despite a frightening catalogue of evidence to the contrary, “it’ll be fine.”

Chapter Nine

"Like, for repairs?" Bracken asked hopefully.

"No," Adric yelled sadly, twirling one of his bow ties. "One of the local kids was burying a cat out in the garden - don't ask - and he found a big wedge of Mayan gold. At first we thought it was a hoax by some of the older boys – ” he gestured towards a row of computers where a line of older teenage boys sat in silence checking their social networking sites and hatching plots.

“– they need to get jobs like – but the council was interested enough by the prospect of money to get some professor down here to check it out... The kid was pretty annoyed, as it turns out it's real, authentic and very very old."

"Mayan gold, though," Bracken said, incredulous and slow. "As in the ancient civilisation in south America?"

"That's the one." Adric confirmed squeakily, putting up some shelves as he did so.

"But how did it get here? Under a library in Edinburgh? It doesn't make any sense."

"Oh Bracken," Adric said paternally, placing an assortment of library related knick knacks on the aforementioned shelves, "you said it yourself. The Mayans were an ancient civilisation. This building has only been here since the mid seventies. I know that seems ages to a young snip of a girl like you, with your flighty fancies and frippery doodads. But it's really not that long in the grand scheme of things. You'll start to see that as you get older."

"No," she said patiently, "I mean physically how did this gold get from South America to Scotland? Who went to all the trouble of removing what was probably a cursed treasure - they usually are, at any rate - sailing back here, and burying it in the Scottish countryside, never for them to lay eyes on again?"

"I would have thought that was pretty obvious," Adric said, "it must have been pirates. They love nicking shiny stuff and burying it."

"That's a myth propagated by Treasure Island," Bracken informed him wearily, "you might just as well say a dragon did it."

"Don't be silly," Adric said dismissively, "you don't get dragons this far north. They hail from Wales. Must’ve been pirates. With big hats, and peg legs, and hooks for eyes. No, wait. Hands. That’s right, isn’t it? Like in Peter Piper. I mean Pan."

"So what will happen to your jobs then," Esmerelda asked, when the flow of nonsense seemed to have come to a natural end, "what with the economic climate how it is? The Edinburgh Evening News says the council are firing people at a rate of lots."

"Knots," Aloysius corrected automatically.

"What?"

"The phrase is at a rate of knots," he said, "it's a seafaring term."

“I know,” Esmeralda pouted, irritated at her amateurish mistake, “I was just making a joke. God, Al. Way to make me sound like an idiot.”

"We'll probably be offered the chance to go to different branches," Adric explained, blissfully unaware of the tension in the room. Bracken noticed it though, and a flicker of hope twangled in her tummy like a rowdy gerbil.

"Or if we refuse, a minuscule pay out. I'll probably go to another branch, myself. Maybe in the Maldives, haha. Only kidding. The council doesn’t run any libraries in the Maldives. Not any that are legal and above board, at least."

"Actually, I was wondering about volunteering in a Romanian orphanage," said Aloysius, to the evident surprise and chagrin of his alleged girlfriend.

Bracken noticed that their body language was very distant as well. Could it be that Esmeralda had lied to her that night at the hospital?

"Where did that come from, all of a sudden," Esmeralda was asking through gritted teeth.

"I just think that maybe it's time to do something different," he said, "something to help other people rather than worrying about myself all of the time."

Esmeralda looked genuinely blank. This was a concept that was alien to her. Because she was secretly mean.

"And anyway," he continued, shooting a sneaky look at Bracken under his lovely (in a butch way) eyelashes, "there's not really anything for me here."

"Ally-poos," came the tinkling voice of Nigella in full slap, "how can you say that? After last night?"

She emerged from the staff room brandishing two cups of tea, and gave one to Al with a lingering look.

"What happened last night?" asked Bracken and Esmeralda in unison.

"It's always the quiet ones," remarked Adric, pulling a custard cream out of his shirt pocket and munching cheerfully.

"Nothing happened last night," Aloysius said quickly. "I just walked her home, that's all."

Knowing how honest he was, Esmeralda was inclined to believe him.

Knowing what a fantasist Nige was, Bracken tended to agree. And yet there was something not quite right about his demeanour, or her snake eyed look of triumph.

"Well, that was pretty much the most boring revelation ever," Adric said, scanning through a bunch of graphic novels for comic book guy and stamping eight of them due back on the 41st of April 2026 before realising it had been tampered with.

"You know me," said comic book guy, "I'll have them back within the week anyway!". He laughed, implying that this had been a joke of some kind.

Adric, who had never seen comic book guy in his life, was confused.

He overcompensated by laughing uproariously and shouting, "yep, that sounds like you."

"Maybe it's not such a bad thing we have to close," he said sadly after comic book guy hooded up and dashed out into the rain, "I don't know the customers anymore anyway."

"You know me," Bracken pointed out.

"Yeah, but this is the first time you've been here in weeks. Where have you been? We've got a book in that you reserved, actually. That one about the woman who turns everything she touches into marine creatures."

"That the one with the moustachioed porpoise on the front?" Al asked, going to retrieve it.

"The very same."

"I don't have my card," she admitted regretfully, "sorry guys."

"That's alright," Al said, "we put your card number on the book when it comes in."

"Not just yours," Adric qualified, taking the book from him and typing her borrower number into the database. "It's standard procedure."

"Gosh," Esmeralda said sarcastically, "how fascinating. Nobody should live at this speed."

"Thanks," Bracken said quietly, examining the cover.

The moustachioed porpoise gazed back at her with the calm of the sea.

“Maroona Fusible was an ordinary, strikingly beautiful girl… Until the clock struck 12 on her eighteenth birthday,” began the blurb on the back in flowing silver calligraphy. “But then her family’s secret curse was unlocked, and strange things began to happen to the people she loved. Whenever she touched someone with whom she had a connection, they turned into citizens of the sea.”

“I think it’s meant to be some sort of strangled metaphor,” Bracken muttered, “wonder if it explains what for or whether I’ll have to try and work it out from context and the author’s background.”

“Well guys,” Nigella trilled, interrupting her train of though, “I’d better be going. People to do, places to see. Oh, what am I like.”

Bracken rolled her eyes.

“See you soon, Al,” Nige added sweetly, clopping away in her tallest pulling shoes.

“Break a leg,” Bracken wanted to shout after her, but she didn’t.

“I should go too actually,” she remembered, “the kids’ll be finishing soon.”

“No they won’t,” Adric asserted, “they’ve got an in-service day. Nobody in the school at all.”

“Oh,” Bracken said, “that’s why they’re all running about in here making a racket. I’m so used to them now I just tune them out, I thought it was quiet in here.”

“ADRIC,” shouted a chubby boy with mud all over his face, “WHEN AM AH GETTING MA GOLD BACK?”

“You’re not getting it,” Adric explained, evidently not for the first time. “It’s been taken away to go in a museum.”

“Should I not get a reward for finding it or suhin?” persisted the boy, picking his nose and wiping it disinterestedly on the counter.

“Well, in a perfect world maybe,” Adric admitted, “but nobody knew it was missing, so there isn’t really a reward going as such. You got your picture in the paper, though. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“NUT,” expostulated the boy, “ah’ve been in the paper like, about, a HUNDRED times. Like for ma golf and when we did that thing for Robbie Burns night and when my sister got married…”

“Ooooh,” Bracken said, recognizing the kid at last, “you’re Kelly’s wee brother aren’t you.”

“Aye,” he said.

“I was in school wi her.”

“Oh.”

Adric shrugged apologetically.

“Well can I book on the playstation 3?” Enquired the boy.

“That depends,” Adric responded, “have you got your library card?”

“Ew nut,” the boy shrieked, “that’s pure geeky!”

He saw the look on Adric’s face.

“Eh, I mean, I lost it.”

Adric folded his arms.

“Dog ate it.”

A shake of the head.

“Ma wee sister accidentally on purpose flushed it down the toilet.”

“Your wee sister, aye,” Bracken interjected doubtfully.

“Ma wee brother.”

“You don’t have a wee sister or a wee brother,” Adric and Bracken chorused. Such was the benefit of living in a tiny community where everyone knew everyone. Through very different channels, both of them knew that Dillon Mackay (for this was his name) was the youngest of nine children.

“Just find someone who does have a card and play with them,” another kid suggested from the sidelines.

“I think I might go,” Bracken concluded, having glanced outside and noticed that the rain had stopped; “now that I’ve realized they’re here I’m going to end up shouting at them. They’re wee toe rags when they’re in here.”

“What, are they mild mannered and delightful when they’re outside?”

“No. You know what I mean. Youse’re good wi them, but I couldnae stand it.”

“You’d be surprised,” Al disagreed, reappearing from a Super Mario Brothers tournament in which he had been pwned by an eight year old girl. She was now doing a victory dance on the craft table as some other kids cheered her on.

“Well,” Adric told her, “don’t be a stranger, OK? We’re all rooting for you and hoping things work out with Nicky and the wee one.”

Bracken was genuinely touched by this unexpected display of kindness. Because her aunt and Nige and Jeremy Kyle had been so vocally against her, she hadn’t thought that anyone was on her side.

“Thanks,” she nodded, the lump in her throat threatening to swell up to kitten size. “I’ll see you when I bring this back –” she waved the porpoise book – “if not before.”

“You take care,” he smiled.

“Will do.”

Which was ironic really, because as soon as she stepped outside, she was grabbed from behind, a gloved hand went over her mouth, and she was bundled into the back of a car by a man (or a female bodybuilder like on Louis Theroux) in a balaclava.

“What the-” was all she got out before everything went black.