“Of course you do! Mr and Mrs Ateba are nice and they look after you and they probably never shout.”
Taylor thought about giving him a little lesson in genetics, because the chances of two black parents creating a milk white ginger kid was 0.000001%. He knew. He’d checked. Back when he wanted to convince everyone at school that he and Johnny were actually biological brothers.
Instead, Taylor tipped his head. “You think Mr and Mrs Ateba are my parents? Man, I wish.”
William looked up. He still looked angry, but the expression was rapidly melting into desperation. “They aren’t?”
Taylor shook his head. “Nah. My parents are from down south. Near London.”
“Is that why you have a weird accent?”
Taylor scoffed, mildly offended because he had worked his arse off during school to try and get rid of his city accent. It was something he and Johnny had in common during those early days. “I do not.”
“You do. You sound like that guy off the telly.Apples and pears, apples and pears.”
Taylor let his mouth hang open. “Excuse me, it’s illegal to make fun of a police officer.”
William laughed, and it was probably the best sound Taylor had ever heard. “No, it isn’t. Dad makes fun of you all the time.”
“Mhm, and how many times has your dad been locked up?”
William grumbled and sank back into his filthy coat. Shit. Wrong thing to say.
“What’re you doing out here, anyway? It’s the summer holidays, shouldn’t you be with other kids?”
William frowned and inspected his grubby nails. “Dad has friends out here.”
“Oh yeah? Who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t talk to them, do I? They just give Dad bags of stuff and then they smoke for ages. Makes Dad all quiet and grumpy. I hate it.”
Taylor sniffed. If he was being completely honest, he didn’t give two shits about people smoking cannabis. It was neither here nor there in terms of all the other drugs that were out there. But the smell of it… the smell triggered all sorts of unpleasant things in Taylor’s brain that he did his best to forget.
His parents used to smoke it constantly, and he remembered them hiding it under the floorboards when the social came knocking.
“William,” he began, swallowing as his throat went dry, “do you… do you ever smoke that stuff?”
William’s brows pulled together and he shot Taylor a dirty look. “No way. The people Dad smokes with are weird. But I—”He balled his hands in his pockets. “This time I stole some. I didn’t… I didn’t want Dad to have so much, so I took it away.”
Taylor sighed. “Is that why you’re up here? Are you hiding from your dad and his friends?”
William scoffed. “If I wanted to run away I’d have just gone into the woods.” He smirked, which threw Taylor completely off guard. “You know how fast I can run.”
Taylor laughed, because it seemed like William needed that. “Yeah, yeah. Take the piss out of me why don’t you?”
William was a tough kid. He could see it in the tilt of his jaw and the starving hardness in his eyes, andfuckit was like looking in a mirror. He realised then that William was probably telling the truth when he said he wasn’t running. By getting up on the roof he knew that someone would notice, someone would call the police or at least try to get him down.
It was a cry for help.
“Will…” Taylor said, thinking back to the first time he ever went to Johnny’s house back in Slough. It had been a tiny two-bed terrace with a scraggly patch of grass at the back and an oversized dinner table that they still ate around today. Maman had sat him down, run her hand through his hair and put a drink in front of him.
So, reaching out a hand, Taylor said, “How about we go inside and get a nice cup of Ribena?”
CHAPTER 15
CONFESSIONS SHOULD BE BETTER PLANNED
Johnny
