All Sorts of Possible by Rupert Wallis Read Free Book Online

remembered that both their bikes had gone to the shop for a service, he looked out his dad’s old one. It was tied to the wall of the shed by cobwebs that
crackled when they tore. The chain was stiff, golden with rust, and the gear cassette at the rear looked like the bloom of some long-dead flower.
    He found an oil can on a shelf in the shed and eased the upturned bicycle back to life in the garden until the wheel was turning like a spinning wheel as he wound the peddles round.
    ‘Where are you off to?’ asked his aunt as she stood by the back door, arms folded, the morning sun pooling on her auburn hair in patches.
    ‘Bennett’s. He’s my best friend.’
    ‘Really? Didn’t he want to come here?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘After all you’ve been through?’
    Daniel didn’t know what to say to that.
    ‘Daniel, where are you really going? We need to sit down and sort things out. Go shopping. What about going to see your father?’
    ‘We’ll go later. I need to go to Bennett’s first,’ he said again, more urgently.
    ‘Wait there,’ she said, ducking back into the kitchen. She reappeared, holding out three twenty-pound notes. ‘In case you get hungry or see anything you want. If you need a new
wallet then we can choose one along with anything else you lost in the car. I thought we could make a list before we go shopping.’
    ‘Sure,’ said Daniel. ‘Thanks.’ He took the notes and put them in his pocket.
    He turned round, wheeling the bike over the grass towards the door in the fence. When he lifted the latch and glanced back, his aunt was still standing in the doorway, watching him. For a
minute, he imagined her as someone else, not the person his dad had told him about. And then Daniel whispered to himself that she wasn’t that person at all and went on his way.

21
    Lawson’s house was just how Daniel had dreamt it: a 1940s red-brick affair, standing on its own about a mile outside Cambridge down a potholed lane. Fields of tall golden
wheat shimmered all around it.
    Daniel opened the gate and wheeled his bike down the concrete path. Through the front window he could see what the house was like inside. Tidy. But tired. There was a sofa and two armchairs, all
covered in a severe grey fabric that made the seats look hard and uncomfortable, as if designed to make a person sit upright. The arms were stripped down to bare wooden struts. The wallpaper was
densely patterned with precise rainbow semicircles, geometrically arranged one behind the other in rows, seemingly overlapping like fish scales.
    The front door opened before he had time to knock and his hand took fright and retreated, his arm upright like a cobra ready to strike. Lawson beamed as if he had been expecting him.
    ‘What’s happened to me?’ Daniel asked immediately. ‘What’s the fit?’
    Lawson beckoned Daniel into the hallway. ‘You can leave the bike outside,’ he said. ‘It’s safe. No one ever comes down here.’ But Daniel stood his ground. Lawson
squinted in the daylight as if he had just awoken from a long sleep. ‘The best way to explain it is to show you.’ He backed away from the doorway and held out a hand again.
‘Please.’
    ‘You said we could help my dad?’
    But Lawson just kept his hand out. ‘Please,’ he said again. ‘I promise I’ll show you what I know.’
    Daniel felt the sunlight on the back of his neck, and it seemed all the warmer as he looked into the cool, dim hallway.
    He rested the bike against the red-brick wall and then his feet were moving, stepping into the house, taking him with them because they knew he was desperate to know more.

22
    The house smelt vaguely of incense, a smell that grew stronger as Daniel stood in the sitting room and watched Lawson light a series of white candles, then draw the thick
patterned curtains, making the walls shrink in the stuttering light.
    ‘Your talent,’ said Lawson, ‘can only be used with someone else, somebody who has their own talents