Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

– but I know that it took days to build. It was really hard work – finding exactly the right spot, scouring the old factory for building materials (old doors, corrugated metal, rusty nails), lugging it all back to the top of the bank, fixing it all together, plugging the gaps between the walls, covering the outside with branches and brambles… we even gave it a little door and a skylight in the roof. And when it was all finished, it was amazing. Hidden away at the top of the bank, but not too close to the factory fence, it was virtually invisible. Even when you were standing right in front of it, it was hard to tell it was there. And onceyou got inside, it was almost like being in a proper little room. It wasn’t huge or anything, but it was just about high enough to walk around in without having to stoop too much, and there was easily enough room for the five of us to slouch around on the floor, which is mostly what we did. The floor wasn’t really a floor , but we’d cleared the ground, and we’d stamped it down, and after we’d slouched around on it for a couple of weeks, it was almost as hard as concrete.
    We spent most of that summer in the Back Lane den. Hot summer days, rainy days, shadowy evenings and candlelit nights. We just about lived in there. God knows what we did all day – all I can remember is sitting around talking, making stupid plans, messing around…
    Messing around.
    Yeah, there was that. There was all kinds of messing around.
    And the den parties, of course. We had lots of den parties that summer. Steamy nights, stolen cigarettes and bottles of booze, getting drunk, getting sick, getting overexcited…
    Me and Nicole.
    Breathless in the candlelight…
    Kids’ stuff.
    ‘What?’ said Raymond.
    We’d reached the top of the bank now, and I’d kind of forgotten Raymond was there. I also hadn’t realized that I’d been thinking out loud.
    ‘Sorry?’ I said to him, pausing for breath.
    ‘I thought you said something.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Just now.’
    I shook my head. ‘I didn’t say anything.’
    Raymond looked at me for a moment, smiling secretly tohimself, then he turned his head and gazed across at a suddenly familiar-looking patch of ground over to our left.
    ‘There it is,’ he said.
    In the greying light, I could see the overgrown brambles spreading out over the roof of the den, and beneath the brambles I could just make out the faded blue paint on the boards of the roof. The skylight – a cracked old window pane, fixed with bent nails over a hole in the roof – was still intact.
    ‘It looks all right, doesn’t it?’ I said to Raymond.
    He smiled at me. ‘I told you it’d still be here.’
    ‘Yeah, you did.’
    I glanced over my shoulder and looked down the bank at Pauly. He was scrambling up behind us, breathing hard and cursing at the brambles.
    I looked back at Raymond. ‘Do you want to wait for him?’
    ‘No.’
    We walked over to the den and stopped in front of the door.
    ‘After you,’ I said to Raymond.
    ‘No, after you ,’ he smiled, waving me forward.
    I paused for a moment, breathing in the hot thundery air, then I stooped down and opened the door.
    ‘Hey, Pete.’
    ‘Who’s that?’
    Nicole laughed. ‘Who do you think?’
    ‘Christ,’ I said, edging my way inside, ‘I can hardly see in here.’
    ‘Let me in,’ Raymond said from behind me.
    ‘Hold on.’
    I took a step forward.
    ‘Shit!’ Eric cried out. ‘That’s my foot!’
    ‘Sorry.’
    As I stepped to one side, I cracked my head on the roof – ‘Shit!’ – and then Raymond stumbled into me, almost knocking me over, and I stepped on Eric’s foot again.
    ‘Christ, Boland! What are you doing ?’
    ‘It was Raymond –’
    ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Raymond said.
    Then Pauly bulldozed his way through the door behind us – ‘Watch out! I’m coming in!’ – and he tripped over something – ‘Fuck!’ – crashing into Raymond, and Raymond crashed into me, and I toppled over