The Bone Clocks

“Head left out of the forecourt, over the first set of traffic lights, past the Star Inn, and up the hill to the clock tower. Take the left turn to Chatham and follow your nose a bit further, past Saint Bart’s Hospital. Keep going till you get to an Austin Rover dealer and you’re at the Chatham roundabout. Stick your thumb out there, wait for a knight in a shining Jag to stop.” He deliberately said it all too quick for me to take in. “You might get lucky, or you might be waiting hours. You never know with hitching. Make sure you’re dropped at the turnoff to Sheerness—if you find yourself in Faversham, you’ve gone too far.” He readjusts his crotch and turns to the woman. “Now, what can I do for you, sweetheart?”

“Not calling me ‘sweetheart’ would be a good start.”

I don’t hide my laugh. The guy stares daggers at me.

·   ·   ·

LESS THAN A hundred yards later this knackered Ford Escort van pulls over. It might’ve been orange once, or perhaps that’s just rust. The passenger winds down the window. “Hi.” I’ve got a gobful of Ritz biscuit and must look like a total spaz, but I recognize who it is straight off. “It’s not quite a shiny Jaguar,” the woman with the raspberry-red hair slaps the door cheerfully, “and Ian here definitely isn’t a knight,” the guy driving does a little lean-over and a wave, “but if you’re after a lift to Sheppey, we’re going nearly to the bridge. Guide’s honor, we’re not axe murderers or chainsaw killers, and it’s got to beat standing on a slip road for six hours waiting for someone like that”—she cocks her head towards the Texaco garage—“to stop and ‘What can I do for you, sweetheart?’ all over you.”

My feet are killing me, and a lift off a couple’s safer than a single man, she’s right. “That’d be brill, thanks.”

She opens the back of the van and shunts some boxes to make space. I wedge myself in, but there’s windows on all sides so I’ve got a nice enough view. Ian, who’s midtwenties, baldish, and has a nose as big as a Concorde, asks, “Not too crushed back there, I hope?”

“Not at all,” I say. “It’s dead cozy.”

“It’ll only be twenty-five minutes,” Ian says, and we move off.

“I was saying to Ian,” the woman tells me, “if we didn’t give you a lift, I’d spend all day worrying. I’m Heidi, anyway. Who are you?”

“Tracy,” I answer. “Tracy Corcoran.”

“You know, I never met a Tracy I didn’t like.”

“I could find you one or two,” I say, and Ian and Heidi laugh, like that was pretty witty, and I s’pose it was, yeah. “Heidi’s a nice name, too.”

Ian does a dubious mmm, and Heidi gives him a poke in the ribs. “Stop interfering with the driver,” he says.

We pass a school ordered from the same catalogue as Windmill Hill Comprehensive—same big windows, same flat roofs, same muddy football pitch. I’m actually starting to believe I’ve left school: It’s like old Mr. Sharkey says, “Life’s a matter of Who Dares Wins.”

Heidi asks, “Do you live on Sheppey, Tracy?”

“No. I’m going there to work on a fruit farm.”

Ian asks, “Gabriel Harty’s place, would that be?”

“That’s right. D’you know him?”

“Not personally, but he’s known for having a subjective grasp of arithmetic when it comes to totting up your pay, so keep your wits about you. Errors are likely to be in his favor.”

“Thanks, I will. But it should be okay. A friend at school was there last summer.” I find myself gabbling to make myself more believable. “I’ve just done my O levels ’cause I’m sixteen, and I’m saving for an InterRail in August.”

That all sounded like I read it off a card.

“InterRails look great fun,” says Heidi. “Europe’s your oyster. So where’s home, Tracy?”

Where would I likehome to be? “London.”

The lights are red. A blind man and his guide dog step out.

“Big city, London,” says Ian. “Whereabouts, exactly?”

Now I panic a bit. “In Hyde Park.”

“What— inHyde Park? Up a tree, with the squirrels?”

“No. Our actual house is closer to, uh, Camden Town.”

Heidi and Ian don’t answer at first—have I said something stupid?—but then Ian says, “I’m with you,” so it’s okay. The blind man reaches the other side of the road, and Ian struggles with the gearbox before we move off. “I stayed in Camden Town when I first went to London,” he says, “sleeping on a mate’s sofa. In Rowntree Square, by the cricket ground next to the Tube station. Know it?”

“Sure,” I lie. “I go past there, like, all the time.”

Heidi asks, “Have you hitched from Camden this morning?”

“Yes. I got a lift off a truck driver to Gravesend, then a German tourist brought me to Rochester Bridge, and then you pulled up. Jammy or what?” I look for a way to change the subject. “What’s in all these boxes, then? Are you moving house?”

“No, it’s this week’s Socialist Worker,” says Heidi.

“They sell that in Queen Street,” I say. “In Camden.”

“We’re with the Central London branch,” says Ian. “Me and Heidi are postgrads at the LSE, but we spend our weekends near Faversham so we’re a sort of distribution hub. Hence all the boxes.”

I pick up a copy of the Socialist Worker. “Good read, is it?”