A Room Full of Killers, Michael Wood [best books for students to read txt] 📗

evil monsters? Then he remembered. Ryan was an evil monster himself. He wondered if the other seven felt the same regret and remorse as he did.

‘You been to see Call Me Fred?’ Lee Marriott was a thin boy with brilliant blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and skin so pale he was almost translucent.

Ryan smiled. ‘Yeah. Just finished the tests.’

‘Here’s a tip: when he gets on a subject he really likes he spits when he talks; so always lean back when he comes near you.’

‘Cheers.’

‘You any good at pool?’

‘Not really.’

‘Table tennis?’

‘A bit.’

‘We’ll have a game after tea if you want.’

‘Yeah. Sure. Thanks.’

‘No problem.’ Lee moved up the sofa so he was next to Ryan. ‘Look, don’t worry about this place. It’s scary at first but you’ll soon settle in. Miss Moloney’s all right as long as you’re all right by her, and the other staff are pretty cool too. As for the rest of us lot, we all get along just fine – we have to really,’ he sniggered.

‘Thanks.’

‘Let’s have that game now. I fucking hate Star Wars.’

By the time the evening meal came around at 6 p.m, Ryan had spoken to all seven boys and was relatively relaxed in their company. There were a couple who seemed a bit distant but, when he factored in the reason why they were all here, he could perfectly understand that.

Ryan entered the dining room with Jacob, Mark, and Lewis. They were laughing and joking. To the outsider they looked like four school pals on their lunch break. Once they were seated the plastic cutlery gave away the seriousness of where they were.

Ryan had been too knotted up to eat at lunchtime. Now he had settled in and relaxed with his contemporaries for a few hours, he found he was hungry, and was the first to finish his bland chicken dinner. They all chatted between mouthfuls: safe subjects like football, TV, and the fact Mark Parker couldn’t do more than ten press-ups in the gym.

Following dessert (soggy treacle sponge and lumpy custard), it was back into the recreation room for a few hours before they went to bed at nine o’clock.

Ryan beat Lee easily at table tennis but there was no malice, no arguments, no threats of reprisals – it was all good-natured fun.

Nine o’clock came far too quickly for Ryan’s liking and he was soon locked up in his small room (not a cell). He was finally alone after a hectic first day at Starling House. He wasn’t tired. It had been years since he had a bedtime. As he lay wide awake on the single bed, looking up at the ceiling with its cracked paint and damp patches, his mind drifted. How did he end up here? Where were his mum and dad? What were they calling themselves now?

The room was sparse. A single pine bed with matching bedside cabinet. A cheap veneer wardrobe secured to the wall and a plastic chair. There was one shelf which had a few dusty paperbacks. The room lacked atmosphere and there was a cold draft coming from somewhere. There was nothing personal or comforting about it. He wondered what the other boys’ rooms were like. Had they brought items from home: posters, photographs, games? He wondered if he was allowed to visit the other boys in their rooms. Something else to ask Lee in the morning.

Ryan listened to the silence. He couldn’t hear anything from the outside, no traffic on the roads, no people walking by. He wondered how far he was from civilisation. He’d never been to Sheffield before so had no idea of the layout. It was in Yorkshire, which had two shit football teams, was about all he knew. He remembered his uncle coming up to Sheffield for the snooker once when Ryan was a little boy but that was the only time the city was mentioned in his house.

There were no sounds coming from anywhere else in the building. He strained to hear any of the other boys talking, either to themselves or each other through the walls, or any of them crying, but he guessed the walls were too thick.

He took a deep breath and sighed. His first full night in Starling House. His first of many. Lee and Jacob had made the first day manageable but he would give anything to be back home with his mum and dad, to be hugged by them one more time.

A tear fell from his eye, down his face and onto his pillow.

‘I’m so sorry, Mum. For everything I did. I’m really sorry,’ he said, quietly, under his breath. ‘Please find it in your heart to forgive me. I need to see you.’

Ryan turned over and hid his face into his pillow to muffle the sound of his sobbing. Just because he couldn’t hear anyone else, it didn’t mean they couldn’t hear him.

He cried uncontrollably; cried himself to sleep. He was just nodding off when his door was unlocked from the outside.

LEE MARRIOTT

Blackpool. August 2013

I was born by accident. It’s not that my parents didn’t want me, they did, well, Mum did. It’s just that I was a surprise for them both.

Mum and Dad had tried for years to have a baby. They married when Dad was twenty-five and Mum was twenty-one. They tried from the honeymoon onwards but nothing happened. Twenty years later, out I popped. I was their middle-age miracle.

I’ve heard that story so many times from Mum that I could give a lecture on it. I could go on that boring quiz show with the leather chair and have it as my specialist subject. At first it was a sweet story, as if I had waited more than twenty years for the right time to be born, or the angels were preparing my mum and dad to be the best parents ever (that’s a direct quote from Mum’s story, by the way – pathetic, isn’t it?). After hearing it more than ten million times it starts to get annoying;