Jules
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Transcript of Jules
Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
JULES
He did not like to be touched. They pushed too much, so
he waited until last, until all the others had left the classroom.
He was always the last one to leave.
Jules needed a drink. He needed a coke. If he had not
been so thirsty though, he would not have had to walk that
way. He would not have had to walk past the boys. There were
four of them standing next to each other in front of the cool
drink machine, staring at him, blocking his way.
He wanted to turn back, but the double doors had
already closed behind him, so he continued to walk towards
them, slowly, not knowing how to escape.
Fear attacked him. It pounded inside his temples, a hot
stone swinging inside a boxing glove, bashing behind his eyes,
muddying up his already muddled brain. His thin body felt
drained of strength. His knees turned soft, and his small body
shrank, a feeling of sinking down into his large shoes, which
held his extraordinarily big feet. He walked forward a few
steps, then stood still, his head down, looking at his feet,
which poked out from under his over length trousers like the
big feet of a wader hesitantly scavenging for food.
Panicking, Jules looked for another way out of the
narrow passage. There was none. He had to walk past the
boys.
He walked forward, slowly, his eyes fixed down on his
embarrassingly big feet. His mouth felt dry, his tongue thick
and coated. He tried to peel his dry gummy tongue away from
a dry sensitive palate, then he bit the insides of his cheeks to
get some moisture. The blood tasted wet, salty and
comforting.
He knew what was coming.
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Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
Butch the bully came walking towards him, slowly. Jules’
downcast eyes fell on Butch’s doc Martins. Black leather.
Thick rubber. Mean steel tips.
With long, sinewy arms stiff and jumpy inside his school
blazer, Jules came to a complete standstill. Wet with sweat,
the nylon lining of his blazer clung to his forearms,
compressing them like vacuum-packed meat inside two
airtight tubes. Nervously he wiped a bony palm against his
jeans. His hands were trembling.
Butch stood still, waiting menacingly. The other boys
were quiet. His thick neck bursting out of a tight, round
necked t-shirt, Butch stood, looking at Jules with small, close-
set blue eyes. His thick, muscular arms were crossed over a
broad chest. A smear flattened his broad lips over huge, even
teeth.
‘Give a man a coke,’ Butch hissed through the smear of a
smile stuck on his lips, which were hardly moving. He stepped
forward, forcing himself into Jules’ space, a dart of spite
hitting the boy in the face.
His cheeks stinging, Jules stepped back. With all his
mind he kept his eyes down on his feet, which had drawn
themselves close together in fear.
Jules’ heavy glasses started to shift off his nose, riding
down on a slippery slope of sweat as his head sank further
down in defeat. His shoulders sagged forward as he let go
even before the fight had started. He swallowed to calm the
scorching muscles in his throat. They burnt with dread and
dehydration and his bladder started screaming.
Butch came right up to Jules and pushed a fresh, wet can
of coke onto the boy’s cheek, the tin fizzing invitingly, drops of
ice melting down the side.
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Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
‘Take it, fool.’ Butch kept his eyes on Jules and saw fear
creep up in pink blotches over Jules’ pale cheeks. A snigger
from one of the boys slapped Jules in the face.
He reached for the can. But one of the other boys
stepped forward and snatched it away before he touched it.
Then he had to lift his eyes, which caught Butch’s flat face,
now only a few inches away.
At that moment Jules’ nose gave up and the heavy
glasses slid down his sweating nose. Instinctively he reached
up to catch them with one hand, while the other hand pushed
forward, towards Butch. With bent elbow he tried to make
space between himself and the bully.
But his movements were nightmarishly slow. Butch
caught his hand easily.
‘Shit!’ Butch shouted, pulling his hand away, shaking it.
He moved hid head up and around in a circle, his eyes
following an imaginary arc from his hand to the floor as he
continued to shake his hand, is if water were falling from his
fingers to the ground.
Again, ‘shit!’ he shouted, this time looking at the other
boys with a silly, mocking smile, his eyes darting from face to
face. He breathed in deeply, extending his chest. His deep,
exaggerated in-breath sucked explosive laughter from the
boys.
Jules’ face filled up with blood. And more sweat.
‘He’s bleeding sweating with fear!’ Butch mocked.
With an open palm Butch hit Jules on his overloaded
backpack, which made the frightened boy stumble forward.
His frozen legs suddenly thawed into a microwave of activity
as he was propelled forward by the weight of his backpack.
He ran.
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Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
With superhuman focus and every last ounce of strength,
he ran, drowning out the jeers, which echoed behind him
along the passage. As he ran around the corner, he saw his
hollow cheeks and frightened eyes stare back at him from the
glass windows. He ran through the glass-panelled corridor to
the double doors on the other side. Short-sightedly, hurriedly,
he bumped himself into, and through, the swing doors, out
into the sunlight.
By then he knew they were not following him, for he
would have heard them. But he kept running, across the yard,
out through the big gates, and across the park, while pressing
a fist into his tummy on each in breath to stop the sharp stitch
which was paralyzing his insides.
§
The nightmares became worse after that, so bad that
they persisted into his days. A confusion of thoughts and
voices jumped around in the boy’s head, visions real and
imagined, mixing nightmares and mashing up daydreams.
Eventually he was unable to tell them apart.
Jules stopped going to school.
§
Constable Dan Cope could easily have seen what was
happening on the bridge if he had looked out of the window.
The top of the bridge was clearly visible from the window
where he had been sitting.
The velvet curtain kept the inside of the pub to itself
over tightly closed windows. This, despite the fact that it had
been a hot day and the August evening was sticky and humid.
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The pub was full and the queue at the bar counter five
deep. Dan waited patiently. He was in no hurry, for the day
had been a long one. A boring Monday of paperwork and
irritable superiors.
As soon as he was given his pint, even before he had
paid for it, Dan bent down and sipped thirstily, his thoughts
far away.
The pub door burst open.
‘Call the cops!’ a man shouted. Dan swung around and
saw the man hurrying out of the pub. He left his drink on the
counter and rushed out behind the man.
A small crowd had gathered outside the pub.
‘Police, excuse me, out of the way, please,’ Dan said as
he forced his way through.
A slightly overweight woman stood in the centre of the
group, with a young girl crying in her arms. The girl’s thin
body shook as she tried to control her sobs.
‘It’s ok, sweetheart,’ the woman said. She had both arms
around the girl. ‘Tell me what’s upsetting you,’ she said, for
the girl could not stop crying. The woman glanced up over the
girl’s head at Dan.
‘Police,’ Dan said, with a questioning frown.
‘The police are here,’ the woman said softly to the girl.
This seemed to have an effect, for the girl’s body stopped
shaking and her sobbing subsided into a tremulous in-breath.
‘Will you tell the policeman what happened?’ the woman
asked softly.
Before the girl could answer they heard a loud shout
from behind the crowd, ‘Police here yet?’ A man’s deep voice,
coming from under the bridge somewhere. ‘Will someone
please call an ambulance!’ the voice rose with hysteria.
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Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
Dan turned and ran across the road, down the steps,
which led to the bank of the canal under the bridge. As he
came to the bottom of the steps, he saw another girl lying on
her back on the narrow canal pathway. Her left elbow was
folded under her tiny body, her long black hair a mess of
congealed blood and mud. A short, stocky man was on his
knees by her side, his shabby black coat soaking up the
muddy water in which the girl lay.
‘Police!’ Dan called as he knelt down next to the man,
immediately reaching out to feel the girl’s pulse.
He could not feel anything.
‘How long has she been lying here?’ he asked the man
while bending forward over the girl’s face. He did not hear the
man’s reply. With an ear close to the girl’s mouth, he reached
to feel for a pulse in her neck. There was a very faint pulse in
her, and, deep down in her throat, he thought he heard a
gurgle.
‘She’s still alive,’ he said as he glanced up. By this time
two paramedics were coming running down the steps.
Dan did not wait there. He ran back up the steps, back
to the pub. The woman was still there, outside, holding the
first girl by the hand. They were sitting on a small brick wall
next to the pub.
‘She did not see how it happened,’ the woman told Dan
before he had said a word. The girl sat with her head down,
straight blond hair falling over her shoulders. She looked up
as Dan came to stand in front of them. She had a pretty, small,
pixie face and a pert, freckled nose.
‘What’s your name, love?’ Dan asked. The hazel speckles
in her eyes were sparkling with tears.
‘Myra,’ she whispered.
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‘Is the other girl under the bridge your friend, Myra?’
She nodded. Fresh tears started out of her eyes. She did not
blink, but kept her eyes on Dan’s face, while the tears ran
freely down her cheeks. She stared at Dan, not moving.
‘Were the two of you together?’ Another nod.
‘Was anyone else there?’ At first the girl shook her head,
then she frowned.
‘Did you see anyone?’ Dan prompted.
Yes, she nodded.
‘A girl?’ Another shake of the head. ‘A boy,’ she
whispered.
‘Do you know him?’
Yes. Another nod. Then she started sobbing again. She
bent herself double, dropped her face on her knees which she
held tightly together, and sobbed into her hands.
‘It’s ok, don’t worry,’ said Dan. ‘We won’t talk about it
now. You go home and have a rest. I’ll come and see you at
home tomorrow, OK?’
She nodded without looking up.
‘I’ll walk you home if you like,’ Dan said, reaching for
her arm. She stood up slowly, trembling against his hand.
§
‘I saw the boy there, on the bridge,’ Myra told Dan the
next morning. She looked much calmer, her long hair tied
back in a tidy ponytail. But her thin face was very pale, her
eyes big and round.
‘Do you know the boy’s name?’
‘I don’t know what his real name is, but I think they call
him Jules,’ she said.
‘Where was he when your friend fell over the bridge?’
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‘I never saw him before she fell over, but I’m sure he
pushed her.’
‘Why do you think he pushed her?’
‘Coz she screamed before she fell and I came running
back when she screamed, and I saw him just after she fell.’
‘Where were you?’
‘On the other side of the bridge.’
‘Could you see her from where you were?’
‘No, I was too far away. But I heard her scream.’
‘And that was when you came running towards her?’
‘Yes. Then I saw the boy.’
‘Jules?’
Yes, she said. He was running away from Myra. He ran
down the road, off the bridge she told Dan.
He must have pushed her friend, Myra insisted. Today
she felt angry. Her friend was still unconscious, critically ill.
She was sure that that weird boy, Jules, had pushed her
friend, she said.
‘He’s real weird,’ she told Dan.
‘What do you mean weird?’ Dan asked.
‘He looks strange like, you know?’ she said. ‘Always
alone. Kinda sad, like, coz no-one ever talks with him at
school. He mumbles to himself, acts crazy like. And he smells.
His clothes smell. It’s gross, the way he is. Scary-like,’ she
said, no longer crying, her lips pinching up as if the smell
were there, coming from Dan.
§
The voices were all talking at the same time now. They
were saying all sorts of things. Important things, like that he
should not desert his gran, that he should look after her. He
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Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
listened to them. He did look after her like they told him. He
did this very seriously, for she needed him, now, more than
ever before.
That morning, as he had done for many days, he took his
time, carefully putting the ointment on her face for her. The
ointment was meant for her hand, he knew, but he had
nothing else, so he offered to put it on her face, and she did
not object. He patted it on her cheeks, taking his time, for the
skin was very delicate and he could not rub it in without
hurting her.
The bossy voice said, ‘Stop that, you silly ass. Can’t you
see that she’s not enjoying it?’ He looked up at her, wondering
if she’d heard the voice too, but she just kept her eyes closed,
enjoying the way he gently stroked her cheek with the
ointment. He hated the bossy voice most of all. He ignored it,
and he carefully crooked his index finger and scooped up
more ointment.
‘Turn this way, Granna, I can’t reach your throat,’ he
said to his grandmother. Gently, lightly, he turned her head to
face him, and he thought he saw a small smile on her lips
while she kept her eyes shut.
A wetness returned on her cheeks. ‘Don’t cry, please
Granna, don’t cry,’ he told her softly, trying to wipe the wet
away. With his little finger he lifted a wisp of grey hair from
her forehead and applied the ointment above her eyebrows.
He worked gently, taking his time, loving her.
The little voice encouraged him. Ask her to read you a
story, it said. She will do it for you, you deserve it, the way
you are looking after her. Go on, ask her. Bet she agrees, it
whispered.
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He bent down and picked up the open book and put it on
her lap. Lightly he lifted her hand and put it on the open book,
to keep it in place. Her eyes were still closed, her smile now
faded as she went deeper into her silent world.
‘Please read to me, Granna,’ Jule whispered, hoping she
would open her eyes and read to him. He, too, now closed his
eyes and he sank back into the corner on the floor opposite
her chair, pulling his knees into his chest. He put his head on
his knees, his legs up in front of him, hugging his knees, as he
used to do when he was very little.
‘But Big Ears,’ his grandmother’s soft Noddy-voice
drifted through his comforting infantile world, ‘Mr Plod said
that I should stay here with you.’
Jules kept his eyes tightly shut, savouring the sound.
Although her voice was soft, it still managed to block out the
bossy voice and drown out the little voice inside his head.
Slowly he opened his eyes. He stretched his neck and peered
over his grandmother’s arm, at the picture in the book which
lay open in her lap, under her hand, just where he had place
it.
He jumped up, shocked, as the doorbell rang.
His head hit against the door as he tried to get out of his
confusion. He stumbled forward through the door. He had still
not got his glasses back, and he could not see through the
gloomy passage. He stopped, feeling disorientated, not quite
sure what to do, what had shocked him out of his half-sleep.
He stood with his back against the wall for a moment,
breathing heavily, blinking his eyes, trying to settle his
jumping, confused mind. The voices were all quiet now,
nobody told him what to do.
The doorbell rang again, longer this time, insistently.
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He could see the shape of the man through the lace
curtain as he stepped forward. He was two steps from the
front door, but his legs would not take him further. He
stopped, scared, stiff, hardly breathing, hoping that the
person would leave.
But the doorbell rang again. This time it did not stop.
Slowly, heart pounding, he stepped forward. One step. A
big drop of sweat trickled down his spine. A second step and
his underarm slid on the sweat in his armpit.
He stopped. The bell had gone quiet.
Dan had stopped ringing the doorbell. Something looked
very wrong, but he did not know what it was. He knocked on
the shiny green door, loudly. He opened the top button of his
shirt, pulled at his tie, which had gone very right in the hot
sun.
From the corner of his eye he saw the lace-curtain fall
back behind the window next to the front door.
Everything was very still in the cul-de-sac. The little
garden in front of the green door looked tidy, but in need of
water, for the flowers neatly bordering the path looked
withered. He raised his hand to knock on the door again. Just
then it opened, very slowly.
The young boy did not open the door very widely. Dan
could just see a thin nose through the opening, opaque eyes
staring obliquely and short-sightedly at him.
Jules tweaked the fine tip of his nose up. This made him
look very young and vulnerable. Sweat appeared like drops of
water out of his waterlogged skin.
‘Yes?’ his voice squeaked in broken adolescence. He
blinked up at the policeman, into the bright sunlight behind
his bigness.
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Dan took off his hat. He opened his mouth, then shut it.
The smell which rushed out from behind the boy almost
knocked him back into the street.
‘I must talk with you,’ Dan said. He did not wait for a
reply, but stepped forward and pushed past Jules, who did not
resist.
The smell inside the tiny, dark passage was almost
unbearable. Dan looked at Jules, who hung his head, staring
down at his oversized shoes.
‘You know what I’ve come about, don’t you?’ Dan asked
the teenager.
Jules nodded. He did not take his eyes off the carpet.
‘Is your name Jules Delaney?’
‘Yes,’ Jules said, in a hoarse whisper, his eyes still down.
He had not used his voice for days. His breath smelt of rotting
teeth.
Dan realised that there was something very wrong in the
house. The boy’s eyes darted from Dan’s face to the cupboard
under the stairs, then back to Dan. The door to the cupboard
was slightly open.
‘What’s in there –‘ Dan said, pushing past the boy to the
half-open door.
Jules jumped forward, trying to block Dan’s way. Dan
grabbed him by the arm and pushed past him.
With incredible speed Jules turned around and kicked
Dan in the shin. Dan’s leg folded back and he tripped. His
head hit the banister and he went flying into the hall table,
which the boy had pushed away from the wall as he ran out of
the front door.
It was not too difficult to catch Jules, who ran without
energy, with the listlessness of the hungry, as if he wanted to
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Jule, a short story by Monica Clarke
be caught. Dan grabbed him from behind by his sticky neck
and brought him down onto the pavement.
§
The decaying corpse was sitting tidily on a small
armchair in the cupboard under the stairs, an open book in its
lap, held open by fermenting fingers. The bulb above its head
was yellow with age and gave very little light. It cast shadows
over the muddy cheeks, which were covered with a white
ointment. The boy had tried unsuccessfully, for days, to stop
the flow of body fluid from the oozing eyes which were closed,
the mouth set in a rigid smile, congealed by death. Crusty
white layers of body fluid, slimy in places, which had flowed
from the nose and ears, had settled in the folds of her neck.
The boy had tied her to the stool, and the rope was
hanging loosely around her sagging body, looped through the
drain pipe behind her against the wall to keep her from falling
forward. She had once been an obese person, for her rotting
flesh was hanging in empty, uneven, bags under her high-
necked floral dress and apron, from under which came the
most suffocating stink Dan had ever smelt.
It was a long time before the police managed to get the
boy to talk about it. Under police guard, Jules slept for days,
first with the drugs which the doctors gave him, then in a
semi-conscious, exhausted stupor.
His concern when he finally awoke was for his
grandmother, his loving Granna, whom he had found lying in
the passage when he had come down from his room for
breakfast one morning, the nurse told Dan.
‘She doted on the boy,’ said a shocked neighbour. A thin,
curious woman, with widespread fingers covering a bony
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chest, she spoke with the sombre, sanctimonious sobriety of
the curious, all the while peering inquisitively over the fence
between their two houses. She was eager to speak.
‘Brought him up from when he was four, when his
mother left them. How terrible. Just upped and left the child
with the poor dear. They never got on. Never heard from her
again. That were nine years ago,’ she said.
Jules’ grandmother had died from natural causes, a
heart attack, the police doctors reported, while Jules lay in
semi-consciousness avoidance.
He had found her lying at the foot of the stairs, Jules
mumbled to the nurse during a brief, reluctant bout of
consciousness. Slowly the young nurse pieced the story
together while she tended to him over the next few days.
The harsh reality of his grandmother’s death eventually
dropped like a stone into his befuddled brain, starting fresh
ripples of insecurity over an already fragile life. He eventually
started to speak his grief in broken tones, his cracked voice
splintering under the strain. Between freak outs and
blackouts, voices and dream attacks of steel blades ripping
bloodless flesh into metal strips, Jules’ mind relived his
distress. The young nurse had a job piecing the story
together, had a worse time protecting the boy’s delicate
personality from complete fracture.
His gran was all he had. Now she was gone, and his
brain refused to accept it.
His grief and fear had made it impossible for him to part
from his gran, the nurse reported to the police. The voices had
told him to put her in the cupboard. They had given him the
strength to drag her there and pull her onto the small chair,
given him the super determination to do so. She would not sit
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up, so he had tied her to the pole behind her, ‘..gently, I never
hurt her,’ he made sure the nurse understood - so that he
could rub the cream over her face, the cream which the
doctor had given her for the cracks in her hands. This he
knew.
His dreams had kept her alive for him. And the voices
had assured him that she was alright, as long as he stayed
close to her. That’s why he dared not go to school.
The doctors would not allow the police to question Jules
for many days.
‘It might turn into a murder charge,’ Dan told them, for
Myra’s friend was slipping further into unconsciousness as the
days went by.
On the fourth day Dan was allowed to interview Jules,
with a nurse standing close by.
The girls had not at first seen him, Jules said. In fact, he
did not think that they saw him at all, for he had stood out of
their sight, under the bridge all the time, while the two girls
were playing around on the bridge. Even when Myra’s friend
with the white trainers had leaned over the railing and spat
out her gum, she did not see him, he was sure. He had
watched the gum as it sailed down slowly, as it took a turn
and landed a foot away from his toes, where he had stood
behind the bush under the bridge.
‘I looked up,’ he mumbled to Dan, who listened intently,
not wanting to disturb the tenuous connection he had
established with the boy by writing things down.
Then one of the girls had raised the edge of her school
skirt to wipe her nose, Jules said. This detail he remembered,
recounting it to Dan with clarity, as if it proved his innocence.
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He had watched the girl carefully. Myra was not there
then. He knew Myra’s name, but he did not know the other
girl, the one who had fallen over the bridge.
After that it had happened very quickly.
Someone must have walked up to Myra’s friend, he said.
‘Did you see anyone?’ Dan asked.
‘No, I never saw him, but I heard them talking with the
girls on the bridge. I think it is one of the boys from my
school.’
Jules wanted to get away before the other boys saw him.
He was just about to step out from behind the bush where he
was hiding under the bridge, he said, when he saw Butch
running under the bridge. ‘He ran past the bush and I waited
for him to pass. He ran past me. He did not see me,” Jules
whispered, close to tears. ‘He ran fast. He did not see me,’ he
repeated.
He watched Butch scramble up the bank, onto the
bridge.
Then Jules heard the girl scream, while he was still in
hiding.
‘I was too scared to come out,’ he said.
Dan did not believe him. Myra had not said a word about
anyone else having been there. She had seen only Jules.
‘What did you do then?’ he asked Jules.
‘Nuffink. I was too scared,’ Jules said from behind closed
eyes. He had withdrawn from Dan. ‘I heard the girl
screaming. Then I saw her fall over the bridge,’ he said,
almost inaudibly.
He drew himself back deep into the bush under the
bridge, he said. He could see the thin girl’s legs and lower
body lying on its back on the cement path from where he was
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standing. Her legs were spread wide apart, and blood was
running from a gash in her leg, onto the pavement.
Everything went quiet on top of the bridge. The boys had
run away, so he came out and ran up the steps, onto the
bridge and away.
‘He’s lying,’ Dan thought, watching the boy carefully,
wondering what line of questioning to follow next. He stared
at the boy, who did not open his eyes again.
‘Why should we believe you,’ Dan asked softly, almost to
himself. The boy had slipped away into his comfortable world
and did not answer. Then, louder, ‘Why should we believe you.
How do we know that you had not pushed her?’
From somewhere, from very far away, Jules heard Dan.
And with Dan’s voice came a vague memory. He tried to grab
it, then it faded away, out of his grasp. He frowned, and Dan
knew that the boy had heard him.
Dan remained silent, watching the boy intently. Slowly
Jules’ frown settled and his face relaxed. The memory
appeared again, further forward into the present this time,
and took shape in a reluctant cloud of fact. Jules pushed it
forward to the front of his mind with great effort, making it
jump over other images, dart between the voices which had
started to mumble in the back of his life as they ducked to
allow the memory to flow over them and past jumbled
thoughts, down into Jules’ dry mouth.
‘Butch’s knife,’ Jules said.
‘What?’ Dan asked, caught by surprise.
‘Butch dropped his knife. I saw it. I kicked against it
when I ran away. It must still be there, next to the bush,
under the bridge.’ His words collided over each other
excitedly. He opened his eyes, frowning at Dan accusingly.
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As quickly as it had risen, the fight in Jules subsided.
‘The knife must still be there,’ he finished weakly. What’s the
use, they won’t believe you, the bossy voice clearly said, and
that was that. Jules closed his tired eyes. The natter of the
voices increased and he went to join them, for that was where
he received his comfort, where he was safe. He ignored
everyone else and slipped away back into sleep, even while
Dan and the nurse where still waiting for him to finish talking.
Dan nodded at the nurse and left the room quietly while
the nurse drew the curtains to allow the boy to enjoy, with
undisturbed relief, his own world, the only place which offered
him safety from the other world of cruelty and loss.
‘What will happen to me now?’ he asked as soon as he
woke up. The room had gone dark. He had slept and slept.
The sun was gone. The policeman had just come back. He was
standing at the door, talking to the nurse.
Hearing Jules, Dan turned to him.
‘You get yourself better, son. That’s what must happen
next,’ Dan said, glancing at the nurse as he walked out and
closed the door quietly behind him.
Butches’ bloody knife was inside a plastic evidence bag
in Dan’s pocket. He signalled to the policeman on guard
outside Jules’ hospital room and together they walked out into
the sunshine, out of the boy’s fragmented life.
end
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