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.Darkness crept stealthily up the gwli towards them and covered them up one by one, turning them into sinister crouching dwarves.Behind them in Balaclava Row the gas lamps began to light up the windows of the crooked old houses and black monsters writhed and lurked behind ghostly curtains.The first cold breeze was blowing as summer tipped towards autumn, and Iffy knew with a horrible ache that the lovely days of freedom were coming to an end.She thought of the itchy winter uniform they wore to school, the cold swish of Miss Riley’s skirts, the pad of her feet on icy linoleum, and she shivered.An owl called somewhere up on the Black Band and an army of ghosts tramped up and down Iffy’s spine.“Where the hell has he got to?” Fatty hissed and his voice was strange and savage in the dark.Dai was always in the lav by nine.They knew his routine by heart.Iffy began to pray that Dai wouldn’t come out to the lav at all.Then they’d have to abandon their plan and slope off home.It wasn’t such a good idea.It had sounded great when Fatty had first said it.Most things Fatty said sounded great, like the time he’d had the brilliant idea of cooking tinned tomatoes with a blow torch, only he hadn’t take the lid off first.They would get into terrible trouble for what they were going to do.The coppers would catch them and put handcuffs on them.They’d go to prison.Iffy pictured herself in a suit with arrows on it, a ball and chain dragging behind her like the villains she’d seen in comics.She prayed to God.Gritted her teeth and prayed really hard.Dear God, please don’t let Dai come out to the lav tonight.Let him die in his chair before he needs to go.She prayed to the Virgin.Dear Mary, please make Dai constipated.She didn’t ask God for constipation, he probably got the women saints to answer those sorts of prayers.Blessed Virgin, please just bung him up a bit.She prayed to all the saints she could remember.Saint Francis the Cissy, Joan of Fark.They waited, ears pricked for any sound.No sign of Dai.Thank you, God.Thank you, Blessed Virgin.Joan of Fark and Francis the Cissy.“Come on, let’s go,” Bessie whispered, but Fatty made no attempt to move.A mouse squeaked somewhere close by and Bessie pulled her skirts tight around her bum in case it took a flying leap at her privates.Then there was a noise.The sound of a door creaking open, wood scraping harshly across a stone floor.Oh God!Fatty grinned like a demon.Dai was on his way! He was going to step right into the trap!Bessie poked Iffy hard in the ribs and she jumped and sniggered with nerves.“Hush up, you two! Don’t give the game away!” Fatty hissed.They shut it.He was the boss.Iffy screwed up her face and tried to squeeze away the tears of fear that were coming.Fatty swept his eyes over them like a general over his men.“Everyone know what they’re doing?”Iffy and Bessie nodded weakly.They knew their jobs.They’d rehearsed them often enough.Fatty had the scariest job of all.He was in charge of the newspaper, an Argus he’d pinched from the letterbox of a posh house up in Georgetown where teachers and shopkeepers and crooks and people who’d won the pools lived.Bessie was in charge of the bolts.Fatty had greased them with lard earlier so that they wouldn’t squeak and give them away.Iffy was in charge of the box of matches which she’d borrowed from the pantry cupboard.Fatty was also doing the countdown.Like Americans did for space rockets.Billy hadn’t got a job, he was just there for the ride.“Keep them matches still, Iffy!” Fatty said.The matches rattled in her hand and she closed her fist tight to stop them.Billy smiled at Iffy kindly.She smiled back.He had pretty dimples when he smiled.Fatty didn’t have a nervous bone in his body, he was crouched down like the rest of them, but there was no sign of fear about him.He was enjoying every minute of it.Iffy was terrified.So was Bessie.Fatty breathed slowly, calmly.Just a few more minutes and then that fat bastard would get what was coming to him.He owed him.Oh yes, he owed him.He bit his lips and tried to put the memory of his mam out of his mind.He’d been coming over the bridge when he’d seen Iffy’s grancha.The old man’s face was contorted with pain and exertion.He was carrying Fatty’s mam as though she was a small child and Fatty’d known by the droop of her head and her wide staring eyes that she was gone from him for ever.Over at the end of the gwli, the wonky lamp post outside the Old Bake House threw a pool of light onto the road.A lone bat danced through the ballroom of its light.Somewhere a sash window rattled like old bones and then crashed shut.Iffy sneaked a look at Bessie who was crouched next to her, and then wished she hadn’t.Bessie’s eyes were on leave from their sockets.At any minute they might pop out, roll down her cheeks and get lost in the darkness of the gwli; sticky eyeballs covered in dirt.Iffy imagined Bessie scrabbling about in the muck to find them, having to rinse them under the tap and pop them back into her empty sockets.She had to look away in the end because Bessie’s face made Iffy want to laugh and Fatty would kill her if she did.Bessie pulled at Iffy’s cardie.“Let’s go home,” she whimpered.She was shaking like blancmange, her lips two wriggling grubs, beads of sweat bubbling between her lip and her nose.On the other side of Iffy, Billy grinned like a fool.Iffy just hoped he could run fast enough when the time came.He was going to need to, they all were.Dai was out on his step, Fatty could hear his wheezy breath and the bubbling green phlegm in his pipes.The breeze carried his smells of tobacco, stale beer and sweat.Iffy hoped Dai couldn’t smell them.Bessie stank of talcum powder.Billy smelled fragrantly of bread: Swansea batch, cobs and bloomers.Fatty smelled of nettles, bubblegum and horse shit.Iffy wasn’t sure what she smelled of.Dai crossed the bailey and they heard the latch lift on the lav door.Then he was inside the lav and only the whitewashed wall separated the four of them from him.He was close enough to touch!They stayed crouching.Pins and needles burned Iffy’s feet and she bounced with terror.She thought that at any moment she might start to bounce faster and faster and not be able to stop.She might bounce away along the gwli, down the hill and into the river.Iffy imagined Dai’s face in the darkness of the lav: the huge great pumpkin head, tumbleweed hair, his sucked gobstopper eyes and wonky nose, nostrils wide as arches with sticky-out hairs, and his awful mouth – the great black dirty hole where one yellow fang hung by a sticky thread.She felt sick with fear.It was pitch dark now in the gwli and Bessie’s hand came out of the blackness and found Iffy’s for comfort
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