Chapter 1. Peggy Sue. I disappeared on the night before my twelfth birthday, July the 28th, 1988. Only now can I at last tell the whole extraordinary story, the true story. Kensuke made me promise that I would say nothing, nothing at all, until at the end of the day. least ten years had passed.
It was almost the last thing he said to me. I promised. And because of that, I have had to live out a lie.
I could let sleeping lies sleep on, but more than that, I could not. More than ten years have passed now. I've done school, done college, and had time to think.
I owe it to my family and to my friends, all of whom I have deceived for so long, to tell the truth. About my long disappearance. About how I lived to come back from the dead.
But there is another reason for speaking out now. A far, far better reason. Kintsuki was a great man.
A good man. And he was my friend. I want the world to know him as I knew him. Until I was nearly eleven, until the letter came, life was just normal.
There were the four of us in the house. My mother, my father, me and Stella. Stella Artois, that is my one ear up. and one ear down black and white sheepdog, who always seemed to know what was about to happen before it did. But even she could not have foreseen how that letter was going to change our lives forever.
Thinking back, there was a regularity, a sameness about my early childhood. It was down the road each morning to the monkey school. My father called it because he said the children jibbered and screeched and hung upside down on the climbing frame in the playground. And anyway, I was always monkey face to him when he was in a playful mood.
Well, that is which he often was. The school was really cold. Joseph's and I was happy there, most of the time anyway.
After school every day, whatever the weather, I'd be off down to the recreation ground for football with Eddie Dodds, my best friend in all the world, and Matt and Bobby and the others. It was a muddy down there. Cross the ball and it would just land and stick. We had our own team, the Mudlarks we called ourselves, and we were good too.
Visiting to see... teams seemed to expect the ball to bounce for some reason and by the time they realised it didn't we were often two or three goals up. We weren't so good away from home. Every weekend I did a paper round from Mr Patel's shop on the corner.
I was saving up for a mountain bike. I wanted to go mountain biking up on the moors with Eddie. The trouble was I would keep spending what I'd saved. I'm still the same that way.
Sundays were always special, I remember. We'd go dinghy sailing, all of us, on the reservoir. Stella Artois barking her head off at the other boats as if they'd no right to be there. My father loved it. He said because the air was clear and clean, no brick dust.
He worked down at the brickworks. He was a great do-it-yourself fanatic. There was nothing he couldn't fix, even if it didn't need fixing. So he was in his element on the boat. My mother, who worked part-time in the office at the brickworks, reveled in it too.
I remember her once throwing back her head in the wind and breathing in deep as she sat at the tiller. This is it, she cried. This is how life is supposed to be. Wonderful.
Just wonderful. She always wore a blue cap. She was the undisputed skipper.
And if there was a breeze out there, she'd find it and catch it. She had a real nose for it. we had some great days on the water we'd go out when it was rough when no one else would and we'd go skimming over the waves exhilarating in the speed of it the sheer joy of it and if there wasn't a breath of wind we didn't mind that either sometimes we'd be the only boat on the whole reservoir we'd just sit and fish instead by the way i was better at fishing than either of them and sir artois would be curled up behind us us in the boat, bored with the whole thing because there was no one to bark at.
Then the letter arrived. Sœur Artois savaged it as it came through the letterbox. There were puncture holes in it and it was damp, but we could read it enough. The brickworks were going to close down.
They were both being made redundant. There was a terrible silence at the breakfast table that morning. After that, we never went sailing on Sundays anymore. I didn't have to ask why not. Both tried to find other jobs, but there was nothing.
A creeping misery came over the house. Sometimes I'd come home and they just wouldn't be speaking. They'd argue a lot about little niggly things and they had never been like that before. My father stopped fixing things around the house. He was scarcely ever home anyway.
If he wasn't looking for a job, he'd be down in the pub. When he was home, he'd just sit there, flicking through endless yachting magazines and saying, Nothing. I tried to stay out of the house and play football as much as I could, but then Eddie moved away because his father had found a job somewhere down south.
Football just wasn't the same without him. Bloodlarks disbanded. Everything was falling apart.
Then one Saturday I came home from my paper round and found my mother sitting at the bottom of the stairs and crying. She'd always been so strong. I'd never seen her like this before. Silly beggar, she said.
Your dad's a silly beggar. Michael, that's what he is. What's he done, I asked.
He's gone off, she told me. And I thought she meant for good. He wouldn't hear reason.
Oh, no. He'd had this idea, he says. He wouldn't tell me what it was, only that he'd sold the car and that we're moving south.
And he's going to find us a place. I was relieved. I was quite pleased, really. South must be nearer to Eddie.
She went on. If he thinks I'm leaving this house, then I'm telling you, he's got. got another thing coming.
Why not? I said. Not much here. Well, there's the house for a start. There's Grant and there's school.
Yeah, there's other schools, I told her. She became steaming angry then. Angrier than I'd ever known her.
You want to know what was our straw? She said. It was you, Michael.
You going off on your paper round this morning. You know what your dad said? Well, I'll tell you, shall I?
Do you know something? he says. There's only one lousy wage coming into this house. Michael's paper money.
How do you think that makes me feel eh? My son's 11 years old and he's got a job and I haven't. She steadied herself for a moment or two before she went on. Her eyes filled with fierce tears. I'm not moving Michael.
I was born here and I'm not going. No matter what he says I'm not leaving. I was there when the phone call came a week or so later. I knew it was my father.
My mother said very little, so I couldn't understand what was going on. Not until she sat me down afterwards and told me. He sounds different, Michael.
I mean... Like his old self. Like his very old self. Like he used to be when I first knew him. He's found us a place.
Just pack your stuff and come, he says. Fairham. Somewhere near Southampton.
Right on the... the sea, he says. There's something very different about him, I'm telling you. My father did indeed seem a changed man. He was waiting for us when we got off the train.
All bright-eyed and full of laughter, he helped us with the cases. It's not far, he said, ruffling my hair. You wait till you see it, monkey face. I've got it all sorted, the whole thing. It's no good you trying to talk me out of it either of you.
I've I've made up my mind. What about, I asked him. You'll see, he said.
Seratois bounded along ahead of us, a tail held high and happy. We all felt like that, I think. In the end, we caught a bus because the cases were too heavy. When we got off, we were right by the sea.
There didn't seem to be any houses anywhere, just a yachting marina. What are we doing here? My mother asked. Someone. I want you to meet a good friend of mine.
She's called Peggy Sue. She's been looking forward to meeting you and I've told her all about you. My mother frowned at me in puzzlement. I wasn't any the wiser either. All I knew for certain was that he was being deliberately mysterious.