Louder Than Words (21 page)

Tyler brought mugs of herbal tea and coffee around for everyone. Dillon was nowhere in sight at this point. Katrin was chattering animatedly to some guys I hadn’t seen before, though from what she was saying they’d been very active in the riot.

Jez came and sat by us. ‘So,’ he said and smiled and nodded.

I waited, but that seemed to be it.

Lara smiled back at Jez so I decided that was the expected response and followed suit. This had to be the most laid-back guy on the planet. What did Katrin, who’s more than a bit manic, see in him?

Dillon entered and the room quietened in a moment. Something about that irritated me, but if I’m honest it scared me a bit too. To have that kind of power over people . . .

Dillon looked round and smiled. ‘You’re all here. Very cool. OK, let’s get on with it.’ He sat down on a floor cushion against the back wall, everyone else seated round him like he was some guru or something. But at the time I found myself sucked into hanging on Dillon’s every word like all the rest.

‘Some of you know I’ve been planning a direction change for ActionX. Since we lost Deef, I’ve been re-evaluating what we’ve been doing. And you know, guys, there are things about what we’ve done and how we’ve done it that don’t sit well with me.’

It was as if the whole room leaned forward to hear as his voice fell lower.

‘There are things we’ve done I’m ashamed of. Oh, I know when you’re caught up in the moment that it all seems OK, but is it really?’ He looked round them, one by one in turn, his face serious. ‘Is it really OK at 2 a.m. when you think about who got hurt and how? A lot of you here have got good reason to hate the police after the way you’ve been treated on demos. Even in the street you’re picked up for stop and searches. But what we need to remember – and I think I’ve forgotten this at times too – is that the police are not who we are fighting. They’re simply the instruments of the people we’re doing battle with. The people in power are the ones we want to hit and they hide behind the riot squads like they hide behind the armies they send out to be butchered for them.’ He leaned back against the wall. ‘We’re hitting the wrong target.’

There was complete silence and then a wave of agreement spread round the room, some vocalised, some nodded. I nodded too because wasn’t that more or less what I’d been thinking after the riot?

‘So where I’ve got to with this,’ Dillon continued, ‘is that we need a change of plan badly. We’re still at war here, my friends, but we’re taking our battle out into a new arena. And this is where I need your help.’

Again everyone listened intently.

‘Let’s fight where there are no casualties. Let’s cause maximum disruption and economic loss, but no loss of blood. I’m talking war, my friends, but I’m talking cyberwar.’

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

Dillon reached over and slung his arm round Tyler’s neck. ‘Now most of you know Tyler has some mad skills with computers, and he’s given me a lot of advice over the last few weeks. But the scale of the hit I want to make and keep on making is not something he can do – he’s told me that. He knows all about where to hit, but the how is where we’re stuck. This is why I’ve asked you guys round today, partly to talk to you about this change in focus, but also to ask for your help. Do any of you know of anyone who’d be sympathetic to our cause who could team up with Tyler on this stuff? It needs some seriously crazy technical skill –’

He broke off and looked across the room . . . to where I’d raised my hand.

I don’t know now why I did it, Dad. There’re things about Dillon I like, but there’re things I don’t. Maybe you think it was to impress Lara. Maybe it was a bit, but that’s not all of it. I think most of it was because I believe in a lot of what they do.

It’ll be fine though, Dad. Really. If there’s one place I understand totally what I’m doing, it’s out there in cyberspace. Wish me luck!

Love, Silas

CHAPTER 38

‘So how did it go?’

Josie met her dad in the hall, one hand on her hip and an expectant expression on her face. He laughed and gently scooted her to one side and came through to the kitchen.

I had been flopped on their big sofa, idly watching TV with Josie, and I quickly got up to go. If they were about to have a frank father–daughter conversation then I should leave. Immediately.

Josie shook her head at me vehemently and I shrank back down on the sofa. Oh God, they weren’t going to row, were they? From what Josie had said before about their ‘Dad dating’ chats, it hadn’t sounded bad, but if she was going to get huffy about it now I didn’t want to be caught up in the middle of it.

It was hard to think of anything I’d hate more, short of obvious things like Silas dying or something.

Her dad sat on a kitchen stool. ‘Make me a coffee, please, Baby D. I’ve had too much wine.’

Josie didn’t show a shred of embarrassment over the pet name. I liked this about her.

Instead she looked at him, narrow-eyed and assessing. ‘That good then?’

He laughed and waved her to get into the kitchen. ‘Coffee first!’

She grinned and started the machine up. They had one of those huge coffee makers that looked as if it would be more at home in a café, but their kitchen was so vast that they got away with it. It confused me with its dials and levers, but Josie seemed to be able to get it to do anything she wanted – espresso, latte, cappuccino . . . it did the works.

She made me a cappuccino with extra froth without asking, just a wink, and her dad a long, strong Americano. Her regular hit was latte with a dose of hazelnut syrup and she made hers as she began her dad’s interrogation.

‘So come on, give! How did it go?’

Her dad sipped the coffee and closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Oh, that’s good!’

‘DAD!’

He shook his head, eyes still closed. ‘Peace, child. Everything in good time.’

She growled. ‘You are so infuriating sometimes.’

I laughed inside as she sat down on the stool opposite him and pulled it close. She was right up in his face.

He laughed too when he opened his eyes, but out loud.

‘Baby D, you have no patience, this is your trouble.’

She tapped the counter, nails clicking on the granite. ‘I think I’ve been very patient, Daddy. Now do you think you can get round to telling me before my eighteenth birthday?’

I cowered against the sofa cushions, trying to be invisible. I would never dare speak to my mother that way. Not that I dared speak to my mother at all.

To my surprise, Josie’s dad – despite his formidable reputation according to Silas’s friend Toby – didn’t seem to care at all, even though I was there to hear it. Or did he forget I could hear, in the way that people did?

‘OK.’ He set his coffee down on the counter. ‘We went to see the film. It wasn’t bad. Maybe wouldn’t want to see it again if it came on TV, but, you know, watchable. I think the lead guy is overrated though –’

‘DAD!’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, all right. We went to see the film and then we got dinner at this fancy Japanese place that’s just opened. Now
that
was good – I’ll take you sometime.’

I was momentarily stunned. I’d read about fathers taking their daughters to dinner, about whole families going to dinner together too, but I suppose I thought it was something that just happened in books, having no experience of it myself. I had a sudden picture of me and my mother sitting together in a hypothetical Japanese restaurant. It was just too absurd for the image to last more than a few seconds. I tried to picture it with my father instead and then realised I couldn’t remember what he looked like well enough any more.

‘What about her?’ Josie asked. ‘Angelica.’

She hadn’t told me the woman’s name before. I tried to visualise what an Angelica might look like. Tall, I decided. It was definitely a tall person’s name. But I couldn’t decide if she’d be black or white. Hmm, either . . .

‘Well, it wasn’t the worst time ever. You know, we talk easy enough. But . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t think we’ll be more than friends.’

For a second I wanted to laugh. Most inappropriately. But really the way he was getting round to where he was really going with this reminded me so much of Silas and those conversations about the girls pre-Lara.

I stifled the urge.

Josie could have been either immensely relieved or slightly regretful. It was difficult to say, and looking at her I couldn’t guess which feeling was winning.

‘Dad, have you really given her a chance?’

It cost her to ask that, but she did anyway.

He sipped the coffee slowly and thought. I liked this about him, the time he took to give an answer. It made me think there’d be truth and importance in his words when he did speak them.

‘I think so. It’s like this, Baby D, and I guess we haven’t talked much about this stuff . . . we should have because your mum would have had these talks with you and I should have tried . . . but that kind of attraction you get to someone you want to carry on dating . . .’ He gave a little shake of his head as he tried to find the right words. ‘It can’t be created from nothing. It’s there or it’s not. And with Angelica, I told you I hadn’t thought of her like that. Maybe if we weren’t at work, a different environment, then that
something
might have sparked a little. That’s what I thought. I should have known better, but it’s been a long time for me. And it was so different with your mother anyway.’

Josie bit her lip. ‘How was it different with Mum?’

There’s something about the smile people get when they remember the dead – so happy and heart-shattered all at once that it hurts your soul to see it. But they’re the lucky ones – lucky to have known someone so wonderful that it still lights them up like a match has been struck within them and their memory-lamp burns with a bright flare.

‘When you meet someone like that, the one you know you’re meant to be with, you don’t wonder if you like them. You know. It’s in every tingle of your skin when you’re with them, in how your stomach wobbles when you know you’re about to see them, how they fill your thoughts every waking second, and your sleeping ones too.’

‘Can’t that be fake though?’ Josie asked with a shake in her voice. ‘Can’t you feel all that when it isn’t real?’

He paused to think. ‘Yes, you can get a crush on someone. I guess it feels a lot like that when you do. And everyone gets a crush sometime or other, especially at your age. But the real thing, Josie, that’s different.’

‘How?’

‘It’s stronger, so much stronger. You might think you’re in love with a crush but the real thing blows that right out of the water. And the other thing with it is . . . it’s . . . well . . .’ His forehead creased with effort. ‘It’s
nicer
.’

‘Nicer?’ Josie’s face screwed up to match his.

‘Yeah, nicer.’ He grinned, pleased with himself. ‘That’s exactly it. You can relax with her, be yourself. It’s never hard work being around her.’

Josie looked astonished. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. Even when you go through tough times together, your tough times are easier with her than they’d be with anyone else.’

I’d never heard a grown man in real life talk about love before. If I had words, I’d have fallen silent with shock. He’d been drinking wine of course. Maybe he couldn’t have spoken that way if he was completely sober. Maybe that was why he said it in front of me.

‘And that’s how it was with Mum?’

He gave that smile again. ‘That’s how it was.’

‘But what about
Wuthering Heights
?’

‘What?’ Josie’s father looked confused.

‘
Wuthering Heights
. Heathcliff and Cathy. Um, ultimate passion. You know, love being all-consuming and –’

Josie’s dad let out a peal of laughter. He looked up at her and saw her serious, cross face and he burst out laughing again, slapping at the counter he laughed so hard.

‘What?’ she said angrily.

‘Oh precious, you don’t want to be loving like that. It might sound like the best way in a book, all that sad stuff, but who wants that in their life? It’s all just misery and tearing yourself up.’

He took hold of her hand and became more serious. ‘Now you listen to me, girl, because this is important. There’s a kind of love which isn’t about all that tortured romance stuff women seem to like in books. It’s the love that means there’s a hot dinner waiting for you on the table when you’ve had a bad day at work. The love that means a wife never has to ask her husband to put the bins out. The kind that bursts a man’s heart when he sees how his wife takes care of her child. And if you ask me, that love’s worth so much more than the other kind that it’s not even worth bothering about what’s in those books.’

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. ‘You wait for a man who loves you like that.’ And then he winked at her. ‘To be honest, Baby D, if you bring home a man who doesn’t love you like that, he’s gonna have to get past me.’

Josie burst out laughing then, but behind that I could see the cogs of her brain whirring furiously, as mine were, trying to process what he’d said.

Because I thought I might just have heard the biggest truth ever for my collection.

She took me to her Elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh’d full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

(John Keats – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’)

CHAPTER 39

Dear Dad,

I’m still not entirely sure what had possessed me when I raised my hand and volunteered my services to Dillon. Perhaps I was swept away by the moment – Dillon is persuasive. Or it could have been all about showing Lara I can be useful too. Because, in this area, none of them could touch me.

For a moment there in that room, she looked at me with admiration. She looked up at me, as they all turned to see what I had to say. I told Dillon I could do it, not bragging, just genuine. And she looked proud of me.