Ash Road by Ivan Southall

hadn’t. It had ended with nasty words and with a pain so deep that the world around him blurred and the details of earth and scrub and trees for a few moments merged into a uniform colour, a nameless colour that looked like misery. Then it separated again into its components, and not far from his feet were the three haversacks dumped in the tall, dry, wiry grass at the edge of the roadside ditch. These became of absorbing interest to him, though for a while he didn’t really observe them. He could see that they had come out of the fire, that the fire had been so close to them that it had left its mark upon them, that the packs were partly burnt, and that two of the sleeping-bags strapped to them were not fit to be used again. They triggered a strange response in him. He felt he knew about these haversacks, that they were not new to him, that they had reappeared out of some past or half-forgotten experience. Three campers. Three teenage boys missing in the fire...
    He had never doubted for a moment that his deduction was the right one. He
knew.
    There was in him, too, another bridge of understanding, another flash of perception. Pippa had followed them down the road. Pippa had followed them through the Georges’ gateway. In some obscure way they had created the division between Pippa and himself; and he began to feel against them the stirrings of a positive dislike.
    They
were
the missing boys. And they were missing not because they had been burnt to death in the fire but because they had got away from it. And for what reason would they get away from it? Certainly not for the reason that applied to himself. They were on their own; they were free agents; and for that, too, Peter resented them and envied them and wanted to strike at them. Surely if they had had nothing to hide they would have stayed to fight the fire? And what did they have to hide but the fact that they had started it?
    Rarely had Peter seen anything so clearly. Never had the processes of his mind brought him so swiftly and surely to a conclusion. That he had based it on the flimsiest of evidence never occurred to him. He
knew.
    He didn’t rush through the Georges’ gateway; that was not his nature; he started off down the path nevertheless, frightened of those three big boys, but not so frightened that he was afraid to face them in front of Pippa.
    They put the door down in the shade at the back of the house, and Lorna dropped on one knee beside her father. She didn’t know what to do next. She ran her fingers nervously across his brow and said, ‘I’ll get a pillow.’
    As soon as she had disappeared into the house Graham hissed at the others: ‘You’re crazy. You’re plumb crazy. Now look what you’ve done. How are we supposed to get out of this lot? We’re hooked.’
    Harry and Wallace glanced at each other and at the sick man at their feet. Harry was tight-lipped. ‘It’s just one of those things,’ he said.
    â€˜Yeh,’ agreed Wallace. ‘No one’s laughin’, Graham. It’s like Harry says.’
    Lorna clattered out with the pillow in her hand.
    â€˜Here, give it to me,’ said Harry, anxious to get her out of the way again for a moment. ‘You’d better get a blanket, too.’
    â€˜It’s too hot for that,’ said Lorna.
    â€˜We don’t know for sure, do we? We don’t know what’s wrong with him. At least we’re on the safe side if we cover him.’
    â€˜All right,’ said Lorna and went inside again. Whether it was the right or the wrong thing to do, it was at least something to do.
    Harry fluffed the pillow up and pushed it under the old man’s head. Graham mumbled, ‘We were safe. I just know we were safe.’
    â€˜We still will be,’ growled Wallace, ‘if you’ll shut up.’
    â€˜We’d got all this way,’ sighed Graham.
    â€˜Yeh, yeh.’
    Not one of them really knew how he