The Executioner's Art [Paperback]

We were in the shed when it happened. 'Good job your mum's out,' whispered Gina. 'She might have seen green smoke coming off the roof.' 'Smelt a whiff of sulphur,' said Ellie. 'Or felt a shiver from nowhere,' said Rose, quivering; a little thrilled, 'like the holy spirit.' We laughed, and felt immediately brighter. Our shoulders relaxed, errant locks of hair were looped behind ears, Cora casually lit a cigarette. 'D'you want one, Alice?' she said, waving a packet of ten No. 6 in front of me. 'Let's share it,' I said - and all five of us watched as the smoke curled out of her nostrils and settled under the dusty eaves. None of us dared move though; our yard was a tricky place at the best of times. The shed skulked in the far corner of it, behind my mum's secondhand shop, itself tacked on to the scruffy end of the High Street. Two suburbs out from the city centre, we were; two more to go before the road rolled off the plateau and down into the countryside. The traffic only lulled for an hour or two at night; when sleeping in our flat above the shop I was often woken by the silence: a gap when noise you weren't aware of is suddenly switched off. My mum was in the right trade, we all agreed, because she could never bring herself to throw anything away. From the back alley behind the High Street we had to squeeze through the bars of the rusted-up gate, then pick our way through the hopeless congeries of corroding bicycle parts, warping tables, cracked pottery slopping with greenish water and vault over the broken twintub before reaching the shed. We were safe once we got there, though; it was the best bunking-off hidey-hole we'd ever found. That day we'd escaped the monotony of school to try and catch the travelling fair before it moved on, but the field where the stalls and rides had been was a rutted mess of tyre tracks; we just caught the last silver-sided lorry lumbering off the site, trailing fairground music. So we filled the afternoon by jumping on and off the back of the number eleven Outer Circle, two or three stops before the conductor got to us, hopscotching our way around the city until we finally got chased away at the bus station in Harborne. Then running home, taking the back routes, five girls a streak of blue down underpasses and over footbridges, cutting down to the canal bank where midges hung over the trickle of water; mudbanks still cracked from the summer's scorch. Over the tunnel where the witches lived; the air thick with the smell of chocolate from Cadbury's. Straight lines across the parks - always faster than the parkie - we knew holes in fences and alleys to hide in; weaving our way through the busy streets full of chip shops and mechanics in greasy boilersuits and leftover hippies with fur coats and bare feet. Then down the alley, across the yard and through the door into the cool, dim shed, stacked with boxes spilling out dressing-up clothes and salvaged toys - although we were too old for all that really and pinned photos of ourselves in teenage poses around to prove it. Rose at the Mop, her red hair splayed out. Ellie's fourteenth birthday party where I wore a denim waistcoat and Cora snogged every boy over twelve; Gina in dungarees outside the Lazy Fox trying to cajole some lads to go in and buy us lagers.

It was my idea to try levitation. For our first attempt Cora had volunteered and lay rigid across two desks while the rest of us puffed around her. She didn't move, not even a millimetre. 'We have to think together,' I said, 'then it'll work.' 'How are we supposed to do that?' said Ellie, red creeping up her face. 'I don't know. Chant or something. Focus our minds.' 'I've got no chance then,' said Gina. 'You concentrate well enough if you've got to come up with a quick excuse,' said Rose. 'Yeah, your mind comes into focus then,' said Cora. 'What's that to you?' 'Nothing. Just saying.' 'It's not like concentrating on physics, you know,' said Cora. She was languid, gazing out of the window. A layer of mist clung to the damp grass of the playing field; the hockey-players' legs faded out below the second stripe of their socks. It was chilly, but the sky was bright and held the promise of sunshine, as if it could burst through any moment to flood the classroom and lift Ellie - the next subject - clean up to the ceiling, where she would hover and shimmer like the autumn light. 'We can do it,' said Rose, suddenly convinced. 'We will.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.