How the Trouble Started Read Online Free

happy or glad feels like. I know those feelings do exist, but I can’t see that I’ll ever find my way back to them. On a stinging cold winter’s day, when it’s so cold your teeth are hurting, your fingers are numb and you can’t feel your own face, you know you were uncomfortably hot four months before, but you can’t remember what that actually felt like. That’s how far away from happy I’ve been.
    I'd slept badly, dreams had cast a shadow, and I’d woken too early for the mood I’d woken into. More sleep was the only way to deal with it, but sleep was hiding anywhere other than behind my eyelids, and there was nothing to do other than get up and face the day. School was closed for an inset day and Mum had forgotten and was annoyed at the thought of me around the place. The irritation buzzed off her and up through the floorboards and I knew that even if I stayed in my room and did nothing I would do it in a way that would provoke her. And after the dreams my chest was tight and panic was hovering in the corners of rooms, waiting to pounce. It was hard to breathe and I needed air. I needed to escape. I left by the back door and wandered towards town. I wanted to put some distance between me and the house and Mum. I really wanted to put some distance between me and myself but that’s a tricky thing to do, and the closest I could get to it was walking. I’ve been doing it for years, walking around Raithswaite, finding out where all the tiny backstreets lead to, walking to the fringes of the town and seeing what’s out there, trying not to think about the little boy, trying to disappear somehow.
    The sun was bright and kids from school were already out and about, in pairs or groups, planning and nattering, enjoying the free day. The odd shout came my way from across the road, from up on a bridge, but it wasn’t having any effect. My brain was caught up in its thinking. I ended up at the cricket ground at the end of Chatburn Road. I wandered around the pitch and noticed that it wasn’t even close to being properly flat and I wondered how they ever got a decent game out of it. As I continued on I started thinking about why the latest vanishing hadn’t worked. I’d planned Lossiemouth to the last detail. I had the house and the wife and I could see it all clearly and easily, but when I tried to disappear, it didn’t work. I’ve planned less and had more​​ successful  vanishings in the past. It was a worry that recently my brain was unwilling to be tricked.
    The day was warming up and heat was easing over my body and working its way through to my bones and I was thinking that at least something felt good. I was coming up to the scrubland at the bottom of the cricket pitch, just beginning to relax a little, when a man flew past me on a bike so close his jacket toggle nearly whipped my face. I was frozen in my tracks. I hadn’t heard him approach at all. He should be more careful. He should have rung his bell. It set my heart racing and I had to take a minute to calm down. I stepped forward again but I’d only walked a few steps when I heard singing. I stopped to listen and for a second there was nothing, but then I could hear it again – lots of little voices wobbling their way around a tune that drifted across the air in front of me so slowly I could almost catch it in a net. It was faint but I could make out the intended melody and it immediately took me back to a school hall with a battered wooden floor, big burgundy curtains and a climbing frame that locked against the wall. I couldn’t quite make out the words but it didn’t matter because they leapt into my brain as quickly and completely as a fully formed vanishing used to:
     
    Think of a world without any people
    Think of a street with no-one living there
    Think of a town without any houses
    No-one to love and nobody to care.
    We thank you, Lord, for families and friendships,
    We thank you, Lord, and praise your holy name.
     
    It was my