The Door That Led to Where Read Online Free Page A

luxury of thought AJ hadn’t allowed himself.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said.
    â€˜Have a good weekend.’
    His seventeenth birthday, hardly remembered, was quickly forgotten. That Saturday AJ was able to get Slim’s skateboard back and they went in search of Leon. They reckoned the best place to find him would be the undercroft of the Southbank Centre. The three of them had been going there since they were eleven.
    October had come in unseasonally warm, taking everyone by surprise. Half the inhabitants of London were slow cooking in new winter clothes while the other half were out to shimmer in the sunshine in shorts and skimpy dresses, doing their best to chase away the thought of autumn altogether.
    It was a relief to find Leon, though he looked tired and thinner. His mum was still in a coma and he visited her whenever he could. His foster family meant well but thought that he shouldn’t see her, that it wasn’t good for his stability.
    â€˜I ain’t going back there,’ said Leon. ‘I’d rather live rough than stay in that up-its-arse-house. They eat brown rice and shit like that, full of what’s good for you. They say that if I carry on living with Mum, I’ll end up just like her. They understand nothing except what they read in the
Guardian
. I tell you, life is better in the
Sun
. At least the women have tits. I haven’t been going to college either.’
    Of the three of them, Leon had done the best in his exams and been accepted at sixth-form college.
    â€˜What’re you going to do?’ asked Slim.
    â€˜Move back home. Live there on my own. I’m not a kid.’
    â€˜Live on what?’ said AJ.
    â€˜That’s where I thought you might help me out, bro.’
    Leon disappeared down the ramp.
    â€˜In the nineteenth century,’ AJ said to Slim, ‘we would’ve been considered men by now. Do you ever think that you were born in the wrong century? At the wrong time, to the wrong parents?’
    â€˜No, never. All I know is we all live in the Electronic Jungle of Despair.’
    On Monday, AJ noticed that no one in chambers slouched, nor did the junior barristers linger in the clerks’ room. The day was wired tight.
    AJ waited anxiously to be called into Mr Baldwin’s office. Stephen had a knowing look about him.
    â€˜I wouldn’t make yourself too comfortable here,’ he said. ‘If Mr Baldwin doesn’t like you – well, that’s that.’
    Charles Baldwin QC was a well-dressed man, a time fighter, someone who invested a lot of energy in staying young. A smug smile stuck firmly to his tight features.
    â€˜So you’re Aiden Jobey,’ he said, greeting AJ with a pat on the back. ‘Morton speaks highly of you. He thinks you could well make a good clerk. I knew your father, you know.’
    Had AJ heard correctly? This lawyer had known his father. Why hadn’t Mum mentioned it? Surely it was important.
    â€˜And Janice, your mother,’ Mr Baldwin continued. ‘I remember her well. She was a pretty little thing.’
    AJ wondered if Mr Baldwin was muddling him up with someone else. It was hard to imagine that the red reptile was ever a pretty little thing. AJ was completely wrong-footed by this plastic cheerfulness. It was not what he had been expecting and he was quite at a loss. How had his mum come to make such a huge impression on Mr Groat and Mr Baldwin that seventeen years down the line they still remembered her? It would have helped if the red reptile had been more talkative on the subject but like so much of her past it belonged in the deep freeze of things unsaid.
    â€˜A black coffee, please. Thanks, Aiden,’ said Mr Baldwin.
    AJ was dismissed.
    â€˜Well?’ said Stephen who was waiting outside.
    â€˜He wants me to make him coffee.’
    â€˜As soon as you can Aiden,’ shouted Mr Baldwin through the office door.
    At the end of a week of making coffee for Mr Baldwin, AJ