The Secret Bunker Trilogy: Part One: Darkness Falls Read Online Free Page B

think we even had wireless broadband at the time, so I can only
see this now, with the tech that I have as a twelve year old.
But I can only describe it as ‘searching for a signal’. That’s how it felt without Nat.
When Nat had been around I’d been fine, I felt perfectly okay. But when Nat died, it was like I was searching desperately for
something that wasn’t there anymore.
    I know all twins will tell you that. They’re incredibly close, they sometimes know what the other twin is
thinking and feeling. Amazing how humans work.
But this was different, it wasn’t just about closeness.
I didn’t have the words to explain it at the time.
Now I do. It really was like we were fused in some way, locked together,
dependent. ‘Symbiotic’ is the word I found in the online dictionary, it describes it
perfectly. And so when Nat died, it wasn’t so much one death, it was more like
two.
Trouble at School
    I had real trouble adjusting to life without Nat. They handled me with kid gloves at school.
Or at least for a while they did. Just like washing, plates and grass, real life has a habit of getting in the
way. In a class of thirty kids, there was only so long I had to get over Nat.
The reality was that they needed me fully functioning as soon as
possible, there’s only so long that you can put up with a problem child
in a busy classroom. So all the time, I felt like I was desperately trying to re-establish this
connection.
    It wasn’t just sadness, loss and grief. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, and I just thought it was what
everybody else in the family was going through too. To be honest, I didn’t cope with it very well at all.
Sometimes it would drive me mad, I just needed to get that connection
back with Nat and I’d be fine. So, if other kids caught me at the wrong time, I’d just go crazy with
them. A bit of stupid teasing, some playful pushing, a daft comment.
Sometimes, when I was struggling with my ‘disconnection’ with Nat, I
would just lash out.
    Before I knew it the hushed conversations had begun.
Mum and Dad were being called in after school to chat with my class
teacher. When it gets really serious the Head Teacher is involved and Mum and
Dad are having those conversations during the working day. And before you know it, you’re being introduced to a man with an
unusual tie, called Dr Pierce.
The Holiday Itinerary
    I wasn’t unusually troubled by that logo at the time because I was
more interested in the details of the holiday. It made no difference to me of course, but this holiday had to be taken
in term time. That was okay for us, because Harriet could come out of nursery and
David would be able to come out of school for a week.
Mum and Dad had pulled this one off before, and so long as you called
it an ‘educational visit’ and made a big thing of the incredible learning
experiences involved, the Head Teacher usually let you get away with
it. Mum and Dad didn’t bother mentioning the long morning lie-ins, the
evening DVDs and the trips to our favourite burger restaurant.
Always best to miss those bits out when talking to the Head Teacher.
    We seemed to be pretty free to do as we pleased for most of the time.
But they were really insistent about that trip to the bunker. In fact, although it was written in a really cheery way, it was made
pretty clear that if we didn’t make that bunker visit, there would be a
‘penalty’ to pay. I scanned words like ‘publicity opportunity’, ‘sponsor involvement’
and ‘extra spending money’ - enough to know that if there was one
thing that had to happen on this holiday, it was getting to that bunker
at the appointed time

Chapter Seven
Jigsaw
    There were three pieces that didn’t quite fit in this jigsaw. Yes, they were part of the overall picture, but they felt like they’d been
taken out of another set.
Why do I remember Nat moving for instance?
That image doesn’t belong in this picture.
Nat