The Swap Read Online Free Page A

really.' Harvey tried to smile. 'I just sort of carried on being interested after school.'
    'Jesus, yes, you were the comic king, weren't you? Always swapping and bartering. You were a real wheeler-dealer. You should have ended up in the City really.' He laughed again and Harvey felt his scalp give another skip. Always swapping? Christ, do you really have no idea?
    'Er, yeah, so I just sort of stuck with it. Stick to what you're good at.' He made a vague phrase, for no reason discernible to him. 'I've got a shop, in London, in Old Street.' He should have added something about departments and assistants and foreign trips, but somehow it got lost.
    'Right.' Bleeder nodded and gave a longer, more searching glance around the room. 'Well, I guess if you like something ...'
    'Exactly.' And Harvey saw his chance. He could just ask. So much build-up, twenty years of build-up was making it harder than it needed to be. He could simply ask straight out and be done with it. It would be over. Unexpectedly an enormous rush of adrenalin shot up his spine and sealed his mouth shut. If I ask it will be over. If I ask I will have to hear an answer. He looked down and saw that the cigarette packet was trembling in his hand, trembling so much that the cellophane wrapper that he had left round the box was making little crinkling sounds. He raised his head and took a deep breath.
    'Oh, there he is.' Bleeder was looking past him at a crowd gathered in the corner where the bar was. 'I've got to have a word.' And before Harvey could stop him, before another word could escape him, Bleeder had moved off into the crowd. Harvey found he was panting as if he had been running. And he wanted to run, to race after Bleeder, grab him by the shoulders. He had been so close to a new life, a new start. As he stood breathing heavily and pushing the cigarette packet in and out of the cellophane he looked at the group by the bar. Bleeder had joined it and was talking to an old man Harvey didn't recognise. Could he just go over? Demand that they continue the conversation? But he needed Bleeder alone. Perhaps he could drag him bodily outside. Who was that he was talking to? What could be more important than this conversation?
    Rob and Steve came over.
    'Bleeeeeder!' Rob hissed. 'Having a nice chat, H?'
    'Mmm, well, yeah . . .' Harvey was still gazing after Bleeder, as if watching a departing unicorn. 'Who is that?' he asked. 'Talking to him, the old bloke?'
    'That's Mr Simes,' both Steve and Rob answered together. 'Taught me physics,' Steve added, 'but also took maths. Top-stream maths. Not our class. Out of our league. Swot division. Hey, did Bleeder have your comic? The one that's going to make you rich?' Sometimes Harvey regretted his openness with his friends.
    'Er no. Don't think so . . . Was Bleeder in the top stream?' He moved the conversation on quickly to a point that caused him genuine surprise. 'I thought he was, well—'
    'Just there to be kicked?' Rob finished for him. 'He was, he liked being kicked. But occasionally, just for a change, he did maths. Not much of a change really. I'm not sure I wouldn't have preferred the beatings myself. Touch and go.'
    'Simes liked the maths swots,' Steve added. 'Bleeder was probably his pet. Kept him in a basket in the corner, fed him on bones.'
    Harvey realised they were sniggering and forced a smile. 'How old are you again?' he asked. This was another regular phrase, again getting less funny as the years passed.
    'Yeah, but he's Bleeder, H,' Steve said, grinning. 'He's Bleeeeeeder.'
    'I know.' Harvey found a sharp note in his voice as he said it. 'I am fully aware of that.'
    'Uh-oh, sense of humour failure. You need a drink, mate.' Rob patted him on the back and moved off towards the bar, which consisted of a long table with many plastic cups full of warm white wine on it.
    'We all need a drink.' Steve followed Rob down the room, leaving Harvey watching Bleeder with Zen-like focus. The old man he was talking to was