Chapter 2

I didn't sleep much that night and, yes, I did drain the snake a couple of times but I know from experience that given half a chance it wouldn't hold me back the next day.

More by luck than judgement my day ended with a study period, now normally I'd have been in the library like a good little nerd but today I had more important things to take care of. Initially I'd thought of getting up close and having a ringside seat for whatever was going to happen but common sense prevailed and I took up a position overlooking the shelter.

On the far side of the pitch from the shelter was an old wooden pavilion that must have been built around the same time as the shelter, probably during the dark ages. Like the shelter it was made of wood and was painted green and like the shelter it had fallen out of use.

A new brick pavilion with proper changing facilities and a clubhouse had been built a couple of years ago and, because of this; the old pavilion had become a storeroom for the excess cricket equipment. After a couple of nuisance break-ins the equipment stored there had been moved to a more secure storeroom and the old place had been left to rot.

I'd found a way into it last year when I'd been looking for a place to hole up in when it was wet. It was too much hassle to clamber into the place on a regular basis so I'd just used the shelter but now I was prepared to make the effort. Slipping around the back of the building carrying my overly full schoolbag I slipped up onto the outhouse roof and then prised open the loose boards covering an upstairs window.

You had to watch out for the odd nail as you entered the place and it was pretty dark as most of the windows were boarded up but it was mostly dry and I was unlikely to be spotted from the other side of the pitch.

Was I prepared for what was to come? You bet I was.

I'd 'borrowed' my dad's camera, a Canon EOS 1D with all the bits and pieces that had cost him a couple of grand second-hand. That was a year ago and after a month of frantic use it had been pushed in the cupboard with all his other toys and he'd moved onto a huge train set that he was building in the garden shed. That was my dad for you, impulsive and quickly distracted, it was a good job he was well paid or his constant changing of hobbies would have bankrupt the family.

As often happened I was the beneficiary of my dad's excesses, in this case it was in the form of a 35-350mm professional quality lens for 'his' top of the range camera.

That big lens appeared to drag the insides of the shelter across the pitch and place it outside my hideaway. The only problem was that things were a bit dark for taking clear pictures without using a flash, something I didn't want to do and anyway the flash with the camera wasn't powerful enough to illuminate something that far away.

Any pictures I was able to get would be blurred unless the people were totally still, something that didn't normally happen unless someone was asked to hold a pose.

I got all of the bits for the camera out of my bag and laid them down carefully, the lens was already fitted so I didn't have to fiddle with that. I checked to see that the battery was fully charged, it was and that wasn't a surprise as I'd had it hooked up to its charger all night. The memory card was a four-gigabyte model and I'd formatted it last night so I knew there was plenty of room on it.

Fastening the camera to the tripod took seconds and then I positioned it so that I could see the shelter through a gap I'd created in the cover over one of the windows. After staring at the place for a couple of minutes I tried to relax.

Waiting for something to happen really was hard on the nerves, I wanted to go outside and see if I could spot any sign of them. Fortunately my brain was still in charge and told me that this was a bad idea, but that didn't settle my nerves down or stop my heart from pounding.

The time when school let out arrived and I was kneeling behind the camera, my knees aching already. If I was going to do anything like this again I was going to have to find a more comfortable position to do it from. There was movement across the way but it was just people using the pitch as a short cut to get home.

Ten minutes after the last bell I was twisting around trying to get comfortable and there was still no sign of Natasha and Kirsty.

Had they decided not to play?

A realisation came over me as I battled the cramp that was creeping into my muscles that I hadn't specified what day the dare was for, had I fucked up so simply?

Shit!

In the end it was just like one of those cliff-hangers that you get on television.

I'd just decided that I'd got it wrong and no one was going to show up and took my eye away from the camera's viewfinder. That's right, I preferred to use the mark-one eyeball instead of the pretty little screen to observe with.

A quick twist of the thumbscrew and the camera was off its mount and I took another wistful glance outside.

Someone was coming; I could see people moving towards the shelter. Was it the girls?

I rushed to get the camera back on the tripod and nearly dropped the bloody thing in my panic. I managed to slow down and the two pieces went together as the manufacturer had intended.

Looking through the camera I swung it as far as the gap in the panelling would allow and had to wait a moment until four people came into view.

Four!

I screwed up my face as I tried to identify the people walking across the grass. The two girls were easy, Natasha and Kirsty. That meant that one of the others should be Natasha's mom, it was.

So who was the fourth?

Uhmm, mid to late thirties with dark hair and judging by the way they jiggled as she walked she had a pretty impressive rack. It wasn't anybody I recognised from school that's for sure.

Could it be Kirsty's mum?

There was some similarity in their appearance. I couldn't recall seeing her before but that didn't mean anything, as I'm not the most observant of people. I continued to ponder the issue as the group approached the shelter, they seemed amused at something and all of them kept looking around.

As soon as they reached the green painted wreck of a building the younger girls shot inside and the women took up positions just inside of the opening, acting as lookouts.

Deep inside the shadows I could just make out the girls lifting their skirts and pulling down their knickers.

I was clicking away on the camera button, letting it do its own thing. Hopefully it was smart enough to juggle the light and focus issues and give me some decent pictures. I was too busy watching the real thing to worry about what the camera was up to.

My mouth went dry as the two girls stepped forward, Natasha smoothing down her skirt as she did so. Kirsty looked flushed even from this far away, I bet she was doing this under pressure from Natasha.

The two women allowed the girls to replace them as lookouts and stepped back into the room. Natasha's mom didn't go far, a couple of steps at the most and I could still see her clearly.