‘Nope.’ Eric frowned, dragging a stick along the wall. ‘He won’t tell me what the big secret is.’ He shook his head, but had a spring in his step that suggested he too was excited.
‘You’ll see in a minute.’ Nick liked this powerful position in which he found himself, especially having the little leather case nestling in his pocket.
‘You’re not the only one with a secret,’ Eric piped up.
‘What’s your secret, then?’ Alex asked.
Eric looked up and down the road and without the need for further coaxing, confident that he was not being overheard, he beckoned his mates closer. ‘My mum has got a secret new job.’ He beamed.
‘Is she a spy?’ Alex asked, wide eyed.
Nick didn’t know much about spying, but even he thought it might be a stretch for Mrs Pickard to go from working shifts in the care home in Thirsk, where she looked after old people who were really old, like forty, to spying.
‘No,’ Eric laughed, ‘not a spy, but a secret job that I can’t tell my dad about.’
‘What kind of secret job?’ Nick was curious.
‘A job with Dave the Milk.’
The boys all knew the local milkman, Dave.
‘Why’s it a secret?’ Alex asked the question for them both.
‘Because it’s a surprise – she’s earning extra and I mustn’t spoil it,’ Eric explained, ‘but Dave the Milk comes over on a Thursday night while my dad is at billiards and I’m not allowed in the house.’
‘In case you see their secret work?’ Alex asked.
‘Yep.’ Eric nodded, still dragging the stick over each and every surface. ‘I bet she’s saving up to get my dad a stereo for his car; he’s always banging on about one and I think that’s the secret.’
‘What are you supposed to do when they are working?’ Nick couldn’t imagine being barred from his home for any period of time, especially of an evening when, in the winter, it would be dark and cold; he swallowed the fear this conjured.
Eric shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Go up the Rec, come to yours . . .’
Nick nodded, as if both of these sounded reasonable.
With the Bairstows’ garage in sight, the three boys broke into a run, as if the anticipation were more than they could stand. They let themselves in via the side door and immediately switched on the lamp on the workbench and sat on the green canvas camping stools his dad had given them to use on the condition they did not leave the garage.
‘Okay,’ Nick began, as his two friends stared at him. Carefully he reached into his pocket and pulled out the leather case.
‘What’s that?’ Eric, impatient as ever, leant in.
‘Is it a nail scissor set?’ Alex guessed.
‘He’d better not have dragged me all the way over here for a chuffin’ nail scissor set!’ Eric scoffed.
Nick and Alex laughed, not only at his anger but the fact that they knew there was nowhere else Eric needed to be and that he would tramp all the way over for a lot less than that.
‘It’s a Raleigh multi-tool, also called a multi-spanner.’ He liked demonstrating his knowledge.
‘Can I hold it?’
Nick nodded and passed it to Alex, who wiggled his fingers inside the little holes and turned it gently over in his palm.
‘What’s it for?’ Eric asked, while balling up a sheet of newspaper and trying to throw it up over the steel beam that ran the length of the garage.
‘It’s the tool for our project.’
‘What project?’ Eric sneered; Nick had made it sound dangerously like work, and the summer holidays were for anything but.
Nick stood and marched them to the garden, confident his friends would follow.
‘This!’ He pointed at the frame still propped against the shed.
‘Where’s the rest of it?’ Eric asked with typical candour.
‘That’s the best bit.’ Nick drew on the enthusiasm he was starting to feel. ‘We have to finish it, build it, and then we get a bike!’
Alex ran his hand over the frame and nodded, as if he knew what he was looking for and approved.
‘We need to find the parts and the bits we need and then figure out how to fix it all together.’ Nick hoped he made the task sound less Herculean than it felt.
‘So hang on a minute.’ Eric wiped his nose with his fingers. ‘We find all the bits and parts and we build it together . . .’
‘Yes,’ Nick confirmed.
‘So who will own the bike at the end of it?’
Nick pondered this.
‘We could all own a piece of it,’ Alex suggested, fair-minded as ever.
‘Well, it’s my frame, technically, and I’ve got the tool.’ Nick banged it against his palm. ‘Plus, we’ll be doing it in my garage, so I think I should have half and you can each have half of a half.’ His maths wasn’t that great.
‘So a half of a half each for us and a whole half for you?’ Alex clarified. Nick nodded; it didn’t occur to any of them at that point that only one person could ride the bike and so technically they would each have one hundred per cent of the bike when they were on it.
‘Let’s shake on it,’ Eric suggested, and the three put their grubby hands into the middle and clasped what they could, heaving up and down with force.
‘Anyone want a cookie and some juice?’ his mum called from the kitchen window.
Eric ran inside quicker than Nick could suggest they should name their bike-building gang . . .
Alex looped his fingers under one of the brake wires and joggled it back and forth, shaking his head. ‘That bike tool is really cool.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Nick turned the coveted object over in his palm.
‘I don’t want to put anyone off, but it might be harder than we think to build a bike. I tried to build an Airfix kit my Auntie Natalie got me for my birthday, but I couldn’t finish it. It’s still in the box under my bed.’
‘The way I see it’ – Nick drew breath – ‘we will never know what we are capable of until we try. The trying will be good for us and the rewards great . . . At the end of it we’ll get a bike!’
Alex stared up at him. ‘You sound like your dad.’
Nick smiled, unsure as to whether he was pleased or offended.
‘You ladies comin’ in for snacks or what?’ Eric yelled through the back door with a mouthful of Custard Cream.
TWO
Nick manoeuvred into the spot in the car park, pulled on the handbrake and took a deep breath.
‘Flippin’ ’eck, I thought the whole idea of living in halls of residence is that everything is provided for you.’
He looked up through the windscreen at the vast blue-and-yellow Ikea warehouse and felt the ball of dread in his stomach. Shopping was his least favourite activity. He always found his attention wandering and a mild sense of claustrophobia setting in after a few minutes. And whilst a quick scoot around B&Q with knowledge of exactly what he needed was just about bearable, shopping for soft furnishings and homeware was his most dreaded thing.
‘I don’t know what we need from here.’
‘Dad.’ Oliver sounded a little exasperated and a lot more like the adult out of the two. ‘It said online that in my room there will be a bed and a desk and a chair and a noticeboard, that’s it. I need to get a duvet and pillows, duvet cover, wall stuff, fairy lights.’