Maxwell's Mask by M.J. Trow

car’s off the road at the moment. Soon as it’s fixed though… Look, this is awfully good of you.’
    â€˜No, no,’ he assured her. ‘It’s good of you . The production would have fallen apart without your stepping in.’
    â€˜Well, I felt so sorry for Mrs Carmichael. Are things all right? I mean, as all right as they can be? With her baby, I mean?’
    â€˜I believe so,’ he told her.
    â€˜Good.’ She flashed him her broadest smile. ‘Well, till tonight, then.’
    â€˜Looking forward to it.’
    And she was gone, tripping gaily through Mrs B’s crisp packet collection on her way out.
    Peter Maxwell watched her go, with the old bounce he remembered and then some. It was odd about ex-students now that nobody called them Old Boys or Old Girls. Some of them were strangers whose faces were the same but whose lives had moved on. As if they were husks of their former selves, inhabiting familiar bodies but with souls and experiences and memories that were far away. Others couldn’t keep away, like those sad people who haunt the superhighways of Friends Reunited. ‘Hi, I’m still mad as a skunk and Party Animal. Oh, by the way, I’ve had three divorces, six kids, a prison sentence for fraud and am currently living on my own. Would love to hear from the Old Gang.’ Still others had changed beyond recognition – mice who scurried along corridors were now men and women of the world, with firm handshakes and steely gazes. And Deena? Well, Deena seemed the same as ever.
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    Anthony Wetta was of Cypriot extraction via the Balls Pond Road. His family had been shunted down to Leighford, to that spur of protected family housing they’d built off the already vast and sprawling Barlichway Estate, to make a fresh startin life. Anthony’s big brother, Charalambos, collected ASBOs like most people collected other people’s chewing gum on their soles. Anthony’s dad was inside, although how much pleasure he actually gave Her Majesty was a moot point.
    â€˜Bed,’ the hiss came from the privet. ‘Can you see anything?’
    â€˜Shut the fuck up,’ Anthony hissed back. ‘I’m thinking.’ And for that, the boy needed silence. He checked his position. He was…what…a hundred metres from the road? Two? The place was big and he couldn’t see any lights. He checked his watch in the fitful moonlight, the one he’d liberated from the KwikiMart by the bus station. Pity he hadn’t liberated some batteries for it really. The time said ‘88’. Still, it must be past eleven. They were still rolling out of the Moon and Sixpence down the road, but the landlord there was one of Anthony’s ‘uncles’ and his time-keeping was not as immaculate as it might be.
    â€˜Bed.’
    â€˜Stuff me sideways.’ Anthony leapt a mile in his hedge hideaway, shaking the foliage and ducking down again. ‘If I was this much older,’ he whispered, holding his thumb and forefinger close together, ‘I’d’ve had a fuckin’ connery there. You’re supposed to stay over the other side. We’re casing the joint.’
    â€˜But I can’t see anything.’
    Anthony looked at his partner in crime. GeorgeLemon looked even more stupid in the moonlight than he did under a neon strip getting a good letting off from Mr Diamond. The word bovine was unknown to Anthony – he just thought George looked like a cow. Just as large, but nothing like as useful.
    â€˜All right,’ the master-cracksman whispered, taking George resolutely by the horns. ‘We go left.’
    â€˜What if they’ve got dogs?’ George had been to Literacy and Numeracy classes. He’d been around.
    â€˜Then we’ll hear the bloody barking, won’t we? And you and I’ll make a bleedin’ world record getting back to the gate. If I’d known you was this windy, I’d have