The Swap - By Antony Moore Page 0,1

was his future. All this rubbish, it didn't matter a damn.

'Here, here, let's do it.' The odd boy was scrambling to get in front of him, brushing through the nettles that lined the path. Harvey wondered vaguely if his bare knees were stung. The odd boy gave no indication of pain and put his back to the gate, unwrapping the plastic tubing from his shoulder. 'It's yours now. Don't tell where you got it from.'

He held it out eagerly and Harvey gazed at it wonderingly: why on earth would he want it? He actually shook his head but then caught the hope in the odd boy's eye and sighed again. God, it was ridiculous. He opened his satchel, a rather cool army surplus, canvas bag, on the flap of which he had painted the face of Donald Duck with a cigar in his beak. The painting was good. He pulled out the magazine, wrapped in the plastic sheath he put round all his comics.

'Sure?' he asked with heavy irony.

'Yeah, OK.' The odd boy held out the length of plastic and Harvey took it but the boy did not let go.

'Give me the comic.' His voice was taut for a moment and Harvey glanced up surprised.

'Yeah, all right,' he said. 'I'll just take this plastic cover off. Only collectors use these.' He tried to slip the liner away but the odd boy snatched it from him.

'No' he said. 'I want it as you offered it to me.' He let go of the plastic wire and held the comic against him tightly, as though ready to defend it from attack.

Harvey shook his head and raised his eyes with practised disbelief. 'You fucking freak,' he said, and pushing the odd boy aside, clambered over the gate. He walked away, slashing the grasses to left and right, all the way up to the point where the wild world was tamed and blended into the edge of the rugby pitch. As he walked, the odd boy's eyes did not leave him. Clutched in his hands, the Superman One was pressed to his chest, tightly held, but also unwrinkled: guarded against harm.

Chapter One: London, the present

The sigh had become a feature of the man. And when he sighed it signified no special existential despair, only an acknowledgement of the fact that another day has come and the coffee that he was drinking was no better than it had been yesterday. He sat in unsplendid isolation at the counter of his shop, his back to the rows and rows of stands that ran away from him towards the front door. Each stand was thick with plastic and in the harsh strip lighting it was hard to see that each piece of plastic contained a comic.

'All right, Harvey? Make us one, I'm freezing.'

How long had it been from his own arrival until Josh tapped him playfully on one shoulder while walking the other way? The coffee cup was still warm in his hands. He looked up. 'You're late.' He hadn't actually checked the time but he liked to start each working day by registering a complaint, preferably to Josh.

'What's up? We open, are we?'

'Of course we are open. We keep business hours, or at least, I do.'

'Well, the sign doesn't say Open.' Josh went back to the door and turned a rather grubby picture of Thor God of Thunder saying Closed to an identical one of him saying Open. 'You wonder why we don't get any customers, but you have to turn the sign round, Harvey.' Giggling, Josh made his way behind the counter and through into the back room where they kept the coffee. 'You might have been swamped with customers by now if you'd remembered that simple rule.' Josh's voice was muffled by the sound of water being run into a kettle.

But not muffled enough.

'Fuck off.' Harvey rose from his seat at the counter and moved to the front of the shop to avoid Josh's voice, which now began painfully to accompany music on XFm from the back room. He opened the door and walked out into a February wind that made him lift his shoulders and narrow his eyes.

If only.

Some days it was worse than usual, the memories, the wondering. It had never left him. Ever since he moved from Cornwall, made his way to the big city, he'd sort of expected it to go, to withdraw into some back room of his mind, but every day it had seemed stronger. He breathed deep of