Before Ward could reply Nick had loped off into the half-light and was soon lost among the shadows. Ward's heart sank. For the second time that day he had been abandoned by someone he had come to trust.
He was still standing there, undecided about his next move, when a voice rose from behind him. "Hey you."
He spun around. Two boys of roughly his own age stood there: one wiry and hard-looking, arms crossed; the other small and pale, hands in pockets.
"You a peacher?" the wiry boy said.
"What's that?"
If anything this seemed to make the boy more suspicious. He closed in until Ward could see the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. Then he looked Ward slowly up and down, as if he were an item he wished to purchase. When he spoke the sigarillo in his mouth bounced. "What's your name...?" he said, using a word that was a favourite of Jaggles's.
"Ward."
"Gamm name." The boy was silent for a moment, as if making up his mind about something. Then he said, "I'm Flip. Flip Wrinkler. This is Lightfinger. He can't speak, the poor -" and there was that word again. "But he can do other stuff."
Lightfinger beamed.
"Saint Nick just brung you didn't he? You got a place to sleep? You can stay in our dorm if you want."
"Thanks," Ward said, glancing at Lightfinger, who was nodding and smiling with an unsettling degree of enthusiasm.
The staircase they took was steep. Although it was made of solid concrete there were no rails, and it sloped outward as well as upward towards the apex of the Cathedral – this made it seem as if it was held up by nothing at all. Ward was relieved when they gained the top, but stopped long enough to read the words splashed in white paint above the pipe mouth.
OKIES – KEP OUT
Inside, the floor was dry and worn smooth. It opened to the left and right into sleeping quarters – Ward caught glimpses of rudimentary beds in hemispherical rooms, and human shapes curled up under blankets. He was shocked to see a boy reading a book by lamplight.
They came to a room strewn with sofas. There was a rug on the floor. The lanthorns on the walls were interspersed with paintings: landscapes, portraits of dour people in old-fashioned clothing, still-lifes. Ward stared. Like books, art was forbidden.
"Where's all this stuff come from?"
"Nicked," Wrinkler said. "Beer?" There was a kitchen area at one end of the room; Wrinkler had gone straight to it and begun removing brown bottles from a chest beside the sink. Ward declined. Wrinkler didn't offer one to Lightfinger. He opened a bottle and sprawled on an armchair, as if he'd forgotten the other boys were there, alternating between the beer and the sigarillo, and looking for all the world like a man home from a hard day's work. There was no pretence about any of it: it seemed a natural thing for this boy to do, somehow.
So what's this word Flip Wrinkler keeps using?
Take a guess below and go into the running for a lifetime ban from Wattpad.