You Have No Power Over Me

Lark Milliband realised later that the first words the child ever spoke to him should have told him that something was very wrong. Perhaps Lark missed the warning because of what had happened to Sarah in the house at Poplar; after that, he was desperate not to fail anyone else.

When he first saw the child, Lark was sitting on the ground some way from Sunrise Lake, pencil poised over his sketchpad (lifted from the Art Supermarket, Reading). He rubbed his hands to warm them and looked again because he couldn't believe his eyes. He could make out that the figure bathed in the sunrise was a boy of about nine and that he was naked.

The figure ran towards the lake, paused for about three seconds and jumped in. Lark could see it was clutching something small in its hand, but he couldn't tell what. The figure swam around, Lark shivering in sympathy, wondering why a child would go swimming outside in November. When he saw the figure run onto the shore and start rubbing itself all over with the object, Lark guessed the child was soaping himself.

The boy was tall for his age with silky, white-blond hair and Lark could see no cuts, no spots, no imperfections on his baby-smooth body, only slightly reddened, cracked skin on his hands, especially around the knuckles. Lark just had to draw him (he had that feeling in his fingers, a combination of tingling and stinging, which only went away if he drew a picture).

As Lark continued to draw the child, the child ran back into the lake, covered all over in soap lather (even his hair). Lark finished drawing the child and moved onto the lake. If the child wasn't careful, he was going to give himself hypothermia: Lark had heard on the weather report on his personal CD-player-radio that the temperature would be only twelve degrees.  (The player-radio was battered and dirty now, but Lark kept it because it was a link to a happier past when he had a house, a job and a girlfriend. Most of important of all, it was the last Christmas present Sarah had ever given him.)

Lark added the sun to his picture, the child running out of the lake and round and round to dry himself. The questions returned to Lark: what on earth was wrong with the child? Why wasn't he at home and asleep? (Lark smiled to himself: he was a fine one to ask that question. He'd been rising very early to draw since he was eight: that was how he'd acquired the nickname "Lark".) Did the boy even have a home? Lark decided to find out. Left to his own devices, the child wouldn't last more than a few days in this weather. And Lark couldn't possibly allow him to die, not after what had happened to Sarah.

Lark snapped his sketchpad shut and slipped it into a Waitrose carrier bag. The child was dressing now and Lark kept out of sight until he was finished (he didn't want to embarrass the boy or make him think he was a paedophile). The child walked around the lake and climbed into a hole beneath a fallen tree. He struggled to drag a cardboard box which had held a Bosch washing-machine over much of the opening. Then all was still and quiet, apart from the occasional drone of a car or lorry from the nearby motorway.

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