Darren Holding watched the boy from his nightmares walk calmly up to the front door of his mother's maisonette and ring the doorbell. He heard his mother answer the door and greet the boy with a cheery hello. The murmuring of voices on the doorstep grew quite in intensity. He knew his mother was explaining why the boy could not come and see him. No-one could come and see him at the moment. Not until he was better.

He wandered listlessly out onto the landing. The words "...must see him, Mrs Holding. Please," floated through his mind, insistent yet disconnected. To Darren, it was if he was watching his life through someone else's eyes. Things happened, he watched, nothing ever touched him. The boy on the doorstep was bad news but somehow Darren just could not get all that worked up about him.

However, a spark of curiosity gnawed at him. Why did this boy come knocking? Was it to give him another pasting? He had a sense that he deserved it but it seemed so unfair. The awful things that people said that he had done seemed as if they had been committed by someone else. To be sure, he knew he had done these things but it just didn't seem that it was him at the time. He couldn't imagine doing anything like that again. He wondered whether this boy knew more about why he couldn't seem to remember who he was. After all, he was in his nightmares.

"Mum!" he called. "Let him in!"

"No, Darren, you know what the doctor said."

"I need a break, Mum. I haven't seen anyone in weeks! What harm can it do?"

His mother seemed undecided on the matter but he heard the boy say something quietly that appeared to sway her.

"All right then. Five minutes and no more, you hear?"

***

Mrs Holding disappeared off to the lounge and her neglected cigarette. The boy went up the narrow stairs where he was greeted by Darren. He found it peculiar to be in Darren's house. He couldn't imagine anything more bizarre than being in the home of someone you despised so much that you had beaten them into insensibility with an antique police truncheon.

"Er, hello, Daz," Charlie said.

"Please don't call me that. Father Uranta prefers it if people call me Darren. He says it's not good for me to be called Daz." Darren Holding muttered slowly, as if he struggled remembering the words.

Charlie looked at Darren closely. The boy was a wreck. He had a tremor in one hand that Darren kept firmly ensconced in a pocket in a vain attempt to conceal it. Once a burly thug, Darren had lost weight and was now simply tall, thin and scrawny. Washing didn't seem to be a priority for Darren either, as his lank greasy hair and faint body odour announced. Worst of all, his eyes seemed blank.

"Er, Darren, do you know who I am?"

"Yeah, sort of."

"What do you mean, sort of?"

"Well...er...I've seen you in my dreams. In my nightmares."

The monotone of Darren's voice belied any sense of anxiety or fear and that blankness was the thing that made up Charlie's mind for him. The boy was a mess. Did he deserve that? Probably. Did Charlie want it on his conscience? No. He didn't want to owe Darren anything and he knew that if he walked away from this house without helping Darren he would only feel guilt. Darren wasn't worth that guilt.

"I'm a friend of Trev's. You know Trev. Trevor Blackstock. The boy you killed."

What little colour there was drained from Darren's pasty face. Making a weird mewling sound, Darren collapsed to the floor but not once did his eyes leave Charlie's.

"Trev's got a message for you."

"...a message?"

"He says he forgives you. He says that you have nothing to fear from him."

"He... forgives... me?"

"Yeah, he forgives you," Charlie said. Then when he saw a strange look in Darren's eye, he added, "I think you know who I am now."

"...P...p..please don't hit me again, Charlie," Darren wept.

It was the sight of the weeping boy that made his mind up for him. Instead of revulsion for the bully, he felt compassion.

"I'm not here to hit you, Darren. I came to forgive you too. You have nothing else to fear from me. I wish that you hadn't attacked me and Trev that day. I wish you hadn't chased Trev into the road and I wish the bus hadn't killed him. It's your fault, what happened. I'm not here to say that it's not your fault. If you hadn't done those things then my friend would still be alive. But I don't want to live my life hating you, Darren. I want to simply get on with my life, remember my friend as he was and, maybe, get through to you what a horrible thing you did. People still have to live with what you did, like Trev's mum and dad, his brothers and sisters and his friends. We remember a special guy and we don't want our memories clouded by you. So I forgive you. I am sorry that I hit you. I'd probably do it again but it didn't help the first time round. I shouldn't have done it, I could see that you weren't the same person that ran Trev into the road. I'm sorry.

"This is the last you'll hear from me, or Trev. I won't be back again. Trev won't come back in your dreams either. He told me to tell you that's a promise. Goodbye, Darren."

With that Charlie turned and clattered down the stairs, ignoring Mrs Holding, who appeared from the lounge with a not altogether kindly look on her face.

"Wait a minute, you! I know who you are..." Charlie heard as he left the dingy maisonette and its pink carpets. He walked briskly, keeping one step ahead of Mrs Holding, as she chased after him down Wellington Avenue. If there was one thing about climbing volcanoes in the South Pacific, Charlie thought, it gave you the sort of stamina you needed when you wanted to out pace red-faced, overweight smokers.

He soon lost Mrs Holding, who turned back to check on her precious. It was a fair way to go if he decided to walk home. He decided that was what he needed to help clear his head.

School would start again in a week but he just could not get that worked up about it. Everyday life seemed so small compared to what he had just experienced. It seemed appropriate that Solitude was half a world away; it helped keep everything at a distance. However, he half expected to see Savanarolova turn up at the newsagents, or at a bus stop, or in Mr Khan's late-night supermarket. His dreams were full of jungles and shouting, fear and fierce, furnace-bright eyes.

After leaving Solitude, things had been a little tense at his father's house. In the first couple of days he and Charlie had skirted around what had happened on the island, finding any excuse not to talk about it. Eventually, Charlie had realised that Rick was feeling guilty about what had happened and was worried about what to tell Angela back in London.

He had decided to take control of the situation. Grasping a mug of his fathers horrible coffee, Charlie had explained that he did not think it was good idea to tell his Mum exactly what had happened. For one, she would never believe them about a dragon, nor the spectres, or even the crazy Japanese guy. However the most pressing reason to keep things secret was that Angela would never allow Charlie to stay with Rick again if she knew the truth of what had happened on Solitude. With tears in his eyes, Charlie had told Rick how much he wanted to avoid that.

Relief had spread across Rick's face like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Beaming, he had explained how he had wanted to say the same thing to Charlie but had not known how to bring the subject up. He couldn't bear the idea of not seeing Charlie again. In only a few minutes they had quickly cooked up an alternative version of Charlie's first week in the South Pacific. Happily, they had cracked their mugs together and toasted their idea with the bitter dregs.

It seemed amazing to Charlie, now he was back in London, that there was a dragon loose somewhere in the world. It seemed all the more amazing that nothing had been heard of it since. He had developed a hitherto unforeseen devotion to current affairs and it was him who was first to the door to grab the newspaper in the morning, or first to scan the websites for overnight developments. Angela Buttons was amazed at her son's avid consumption of the news but was secretly pleased at his interest in the world, unaware that there was a more sinister reason at the root of it all.

The second and third week of his stay in Tonga had been bliss. George and Rick had taken Charlie and Carmen whale watching with an old friend. Charlie had even overcome his nervousness of deep water and swam with the magnificent animals. Even though he had seen a dragon he had still been awed, suspended in the deep blue of the ocean, watching as the humpbacks had swum by. That experience alone seemed to heal some of the wounds of Solitude. Whenever he felt the racing pulse and shortness of breath that signalled the underlying panic caused by thinking of Solitude, all he had to do was imagine the whale swim in order to return to a calmer frame of mind.

Peaceful nights on the beach, crazy barbecues at George's with after dinner rugby, fiddling around with engine parts at the hanger under Rick and George's watchful eye, helped restore the boy in Charlie so that when he came to say goodbye at Fua'amotu Airport, there were tears in his eyes.

"I'll talk to your mom, Charlie. Don't try to tell her about Solitude, it's not fair on you. I have a few things to sort out down here but I think I'm going to be coming to London in couple of weeks. I need to speak to some old contacts about what we saw there. Call me if it gets too much, OK?" With that Rick had hugged his son and walked him to the departure gate. "Take care, Charlie." He paused for a moment and swept a hand through his red hair. He was dressed exactly the same way as he was when Charlie had first met him all those weeks ago: shorts and Hawaiian shirt. The only thing that was different was that Rick now looked older, more serious, graver. He put a gnarled hand on Charlie's shoulder and looked into his eyes, "I'm right glad you came along in my life, Charlie. I can't imagine being prouder of you than anyone else that I know. I feel humbled by what you have done and I just hope that you can bring yourself to stay in contact. If you'd accept it, I'd like you to consider my house as much a home to you as your mom's place is."

Charlie had stared into his father's eyes and smiled then, "Thanks, Dad. A few weeks back I didn't have a dad, then I did, then I almost lost him. I don't want to go back to a life without a dad, so I guess you've got the job."

Rick had beamed at him. "That helps, Charlie, because I've got a feeling that I'm gonna need all the friends I can get!"

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