Atkins was standing outside the house. He'd been there an hour + a half since I first noticed him, and I was beginning to get a little impatient. The main thing was how did he get round the back? Mum wouldn't have let him in through the house, she's as sick of him as I am. The hedge by the fence seperating our house from the Ramaan's is not possible to get through and he can't have come over from Mrs Bilden's on the left as I hadn't heard her dog barking, as is his habit when anyone but Mrs Bilden is in the house. The only other possibility could be he came over the wall at the back, from the railway lines, but to get there would mean scaling the barbed wire fence at the north end (the dodgy end) of the park and walking down the long tunnel on the tracks. I think Michael and Greg tried it once but didn't get more than half way down the tunnel before turning back and almost getting hit by the 11.05 express train.
But he was there. Still there. I wondered what to do.
"Lauren, food!" Mum was calling from downstairs. She wouldn't be able to see Atkins from the kitchen or living room because of where he was standing, between the shed + the old den Tim made last summer. But I could see him. He was just standing there looking straight ahead, facing the shed, as he'd been the whole time - and I remebered how he used to be so so skinny when he first came to our school, and James called him 'Atkins Diet', soon dropping the 'diet'. It was silly but the name stuck. Most people didn't know his real name - Charlie Darwin, which I always thought was a ridiculous oversight by his uneducated Catholic parents.
"Lauren, it'll be cold" mum called.
I headed downstairs for dinner.