In the Bag Read Online Free Page A

upstairs, holding the bag in front of him. He keeps stopping, straining his ears to hear his parents. But the whole house is silent. At the top of the stairs, he stops again. He looks around. All the bedroom doors are closed. He turns to me and then points to his bedroom door. I nod. We creep up the rest of the stairs and then, when he’s at the top, Ash turns right and silently opens his door. He waits for me to get inside and then shuts the door behind us.
    Ash chucks the bag down on his bed and switches on a lamp. The room fills with dim light. He looks around his room and his eyes settle on the swivel chair at his desk. He walks over to the chair, wheels it over to the door, jams it underneath the handle and then pushes down a lever on the side of the chair to lock the wheels.
    He takes a deep breath and then blows it out slowly, running both hands through his hair. He looks completely sober now. I feel totally sober too. He turns to look at me. We both smile.
    I can already think of a few things I’d do with the money. If we kept it.
    Ash walks back over to his bed and pulls the bag towards him. He unzips it, pulls the flap on the top of the bag open and takes the clothes out. A smell of aftershave wafts up my nose. I look in the bag, half expecting it to be empty this time, or filled with blank pieces of paper or something. But it isn’t. It’s still full of money. I shake my head in disbelief and smile at the same time.
    Ash picks the bag up and tips the money out on the bed. It doesn’t all come out at first, so he has to shake it. But after a few seconds the bag’s empty and the bed is covered in cash. And that’s not all. There’s a clear plastic bag as well, filled with weed or something. Ash scoops the money up in his hands and lets it all shower down on us. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that,’ he says. He picks up the plastic bag and looks at it closely for a second, opens the top and gives it a sniff. Then he kisses it and smiles. ‘This just gets better and better.’
    I stare at the money all over the bed and the floor. There’s just loads of it. God knows how much is there. Thousands probably. ‘Let’s count it,’ I say quietly.
    Ash looks up at me and smiles. He nods. ‘You count the fifties, I’ll do the twenties.’
    So we crouch there, by the side of his bed, counting the stack of fifties and twenties. And when we’re done with that, we do the fives and the tens as well. Ash goes over to his desk and grabs a piece of paper and a pen. He notes down the amounts. And then he adds them all up. ‘Fuck me!’ he says with a smile. ‘That’s more than twenty grand!’
    I shake my head. This is too much to take in. Twenty grand! How can you lose twenty grand?
    Ash smiles. He’s worked something else out on his paper. ‘If we were gonna split it, we’d get ten thousand and ninety-seven pounds and fifty pence each,’ he says. He looks at me. He’s smiling like crazy. Like he’s just won the lottery.
    I shake my head. ‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘That’s a lot of money. How can someone not notice they lost that much money? That’s just mad.’
    Ash shrugs. ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ he says. ‘If I had twenty grand, I wouldn’t leave it lying round in the woods for someone to find. Would you?’
    I shake my head. ‘No way.’
    From outside the room there’s a noise. A door opens. Footsteps cross the landing. Another door opens and then shuts. Then there’s a ping as the bathroom light goes on. And then the sound of Ash’s mum or dad going to the toilet.
    Ash looks at me and laughs. ‘Quick, help me put it all back in the bag!’
    We grab enormous handfuls of cash and stuff it back into the bag along with the clothes and the bag of weed, until there’s nothing left on the bed.
    Out on the landing, I hear the toilet flush, the door open and the light go off. More footsteps, then a closing door.
    Ash grabs a handful of fifties out of the top of the bag. He shoves some in his pocket