Shoving her books into her bag, she jumped to her feet and ran from the room into the school’s wide hallway. She ran past chatting students and patrolling guards, under the gaze of the elegant nineteenth-century men and women who gazed down at her dubiously from the oil paintings hung high on the walls. When she reached the section where the school’s wings met and the hallway widened to hold marble statues on heavy plinths, she turned into the classroom wing. She pelted up two flights, and down the shadowy corridor, skidding to a stop in front of Dom’s office.
The once peaceful room was now a crowded hive of activity.
Rachel sat with Zoe and a young guard, all of them typing furiously on laptops. A gigantic map had been spread across one wall and Katie stood in front of it with two guards talking animatedly. None of them even noticed Allie.
A low hum of voices crackled through the speakers.
Dom was at her desk, talking on a cell phone. Spotting Allie hovering in the doorway, she motioned for her to enter. ‘Anything you can do to get us some of that satellite time?’ she said into the phone.
The light streaming through the windows that lined one wall of the office gave her dark skin a bronze sheen as she ended the call and turned to look at Allie.
‘I’m not supposed to bother you,’ she said, ‘until after your grandmother’s funeral.’
So that was why Isabelle hadn’t given her anything to do.
‘If I don’t do something I think I’ll go crazy.’ Allie looked around the crowded room. ‘Isn’t there something I could do? I’ll sweep floors, bring coffee. Anything.’
For a long moment Dom said nothing. Her expression was hard to read. Allie tensed, readying herself to be sent away.
But that didn’t happen.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ the tech said. ‘I was just about to ask Isabelle for another volunteer.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘Come with me.’
Allie was grateful for the lie.
Dom headed over to the round table where the others were working, Allie at her side. Rachel waved; Zoe was too involved in her work to notice her.
She tapped the shoulder of the young guard in headphones. He was obviously involved in whatever he was listening to, because her touch made him jump. When he saw it was Dom, he slid the headphones off hastily.
‘What’s up?’
He was small and muscular with short dark hair and skin a shade or two lighter than Dom’s.
‘Shakir Nasseem, This is Allie Sheridan. She’s going to help monitor the communication from Nathaniel’s unit.’
Shakir didn’t ask any questions.
‘Aces.’ He pointed to an empty chair and handed her the silver headphones he’d just taken off.
‘Thanks, Shakir,’ Allie said, as she sat down.
‘Call me Shak,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Situation Room.’
8
Nathaniel’s guards talked constantly.
‘I think they’re bored,’ Shak explained. His disapproving expression told her what he thought of that. ‘They say a lot of stuff they shouldn’t ever say. Raj would kill us if we pulled that kind of shizzle.’
He had a contagious smile that Allie liked instantly. He seemed laidback, despite his intimidating black uniform.
He showed her how to toggle between conversations on the computer, so she could listen to multiple guards at once. ‘Give us a heads up if you hear anything useful.’
She frowned. ‘What’s useful, though?’
‘Clues about their location. Anything at all. A street name. A restaurant. A shop. Anything we can track down.’ He turned back to his own laptop, where the screen held only a mystifying series of numbers. ‘Just keep your ears open. Don’t miss anything.’
Hesitantly, Allie slid the headphones on. Instantly the sound of typing and chatting disappeared. Voices filled her head. They were all male, speaking in the crisp truncated language she associated with soldiers in films.
There were so many of them, at first it was a bit bewildering. A tangle of words. Gradually, though, she began to identify unique voices barking orders, giving locations, making jokes. Saying ‘copy that’ a lot.
‘Going to the shops. Want anything?’
‘Copy that. Get me some crisps. And something sweet.’
‘Copy that. How about that sweet blonde behind the counter? No wait. I forgot. She’s mine.’
‘That’s not what she told me last night…’
‘(Muffled laughter) Copy that.’
There was no way she could imagine Raj’s guards having conversations like this on Cimmeria’s comms system. He’d have their heads.
They never used names, only numbers. After a while she got to know their voices. Nine had a gravelly voice and an Essex accent. Six had a distinctive high-pitched voice and a London accent.
As the hours passed, and she listened to them talk about lunch, their cars, their girlfriends, she imagined faces for them. She decided Nine had a square jaw and dark hair. Six was slim with an overbite.
There was only one guard whose real name she knew. He called himself One.
‘One to Six. You bringing me those papers? Over.’
When she heard that voice, Allie started so violently her earphones unplugged. The guards’ voices flooded into the room.
Shak glanced up at her questioningly.
Her hands had gone cold and clumsy, and she fumbled with the cable.
‘It’s Gabe.’ She whispered the words, as if Gabe might somehow hear her. ‘Gabe Porthus.’
Shak didn’t seem surprised. ‘Number One,’ he said. ‘What a wanker.’ He gestured at her laptop. ‘Make a note of what he talks about. We’re keeping an eye on that guy.’
Allie finally got the earphones plugged in. Gabe’s voice filled her head.
She hated that voice. She’d heard it the day before, but only for a second. Now it made her skin crawl.
His face she didn’t have to imagine. She knew it all too well. He was beautiful – with blond hair and perfectly even white teeth. He had a chiselled jaw and warm brown eyes. The kind of boy any girl would fall for.
He was Jo’s murderer.
His voice was a little deeper than she remembered; the corners had been shaved off his plummy accent, but it was definitely him.
‘Do it now, Six,’ his voice crackled through her headset. ‘I don’t have time for this.’
‘Copy that. En route.’ Six sounded sullen but he didn’t argue.
‘Too late,’ Gabe muttered. ‘Again.’
For a while after that, the other guards seemed subdued, using the radio more carefully. Soon, though, they slid back into their old ways, talking too much and wasting time.
There was nothing useful in what they said – quite a bit of disgusting talk about women. A bit of gabbing about football. Then, late in the afternoon, Six reappeared. Whatever had happened with Gabe, he hadn’t been fired. He seemed relatively jolly.
The others teased him about getting in trouble and he brushed it off.
Then Nine said something that made Allie sit up straight.
‘So… the boss. He still holed up in there with his pictures?’
She made a note: Nathaniel = boss? Pictures?
Six replied. ‘Yep. One says he hasn’t eaten anything in twenty-four hours.’
There was a pause. Then Nine responded. ‘In all seriousness, mate, is the guy losing it? Ever since that old lady got shot no one sees him.’
‘One says he’ll be fine.’ But even to Allie’s ears, Six didn’t sound convinced.
‘Yeah, One gets paid to think that. What’s it feel like to you?’
There was a pause.
‘Too early to tell.’ Six’s tone was terse.
‘Mate, this whole thing’s getting strange. We’ve done nothing since London. We should be moving in on them. Finishing this. I didn’t sign up to be a wet nurse in a loony bin.’ Frustration was clear in Nine’s gravelly voice.
All the other guards had fallen silent.
Allie got the feeling they were listening to this conversation – hanging on every word. She willed Six to say something useful.
But when Six replied it wasn’t at all what she was hoping for.
‘I got a break in twenty. Meet at the usual place? We need to take this off the air. One’s on the rag again.’
As the others returned to normal chatter, Allie wrote feverishly: Ever since Lucinda died Nathaniel has been locked away. No one sees him. Guards are restless.
She paused to consider how to explain what she’d heard. Then she wrote it straight.
They think he’s going mad.
All through dinner that night the students chatted excitedly about working with Dom, finding Carter. There was a tangible sense of hope in the air.
But Allie was distracted. Unable to join in. The conversation she’d heard that afternoon was still bothering her. The idea that Nathaniel was locking himself away and mourning his dead stepmother – who he’d helped to kill – had really thrown her.
It brought too many images of that night. Images she’d tried to forget.
Lucinda’s hand, slick with blood, clutching her wrist.
Red blood soaking through a crisp, Burberry raincoat.
She didn’t want to think about that. She’d tried really hard not to think of it.
Rachel must have seen how distracted she was, because as soon as dinner ended, she pulled her to one side.
‘Hey, are you OK? You look so sad.’ Her warm brown eyes searched Allie’s face.
They stood in the wide hallway, out of the way of the bustling crowd pouring out of the dining hall. Everyone was talking and laughing. Allie felt utterly cut off from that world.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, dodging Rachel’s gaze. ‘I don’t know, Rachel. I guess I’m just not looking forward to this whole funeral thing.’
‘Oh honey,’ Rachel put her arm around her shoulders. ‘Do you want to talk about it? My grandmother died a few years ago…’ She paused, before adding hastily, ‘Of course, it’s not the same as what happened with Lucinda. This must be much worse for you than it was for me. But I was really sad. It was hard to imagine life without her.’
Allie thought for a second about not telling her the truth, but then she couldn’t seem to lie.
‘Here’s the weird thing, Rach,’ she said. ‘I know I should be sad, but I can’t seem to feel very much right now. It’s like I’m numb.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I feel like such a monster. I mean… Lucinda’s dead. Dead forever. But whenever I think about it, it’s like I’m kind of… I don’t know. Empty.’
She squinted at Rachel, expecting her to be repulsed. But it wasn’t repulsion she saw in her eyes. It was understanding.
‘Do you know what? I think that’s perfectly normal,’ Rachel said. ‘You saw her get killed. One of your best friends was kidnapped. And it all happened so fast. Your brain – your heart – they need time to catch up with you. With what happened.’
Allie wasn’t convinced. ‘But it’s weird, isn’t it?’ She kept her voice low so the guards passing by couldn’t overhear. ‘She was my grandmother. It should hurt more.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Rachel scolded her gently. ‘You’re torturing yourself for no reason. You are not doing anything wrong. There aren’t rules for being sad. We all handle it our own way. And you are sad. I can see it in your face. Even if you can’t quite let yourself feel it yet.’
Trust Rachel to know the right thing to say. She’d been reading psychology textbooks for fun since she was fourteen.
‘Thanks for saving my sanity, Rach.’
Rachel smiled and pulled her into a warm hug. ‘The doctor is in, whenever you need her.’
Her hair smelled like jasmine flowers. Odd. Jasmine was a scent Allie always associated with Nicole.
Maybe they use the same shampoo now…
‘You can get through this,’ Rachel said, her cheek pressed against Allie’s shoulder. ‘We’ll all get through this together.’
The two of them joined the others who were already gathered in the common room. The conversation was lively. Zoe and Lucas played a bizarrely aggressive type of chess.
Allie sat back, watching the others. Rachel’s words made sense, but she hated being numb. She wanted to feel grief. She wanted it to hurt.
It wouldn’t be real until it hurt.
She thought of Nathaniel, weeping over pictures of her grandmother. How was it possible Lucinda’s enemy felt worse about her death than her own granddaughter?
Why couldn’t she feel anything?
She didn’t want to chat or play. When the others weren’t looking, she slipped away.
Two guards sat on chairs on either side of the heavy front door, with its elaborate system of hand-forged black iron locks hundreds of years old.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long.’
The two glanced at each other. She could tell that they knew who she was.
Everyone knew Allie Sheridan now.
One stood and opened the door for her.
‘Be careful,’ he said.
Allie inclined her head. ‘Always.’
The door closed behind her with a solid thud. The evening was cool and grey – there’d be no vivid sunset tonight. A hint of rain hung in the air like a threat.
Allie took a deep breath, and then struck out across the grass towards the woods.
It was time to talk to Lucinda.
9
The chapel was hidden deep in the woods not quite a mile from the main school building. When Allie reached the old church wall, she slowed to a walk. Her heart began to quicken.
She didn’t want to do this. But she had to. She would see her grandmother again. She would say goodbye.
And she would feel something.
She followed the long path that ran beside the wall until she reached the arched, wooden gate. She flipped the well-oiled metal latch. The gate swung open.
Inside the churchyard, she saw that someone had cut the grass recently – maybe even today. It still smelled green and fresh. All the bushes had been neatly trimmed, making the grey, lichen-covered gravestones seem taller.
In the middle, an ancient yew tree spread its long, smooth branches over the graves. Its gnarled roots rose out of the ground. The tree was said to be as old as the chapel, and the chapel was more than nine hundred years old.
Just beyond the tree the ground had been disturbed. Fresh dirt lay in a neat pile at the end of a rectangular hole.
It took Allie a second to realise what she was looking at.
When she did, her lungs contracted until her breath disappeared.
Tearing her gaze away, she stumbled the last few steps to the church door. It took both hands to turn the iron ring that served as a handle, and she had to shove her shoulder against the door to force it open.
There was no electricity in the chapel, and she expected to find darkness inside. Instead, she was greeted by a warm, flickering glow.
Candles had been lit in all the wall sconces, ceiling fixtures, candelabras. They glimmered from the pulpit, the tables and on the windowsills.
The flames caught the breeze coming through the open door and shivered. Allie hurried to shut the door.
The room was small, with ten rows of high-backed, mahogany pews neatly aligned on either side of a central aisle. A plain pine coffin had been placed on a stand at the foot of the pulpit.
The lid was shut.
Allie’s back was pressed against the solid oak door. Every muscle in her body was stiff. She didn’t want to be here.
But she had to do this. After all, she’d made it this far.
Slowly, she made her way down the aisle, her feet scuffing softly on the flagstone floor, eyes glued to the pine box ahead of her.
She glanced around nervously – the walls were elaborately painted in medieval style, with devils, dragons, trees and doves. In the candlelight, the paintings seemed to move.
The dove’s feathers fluttered. T
he dragon’s scales shimmered.
By the time she reached the front row, Allie’s heart was pounding. She couldn’t breathe. Every instinct told her to run away. But she lowered herself stiffly onto the hard wooden pew.
I can do this. I have to.
The room was so quiet, she could hear the melting wax sizzle.
Knotting her hands in her lap, she made herself think about Lucinda. The first time she’d seen her, standing on the landing in the school building, looking out at the snow. Regal as a queen; an emerald the size of an almond on her finger.
And later, her calm cool voice coming through the phone, giving orders, but also listening. Understanding.
Then, on a hilltop, looking down at the lights of London. One last time.
The coffin was so simple, no ornamentation at all. That was wrong. It should be covered in diamonds.
‘I wish…’
She hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, and her own voice startled her to silence.
The candles flickered, sending light dancing on the vivid walls. The dragon’s painted eyes seemed to watch her.
‘I wish I’d known you,’ she told the box. Her voice was low and shaky. ‘Really known you. Sometimes I…’ She paused, then made herself continue. ‘Sometimes I pretend I grew up with you in my life. You took me to plays. To Parliament. We went to Washington, DC, together. I called you “grandmother” and it didn’t feel weird. It just felt… normal. I pretend that’s the way things were. Because… I would have liked that.’
She was shaken by a sudden overwhelming sense of loss. As if a hole had opened in front of her unexpectedly and she was falling down into it.
Hot tears stung her eyes.
Here was the emotion she’d been hiding from herself. The pain she’d dodged since that night on the heath.
She dropped her feet to the floor, leaning forward to look at the box earnestly, letting her tears fall unimpeded.
‘I know you thought I didnt always listen to you. But I did. I really listened. And I want to be like you, someday. To be brave. To try and make things better. Only now…’ She paused, seeking the right words. ‘Sometimes I don’t believe things can be better. Like, maybe better is impossible. And when you try to make one thing better you make something else worse. Something you never thought about before. Like you tried to help Nathaniel and it ended up killing you.’