Chapter 19: Spying on the King
Eddy yanked me behind him and stepped forward into the front room. “Get away!”
I peered around his chest. Framed by the jagged shards of the broken window, the old woman raised the silver framed shopping basket. It darkened, its angles smoothed and the spaces in the frame filled in with black metal. The basket became a motorbike helmet.
I gasped as the woman’s skin tightened over her face, like creased paper being snapped flat. Age disappeared from her features and her clothes closed and darkened around her, becoming the black leathers of the young woman I had seen before on Chalice Drive.
“She’s been here all the time,” I hissed.
Eddy half turned and with one hand hurled me towards the back of the house. I thudded into a wall and pain shot through my shoulder.
He leapt after me. “Sorry.” A second long stride took him into the kitchen.
I slumped against the wall, staring at the blonde woman just beyond the front of the house. Without gathering herself she sprang over the window ledge, seeming to jump with her whole body upright, as if somebody had hoisted her on a rope. In the air the helmet transformed again, twisting into a short matt-black sword.
Her boots crunched on the broken glass strewn across the living-room carpet. She pointed the sword at me. Rather than hearing them I felt her words, as if white hot irons were branding them into my mind. “Grandmother, mother, daughter. You all will fall.”
I screamed and clutched at my head.
Then a clear chime rang through the air, soothing my mind. Eddy stepped between the woman and me. The sound came from the unsheathing of Excalibur. Light danced along its blade and the woman stepped back.
“You didn’t know I had my sword again.” His voice growled low and mocking. “You remember how it cuts?”
This time the woman’s hiss was audible. “You’re still young.”
She jumped forward, and Excalibur met her sword with a bang. The violence of the strike threw her against the wall, and Eddy advanced, towering over her. She jumped to her feet, he jabbed Excalibur at her and she sprang backwards through the window.
“You can’t protect them always.”
The sword inflated into a motorbike helmet. She raised it at us, as if in warning, then melted away into the night.
Eddy knelt beside me. “Are you okay?”
I rubbed at my shoulder. “I’ll be alright. You were amazing.”
He shrugged. “She didn’t expect me to be here, and especially not with my sword. She knows she couldn’t defeat me by herself without getting badly hurt.”
“Okay.” I straightened. “I need to sort out the window.”
Footsteps sounded from upstairs.
“Mum?”
“Maddie.” Though weak, her voice had lost some of its early strangeness.
I scrambled to my feet, moved to the bottom of the stairs and flipped on the light. I called upwards. “Mum, how are you feeling?”
“I heard noises. What’s going on?”
I climbed half way up the stairs by the time she appeared at their top. Though her voice made her sound as if she was back to normal, her eyes still seemed oddly glazed.
“Wait there Mum.”
She looked straight ahead, at the sloping ceiling above the stairs. “Where are you?”
What was wrong with her? Did she not know where she was, or could she not see?
She stepped towards the stairs. “Maddie?”
“Mum! Stop!”
Too late. She took another step and fell straight down the stairs into me. Together we tumbled down the dozen steps to the floor. As I landed on top of Mum I felt the revolting click of a bone breaking beneath me.
Again, Eddy crouched over me. “What’s going on?”
Mum moaned in pain. Her arm was jammed under me, angled against the bottom step. I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could.
“Mum, can you see?”
In answer she looked straight at me. “Of course I can. My eyes are fine. But I’ve broken my bloody arm.”
“Oh my God.” I began to cry. The issues and problems facing me seemed like an enormous, impossible obstacle. Kissing Eddy felt like a hundred years before.
“Hey.” With a big, leathery thumb, Eddy wiped the tears from my cheeks. “It’ll be alright.”
Mum scowled. “Well I don’t see how, if you two are just going to moon over each other, pardon the pun. I don’t know if you heard me, but my arm is broken and it really, really hurts.”
I narrowed my eyes. I’d always thought of Mum as quite tough, but joking with a broken arm was exceptional. Maybe her mental confusion had partly numbed her to the pain.
“Okay.” Eddy stepped back, his voice calm and purposeful. “Maddie, you call an ambulance. I’ll call a glazer for the window. There should be somebody with twenty-four hour service.”
“Can’t you drive her?”
He shook his head. “Too much chance of somebody catching me in town, or outside the hospital. Besides, I need to get Boxer home. I’ll stay here until the window’s done.”
We stepped away from each other and pulled our phones from our pockets. The ambulance would be fifteen minutes, the glazier an hour.
Eddy looked into Mum’s eyes. “I don’t know if she’s got concussion, but from her reactions they’re going to think she has. They’ll keep her in for observation.”
My heart sank. “What will I do?”
“You can’t be here by yourself at night.” He bit his lip. “You should really think about what I said earlier.”
“About what?”
“Going to London.” His face blazed with persuasion and willpower. “You have to. There’s no other choice.”
I took a deep breath. Vomit rose in my throat. We had kissed, he had protected me. I couldn’t go to London without Eddy. I belonged with him there, on the levels. “I could, I could stay with you and Boxer?”
“Stay with me and the Hechters?” Eddy screwed up his nose. “How would that work?”
I nodded helplessly. “You could stay here.”
He shook his head. “No chance. Do you know people you could stay with?”
I nodded. “Friends of my Mum. My God-parents. I stayed with them when she went away on business, before.”
“What kind of house?”
“They’re on the tenth floor of a block in Dalston.”
He pressed his lips together. “Concierge? On a busy road?”
I nodded yes to both.
“Okay. Pack a bag for a couple of days.”
Bowing my head in defeat I trudged up the stairs, while Eddy began to pick up fragments of glass from the front room.
The ambulance took Mum and me to accident and emergency in Weston Super Mare. The paramedics gave her a painkiller, but she seemed quite frightened, so I sat beside her and held her hand.
Eddy had been right about the hospital wanting to keep her in, so I did as he asked. After a night sitting in a chair beside Mum I called the Lidens, in London, explained what had happened, and asked if I could stay for a few days. In a second phone call I told school what was happening, saying that Mum would confirm when she was well enough. I used Mum’s card to take two hundred pounds from an ATM, kissed her goodbye, and walked to the station. Leaving her broke my heart, but there was something about Eddy’s certainty that made him impossible to resist. I had to believe that she would be safe in the hospital.
When I was little, visiting Weston with Grandma had been one of the high points of trips to Somerset. It boasted a grand, white painted pier standing on tall iron legs above a beach that went on forever. A promenade, lined with cafes and tourist shops, faced the sea.
I could taste the candyfloss and smell the chips frying. In the early winter morning it stretched grey and bleak. Rows of terraced houses descending gradually to the sea. Everything seemed damp and over salted, like soggy fish and chip wrappings at the bottom of a trash can.
I pushed my hands deep
into my pockets, hunched my shoulders against the cold, and hurried to the train station. The intercity from Devon swept through Weston on its way to Bristol and then London. Commuters crowded the station platform, long and curved, reminding me of the bay at the foot of the town. They filled every bench and seat, so I leaned against a wall and tried not to cry.
Thankfully I managed to get a seat on the train and was so tired that I fell asleep almost instantly and didn’t wake until we were whizzing through the countryside south of Marlborough. After that I just sat and stared blankly out the window, thinking about Eddy and how this was what he wanted me to do, therefore it had to be for the best.
Arriving back in London cheered me up a bit. It was still my favourite place in the world. From Paddington station I slipped straight down into the Underground, along the familiar tiled tunnels among the same bustling crowds.
The Lidens’ block stood a short walk from Dalston station. I breathed deep when I emerged onto the street. This was the London I remembered, everything gleaming with rain. Random posters in a thousand different languages emblazoned pay phones and shabby convenience stores.
At the apartment block the concierge buzzed me up and when I got out of the lift, Dora Liden was standing in their apartment doorway. In the clean, pastel colours of the hallway, her red and gold, Indian looking dress was a blaze of warmth and colour.
“Oh you poor thing, and your poor mother.” She held out her arms and wrapped me in a hug.
“Hi Dora.”
“Come in, come in.”
She stood to one side and ushered me into the apartment, where I found Tom, her husband, standing in the middle of their sitting room, smoking a cigarette. He stared at me for a moment, as if he’d forgotten I was coming, then scowled at his cigarette. “Dreadful thing!” He marched across the room and stubbed it out in a plant pot. “Hello darling Maddie.” He wrapped me in a warm, smoky hug.
“Sit down, sit down.” Dora retrieved the cigarette end from the plant pot and put it in an ashtray. “What will you have? Something to drink, something to eat? I could make you a sandwich, or there’s soup, and some salad from lunch, and fresh bread, or...”
I held up a hand. “Dora, Dora, a sandwich would be lovely.” I had forgotten about the Lidens’ legendary hospitality.
She bustled away and Tom stood over me, one hand deep in a pocket and the other pulling at his scruffy, grey beard. “So, Maddie, you brave thing, coming all this way. How’s your wonderful mother? You did give her our love?”
“I did. Her arm’s going to be okay, but they think she banged her head, or something. She gets confused.”
“Oh goodness.” He lowered his brows. “That must be very worrying for you.”
I nodded, realising how little sympathy I had received recently. “It is Tom, exactly.” I looked at my phone. “Actually, I should call her, to tell her I’m here, I got here safely.”
I stood up and moved away to their big French windows, opening onto a wooden balcony, half glassed-in against the London chill. The view south was spectacular, with the tall, luminous office buildings of the city of London in the far distance.
Mum picked up her phone straight away. “Hello sweetheart, how are you? Where are you?”
I told her where I was and that everything was okay. She sounded relieved.
“And you, Mum, how are you?”
“I’m feeling better love. My arm aches, and it’ll be in plaster for a few weeks. It’s going to take me a while to get over what that creature’s been up to, messing with my head.”
I bit my lip. She knew what had been happening to her, which was a big step forward.
She continued. “Eddy told me all about it.”
“Eddy did?”
“He came and visited me right after they set my arm. He’s a lovely boy Madeleine.”
My heart jumped with love, and I grinned stupidly at the London skyline. Eddy had gone to visit Mum in Weston hospital. How many boys would do that?
I couldn’t keep the smile from my voice. “You really think that? He is, isn’t he?”
We talked through Mum’s treatment a little longer. She sounded very positive about staying in the hospital and we agreed that keeping away from Chalice Drive was the best option for both of us for a few days at least.
Dora reappeared behind me, carrying a plate loaded with an overflowing, crusty baguette and a mound of fresh looking salad.
“Dora!” I sat down at their little dining table, realising I was absolutely starving. “Thank you so much. This looks amazing.”
After I had eaten Dora showed me to their spare room, which doubled as a study for both of them. Thousands of books lined its walls. As I walked to and fro, stowing my few belongings in a little chest of drawers, I ran my fingers along the ridged rows of uneven book spines. Their familiarity, normality, comforted me.
“Maddie,” Dora called from the hallway. “Would you like me to run you a bath? You almost done?”
“Oh yes.” There was no chance of a meditative swim, but a hot bath was a close second best.
The Lidens’ bathroom was beautiful, lined with antique blue and white tiles, and boasted an old fashioned white bath on legs. Steam rose enticingly from the water as I quickly stripped off and clambered in.
Oh. Bliss. The warmth enveloped me and slowly melted the aches and tightness from my limbs, back and shoulders. I hadn’t realised how cold I had been, deep inside, under my skin. Idly I let my mind explore the water, feeling the smooth, hard contours of the bath, all around.
The hot tap dripped and I plugged it with my big toe. Water built up against my skin and I sent my mind through it, flying down the pipes that seamed the apartment block and out underneath the city. How far could I go? How powerful was this sense of mine?
Eddy. I thought about Eddy, wanted Eddy, formed my thoughts into an Eddy shaped question arrowing west through the water. Through reservoirs and canals, pumping stations and pipes the little fish of my mind swam faster than sound or electric current.
Up a pipe, around squared corners and into the light. Not touch, not feeling the shape beneath the water, but seeing. I gasped at the awareness I was actually able to see through water that I touched. A crazy, bent image, like the reflection in a spoon, expanded in my mind’s eye, then erupted into blurs and disappeared. Again it appeared, growing larger and larger, a fish eye view of another bathroom, somewhere, before streaking away and vanishing.
It appeared a third time, and I looked at it more carefully. My mind’s eye hung high above a bath, much like the one I lay in. The image grew bigger, before the bath and its plughole suddenly rocketed towards me. I had a view through drips falling from a shower head.
The bathroom I looked at was big and old fashioned. Prints of horses hung on white-washed walls. The bleached, worn pine door swung open and a tall, blond, man stumbled in. He turned towards me.
Eddy. At home.
I winced, ready to pull my toe from the tap. Much as I loved him, I had no interest in seeing Eddy doing anything private, or toilet related.
I needn’t have worried about his privacy. He wasn’t alone. A girl with long dark hair burst into the bathroom after him. I frowned, trying to see her face. She only had eyes for Eddy, though, looking up at him as he backed away from her, and away from my viewpoint. He stopped when his shoulders made contact with the whitewashed wall, but she kept on going. I gasped as she reached one hand up to the nape of his neck, then shouted out loud as he let her pull his head down to hers, to meet her face in a long, passionate kiss.