Hidden Among Us (4 page)

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t be angry with Nick. He was just too nice. “I wanted to get the train instead.” My voice sounded very small. Small, young and stupid. “Where’s Mum and Connie?”

Nick frowned again, obviously wondering if I’d gone stark raving mad but too tactful to ask. “Back at the house – Connie’s not feeling well so I said I’d come and pick you up.” Mum and Nick hadn’t been together that long, only about nine months or so, but Nick always spoke to me like an adult. Now he sounded disappointed and sad at the same time, like I’d let him down: in a way, it was worse than Mum yelling at me.

Cold unease crept over me. Connie was never ill. She just didn’t seem to get bugs and viruses like other kids. And taking that train had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I was moments away from facing up to Mum it seemed like the stupidest thing I’d ever done. She was going to freak out. Completely. I’d psyched myself up to meet her at Hopesay Edge station, just the two of us, but now I’d have to wait till we got back to the house with everyone there. What would she do? What would she say? It was torture. If she’d met me at the station, she could have killed me in private. Now Joe and Nick would be our audience. Great.

“First left after this village, Dad,” Joe said from the front. And that was it – we just drove off.

They hadn’t even seen the boy I was talking to, I realized.

The car smelled of Nick’s tobacco; inside it was littered with service station coffee cups and empty crisp packets. A guitar in an old leather case sat in the seat next to me. It was all so different: Mum’s people carrier is always immaculate, the vanilla smell of air freshener.
I’m in the wrong life
, I thought, staring at the battered guitar case.
I shouldn’t be in this car
.

When Nick stopped at a garage I leaned back in my seat, shutting my eyes, breathing in the smell of old pipe-smoke and the faint oily scent of diesel. All I could see was the boy from the station looking back at me, eyes like puddles of black ink. Where had he gone?

It was as if the boy had never been there. How could Joe and Nick not have noticed me talking to him? Why hadn’t they mentioned it? Looking out of the window, I watched the dark trees as we drove away from the lit-up forecourt, a menacing tangle of knotted branches looming out of the darkness.

“Right down this lane,” Joe said in the front, breaking the spell. “We’re here, this is it.” I wished he’d shut up; I was worried about Connie and terrified about confronting Mum, but at the same time my stomach was fluttering with sheer excitement. As we turned into a long, tree-lined drive, a sort of friendly familiarity washed over me, like driving on the left-hand side of the road after being in France for two weeks and finally seeing the same old English petrol station chains on the motorway.

I climbed out of the car onto rain-swept gravel that scrunched beneath my feet before Joe and Nick had even undone their seatbelts. I breathed in chilly night air, harsh with the faint tang of woodsmoke. I turned to look at the place where I was born. An overgrown lawn swept away towards a long, low house: ancient grey stone at one end, the rest black and white timber like a picture-postcard cottage. A forest of chimneys rose up from jumbled rooftops and small, odd-shaped windows glittered in the moonlight. The front door was enormous – arched and wooden, like you see in churches.
This is my place
, I thought, which was totally irrational.
This is where I belong: an ancient house surrounded by trees, waiting just for me in a puddle of silvery moonlight
. For a moment, I didn’t even care what Mum was going to say.

I must have been standing there like I’d forgotten how to move, because Nick and Joe edged politely past. Joe reached for the plastic doorbell and I remember thinking how out of place it looked. There was a faint lighter patch on the wood where you could see an old-fashioned knocker had once hung. The door swung open before Joe had the chance to ring.

Mum had heard the car. My throat felt dry. I tried to swallow but couldn’t. She was going to go mad. What if she started screaming at me in front of everyone? What if she
cried
?

Inside, we burst into a bubble of light and colour. Mum and Nick were both talking at once. The hallway was painted blood red, and thick wooden beams criss-crossed the ceiling. I looked over my shoulder and noticed a darker patch in the paint just above the door. It was the shape of a crucifix, like a cross had hung there for years as the blood red faded around it, and it had only been taken down quite recently. Nick and Joe were backing quickly away through the door at the end of the hallway.

“Lissy!”
Mum turned to me, and it was then I saw that she didn’t look furious, more frightened. Tears beaded in her eyes.
Oh, no
. “You caught the train all the way on your own?” She was speaking in French – always a sign she’d lost control. “Why on earth did you do that? For God’s sake, Lissy! Anything could have happened. You could—”

“Well it didn’t, did it?” I said, deliberately replying in English. Our worst arguments are always in French, for some reason. “I should have asked but I knew you’d say no. I just wanted to come on my own, OK? I’m not a baby any more, I wanted you to—”

“Never, ever do
anything
like this again! I knew I should never have let you go on that school trip!” Mum roared at me, her voice deep and bloody. She’d totally lost control; I’d expected it to be bad but not like this. “You can’t do these things, you can’t!”

I stood in the shadowy hallway a moment – frozen – then turned and slammed out of the door.

Hot angry thoughts skittered around in my head.
She’s going to keep me a prisoner the rest of my life. What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with me?

I ran down the drive, tripped on a tree root hidden in the gravel. Fell.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! What did you expect?
Had I really thought that taking the train on my own without permission would make her
less
overprotective? No, I’d just had enough, that was all. The only girl in my year not allowed to walk into town on Saturdays. The only girl not allowed on the Easter trip to Rome.
There will only be two teachers
, Mum had said.
It’s not safe
. Always watched, monitored, like a laboratory rat. Not allowed, never allowed. One rule for Rafe, another for me. For God’s sake, soon even
Connie
would have more freedom than I did.

And why? She would never say. Refused to even discuss it. I’d shown her now, though.

I heard Mum shouting after me as I picked myself up, palms burning, knees scalded even through my jeans, half winded from the fall. Tears scorched my face. I was glad no one could see them.

Stay out a few moments to cool off,
I told myself. But at the back of my mind I was thinking,
And let her worry. Just let her
.

I flew out of the gate, heard it banging behind me, banging open and shut in the wind. Mum was still shouting for me, but I ignored her. Rain slammed into my face.
When did the weather get so bad?
It had been barely even spitting at the station, and now this. I stalked off down the twisting, tree-lined lane. Would she follow? I glanced back over my shoulder; the gate and the house were already out of sight. I walked on.
Just around the next corner,
I told myself.
Then go back. That’ll teach her
. I was soaking already; rain dripped down the back of my neck, slithering between my shoulder blades. So cold. May is supposed to be a time of magic, it’s like the earth takes a deep breath as springtime turns into summer. Not this year.

I turned the corner and saw I wasn’t alone.

Moonlight glinted off the plastic sides of a bus shelter cowering against the hedge. There was someone waiting inside, slouching on the metal seat. He got to his feet, left the bus shelter, walked towards me.

I froze, thinking,
Murderer, rapist, mugger?
And then immediately,
Don’t be such an idiot, maybe he’s lost and wants to ask for directions
.

It was that boy from the station, hood up against the rain.

My heart was racing again, a mixture of panic and – something else. Excitement.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to be late. I waited.”

8

I took the Tube. It was rush hour so I changed at Oxford Circus in a hot sweating ocean of people. Hundreds of bodies pressed up together, the stale-coffee breath of strangers in my face, sickening. And all the time my heart was racing like I’d sprinted a mile.

I hadn’t checked the Reading Room for CCTV.

Even now the police might be following me, tracking down the manuscript hidden in my shirt, light and tickling against my skin. There was no way of explaining this. I would be arrested.

I wanted so much to read it.

I scanned the carriage: too many people with tired faces, sweaty clothes. And
there they were
: pressed against the window I caught sight of a policeman stepping into the next carriage, a flash of fluorescent yellow jacket.

They were coming. I was trapped. I looked down at my rucksack, staring at the black plastic buckles, concentrating on boring detail to block the panic. That feeling I was going to vomit.

Bond Street, Marble Arch, Lancaster Gate. Queensway. The train spewed passengers onto the platform and there it was again: fluorescent yellow among dark suits, drab work clothes.

The policeman stepped off the train, moving down the platform in a rush of commuters.

Not for me. Of course not. I couldn’t help smiling as we pulled away, back into the black tunnel. I was a step ahead. But for how long? Sooner or later, someone would notice the journal was missing. If they hadn’t already.

Still no time to stop, no time to look. Even now that librarian could be starting to panic, to make telephone calls, raise the alarm. Notting Hill Gate. At last. I allowed myself to be swept along with everyone else up the escalator, through the ticket barrier. Rushing to get home no faster than anyone else.

It wasn’t my home, Dad and Elena’s house, just free parking. I didn’t even knock on the door, just went straight for the line of cars squeezed as close to the kerb as possible. I felt in my pocket for the car keys. Still there. Sliding the manuscript carefully out of my shirt, I laid it face-down on the passenger seat, hidden beneath my rucksack. At least I couldn’t sweat on it there and blur the writing. So precious it could only be touched with gloves. Just sitting on the passenger seat in my car.

I started the engine and reached for the steering wheel, saw my hands were shaking. I pulled out into our road, leather steering wheel hot to the touch.

London traffic at eight o’clock on a Friday evening is hell but I’m a good driver with a functioning sense of direction. It took almost an hour to reach the furthest edges of town, slipping up back streets. I didn’t notice the car until I was waiting at traffic lights, trying to remember Dad’s shortcut onto the Westway. A grey Alfa Romeo, waiting behind the van who’d been tailgating me: nondescript but very fast. The same Alfa Romeo that had overtaken me earlier, I was sure. Now it was behind me again.

“Don’t be paranoid,” I said aloud. “No one’s following. Why would anyone be following?”

Because of the manuscript. Because of that message in brown ink: They will kill you
.

Rubbish. Shut up. It’s just a stupid old journal from the library archives that—

That I’ve stolen
.

It was Friday night.
Everyone
was leaving town, heading west. So what if I’d seen the same car twice? It was hardly a miracle.

I pulled out onto the motorway. Now I was moving along in fast traffic and driving into a wide summer sky, I could see sense: even if the librarian
had
realized what I’d done (which he must have, by now), it would be hours before the police responded to a report of theft on a Friday night in central London. I could relax. There wasn’t a chance they’d trace me here, not so quickly. Especially not after the precautions I’d taken. I might have used the school’s name as leverage, but my own remained out of the equation.

For now.

It was a fairly transparent trick, and I just hoped it would work. For a few days at least.

Once I’d been on the motorway an hour, I felt safe enough to stop and look. Finally.

The service station streamed with people: businessmen in suit trousers and crumpled shirts, people escaping London for the weekend, carloads of families leaving for half-term. I got a gritty espresso from a chain outlet inside and sat in the car with the manuscript in my hands again at last.

The librarian had been right, of course. It
was
a journal; I should have expected that after finding the title on their database:
Facts Concerning Concealment of a Hidden Race 5
.
Five was the issue number. There had been no record of issues one to four, no mention of anything that might have come afterwards. It was dated May 1820.
1820
. So old.

I waited before opening it again, ancient paper fragile beneath my fingertips, savouring the single word “facts”, after a lifetime of trawling through websites produced by pathetic delusional hippies about elves and fairies and crystal pathways.

Because none of that comes even close to the truth about what happened fourteen years ago.

I started to read.

I turned the page, hardly even breathing. I’d found it at last. Evidence. A shadow of proof.