One of Us (37 page)

I scrabble through the rest of the papers. Here's another birth certificate, a copy from when I was two.
K Child.
Grandma must have gotten this one.

Eventually I reach for the bundle of newspaper cuttings, and as I read them, the knowledge seeps into me with a chilly inevitability: something that's always been there, just out of sight.

Grandma's house, where there were no photos. The life I led with her, hidden away, never going to school, never coming here. I read through the articles until I get to the end.

All the clippings are about the bomb that killed my parents. It went off in the concourse at Gatesbrooke Central Station, killing nineteen people. I close my eyes when I read that. Then I make myself read on, even though I'm hardly breathing now. First there's a list of the dead, with names and photos. My parents' faces are there too. Nothing about me.

I turn to the next cutting, and the next. I know what I'm going to find now.

First the calls to find those responsible. Then recriminations. The possibility of a suicide bomber.

And then I finally allow myself to face it. I am Verity Nekton, and Verity Nekton's parents are my parents.

My ears begin to ring. I snatch up the last clipping,
but my vision is blurring. I force myself to hold the paper still and look at the photos.

AMBROSE NEKTON, SUICIDE BOMBER

KIT NEKTON, TERRORIST

How could they have done this?

Grandma must have taken me secretly, changed my name, and hidden me. That's why I never went to school. She was ashamed of me.

I represented everything she hated.

And if I'm the child of terrorists, I represent everything I hate.

CHAPTER 46

I
SIT FROZEN
for a long time, my head against the knee of my uninjured leg. Gradually I start to hear the ticking sound of the pipes cooling down, and the wind gusting around the building in a shriek. Then I become aware of the crushing exhaustion that pins me down.

I lift my head and the sudden brightness makes my vision explode into dots. Scattered all around me on the floor is the evidence of Oskar's plans for me, the way he took my buried history and twisted it into a new atrocity, so easy to believe. Like parents, like child.

My mother and my father. How could they have thrown their lives away in an act of murder? How could they have left me behind?

It's over. Nothing matters anymore. A great stillness has gripped me, and I can't move at all, not even my eyes, which have locked themselves onto the thin
copper pipe at the bottom of the radiator. It's a relief now. That's all I have to do: stare at the pipe while the room grows steadily colder, because none of it matters. It wouldn't matter if I walked outside now and waited for Oskar to find me. I could even go back to Col's house. I could do that. It's just on the other side of the square, minutes away. I know too much. Oskar wanted to kill me, and he'll get me in the end. I could get it over with. It would be a relief.

But first I have to get up.

I turn onto my good leg, trying to kneel. The first movement of my other foot sends pain searing through my body, rocking me so that I lose my balance and fall back against the wall. My good knee crunches onto something thin and round in a burst of sickening pain. Greg's paintbrush rolls toward the newspaper cutting.

AMBROSE NEKTON, SUICIDE BOMBER

KIT NEKTON, TERRORIST

That's not me. I pushed Oskar's bomb into the canal. Everyone who was outside the Old City Meeting Hall last night is still alive.

I pick up Greg's paintbrush and close my eyes, and faces appear on the dark screen of my eyelids.

First Mr. Williams. He's whistling an old tune while he writes
Verity
carefully on the side of a box for the anxious Brotherhood girl who talks to herself while she cuts into her woodblock. For me.

Celestina, floating motionless, upright in the pool, her head tipped back against the water, smiling at her own buoyancy.

Emanuel, so sweet and smiling, looking for me to share his happiness.

Serafina, flung against a tree after her bicycle crash, and the gladness I felt when I heard someone coming to help.

Greg.

And what I see is his uncertain brown eyes, and I hear his voice as he says, “
What's so wrong that we can't fix it?
”

That's when I know I have to see him again. I have to tell them all what really happened.

I open my eyes and let them adjust to the fluorescent light in the quiet bathroom. There is a reason why people should believe me. Because it's the truth.

I won't feel sad. I won't feel angry. I'm going to let myself feel something I've only allowed a little glimpse at until now. Hope. It's a dangerous feeling, I know that.

For the first time in months, everything is here in my own hands. Carefully I put all of it, my whole life, back in the envelope, and I tuck that into my backpack.

I know what I have to do. I must prove who I am and what really happened. I have to stop Oskar from using me for propaganda. But I'm too tired to do anything tonight.

I brace myself, and clamber to my feet, pulling myself up on the radiator. I turn off the light once I'm holding the door handle. Nothing happens. Too late I see that there are two switches. I must have turned on the light in the hall outside. I snap it off, my heart racing. Surely nobody will have seen that momentary flash?

I watch and listen, with the door ajar. There's no sound from the lobby outside. It's dark in the hallway
as I edge out, holding on to the wall. I stand and wait in the darkness. When I can make out the staircase in the faint shimmer of moonlight, I creak my way up to the gallery, one step at a time. The pain isn't so bad now. My ankle feels numb.

I only need one more day. Just enough time to call Tina from a pay phone and go to Limbourne. And over the horizon is the thought that if I can clear my name, I can see Greg and explain everything. I have to believe he'll still want to know me. I know it's a big “if.” Maybe bigger now than before.

So I pull a long cushion off a bench onto the floor, wrap myself up in my coat with my hood up, and lie down. My ankle throbs against the side of my boot. I don't think I'll be able to get it off now, so I leave it, and shut my eyes.

The second I close them I hear something. It's not the creaks of wood contracting at night. It's not the scurrying of mice.

It's the sound of a person, creeping up, step by step. I can even hear them breathing.

Moonlight shafts through the skylight onto the landing at the top of the stairs. A shadow creeps across the floorboards. I see him.

Oskar.

Just for one moment I think he hasn't seen me. Then I'm blinded, as the beam of his flashlight shines into my eyes.

CHAPTER 47

I
SHUT MY
eyes. I can't bear to watch him coming closer,
toward my trap between the wall and the bench.

Then he speaks.

“Verity?” he says. “Verity? It's me.”

He shines the flashlight on his own face, lighting it up from underneath like a mask.

I leap up, forgetting about my ankle, until the searing pain makes it give way and sends me tumbling toward him. He catches me by my arms.

“Greg! What are you doing here?” I stop, breathless.

Greg lets go of my arms. “I'm sorry.” His voice is cold. “I know you don't want to see me. I just came to check you're OK. That's all.”

“How did you find me?”

“I followed you from the beach,” says Greg. “I knew you were somewhere near the square, so I waited. Then I saw a light go on in here.”

He turns off his flashlight. But I can see him in the thin moonlight if I don't look directly at him.

“You look like a citizen,” he says. “But that's not surprising, is it, K?”

I feel the blood rush to my head. “What did you call me?”

“K,” says Greg. “K.”

I'm dizzy. I sit down, suddenly, on the cushions. I try to keep the tears out of my voice. “You know?”

“I know.” His voice is cold. He's still standing.

“Why are you here, Greg?”

“Serafina told me you'd disappeared. She said you made up a story about losing your wallet so you could go into the city early and then you didn't come home all night. So she was worried.” He half-shrugs.
“Celestina called Ms. Cobana—Tina. Celestina told her you broke up with me, and Tina said she knew—because of Jeremiah.”

I nod. He's come a long way to be so cold. “Do you want to sit down?” I say. I wipe my face with the back of my hand.

Greg sits down, at the other end of the cushion. Then he punches it. “Why didn't you tell me sooner?” he says. “About you and Jeremiah?”

“Me and Jeremiah? . . . Greg, what did Tina say about Jeremiah?”

“She just said that's why you broke up with me. You don't have to explain. I don't want to hear about it. It's not as if we were . . .”

I start laughing. I can't help it, and once I've started, I can't stop.

“Shut up, Verity. K. Whatever your name is.”

I crawl over to where Greg is sitting. He knows I'm K, and he still came. I put my hand on his arm, but he pulls away.

“Greg. Listen to me. I thought Jeremiah was arrested because of me. He asked me to meet him, after the BSF meeting. He looked upset, so I said I would. And because he was from the Institute and he was your and Emanuel's friend.”

“Not really my friend,” mutters Greg.

“I was sure he'd been arrested because of me. So I was afraid the same thing would happen to you. That's why I ended it.”

He turns to me. “So you and Jeremiah aren't—”

“No! I didn't even like Jeremiah, really.”

Neither of us speaks for a moment.

“But it's still dangerous for you to be friends with me,” I say. “More dangerous than it was before. Oskar, the guy who set me up, he knows I'm in Yoremouth. Maybe if you go now—”

“Verity,” says Greg. “I know who Oskar is, but I'm not going anywhere without you. You were wrong not to tell me the truth.”

“I tried to tell you, all the time. It's you who wouldn't let me.”

“I mean after Jeremiah was arrested.”

“I was so scared I'd hurt you,” I whisper.

“You did hurt me.” He moves closer. I reach up to feel the shape of his face. His hair has grown longer.

“Greg,” I say. “Greg.” I kneel up so that I can kiss him.

He puts his arms around me, so tightly that we fall onto the cushions. It's a hard, angry kiss. Neither of us will let it end. Finally I lean away.

“Greg? I want to tell you everything now.” I pull myself up to make him listen.

“OK.” He sits up too and holds me close.

“How did you know my name? K?”

“Tina told Celestina,” says Greg. “I knew about Oskar before, from Brer Magnus.” He pauses. “I told you before, I knew who you were. You should have trusted me.”

I tell him about Oskar's bomb and the letters I found today.

Greg waits until I stop talking. Then he says, “You didn't know you really were Verity Nekton?”

Now he will despise me. I shake my head.

“You didn't know your father was Brotherhood?”

“No. Did you know? And did you know my mother wasn't?”

“Yes. I told you, I know who you are. I don't care.”

There's a silence. I start to move away, but Greg's hand tightens on my arm. “There's something you need to know about me too,” he says. “It's the reason why I didn't want you to say who you were. Because I knew that then I'd have to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” It must be something quite bad after all.

Greg holds on to me like I might try to move away once I know. “At the Institute,” he says. “When you were new? Brer Magnus asked me to watch you. So I was a spy. I spied on you.”

“Oh, that,” I say. “Yeah, I know.”

“You know?”

“I think I always did,” I say.

Greg gives a little laugh. “That's why, after Limbourne, I stopped speaking to you.” He pulls me closer. “I couldn't do it anymore. I went to tell Brer Magnus.”

“I overheard you.”

“I couldn't stand it once I got to know you,” Greg murmurs. “No, before that. The first time you spoke to me. I was terrified you'd find out I was spying on you.”

Now I laugh. “How did you find me tonight?” I ask him.

“I looked through your things in the Art room,” says Greg. “I found your sketches of the beach huts. And you seemed to know your way in Yoremouth last spring. Celestina thought you'd come here. So I came
in my car. I saw you go into the beach hut. By the way”—his voice sounds much more like it used to, at the Institute—“that was a pretty stupid place to hide, if you don't mind me saying.”