Ribblestrop (12 page)

Millie tried to sort her experiences.

She lay them out in her mind, step by step, like a set of hideous playing cards. A door in a rock. Animals in cages. A lift and two men with a chair. Before that, what had happened? She rewound frantically. Sanchez and that horrible little Vyner child. Sam and
the falling teapot. Names came back to her and here she was in her school clothes: her shoes were next to her, with her socks neatly tucked into them. There were two candles burning beside her, both in rather nice silver candlesticks. And not far off was a breakfast tray, as if this was some bizarre hotel and she'd placed an order with room service.

She stood up, very gingerly.

Things were clicking into place remarkably quickly. Worst of all was the realization that she still had no idea how to get out of the maze, plus she now had a great stack of unanswered, unanswerable questions. So someone had saved her, yes. So—logically—that person would appear very soon to lead her back to school. She looked at her hands again, and felt her mouth. Had somebody
washed
her? She shuddered and held herself. “Help,” she said, very softly.

Next to the breakfast tray was a jug full of water. Next to that, a shallow basin, and next to that, a little face cloth and a sliver of soap. Clearly, it was a good hotel: someone cared about the details. The water was deliciously cold, too, so she knelt down carefully and bathed her face. She soaked the towel and held it to her eyes and nose. “All right,” she said. “You're alive.” Her voice was deeper than she remembered it. “You're not dead, are you? You're not dreaming, are you?”

She slipped into her shoes, put her socks in her blazer pocket, and sat down cross-legged in front of the breakfast tray. The questions could wait a few minutes and it would be better if she just stopped thinking for a short while. Hunger took over, uncoiling from deep inside—when had she last eaten? She'd missed dinner, and now—as she lifted the little cloth and saw white crockery and silver cutlery—the most delicious smell floated up to her nose. A glass of orange juice, a grapefruit half with sugar soaking into it, a rack of toast with a doll's portion of butter and marmalade. Under a shallow, domed dish, scrambled egg and tomatoes, with two sausages set to one side. There was even a napkin rolled up in a silver ring.

“This is very nice,” she said, softly. She would try to normalize things. The food was still warm, so somebody . . .

Millie ate, fast and hard. Everything was cooked to perfection, and every single thing went down, despite the pain of swallowing. The juice was thick and gritty, as if someone had squeezed it for her and crushed in a little ice—there just wasn't enough of it. She had the most terrible thirst. She ate the sausages with her hands and crammed down the four triangles of bread.

“No,” she said. The questions were buzzing again. Then, still softly, she called down the tunnel: “Excuse me. Is anyone there, please?”

She drank more water and her mouth felt better. Then she looked again at the breakfast tray; she studied the details. Every plate had a little crest, and a scroll of letters floated above each crest. On the linen napkin too, the same design was embroidered:
OU
, possibly, or
OV
—it was too floaty and fancy. On the silver knife and fork, like a metalworker's hallmark, the same inscription.

Millie looked up and down, positive that whoever it was must be close. But the tunnel simply curved off in both directions, reminding her that she had no idea which way to go, and that she'd made absolutely no progress since she left Sam Tack's bedside, hours, even days, ago. She still had to get out and she still had no idea how.

“I want to go home,” she whispered.

At least she was refreshed. She stood up and set off. She was bound to find a way out soon. Was it day or night? She had no idea, and it didn't matter. She walked and was comforted simply by the rhythm of walking. She carried one of the candlesticks, and it gave her just enough light. It wouldn't be long, and she would climb a set of ordinary stairs and find herself back in the insanely horrible school that she didn't want to go back to, but had to be better than this labyrinth. A school for freaks and weirdos, where people seemed to nearly get killed on a fairly routine basis: yes, she would be back there. The headmaster would smile and she would explain that she had to leave, immediately.

She quickened her pace, the decision giving her energy. Oh yes, she knew exactly what she would do. First, phone her father and describe the situation. She remembered a telephone kiosk, along the drive. If the smiling headmaster didn't want her to use his phone, she'd trek off to that. She imagined how it would be to heave open the door and lift that receiver. “
Dad
,” she would say. “
I'm on my way to London. I'm checking in to Claridge's, and I am never going back!
” Slam. She would slam the receiver down hard. She rehearsed the conversation again. She won the arguments. She heard her father's voice, “
Fine, Millie, you're right
 . . .” And then she would walk up the drive and find the open road. She would stand on it, with her thumb out—she wouldn't even gather up her stuff, all the lovely things she'd bought with that woman's credit card—she'd stand there and wait for the first car or truck that stopped. Whoever it was, wherever it was going, she would climb inside and put the miles between her and Ribblestrop Mental Asylum.

Millie walked faster. As she walked, she tore off her ridiculous blazer and dropped it. She threw away her tie: she would not need it. Millie started to jog, following her nose and knowing in her heart that no network of tunnels could be without end.

*

Several hours later, she came upon a blazer and a tie.

They had been neatly folded. There was a silver tray next to them, covered in a white cloth. She staggered to it, knelt, and found a club sandwich, skewered with four tiny silver swords. Lettuce, bacon, fried egg, tomato. There was a little dish of tomato ketchup. A handknitted tea cozy sat over a tiny teapot, and under the teapot was a hand-drawn map.

Millie discovered her hands were trembling again, but whether it was fear or sickness or simple frustration, she didn't know. The tea was hot. The map was like a child's puzzle: lots of lines with elbows and intersections. There was a little stick figure, with long hair. Some way away from her, if you followed the lines and didn't miss the turning . . . there was a train. The creator of the map had
drawn a little train, with a puff of smoke emerging from its funnel.

Millie was about to cry, but she made herself sit calmly, and again she ate every crumb of her lunch. She had two cups of tea. She wiped her lips with the napkin and put on her blazer.

“Oh please,” she said. “Please help.”

Silence.

“I need help! Why won't you talk to me?”

She waited for the voice or footstep she knew wouldn't come. She had forgotten if she'd come upon the tray from the left or the right; she didn't know which way to go to follow the map. If it was left, then that meant quite a long trek before a Y-shaped fork. When she came to that, she should take the right-hand tunnel. But what if it was in the other direction?

She closed her eyes. “Dip-dip-dip,” she said, quietly. “My little ship. This is the way to get out of here . . . quick.” She opened her eyes and her finger was pointing left. She held the map out in front with both hands, as if it were a steering wheel: she must not get lost. Again, the promise of freedom kept her going: the open road, a fine hotel, her father's astonished apologies. She followed the map so carefully she was talking to herself without noticing, still deep-voiced with a throaty rasp: “Second right, so that's the first. We don't take that, we go on to the next. Coming soon, here it comes. What's this? A circle. We're coming to a circle—no we're not.”

She walked on. There was a gleam of very soft light from above. Standing under it, she looked up and saw a tall chimney of brick shooting up above her. Was it daylight all the way up there? There was light from somewhere, so Millie called: “Hello?” and heard her voice spiral up in echoes and disappear. No ladder, no ropes, no way of getting up. But the chimney or air vent must be the map drawer's circle, which suggested she was moving in the right direction.

Millie found new energy and set off at a brisk walk. Up ahead was a T-junction, which was where she turned right, and that was where she came upon . . . train tracks.

She started to laugh. Yes, she was following the map correctly, something she'd never been able to do before. How many car journeys had ended in screaming rows because Millie couldn't see that the yellow B road didn't join the blue motorway but went underneath or over? Now she was map-reading for her life, and she wasn't going to end up a pile of bones wrapped in a stupid blazer.
I've learned one skill today
, she thought.
One useful skill at this horrific school
. She heard herself giggling.

The tunnel was going uphill: that was promising. She marched between the railway tracks—it was only a narrow-gauge thing, long out of use. It had a gentle curve, and as she came round it she saw how the tunnel bulged and the tracks became two. Something huge lay up ahead. She grinned broadly, understanding the map drawer's plan. Here was the train! Vast and brown and orange with rust, it sat there fast asleep, dreaming of the days it heaved carriages. She touched a wheel. Every valve must be seized-up and dead: had nobody wanted it? She marched on, smiling, not really noticing that the tunnel was getting darker. Not noticing that it was getting clammier, as if the air could not circulate. She had to light the precious cigarette lighter then, because it was very dark indeed.

When she came to a solid wall of rock, she had to stop. She was precisely where the map told her to be, but it was a very, very dead end. A cliff, in fact. A great blockage of tombstone granite. Someone had lit a little oil lamp, on a tiny stone shelf. Next to it was a glass of water, and it sat on a piece of paper with a large X filling the white space.

It occurred to Millie that possibly, just possibly, she was the victim of an appalling joke. Why had she assumed her map drawer was on her side? Because he'd provided food. But he hadn't made himself known to her. And had there been any other dead ends? No: this was the first. All the tunnels had looped and forked, there had always been a sense of progress, even if the progress was insane. Millie leaned against the stone. She screwed the
map up and beat her head gently on the rock. She looked up and around, thinking maybe there could be steps cut in, maybe a way . . .

She saw nothing. Her lips were dry again, so she drank the water. As if the water went straight up into her eyes, she found she was in real danger of crying. She could feel it coming in a great tide of despair: she could not walk anymore, she could not retrace her steps.

She looked to where freedom might be, above all this tonnage of rock, and that was when she saw the lever.

It was just above head height. It blended into the rock, but on close inspection was of steel, emerging from a socket in the stone. The lever had a handle shaped to take human fingers, so Millie did the obvious thing. She would not allow herself to hope, because she had been hoping for so many hours. Weak and tired as she was, she reached up to take a firm hold.

“Oh God,” she said, very quietly. “I don't believe in you. I have never believed in you. So I don't expect you to be listening, and if you are I certainly don't expect you to help, there's no reason why you should. But if you are, if you could just possibly, please, let this be an exit. If this gets me out, I will believe in you forever.”

She pulled, and nothing happened.

“I will sacrifice goats to you,” she whispered.

She pulled again. Nothing gave, no movement—but overhead, maybe a distant vibration?

She began to curse, closer than ever to hysteria. The vibration was real and reminded her of trains. She put both hands round the lever and pulled with all her strength and all her skinny weight. She lifted her feet from the ground and braced them on the wall: she could hear a roaring. She hauled again, crying out with the pain and frustration. And,
slam!
—the lever shifted violently down, trapping her little finger and making her gasp. Then, immediately, gears and pulleys sprang into action.

At first Millie thought she'd caused an earthquake—the world seemed to be ending right over her head. The roof slipped
and there was dust and dirt cascading. Worse than that, there was a sound of thunder, and it was booming into her tunnel. She'd woken up a monster and it was roaring down on top of her. She cowered on the ground, the ceiling above her swinging away: the whole roof of the tunnel was lowering like a drawbridge and, impossibly, there were bodies tumbling down toward her. Children, crying out and slipping, screaming, down into the tunnel. The roof had become a set of steps, and the bodies were falling down them. Above it all there was a shriek of screaming metal passing overhead with the frantic rhythm you'd recognize anywhere as a hurtling express. In the dim light, she could see that these human forms wore blazers: black and gold. Some of them were sitting up, on the newly formed staircase and the floor of the tunnel. One of them was groping for something, on its knees, hands exploring the soil. A smallish, fattish form: it found a pair of glasses, and the blinking, molelike face of Jacob Ruskin stared down at her.

“Millie!” he said.

“Ruskin!”

“Where have you been? We thought you'd gone home.”

Then Sanchez was in front of her, on his knees. His hands found her shoulders. He was peering into her face, grinning broadly, panting with joy. “Millie!” he said. He shook her gently. He shook her harder. He embraced her. “You save our life. You save everyone's life!” Then she was hugged harder than she'd ever been hugged. A whole scrum of boys formed around her, and everyone was hugging her, laughing and cheering, clapping and dancing.