Authors: Fleur Hitchcock
Saving Sophia (11 page)
Pins and needles are worse the longer you leave them.
When Wesson helps herself from the water cooler, I risk moving my dead leg. It’s excruciating. Absolutely agonising. It feels as if someone’s pulling it off my body and it’s all I can do to stop myself from screaming.
I think of Irene flying those aeroplanes, stuck in the same position for hours in a freezing cockpit. If she could do it, so can I.
Mind you, she didn’t have Pinhead after her. Racehorse trainer, bouncer, boxer, sausage maker,
international criminal. Gangster. Spy. Murderer.
All the stories of concrete overcoats and missing relatives become horribly possible. I keep playing the conversation over in my mind.
No loose ends. No loose ends
. Am I a loose end?
And who was the second caller – was it my mum? Or Miss Sackbutt? Maybe Sophia’s mum – though it sounds like she’s already propping up a motorway in Japan.
Away to my left in the cupboard of filing cabinets, Sophia has managed to stay completely silent, but I’m wondering how long I can stand this for.
Are we going to have to wait for Wesson to give up and go home?
I watch the sun cross from one side of the room to the other, the lights come on in the office, and finally, I listen to the sound of Miss Wesson bedding down on the floor, her head scarily close to my ankle on the other side of the backboard of the desk.
For some time Wesson’s breathing’s fast, too fast to be asleep, and then it turns from fast to slow, and I wonder whether I could sneak out past her nose, but I’m not at all sure I could walk well enough.
De dee dee, da dee dee, da da dee dee dee
.
A mobile phone rings and I use the noise to shuffle my legs while Wesson gropes to switch it on.
“Yeah?” she says.
Silence.
“Oh.”
Silence.
“Well, you’ve got the car but I could get a cab, meet you there.”
Silence.
“See you in half an hour and, Trevor, love you.”
The carpet crunches as Wesson stands up and fabric rustles. She pulls on some sort of clothing, and then there’s an empty silence as the door clicks shut.
I sit motionless, waiting.
Ping
.
The lift doors clunk.
The whole office floor feels wrapped in cottonwool silence. I risk pushing my leg out of the side of the desk. No one leaps on me, no one shouts, although everything aches.
I stand, my legs shaking and pull back the door on the filing cabinets.
“Lottie?”
At first I can’t see her, then I realise she’s crammed herself into the gap along the top but so far back that only her eyes give her away.
“She’s gone,” I say, reaching my hand out to pull Sophia from the space.
It takes a few minutes to get her out, and like me, she’s seized up.
“Did you get that?” I say. “The conversations?”
Sophia nods. She gazes at me, wide eyed. “See – I said he was scary.”
I wipe a homesick tear away from my eye.
I’d really like to go home now. I want it all to stop
. But instead I say, “There’s a bundle of money under here. And a mobile phone.”
Sophia drops to her knees and peers under the desk.
“There’s loads. Hundreds. What did he mean, Sophia – about the loose ends?” I say, swallowing the tears, trying to sound sensible.
She pulls out the bundle. It’s a thick wad of twenties wrapped with a paper band and a bank stamp. “I don’t know, Lottie.” She shivers. “Do you think it would be wrong to take this?”
I stare at the bundle, and think of the
conversation we just heard.
“No, I don’t. Take the phone, too, and let’s get out of here.”
It’s easier to think about leaving the office than to leave it.
“They’ll find us in seconds if we use the lift, we’ll have to go by the stairs,” I say.
“Do you think they’re still looking for us?” Sophia says, pulling open the heavy fire door.
“I do. They never saw us leave. They must still think we might be here,” I say. “Up or down?”
“Why up?” she says.
“They’ll expect us to come out of the bottom, so perhaps we should try the top.”
We start climbing the stairs. I lose count after
six floors, in fact I can’t even work out which way I’m facing. I realise that I’m much more at home in the countryside, where I can see the sky. Here, without the sun, there’s nothing to tell you where anything is.
I’m boiling within seconds, and out of breath within minutes.
“Do you think Ned told them we were coming here?” she asks.
I walk up another flight of steps. Would he or wouldn’t he?
An improbable thought comes to me. “I suppose he might have been worried about us?” As I say it I feel something curious, that’s not just to do with being out of breath. A kind of warm, sweet sadness, that comes with the thought of my brother actually caring about me.
I push it to one side and make myself walk up another flight of steps. Sophia skips up the last few steps and I rush to follow.
A minute later and I’m regretting it. These buildings are seriously tall. So tall that you can hear them blowing in the wind, and the tops are not nearly as smart as the entrances would make you think.
I would rather stamp up the staircase forever than be stuck here on top for one minute.
We step out into a howling gale. Rain beats on the roof all around us and it’s freezing. I stop in the doorway, letting my eyes sort the shapes in the dark. Tall chimneys thrust up into the rain cloud, aerials, pipes, all standing dark against the yellow nightglow of the city. Things I can’t see scrunch under my trainers. Gravel? Seagull bones? Eggs? Poo?
Sophia picks her way through the shafts and pipes to the side of the roof. I can see her clearly now; it’s not at all dark really. A steel parapet runs around the side, with one small gap.
“The fire escape?” she shouts.
I lean against the wind. I can barely walk on the flat so how on earth am I supposed to go down a fire escape? This was mad – I should never have suggested it.
Sophia leans on the parapet, looking down. “It’s not too bad,” she says. “A ladder for a couple of storeys then a proper staircase.”
“Really?” I say, as my ladder dream comes back. I can’t move.
“If you don’t look down, Lottie, you ought to
be able to climb it.” Sophia stands, her feet already below roof level, and beckons to me.
This is not good. This is exactly the kind of thing that stopped me from wanting to go to Bream Lodge and they’ve got a safety net there.
I walk towards her, keeping my eyes on her eyes and avoiding the huge falling landscape view behind her.
“Turn around, Lottie.”
I turn.
“Get on your hands and knees.”
I drop to the ground. Fragments of concrete and roofing felt dig into my palms. This could be the last time I ever look at anything close up. A tiny snail clings to the side of the parapet. How did he get all the way up here?
“Now put your feet down on to the first rung.”
I stretch my leg down, feel the step in the arch of my foot, and pull the other leg down, too. I’m shaking. My whole body is shaking. I am not designed to do this.
“Put one hand on either side.”
I grip the black handrail. It’s rough, badly painted, slightly rusty – exactly like the ones in my dreams although this one seems quite solid.
The roof, the last solid thing, disappears upwards in front of my nose.
One step, two step, three step, pause.
The ladder just goes down and down.
One step, two step, three step, pause.
One step, two step, three step, pause.
Sophia talks to me the whole way, calling encouragement.
“Nearly there, Lottie!” she shouts. “You’re doing so well.”
I’m doing well. Yes, I have to remember that; I’m getting there, even with the gale whipping around my head and Ned’s backpack pulling me towards the ground.
Ned. If he were here he’d be doing this; he’d even be enjoying it.
I wonder what happened when we left him. I’ve never even considered what he might have felt as I jumped out of that window or that he might actually have enjoyed the adventure. He would have loved this. A pang of guilt flashes in my brain and for a moment I’m almost not scared, just conscience-stricken.
I stop, and look down. Between me and where I think the ground is, I can see a criss-cross of bars;
they might be close, they might be miles away, but they move over the lights below when I move my head.
Moving my head. Not a good idea. I go back to staring at the wall in front of me and put my foot down again.
I must do this. Irene walked across Scotland. Flew aeroplanes on her own. Worked as a doctor in war zones. She was real, not just a character in a book. She really did it.
One step, two step, three step, pause.
One step, two step, three step, pause.
“One more, Lottie!” yells Sophia, and my foot grates on a wider piece of metal.
“This is the fire staircase,” she says, her hand on my back as my legs fold. “You absolutely can’t fall off here.”
“Really?” I say, although I don’t think Sophia can hear me – the wind’s doing its best to steal my words.
The wall in front is still concrete, but just at the level of my feet it changes to glass. I sag to the metal platform and wait for my heart to steady.
Sophia talks right into my ear. “Ready for the next bit?”
I suppose I’d hoped we could just stay here, but I half stand, although my legs feel soft and unreal. She turns and I follow her down a metal staircase that seems to go on forever.
We start slowly, but I begin to get into a new rhythm and Sophia speeds up.
One two three four five six seven, turn, three paces, one two three four five six…
I lose count, but the ground comes up to meet us, and soon cars are whizzing by underneath, and street lights glow warm and welcoming. We’re probably still three storeys up, but it feels like we’re reaching the ground.
Sophia stops. There are lights on in the windows at the bottom level.
“They won’t see us,” I say. “Not if we stick to the outside of the staircases.”
We run the last six sets of stairs, and then there’s a tiny ladder that I race down before following Sophia into the darkness at the end of the alley.
The Japanese receptionist covers her surprise when Sophia counts a pile of twenty-pound notes on to the counter.
“And,” Sophia says, as if she’s done this a hundred times before, “could someone go out and get us some clothes? I imagine there must be a supermarket somewhere that’s open. Size four shoes for me.”
“Oh, and mine are five and a half,” I say, as carelessly as I can.
We head for the lift, catching a disapproving glance from a middle-aged couple arriving at the
hotel with expensive luggage.
In silence, we head for the fifth floor, open the door to room 507 and throw ourselves on to the bed.
“Whoa,” says Sophia.
I’m actually too tired to say anything at all.
She bathes first, while I try to ring home.
There’s no answer and no way of leaving a message. They’re either out looking for us, haven’t heard we’re missing or they’re feeding the chickens.
I lay the phone back in the cradle. I feel horribly homesick.
Ned must be home by now. Miss Sackbutt must be back. I imagine all of them at home, worrying about us. I try the number again, but there’s still no reply and I just make myself miserable by imagining the phone ringing in an empty kitchen, all the plants listening to it sounding in the darkness. The old black phone ringing quietly next to Mum and Dad’s iron bedstead. The office phone, buried under piles of paperwork and newspaper cuttings. I imagine the rain beating on the windows, and the hens sheltering under the coop.
I reach into Ned’s bag. My fingers rest on a
book and I pull it out. It’s not the SAS survival guide. It’s
The Severed Foot
. I open the cover. There’s Irene’s name, but inside there are signs of Mum among the pages. Leaves and scraps of the parish magazine used as bookmarks, tickets from the National Humus Society Museum.
I hold a dried hornbeam leaf against my face and think about Mum.
Although I thought I never would, I miss her, and I’m beginning to think I might have got her wrong. That she doesn’t just like nature and science, that maybe she craves something else, like I do. Perhaps that’s why they go moth-hunting without a phone, alone in the elements? Perhaps she, or maybe she and Dad, need excitement in their lives. Perhaps what goes on inside Mum’s head isn’t at all like the person she seems on the outside.
And what about Irene? Did she crave excitement? Is that why she had all those books for when she was too old to have any more adventures?
“Your turn,” says Sophia, throwing herself on the bed trussed in white towels. I stuff the book back in the bag, but leave the hornbeam leaf on my pillow.
For the first time in nearly a week, I enter a bathroom.
It’s the bathroom of my dreams. White, sparkling, loaded with fluffy towels, glittering with mirrors and downlighters. A shelf of small plastic bottles under the mirror. Shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, all the things I’ve ever dreamed of.
Heaven.
But it isn’t home.
I bet when I flush the loo, it doesn’t make the pipes sing.
I bet there aren’t woodlice under the bath.
I turn on the shower. Sophia has left it on exactly the right temperature.
Delicious. But I can’t enjoy it.
Hot water, gallons of it, pours from the showerhead and I look down by my feet to see the week of twigs and mud and sweat sweep in a river down the plughole.
This should all be happening to Ned,
I think.
The water beats on the top of my head, scouring my scalp, turning my skin red.
I imagine Ned rolling on the floor next door, hooting with laughter about our escape from the rooftops. He’d have loved it. He’d have been good
at it. And this, the posh hotel with all the shiny stuff, all paid for with Pinhead’s money. He would have loved the idea of that.
I think back to the moment in the miserable man’s office.
I squeeze a huge dollop of shampoo on to my hand.
I wish we hadn’t fallen out.
I stay in the shower for so long, the effort to leave it seems too much. If the hot water could go on for ever I’d sleep here.
Sophia is dressed in badly fitting jeans and a sweatshirt. Somebody’s been to the shops and bought us a selection of nasty clothes.
I struggle with some trousers, but settle on a black skirt, black tights, trainers and a hoody. The hoody has “Princess” embroidered across the chest and down the arms in purple sequins but I don’t honestly care, I’m just glad to leave the tracksuit behind. I brush the tangles from my hair and use the glittery hairbands provided to jam it all into a bun.
“Fourteen, maybe fifteen?” says Sophia.
“What?” I say, peering at myself in the mirror. I
look like a stranger.
“How old you look. And tell me, what do you fancy from the menu? I’ll call room service.”
We order burgers and chips with ice cream and chocolate fudge cake to follow.
“So where’s your mum?” I ask. “Did you find out?”
“I did.” Sophia grabs the remote control, flicking over to a film.
“And?” I say.
“And she’s performing in London.”
“London?” My stomach lurches.
“We could catch the train. Would you mind?”
I would mind but I don’t say it. “Of course, we’ll go tomorrow. So she’s not dead then?”
Sophia shakes her head, staring at the screen.
“We could watch the news,” I suggest, “see if they’re still looking for us.”
She shakes her head. “I really like this film – can we watch it?”
I sit and stare at the telly. It’s an unlovable film about a dog. I don’t care about the dog or its owner, and I’m slightly cross about not being able to watch the news. I don’t say anything, though.
Instead I flick through the mobile phone we took
from underneath Pinhead’s desk. It’s got loads of numbers, times of calls. But none of the numbers are labelled “dodgy bloke” or “hired gun”.
I press the red button and the screen goes dead. I sit staring at the dog on the telly.
Knock knock.
I freeze.
“Room service,” says a man’s voice.
This is the bit where the hired assassin comes in and shoots us.
But it’s just a man with a trolley. A trolley heaped with chips and burgers and salad and iced tea. A trolley of complete bliss.
And guilt.
I take Pinky and Perky to the bathroom, wash out their box, and give them two large pale lettuce leaves.
At least they got to stay in a hotel. I’ll take them back to Ned, like a souvenir. If we ever make it home.
