by Rachel Ward
“She’s a child, Rector. She came to us for help, sanctuary.”
“I was frisked, Simon. Frisked! Before they’d let me into my own church.”
“Oh…I see.”
“Well, you can stop smirking. This is serious. We must stop this right now. We must hand over the girl. Where is she?”
I shrank back farther into the corner of the chapel.
“She’s in the chapel, but” — immediately, the sound of footsteps coming toward me — “but you can’t just throw her out. She’s a child.”
“She may also be a mass murderer, Simon. And I can do exactly what I like in my church. I am the rector, after all.” They were very close now.
“It’s God’s church.”
The footsteps stopped. Their echoes faded away into the vaulted roof, and there was silence.
“I beg your pardon?”
I knew that tone. That’s it, I thought. Simon was in real trouble now, and so was I.
“I mean, that is to say, this is the House of God. Of course, we look after it, but really it isn’t ours. I mean, we’re the guardians, but…” His stumbling words trailed off.
“And your point is?”
“Surely…surely, we must search our hearts and do what Jesus would do.”
How lame was that? I thought. I’m done for. But I wasn’t, because Simon had found the perfect line, had said the one thing that could save me.
“What would Jesus do?” the rector said slowly. “What would He do? Where is she?” His tone was gentler now.
“I’m here,” I said, stepping out from behind the screen.
He looked at me, and I saw his future: forty years or more, the comfort of growing old, respected, a somebody. I don’t know what he saw when he looked at me; his face gave nothing away, but after a bit he said, “Come, let us pray together, then.” He walked to the front of the chapel and knelt down.
“I’m sorry, I—” I started to say, but Simon held his finger up to his lips and shook his head, then he shepherded me beside him and we knelt down, too.
The rector launched into a prayer, a string of stuff I didn’t understand, like he was talking to someone — asking them stuff — but of course there was nobody else there, just us three. And then he was quiet. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with myself. I held my hands in front of me, palms together, feeling ridiculous. I didn’t know whether to have my eyes open or shut, and I shot a sneaky glance along the row to see what the other two were doing. They were kneeling like two angels on a Christmas card, eyes firmly closed, in a world of their own. My knees were getting sore, especially the one I’d twisted getting over the fence. I shifted about to try and get more comfortable, and then sat down properly, wondering how long it would be until I knew my fate.
Hours later — or was it minutes? — and without saying anything to each other, they both opened their eyes at the same time and stood up. I got to my feet, too. The rector stepped toward me and took both my hands in his.
“You’re welcome in God’s House, child. You have sought sanctuary with us, and you will find it here. For the time being.” Behind him, Simon was beaming. “This isn’t going to be easy, for any of us. Before we go on, I need you to answer me honestly. Do you have anything with you, any weapons?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“No guns or knives? Explosives?” he said, eyeing my backpack, which was lying on the floor.
“No.”
“Do you mind if I, or Simon here, have a look?”
I did mind, as it happened. It wasn’t really my stuff, it was Britney’s, and it was all I had in the world, but I wasn’t really in a position to argue. I undid my bag there and then and tipped it out, the contents spilling onto the tiled floor: food, bottles of water, my cigarettes, some spare undies from Britney.
“We don’t allow smoking in here. I’m sure you understand that.”
I shrugged.
“And your pockets? Would you mind turning out your pockets?”
I dug my hands into the pockets of my coat and my jeans and added old tissues, my lighter, the last bit of change to the pile on the floor. Fifteen years old, and that was everything I had in the world.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to search you.” I shot him a warning look. Now we’re getting to it, I thought. Any excuse for him to stick his fingers where I don’t want him to. Dirty old man. If they started anything, I was ready to defend myself. Neither of them looked like much of a threat to me.
“Simon,” the rector said, “will you do the honors?”
Simon looked more frightened than me. He stepped forward. “I’m sorry about this.” He gently patted my shoulders, and then his hands moved under my arms and down my body. He crouched and patted each leg in turn, his face turned away from my crotch but coloring up all the same. When he’d finished there were beads of sweat on his forehead — sheer stress, I should think. It was a pretty safe bet that he didn’t get that close to a woman too often.
“No, that’s fine,” he said, straightening up. “Nothing there.”
“Good. Now, gather up your things and, Simon, if you show our guest…”
“Jem,” Simon said quickly.
“If you show Jem into the vestry, I will speak with the police and explain that this isn’t a siege. We need to open up; there’ll be people queuing outside for Matins.” He bustled off toward the main door, keen to put his day back on track.
Simon showed me into a side room, where there was a table, and some chairs, and a rack with loads of cloaks and things hanging up.
“Just put your things down here.” He was having trouble looking me in the eye since he’d frisked me. “Tell you what, I’ll put the kettle on. No milk, I’m afraid, but I could make us a black coffee or tea. I’ll just get some water.”
He disappeared into the toilet but left the door open. The tap was running for a long time, and I could hear the squelching of soap as he washed his hands, before the unmistakable sound of the kettle filling up. I know I was pretty grubby from sleeping in that ditch, but I had a feeling it wasn’t just a bit of mud and grass he was washing away.
He smiled straight at me when he emerged. “That’s better. Now, tea or coffee?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
“I’ll talk to them on one condition: They must let Spider go — my mate. I need to see him. He hasn’t done anything. If they let him go, I’ll talk. You can tell them that.”
The rector let out his breath like a burst of steam. “Must we really go backward and forward like this? You are in serious trouble, young lady. If you have done nothing wrong, if you have nothing to hide, then you should talk to the police. Nothing bad will happen to you if you tell the truth.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
His nostrils flared. “I don’t like your attitude. Appalling things have happened. Innocent people have died. We need to get to the truth. We need to find those responsible. It’s not a laughing matter.”
“I’m not laughing,” I said, “but I’m not talking to them. I don’t trust them. Why should I? They’ve taken my friend away.”
“He was a suspect,” he said, his mouth slowly shaping all the words like he was talking to a very young kid or a foreigner. “Of course they’ve taken him away. And if he has done nothing wrong and he tells the truth, they will let him go again. Perhaps” — his voice softened—“perhaps we sometimes don’t know people as well as we think we do. It’s possible that your…your friend didn’t tell you everything. That you got caught up in something you knew nothing about….”
“No!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the place. “It’s not like that. You’re like the rest of them. You’re twisting things around, trying to make him into something he’s not. It wasn’t him at the London Eye. It was me.”
They were both looking at me intently now. “Go on,” Simon said.
“I didn’t do nothing. I just knew that something was going to happen that day. I could see that lots of people there were goin
g to die.”
“How did you know?” The rector was waiting for me to tell him I did it, I planted the bomb.
“I can see the day, the date, when people are going to die.” They looked at each other quickly. “I could tell you both yours, your last days, but I never will. I never tell people, it’s not right. But when I saw that all those people had the same day, that day in London, I was scared. I didn’t want to be there, so we ran away.”
“What do you mean, you can see the date…?”
“If I look at someone, I see a number. It’s kind of inside my head and outside at the same time. The number is a date.”
“How do you know what the number means?”
“I’ve seen enough death. I know. Anyway, I was right, wasn’t I, about the London Eye? I was right to run away.”
They looked at each other again.
“Why didn’t you go to the police, tell them what you knew?”
“Why do you think? It’s all so simple, isn’t it? Tell the truth and it will all be alright. Maybe it’s like that here, but it’s not where I come from. They see a black kid with some money, they see a dealer. They see a couple of kids, just chilling somewhere, hanging out, they see a couple of muggers. They need to collar someone for a crime, they collar someone — one of the usual suspects, anyone who fits the picture, doesn’t matter. Truth and lies, it all gets mixed up. No one would believe me.”
“It’s certainly…unexpected” — the rector was picking his words carefully—“what you’re saying. But if that’s what you believe, then you should tell them. They will be able to do tests that can exonerate you, test your clothes for traces of explosives.”
“Set me up, you mean.”
His turn to get angry. “No!” he shouted, slamming his fist against the door. “That’s not how it works in this country. There are processes, checks and balances. You must trust the system. It’s what keeps this country civilized.”
I closed my eyes. What can you say to people like that, part of the system themselves, or so naïve they believe all that establishment bullshit? I couldn’t argue against them, anyway. I didn’t have the words that would make them listen, respect me; didn’t know their language.
They let the police in to see me, of course, and as usual they brought a social worker with them. The feeling that Simon and the rector might protect me from all that had faded during the lecture about our “civilized society,” but it still felt like a betrayal. I didn’t answer their questions. The only thing I said, over and over, until I thought it would drive us all mad, was, “I’ll talk when you bring my friend here. I’ll talk when I’ve seen Spider.”
They tried all the usual stuff: good cop, bad cop; kind cop, irritated cop; sympathetic cop, threatening cop. None of it touched me — I let their voices wash over and around me, while they got more and more frustrated. They brought in a doctor, too, but I didn’t talk to him, either. I was pretty sure once I started telling him about the numbers, he’d have me in the loony bin before I could blink — carted off to a secure ward somewhere, locked up, tranquilized.
There was the sound of movement outside. The door opened to let another woman in: Karen. To be honest, it took me a few seconds to remember where I’d seen her before. The last few days had been so intense, it was like I’d lived a whole different life since I’d left her house.
“Jem!” she said, and half walked, half ran across the room with her arms open. She gathered me to her, and all at once I was back in her kitchen on Sherwood Road, and I was who I used to be, before all this happened. She held me for a long time. There was a lot of emotion from her, in that hug; it surprised me, kind of repulsed me, too, but I didn’t pull away. It was like she’d really missed me — I would have thought she’d be glad for the peace and quiet of the past few days.
Eventually, she let go and moved away a little. “How are you? Are you alright? I’ve been so worried. If you’d only told me….” There was pain in her face, concern.
“I’m alright,” I said, but I was betrayed by the wobble in my voice.
“You look tired. You’re very pale.” She stroked my cheek with one of her pudgy hands. “It’s alright now, Jem. You can come home with me. I expect the police will want to question you again tomorrow, and I’ll be with you, but you can come home tonight.”
Home. The thought of Sherwood Road, the projects, the twins, everything back to normal.
“I’m not going, not without Spider.”
“Of course you must. Jem, you’ve been through a heck of a lot. Let me look after you for a bit. Give yourself a break.”
“I’m going to stay here.”
She frowned. “I don’t think you can, Jem. This is not a place where people live.”
“I can stay, and I’m going to. I’m going to stay until they bring Spider back to me. You’re not going to take me away. You can’t make me.”
She had her hand on my arm now. “No one’s going to take you anywhere you don’t want to go. I’m just asking you — asking, Jem — that you come home.”
I shrugged her arm away. Instantly her face crumpled with hurt feelings.
“I’m not going, Karen. I’m staying here.”
She sighed and shook her head. “You’re not so tough, Jem. One day you’ll realize that, and I’ll be there for you.”
She gathered up her handbag and went to join the others outside. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I didn’t care. They could talk about me all they liked. Whether he knew it or not, Simon had given me something precious, something powerful, a silver bullet to defend myself with. One word: “sanctuary.”
They came back in; Karen, Imogen — the social worker — Simon, and the rector.
“We can’t leave you here on your own,” said the rector wearily.
“Why not?”
“You’re a fifteen-year-old girl. It’s not appropriate.”
“I’ve been on my own for days.”
“Be reasonable, Jem,” Karen chipped in.
“I’m not moving. I can sleep right here. It’s safer than on the street.”
They looked at each other.
“I need to get back,” said Karen. “I’ve got a neighbor keeping an eye on the kids, but…I suppose I could see if she could sleep there.”
Karen looked at Simon and the rector, who nodded. “If you can stay, Karen, we’ll make up a couple of beds for you.”
Karen made a couple of phone calls and there was a bit more faffing about. They were doing that adult thing of talking like I wasn’t there. The rector started mouthing off about me vandalizing the place, but Karen stepped in.
“I’ll be here. I’ll vouch for her. Anyway, she’s not a violent kid at heart. She got into trouble at school, but I think there was provocation there. She wouldn’t be destructive here.”
I just sat still, picking at a flap of loose skin on the side of my thumb. I looked up and Karen caught my eye. She looked at me evenly, but I knew we were both thinking of my room back at her house, smashed to bits the night before I left.
The rector’s wife, Anne, had appeared with a couple of duvets and some pillows, and she and Karen made up two beds on the floor. She’d brought some food, too: packets and parcels that she left on the table.
Then the rector, Simon, and Anne started saying their good-byes. Simon was telling Karen about the facilities, and I tuned out for a while. When I tuned back in, he had lowered his voice, but I could still hear.
“If you’re in trouble,” he was saying, “if you need them, there’s a spare set of keys in the vestry. In the desk drawer. The key to the side door has some yellow tape around it.”
“OK,” Karen said. “Thanks.”
They filed out quietly, down the abbey, leaving through the side door. Beyond them I got a glimpse of the outside world. There was quite a crowd there, and a shed load of policemen. As the door opened, a barrage of flashbulbs went off, like strobe lights at a disco. What the hell was going on? There were people shouting, it was compl
ete pandemonium. The abbey contingent looked shaken, and I ducked back out of view behind the door.
The last one out was Simon, the big bunch of keys jingling in his hand. He paused as he was swinging the door shut, leaving a two-inch gap. “Good night, ladies. Sleep well.” His face twitched into a smile, and he closed the door, the big metal key scraping ’round as he locked it, an oddly liquid sound.
On the other side of the windows, the sky was flashing like fireworks, lighting up the inside of the abbey, too. I leaned against the door, listening to the noise outside.
“Right,” said Karen. “Let’s see what Anne left us, shall we? This is going to be fun, isn’t it. Like camping! Ever been camping, Jem?”