Saving Sophia

by Fleur Hitchcock

  “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 woul
d 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.

  My dreams are filled with images of Mum and Dad setting off on an expedition. Ned’s with them and they all look really excited, but I can’t hear any of them, I can’t hear the words, I can just see their lips moving. They reach out to me, and I reach out to them, but Pinhead and Miss Sackbutt stand between us, waving golf clubs, and Sophia’s way off to the side, singing loudly and dancing with a tennis racquet.

  I pull at Mum’s hands but they shrink from mine, until she’s nothing more than a tiny speck, vanishing into the dark.

  I wake before light, trying to work out where I am. Sophia is fast asleep. But something has woken me.

  I look outside the window. It’s raining, but there’s a police car parked down by the entrance to the building opposite.

  Poo.

  “Sophia.” I nudge her awake. “We need to go. Now.”

  “What?” She’s still asleep.

  “Now – let’s get out of here.”

  I stuff the remains of last night’s food into Ned’s bag along with the spare clothes.

  Sophia slides off the bed and on to her feet. She leaves two twenty-pound notes on the side, stuffing the rest of the bundle into her jeans.

  I open the door, fully expecting to find a policeman out there, but the corridor’s empty. We tiptoe away from the lift towards the stairs at the end of the passage. Everything is utterly silent.

  The fire door to the stairs is heavy, so I hold it for Sophia, and pull hard so that it barely thumps back into place. Sophia points down, but I point up.

  “Not the roof again?” She opens her sleepy eyes wide.

  I shake my head and set off up the stairs. My legs complain; yesterday was the worst of all the days we’ve had so far and I could have stayed asleep forever.

  We climb two flights, our feet tip-tapping on the steps, our breath far too noisy. I pull open the fire door on to the seventh floor. Silence. We tiptoe past a tray of dirty crockery left outside a bedroom door; instinctively I check it for leftovers but it’s just crusts, nothing worth having, and we go on until we reach the lift.

  It’s clanging somewhere down the shaft. Doors opening? Closing? Sophia shrugs and presses the call button. We stand outside the doors before ducking out of the way seconds before the lift arrives. It stops and the doors open. I creep back until I can see inside. It’s empty.

  “Quick, Sophia.”

  We stand inside the lift, looking at the buttons.

  “If we go to the bottom, we have to go through reception to get out,” she says.

  “If we go to the basement, we probably have to go through the kitchens or something.”

  We choose the first floor and step out into another silent corridor. At the end is the staircase again, so we take it and tiptoe downstairs. A glass window in the door allows us to look through into the lobby. It seems deserted. I push open the door. It’s still absolutely quiet.

  Our feet don’t sound on the thick carpeting, and there’s this soft tinkly music in the background that muffles everything anyway.

  Sophia heads towards the main entrance. I follow, holding my breath, expecting the police to jump on us at any moment.

  The door opens quietly as we approach. Looking back, I see a man in reception, his back to us, shuffling through post, drinking coffee.

  “Bye,” whispers Sophia and we creep out into the street.

  “Sophia and Charlotte.”

  I look up from the shiny black shoes.

  Pinhead.

  And he looks furious.

  I turn to run, but he grabs me by the elbow. Sophia makes it a few metres down the road only to be stopped by Wesson, who leaps from a parked car and sprints after her.

  “Right, tie them up,” says Pinhead, gripping my arm so tight that it hurts. “Here – to the car.” I’m dragged over the pavement, pulled by my elbow, until my arm reaches the bar of the front passenger seat headrest.

  “Help!” I shout, my voice sharp across the empty streets. A flock of pigeons jump into the air and Pinhead laughs, but nothing else happens.

  No one runs to help us.

  “No one around, see. Good timing, by the way. We thought we’d have to get you later on, pick you out of the crowds – but you made it easy.” From his pocket, Pinhead takes a bundle of small black plastic things. I recognise them as cable ties; Dad uses them to hold the car together. Pinhead tightens three around my wrist and loops another three through the front headrest chaining me half-in, half-out of the back seat of the giant car. Seconds later and Sophia joins me, her hand looped to the door handle on the other side.

  “You two have caused me a lot of trouble. But you’re not as clever as you think, are you?”

  I stare at the carpet. I don’t want to look up at him, see the satisfaction on his face.

  It doesn’t seem to bother him. He keeps talking. “I don’t know how you got hold of the phone, but it made you easy to find.” I look up and he taps his nose. “Smart phone, see – not a stupid phone. Right, let’s get moving.”

  Stupid.

  Stupid stupid stupid.

  “Get in,” says Wesson, a faint sheen
of sweat on her top lip. She pushes me up on to the seat and shuts the door. Pinhead slams the other side and clambers into the front, locking all the doors. We’re trapped. No one can see in; the car’s tinted windows see to that, although it’s irrelevant, there’s still no one around at this time in the morning. I look back towards the hotel. The doors are closed. It looks asleep.

  Across the road, the police car seems deserted.

  Poo.

  I got it all wrong.

  We drive out of town along a fast and empty road. I’m so scared that I can’t make myself breathe properly. I’m panting, but feel as if I might explode from lack of oxygen. Compared to this, climbing off the roof of the office building was a picnic. This is like a gangster movie – except it’s real.

  After a few minutes, the dog sticks its nose over the back seat.

  “Hello, dog,” I whisper.

  He responds by licking my neck and panting in my ear.

  “Buster!” shouts Wesson. “Down.”

  The dog slinks back. If I turn my head really hard I can just about see him. “Hello, Buster.” I smile at the dog.

  He smiles back.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” says Sophia under her breath.

  For a nanosecond I feel like telling her life was boring but safe until I met her; now it’s exciting but I’ve been kidnapped by a madman murderer and his moll. Instead I say: “It’s OK, Sophia, I’m sure you’d do the same for me – let’s just get through it.”

  My voice sounds really calm and ordinary, but I don’t feel like that – I feel panicky and screamy and like leaping up in the air and leaving my spine behind.

  But there’s nothing I can do.

  The road winds into woodland. Beech trees with a thick carpet of fallen leaves stretch away from us. It looks very lonely. It makes me think of the Gravelly sisters in Body in the Waves. They were fed poisonous mushrooms in the woods and then hidden in a wardrobe wrapped in gingham. But I don’t say anything to Sophia. I glance across at her. She’s gone white. The thing about the Gravelly sisters was that they left a crucial letter for Verity Potsdam to find, which is how she discovers their bodies in the gingham wardrobe. I can’t write a letter. Instead, I reach into the bag and fumble until I feel the flash-drive that Sophia used to copy the files.