*
Angelica has obviously told Simon’s mum that I’m in the house and we can hear her doing the mad step up the stairs. The staircases in these old houses creak and each thump on a riser is followed by a creak. The angry thump-creaks are getting closer and I look at Simon, and he’s giving me a superior smile and I’m wondering if it might be worth me risking that jump to the tree. It’s not that I’m scared of Simon’s mum, right? But a girl can get tired of being misunderstood. And if I want to be shouted at, there’s a ton of elders forming an orderly queue for the privilege. Starting with my mum.
The thumping stops on the landing below as she catches her breath, and Simon jumps to his feet. He takes a classic ballet stance, second position, back straight, hands held palm-up in front of his belly.
In the silence I hear his mum take a deep breath and Simon is miming taking his own breath, hands rising as they both breathe in, before flipping over and pushing down on the exhale. Simon repeats the action twice more before miming straightening an imaginary suit jacket and flicking non-existent dust off his shoulders. I can hear his mum coming up the final flight of stairs in slow deliberate steps. Simon winks at me, scoops up his Latin homework, and as soon as his mum’s head emerges through the slot in the floor he runs forward and waves it at her.
‘Look, Mum,’ he cries. ‘I can do Latin – Abigail helped me.’
I’m impressed that she doesn’t cave right away. Instead she takes the A4 pad and flicks over the answers written out in Simon’s terrible handwriting. She looks at Simon, looks back at the work and then back at me. Her eyes narrow and she cocks her head to one side – but she can’t be vexed with Simon because the homework is done and she has to know I’m the reason it got done.
I try the innocent look again – sooner or later it’s bound to work.
She gives a little snort and invites us both down for ‘supper’.
*
Simon’s mum cooks exactly the same way my mum does. Banging pots and pans about as if she’s angry with the ingredients and is daring them to fight her. She dishes up home-made fish fingers, peas, carrots and boiled potatoes. I’m not sure whose home the fish fingers were made in, because Simon’s mum got them out of a packet.
Weirdly, she doesn’t seem that bothered about Simon’s bruise. She fusses a bit, but apparently this is just the latest in a long run of scrapes and bruises that Simon’s been accumulating since he learnt to crawl.
‘We had to sell the monkey bars,’ she says, and Simon pulls a face.
For pudding we have posh peach-flavoured sorbet which, I won’t lie, tastes like ice cream without the cream, but since me and Simon’s mum are getting on so well right now I keep my lips zipped. After supper she’s hustling me out the door, but this time she insists on driving me home.
‘I’m worried about your safety,’ she says, and I can’t tell if she just wants to be sure I clear the area or she’s genuinely concerned. If she is, I’m wondering what she knows that I don’t.
I was expecting a Range Rover or something like that. But instead it’s a sensible Audi with, I notice, an Airwave vehicle kit hidden amongst the other electronics. Airwave is mainly Radio Fed, but it’s also used by fire and ambulance – I’m guessing Simon’s mum is Fed-adjacent in some way.
‘Seat belt?’ she asks and, satisfied I’m strapped in, off we go.
*
‘I’m surprised that your school does Latin,’ says Simon’s mum one minute into the drive. ‘And there was no mention of it on the website, although your creative arts programme seemed strong.’
So she’d checked the Acland Burghley website – because of course she had.
‘I do it after school,’ I say, which is half true.
‘Interesting,’ says Simon’s mum. ‘Why do you want to learn Latin?’
Because Peter Grant, apprentice wizard, said that if I passed my Latin GCSE then he’d teach me magic. I think he thought he was joking. But if he did, more fool him.
‘So I can learn to cast magic spells,’ I say to test her.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Like Harry Potter?’
Which I think means she either doesn’t know about the Folly, Peter Grant and Inspector Nightingale, or hasn’t figured out the connection. And why should she?
‘Sort of,’ I say.
‘Whatever gets you up in the morning,’ she says.
I have her drop me off on Falkland Road so she won’t know where I live.
Unlike certain foxes I could name.
Indigo is waiting for me in the garden square in the centre of my flats. She squeezes through the fence and walks beside me as I head for my block.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I ask.
‘I’m coming with you,’ she says. ‘I’m assigned to shadow you.’
‘You can’t,’ I say. ‘My mum will freak.’
‘No, she won’t,’ says Indigo. ‘Because she’s not in your den – she went with your brother in a vehicle.’
I check my phone and there’s a text from my mum.
Appointment brought forward see you tomorrow dinner in the fridge.
‘What about my dad?’
‘At work,’ says Indigo. ‘Not scheduled back until second sleep.’
One of the posh white leaseholders pops out of the front door, wheeling her pushbike ahead of her. She nods politely and holds the door for me, her eyes widening as Indigo trots in beside me.
She don’t say anything ’cause on the Peckwater Estate we have our leaseholders well trained.
We’re in the lift, which is small and smells of spilt orange juice.
‘How do you know where my dad is?’ I ask.
‘We have your den under continuous surveillance,’ says Indigo. ‘A team based out of Kentish Town Station.’
‘But why?’ I ask.
‘Orders from Control,’ she says.
‘Yeah, but why does Control want me monitored?’
‘That’s beyond the scope of my current need to know,’ says Indigo.
‘You better be house-trained,’ I say as I let us into the flat.
Indigo refuses to explain why I’m under surveillance, even though I give her the chicken salad my mum left in the fridge and let her sit on the sofa when we watch The White Queen on the TV.
She wants to sleep in my room, so I move a sofa cushion in and put it on the floor by my bed.
‘Where did the goth girl go?’ I ask while Indigo is making herself comfortable.
‘She exited the green zone into the Brick where it sticks into the Heath and the machine men hibernate,’ says Indigo, and I think she means the Vale of Health but I can’t be sure.
‘Who are the machine men?’ I ask.
‘The whirligig men,’ she says, stamping down with her front paws to ensure the cushion knows its place. ‘The slide men, the crash bang operatives, the barkers and change men.’
Whirligig, barker, slide – Indigo means the pitch where the Showmen rest up their rides between shows. Definitely the Vale of Health then. So if I left the Heath there – where would I be going?
Not Whitestone Pond and Jack Straw’s Castle, because if you were heading there you’d stay on the Viaduct Path. Not the houses lower down, because why would you go up first.
It’s too warm to get under the duvet so I lie down on top and turn the light out.
So either Goth Girl and Nerd Boy stayed in the Vale of Health, or they walked up to the top bit of Hampstead proper.
Indigo makes a breathy noise like a sigh and I close my eyes.
*
I wake up the next morning to find Indigo on the bed with me, her head resting on my hip.
‘Why didn’t you stay on the floor?’ I ask.
‘I’m not used to sleeping on my own,’ she says. ‘Do the scratchy thing.’
Indigo’s f
ur is soft and she makes little whiny sounds as I scratch. It’s so easy to make her happy that it’s hard to stay vexed.
‘What’s the operation today?’ asks Indigo.
‘You’re going back to the Heath to keep an eye on Simon for me,’ I say. ‘I’m going to visit the hospital and then I’m going to the library.’
5 This is contemporary youth slang for ‘hard’ or ‘difficult’ – presumably because their attention spans are so truncated that mastering any task of even moderate difficulty is seen as taking an inordinate duration.
10
Deeping It
I am sitting at a mahogany reading table in a library on the ground floor of a large Regency building that sits on the south side of Russell Square on the corner of Bedford Place. It’s easy to walk by it, because it blends in with the terraces that line that part of the square. It has a grand entrance with SCIENTIA POTENTIA EST written above the door, a square atrium with balconies that goes all the way to the roof and is topped by the dome, and it has at least two teaching laboratories, a lecture hall, bedrooms upstairs, and a kitchen and shooting range in the basement.
It is called the Folly, and when I have passed my Latin GCSE this is where they will teach me magic.
There is a white and brown short-haired terrier sitting upright on a chair and staring at me across the width of the table. His name is Toby, and either he can smell Indigo on me or he wants a sausage. Probably both.
This place is quiet, old and forgotten. I can concentrate here – despite Toby.
I’ve got my notebook out and a couple of sheets of expensive writing paper because the Folly hasn’t yet caught up with the discount A4 pad. The paper is smooth and dense, and I use a fountain pen because it’s like writing on money. I’m making a list of all the things I know – it’s a short list.
Natali comes round to recruit me – which is definitely sus in and of itself.
Jessica tries to recruit Simon – which is double sus.
Jessica and Natali both disappear long enough to become the subject of an active police inquiry – which is triple sus because the Feds don’t have the manpower to roll out for teens unless there’s concerns.
And then they get themselves ‘returned to their families’.
But I saw Goth Girl and Nerd Boy buck up at the same meeting place Natali and Jessica told me and Simon about. Coincidence? At least I know where they left the Heath, even if Indigo said it was outside her ‘operational parameters’ to follow them.
The talking foxes think something sinister is lurking on the Heath and want me to check it.
Something the foxes can’t track directly.
A white man walks into the library. He’s dressed in an old-fashioned charcoal-grey suit, has an old-school haircut and grey eyes. He’s got that effortless posh style that Simon’s mum only wishes she had. His name is Thomas Nightingale, he is a detective chief inspector and is at least a hundred years old, though he don’t look it. He is also Britain’s only licensed, fully qualified wizard. He takes a seat next to Toby and pulls out his notebook.
‘I’ve just had an interesting chat with a Detective Constable Jonquire,’ he says.
Which is typical. I never asked him to talk to anyone – all I wanted was for him to look some stuff up on Peter’s AWARE terminal. That’s the excluse6 Fed internet which gives them access to the various computer systems that I’m sure some of them actually know how to use. Peter knows how to use them. Nightingale, I’m not so sure.
Obviously, I’m not authorised to use them. And, while I’ve memorised both Nightingale’s and Peter’s warrant numbers and their additional security passwords, I’m saving those for an emergency.
Nightingale reads my face.
‘I’ve always found it more efficient to simply find someone who knows the answers and ask them,’ he says. ‘Especially when one is not sure what the precise nature of the question is.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You’re a detective inspector so people’ve got to answer.’
‘If only that were the case,’ he says.
‘Anyway, did you get one? An answer?’
‘There are no current missing persons cases that match the criteria you specified,’ he says. ‘However, there were twenty-three reports in the last three weeks, which is what triggered the operational response you witnessed. But all of them have been resolved.’
All the kids were between the ages of twelve and sixteen, had been missing no more than two nights, and a maximum of three of them had been missing on the same nights. Nightingale is thorough, so he’d asked whether there’d been follow-up interviews. But apart from Natali, Jessica and two other recent teenagers, none had been taken.
Nightingale draws the line at showing me the interviews or giving me the names of the other two teens.
‘That information is confidential,’ he says. ‘And this is not our case.’
I say I understand, but I don’t think he believes me because he says that if I find out anything ‘interesting’ I should call him.
‘No worries,’ I say.
‘Before you do anything precipitate,’ he says.
6 Much like the youth of my own generation, today’s young people have taken to amputating the ends of words. Presumably so they can speak them faster and with greater emphasis. Thankfully they have yet to take up the antipodean habit of adding an ‘o’ to aid flow. In any case, ‘excluse’ is short for ‘exclusive’.
11
Legwork
My Samsung may be krutters7 but I can still access Facebook. I know Natali’s surname and the area she lives in – the 168 has barely made it to Euston Station and I have enough information to narrow her house down to one of three on Savernake Road. I bale the bus at Camden and hop on a 24.
Savernake Road runs down the southern side of the Overground tracks from Hampstead Station to Gospel Oak. On the other side of the line is the Heath, and I wonder if that’s significant. But without the other kids’ addresses I can’t check it.
It’s fifteen minutes later and I’m standing outside a house I realise I still recognise from a birthday party I went to eight years ago. It’s another Victorian semi, but a scale down from Simon’s house. This is the mid-rent version although, according to Zoopla, houses on this side of the street, with back views over the Heath, go for a million more than houses on the other side.
The white stucco on the gatepost is grimy and cracked and the front garden has gone a bit wild. The porch is freshly painted, though, and it has one of those Number 10 doors with an ornamental knocker that looks like it should have the face of a dead banker but doesn’t.
I ring the doorbell and wait.
A white man opens the door, a shrunk version of the Natali’s dad I remember from eight years ago. He’s wearing a black T-shirt with THE CLASH written across the front over a red Soviet-style star, black jeans and a hostile expression. He tries to look friendly when he sees me, but he’s too pissed off to make it convincing.
‘Can I help you?’ he says, and I ask whether Natali is in.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But she’s not allowed visitors.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. ‘I just need to ask her a few things for a school project. I won’t take long – I promise.’
Natali’s dad hesitates, but the aura of the school project exerts a powerful influence on posh grown-ups. My mum would have wanted to know details – what project? Which school? But Natali’s dad is too worried about seeming rude to a child to ask questions. Plus I think he sort of recognises me.
He doesn’t invite me in, though – makes me wait on the doorstep while he fetches Natali.
Natali is looking pale and booky8 in pink pyjama bottoms and an oversized Sex Pistols T-shirt that she must have borrowed from her dad. She’s surprised to see me. ‘Abigail,’ she says. ‘I haven’t seen you for years.’
We’re back in sus-land, then. But what kind of sus is it?
‘You came down my ends two days ago,’ I say. ‘You invited me to a happening on the Heath.’
‘I don’t remember,’ she says.
Not No I didn’t, which is what you would say if you were denying things.
‘Really?’ I ask.
‘Yeah,’ she says. Leaning closer as if she don’t want anyone else to hear. ‘They say I was . . .’ She hesitates and leans in even closer and whispers, ‘Missing.’
‘Missing how?’ I whisper back.
‘I don’t know.’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘What – nothing?’
‘I remember a kitchen. Maybe . . .’ Natali shrugs.
‘Natali!’ Her dad is calling from further along the hall.
‘Dad doesn’t believe me,’ she says in a normal voice, on purpose I reckon, so that her dad can hear. ‘He never believes me about anything.’
‘I believe you,’ I whisper, and I’m a bit surprised to find I mean it. ‘Add me on Snapchat.’
And then I give her one of my disposable identities that I use when I want to keep people at arm’s length. Which, if truth be told, is most people most of the time.
‘When they give me my phone back,’ she says.
Now her dad is walking back up the hall to loom at Natali’s shoulder and make it clear that our conversation is over. I give him another attempt at Simon’s smile and thank them both.
The door is barely closed behind me when I hear them shouting.
I walk down the path and I’m not even through the gate and my phone is ringing. I check and the screen is showing an unknown number. I answer and immediately recognise the voice – Simon’s mum.
‘Abigail,’ she says. ‘Is Simon with you?’
‘How did you get my number?’ I ask.
What Abigail Did Tha Summer Page 4