‘Vicious buggers,’ she says.
‘Billiards,’ I say.
‘Who’s Billy Yards?’ Indigo asks, perking up. ‘Who does he work for?’
‘Billiards,’ I say. ‘It’s a game. A bit like snooker.’
‘What’s snooker?’
‘Not important,’ I say.
What is important is that it’s played on a big expensive fabric-covered table – it’s not generally known as an outdoor sport. It’s also well posh and not often played by teenagers, not even posh ones like Natali. A happening with billiards, she’d said. And, thinking back, that should have been a clue right there.
‘If they’re playing billiards,’ I say, ‘then they got to be indoors.’
Possibly somewhere with billiard tables.
Indigo stiffens and makes a hissing sound like a snake coughing up a furball.
‘What is it?’
‘Something’s coming,’ she whispers.
I can feel it too. A weird singing in the head, like when you walk into a room full of strangers and could swear they’re all staring at you and there’s nothing you can do but keep your head up and dare them to make some beef about it.
Quick as a flash, Indigo snakes off my lap and burrows into the gap between the small of my back and the fence. I can feel her trembling.
‘In front of you,’ she hisses.
There is a dog lying in the grass three metres to my front and left. It’s a black and white collie with one blue eye and one brown eye. I recognise it as the one that approached me and Indigo that first night on Kite Hill. It is lying on its belly in the way sheepdogs do when they’re waiting for instructions.
I look around to see if I can spot its owners and don’t see any wizened farmers in flat caps, or anybody else taking an interest for that matter.
‘Sugar Dog H-1 Alpha,’ says Indigo, still trembling.
‘Meaning what?’ I ask.
The sheepdog’s gaze is fixed on me.
‘Dog captain, dog officer,’ says Indigo. ‘Alpha male – top dog.’
‘Meaning what!’
‘Meaning you wished to meet the local goddess,’ says Indigo. ‘Wish granted.’
10 Apparently ‘bad’, although Abigail assures me that the use of ‘peak’ gives a greater sense of alarm than the plain English.
15
An Island in the Aegean
As soon as there were ponds on the Heath then people started swimming in them. This being the old days, they didn’t worry about Health and Safety, and if four people were dying a month during the summer that was a price worth paying. What did disturb the Victorians was that people were doing it without their clothes on.
Obviously something had to be done, otherwise people might get overexcited at the sight of some random bather’s package. So, by the end of the nineteenth century, the London County Council added some proper facilities to the Mixed Bathing Pond on the Hampstead side. This became the famous ‘Cockney child’s seaside’, where thousands of poor kids came to splash about in the summer, meaning that the posh olds needed somewhere else to swim. In 1893 the Highgate Men’s Pond on the other side of the Heath was opened, and there fine strapping Edwardian men could show off their legs to their fellow men without having any females around to harsh their squee. It wasn’t until 1926 that the Highgate Ladies’ Pond opened further up the hill.
On the first day there was a host of donnies standing on the slope overlooking the pond, eager to catch a glimpse of the other half of the population getting wet in their scandalously skimpy swimming costumes. Never mind that they was as revealing as a burkini – it’s the thought that counts, isn’t that right, fam? This is probably why the pond is now screened on all sides by trees so tall you’d need a drone to see over.
And why there is a sign that says WOMEN ONLY on the front gate.
As soon as I’d got to my feet the collie had sprung up, turned smartly and headed north. I followed but Indigo stayed behind, making little whimpering noises. The collie led me past the men’s pond, the Model Boating Pond and then left up the hill to Millfield Lane, which runs along the east side of the Heath. Ponds and trees on one side, the back fences of the uber-boujee11 on the other. I find out later that this is also called Poet’s Lane, because Keats and Coleridge used to jam down here looking for nightingales. If I’d kept going I’d have ended up in Kenwood, where me and Simon practised falling out of trees. Halfway along there is a gate in the iron fence that marks the entrance to the women’s pond.
Beyond the gate is a cool shady path through the trees.
The Border collie pauses to let me catch up, watching me over his shoulder with cool mismatched eyes.
I’m not prang12, not even a little bit. What’s there to be scared of, anyway? I follow the Border collie down the path, past the changing rooms and out into the sunlight again. I’m standing at the edge of the meadow that runs from the trees down to the pond. Dozens of white women are stretched out on their towels and sizzling like bacon in the hot sun. Most are pale but a couple are tanned. One old lady near me is nut-brown and wrinkly in nothing but a polka-dot bikini and a sun hat. She has an open hardback book lying across her face as a sun shield – I can’t see the title.
The collie nudges my leg and pads forward, threading between the scattered bodies. I follow her and, as we walk deeper into the meadow, I feel the quality of the air shift around me. As we approach the far end, the colour of the sunlight deepens and thistledown swirls in a breeze off the pond that smells of the sea – which is pretty effing unlikely, given the nearest proper seaside is fifty kilometres away.
At the end of the meadow a picnic has been laid on a red and white checked cloth and a group of women lounge around, drinking white wine coolers. At their centre is a broad-shouldered and dark-skinned black woman. She is wearing an expensive blue tankini with a halter top that shows off her broad shoulders and muscled arms and legs. Her hair is shaved down to a shadow, her eyes are black, her nose is flatter than my dad’s and when she sees me her mouth stretches into a Cheshire cat grin.
‘Abigail,’ she says, and beneath her voice is the roar of the printing press and the crackle of telegraph wires. This is the spirit of the River Fleet that rises in the heights of Hampstead and Highgate, then feeds the ponds before rushing underground beneath the Farringdon Road and joining her mother at Blackfriars. The great mechanical presses that once thundered out the news and gossip may have gone from her valley, but the spirit remains.
‘What brings you to my court?’ she asks, and her words draw me closer with promises of secrets and gossip, of witty conversation and smoky after-hours clubs. This is the seducere, also called the glamour, and these supernatural types like to try it when they meet you. It’s a test. But that’s okay, ’cause I’ve always smashed it at tests.
I’ve got my hands on my hips and my face set in a way that is pure my mum when someone from the council, or the school or the hospital, is griefing her.
‘I’ve got some questions,’ I say.
A woman in a pink bikini next to Fleet opens her mouth and laughs. She is long and thin and so pale she’s almost blue. She has a pointy chin, a snub nose and violet eyes. Her hair is swept back and up and is as white and fluffy as the thistledown blowing off the pond.
‘This is the cousin, right?’ she says, uncoiling from the ground, head tilted to the side as she sways in my direction. ‘Ghost hunter, fox whisperer, troublemaker.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying not to shake. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Thistle,’ she says with her face right in mine. ‘Dancer, shaker, swimmer – Riverwife.’
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath through her nose like I’m something tasty. She opens her eyes and circles around me, but I’m not moving. I know better, I’ve read books – Thistle is fae and the fae are like cats. They like to play games.
‘I can wait,’ I say.
‘Liar,’ she whispers in my other ear. ‘But wise to wait.’
‘Leave the poor girl alone,’ says Fleet, and pats the ground by her side. ‘Sit.’
The roar and oil stink of the printing press is all around me, and around its edges like a cloud are the ballad sheets, pamphlets, flyers, earworms, slogans, memes, likes, dislikes, follows and friends. This is the seducere again and it pulls at me like the sound of my mother’s voice.
But I can ignore my mum when I have to, and so I stay where I am and count to ten – slowly.
Thistle laughs with a sound of little bells and Fleet narrows her eyes at me.
‘All right, girl. You’re a badass,’ she says as Thistle slides down to wrap herself around her back, one arm draped comfortably over her shoulder. ‘But I’m not standing up, so it’s sit down or go home.’
11 This is another import from American English and means rich and/or pretentious. Derived, it seems, from the word bourgeoise.
12 According to my great-niece this means scared or possibly shaken up.
16
A Localised Heat Differential
I am sitting right in the middle of the Summer Court of the Goddess of the River Fleet. Or I am sitting down to a picnic with a bunch of women in the sunbathing meadow of the Kenwood Ladies’ Bathing Pond.
Maybe I’m doing both – sometimes it’s hard to tell.
‘Bubbly?’ asks Fleet, holding out a fluted wineglass full of champagne. I know it’s champagne because I can smell the alcohol. Thistle is leaning against Fleet’s back, her chin resting on Fleet’s shoulder – watching me, her eyes bright.
‘No, thank you,’ I say in my mum’s posh voice – the one she uses on the telephone to the hospital.
‘There’s no obligation,’ says Fleet. ‘You may eat and drink at my table without fear.’
‘No, thank you,’ I say.
‘Something else?’ says Thistle. ‘A cordial? Dewdrop, cowslip – elderflower?’
‘No, thank you,’ I say. Because not only don’t I take chances – but, dewdrop? Seriously?
Now that I’ve got used to Fleet and Thistle, I start to notice the rest of the crew. They’re whiter than I expected and most of them are what my dad calls eiwashi, which is a Themne word that means size zero skinny. A lot of them I reckon are part fae, but Peter says we’ve got to be careful about making assumptions because people come in all shapes and sizes, anyway. And thinking you know what somebody is is worse than not knowing anything at all.
‘So, what do you want, Troublemaker?’ says Thistle.
‘To make trouble, perhaps?’ says Fleet.
‘I want to know what’s going on,’ I say.
‘In general, or could you localise it a tiny bit?’ says Fleet.
‘The missing kids,’ I say, and Fleet frowns.
‘As I understand it, there aren’t any,’ she says. ‘Has that changed?’
‘Something is recruiting teenagers,’ I say. ‘Something weird.’
‘What does the Nightingale say?’ she asks. And when I don’t say nothing she draws the right conclusion. ‘Don’t you think you should tell him?’ she asks.
‘When I have something to tell him, I will,’ I say and Fleet nods.
‘As you like,’ she says. ‘The world is full of invisible currents. Do you know what makes the wind blow?’
‘The air flows from high pressure areas to low pressure areas,’ I say, because some of us were paying attention in geography.
‘Do you know what causes areas of high and low pressure?’ she asks, and I’m about to say of course I do when I remember that Peter says you can learn more when you listen than when you speak. True, he’s thinking of police interviewing technique, but it works for other stuff as well.
I shake my head.
‘It’s caused by the interaction of the radiant heat of the sun and the surface environment of the Earth,’ she says, and I think she could have just said that the sun heats some places faster than others, but say nothing because . . . listening.
‘And this interaction exists at multiple interrelated scales,’ she says, and throws her arm in the air and sweeps her hand in a big circle. ‘From the Hadley cells that drive the trade winds to the localised heat differential that creates the pleasant breeze we’re enjoying now.’
And there is a cool breeze coming off the swimming pond, still with that suspiciously fresh salt sea tang.
‘Isn’t that you?’ I ask. ‘Aren’t you making that happen?’
‘Yes,’ she says, and Thistle giggles behind her hand. ‘But it’s the same thing. And the wind is just one current in the biosphere. There’s the currents of the sea, of the animals, of people and’ – she waves her hand again – ‘other things.’
‘Other things?’
‘Other invisible things.’
I’m getting bare vexed with the whole Dumbledore teaching approach here. Obviously Fleet means that the not-quite-missing kids are caught up in an invisible current but can’t bring herself to just say that, because . . . who knows? Coolness, probably.
‘My love,’ says Fleet, reaching up to place a hand on Thistle’s cheek. ‘She can see the wind while I cannot.’
‘Really?’ I say. ‘What colour is it?’
‘It is the same colour as the breath you used to speak your question,’ she says.
Fleet speaks quickly – trying to keep the chat where she wants it.
‘I can see the flow of water through the landscape,’ she says.
‘You can see that?’
‘Maybe feel would be more accurate,’ says Fleet. ‘Sense certainly. My point being, some currents are visible to some people and not to others.’
‘But we can measure the wind,’ I say. ‘We don’t have to see it to do that. We use instruments, don’t we?’
‘Precisely,’ says Fleet, looking smug ’cause she thinks she’s outsmarted me and made me think for myself. Olds are like this, but I know who Socrates was – he was in an episode of Horrible Histories.13 ‘But before we had barometers and anemometers and radar,’ says Fleet, ‘people had other ways to read the wind. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
I’m bare tempted to say no just to vex her, but I know what I need to do now and I have to be getting on with it.
‘Yep,’ I say and jump up. ‘Thanks for all your help – laters.’
But, before I can escape completely, Thistle is at my side. She takes my elbow and draws me away from the picnic and into the cool shade of a tree.
‘A word in your shell-like before you go,’ she says. ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about making a sacrifice.’
She puts her arm around my shoulder and I feel a weird thrill, but I can’t tell if it’s her or me. That’s the trouble with the fae – they got bare fluid boundaries.
‘Whatever you sacrifice, however important it is to you personally, it doesn’t put an obligation on the likes of my love,’ she says, and presses something into my hand. I look – it’s my Samsung. ‘It just gets their attention. And that’s not always a good thing.’
When I press the button on the Samsung it boots up.
‘I added my number,’ she says. ‘But only for emergencies.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘You just remember who it was who handed it back,’ she says, and lets go of my shoulders. Then she kisses me on the forehead and my mind is full of fluff and multicoloured party balloons. ‘Have fun,’ she says and releases me. ‘Make trouble.’
13 A rather splendid BBC children’s programme about history with sketches and songs. You really should ‘check it’ as Abigail might say.
17
George Oboe Sugar Charli
e Fox
I’m walking away from the women’s pond and thinking about invisible currents.
Natali came looking for me just as Jessica came looking for Simon. Once could be an isolated event, twice could be a coincidence, but if Goth Girl had recruited Nerd Boy then we were looking at a pattern.
So, what can we tell from that?
One: Natali knew me, Jessica knew Simon – if Goth Girl knew Nerd Boy, then maybe the recruiters recruited people they knew.
Two: so far nobody had gone missing permanently, that we knew of, so people weren’t being lured somewhere to have their brains sucked out. Or at least not on their first visit, anyway.
Three: first visit to where?
Four: none of the recruiters or their targets were olds – or even old enough to drink.14 Invisible currents, said Fleet, each driven by the interaction of different forces and before we had proper instruments . . . People had other ways to read the wind.
By watching the clouds, I reckon, and seeing what blew in which direction.
As I get to the top of Millfield Lane, Indigo leaps out of the bushes that surround the public toilets and into my arms.
‘You’re alive,’ she says as I stagger. ‘The dogs didn’t eat you.’
Foxes, I learn, don’t go into the women’s bathing pond. At least, foxes don’t go in twice.
‘I need some surveillance done,’ I say as Indigo squirms herself into a comfortable position over my shoulders.
‘Came top in my class,’ says Indigo smugly. ‘I’m practically invisible.’
‘I noticed,’ I say, because she’s bare heavy and if she thinks she’s staying there for more than a minute she can think again. ‘But I need you to cover a wide area.’
‘How wide?’
‘All the way around the edge of the Heath,’ I say.
‘The whole perimeter?’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘You’re going to need a lot of assets for that,’ says Indigo. ‘I’ll need authorisation from my section chief.’
What Abigail Did Tha Summer Page 6