by Teri Terry
He has rocked back onto his heels. The torch light points the wrong way, but even in shadow his face isn’t how it has ever been when he has looked at me before.
‘Daddy?’ I say again.
His eyes focus back on mine. ‘Go to your room now, Lucy. Go!’
And he has stopped being a quiet spy. He runs for the door; soon he is on the other side of the wall with Mummy and Grandma, and their voices are loud enough to not have to listen by the grate.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
‘Are you all right?’ Mrs Medway asks when I rush in the next morning. I’d managed to avoid saying anything to Stella at breakfast, still reeling with what she said the night before. The dream that followed. My father – he knew. He was there when I heard those words. Had something inside suppressed the memory that he was with me? I didn’t want to know it. I didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when he knew the truth.
Is Stella right about what happened?
‘You’re pale.’ Mrs Medway puts a hand on my forehead.
‘Really, I’m fine.’
She looks at me closer. ‘Madison from the cafe was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?’
I start guiltily. I’d barely thought of her since Stella’s late-night visit. The dream that had me awake, staring at the walls, for hours.
She misreads. ‘It’s a small town. Word gets around. How about if we give you admin today? There is a stack of filing. But if you want to nap in the corner, that’s okay, too.’
So I find myself in a locked back office. With rows of cabinets organised by year, with student names in alphabetical order, and baskets of papers to file. She explains the system, and when I am surprised at paper records, not computer files, she touches a finger to the side of her nose, and winks. ‘Paper files can’t be hacked,’ she says.
She leaves, and I rifle through the stack of papers in the first basket: absence certificates for flu, appointments. File notes. Test results. I start at the top, find the file for each and shove them in, glad to have something mindless to do. But after a while I put the basket down.
The cabinets for current years take up the front row; what of those behind? I wander back. They are in year order and go back decades – since the school was renamed and reopened, about thirty years ago.
The years I would have been at this school – the cabinets are here. I glance at the door: closed, locked, quiet. My last school year here was 2047-2048. I find the cabinet, and pull the A to H drawer open to hunt for Lucy Connor, but come up empty.
Wait a minute. Astrid, my grandmother, is also a Connor: Connor is Stella’s name. Would I have had Dad’s last name back then, before they fell out? What was his name? I focus on Danny, then Daniel. I lean forward, close my eyes, rest my forehead against the cold metal cabinet, and will it to give up its secrets. I try to let my mind drift: but nothing comes. Frustrated, I start in the As, scanning through, and realise this will take forever.
I go back to my filing, and the morning finally ends. At lunch I avoid the staff room, and wander the school grounds.
The grounds are enclosed all the way around, with fences too high for a ten-year-old to climb without a ladder. The only gates have keypads on them: locked, a code needed, and I’m sure the students don’t know the code.
It’s cold, but there is snow to play with, and the children are out in force: building snowmen, having snowball fights. I see one whizzing towards my head too late to duck. A teacher walks over, yells at the children to stop.
She comes up to me as I brush the snow out of my hair. ‘All right?’ she asks.
‘It’s fine,’ I say, and lean against the gate.
‘You’re one of the new apprentices, aren’t you?’
‘Trialling to be one,’ I said.
‘Do you like it so far?’
‘Pretty much.’ I look at her closer. ‘You didn’t know for sure why I was here until I said so. Could anyone wander about in the grounds?’
She shakes her head. ‘There’s cameras,’ she says and points them out: by the gate, on the building, a few in trees. ‘Security will know exactly who you are even if I don’t. And the gates are kept locked.’
‘Was that always the case?’
She shrugs. ‘Mrs Medway is security mad.’ She looks around; the nearest children are too far to hear, but she lowers her voice anyhow. ‘Ever since a girl went missing from school. It was about six or seven years ago.’
‘Oh. I think I may have heard of that: what was her name?’ I say, trying to keep my voice light, casual, even as I’m desperate to know: my name.
‘Louise or something? Yes, that’s it. Louise Howard, I think.’ Then there is commotion at the other end of the school yard: a snowman kicked over to wails of protest. She rushes over to deal with it.
That afternoon I get back to the filing cabinets. Louise is maybe close to Lucy: could I have been Lucy Howard?
There is no Lucy Howard, or Louise Howard for that matter. But she got the first name wrong; maybe the second one isn’t quite right, either.
I dip further into the Hs and a few paper cuts later, find it: Lucy Howarth. As soon as I see the name, whisper it out loud, I know it is right. My hands start to shake. I really am remembering things, more and more: little things maybe, but more than I ever thought I would be able to. Are they like blocks? Pull a bottom one out, and others must tumble down.
I extract the file. It’s bulky. Was I a truant? Somehow I don’t think so. Stella wouldn’t have put up with it.
On the cover of the file is my registration information: parents Stella and Daniel Howarth – Danny the spy – and contact details. Inside are all the usual things like I’d been filing all morning. Reports by teachers, a few absence slips, but very few: I didn’t get sick much. And an artist I was, even back then: winning contests at this school and across the county. If the AGT were looking for young artists I wouldn’t have been hard to find, with or without any help from my family. I hold onto that inside.
There is a separate folder in the back of my file: a missing report. Beginning with a note of reported absence from afternoon classes. Written notes follow, then typed ones: how my mother was contacted, then the authorities. Morning attendance was confirmed: I was missing in the afternoon. No one in the school grounds saw me leave; it was a mystery. The file ends abruptly. Lucy was gone. What happened to her? To me. They didn’t know: the ending is blank.
I put the file back together, shove it in the cabinet where I found it, and go back to filing the endless bits of paper. Not focusing on what is in my hands beyond the letters of the alphabet to file them under, while the minutes tick past.
Where did I go?
Okay, so maybe the gates weren’t locked back then, and perhaps there weren’t security cameras, either, but it is hard to believe anyone could have snatched me, protesting, from the school, and nobody see anything. But what if it was someone I wanted to leave with?
Like Dad.
That night, I try. To explain to Stella why I can’t believe Dad gave me to the AGT. I tell her how he infiltrated the AGT guards where I was held, how he snuck me out of my room at night. That we ran across the sand to a boat. Then I tripped, and they caught us. Nico; the gun raised in his hands. Dad on the sand telling me to close my eyes, to never forget who I am. How I couldn’t look away. How his eyes held mine as he died.
How watching him die was the brick that finally achieved what Nico and the AGT doctor wanted: I couldn’t deal with it, and my personality fractured. It hid what happened away, inside. That the split achieved their objective: when I was Slated, part of my memories survived, waiting for the right trigger to come out again so I could fight AGT battles.
Stella cries. Great gulping sobs. She never knew how Dad died, or even that he was dead for sure. She only knew he disappeared and never came back
.
She never knew that it was my fault.
But despite the tears, I can tell she still believes it was him who took me away from her in the first place.
I take careful steps like a spy across the school grounds, watching for the teacher on playground duty. I wait for her to be distracted. Some boys push and shove each other; it turns into a fight. Voices are raised and everyone strains to see, then at last the teacher notices and rushes over.
I swallow hard, pull up the gate handle, step through. It shuts with a too-loud clang behind me. I’m out! I dash up the road, keeping an eye out, expecting any moment somebody will rush out and march me back to school. I can’t get caught.
My hand is still in my pocket clutching the note I’d found under my pillow. Daddy had been gone for days, ever since… And I shy away from thinking about that day, my birthday, and what Grandma said. Mummy and Daddy shouting late at night. The empty place he left behind when I woke up again.
But it’s okay now, it must be. I pull the note out that I’d read and re-read ten million times since yesterday.
Dear Lucy, I’m on a very special secret mission, and I need your help! Go to the Mountains’ Children at lunchtime tomorrow, and wait for further instructions. Tell no one.
Love, Daddy
See: signed ‘Love, Daddy’. It was all some horrible mix-up, and he’s going to tell me, and then everything will be all right.
My feet half fly up all the quieter streets where eyes are less likely to spot my escape, then up the footpath and the hill, still going fast. I don’t want to miss him. I don’t want him to think I didn’t come.
I burst through the gate to the field – no sign of him. Maybe he’s hiding behind one of the stones? I rush to our beginning place and start around the stones, counting out loud as I go, expecting him to jump out and give me a fright at each one.
I’m at number fourteen when I hear a car the other way. There is a car park by the gate at the other end of the field.
After a moment the gate opens, but it’s not Daddy. A man, one I don’t know, walks across the field towards me, and I ignore him, and keep counting the stones, uneasy. Daddy, come out from where you are hiding. Do it now!
But the man doesn’t come up to me. He stands in the centre of the circle and watches me for a moment, then looks both ways.
‘Are you Secret Agent Lucy?’
I stop in my tracks. Only Daddy calls me that. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Special Agent Craig. I’ve got your further instructions from Agent Howarth.’
Oh. I stare at him. Daddy is Agent Howarth! But he has never involved other agents in our games. He must be a real agent!
I salute him. ‘Proceed.’
‘Agent Howarth orders you to accompany Special Agent Craig – that’s me,’ and he winks, ‘in the spy-mobile. I will take you to Agent Howarth for a full briefing of your mission.’
I hesitate as I walk across the field towards the parking area. Agent Craig walks slower, behind me, and I glance back. His careful eyes are watchful, on the stones, on the mountains. On me.
When we get to the car, I pause. ‘Where’s Daddy?’
He opens the door. ‘Get in, Secret Agent Lucy. You’ll find out soon enough where we’re going.’ He smiles and my feet suddenly feel rooted to the ground, remembering Mrs Medway at school saying to never go with people we don’t know. But I know Daddy, and he is taking me to him. So it’s okay, isn’t it?
He nods, as if he can hear my thoughts. ‘It’s fine, Lucy, we’ll take you straight to your father. He wanted to come himself, but he’s being watched. That’s why he’s been in hiding these last few days.’
If he knows Daddy has been in hiding, then it must all be true. I slide into the car; he shuts the door. It clicks locked as he gets in. As we pull away, I look back at the stones through the window, trying to crush some flutter of panic inside that says I will never see them again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
The drawings are laid out before us in her office. The art teacher smiles. ‘This is the hard part. Which do you think?’
I try to concentrate after a hard night of not enough sleep and too many painful memories. Sometimes I wish they’d stay buried. I feel jagged and exposed, as if I’m bleeding in front of everyone, and can’t believe no one can see the wounds. Did Dad really do it? Set me up with that note? Did he really write it, or did I just think he did, because of where it was, what it said?
‘Riley?’
There are expectant young artists waiting. I pull myself back to the present.
‘It’s a tough call, but I’d put these ones ahead of the others,’ I say, and point out five of the pencil drawings.
The teacher picks her favourites, we compare, and she eventually settles on a top three. We go back out into the noisy classroom, and the Year Four students settle down. She holds up the ones chosen but is careful to praise all the others. There are happy faces, and disappointed ones. Was I like that? Did I care if I won?
She points out the winners from last year, still up on the side wall, and I realise they start a border that goes around the room. School winners, different grades.
Later, while they’re packing up and leaving to go to lunch, I follow the drawings along the walls.
I stop, frozen, at a landscape: the Mountains’ Children. The grey stones of Castlerigg Stone Circle are drawn delicately, with hidden details to animate: they are dancing. The mountains above have faint faces etched in them, smiling down on their children below. At first glance the movement, the personification, is hidden. A closer look reveals it. And there, written at the bottom corner: a small ‘Lucy’.
Vaguely I’m aware of movement next to me, but it doesn’t really register. I’m some other place, a pencil in my hand, hiding the faces in the shading and texture of the stone.
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ a voice says near my ear. I don’t answer. ‘Do you see?’ And the art teacher points out the drawing’s secrets.
Unable to stop myself, I ask. ‘What happened to this girl, this Lucy: did she go on to become an artist?’
‘I don’t know. She left,’ she says, and walks sharply away.
Did she leave, or was she stolen? She climbed into that car of her own free will.
At the end of the day I can’t stop myself: I run up the paths that lead to Castlerigg. Now I understand how I felt the other day when I came here, the shadow of fear that coloured my connection to this place.
Before anything else, this was our special place: Dad’s and mine. I can see the magic in the dancing stones; the faint faces I’d drawn for the mountains are there in the distant lines and shade in the late afternoon sun. I start counting the stones as I had done just days ago, but it is spoiled. When I get to fourteen a cold shiver runs down my spine; I half expect to hear a car, to look up and see Dr Craig walking towards me. For all his pretending that day, that is who he was: the AGT doctor who deliberately fractured my mind.
And it wasn’t just a dream. The blocks inside are pulling out, one at a time: I remember that day. The note was real, but did Dad write it?
My head is fuzzy, but becoming clearer. Is it like Stella wondered, days ago? As a child, I was left-handed. No matter that I was forced later to be right-handed, and Slated as such. These other memories were hidden and twisted tight, but are starting to unravel – and me with them.
I thought it was watching Nico kill my father that finally caused my personality to fracture, but maybe that was just the final nail. Maybe it all started with Dad, with that note: with knowing that once he found out I wasn’t really his daughter, he didn’t want me any more.
Or was that just what Nico and Dr Craig wanted me to think?
Whichever is true, one thing I am sure of now: Stella had nothing to do with them. Her exposed s
ecret might have set things off, but she’d never have given me up. She’d never have done anything but cling to me, desperate and tight.
Light is failing, and I run back to town for the bus. It is pulling away when I get to the square, and I wave: the driver pulls in and I clamber on.
Finley is there, on the same seat he’s been on before with Madison. Guilt grabs at me when I realise that I was so absorbed with my own stuff, I never noticed I haven’t seen him on the bus the last few days. No matter how it feels to me now, what I’m going through is ancient history. Finley’s pain is immediate.
I sit across from him in the aisle and try to catch his eye, but his are lowered. I think he doesn’t even know I’m there, but then after a moment he glances over. ‘Heh, Extra Shorty,’ he says.
‘Heh,’ I say back. I want to ask how he is, is he all right, but that is stupid, isn’t it? Of course he isn’t. I try to say it with my eyes, instead. After a few beats, he nods, looks down again.
Does he know who Stella’s mother is, that she must be responsible for Madison vanishing? What good would it do if he did? Maybe if Stella could see his pain, she’d do something about Madison. Maybe she’d get Astrid to bring her back.
Or maybe he’d kick up enough of a fuss for it to get back to Astrid, and then he’d disappear, too.
But I can’t leave this, and when it comes to me I can’t believe it took so long. MIA: we have to put Madison on Missing in Action. As unlikely as it seems, maybe she can be found.
I stare at him, nudge his foot with mine. ‘Finley? We need to talk,’ I breathe the words quietly. He looks up with a quick look of hope, one that fades fast when I give a small shake of my head. If only I knew where she was.
‘Tomorrow – get the 7 am bus,’ he breathes back.
I nod.
That night, I get to work on a drawing of Madison. Why didn’t I take a photo of her with my camera when I had the chance?