Walking down from the square, you came to a crossroads with the Queen’s Head on one side. The Queen, as everyone called it, was white, half-timbered and still made its own beer. Known as Queen’s Rot, it had been something of a joke in the county: weak, watery and wet was how the locals described it. Nobody had thought that, one day, it would be the only beer you could get. Turn right and you looped back on yourself, coming out on Ferry Lane behind the garage. Turn left and you passed about half a dozen houses before coming to open farmland and the orchards. The village grew wheat, potatoes and sugar beet, depending on the season, and there were pigs and chickens too. Everyone had their own allotment but the rule was that you had to share everything, even though this always led to arguments.
Follow the main road all the way down to the bottom and you came to a quay with a flagpole but no flag, and the river, a dead end in every sense because although the water had once been full of fish, it was now thick and oily and a five-minute swim would put you into hospital – if we had one, which we didn’t – or more probably the grave. In The Queen there was a photograph of the river as it had once been, and even though it was a black-and-white picture it still looked more colourful than it did now. There was no other way out of the village and only one way in. That was its distinguishing feature. A single road ran through the thick woodland that surrounded us on three sides. Over the years, a ring of watchtowers had been constructed so that it was impossible to approach the village without being seen. Big signs warned people that they would be shot if they came too close and I did hear gunfire once or twice in the middle of the day, but as I never went to a village meeting I don’t know how many people tried to get in, how many were turned back or how many died.
We villagers were allowed to come and go. We had passwords that changed every month and that were posted in the old bus shelter which stood as a reminder of the time when there had been buses. September’s password was “samphire”. There were still plenty of rabbits in the wood (although fewer in recent years) and we were encouraged to go out hunting, using bows and arrows to conserve bullets. I’d once brought down a wild deer with a single arrow through its neck and for about a week after that I was the village hero. Everyone had something nice to say about me. But then the last scrap of meat was eaten and the bones were boiled down to the last bowl of soup and things quickly went back to normal.
Anyway, there you have it. A village of about three hundred people with a dense wood at one end and a dead river at the other. We were isolated. And we all knew that was probably the reason we were still alive.
Rita was waiting for me on the other side of the front door and she knew immediately from my face that something was wrong. She was stick-thin with long, silver hair and eyes that had retreated into caves. When she was angry, she looked like a witch. Now she was just scared, although as usual she was doing her best not to show it. Rita kept her emotions locked up like her best china and only brought them out for special occasions.
“What is it, Hermione?” She was the only one who called me that. “What’s happened? Why are you late?”
“I met someone…” I hesitated.
“Who did you meet?”
“It was a boy. But he wasn’t from the village.”
She stared at me. “What do you mean?”
“He just appeared at the church. He said his name was Jamie. I’d never seen him before.”
“So what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. I talked to him.”
Rita’s shoulders sagged. It was a very deliberate movement. She did that to show she was annoyed. Then she turned on her heel and hurried into the kitchen, where John and the last member of our little household – George – were having their tea.
I don’t need to tell you a lot about John. He never said very much. He was a small, white-haired man – shorter than Rita – who spent most of his time sitting there with a sort of half-dazed smile on his face. He wasn’t stupid. I think he just didn’t want to get involved. George was another matter. He was eighteen, three years older than me, and like me he had no parents. He worked at the village bakery and you could tell that just by looking at him because he was quite fleshy and he was always covered in a thin coating of flour. He had blond hair, which he never combed, and blue eyes. They were his best feature. Nobody thought George had very much to offer, but I knew him better than anyone and if I’d had to choose one person in the village to stick up for me, it would have been him.
The two of us had grown up as brother and sister, looked after by Rita and John. George was very shy and always seemed to be uncomfortable when I was around. I sometimes thought that when Rita and John died, we’d simply take over the house and end up living together … and well we might have if things hadn’t turned out the way they did.
“There’s been a stranger in the village,” Rita announced as I followed her into the room.
“A stranger?” John looked up from his porridge – or whatever slop he was eating.
“I found him in the churchyard,” I said.
“Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know. He was just there.” I wasn’t going to tell them about the door. That still didn’t make any sense to me.
“So who was he?” George asked. “What was his name?”
“He said his name was Jamie. I didn’t talk to him much. He was just a boy about the same age as me. And he had a funny accent. I don’t think he was English.”
“And you raised the alarm…?”
This was the big question. Everyone waited for me to answer.
“I didn’t have a chance to. Simon Reade and Mike Dolan found us together. They grabbed Jamie and they sent me home.”
“They found you talking together? And you hadn’t raised the alarm?” Rita stared at me.
I nodded miserably.
“You don’t realize how much trouble you’re in. You broke the first rule of the village. The moment you saw him, you should have called for help.”
“I know. But he was so young. And he was hurt. He was covered in blood.”
“He’ll be worse than that when the Council have finished with him.”
“You shouldn’t be angry with her,” George said. He had a way of talking, slow and deliberate, that always made you feel he’d thought very carefully about what he was about to say. “Holly didn’t help this boy come here and it wasn’t her fault she saw him first. And if he was hurt, it was only right she should try to help him.”
“Simon and Mike won’t see it that way.”
“They’ll try to make trouble. They always do. It makes them feel important.” George got up from the table and fetched the saucepan. “You’d better have something to eat,” he said. “We left you some stew.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat anyway.”
I did as I was told. It was getting dark and Rita nodded at George, who got out a couple of candles and lit them. I would have preferred an electric light. The little flames somehow emphasized the darkness rather than illuminating it. I could feel the world outside and all sorts of unnamed troubles pressing in on me. But there was no reason to waste a battery. They were only kept for emergencies.
There was a knock at the door. John went out and I expected him to return with Simon Reade or Mike Dolan, so I was relieved when it was Miss Keyland that he showed into the room.
Anne Keyland was one of those people you couldn’t help liking. She was about sixty, but young with it, full of energy, striding around the place in her yellow wellington boots. She had lost a lot of weight recently and there were rumours that she was ill, but even if that had been the case, she would never have admitted it. She still ran the village school. She was also deputy chair of the Council. I guessed at once that was the reason she was here.
She gave me a hug. “Holly. Trust you to get into trouble! A stranger in the village and you have to be the one who finds him. You’re going to have to tell me everything he said to you, my dear. H
ow did he get past the watchtowers? What was he doing at the church? Where had he come from?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” I exclaimed. I was just glad it was her. Whatever rules I’d broken, I knew she’d be on my side.
“Not just me, I’m afraid. They’ve called a Council meeting. They’re going to talk to the boy and decide what to do with him – and they want you there.”
“At the Council?”
“Yes. You don’t need to be scared. We just need to know the truth about what happened.”
“What will they do to him?” George asked.
“That depends on where he came from and what he was hoping to do. If he was sent to spy on us…” She left the sentence unfinished.
“I want to come,” said George. “I don’t think Holly should go on her own.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, George. Rita will come as Holly’s guardian. And I’ll be there, so you don’t need to worry.”
“When is the Council meeting?” I asked. I expected it to be the following morning or maybe in the early evening, after work.
“They’re already there,” Miss Keyland replied. “They’re waiting for you now.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rita and John exchange a look. It was as if they’d just heard very bad news. People very rarely went out at night … and certainly not without the light of a full moon. It was only now that I saw how serious this was.
“Well, we’d better go then,” Rita said.
And that was it. She stood up. And we went.
THREE
They were waiting for us inside the church, arranged in a semicircle, up near the altar with the cross and the stained-glass window showing the apostles St Peter and St Andrew fishing – although it was pretty much blank against the night sky. More candles and a couple of oil lamps had been lit so I could clearly see all the people who were waiting for me. I can’t say any of them smiled as I came in, but even so I relaxed a little. They might call themselves the Council with a capital C but these were men and women I had known all my life. At the end of the day, I hadn’t really done anything wrong. They weren’t going to hurt me.
The vicar, Reverend Johnstone, was the first one I saw, with that long face he always pulled before one of his endless sermons. Mike Dolan and Simon Reade were next to him, enjoying their moment of glory. Then came Mr and Mrs Flint, a solid, ordinary couple in their fifties. They had the house at the bottom of the hill, overlooking the river, and although they had lost both their children, they always tried to be positive. Miss Keyland took her place next to them, sitting beside Sir Ian Ingram, universally known as “I. I.” (though not to his face), the chairman of the Council and the oldest, wisest, most serious man in the village. Nobody knew why he had been knighted. Indeed, we only had his say-so that he ever had been. But nobody would have dreamt of arguing. When I say that his word was law, I mean it quite literally. He had once been a barrister and he had set down in writing a lot of the laws by which we now lived.
Jamie Tyler was sitting with his back to me, facing the altar. He was slumped in a chair; not tied to it, but looking too exhausted to move. He turned round as I came in and I saw that his face had been cleaned up and that someone had put a bandage on his forehead. They had also taken his shirt, and if he’d asked me when he’d get it back, I would have told him not to bother waiting. Once it had been washed, it would make a nice present for someone’s teenage son because it was almost brand new and still had its colour and all of its buttons. He would just have to make do with the ill-fitting and worn-out T-shirt with HEINZ 57 written on the front – which was what he had been given in its place.
Our eyes met and for just a second I felt him trying to tell me something. I wanted to look away but somehow I found my gaze locked in place. George often did something quite similar at the dinner table – somehow signal to me not to repeat something he’d said or avoid telling Rita what we’d been up to during the day. But with Jamie it was much more than that. It was as if I could hear his voice whispering to me, right up against my ear.
Don’t say anything…
It was the weirdest sensation I’d ever had, and as I sat down next to him (not good – two chairs facing the Council, two of us being accused) I had to work hard to persuade myself that I’d just imagined it, that he hadn’t just trespassed inside my head. Examining him now, he looked so ordinary, so innocent. And yet I was beginning to realize that he was anything but.
Rita took her place in one of the pews, meaning that she was watching, rather than part of the Council. The session began.
To start with, Reade and Dolan gave their version of what had happened, each of them trying to outdo the other in being the centre of attention so that they ended up saying everything twice. They had seen me, they had asked me what I was doing, they had realized I was lying, they had come back and found me with the boy. Although they tried to dress it up and make it worse than it really was, that was about the sum of it.
Sir Ian glared at me. “Why did you not raise the alarm the moment you saw the boy?” he asked.
“I was going to,” I said. “But I didn’t have a chance.”
“You lied to Mr Dolan and to Mr Reade.”
“I don’t know why I did that.” It was certainly the truth. I must have been out of my mind. “I suppose it was because he was hurt.”
“The safety of the village, our entire survival, rests on a single premise. We don’t let anyone know we are here. We protect ourselves from the outside world – with force if need be. If this boy came and went and told others what we have here, it could all be over for us. Do you understand that? And yet you were prepared to let that happen.”
“He didn’t look like a spy,” I said. My mouth had gone dry and I felt wretched.
Sir Ian turned his attention to Jamie. “Your name is Jamie Tyler,” he said. “Yes, sir.”
“Where have you come from?”
“I’ve already told you.” Jamie’s voice had changed since I had found him an hour or two ago. It had lost the edge of panic. He sounded more assured. “I can’t remember what happened to me. I woke up in the wood and someone had hit me on the head. There was a lot of blood. I didn’t know which way to go so I just sort of stumbled forward and then I came upon this village. I was scared of being seen so I hid behind the church. That was where Holly found me.”
He was lying. He hadn’t told them about the door – or about the typhoon and Hong Kong … all the things he had told me. I was going to say something but there he was again, inside my head.
Please…
“How did you get past the watchtowers?” the vicar asked.
“I didn’t see any watchtowers, sir. I didn’t see anything until I reached the village and I didn’t mean to come here. It was just where I arrived.”
“And where had you come from?” Sir Ian repeated his question.
Jamie touched the bandage around his head. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, sir. I don’t remember. All I know is that I woke up in the forest. I guess I must have been dumped there.”
“He’s lying,” Reade said.
“Nobody could have got past the watchtowers,” Dolan agreed.
“Give us an hour alone with him,” Reade continued. “We’ll make him remember where he came from.”
“We’re not hurting children.” I forget if it was Mr or Mrs Flint who said that, but both of them looked outraged. He and his wife looked very similar. They always agreed with each other.
“Is this what he told you?” Sir Ian had turned back to me.
This was the moment of truth. I was the only person in the church who knew for certain that Jamie was making everything up. He certainly hadn’t had amnesia when he met me and even if he had been lying then, it was a different story from the one he was telling now. All my instincts were screaming at me to separate myself from him, to stand up and accuse him. But for some reason I couldn’t do it. I had no idea who he was. I had barely spoken to him. But still I fou
nd myself speaking on his behalf. “He was very confused,” I said. “He didn’t make a lot of sense. He certainly didn’t know where he was.” All of which was true, sort of. It just wasn’t completely true.
Sir Ian examined Jamie. “You have an American accent,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“But that’s not possible. You couldn’t possibly have come from America. Do you have any memories of being in a plane or a ship?”
“Sir, I wish I could help you. But I don’t remember anything.”
Sir Ian turned to his deputy. “Anne?”
Miss Keyland drew herself up in the way I had often seen her do in class. She had put her glasses on, but she was looking over them, not through them. “If the boy can’t help us, then we’re going to have to decide among ourselves what we’re going to do with him,” she said. “What are the choices? We know how we’ve dealt with intruders in the past.”
“He’s a child,” Reverend Johnstone said, making the same point as the Flints.
“He’s at least fifteen,” Dolan countered. “And he knew what he was doing, coming here.”
“We could give him a home and make him one of us,” Miss Keyland went on. “We would have to watch him, of course. He wouldn’t be allowed outside the perimeter. In normal circumstances, given his age, that is what I would recommend. But these are not normal circumstances, are they, Sir Ian?”
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