His brow cleared suddenly. It was beautiful to watch, as if the sky was clearing after a heavy storm. He looked, briefly, like someone else – like the man she’d found up the mountain, and the man painted on murals and postcards all around Mount Hookey, with his knowing and contented half-smile.
“The shape,” he said.
Vivian leaned in to listen.
“What’s that, Jesse?”
He looked up from his hands and surveyed the departure lounge as if seeing it for the first time. Opposite him a man and a woman were trying to quieten their screaming baby, while an older child hammered on his phone, wearing a pair of enormous headphones that seemed designed to counter this specific scenario. Someone pushed a sophisticated and many-levelled cleaning trolley between the aisles, and collided with an old man’s feet, and said sorry but didn’t mean it, and the old man zipped his coat up and went on cursing under his breath long after the cleaner had gone on her way. Outside the darkened windows the planes taking off and landing and taking off again. The smell of jet fuel and discounted perfumes and grilled cheese.
“It’s a miracle,” Jesse said.
“What is?” she asked.
“All of it,” he said.
A moment passed before he started frowning again. Vivian put her arm around his shoulders and his skinny arm wound its way between the small of her back and the chair and they clung onto each other in the middle of the chaos. They sat perfectly still. Such an odd pair they must have looked: identical human beings, with identical baseball caps concealing identically damaged and bandaged heads.
There was a general groan from their fellow passengers. The flight to Heathrow had been delayed for a fourth time. The family opposite them looked despairingly at each other and then at Vivian. She glanced up at the board and pulled Jesse in a little closer, glad – overjoyed, in fact – that she and her brother would be able to stay as they were for at least another hour.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THANKS TO my editor Sophie Robinson, and copyeditor Dan Coxon, for their work on the manuscript at every stage; to my agent Jane Willis for her advice and encouragement; to Chris Vernon for being interested and insightful from the very beginning; to Mary and Dave and Carrie and Titus for giving me somewhere to live and write; and, above all, to Laura “The Most” Lomas, for reading and listening and being there, glowing, in my darkroom.
Special thanks to the residents of the real Mount Hookey, whose location must of course remain a secret. I think of you often, and with nothing but with fondness and gratitude.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NICHOLAS BOWLING is an author, musician, stand-up comic and Latin teacher from London. He graduated from Oxford University in 2007 with a BA in Classics and English, and again in 2010 with a Masters in Greek and Latin Language and Literature, before moving into teaching. He has also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and has recorded two albums and two EPs with Me For Queen.
He is also a critically acclaimed children’s author, with Witchborn published in 2017 by Chicken House, and was followed in 2019 with In the Shadow of Heroes, which was shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
ALPHA OMEGA
BY NICHOLAS BOWLING
Something is rotten in the state of the NutriStart Skills Academy.
With the discovery of a human skull on the playing fields, children displaying symptoms of an unfamiliar, grisly virus and a catastrophic malfunction in the site’s security system, the NSA is about to experience a week that no amount of rebranding can conceal. As the school descends into chaos, teacher Tom Rosen goes looking for answers – but when the real, the unreal and the surreal are indistinguishable, the truth can be difficult to recognise.
One pupil, Gabriel Backer, may hold the key to saving the school from destroying itself and its students, except he has already been expelled. Not only that – he has disappeared down the rabbit-hole of “Alpha Omega” – the world’s largest VR role-playing game, filled with violent delights and unbridled debauchery. But the game quickly sours. Gabriel will need to confront the real world he’s been so desperate to escape if he ever wants to leave…
“Inventive, playful bonkers writing... that ties up all the story’s threads with a beautiful, pitch-black bow.” SFX Magazine
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