Sure enough, a few minutes later an old-fashioned wrought-iron sign pointed her to the train station. It was nearly empty – the next train wasn’t due for quite a while. The waiting room was locked tight, along with the ticket office, so she lowered herself on to a cold, metal bench on the platform and waited. The night air was freezing; her breath puffed out in little clouds and for a while she amused herself trying to make smoke rings of steam.
But that was only so much fun. And soon, shivering, she gave up, burrowing further into her coat, yanking the collar up to her ears.
She must have dozed off because the train woke her with a start as it roared into the station. The long red carriages were packed with well-dressed commuters coming home from a day in the office. Allie watched blankly as they hustled down the platform without even a glance in her direction, hurrying to their waiting cars, their warm homes and happy families.
She was so absorbed in watching them, wondering what it would be like to be them, she didn’t hear the boy sneaking up behind her.
‘Do you have permission to be here, miss?’
Jumping to her feet, she launched herself at him with such force she nearly bowled him over. Her hat flew off her head, landing on the platform a foot away.
‘Mark!’ She hugged him tightly, breathing in the faint but not unpleasant scent of cigarette smoke that always clung to his clothes.
He’d dyed the ends of his dark hair blue and mussed it into a swirl of black and blue; a tiny gold hoop earring peeked out through the tangles, matching the one in his eyebrow. While she’d been away his pimples had cleared up – he looked more grown-up. But his clothes were the same – tonight he wore torn jeans and a faded black T-shirt with ‘Revolution’ on it in mirror writing.
Clearly surprised by the force of her greeting, he hesitated briefly before hugging her back. ‘What the hell, Allie? What am I doing here in –’ he paused to watch the last commuters in suits and high heels make their way out of the station – ‘wherever the hell we are?’
At that moment she must have stepped into the glow of a security light, because she saw him notice the scar at her hairline – the doctors had shaved her temple to keep the wound clean. The hair was growing back but the jagged red line still stood out starkly.
He whistled admiringly. ‘That’s a nice scar. Who hit you?’
She grew serious. ‘It’s a long story, but it’s why I called you. I need your help.’
‘No kidding. You look like crap, Al.’ She saw him noticing with growing concern the circles under her eyes, her thinness and pallor. ‘What’ve they done to you?’
The station was empty now. Behind them, with a groan and a screech, the train began to depart. But Allie lowered her voice anyway.
‘Some people tried to… to kill me. And now I can’t…’ She stopped. How could she explain this? Mark knew nothing at all about what had been happening in her life since she left London. Nothing about Cimmeria or Night School. Nothing about Nathaniel or murder. He was utterly outside that world.
‘Look, let’s just get on a train and get out of here, Mark,’ she said, grabbing his arm with sudden urgency and dragging him towards the station timetable. ‘I’ll tell you on the way. The next train to London, when is it?’
Her mood change seemed to catch him off guard and he held up his hands. ‘Whoa, hang on. Look at the board.’ He pointed at the lighted schedule near the door. ‘The next train’s not for two hours. This is the back of beyond, remember?’
Allie’s face must have fallen because he scrambled for an alternative. ‘Let’s go and get a drink and find somewhere to talk. We got plenty of time.’
Glancing longingly back at the quiet rails behind them, she gave in and let him lead the way out of the station. What other option did she have?
‘OK,’ she said. ‘But let’s just… be on that train.’
‘Where should we go?’ Mark said as they emerged on to a dark street. Ahead of them, Allie could see the lights of the high street. ‘What’s in this town anyway?’
Mark had been her closest friend before she came to Cimmeria. They’d been arrested together several times, tagging bridges and schools. He’d shown her a side of London girls like her rarely saw – a world of rebellion and anarchy.
The main thing they’d had in common in those days was anger.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve never really been anywhere but the hospital.’
When his eyebrows winged upward his piercing glittered. ‘Well, come on.’ He pulled her with him towards the lights. ‘Let’s find an offie and a place where you can tell me all your troubles. I want to know more about those battle scars.’
Allie nodded and followed him down the street. ‘Right-o.’
‘Right-o?’ Mark imitated her accent with open incredulity. ‘Right-o?’
‘Oh shut up,’ Allie laughed, giving him a shove. She hadn’t realised her accent had changed so much while she’d been at school.
After that she tried to sound less posh.
The high street was lined with expensive-looking boutiques. Mark shot the piles of silk and cashmere in the shop windows bilious glances and grumbled under his breath about ‘snobs’ until they found an off-licence in a side street.
‘I’ll go inside and see what’s on offer.’ His eyes swept over Allie’s decidedly underage features. ‘You better stay here. If we go in together they might get curious.’
She waited in the cold, stomping her feet to keep warm until he reappeared a few minutes later carrying a plastic bag. She could hear the cans rattling inside it.
‘Right,’ he said, looking around. ‘We need a venue.’
For nearly ten minutes they trudged up and down the quiet streets looking for a drinking spot until Allie spotted a narrow cobblestone lane leading to a quiet churchyard.
The ancient church building was surrounded by spotlights illuminating its crenellated bell tower but the graveyard around it was ghostly and dark. They found a damp wooden bench sheltered beneath the sprawling branches of an oak tree and settled down.
Pulling out two cans of cheap cider, Mark handed her one. He popped his own can open and took a deep draught then sighed with pleasure. ‘That’s better.’
Allie followed his lead. The fizzy, apple-flavoured alcohol went down easily, warming her insides. After a while she stopped shivering. Maybe sitting outside wouldn’t be so bad after all.
After they’d drunk a little, Mark turned to face her. ‘Now. What happened to your head?’
There was no way for him to know how huge that question was. How long the answer could be.
She took a long, deep gulp and let the fire of the alcohol burn through her veins.
‘There’s this group,’ she said, ‘at my school. I’m in it. It’s all secret. We train in lots of weird stuff…’
‘What weird stuff?’
Crumpling an empty can, Mark tossed it into the grass. Instinctively, Allie winced. But she told herself to get over it. Mark was the way he was.
She needed time to think. So she up-ended her own can, finishing it off in a few swallows, then gave a loud belch.
‘Nice one,’ Mark commented as he opened a fresh can.
‘Thank you,’ she said primly. ‘Weird stuff like self-defence. Martial arts. How to kill people with your hands.’
His can half open, he stopped and stared at her. ‘What? Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’ Shoving the empty can back on the bench next to her she held out her hand for a new one. With a puzzled frown he handed one to her. ‘All the kids in this group are from super-rich, powerful families. And there’s this man who wants to take over that group and the school and… me.’
He was looking at her with new caution, as if she might bite. ‘Is this some sort of a joke, Allie? Because if it is —’
‘It’s not a joke, Mark.’ Her voice was sharper than she intended and she tried to calm down. ‘It’s all real. I promise you.’
But he didn’t appear convi
nced. ‘So this man, he wants you… why, exactly?’
Allie’s mouth opened and closed again. He had her there. Because even today she wasn’t entirely certain what Nathaniel wanted from her. ‘It’s something to do with my family and his family. Some sort of a fight and I’m just a small part of it…’
It sounded unconvincing and she knew it. She could see the puzzlement in his eyes. But he had to believe her. She needed him to understand. Without his help she was lost.
She held his gaze. ‘I know it sounds crazy, Mark, but it’s real. He’s dangerous. Last Christmas he killed my best friend.’
He looked stunned. ‘Wait. Are you telling me a girl got axed at your school?’
Allie tried not to remember how Jo had looked as her life ebbed away but she couldn’t make that image fade.
‘I found her. It was bad, Mark. So much blood…’ Her voice trailed off.
For a long moment he sat staring at her as if looking for assurance that he could believe her; he didn’t seem convinced by what he found.
‘But, Al, why didn’t I read about it in the papers? Posh bird gets done at some boarding school – that’d make headlines.’
His tone was dubious and Allie’s heart sank. He didn’t believe her.
‘They covered it up,’ she explained, knowing even as she said the words how crazy they sounded. ‘They always cover things up.’
He didn’t appear convinced. Opening her new can, she took a long draught. If only she could drink enough to make everything better.
Mark was still trying to figure things out. ‘Come on. How do they do that?’ he asked. ‘I mean, how do you cover up a murdered rich girl?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, helplessly. ‘They just… do it. Lots of really powerful people went to my school. They can do things like that.’
‘Is that how you got hurt?’ He gestured at the scar on her hairline. ‘Were you with her?’
‘Gabe – the guy who killed my friend – he’d tried to grab me once before and my friends protected me.’ Something about that bothered her – something important – but the cider was doing its job and almost as soon as the thought arrived it slipped from her drunken grasp. She frowned at the can in her hand.
‘Then what happened?’ Mark nudged her.
‘Gabe came back,’ Allie said quietly. ‘He and another guy stabbed Jo and then kidnapped me. Put a bag over my head and threw me in a car and drove me away.’
Mark had gone still.
‘But you see… I’ve had this training now in self-defence. So I knew how to hurt them. So I did.’ She nodded to herself. ‘I hurt them.’
Mark’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously. ‘What did you do?’
She spoke without emotion. ‘I jumped over the seat and shoved my nails in the driver’s eyes so he couldn’t see, and he screamed but I didn’t let go, and Gabe hit me, but I didn’t let go, and then the car flipped over and I broke my arm and my knee and my head and stuff.’ She took a drink. ‘But I got away.’
‘Bloody hell, Allie.’ Mark looked stunned – maybe even a little afraid. ‘I mean… What the…?’
‘But it didn’t matter, don’t you see?’ She leaned towards him, her gaze intent. ‘I got hurt trying to help Jo but it didn’t matter because he killed her anyway. He killed her and I loved her and now she’s dead and it’s all my fault.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘My fault.’ She repeated it again and decided it was true. ‘My fault. All my fault.’
An icy tear rolled down her cheek and she swiped it away with an impatient gesture.
There was so much she wanted to tell him but couldn’t. She wanted to tell him how Night School made her take chances. That it made her risk her own life and other people’s lives. Being in Night School made her arrogant and stupid. It had created a wall between her life and Jo’s life so Jo didn’t tell her things. Like that Gabe was writing to her. That he wanted to see her. So Allie never had the chance to stop her from going to meet him that night. The night he killed her.
It was too hard to explain to an outsider. And besides, there was something else he needed to understand.
‘I had to get out of that school because they haven’t done anything about it – that’s why I called you. One of them helped Gabe. Someone opened the gates for him, you see? Someone on the inside. But whenever I bring it up they just go on and on about how I need help “dealing” with what happened.’ She made sarcastic air quotes around the word to show what she thought about that. ‘They said I should leave it to them. So I did. And they have done nothing.’
She took a long drink of cider then fixed him with a determined look. ‘So I have to do this on my own. For Jo. I have to find Gabe and whoever helped him. And I have to punish them.’
They talked on the bench until they ran out of cider. She was in the middle of explaining how she’d escaped from the school when Mark glanced at his watch and swore.
‘What?’ Allie peered at him drunkenly.
‘The bloody train.’ He yanked his phone out from the pocket of his jacket. ‘We’ve missed it.’
‘Oh bugger.’ Allie had drunk too much cider to be helpful but she tried to look focused as he typed things into his phone. ‘When’s the next one?’
For a long second he stared at the screen. Then he swore again with more vigour.
‘Tomorrow.’ He sounded disgusted. ‘That was the last useful train tonight.’
Allie stared at him open-mouthed.
‘Tomorrow? What are we going to do?’ Her head had begun to throb and, without the shield of a constant stream of warming cider, the cold penetrated through her layers of clothing right down to her bones. ‘Is there a bus?’
Mark typed more things into his phone then shook his head. ‘No buses.’ He shoved his phone back into his pocket hard, as if it had betrayed him. ‘Stupid country town. We’re stuck.’
‘But’ – Allie looked at the gravestones surrounding them, suddenly aware she was surrounded by dead people – ‘we can’t stay here all night.’
Mark stood up stiffly, the last can falling from his lap on to the ground with a dull clang. ‘The first train goes at half six tomorrow. We’ll be on it. Let’s go and find a place to crash for a few hours.’
That was easier said than done. They had no money for a room. And after spending twenty minutes searching for an unsecured door or vacant building they returned to the churchyard, feeling increasingly hopeless.
Allie’s headache had worsened; she shivered uncontrollably. It was only then they thought to check the church door. To their surprise, it swung open silently.
‘Home sweet home,’ Mark whispered as they stood in the doorway looking in at the dark nave.
It wasn’t much warmer inside the old stone building than it was outside but at least there was no wind.
After fumbling for the switch, Mark turned on the lights just long enough to gather the covers off the altar tables and collect all the candles he could find as Allie stood by the door, her arms wrapped tightly around her torso. After that, he switched the lights off again and used the glow of his phone to light their way.
‘Don’t need a nosy vicar coming over to see who’s praying so late at night,’ he explained.
They stretched out together in one corner with the gold and purple satin cloths draped across them like oddly festive blankets. Placing the candles on the floor around them, Mark lit them with his cigarette lighter.
As she stared into the flickering shadows surrounding them, Allie’s teeth chattered.
Mark wasn’t much of a hugger ordinarily, but when she burrowed her way into the crook of his arm he didn’t object.
‘What happens tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘Tomorrow you’ll come to London with me and we’ll find some place for you to stay. I know some guys who have their own flat – I’m sure they’d let you kip on the sofa. Then… we’ll figure something out.’
His voice was gruff and Allie could hear the doubt in it. He wasn’t certain abou
t this at all.
She knew he hadn’t entirely believed her story – he probably thought she was drunk and exaggerating. Or losing it completely. But at least he was still offering to help her.
As she watched the candle flames shudder, she tried to imagine living with his friends. Being alone in the world. Sleeping on dirty couches surrounded by strangers. Trying to figure things out on her own.
Had she made a terrible mistake?
C J Daugherty - [Night School 03] Page 3
