The City's Son

by Tom Pollock

  ‘I can only conclude,’ he said with counterfeit regret, ‘that she’s fending for herself. And then of course there’s this little piece of vandalism you helped her perpetrate.’

  He’d brushed away Pen’s protests with a wave of his hand. He knew it was Beth, of course he did, whether he could prove it or not. There was no one else it could have been.

  ‘The Child Protection people will make their own assessment, of course,’ he said with grim satisfaction, ‘but I believe there’s a solid case for rehoming your little friend.’

  It felt like he’d pulled a plug out of Pen’s stomach. The midnight tagging, roaming around the streets, the access to the city, to the night: that was Beth. To shove her into some orphanage would end her.

  Pen had thought: She did this for you.

  ‘I don’t want to do this, Parva,’ Salt had said, leaning forward so she could smell that morning’s coffee on his breath, ‘but she’s a terrible influence on you. It’s your future she’s wasting.’ He’d paused, as though the thought had just come to him, then said slowly, ‘I suppose if I saw genuine commitment from you to that future, a real willingness to change, I could put this away.’ He’d patted the folder.

  Reluctantly, Pen met his eyes. They showed nothing but grave concern. He was taunting her, making her feel her powerlessness – showing her how superb at looking innocent he was.

  ‘Twice a week, after school,’ he’d said softly. ‘This office. Extra maths. I’ll help you out.’

  Pen had swallowed, her throat parched, and then again, until she finally found the strength to nod.

  Salt’s voice had hardened. ‘I want your little friend gone, Parva: that’s non-negotiable. She can be gone from my school, or gone from her home. Those are your choices.’

  Then he’d smiled at her. ‘It’ll be our secret,’ he’d said, and he’d leaned over the desk and kissed her on the lips.

  Every muscle in her body clenched at the smell of the sweat in the folds of his neck, the scrape of his beard along her cheekbone. The hard points of his fingers had pushed down the small of her back and under the waistband of her underwear.

  She didn’t know if he wanted her because he fancied her, or because he knew how much it hurt her. She didn’t know if there was any difference for someone like him.

  Her heart shrank almost to nothingness at the thought of her mother finding out she wasn’t new any more. What would become of the special occasion then?

  Standing in the headmistress’ office, Beth’s wounded gaze burning a hole in her, Pen had wanted to shout, Don’t you dare hate me! I did this for you!

  But she couldn’t. She’d just had to stand there and watch Beth turn away from her, her eyes full of betrayal. And now Beth did hate her, Pen knew she did, just when she needed her most.

  She didn’t want to need B. A tiny, spiteful, furious part of her heart hated her right back.

  The breeze from the window tickled her neck. She went to shut it, and then stopped. The balding man was sitting in a battered car a few yards up the street. She stared out at him, but he made no move towards the ignition. He didn’t look threatening. His shoulders were slumped, and he looked utterly defeated.

  She bit her lip. ‘Mum,’ she called down in English, ‘I’m going to sleep for a bit. Could you ask Dad not to disturb me when he comes in?’

  Her mum’s assent floated back up the stairs. Parva shrugged off her dressing gown and pulled on her jeans and a T-shirt. She lifted her hijab from the faceless mannequin head by her mirror and wrapped it securely around her head.

  What are you doing? a voice in her head asked. He’s a stranger, a strange man. It’s not safe.

  Thoughts like that dogged her now, but she couldn’t succumb to them. Beth wouldn’t. Of course, Beth wouldn’t have caved in to Salt. Pen despised that thought, but it was there, clinging to her mind like a leech: if only she could have been a little more like Beth, she would have been safe.

  Pen arranged the pillows and the duvet, enough to fool a casual inspection, and switched off the light.

  After days of staring at her bedroom ceiling Pen found the day painfully bright, the sky strikingly blue. Her heart felt like a hummingbird caged behind her ribs. There weren’t many people around, but still she flinched from those who passed, walking too close. She tried to calm herself, and screwed up her courage, until at last she felt able to walk over and knock on the car window.

  The man jumped and stared out at her and she immediately felt less afraid: there was no threat in his face. He had sagging cheeks. It looked like sleeplessness had sucked the weight off him.

  The window whirred down. ‘Parva,’ he started uncertainly, and then, ‘Pen?’

  Pen started at the name. She cocked her head sideways. ‘Who are you, mister?’ she asked, although now she was sure she knew – he was only the second person to ever call her that.

  ‘My name’s Paul Bradley. I heard you were sick – thank you. Thank you for talking to me.’ He sounded pathetically grateful. And then he asked, ‘Have you seen my daughter?’

  No; I haven’t seen her, I’ll probably never see her again – I don’t care if I don’t. I don’t care if she drank her own spray-paints, threw up a mural and died, Pen thought, but what she said was, ‘What’s happened to Beth?’

  Mr Bradley’s forced smile fell away. ‘I was hoping you knew,’ he said. ‘Could we talk?’

  ‘I can’t go far,’ Pen said. ‘I told my parents I’m sick.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ he sounded puzzled.

  Pen considered it. ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but not in any way they can know about.’

  He pushed a button and the bolt on the passenger side of the car popped up. ‘We can talk in here if you like, since it’s cold out.’

  Pen stopped dead, feeling herself freeze up. At the thought of getting into this man’s car even her hair felt cold. She eyed the button he’d pushed, the locks on the doors and gave a tight shake of her head.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘where then?’

  Pen pointed at a café across the street and crossed over before he had a chance to get out of the car.

  Some indie band was playing over the café stereo. The espresso machine provided a whirring accompaniment.

  ‘Hey girl,’ the singer whined, ‘you got me in a whirl—’

  And this’ll be a hit, Pen thought, even though it’s sh—

  ‘Shouldn’t you be talking to the cops?’ she asked as Beth’s dad sat down, interrupting her musings.

  He sipped his coffee. He’d asked if she wanted one, but after her tight-lipped head shake, he didn’t offer her anything else. ‘I did,’ he began. ‘They weren’t much help. Apparently she’s been in trouble with them before.’

  How did you not know that? Pen wondered. ‘Look, Mr Bradley,’ she said, trying to sound reassuring, ‘I’m sure Beth’s fine. She can look after herself. In a few days she’ll—’ She tailed off at the expression on his face.

  He dropped the sheaf of papers onto the Formica table. ‘That’s exactly what the police said to me,’ he said, his voice shaking a little. ‘So I looked online …’

  Pen picked up the papers and leafed through them. There were perhaps twenty printouts of newspaper reports, each a picture of a distraught parent with pleading eyes. She flicked through them, reading names from under the headlines: Jessica Saarland, Ian Tompson, Michael Williams, Rowena Moors. Each one was an appeal for news of a missing child.

  ‘And that’s only the ones who were young enough or pretty enough or who disappeared on slow enough news days to get the papers interested,’ he said in a defeated voice. ‘I was a journalist. I know how this works.’

  Pen felt her stomach clench. The missing person’s report on Beth would be sitting at the bottom of a police filing cabinet, squashed in between Allah alone knew how many others: lost lives and forgotten futures, forty to a drawer.

  ‘I’m sorry. We had a fight – a bad one,’ she confessed. ‘We both said some pretty nasty things. I
haven’t seen her for days.’

  Mr Bradley slumped a little more. It was a long time before he spoke. ‘I don’t want to get you into trouble. Do you – I don’t know, do you want me to try to create some sort of diversion so you can sneak back up to your room?’

  Pen cocked her head and looked at him. ‘Wow, Mr Bradley,’ she said. ‘Beth never mentioned you were a Ninja.’

  He blushed as Pen continued, ‘It’s okay. Besides, my mum’s pretty fierce. If she sees you again, after you suggested you come into my room—’ She whistled and slit her throat with her finger.

  ‘She didn’t seem that bad.’

  ‘Don’t let the Karachi Kitten act fool you. She’d shove you slowly through a cheese-grater if she thought you were messing with her little girl. Let me handle her.’

  He laughed at that, and a brief guilty look flitted across his face, as though it was wrong to be laughing at a time like this. ‘When Beth gets back,’ he said, ‘I hope you make it up. I’m glad she has a friend like you.’

  Something stretched queasily in Pen’s stomach. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  They walked together back across the road, dodging the brightly dressed women carrying bags of vegetables from the market in Dalston.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a diversion?’ he asked her as they neared her house. ‘I could, I don’t know, sing?’

  ‘No offence, Mr Bradley, but Beth told me about your singing. She says your rubber duck’s about the right audience for it.’

  ‘Oh, well— Okay.’ He turned back to his car.

  ‘Mr B, wait!’ She saw him stiffen, snared by the urgency in her voice. She was staring at her front door – or rather, the doorframe. Tiny trains had been drawn around its edge, a trail that led away along the bottom of the wall like black breadcrumbs.

  They followed it around the corner into a drab alleyway and peered closed at what had been painted onto the bricks.

  ‘What’s that supposed to—?’ he started. ‘Fractured harmony? I don’t—’

  ‘I do,’ Pen said. She creased her stiff, sore hands into fists and then released them slowly. ‘I know what it means, Mr Bradley. I’ve been there.’ She paused, and then found herself saying, ‘I’ll show you.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ He pointed at the sketch of a skinny boy using a spear to pick his fingernails with a nonchalant air.

  Pen shook her head. ‘Never seen anyone who looked anything like that,’ she admitted. ‘Tell you what though, if Beth’s looking, she’ll find him.’

  She dipped into her pocket, lifted out her phone and snapped a photo of the boy. ‘And that means we need to find him too.’

  It was only on the way out of the alley that she saw her own face, daubed on the brick, and all the anger she’d been nursing towards her best friend changed into something else, something no less sharp, that caught in her throat.

  ‘Gosh, is that you?’ Mr Bradley murmured. ‘It is – it is you. She did that from memory? Heavens, it looks just like you. I mean …’ There was no mistaking the pride in his voice. Pen wondered if Beth had ever heard it.

  ‘Yes, Mr Bradley,’ she said, but it was hard to breathe. ‘She’s very good.’

  CHAPTER 13

  It was morning: the daylamp’s rays pouring into the bulb fell in rainbows, refracted by the glass. Voltaia shifted, the glow of her blood washed out by the surfeit of light. Day. Her eyes stung in the light. Why am I awake? The world outside was a seamless wall of glare. Too early. She shook herself and settled her head back onto her arms, feeling her consciousness ebb away.

  The lamppost shook and her eyes snapped open again. It was too bright; she couldn’t see anything, but she could feel vibrations coming through the metal. The filaments in her bones trembled. She started twitching and shifting, moving just enough to build up some magnetism, until she could stretch her fingers forward, and push the field out, teasing the air.

  Voltaia recoiled in horror; something was crawling up her lamppost. Her heart began to trip, faster and faster, until it was so beating quickly that even through the light of the daylamp she could see the yellow glow reflecting off the glass.

  Lec! she strobed, but her elder sister had run away in disgust at the street-boy’s behaviour and hadn’t come back.

  Galva! Faradi!

  It was too bright, and she was blind. The daylamp was like a thousand furious Whities, battering on the glass. The lamppost jerked again, as though in the grip of a fit, and she flared off another distress call. Useless, she cursed herself; her sisters would be blind too. She could feel the tremors of the thing, whatever it was, dragging itself up the lamppost towards her. She shrank into the back of her shelter; wires pricked her skin.

  A black shape smacked hard against the glass: a long, thin shadow studded with thorns. The whole bulb shuddered. The thing receded, moving nightmarishly slowly, vanishing into the blur of light like ink being sucked out of water …

  —and smacked in again …

  Voltaia tumbled backwards at the impact. The thin barbed shape vanished behind cracked glass and she braced herself, her lungs burning as she held her breath.

  The thing struck again, and the lamp shattered.

  Voltaia leapt from her home, falling for an instant, surrounded by a glittering rain of glass. Concrete drove the breath from her. She shoved herself to her feet, shaking off the impact and casting about. Everything was indistinct dark lines, swamped by the glaring sun; everything looked like a monster, reaching for her. She fled to her left, towards Galvanica’s lamp, probing through her fields, but she couldn’t feel them. She couldn’t feel them.

  Calm down, she told herself, calm down. Her heart was beating so fast she was scared it might start to smoke.

  Galva! Faradi! She knew they wouldn’t see her cries in the light, but she couldn’t stop herself calling for them. She reached into the space where Galvanica’s post should have been and her fingertips groped empty air. She stumbled and fell onto something metal. Her hands trembled as she felt her way along it. It was twisted, pockmarked with dozens of tiny holes.

  A cloud passed in front of the daylamp and suddenly she could see: she was holding Galvanica’s post. It had been torn from the ground, leaving just a stump. The broken-off end was jagged and sharp. A glass girl was lying halfunfolded from the broken bulb, her light extinguished. Her nose and kneecaps were shattered and her skin was frosted with tiny cracks.

  Voltaia stumbled towards her, barely noticing the pain as the shards of metal and broken bulb cut her feet. Her powdered blood spilled on the ground.

  Galv—

  As Voltaia approached, her sister’s hair started to sway in the magnetic breeze she carried. It was a mean mockery of life.

  Through her fields, she felt the metal of the thing behind her brush her field and she turned. Its coils flew in fast, extinguishing the light.

  CHAPTER 14

  I want to help you – I want to help you do more than just run.

  Her words are like river silt, clogging up my ears. I look back at her arm, at the mark I gave her. City dirt has entered it; it will be a scar – it was meant to be a scare, but though she swore fancily at my clumsiness as I swabbed it with disinfectant and stitched it with a splinter of railway sleeper, she wears it patiently enough.

  We weave through the crowds on Church Street. I’m ostentatiously invisible: people take pains not to look at me, I suppose because I look so much like the figures huddled in sleeping-bags in doorways that they are also careful to ignore.

  Is that how you’re going to live up your mother’s legacy? Run?

  It was an idiotic question, frankly. I can no more live up to my mother’s legacy than I can wear her estuary-water skirts, or match her cruelty, or fill her Docklands throne with my bony arse. I’d be a laughing-stock before I died.

  Except now there are two of us laughing-stocks: me, and my idiotic, brave, scarred girl with a conscience. And that makes the odds against us half as bad. So here we are, entering the gates of a graveyard i
n Stoke Newington: a graveyard left to become a wilderness, and the last gathering-ground for my mother’s damned priesthood.

  It was Beth’s idea. ‘You’re the son of a Goddess, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Doesn’t your mum have a vicar or two to help us out?’ It sounded so simple, so logical.

  I’m going to have to talk very fast, and I’ll try to sound confident, but the man I need to convince peddles bullshit by the steaming ton, so he knows it when he hears it. We plunge deep into the bracken, where the just-turning leaves filter the light gold. My tongue feels like a lead slug in my mouth. I’m desperately trying to work out what it is I’m going to say.

  ‘A graveyard,’ Beth said flatly as Fil closed the gate behind them. Weeds had grown everywhere, making the railings more a hedge than anything. ‘Seriously? A graveyard?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, tunnelling through the foliage. The growl of the traffic on the main road became muffled.

  ‘Oh, nothing – having seen what you’ve got crawling around radio-masts and lampposts, I can’t bloody wait to see what you manage to pull out of a graveyard. If it’s just ghosts and zombies I’m going to be sorely disappointed, Fil.’

  She was still in a temper after the spiders, and her feet were starting ache. They’d taken the long route from Crystal Palace to Stoke Newington to avoid the cranes that reared beside the main road in Dalston. Fil wouldn’t go near them. Beth had never noticed them before and wondered idly when they’d appeared. They were sprouting like malign winter trees across the skyline.

  She still hadn’t seen Fil eat. In fact, she was starting to think he didn’t. She’d ducked into a shop with a revolving sign and ordered food off a revolving spit – and now she was sheepishly readying herself for a revolving stomach. She’d offered to buy him a kebab too, but he’d politely declined. Last night, under the tower, his skin had been covered in oily sweat, but just walking barefoot over the tarmac seemed to revive him, as if he was drawing sustenance from the exhaust-heavy air. It suddenly struck Beth that the grey colour on his skin wasn’t dirt, it was him – and it was growing deeper the stronger he got. He’s feeding off the city, she thought, like a plant, living off the sun. She groped for a term and came up with Urbosynthesis.