And she pressed her lips together in a tight little smile, a grateful acknowledgment of the effort it had cost me to say that.
“’Nother cup of tea, love?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll just stretch my legs while the kettle’s on.”
“OK.”
I got up and walked out into the abbey, surprised again at its sheer size, the space above me. All over the floor were stones with writing carved into them. I was standing on one: the marker for someone, dead for two hundred and thirty years. The walls, too, were a patchwork. Words that had lasted for hundreds of years – describing people nobody remembered anymore. I was surrounded by bones and ghosts.
I looked around the abbey, stopping here and there to read the stones. It should have creeped me out. It didn’t. I liked it – I liked the honesty of seeing people’s numbers. The stones told the facts: birth date, death date. The numbers were fine – it was the words that were more troubling.
That’s all there was, as far as I could see. How could anyone possibly know any different?
It made me wonder where my mum was now, or where what was left of her was. What had happened to her after they’d taken me away in that car? Had she been buried somewhere, or cremated? Had there been a funeral, and had anyone gone? Or do junkies, dossers, and slags just get chucked in a ditch? All of a sudden, I really wanted there to be a grave somewhere for her. I wanted her messy, messed-up life to have ended properly.
Then a chill ran through me. What would they do for Spider? It seemed impossible that just over twenty-four hours from now, he’d be needing a gravestone. How could someone so alive, so fizzing with energy, just stop?
I felt a tide of panic rising up inside me. Despite what Karen thought, Spider’s life could be measured out in hours now – minutes, even. I’d seen his number so many times. It didn’t change. It was real. He would die in jail, or some police cell. Beaten up, probably. Unless he was ill. Perhaps he was ill right now, already in the grip of something that seemed trivial, that nobody knew would be fatal. I couldn’t possibly wait out these next hours until someone came to me, told me the news. I needed to step up the pressure, somehow get them to release him.
“Tea’s ready.” Karen’s voice echoed into the church.
I wandered back into the vestry, determined to find a way to see him again. I’d been like a cork at sea all my life, tossed around from home to home, no say in what happened to me. I had to take control.
We had our tea and got ready for bed. Karen went on chatting away, trying to make it fun. By then I was so tired, I was nearly falling over. I let her tuck me in and then listened as, huffing and puffing, she got into her bed.
“It’s quite comfy, isn’t it?” she said, in a cheery, making-the-best-of-things kind of voice.
“Uh…no. But it’s better than sleeping under a hedge.”
“That what you’ve been doing?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Well, you get some kip now, and tomorrow we’ll talk more about you coming home and having a proper night’s sleep in a real bed.” Her duvet rustled as she shifted about. “Honestly, Jem, you’re quite right, I don’t think I could sleep more than one night here – the floor’s so hard…” But no more than five minutes after that, she was gently snoring. She was well out of it.
Perhaps I would have slept on my own, but the steady noise of her rumbling breaths in and out seemed to fill the room. It was irritating beyond belief. I was jealous, too. How could this woman just drift off so quickly like that? My head was full of the last few days, racing ahead to the next few days. After half an hour or so, I knew I’d have to get up or kill her where she lay. Even to me, the murder option seemed a bit extreme, so slowly I peeled down my duvet and stood up.
I remembered Simon’s whispered words to Karen before he left, and tiptoed over to the table, quietly easing out one of drawers. The keys were in there sure enough, a big, thick bunch. As I went to pick them up, they moved against each other, a metallic, oily noise. I stretched the bottom of my hoodie out and wrapped them up, smothering their telltale sound. Then I padded out of the vestry, into the dark cavern of the abbey.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
It wasn’t pitch-black in the church. Streetlights from outside filtered in through the stained-glass windows. Once your eyes adjusted, you could see the shape of things: pews, statues, pillars, all in shades of gray. I knew the doors at the far end and at the side led outdoors, but I didn’t want to leave – I was pretty sure I’d have more negotiating power while I stayed inside the church. But I did want to explore. I picked a door in the corner, to one side of the altar, and started trying all the keys.
The third one worked. I opened the door, which led through to a little room full of junk – well, at least it looked like junk: bits of old stone and wood. It was darker in here, but I could just make out another door on the far side. Again, I had the key to this one. It was darker still inside there, the light just picking out the bottom of some stone steps twisting up ’round a central pillar. I hesitated for a minute. This was starting to creep me out. I didn’t think I could go up there in the dark. I stepped inside and rested my hand on the cold stone wall. There was something knobbly there, too, a switch. I flicked it on and the staircase was lit up, disappearing up and ’round.
“Come on,” I said, trying to psyche myself up. My words bounced off the stone. It’s bad at the best of times, isn’t it, talking to yourself? Sounds even crazier in a church.
I started up the stairs. My legs were pretty wobbly, my knee still not very good, but I took it steady, just one step after the other. You could only see a few steps ahead, and once you lost sight of the bottom, it felt like it could go on forever. Everything about it was cold: the stone through my socks, the walls, even the air was colder here. I was starting to think I should go back for my sneakers and my coat, or just go back, period, when I got to the top. The stairs just ended, a blank wall in front of me, but there was a door to the side. Again, the keys did the job. I swung the door open and was met with a blast of cold air. I stepped through and smiled, couldn’t help myself: I was on the roof.
I’m alright with heights – lucky, that – but as I stepped out onto the roof, a wave of sickness swept over me and I felt lightheaded, dizzy. I was breathing hard from the climb. I sat down and hung my head forward. The sharp air hurt my lungs. I tried breathing in through my nose, to warm up the air as it went inside. That helped a bit. Slowly, slowly, I got back to normal. A little stone wall ran down each side of the roof. Like everything else ’round here, it was carved into a pattern, big holes in it. Even sitting down, I could see through to the rooftops all ’round me. Holding on to the stone, I pulled myself up.
God, it was beautiful, even I could see that. A different kind of city. From up here, you couldn’t see the street- level grime; it was all roofs and chimneys, spires, squares, and arches. The orange streetlights made the pale stone look warm: The buildings were almost glowing, even though it was freezing outside, and you could see strings of lights crisscrossing the little streets. In the yard next to the abbey, there was quite a crowd, some of them sitting down on benches or the ground, others gathered near the tree, with policemen dotted among them. Amazing how stupid tourists can be, hanging around outside on a night like this.
The tower rose up from the other side of the roof. Keeping my head lowered, I scuttled along until I reached another door. Again, my keys didn’t let me down, and I was through, fumbling for the light switch. Another staircase, but this time with rooms leading off it. The first one I came to was full of ropes hanging down from the ceiling. The ends were all tied up on one side of the room, and I didn’t twig what they were until I saw a photo on the wall labeled
