woman who looked more severe than she actually was, had made a speech in assembly, telling everyone to leave her alone, but of course they had been all over her, bombarding her with questions, desperate to know where she had really been. Scarlett had been on TV. She was a minor celebrity. Some of the younger girls had even asked her for an autograph. On the other hand, some of the teachers had been less than happy to see her – Joan Chaplin in particular. The art teacher had taken some of the responsibility for Scarlett’s disappearance and she in turn blamed Scarlett for that.
The next couple of days passed with the usual routine of lessons and games. There were piles of homework and rehearsals for the Christmas play. Everything had returned to normal – at least, that was what Scarlett told herself. But in her heart, she knew that nothing was really normal at all. Maybe it never would be again.
She had already decided that there was only one person she could talk to and tell the truth about her disappearance. Not her father. Not Mrs Murdoch. It had to be Aidan. He was her closest friend. He wouldn’t laugh at her. She had already texted him and the two of them met after school and walked home together, taking their time, allowing the other school kids to stream ahead.
She told him everything: the door, the monastery, Father Gregory, the escape. She was still talking as they turned into Dulwich Park, opposite the art gallery, taking the long way round past the playground and across the grass.
“Do you think I’m mad?” she asked, when she had finished. There had been times when she had begun to wonder herself. Could it be that the official version of events was actually true? Had she somehow hit her head against a wall and dreamed the whole thing?
“I always thought you were pretty strange,” Aidan said.
“But to dream something like that…”
“You don’t make it sound like a dream.” His eyes brightened. “Hey – maybe we could go back to the church. We could go through the door a second time and see what happened.”
Scarlett shuddered. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not? If you went with me, at least it would prove it was true.”
“I couldn’t go back. They might be waiting for me. They’d grab me and the whole thing would just start again.”
“I’d protect you!”
“They’d kill you. They’d kill both of us.”
They had reached the other side of the park and were coming out of the Court Lane Gate on the north side. From here the road cut down to the lights where, two years before, Scarlett had almost been killed.
Scarlett had just turned the corner when she saw the car.
It was a silver Mercedes with tinted windows so that although she could make out two people inside it, she couldn’t see their faces. It was parked on the opposite side of the road and she might not even have noticed it… except that it was the fourth time she had seen it. It had been in the street that morning, parked outside The Crown and Greyhound when she was on her way to school. Once again, there had been two people sitting inside. It had overtaken her when she was walking to the Italian restaurant with her father. And she had seen it from her bedroom, cruising down the street where she lived. She had made a note of the registration number. It contained the letters GEN which just happened to be the first three letters of St Genevieve’s. That was why she remembered it now.
She stopped.
“What is it?” Aidan asked.
“Those two men.” She pointed at the car. “They’re watching me.”
“Scarl…”
“I mean it. I’ve seen them before.” Aidan looked in their direction. “Maybe they’re journalists,” he said. “You’re still a mystery. They could be after an interview.”
“They’ve been following me.”
“I’ll ask them, if you like.”
They must have seen him coming or guessed what he had in mind. As Aidan stepped off the pavement, the driver started the engine up and tore away, disappearing round the corner with a screech of tyres.
Scarlett didn’t see the Mercedes again but that wasn’t the end of it. Quite the opposite. It told her something that she had been feeling all along.
She was being watched. She was sure of it. It had crept up on her over the past few days, before Paul Adams had left, a sense that she was trapped, like a specimen in a laboratory glass slide. She had found herself gazing at complete strangers in the street, convinced that they were spying on her. When she walked past a security camera outside a shop or an office it almost seemed to swivel round, its single, glass eye focusing on her – and she could imagine someone in a secret room far away, staring at her on a television monitor, picking her out from the crowd.
Even when she was on her own in her room she had got the sense of someone eavesdropping, and after a while, just the flapping of a curtain would be enough to unnerve her. When she made phone calls – it didn’t matter if it was her mobile or a landline – she was sure she could hear something in the background. Breathing. A faint echo. Someone listening.
She wasn’t imagining it. It was there.
Scarlett had tried to tell herself that none of this was possible. She knew that there was a word for what she was experiencing. Paranoia. Why would anyone bother to watch her? Nobody was watching her. She was just freaked out by what had happened before.
“There were five children. They came to be known as the Gatekeepers. Four boys and a girl. You are the girl.”
It was when she saw the Mercedes with Aidan that Scarlett understood that what had started at St Meredith’s wasn’t over yet. It had only just begun.
The next day – Friday – was miserable. Scarlett hadn’t slept properly. She was snappy with Mrs Murdoch and managed to make a spectacular mess of a maths test at school. She didn’t want to be in class. She just wanted to go back to her room and close the door – to shut “them” out, even though she didn’t have any idea who “they” might be.
That evening, she got a phone call. It was Aidan.
“Hi, Scarlett,” he said. “I was wondering… do you want to come to a movie tomorrow?”
Just that one sentence and she knew that something was wrong. Scarlett didn’t reply immediately. She cradled her mobile in the palm of her hand, playing back what she had just heard. First of all, Aidan never called her Scarlett. He called her Scarl. And there had been something weird about his tone of voice. He hadn’t asked her out as if he really meant it. He sounded fake, as if he was reading from a script.
As if he knew he was being overheard.
She lifted the mobile again. “What do you want to see?”
“I don’t know. The new Batman or something. We can go into the West End…”
And that was odd too. Why travel all the way into town? Dulwich had a perfectly good cinema.
“OK,” she said. “What time do you want to meet?”
“Twelve?”
“I’ll see you here…”
Aidan arrived at exactly midday, dressed in his trademark hoodie and jeans. As they walked over to the Tube station together, Scarlett wondered if she hadn’t read too much into the conversation the night before. He seemed completely relaxed and cheerful. The two of them chatted about school, football, fast food and the American election which was still in the news. Aidan was interested in politics even if it left Scarlett completely cold.
“Charles Baker is a creep,” he said. “I can’t believe anyone voted for him as President. The other guy, Trelawney, should have walked it.”
“So why didn’t he?”
“I don’t know. Some people are saying they screwed up the voting slips. But I’m telling you, Scarl, the wrong guy won.”
They reached the cinema, the Empire in Leicester Square, but as they approached the box office, Aidan suddenly grabbed Scarlett and dragged her to one side. In an instant, his whole mood had changed. He made sure there was no one else around, then hurriedly began to speak.
