Saving Sophia Part 6

We creep into a large drain that runs under the road and make silent whoops, slapping each other on the back and kicking the wet leaves into the air before realising that we never actually heard the engine start.

We stay down there for hours. Well, not hours, probably about twenty minutes, waiting for Wesson to find us. I know that if she appears all weall be able to do is run in the opposite direction.

Iam thinking that although we didnat see one in the car, Wessonas probably got a gun.

Sheas probably going to shoot us, and leave us here in this drainage ditch.

Iam braced to see her at any moment.

A robin lands at the end of the tunnel, examines us, and takes off again.

A few minutes later he reappears, hops further into the tunnel, takes a microscopic bug and hops off.

Perhaps Wessonas caras really quiet. Perhaps we wouldnat hear it start from here.

I realise that my heart has slowed to normal, that Iave stopped sweating, that Iam breathing again, and that Iave stopped feeling like Iam about to be murdered.

Murdered? I think about Pinhead leaning back against the kitchen counter and not drinking my dadas gooseberry champagne. He canat possibly actually be a murderer? Can he?

Sophia rustles behind me.

I glance down. Sheas examining the contents of Nedas bag again. aI just thought Iad check and see if Ned had a map or anything.a aDid he?a She shakes her head. aWould this help?a she says, handing me the SAS survival guide.

I shrug. aHe didnat leave the watch-compa.s.s thing by any chance?a aHe had it on his wrist, I saw him with it. But he left us the snails.a She holds up the clear plastic box. The shapes of the two snails are quite clear inside.

aThatas fantastic. Now weave got four mouths to feed, unless we let them go.a aWe canat do that, can we?a says Sophia, clicking the lid off the box. aTheyare Nedas pets.a aTheyare also a food source,a I say, flicking through the SAS guide, my eyes resting on the chapter t.i.tle: Get food where you can find it. aWe could eat them.a aYou donat mean that,a says Sophia. aDo you?a I peer at Nedas snails; they have little grey antennae that seem to peer back. The fact that the snails are Nedas makes me want to eat them, but they look too curious and innocent, and anyway the only time we ate snails was with Dad and it was like eating elastic bands. aMaybe not. Look, this bookas got a page about using the sun and moss on trees to find your direction. It says: Moss grows on the north side of trees.a I look around us in the tunnel. Everythingas mossy, so everything in here is north.

aIn Long Afternoon of Death thereas a man who builds a compa.s.s out of a magnet and some iron filings.a aHave you got either?a says Sophia.

aI, um a" no,a I say.

She lets out a long sigh. aThought not. Anyway, we canat stay here for ever, Lottie.a I try to think of a story with any other hints on direction-finding. I canat. There arenat any. I wonder how Irene made it across Scotland.

aOk, weall just have to read road signs.a Hours later, long after weave finished our water supplies, Sophia says: aI loved doing these sorts of things with my mum.a aGetting lost in the West Country?a aNo a" adventures, out in the wild, no mobile phone, no car a" just us and the elements.a We clamber over a gate. aWe trekked across Siberia one summer.a aDid you?a I ask. I thought Siberia was largely frozen, but I donat want to show my ignorance, so I say nothing.

aAnd we spent a few weeks in the Australian outback. Mum killed a snake and then we ate it.a aFun,a I say, surprised that Dadas never fed us snake and leading the way past some road works. A concrete lorryas dumping a load of soft concrete into a large hole.

aSophia,a I say. aWhen Pinheadas brother disappeared, were they building the motorway? Only I thought it was built in the 1970s?a Thereas a long silence, broken by distant dog barking. aYes,a she says quietly. aOr it might have been the new runway at Stansted airport.a aOh,a I say.

By the next day, weave stopped walking in straight lines. Instead we meander over open s.p.a.ces peering into bins, searching behind food shops.

Weare no better than seagulls.

In a childrenas playground, we find most of an abandoned picnic and a soggy bag of face paints.

Sophia crams the remains of a packet of salty biscuits into her mouth and hands me a net bag of tiny cheeses. I suck on a waxed cheese. I play around with it on my tongue. I make it last at least fifteen seconds.

Afterwards, I feel sick.

As we walk along footpaths, a haze appears before us. The large fields break down into smaller fields, and the lanes widen. Houses appear on the horizon, along with sheds, garages, trimmed hedges.

Itas a town. Maybe a city, maybe itas Bristol, but as we havenat walked down a main road thereas no way of telling.

I find myself looking for phone boxes. Nedas bag has the two fifty pence pieces that Dad gave us. I hope itas enough to make a phone call.

I imagine Mum and Dad sitting by the phone, waiting, the house quiet and empty without Ned and me yelling at each other, and I feel guilty.

At last, we round a corner behind a pub and I see a phone box.

But it doesnat take coins.

Nor does the next one, and the one after thatas been turned into a book swap.

It is Bristol. But we must be miles out of the centre, because nothing looks like a city, it all looks like suburbs. We sit on a damp bench, shivering. Iam very hungry, very tired, and desperate for a bath, even in our bathroom where most of the time you have to flush the loo with a bucket. I expect Sophia feels the same. If I were able, Iad definitely ask Mum to come and get us, and risk being killed by Pinhead. It occurs to my sugar-starved brain that none of the heroes in Ireneas books get hungry, and they donat seem to need sleep, either.

Although: aIn Footsteps to Timbuktu, Anthea Sweetling is dying in the desert, and she does walk miles before begging food from the old woman in the village wash house,a I say. aHopefully weall find something like that here somewhere.a Sophia sighs. aDo they have wash houses in Bristol?a The back of my neck p.r.i.c.kles first, and then my face as the blush spreads like ink across my skin. aSorry,a I mutter, mostly to myself.

We stumble on, cutting across the backs of gardens, scrambling through a newly sc.r.a.ped house plot, and emerging into an estate of yellow pretend-stone houses. Before long it becomes difficult to work out which way weave come from and which way weare going.

aBut weave already walked down this road,a I say, staring at a line of identical white plastic front doors. aLook, Iam sure weave pa.s.sed that post box twice.a I sink down next to the post box. Itas getting dark, and I watch as two crows fly to roost on a telephone line. Did Irene do this? Collapse on the edge of civilisation and watch birds going to sleep? Or did she tighten her brogues and keep marching?

A cat crosses the road.

I canat help thinking that Irene was tougher than I am.

I glance up the street, as Sophia sits down next to me. No sign of anyone else. Lights go on in the houses, a telly booms behind me.

The light fades really quickly and a street lamp comes on. Itas lonelier here than it is in the middle of nowhere.

Iam feeling hungry and silly.

I thought my stories would provide answers a" but they didnat. Not one of my heroes could give me realistic solutions and Sophiaas obviously unimpressed. The way she sighed when she asked if there were wash houses in Bristol!

Stupid.

Stupid stupid stupid.

I must look like such an idiot. But hereas the most stupid thing of all: that I promised to help Sophia in the first place. That was really dim. And now weare here, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to eat.

I scratch my back against the post box and shift my weight on the tarmac. I could fall asleep here. I think Sophia already has.

A fine drizzle starts to fall and I stick out my tongue hoping to catch a mouthful.

Thereas also the small matter of Pinhead and Wesson: a amurderera and a mad woman with a dog, and probably a gun. When I think of it, no matter whether or not Pinheadas a murderer, Wessonas bound to have a gun. Sheas that kind of woman. She probably does the actual killing, with a tiny silver revolver she keeps in her iPod, before getting some thug to drop the victim into the concrete. Presumably, she doesnat even need a gun, she can just tie the victimas hands behind their back and shove them into the hole so that they slowly drown.

I imagine dropping into waist-deep wet concrete and adrenaline kicks in, waking me up completely and bringing on a dose of panicky breathing.

I should have stayed in the castle with Ned. We should have stayed together in fact, we should have all stayed in the castle, all met the Chief Constable, explained it all to Miss Sackb.u.t.t. This was never going to work. It wasnat the fact that there were three of us, just that the whole thingas faulty. Weave got no proper plan, no proper proof. Weave got a load of stories, some possible, some incredible. And I no longer know what to believe.

They all come from Sophia.

What do I know of her? Really, truthfully?

I can see she hasnat spoken to her mum in months. She gets emotional about that, so it must be true, and thatas wrong. No one should be kept from their mother. I know that Wessonas after her, but then, Wesson would be after her whatever the background story was. All that stuff about dead people? It could be true. It could be rubbish. But then again a" it might not be. A tiny part of me trembles with excitement; the rest trembles with fear. And I think of Irene again.

Just then, it starts to rain in earnest.

We spend that night in a bus shelter under Nedas silver-foil survival blanket. Itas raining hard now and I know that Iam cold. Sophia must be freezing; sheas got bare legs. We huddle together, sharing a tomato and a piece of stale pitta bread with Pinky and Perky, collecting drinking water in a hollow made out of the corner of the survival blanket.

We gaze long and hard at Nedas egg, wrapped in his school sock safe in the mug. Head curled it right round, so that the eggas in a grey nest.

aOh a" how sweet,a says Sophia.

I try not to cry. Itas only an egg. aTheyare very tough, egg sh.e.l.ls,a I reply, my voice slightly wobbly. aTheyare made of mostly grit a" or calcium.a I lay it back inside the sock nest. aSave it until we can cook it?a Sophia nods, and nibbles another crumb of pitta.

A man walks past with a dog. Heas texting and doesnat even look at us. I tense, as if I might run and get his attention, but Sophiaas talking again.

aTell me a story, Lottie a" tell me one of your book stories.a aReally?a And I risk it. aI thought you thought they were stupid.a aI never said that, itas justa"a aWhat?a aItas just that theyare not very helpful when weare trying to do something.a aLike climb out of a window?a aYeah a" like that. If you think about it, theyare just not very realistic, are they? I mean, I know Ned had a rope in his bag, but the chances of that were a million to one. Just because one of the characters in a book had a rope in her bag doesnat mean youare suddenly going to have one.a She looks up at me. aDoes it?a aNo a" I donat suppose it does.a aWhat I mean is, theyare just stories a" theyare escapism, not real life.a I think about how to say it. aBut your life is like the stories,a I say. aLarger than ordinary life. Almost incredible.a Sophia nods her head and takes a long time to answer. aYes it is, but itas not all cut and dried like it is in books and films. My life is a" messy. I canat explain.a She looks out into the rain.

aTell me about the good bits, tell me about your mum,a I say.

aMum? Well, sheas an actress.a aActress? I thought she was a singer?a aYeah, a bit of both, musical comedy, opera a" that sort of thing.a aI see.a aAnd she laughs a lot, has blonde hair, blue eyes, plays the piano a" she used to have fans and fan letters, and then she started to buzz around the world, and I went, too.a aSo when did you live in the flat over the tube station?a aOh a" that, yes.a Sophia coughs and throws her plait back over her shoulder. aThat was in between times, when she was resting.a aOh a" I see.a aIt was wonderful but itas all in the past now. But hopefully we can find the office tomorrow, find out where she is; catch her before she leaves the UK. We need to press on.a aTonight?a aTomorrow will do,a says Sophia. aIam pretty sure sheas here till Tuesday.a I wonder how, without knowing her motheras stage name, Sophia can be so sure of it. But Iam too tired and I let it pa.s.s.

We sit in silence while two cars whizz past, splashing through puddles and soaking the bus shelter. A few drops fall on the survival blanket and trickle down, yellow under the streetlight.

aI could tell you about a real life hero, if you like,a I say.

aYes?a aThere was this woman a" she was called Irene, she lived in the house up the road from usaa The centre of the city comes as a surprise. We walk over a bridge above a river and into some quiet streets of houses, but within minutes weare surrounded by people, hundreds of them doing their Sat.u.r.day shopping. Rushing back and forth. We stand there looking damp and mad, with a pound and two Roman snails between us and dest.i.tution.

Sophia shelters in a doorway and I follow. We watch the families with shopping and food, and proper clothes.

aWe need to find Pinheadas office, then we can break in and find out where Mum is.a I would now eat paving stones if I could work out how to cook them. Everything is clouded by a desire for food, but on the streets thereas nothing to eat but cardboard and pigeons.

I think about Irene, walking across Scotland and wonder what she ate to keep going. Birdsaeggs? Mud? Moss? Any of them are probably more nutritious than cardboard.

We drink water from the tap in the public toilets, emerging into a crowd of people dressed as teddy bears.

aWhatas going on?a Sophia asks, shivering outside the toilets.

Behind the teddies, a Princess Leia and two people in Star Trek uniforms duck into the loos.

I stare after them.

aOh, I get it. Theyare Ewoks,a says Sophia.

aWhat?a I ask.

aEwoks. From Star Wars. Thatas what theyare dressed as. It must be a carnival thing.a Watching them moving, I realise that I can hardly see the people underneath the clothes. aWe could find the office in disguise and creep in under cover of sci fi,a I suggest.

Sophia widens her eyes. aAre you serious?a aYes. Ina"a But I stop myself. aIam sure people do that kind of thing all the time.a aIn what book are there aliens in PE kits?a she says.

I kick the pavement. aHave you got a better suggestion?a By some giant wheelie bins, we find a carton of cardboard tubes and a length of green carpet. Also a load of used but only slightly cheesy tinfoil, ten rock-hard croissants and a packet of pink paper cups. We eat the croissants and tear holes in the cardboard tubes so that the paper cups stick through them. Covered with tinfoil they look like a two-year-oldas vision of a submachine gun.

aTheyall do,a says Sophia, pretending to shoot the wall.

I pick up my gun. Iave never felt so self-conscious, but once we step out into the hordes of badly dressed aliens, no one even glances at us.

A lorry grinds slowly through the middle of the crowd with a band on the top playing something loud but oddly m.u.f.fled. They shed short lengths of silver cloth that I rescue and drape around my neck.

From another lorry, a silver hat frisbees into the crowd. I scoop it up and jam it on to Sophiaas head. A little further on, we gain a papery skirt, a plastic sword, and a breastplate. Weare starting to look the part.

aThis way,a says Sophia, drifting to the right of the main street.

Tall brick buildings rise from the pavement, their windows blacked out. As our fellow aliens wander through the streets, the huge windows of the office blocks gleam with their shattered reflections.

Security guards loll in the doorways, pointing and laughing at the costumes.

aExcuse me.a Sophia walks up to one of them. aAny chance we could use your loo?a She hops from foot to foot.

The man scratches his head. aUm a" donat see why not,a he says and shouts back into the darkness of the building. aHere, Steve, can these kids use the toilets?a aSure,a comes the reply.

Sophia pulls my arm and, confused, I follow. And then I understand.

On the wall is a list of the people who use the offices.

Pinehead a.s.sociates appears to be on level three.

aYouall have to take the lift,a says Steve, who turns out to be a slack-jawed tapeworm staring at a screen dotted with footballers. aI could show you, but Iam watchinga"a aSaOK,a says Sophia breezily. aWhere do we go?a aAny of the floors, theyave all got toilets. If you like, you can both go to different ones.a His eyes never move from the TV. I glance back at the doorway. Security guard number oneas still glued to the aliens outside.

aPerfect,a I say, as we head towards the lift. aDo you think they recognised you?a Sophia pauses and shakes her head. aNo a" no a" I donat think so a" do you?a I look back at the security guards. Neither of them seem to be paying us any attention. aWhatas the plan?a I whisper.

aWeall break in, see what we can find,a says Sophia. aBut perhaps we should keep the lift going up and down, we could pretend weave gone to different toilets on different floors like he said. Letas make them think weare playing in the lift.a I follow her in, see her press 3 and do my best to keep reality at bay. aOK,a I say. aFine a" itas a plan.a The third floor is exactly what I expected. Pot plants, air conditioning, weird padded silence from a white thickly carpeted floor. For a millisecond, I feel jealous; Iad like that carpet, those leatherette chairs, but it occurs to me that no one who works in the building has ever kept chickens or potted up cuttings or made their own hedgerow jelly, and I experience a slight sense of superiority as if Iave glimpsed another dimension that they donat even know exists.

Sophia stops outside a gla.s.s booth. On the door it says T. R. Pinehead.

She turns the handle.

The dooras locked. Of course itas locked, but above it is a keypad. aAny ideas?a I ask.

Sophia sighs. aDate of birth? Mine, his, Mumas?a She taps at the keys. aRandom numbers?a aFavourite songs?a I ask. aAll one number? Actually a" letas have a look at that.a I peer at the pad. The seven and the eight are both worn and grubby with use a" all the others are pristine and shiny. I try 8787, then 7878, then 7887, then 7788 and the door clicks open.

Sophia looks at me. aClever,a she says, pushing open the door.

aWeall have to be quick, though,a I say, following her inside. aThat football match was in the second half. Heall notice if weare not back by full time.a Standing here, in the office, I feel utterly terrified. This is not the kind of thing Iam meant to do. I do not do breaking and entering. I do top-quality English Comprehension and play the flute. I do not sneak around reading other peopleas secrets, especially not scary people.

I try to forget that what Iam doing is illegal and dangerous. Instead, I look around.

Itas all very white and squishy, lots of leatherette and deep pile carpet, and more silence. A single white computer sits on an enormous desk that is otherwise utterly blank.