Boy in the Tower Read online

  ‘Do you think . . . do you think that when we walked past again and didn’t see them, they were . . .’ My voice trailed off.

  Fat tears rolled down Gaia’s face. Her eyes looked large and glassy.

  ‘What’s wrong, Gaia?’ I said. ‘Are you upset about the men we saw? Don’t worry.’

  But whatever I said, she couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down her face. They ran all the way down her cheeks and down her chin, making wet lines on her face until she pulled down her sleeve and wiped them away.

  ‘It’s OK, Gaia, it’s OK.’

  The whistle went and Gaia sniffed and wiped her face with her sleeve again.

  ‘We shouldn’t have gone out last night,’ she said. ‘It could have been us.’ She slowly stood up and we walked into line.

  We filed into school and sat down at our desks but there was no work on our tables to do. Usually we start the day answering maths questions but the board was blank and our books weren’t out. Miss Farraway sat down on her chair and looked at us blankly, as if she couldn’t remember why she was here, or why we were there either, for that matter.

  ‘Miss Farraway,’ said Paul. ‘We haven’t got our maths books.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Farraway. ‘Maths books.’

  ‘And there aren’t any questions on the board,’ Paul continued.

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Farraway, and it seemed like she was going to say something else after that, but she didn’t. And she didn’t make a move to get our books either.

  ‘Miss Farraway, are you all right?’ asked Olu, who’s the kind of person who always looks after people who fall over in the playground and takes them upstairs for a plaster or an ice pack.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Farraway, but her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Miss Farraway!’ said Olu and jumped out of her chair to comfort her.

  ‘Thank you, Olu. I’m OK. Thank you. Sit down, lovely.’

  But then she really started sobbing. No one knew what to do or what to say. This never happened. Teachers don’t cry. Or if they do, they never do in front of us kids.

  Olu stood paralysed halfway between Miss Farraway and her chair. Some of the girls started to cry a little bit themselves, although I wondered if they knew why.

  I looked over to Gaia, who was looking down at her table, concentrating on a tiny spot on her desk.

  Miss Farraway left the room in the end. She just walked straight out. Miss Arnold, the deputy head, came in a few minutes later and found us some maths questions to do but we were all too stunned to do any of them.

  ‘Is Miss Farraway OK, Miss Arnold?’ Olu asked.

  ‘She’s very upset, as you have all seen. It’s been a very upsetting time for lots of people at the moment. How are you all feeling with what’s been going on?’

  ‘I’m scared,’ said someone straight away. I turned round and I saw the voice had come from Michael.

  ‘Me too,’ a few people agreed.

  ‘I worry every night that our block will collapse,’ said Paul. ‘I can’t sleep because of it.’

  ‘I’m frightened about being outside,’ said Olu.

  ‘I’m scared something will happen to my little sister and my mum when they’re at home during the day,’ said Martha. ‘What if I come home from school and our building’s collapsed? What would I do?’

  We went round and round, talking about our fears and worries. Miss Arnold never said that we shouldn’t worry or that we’d be OK or anything like that. She just smiled sadly as someone else started speaking.

  Gaia and I didn’t say anything.

  I listened to the sound of everyone’s voices. They sounded high and coiled, as though they’d been wound up tighter and tighter until they were taut and could break any moment. I didn’t want to hear their words any longer. I could feel my chest folding in on itself, smaller and smaller, as though it was trying to fit into a small square box, and my breaths came quickly and shallow. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

  I heard someone say my name, and when I looked up Miss Arnold was standing over me and she’d put her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Are you all right, Ade?’ she said.

  I nodded, but she didn’t stop looking away from me with the same worried eyes and I wished I could have told her the truth, right then. I wished I could have cried like some of the others and have Miss Arnold pat my back comfortingly. I wished I could have told her that I was scared.

  Just like everyone else.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We had PE outside and threw brightly coloured balls to each other, standing in long lines across the playground. Gaia said that she had a stomach ache so she sat on the wall watching us. She kept pulling her sleeves down so they came over her wrists and her hands and then wrapping her arms around her like she was cold, even though it was another hot, sunny, airless day.

  By lunch time she seemed to be feeling a little better. She ate a couple of mouthfuls from her plate, chewing steadily and staring into the distance, and then she turned to me suddenly and said, ‘So, what do you think they’re going to do now those men have died?’

  ‘I don’t know. They don’t know how they died. I watched the news all night. They just said the same thing again and again. That their deaths were being treated as suspicious.’

  ‘I don’t think someone killed them,’ Gaia said.

  I looked at her questioningly.

  ‘If no one killed them, how did they die?’

  ‘I think,’ Gaia continued, and she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘I think it had something to do with the buildings.’

  ‘The buildings?’

  ‘We had a bad feeling about them for a reason. I think there’s something wrong with them,’ she said.

  ‘But how could a fallen-down building kill two men just by them standing next to it?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with them, Adeola. I’m just saying I think they’re something to do with it.’

  Gaia looked cross for a moment. Then her face changed. She looked very worried.

  ‘And I definitely don’t think we should get close to them again,’ she said. ‘You won’t, will you – go close to one again? I can always bring you some food from my house so you don’t have to go to the shops.’

  I knew what Gaia meant about having a bad feeling about the fallen buildings, but then we’d walked past them last night and we were fine now, so I wasn’t sure she was right.

  ‘Ade? Do you promise me? Don’t go anywhere near them.’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  It seemed better to agree with her than to make her panic. I didn’t let on that I’d forgotten to get any milk last night and what we had left in the fridge had gone lumpy and sour-smelling. I just wouldn’t tell her that I was going back to the shops tonight.

  That way, I wouldn’t worry her.

  That evening there were lots and lots of policemen on the street. Some of them were standing in a line in front of the fallen buildings and others were walking around, with large, pointy-nosed Alsatians that were sniffing the pavements and the walls.

  I decided to go to the closest newsagent, which was only a little shop but which had a fridge with pints of cold milk in it. It wasn’t very far away. I had to go the same route as I had taken with Gaia the day before but I didn’t stop to look at the buildings at all today. I hurried past the line of policemen that surrounded the area where the two men had been found. Finally I made it into the shop and bought a large bottle of milk so it would last us a bit longer.

  ‘Be careful out there, sonny,’ the shopkeeper said as he passed me my change. He looked out of the window as though he expected something to happen any moment. The bottle felt cold in my hands but I didn’t wait for a bag. I wanted to get home as quickly as I could. Now that I was out on the streets, I was starting to feel more and more like Gaia was right, that I shouldn’t have come out. I don’t know if it was because of what Gaia had told me or if there really was something in the air, something menacing out there
that said, No one is safe.

  I decided I would run back to my tower. I could almost picture in my head exactly what was going to happen in the next few minutes. I would run down the road, turn off down the first street and sprint past the policemen and then run in a straight line to my tower, open the door and bang it behind me.

  The door would go, Slam! No problems. I’d be safe.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I started running as soon as I left the shop. The bottle of milk felt heavy in my hands, so I had to hold it like a baby and it made me slow down a bit.

  I turned down the street towards the policemen with one eye on my tower block in the distance. I wished I had never left it.

  I ran past the policemen. The bored one, the one who yawned, the one who looked like he wanted to go home and have his dinner.

  Then, suddenly, there was a shout.

  I stopped and turned back in surprise.

  Then I wished I had just carried on running.

  One of the policemen I had just passed had fallen over. The policemen on either side of him were trying to help him up, but then, as they kneeled down to help him, they fell to the ground too. It was as if they had all suddenly fallen asleep.

  Their helmets made a cracking sound as they hit the ground. Crack, crack, crack. One after the other.

  I remember thinking it looked like a line of dominoes falling over, each one pushing the next one over in a line that was coming towards me.

  I didn’t know what to do. It’s all so strange when you only have a split second to decide. It seems impossible that you are able to think of so many things at once in your head. Part of me thought I should be helping them. Another part thought I would be falling asleep and falling to the ground next, and then another part, the loudest of all, was thinking of Gaia.

  Gaia’s face, shouting, ‘Run!’

  That is what I did.

  I dropped the milk and it exploded on the ground and I ran away as fast as I could.

  I ran into my tower and I ran up the stairs and I didn’t stop running even when I reached my corridor. I ran into my flat and slammed the front door behind me, and I only stopped when I was in my bedroom and the door was closed behind me.

  I didn’t have anywhere left to go.

  It took a long time for my breathing to slow down. I don’t really know if it was from the running or what I had just seen.

  What had happened to those policemen? Why had they passed out like that? And the question I couldn’t stop asking myself: had they just fallen asleep or was it something a lot more serious than that?

  Had they died?

  It was on the news that night.

  A group of policemen had been found dead. Close to where the two council workers had been found. Their deaths were also being treated as suspicious.

  Chapter Twenty

  Suddenly there were lots of people who arrived in big white vans with satellites on top. People got quite excited in school when we found out that these were TV people.

  We watched them through the bars of the playground gate. They had large black cameras perched on their shoulders like parrots. The newsreaders looked serious and worried one minute, when the camera was in front of them, and then laughed and smoked cigarettes the next. Some of them even came over and started filming the outside of our school.

  I ran away to the other side of the playground when they did that and went to find Gaia. She was not hanging around the cameras either. She was sitting under the sunflowers picking up tiny little stones from the ground.

  I sat beside her.

  ‘Gaia, last night—’ I started, but then I stopped myself. I didn’t really want to tell her that I hadn’t listened to her, but I had to tell someone about what I had seen.

  ‘Last night, I saw what happened.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw what happened to those policemen.’

  ‘From your window?’

  ‘No, I was there. I was standing next to them when it happened.’

  Gaia lifted her head and looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘I’d forgotten to get milk so I went really quickly to get some and then I was running past the policemen and they started falling over. One after the other. Just like they were falling asleep or something. I ran away when they started doing it. I didn’t know that they were dying, I didn’t know. They looked like they were just falling asleep.’

  ‘Did they look like they were in pain?’ Gaia asked.

  ‘No, not really. They just fell down. It happened pretty quickly.’

  Gaia didn’t say anything. It looked like she was thinking it through.

  ‘What do you think made them die?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘I still think it’s to do with the fallen buildings, though. The policemen were right by one of them, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, the same one as those other two men. But they were standing just in front of it.’

  ‘Have you looked out of your window recently? Have you seen how the buildings are falling?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a pattern,’ Gaia said.

  She reached into her pocket and brought out a folded-up piece of paper and handed it to me.

  It was a drawing but it took me a moment to realize it was a map. A map of where we lived. There was a drawing of Gaia’s tower and my block and our school. Then there were lots of red dots which had numbers next to them. They roughly made a circle shape. In the middle of the circle was a star that was labelled Pub – The George, which had a number one written next to it.

  ‘I’ve been filling it in each night. The red dots are the fallen buildings. And the numbers show the day they fell in. It’s how many days have passed since that first pub fell down. Can you see how it’s spreading outwards? The number twos and threes are close to the pub and then the nines and tens are on the outside.’

  ‘What’s this one here?’ I pointed to a red dot that looked like it had a one and a two next to it.

  ‘That’s twelve. Twelve days after. It looks like the buildings which have been missed out are falling now.’

  ‘And these are our blocks,’ I said, pointing to the two wobbly drawings of our towers, one with a capital G above it and the other with a capital A.

  ‘Yes,’ Gaia said.

  ‘They’re so close to the other fallen buildings.’ Our towers were right next to buildings which had fallen five days after the pub collapsed. ‘It . . . it . . . could be us next.’

  ‘Yes. Exactly,’ Gaia said.

  ‘Have you shown this to anyone?’ I said.

  Gaia shrugged.

  ‘I wonder if the police have realized this is happening,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure they know,’ Gaia said. ‘Maybe they’re hiding it from us so we don’t all panic.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I was talking to Mum about it last night and she wants us to pack up and leave now.’

  ‘Leave?’ My voice sounded sharp and shaky all at the same time. ‘Where would you go?’

  ‘She wants to go to my aunt’s. She lives in Brighton. My mum said we should get out while we can.’

  ‘Brighton? Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s south. Down by the sea. I went there once when I was little.’

  ‘Are you going then?’

  ‘My dad doesn’t want us to go.’

  ‘Oh. So are you going to stay?’

  ‘I guess so. Dad usually gets his own way. Has your mum spoken to you about it?’

  ‘No. I’m not sure how much she knows about what’s going on, to be honest. I guess I’m staying too. Here you go,’ I said, handing back the map.

  ‘You can have it, if you like. We can both fill it in. You can give it back to me tomorrow.’

  ‘OK,’ I said and I put the map in my pocket.

  Neither of us could have known that we would not see each other tomorrow. Or the day after that. Or the day after that.

 
; The very next day, they closed our school.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Most people were leaving.

  I could see them going from my window.

  There was a steady procession of people out on the pavements. They were carrying as much as they could, in brightly coloured bags, or dragging large suitcases behind them. All their belongings in the world.

  I spent a long time checking through the line of people to see if I could see Gaia and her family among them.

  I wondered if her dad had changed his mind and they were on their way to Brighton, right now, to her aunt’s house.

  Or if her parents were fighting. Not able to agree over what they were going to do and Gaia and her brothers trying not to hear the shouting through the thin walls.

  I had no way of telling. We didn’t have a phone at my house. Mum had a mobile but I didn’t know where she kept it.

  I felt in my pocket for the map that Gaia had given me, and traced the numbered dots with my finger until I came to rest upon Gaia’s drawing of her block. I missed her.

  I tried to shake the thought from my head that I might never see her again but it kept returning over and over in my mind, making me feel sick and panicky. The only thing that calmed me was turning over the map that Gaia had made in my hands. It was my last piece of her. I didn’t have any photographs, only the pictures in my head and the worn paper map I was holding.

  I hoped that she had got out. I hoped that she had left her flat behind her and was far away from the piles of brick and rubble that made up our streets now. No one was safe in their homes any more. Bricks and walls and doors didn’t protect you any longer.

  Perhaps she was already there. In Brighton. Down by the sea. I’d only seen the sea once when we went on a trip to the beach in Year Two and it had scared me a bit. It was so vast, so unending, stretching on and on until it met the sky. Gaia had held my hand as we waded into the shallow waters because I told her I was afraid, and she’d squeezed it tight as the first wave rolled in and splashed us right up to our waists. I screamed, I think, but I didn’t feel as worried with Gaia beside me.