Necropolis

THE DOOR

Two years later, Scarlett had turned fifteen – and she had become an orphan for a second time.

Paul and Vanessa Adams hadn’t died but their marriage had, one inch at a time. In a way, it was amazing they had stayed together so long. Scarlett’s father had just started a new job, working for a multi-national corporation based in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, her mother was spending more and more time with her own business, looking after customers who seemed to demand her attention twenty-four hours a day. They were seeing less and less of each other and suddenly realized that they preferred it that way. They didn’t argue or shout at each other. They just decided they would be happier apart.

They told Scarlett the news at the end of the summer holidays and for her part she wasn’t quite sure what to feel. But the truth was that in the short term it would make little difference to her life. Most of the time she was on her own with Mrs Murdoch anyway and although she’d always been glad to see her parents, she’d got used to the fact that they were seldom, if ever, around. The three of them had one last meeting in the kitchen, the two adults sitting with grim faces and large glasses of wine.

“Your mother is going to set up a company in Melbourne, in Australia,” Paul said. “She has to go where the market is and Melbourne is a wonderful opportunity.” He glanced at Vanessa and in that moment Scarlett knew that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. Maybe the Australians were desperate for exotic holidays. But the fact was that she had chosen somewhere as far away as possible. Maybe she had met someone else. Whatever the reason, she wanted to carve herself a whole new life. “As for me, Nightrise have asked me to move to the Hong Kong office…”

The Nightrise Corporation. That was the company that employed her dad.

“I know this is very difficult for you, Scarly,” he went on. “Two such huge changes. But we both want to look after you. You can come with either of us.”

In fact, it wasn’t difficult for Scarlett. She had already thought about it and made up her mind. “Why can’t I stay here?” she asked.

“On your own?”

“Mrs Murdoch will look after me. You’re not going to sell the house, are you? This is my home! Anyway, I don’t want to leave St Genevieve’s. And all my friends are here…”

Of course, both her parents protested. They wanted Scarlett to come with them. How could she possibly manage without them? But all of them knew that it was actually the best, the easiest solution. Mrs Murdoch had been with the family for ten years and probably knew Scarlett as well as anyone. In a way, they couldn’t have been happier if they had suggested it themselves. It might not be conventional but it was clearly for the best.

And so it was agreed. A few weeks later, Vanessa left, hugging Scarlett and promising that the two of them would see each other again very soon. And yet, somehow, Scarlett wondered just how likely that would be. She had always tried to be close to Vanessa, recognizing at the same time that they had almost nothing in common. They weren’t a real mother and daughter and so – as far as Scarlett was concerned – this wasn’t a real divorce.

Paul Adams left for Hong Kong shortly afterwards and suddenly Scarlett found herself in a new phase of life, virtually on her own. But, as she had expected, it wasn’t so very different from what she had always been used to. Mrs Murdoch was still there, cooking, cleaning and making sure she was ready for school. Her father telephoned her regularly to check up on her. Vanessa sent long e-mails. Her teachers – who had been warned what had happened – kept a close eye on her. She was surprised how quickly she got used to things.

She was happy. She had plenty of friends and Aidan was still around. The two of them saw more of each other than ever, going shopping together, listening to music, taking Aidan’s dog – a black retriever – out on Dulwich Common. She was allowed to walk home from school on her own again. In fact, as if to recognize her new status, she found herself being given a whole lot more freedom. At weekends, she went into town to the cinema. She stayed overnight with other girls from her class. She had been given a big part in the Christmas play, which meant late afternoon rehearsals and hours in the evening learning her lines. It all helped to fill the time and to make her think that her life wasn’t so very unusual after all.

Everything changed one day in November. That was when Miss Chaplin announced her great Blitz project – a visit to London’s East End.

Joan Chaplin was the art teacher at St Genevieve’s and she was famous for being younger, friendlier and more easygoing than any of the dinosaurs in the staff room. She was always finding new ways to interest the girls, organizing coach trips to exhibitions and events all over London. One class had gone to see the giant crack built into the floor of the Tate Modern. For another it had been a shark suspended in a tank, an installation by the artist, Damien Hirst. Weeks later, they had still been arguing whether it was serious art or just a dead fish.

As part of their GCSE history coursework, a lot of the girls were studying the Blitz, the bombing of London by the Germans during the Second World War. Miss Chaplin had decided that they should take an artistic as well as a historical interest in what had happened.

“I want you to capture the spirit of the Blitz,” she explained. “What’s the point of studying it if you don’t feel it too?” She paused as if waiting for someone to argue, then went on. “You can use photography, painting, collage or even clay modelling if you like. But I want you to give me an idea of what it might have been like to live in London during the winter of 1940.”

There was a mutter of agreement around the class. Walking around London had to be more fun than reading about it in books. Scarlett was particularly pleased. History and art had become two of her favourite subjects and she saw that here was an opportunity to do them both at the same time.

“Next Monday, we’re going to Shoreditch,” Miss Chaplin went on. “It was an area of London that was very heavily bombed. We’ll visit many of the streets, trying to imagine what it was like and we’ll look at some of the buildings that survived.”

She glanced outside. The art room was on the ground floor, at the back of the school, with a view over the garden, sloping down with flower-beds at the bottom and three tennis courts beyond. It was Friday and it was raining. The rain was sheeting down and the grass was sodden. It had been like that for three days.

“Of course,” she went on. “The trip won’t be possible if the weather doesn’t cheer up – and I have to warn you that the forecast hasn’t been too promising. But maybe we’ll be lucky. Either way, remember to bring a permission slip from your parents.” Then she had a sudden thought and smiled. “What do you think, Scarlett?”

It had become a sort of joke at St Genevieve’s.

Scarlett Adams always seemed to know what the weather was going to do. Nobody could remember when it had first started but everyone agreed – you could tell how the day was going to be simply by the way Scarlett dressed. If she forgot her scarf, it would be warm. If she brought in an umbrella, it would rain. After a bit, people began to ask her opinion. If there was an important tennis match or a picnic planned by the river, have a word with Scarlett. If there was any chance of a cross-country run being called off, she would know.

Of course, she wasn’t always right. But it seemed she could be relied upon about ninety per cent of the time.

Now she looked out of the window. It was horrible outside.

The clouds, grey and unbroken, were smothering the sky. She could see raindrops chasing each other across the glass. “It’ll be fine,” she said. “It’ll clear up after the weekend.”

Miss Chaplin nodded. “I do hope you’re right.”

She was. It rained all day Sunday and it was still drizzling on Sunday night. But Monday morning, when Scarlett woke up, the sky was blue. Even Mrs Murdoch was whistling as she put together the packed lunch requested by the school. It was as if a last burst of summer had decided to put in a surprise appearance.

The coach came to the school at midday. The lesson – combining art and history – was actually going to take place over two periods plus lunch and, allowing for the traffic, the girls wouldn’t be back until the end of school. As they pulled out of St Genevieve’s, Miss Chaplin talked over the intercom, explaining what they were going to do.

“We’ll be stopping for lunch at St Paul’s Cathedral,” she said. “It was very much part of the spirit of the Blitz because, despite all the bombing, it was not destroyed. The coach will then take us to Shoreditch and we’re going to walk around the area. It’s still a bit wet underfoot so I want us to go indoors and the place I’ve chosen is St Meredith’s, in Moore Street. It’s one of the oldest churches in London. In fact there was a chapel there as long ago as the thirteenth century.”

“Why are we visiting a church?” one of the girls asked.

“Because it also played an important part in the war. A lot of local people used to hide there during the bombing. They actually believed it had the power to protect them… that they’d be safe there.”

She paused. The coach had reached the River Thames, crossing over Blackfriars Bridge. Scarlett looked out of the window. The water was flowing very quickly after all the rain. In the distance, she could just make out part of the London Eye, the silver framework glinting in the sunlight. The sight of it made her sad. She had ridden on it with her parents, at the end of the summer. It had been one of the last things the three of them had done while they were still a family.

“…actually took a direct hit on October 2, 1940.” Miss Chaplin was still talking about St Meredith’s. Scarlett had allowed her thoughts to wander and she’d missed half of what the teacher had said. “It wasn’t destroyed, but it was badly damaged. Bring your sketch books with you and we can work in there. We have permission and you can go anywhere you like. See if you can feel the atmosphere. Imagine what it was like, being there with the bombs going off all around.”

Miss Chaplin flicked off the microphone and sat down again, next to the driver.

Scarlett was a few rows behind her, sitting next to a girl called Amanda, who was one of her closest friends and who lived in the same road as her. She noticed that Amanda was frowning.

What is it?” she asked.

“St Meredith’s,” Amanda said. “What about it?”

It took Amanda a few moments to remember. “There was a murder there. About six months ago.”

“You’re not being serious.”

“I am.”

If it had been anyone else, Scarlett might not have believed them. But she knew that Amanda had a special interest in murder. She loved reading Agatha Christie and she was always watching whodunnits on TV. “So who got murdered?” she asked.

“I can’t remember,” Amanda said. “It was some guy. A librarian, I think. He was stabbed.”

Scarlett wasn’t sure it sounded very likely and when the coach stopped off at St Paul’s, she went over to Miss Chaplin. To her surprise, the teacher didn’t even hesitate. “Oh yes,” she said cheerfully. “There was an incident there this summer. A man was attacked by a down-and-out. I’m not sure the police ever caught anyone, but it all happened a long time ago. It doesn’t bother you, does it, Scarlett?”

“No,” Scarlett said. “Of course not.”

But that wasn’t quite true. It did secretly worry her, even if she wasn’t sure why. She had a sense of foreboding which only grew worse the closer they got to the church.

The art teacher had chosen this part of London for a reason. It was a patchwork of old and new, with great gaps where whole buildings and perhaps even streets had been taken out by the Germans. Most of the shops were shabby and depressing, with plastic signs and dirty windows full of products which people might need but which they couldn’t possibly want: vacuum cleaners, dog food, one hundred items at less than a pound. There was an ugly car park towering high over the buildings, but it was hard to imagine anyone stopping here. The traffic rumbled past in four lanes, anxious to be on its way.

But even so there were a few clues as to what the area might once have been like. A cobbled alleyway, a gas lamp, a red telephone box, a house with pillars and iron railings. The London of seventy years ago. That was what Miss Chaplin had brought them all to find.

They turned into Moore Street. It was a dead end, narrow and full of puddles and pot-holes. A pub stood on one side, opposite a launderette that had shut down. St Meredith’s was at the bottom, a solid, red-brick church that looked far too big to have been built in this part of town. The war damage was obvious at once. The steeple had been added quite recently. It wasn’t even the same colour as the rest of the building and didn’t quite match the huge oak doors or the windows with their heavy stone frames.

Scarlett felt even more uneasy once they were inside. She jumped as the door boomed shut behind her, cutting out the London traffic, much of the light – indeed, any sense that they were in a modern city at all. The interior of the church stretched into the distance to the silver cross, high up on the altar, caught in a single shaft of dusty light. Otherwise, the stained glass windows held the sun back, the different colours blurring together. Hundreds of candles flickered uselessly in iron holders. She could make out little side-chapels, built into the walls. Even without remembering the murder that had happened there, St Meredith’s didn’t strike her as a particularly holy place. It was simply creepy.

But nobody else seemed to share her feelings. The other girls had taken out their sketch books and were sitting in the pews, chatting to each other and drawing what they had seen outside. Miss Chaplin was examining the pulpit – a carving of an eagle. Presumably, most Londoners chose not to pray at two o’clock in the afternoon. They had the place to themselves.

Scarlett looked for Amanda, but her friend was talking to another girl on the other side of the transept so she sat down on her own and opened her pad. She needed to put the murder out of her mind. Instead, she thought about the men and women who had sheltered here during the Blitz. Had they really believed that St Meredith’s had some sort of magical power to avoid being hit, that they would be safer here than in a cellar or a Tube station? She thought about them sitting there with their fingers crossed while the Luftwaffe roared overhead. Maybe that was what she would draw.

She shivered. She was wearing a coat but it was very cold inside the church. In fact it felt colder inside than out. A movement caught her eye. A line of candles had flickered, all the flames bending together, caught in a sudden breeze. Had someone just come in? No. The door was still shut. Nobody could have opened or closed it without being heard.

A boy walked past. At first, Scarlett barely registered him. He was in the shadows at the side of the church, between the columns and the side-chapels, moving towards the altar. He made absolutely no sound. Even his feet against the marble floor were silent. He could have been floating. She turned to follow him as he went and just for a second his face was illuminated by a naked bulb, hanging on a wire.

She knew him.

For a moment, she was confused as she tried to think where she had seen him before. And then suddenly she remembered. It was crazy. It couldn’t be possible. But at the same time there could be no doubt.

It was the boy from her dreams, one of the four she had seen walking together in that grey desert. She even knew his name.

It was Matt.

In a normal dream, Scarlett wouldn’t see people’s faces – or if she did, she would forget them when she woke up. But she had experienced this dream again and again over a period of two years. She’d learned to recognize Matt and the others almost as soon as she was asleep and that was why she knew him now. Short, dark hair. Broad shoulders. Pale skin and eyes that were an intense blue. He was about her age although there was something about him that seemed older. Maybe it was just the way he walked, the sense of purpose. He walked like someone in trouble.

What was he doing here? How had he even got in? Scarlett turned to a girl who was sitting close to her, drawing a major explosion from the look of the scribble on her pad.

“Did you see him?” she asked.

“Who?”

“That boy who just went past.”

The other girl looked around her. “What boy?”

Scarlett turned back. The boy had disappeared from sight. For a moment, she was thrown. Had she imagined him? But then she saw him again, some distance away. He had stopped in front of a door. He seemed to hesitate, then turned the handle and went through. The door closed behind him.

She followed him. She had made the decision without even thinking about it. She just put down her sketch book, got up and went after him. It was when she reached the door that she asked herself what she was doing, chasing after someone she had never met, someone who might not even exist. Suppose she ran into him? What was she going to say? “Hi, I’m Scarlett and I’ve been dreaming about you. Fancy a Big Mac?” He’d think she was mad.

The door he had passed through was in the outer wall underneath a stained glass window that was so dark and grimy that the picture was lost. Scarlett guessed it must lead out into the street, perhaps into the cemetery if the church had one. There was something strange about it. The door was very small, out of proportion with the rest of St Meredith’s. There was a symbol carved into the wooden surface: a five-pointed star.

She hesitated. The girls weren’t supposed to leave the church. On the other hand, she wouldn’t exactly be going far. If there was no sign of the boy on the other side, she could simply come back in again. The door had an iron ring for a handle. She turned it and went through.

To her surprise, she didn’t find herself outside in the street. Instead, she was standing in a wide, brightly lit corridor. There were flaming torches slanting out of iron brackets set in the walls, the fire leaping up towards the ceiling which was high and vaulted. The corridor had no decoration of any kind and it seemed both old and new at the same time, the plasterwork crumbling to reveal the brickwork underneath. It had to be some sort of cloister – somewhere the priests went to be on their own. But the corridor was nothing like the rest of St Meredith’s. It was a different colour. It was the wrong size and shape.

It was also very cold. The temperature seemed to have fallen dramatically. As she breathed out, Scarlett saw white mist in front of her face. It was as if she were standing inside a fridge. She had to remind herself that this was the first week of November. It felt like the middle of winter. She rubbed her arms, fighting off the biting cold.

There was a man, sitting in a wooden chair opposite her, facing the door. She hadn’t noticed him at first because he was in shadow, between two of the torches. He was dressed like a monk with a long, dirty brown habit that went all the way down to his bare feet. He was wearing sandals, and a hood over his head. He was slumped forward with his face towards the floor. Scarlett had already decided to turn round and go back the way she had come, but before she could move, he suddenly looked up. The hood fell back. She gasped.

He was one of the ugliest men she had ever seen. He was completely bald, the skin stretched over a skull that was utterly white and dead. His head was the wrong shape – narrow, with part of it caved in on one side, like an egg that has been hit with a spoon. His eyes were black and sunken and he had horrible teeth which revealed themselves as he smiled at her, his thin lips sliding back like a knife wound. What had he been doing, sitting there? She looked left and right but they were on their own. The boy called Matt – if it had even been him – had gone.

The man spoke. The words cracked in his throat and Scarlett didn’t understand any of them. He could have been speaking Russian or Polish

… whatever it was, it wasn’t English. She backed away towards the door.

“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I think I’ve come the wrong way.”

She turned round and scrambled for the handle. But she never made it. The monk had moved very quickly. She felt his hands grab hold of her shoulders and drag her backwards, away from the door. He was very strong. His fingers dug into her like steel pincers.

“Let go!” she shouted.

His arm sneaked over her shoulder and around her throat. He was holding her with incredible force. She could feel the bone, cutting into her windpipe, blocking the air supply. And he was screaming out more words that she couldn’t understand, his voice high-pitched and animal. Another monk appeared at the end of the corridor. Scarlett didn’t really see him. She was just aware of him rushing towards them, the long robes flapping.

Still she fought back. She reached with both hands, clawing for the monk’s eyes. She kicked back with one foot, then tried to elbow him in his stomach. But she couldn’t reach him. And then the second monk threw himself onto her.

The next thing she knew, she was on her back, her arms stretched out above her head. Her legs had been knocked out from underneath her. The two men had grabbed hold of her and there was nothing she could do. She twisted and writhed, her hair falling over her face. The monks just laughed.

Scarlett felt her heels bumping over the stone cold floor as the two men dragged her away.