Nightrise

DEPARTURES

The girl in the business-class lounge at Heathrow Airport was dressed in a short white jacket, a pink T-shirt and trousers cut off above the ankle. She had a backpack on the seat beside her and a book open on her lap, although she hadn’t read any of it in the thirty minutes she had been there. There was a glass of Coke on the table in front of her but she hadn’t touched that either.

It was the second week in November and the weather had suddenly turned nasty, blustery showers hitting London and sending the commuters running behind umbrellas and clutched hats. Even now the rain was rattling against the windows of the lounge, dripping off the wings of the waiting planes. The runways looked even greyer than usual. Most of the flights had been delayed.

The girl carried a British passport but her features were anything but. Her looks were very striking, partly Chinese with long black hair tied at the back and eyes that were an unusual shade of green. She was small and thin but there was a confidence about her, a sense that she could look after herself. She was making the flight as a Skyflyer Solo – that was what the airline called her – and they had given her a plastic label to wear around her neck. She had pulled it off the moment she had sat down.

Her name was Scarlett Adams and she was fifteen years old.

She wasn’t usually a nervous flyer but she was nervous today. She still didn’t know why she was making this journey. Only the day before she had been at the expensive private school in Dulwich where she had been sent when she was thirteen. St Genevieve’s was an all-girls school, housed in a rather grand Victorian building with ivy growing up the walls and extensive grounds at the back. Although the school did have a boarding wing, she was a day girl. Her parents lived abroad but they had a house five minutes away and a housekeeper who looked after her during term time.

Yesterday, just before lunch, the headmistress had asked to see her in her study. As Scarlett had climbed the stairs to the waiting area, which everyone called the graveyard because there were so many portraits of dead teachers, she had wondered what sort of trouble she might be in. Was it that argument with Miss Wilson, the geography teacher? Or the physics homework she had “left on the bus”? Or the fight in the computer block – even if it hadn’t been her who’d started it?

But when she was shown in to the cosy room with its gas fire and view over the front drive, it was the last thing she had expected to hear.

“Scarlett, I’m afraid you’re going to be leaving us for a few weeks.” The headmistress didn’t look at all pleased. “I’ve just had a phone call from your father. He was very mysterious, if you want the truth. But it seems that some sort of crisis has arisen. He’s well – but he needs you with him. He’s already arranged the flight.”

“When am I leaving?”

“Tomorrow. I have to say, it’s very inconvenient. You’ve got your GCSEs to consider and we’re going to have to recast the Christmas play. But he was insistent. He said he’d talk to you tonight.”

Scarlett had spoken to her father when she got home but he hadn’t added much more to what the headmistress had already said. He needed her to come out for a week or two. He would explain why when she got there. The housekeeper – a dark and rather sour-looking Scottish woman – was already packing. It seemed that there was nothing to discuss. Scarlett had spent the rest of the evening emailing and texting her friends and went to bed in a bad mood.

And she wasn’t feeling much better now, waiting for her flight to be called. She looked around her. There was the usual collection of business people, some of them hitting the free alcohol, others catching up with the day’s news. A plasma TV stood in one corner of the lounge and she glanced at the screen.

“Today, the new president-elect of the United States issued a statement…”

They were going on about the election again. For the past week, the news had been full of little else. Scarlett watched as Charles Baker appeared behind the rostrum, facing the press corps.

“The defeat of Senator John Trelawny sent shockwaves among his friends and supporters,” the report continued. “The final vote, with Baker taking just over fifty-two per cent of the nationwide ballot and the electoral college, took everyone by surprise and has led to increasingly bitter accusations of electoral fraud.”

Now Baker was speaking. He was smartly dressed and looked relaxed. He would have been handsome except that there was something wrong with his eyes. It was as if they weren’t quite able to focus.

“I hate to accuse Senator Trelawny of sour grapes,” he said. “But these accusations are completely ridiculous and I see no reason for an official enquiry.”

The image changed. There were shots of people protesting outside the White House. They were carrying banners, walking in angry silence.

“At issue are the computer systems used to count the votes,” the report went on. “Almost seventy per cent of votes in a US election are counted by machines and critics point out that no fewer than three of the main vote-counting companies have strong links with the Nightrise Corporation – which backed Charles Baker throughout the campaign.”

Scarlett had been about to stop watching. She had no interest in politics. But one word had caught her attention.

Nightrise.

How strange.

That was the company her father worked for in Hong Kong, and that was exactly where she was heading now. Could they really have been involved in some sort of fraud? It seemed very unlikely. Her father was a lawyer and she couldn’t imagine him ever doing anything wrong.

A young woman in a British Airways uniform had come into the lounge. She walked over to Scarlett. “Are you ready?” she asked. “We need to go back through departures. They’ve begun boarding.”

Scarlett gathered her things and stood up. The report on the television had finished. She smiled and the two of them left together, on their way to the waiting plane.