LIONBOY

Selected by the Blue Peter Book Club
‘A new star has appeared in the children’s literary firmament’
— Independent

‘I am lost in admiration… This is not just a fun book; it is also
a wise one’ — Independent

‘Thrilling moments and dangerous scrapes… We give this read
a big paws up!’ — Funday Times

Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

To Jacob Yeboa and Mrs Elizabeth Adomakoh for help with the Twi and ‘Tuwe tuwe, mamuna tuwe tuwe’ — the traditional Ghanaian children’s song which Aneba sings.

And special thanks to Robert Lockhart for the beautiful tunes. He’s written more, including ‘Pirouette’s Flying Habañera’, ‘El Diablo Aero’s Highwire Violin Melody’ and a rather scary number called ‘Hello Charlieboy, Rafi Calling’. If you’d like to hear them, or learn to play them on the piano, look for the sheet-music book and CD called Music from Zizou Corder’s Lionboy, by Robert Lockhart. It’s published by Faber Music Ltd, and is available at music stores or at www.fabermusic.com.

And all the nice ladies at Puffin with their beautiful footwear, specially Sarah Hughes for her elegant editing, Adele Minchin, Francesca Dow for making us feel so welcome. And to Tom Sanderson for our dramatic new look.

And the Agents: Derek Johns, Linda Shaughnessy, Rob Kraitt, Teresa Nicholls, Anjali Pratap, Sylvie Rabineau — so tough on our behalf! So nice to deal with! So many of them!

Kehinde Ogunseitan, Taiwo Ogunseitan, Hannah Laidley, Melanie Phillips, Kitty Wordsworth, Rosie Gravante, Alice Broughton, Daniel da Cunha Blaker, Jake Kidston Kerr, Charlie Raven, Charlie Regis, Madeleine Ellis Peterson, Queenie Ingrams, Theo Caldwell, Cieran Lacey, Salma Ahmed, Tamsin Stewart, Arta Avdullahu, Naim Saleh, Tiffany Copeland, Hafsa Wardhere, Alison Woronkowicz, Paris Rhoden, Lauren Castle, Gavin Burchard de Taunton, Liam O’Neill, Karim Cherifi and Harry Guyan.

And to Mr Morant, Mr Andrews, Mrs Hart, Mrs Lyne, Miss Ellis, Mrs Joyce, Miss Barakat, Mrs Shine, Ms Neary, Ms Allen, Mrs Haji and everybody. Thank you!

No one can tell what will definitely happen in the future. But we can tell what won’t. For example:

1) The Orient Express won’t leave from the Gare d’Austerlitz. It has always gone from Gare de l’Est.

2) The River Seine won’t be big enough to take a ship the size of Circe. She would never get beyond Rouen.

3) I don’t know for sure that anyone will be able to talk Cat. But I don’t know for sure that they won’t either.

One Saturday afternoon in September Charlie’s mum was up a ladder in the backyard, doing things to plants halfway up the wall. Charlie didn’t know what, or care. He liked the yard, the gorgeous honey-lemon smell of the flowers, and the great Christmas tree that hung over the back wall, with its shiny silver and green and purple fruits that he would harvest towards midwinter and sell at the market. He liked climbing about in the tree and in the ruins beyond, running down to the river, and talking to the cats that lived down there. But he didn’t care what his mum was doing up the ladder — until he heard a shriek and a clatter and a rude word, and he ran out to see.

His mum was on all fours, on the ladder, on the ground, with festoons of the honey-smelling plant around her, her red hair wild and her face as white as ice.

‘No you’re not,’ said Charlie. He offered her his hand and she pulled up to her feet, wincing. ‘You wouldn’t be a professor if you were stupid.’

‘Clever people can do stupid things,’ she said. ‘Let me into the house.’

She hobbled inside and Charlie followed, worried, but not worried, because his mum was the strongest, cleverest, bravest person in the world, apart from his dad, of course, and if anyone could handle falling off a ladder she could.

‘Owwwww,’ she said. Charlie had already passed her the arnica, a chocolate biscuit and a small bottle of her secret shock remedy, which she made in her laboratory and which smelt of comfort and brandy and sweet winter herbs.

‘Best take a look,’ she said, and slid carefully out of the long leather breeches she always wore for outdoor work.

‘Owww,’ they both said, at the sight of the raw red grazes, the pinky purple swellings and the nasty gashes which adorned her shins. Charlie handed over a clean papercloth and Mum dabbed at her wound.

‘Bring me some Bloodstopper Lotion,’ she said. ‘27 Red. It’s in the rack.’ She handed Charlie the keys to her lab. Charlie smiled. Mum, Professor Magdalen Start, PhD, MD, PQRST, LPO, TP, kept her laboratory locked on strict instructions of the government, indeed of the Empire, because her work was so important that no one was to be allowed to know anything about it. Except of course for Charlie’s dad, Aneba Ashanti, Doctor of Endoterica and Tropical Sciences at the University of Accra in Ghana (currently seconded to London University), Chief of Knowledge of all the Tribes of Akan, and Brother of Lions, who knew all about it because they worked together. Charlie’s dad knew everything that had ever been known about the plants of the West African forests, what they were good for, and what was good for them.

‘Your mum and I have different ways of knowing about the same thing,’ Dad would say. ‘Excellent system.’

Charlie was honoured. Every day these days he was allowed to do new things: new things that showed they realized he was growing up. Last Christmas he’d been allowed to do the whole stall and sell the shiny fruit himself, alone; coming back from his lessons he was allowed to hang out for a while at the fountain, drinking sherbets and playing football or oware with the other big kids. And now he was allowed to fetch a lotion from his mother’s lab. It felt good, being big.

He’d been inside the lab before of course. As a baby, after they’d come here to London from Africa, he’d practically lived in there. While Mum worked, mixing and smelling and flicking between her burners and her computer screen, he would paddle about the place in a sort of pair of knickers hung on a wheeled frame: he could scoot and whiz, and once disappeared completely under a table, so Mum couldn’t find him. He’d loved his knickers on wheels…

He loved the lab too. Because it was in a separate shed in the backyard, it had always seemed like a different world. Pushing open the door now he got a waft of the smell of it: somewhere between a cake baking, old books, sweet strong incense, and underneath it all the hard cold smell of science. It looked like it smelt. The walls were old and panelled with well-polished dark wood. The benches to the left were gleaming steel with glass cupboards, VDU screens and instruments of the most precise and modern specifications, while to the left a huge old wooden table stood empty but for a massive globe beneath a rack of hanging dried herbs. Along the back wall were stacked shelf upon shelf upon shelf of books — ancient leather-bound tomes, colourful paperbacks, smart-looking hardbacks, parchments laid out flat, and scrolls rolled tight and piled carefully — plus CD-ROMs, and DVDs, chrome-coloured discs full of information, and old old thick black vinyl discs, which played on a machine with a huge curling horn. It seemed to Charlie that all the knowledge in the world, past and present, lived in his mother’s laboratory, and if it didn’t you could find out here where it did live.

By the door was a tall flattish wooden rack, made up of rows of shelves. On each shelf was a row of small, shiny, coloured glass bottles, held in place by a little wooden bar along the front. If you looked carefully you could see that the colour was not in the glass, but in the contents of the bottle, and they were arranged in order of colour like a rainbow: Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet. Charlie craned up to where the reds began in the top left-hand corner, and scanned along the shelves looking for 27 Red. There it was: a deep crimson, blood-coloured, only not so thick-looking. He reached up for it and, giving the lab a last yearning look, took it back to where his mother was waiting in the kitchen.

‘Thank you, sweetie,’ she said, and was just about to lift the lid and drip a drop of the lotion on to her still-bleeding wound when she hesitated.

Charlie fetched one of the strong swirling glass pens that they used for everyday, and the green kitchen ink, and a scrap of envelope.

‘Proper paper,’ she said, and he brought a piece of heavy clean parchment from the drawer.

Mum pulled herself up, and as she did so the movement made the blood bubble a little more from her shin. She took no notice. Instead, she lifted her leg and laid it along the kitchen table, as if she were doing her yoga, or ballet. The parchment lay on the kitchen table, the ink was ignored. Mum took the Venetian pen and cautiously dipped it in the beading blood of her wound.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said to him. ‘I just thought of something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.’

Mum started to write. By dipping the sharp little nib in her deepest cut she had enough blood to write a full, elegant paragraph, and a signature.

‘You’ll know soon enough,’ she said. She flapped the parchment gently and watched the scarlet turn to a delicate brown. It looked like a magical text, an ancient spell, a decree by some all-powerful and long-dead king or queen.

‘I’m putting it up here,’ she said, as she rolled it up, tied it quickly and popped it behind the photo of her and Aneba on honeymoon in Venice, on the top shelf of the dresser. ‘And Charlie —’ Here she stopped and looked at him, her blue eyes sure and clear: ‘If you need to go anywhere, take it with you.’

A sudden sharp sense of importance welled up inside him. She didn’t mean ‘take it to the bathroom’ or ‘take it when you go to bed’. She meant something bigger, more grown up, more important. Sometimes Charlie felt that the grown ups around him existed on that other level — talking of things they didn’t mention to him, minding things, dealing with things that were not to do with children. Until recently he’d ignored it, and carried on reading his book or taking extra biscuits while they weren’t paying attention. But lately… lately there’d been a lot of talking downstairs after he had gone to bed, a lot of hushed telephone calls and furrowed brows. This look in his mother’s eyes, this sudden mysterious writing in blood, were to do with the same things, he was sure.

Just then the great noise that heralded the Return of Dad started up. There was a Ghanaian song about dinner — delicious mamuna with spicy daw daw — that he sang to himself whenever he wasn’t doing anything else: ‘Tuwe tuwe, mamuna tuwe tuwe, abosom dar ama dawa dawa, tuwe tuwe…’ You could hear it from the distance as he strolled up the street. Then the firm, solid tread of his feet crossing the yard, and the jangle of his big bunch of keys because once again he hasn’t noticed that the door is unlocked. ‘Three, two, one…’ Charlie counted down in his head, and his timing was perfect: on ‘Blast-off!’ came Dad’s huge voice calling out ‘He-llo! He-llo! Where’s my family?’

Charlie’s dad, you ought to know, was huge. Not just a big man, but huge. He wasn’t technically a giant, but Charlie thought he might have giant blood, and this worried him sometimes because if his dad had giant blood then so did he, and that made the whole thing of ‘you’re a big boy now, growing nice and big like your dad’ a different ballgame. Charlie was proud and happy to be brown — both black like his dad and white like his mum, he said — but he wasn’t sure he wanted to be giant as well.

Once in a museum Charlie had seen some armour from ancient Greek times, a breastplate made in the shape of a man’s body, with all the muscles and even the bellybutton moulded in beaten bronze. That’s what Charlie’s dad looked like with his shirt off. Like he was still wearing armour. He had huge arms and the veins on them looked like rivers on a map only they stood out; he had huge legs and shoulders as wide as a small shed, and a neck like a tree, and he walked straight and tall and smiling, and everyone got out of his way and turned to look at him after he had passed. When he closed down the smile in his eyes, and let his mouth lie stern, he was the most frightening-looking man. Then when his smile burst through and his white teeth shone and his eyes crinkled up and his cheeks went into little apple shapes, he was like the god of happiness.

‘No I’m not,’ said Mum, finally dripping the Bloodstopper Lotion on to her cuts, and the evening descended into a sweet time of Mum lying around telling jokes, Dad cooking dinner, Charlie watching The Simpsons and staying up late because there’s no lessons on a Sunday. He forgot all about the parchment written in blood, and didn’t think of it again until six months later, when he came home to find that his parents had disappeared.

He’d been at his lessons with Brother Jerome — Arabic, Latin, mathematics, music and the history of human flight — and his head was aching from the amount of studying he had done. Mum said he learned more being on his own with a tutor and no doubt it was true, but sometimes he just wanted to lark around a bit in lessons, like he’d read about in stories, and how could you do that on your own? So after his lessons on that day he headed down to the fountain to play a bit of football with the schoolkids. Steve Ubsworth might be there, or Lolo and Jake, or Becks and Joe Lockhart.

None of them was around. But Rafi Sadler was. He was leaning against the tree and calling younger boys to him with a flick of his head, and whispering to them. Rafi certainly wasn’t a schoolkid, and he was too old to be called a boy, but he wasn’t really an adult either. Everybody knew Rafi. He was tall and handsome with sleek shaved black hair, and he gazed at you from big brown eyes with the thickest lashes — almost girly lashes, but no one would say that. He wore a long leather jacket and a funny little light beard, shaved into shape. He wasn’t really old enough to have a beard and it wasn’t a very good one. He always had money and adults sometimes wondered where it came from.

Today Rafi deigned to join in the football for a minute or two, kicking around a little. People let him through, and didn’t tackle him, and not just because he was strong. Soon he went back to leaning, and talking on his mobile. Part of Charlie longed for Rafi to call him over, but Rafi had never taken much notice of Charlie.

The football had made them hot, so they all got some cherry sherbet off the guy with his white wooden trolley piled high with crimson cherries and jugs of sugar-cane syrup, and drank it frothy and cool from his tall glasses. One of Rafi’s boys took him a glass, but he didn’t touch it. Instead, he strolled over to where Charlie was.

‘Nice haircut,’ he said. Charlie’s mum had shaved his head the day before. This time she’d cut in a design of two crocodiles with one belly: each has a head and a tail and four legs, but they are set like an X, and the centre of the X is their shared belly. It was an adinkra symbol from Ghana: it was about how though we all eat with different mouths we have only one belly between us.

‘Thanks,’ said Charlie, surprised. Rafi never talked to him. Charlie’s parents used to know his mum, Martha, and Charlie knew that Rafi lived alone with her, and had left school years ago and been in trouble, and he knew that Rafi was not the kind of guy who would talk to him. That’s all he knew.

Charlie couldn’t think of anything else more interesting to say. He smiled again, and then kind of nodded. Then Rafi had strolled away again, and Charlie was so embarrassed that he went home.

The sun was heading west and as he got back towards his street he could smell the evening river smell rising up cool and damp to meet the evening cooking smell of woodsmoke and garlic. The flowers hung heavy on the trees in the front gardens as he turned into his street. He was wondering what was for supper and hoping there would be some cherries left over from breakfast. He’d be sorry when the cherry glut was over — but soon the gardens would be full of strawberries, so there was that to look forward to. And who knows, maybe a ship full of fruit would come up from the south. As he approached his house, he was fantasizing about the old days, when you could get all different kinds of fruit at all different times of year, coming in aeroplanes from far far away… ah well. Cherries would do for now.

When he got to his front garden, the front door was closed. There were no lights on, and there was no good smell seeping out. He banged on the door: nothing. He peered through the window: he couldn’t make out much in the dim light but he could see there was no movement, no sign of life.

Charlie went round to the back. Back door shut, no lights. He banged on that door. Nothing. Turning to the wall to see if there were any cats about who he could ask if they’d seen anyone, he saw something which clutched his heart. The door of his mother’s lab was open. Not just unlocked — open.

He stared at it for a moment. Then he went over and peered in. If there is anyone in there who shouldn’t be, they would have closed the door to hide themselves, he reasoned, therefore no one is in there who shouldn’t be. Therefore maybe someone is in there who should be, i.e. Mum. So he looked in.

Nobody. Everything was just as it should be — except that it was open and empty, which it really really shouldn’t be.

Stepping back into the yard, Charlie closed the door carefully and quietly behind him. At least it looked right now. As right as an empty dark locked-up house can look when you’ve come in for your parents and your supper.

He felt a strong twining furry thing around his ankle and looked down. It was one of the skinny, tough, big-eared cats from the ruins. He bent down to talk to her, because you don’t pick those cats up. Cuddly they’re not.

‘Dunno,’ she said, her yellow eyes large in the dimming light. ‘Gorn orf by river. It was some of them halfwits saw it. Least they arksed the river cats to keep an eye out for ’em. Ain’t ’eard nuffin yet.’

The cats were always having feuds, so Charlie wasn’t concerned about the ‘halfwits’.

‘Your mum,’ she said. ‘And some humans’, and she leapt up on to the wall out of Charlie’s reach, a grey arc flying through the dusk. Her tail flicked. ‘Humans,’ she hissed again, and disappeared.

Charlie sat down on the back step and felt sick. Why would his mother go off by river with people the cats didn’t recognize?

Marshal your thoughts, he told himself. Marshal. Charlie couldn’t even get his thoughts to line up and keep still, let alone stand to attention so he could inspect them. Only two thoughts stood out: one, he didn’t like this one little bit and two, Dad would know.

Charlie reached down into his tutorbag, and as he rummaged his little phone lit up, clear and turquoise like the sea in summer. He pulled it out and keyed in his dad’s number. A computervoice with an Empire accent answered: ‘The apparatus is not functioning. Please try later. The apparatus is not functioning. Please try —’ Charlie cut it off and huddled down into the step. It wasn’t that warm either.

Dad’s probably on the train and that’s why his phone’s not answering. That’ll be it. I’ll go up to the station and probably meet him on the way, otherwise I can wait for him, and he’ll know what’s going on.

Charlie leapt up before the comfort of this version of things deserted him, and raced round to the front of the house, out of the yard and on to the street. There were a lot of people, all coming the opposite way to him: a tide of people returning from work, coming down from the station. He forced his way against the tide up to the marketplace, where the stalls and tents were still up and open, festooned with fairy lights, selling last-minute treats to tired commuters. A handful of sheep were still in the pen beyond the fountain, and their plaintive cries added sadness to the bustle. In this darkness everything familiar was different, and he didn’t really like it. He hoped he wouldn’t bump into any alcoholguys: the loud lurching ones who made no sense and smelt so bad, and could appear at any time.

Up by the station he parked himself in a pool of yellow light under a lamppost. People flowed around him: all sizes, all colours, but no Dad. Charlie didn’t want to try telephoning again because someone might see his phone and nick it, like the big schoolkids do off the little schoolkids, even though it’s useless, because as soon as the little kids’ parents find out they cancel the phones anyway so they can’t be used. Pathetic, Charlie thought: people trying to prove how cool they are by nicking something useless off a tiny kid.

Perhaps I missed him in the crowd and he’s gone home and found neither Mum nor me.

Or maybe he’s working late — maybe I could go to his office at the university. But Charlie knew that was dumb, because he had no idea where Dad’s office was, except that it was by the river, a long way from here. Up there, across the city, the river was twice the size it was here. The riversides had huge ships and warehouses, and great shiny buildings full of people making money, and it smelt of the sea because the sea tide came flooding up, bringing wet fogs and gulls and the heavy salt smell. Here, the riversides had only the ruins and the cats and the fisherguys with their small painted boats, and it smelt of frogs and slimy weed. Perhaps I should just go to the riverside and walk along until I get to where Dad’s office is, he thought. I’d probably recognize it. Probably.

Charlie dived into the flow of people and let them sweep him back to where the houses were, and peeled off at his street. He didn’t much fancy seeing his house still dark and silent and empty… but maybe Dad would be there and the lights on and dinner on the cooker.

The lights were on, but Dad was not there. Instead, framed in the lit-up doorway, stood Rafi Sadler.

He held the door and invited Charlie in, for all the world as if it were his house and Charlie were the guest.

He looked swiftly round the kitchen. Mum’s lab keys were not hanging in the small tree where they normally lived. Rafi’s big grey dog, Troy, was panting at his feet. Troy’s tongue always hung out of his mouth, wet and slathery like a flat pink slug.

‘What plan?’ said Charlie. ‘Mum —’ but he didn’t finish the sentence, because he suddenly caught sight of a flash of yellow eyes outside the kitchen window, and a clear warning in them as a dark arc flicked beyond range of the light, and Petra was again invisible in the gloom. Perhaps she’d heard something.

‘Yeah, I know, it’s a drag,’ said Rafi. ‘Mum asked me to come round and tell you. Your mum and dad have had to go on a trip or something. Some new job. They left a note. Here.’

Rafi held out a folded piece of paper. Charlie looked at it. Rafi’s hand was strong like a man’s.

Dear Charlie

I’m awfully sorry but Mummy and Daddy have had to go away for work business, would have let you know sooner but we couldn’t. You’re to go and stay with Martha and we’ll be in touch as soon as we can. Be a good boy and do as you’re told and we should be back soon.

Tons of love, Mummy

Charlie nearly laughed. He hadn’t called her Mummy for about five years, and she never called Dad ‘Daddy’ like that. She called him Aneba, because that’s his name, or sometimes ‘your dad’. ‘Work business’ was a stupid phrase she would never use — she called work work and hated the word business: she said it made her think of fat people in horrid suits working hard to get even fatter. As for ‘Be a good boy and do as you’re told’ — she always said she couldn’t care less about being a good boy in the ‘doing what you’re told’ sense: she said people often told you to do daft or harmful things, so it was much better to get in the habit of working out for yourself what you should do. ‘Imagine if you bought every single thing that advertisements told you to buy,’ she said. ‘Or — for example — there were times and places where black people and white people were told they weren’t even allowed to be friends, or to work together, let alone to love or marry or have babies… so where would that leave us?’ ‘I’d have to cut myself in half,’ Charlie had said, unhappily, aged about five. Mum had dropped a kiss on his head and her face had gone a bit funny.

‘Come on then,’ he said, a little impatiently, in the way a big kid would to a younger kid who’s been foisted on him.

But Rafi was far too cool to have kids foisted on him by his mum. Rafi never did what his mum said — he’d been ruling himself since he was eight. Charlie had seen Rafi ignore his mum in the street. A long long time ago Rafi had come over to Charlie’s house. He’d said — and Charlie had never forgotten it — ‘Your house is really nice, isn’t it? And your mum. And your dad.’ He’d said it in a way which made Charlie think he wanted to set fire to the whole lot.

Charlie didn’t believe Rafi. His mum’s letter proved that he was right not to.

‘Good boy,’ said Rafi, smiling nicely. Charlie felt a surge of strength knowing that he was being a good boy the right way — clever and brave — not the way Rafi thought — dim and obedient.

He was a little angry that Rafi seemed to think he was so young and dim. He wanted Rafi to know he was cleverer than to fall for this. But the clever thing now was to play dumb.

He went up to his room thinking quickly. He had no idea where he would go but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be staying at Martha’s. He had to get himself ready for anything. Picking up his strong leather camping bag, he put into it his Swiss Army knife with all the different tools and blades, a pair of socks, the little solar panel that would recharge his phone and — after a moment’s hesitation — the big furry toy tiger without which he found it hard to sleep. He hoped Rafi wouldn’t notice it.

From the bathroom he got his toothbrush, his asthma medicine and a small bottle of Mum’s Improve Everything Lotion (42 Green), which should have lived in the lab but was inside because she was trying it out on his asthma. It hadn’t really helped with that but it was great for everything else — even your mood, though Mum wouldn’t let him use it for that. Then he went into his parents’ room and took 200 dirhams that he knew his mother had in the back of her knickerdrawer in case she needed it. ‘Well, I need it, for her,’ he said. Her handbag was sitting there on the bed. Normally he wasn’t allowed in her bag, but… he turned it out. There was her wallet, with its library cards and pictures of him and Dad, her phone, her lipstick, and some other things. Two little glass pill bottles full of pills. A small, polished sphere of lapis lazuli, deep blue and gold, like a little world from a long way away.

In a quick gesture, almost as if he were pretending he wasn’t doing it, Charlie scooped all these things of his mum’s into his own bag. Then he hurtled downstairs. Rafi was leaning on the wall by the front door, waiting.

‘Be with you in a moment!’ Charlie called. In the kitchen he grabbed a couple of apples, and his leather water bottle, then stuck his head out the back door into the yard. The lab door was shut. Checking over his shoulder swiftly to make sure Rafi was not looking, he stepped out into the dark and tried the door. Locked. And the keys missing. So someone had locked it since he had last been here, and so that someone had the keys. Rafi probably. Charlie suddenly and very strongly wanted to punch Rafi. How dare he be locking and unlocking his mum’s lab?

The furry twining round his legs that indicated cat distracted him — which was just as well, because punching Rafi would have got him nowhere. It was Petra.

‘They’re gorn dahn towards the sea,’ she hissed. ‘River cats ’ave put the word about round the sea cats. We’ll see what we see. Where you orf to?’

‘Martha and Rafi’s, only I’m not going,’ Charlie whispered into the dark. ‘I don’t know where I’m going, or how. Did anyone see my dad?’

‘Dunno,’ came Petra’s voice, light and rough. ‘We’ll see. Orf you go. You need anyfink, arks a cat. One of us. Don’t worry — there’s more to this ’n you know.’

‘You ain’t alone,’ she said, but he couldn’t see her and some change in the air told him she was gone.

‘Coming,’ Charlie called back. ‘Just locking up.’ One more thing, he thought as he pulled the kitchen door to. He looked up to the top shelf of the dresser and sure enough there it was, tucked behind the honeymoon photograph where Mum had put it: the letter, or whatever it was, written in her blood. He leapt nimbly up on to the dresser, smiled briefly at the photograph, slid it and the piece of paper into his pocket and then, gripping his bag in one hand and his courage in the other, he went out to join Rafi.

There was a long silver car waiting in the street. Charlie looked at it and sneered to himself. When his parents were young everybody had cars. Nobody had ever thought they’d have to be banned, even though they knew they were dirty and that the oil that makes the petrol that makes them move would run out sooner or later. Sooner, as it turned out.

Ever since the great asthma epidemic of fifteen years before, when so many children fell to wheezing and creaking and coughing all at once that the schools had to close, and the government finally realized it had to act about car pollution, cars had been banned in the housing areas. The Empire, which loved cars, had tried and tried to convince everyone that cars and asthma had nothing to do with each other (they said cats were to blame, and certainly more and more people seemed to be allergic to cats), but for once the government had stood up to them and said, in effect, you can poison your own children, but you can’t make us poison ours. So now most people used electros — little scooters and vans that ran on the electricity from the sun or the windfarms. There was very little oil left (planes couldn’t fly at all, because there was no fuel for them) and very few people had cars with petrol engines. Even fewer had permission to use them in the housing areas. Usually it was only government people, or really rich people — Empire people, mainly.

But the car was beautiful — long and low like a shark, and inside it smelt so sleek and leathery (not rough leather like Charlie was used to, but smooth and expensive). It was peculiar — tempting but sickening at the same time. Charlie knew it was these things that made him sometimes unable to breathe, that made his chest so tight and his shoulders high, so that he would cough and cough to try to get some air into his lungs and oxygen into his blood. But sitting inside one as Rafi pulled out and the car sped off down the road, he was amazed and delighted by it: so fast, so smooth, so powerful. It would be fantastic to drive one of these.

Up on the main road the low lights cast their orange pools on the dust as the car slid through town. Charlie stared out the window. He felt very separate.

Rafi drove to a housing tower a mile or so from home. The flat was on the tenth floor and had no curtains.

It was cold and empty with old Blu-tack marks on the walls where there might have been posters once. There were two small bedrooms with two small beds, a sitting room that they didn’t go into, and a small kitchen with nothing in the fridge or on the side. There was no sign of Martha and it was quite clear that nobody lived here.

‘Your tea.’ Rafi gestured to some damp fish fingers sitting on a plate. They’d obviously been there for hours.

‘My room, your room,’ said Rafi, waving a hand lazily. ‘Mum’ll be along later.’

Charlie knew perfectly well that this was not Martha and Rafi’s home. He wondered exactly how stupid Rafi thought he was. He could see that a guy like Rafi wouldn’t rate him, but really — did he think he was a baby? But then if Rafi didn’t think he was clever enough to escape, he might not bother locking up very thoroughly.

‘Great,’ said Charlie, with a smile. He tried to look a little confused and very accepting.

In his mind, his plan was already falling into place. He would pretend to go to bed when sent. He would escape when all was quiet. He’d have a head start and not be missed till morning.

‘I can’t believe I let this happen,’ Magdalen was muttering. ‘I can’t believe I was so dumb.’

They were sitting side by side on a metal bunk in a cramped cabin — more of a storeroom, really. It was very small and smelt of wet metal and salt. The furniture — two skinny bunks, a tiny metal table, a tiny metal sink, and a metal loo with no seat — was all built in. There were no windows. The door was locked. There was no way out.

One whole wall (that makes it sound big, but it wasn’t, because the cabin was so tiny) was made up of a brownish mirror. In the slightly more comfortable cabin next door, on the other side of the mirrored wall, two men — one big and fat, the other skinny and snivelly-looking — were staring at it. Or rather, they were staring through it, at Aneba and Magdalen, for from this side the mirror was a dark-looking window.

‘I thought they were, like, meant to be like really clever,’ said the big fat one.

‘If I’m not stupid,’ Magdalen was saying, ‘then how come I went with that slimy yob Rafi Sadler in his horrible car?’

‘Because he said Charlie was hurt,’ said Aneba. ‘Anybody would have done that.’

‘How come I drank his drugged drink?’ said Magdalen. ‘In the old days, the first thing a girl learned was not to get in a car with someone you don’t know. The first thing! Stupid. And the second was not to accept drinks from strangers.’

‘Yes, but we know Rafi,’ Aneba replied. ‘What kind of parent wouldn’t go in a car with someone they know who says that their child has been knocked down? Who wouldn’t accept a drink from him? Stop it. Stop blaming yourself. Also you may remember I fell for just the same trick with Martha, so you’re calling me stupid too.’

‘Well,’ said Magdalen, ‘all right. What I really can’t believe is how we were tricked by such stupid people.’

A curious gurgly noise came out of Winner’s throat. It sounded a little as if he was choking, but then when he opened his mouth it became apparent that this was actually a laugh. Sid snickered.

Skinny snivelly Sid stopped snickering to think. It was quite hard work for him, thinking. You could tell by the look on his face, as if he badly needed to go to the loo.

Winner screwed up his face and said a rude word. He didn’t like being called stupid at all. Sid was used to it — from Winner, usually.

‘Yeah, well. We’re here now,’ said Aneba. ‘And yes, we weren’t careful enough. We’ll just have to be a bit cleverer from now on.’

‘Not much chance for cleverness, while we’re locked in here, being taken lord knows where,’ said Magdalen.

‘Yeah,’ said Magdalen. They were both thinking the same thing, though neither of them said it: Charlie. Where was he? What was he going to do without them? They were going to have to be clever to get back to him in one piece, as soon as possible.

‘Oh all right,’ said Magdalen. ‘Let me just dip into the handy bag of it that I take with me everywhere.’ She was cranky because she was scared.

‘Aneba,’ she said. ‘Why would Martha and Rafi do this? And who are these guys? What’s this about?’

‘I’m going through in my head what it’s not,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got to what it is yet. Or why.’

‘I just don’t know…’ she whispered. She was a scientist. She was used to knowing things, discovering them, recognizing them. She was almost as annoyed about being caught out as she was angry at having been stolen away. ‘It can only be because of… I suppose… but why? Why now? And who?’

Aneba was hitting his fists gently against each other. He looked up. ‘And,’ he said… and went and peered closely at the brown glass wall.

Magdalen gasped. ‘Really?’ she said, her eyebrows flying up her forehead. She went round behind him, and made rude waggly donkey-ear gestures behind his head.

Around three or four in the morning, in the real dark when even the slugs and the night creatures have gone back to sleep and before the birds have woken, Charlie leapt up with a start.