“Never thought it would be this easy,” said Emily.
We were on the London train, heading south at 80 miles an hour. It was much swifter and smoother than the coach. I liked it. We ought to be in London by two o’clock, long before anyone noticed we were missing.
And when they did notice? I was feeling bad about that. Mum would go absolutely crazy. I had left a note by the teapot, saying I’d gone away for a few days, I hadn’t been kidnapped, I was perfectly safe. But it probably wouldn’t do much good – she would still worry. And still be very angry.
After the mine episode she was so furious I thought she was about to catch fire. “I told you never to go near the place. I told you it was dangerous. And what do you do? You go right in and get yourself half-killed, and if Jenny hadn’t got more sense you’d have dragged her in too.” Then she rang Dad and I got another roasting from him, and no pocket money for weeks.
Emily didn’t get into trouble – quite the opposite. “LOCAL HEROINE IN MINE DRAMA” was all over the front page of the Caston News. Her parents were so pleased with her, it seemed they never got around to asking her why she was there in the first place.
Fortunately I was off school while all the fuss was going on. I had sprained my ankle so badly that I couldn’t put my foot to the ground.
Emily came to see me once. We talked about nothing very much, until she said all at once, “My mum got a letter today. From the hospital.”
“What did it say?”
“Two weeks on Monday.”
We looked at each other.
“Did you mean what you said, back then?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“But what about your foot?”
“It’ll just have to be better by then.”
***
I shouldn’t have done it. I know that now. Running away was stupid and dangerous and it caused even more problems – don’t ever try it. All I can say is, I thought at the time that it was the right thing to do. I was loving my enemy. I was keeping a promise.
I never even thought of asking God what I should do. If I had, things could have been different. We could have tried to solve the problem, not run away from it.
But secretly, of course, I wanted to run away. I thought it would be fun.
How wrong can you be?
***
My ankle was a lot better, though not perfect. I couldn’t walk very far without wanting to rest it. So why was I taking my games kit to school? Answer: the bag held not games kit but some spare clothes, a London A to Z, and all the money I possessed.
At the school bus stop everyone else got off as usual, but Emily and I stayed put. No one seemed to notice except the driver.
“Not going to school today, love? That’ll help the accident statistics.”
Emily muttered something about a dentist’s appointment.
We got out at the railway station. The ticket office was shut, so we went straight onto the platform. A ten-minute wait for the local train, a change at Allenbury, and there we were on the main line train, speeding towards London. Nobody had questioned us; nobody had spoken to us at all.
When we felt hungry we got a snack from the buffet car. Emily looked out at the rushing landscape. “Bit flat, isn’t it? No hills, no stone walls… I’ve never been this far south before.”
“It’s not the South Pole,” I said. “It’s actually quite civilised.”
“Tickets, please!”
Emily got out the famous white envelope and showed the man the travel voucher. It was plain he didn’t like the look of it.
“What’s this supposed to be, then?”
“Our ticket.”
“This here is not a ticket. This here should have been exchanged at the booking office for a proper ticket. I can’t accept this!”
“The booking office was shut,” I said. “What were we supposed to do, sit there until it opened, middle of next week sometime?”
“Cheeky young madam. What are your parents thinking about, letting you loose on your own? They want their heads seeing to.”
“My parents are divorced,” I said as mournfully as I could. “My dad lives in London. I hardly ever see him now.”
“Well, I hope he’s got the sense to meet you at the other end, that’s all. Kids like you aren’t safe to be let loose.” He went off, muttering to himself.
“Phew! I thought he was going to chuck us off the train.”
“So did I. Probably while it was still moving.”
At long last the train came smoothly to a halt. “London Euston. All change!”
Fortunately no one was checking tickets at the barrier. We stood in the huge station, watching people hurry about. Everyone seemed to know where they were going.
“It’s like an ant heap when you poke it with a stick,” said Emily.
“Oh, this isn’t even busy. You should see it at rush hour.” I was trying to sound confident and streetwise. Actually I’d have given a million pounds for the sight of Dad’s face in the crowd.
“Where do we go now?” Emily asked.
Aha! I spotted something nearly as welcome as a familiar face: the Underground sign. We got our tickets and followed the directions to the Northern Line.
At the top of a long escalator, Emily hung back. “Do we have to go down there?”
“You’re not scared, are you? Emily Smith, heroine of the mine? You ought to love the Underground.”
“Well I don’t. I don’t like it – the noise and the crowds. And the smell!”
“Look, Emily, I don’t know any other way to get there. A taxi would cost a bomb – and the taxi driver might remember where we went.”
“Can’t we walk?”
“You don’t understand. London’s huge. It would be like walking from Brilby to Caston and back.”
“All right then,” said Emily. But she stepped onto the escalator as if she was going over Niagara Falls. And when at last we came up again at Clapham, her face was so pale she might have been underground for months.
“Nearly there,” I said. “It’s just a bus ride now.”
We were both starving, so we got a takeaway pizza and ate it at the bus stop. By now schoolchildren were in the streets going home. Tom would be wondering why I wasn’t on the bus in Caston. The sooner we got under cover, the better.
At last we were walking up Dorset Avenue. There was number 12, looking just the same as ever. I marched up the steps and rang the bell. “Just checking…”
“What will you say if somebody comes?”
But the house was quite silent. The street seemed asleep in the afternoon sun. I don’t think anyone saw us slip through the gate at the side of the house. Now came the moment of truth. Would the key still be there?
It was – hanging on its secret hook under the lowest shelf in the shed. (“Don’t tell Dad. He thinks it would be a security risk,” Mum had said long ago.)
We let ourselves in by the back door. The house had a musty, dusty smell, like Gran’s attic. The stale air felt as if it had sat there undisturbed for months.
I wanted to open all the windows, but Emily stopped me. “People might notice,” she said.
“This is London, not Brilby. Nobody takes much notice of anybody else. But maybe you’re right… we’d better be a bit careful. Keep the curtains drawn. Not show lights at night.”
Emily flicked a switch. “That’ll be easy – there’s no electricity.”
“It’s probably turned off at the mains. It’s OK, I’ve seen Dad do it.”
I opened the understairs cupboard. There was a switch in there somewhere, and a way to turn the water on too – pretty vital, that. I didn’t fancy living in a house where you couldn’t flush the loo.
Success! We had lights and water. The next thing was food. There were a few tins in the kitchen cupboards, but we both agreed not to touch them. Breaking and entering was bad enough without stealing as well.
“I’ll get some things from that shop we passed on the corner,” Emily offered.
I nodded. It was better that I didn’t show my face there – Gita, who had been at my old school, might start asking questions.
Anyway I was quite glad just to sit there, resting my bad ankle on the sofa (an enormous thing in shiny black leather, far too big for the room). There was a lot of new furniture, which made our old carpets and curtains look extremely tatty, but no ornaments, no photos, no magazines. You could tell the place was nobody’s real home.
It was then that I realised this wasn’t my home either. How ridiculous! I was feeling homesick again. Homesick, that is, for Brilby.