The Burning (13 page)

Rachel and Adam looked at each other, then finally, after a few long seconds, they moved back to their own side of the truck and dropped down among the heavy sacks of vegetables.

There was nothing else they could do.

Rachel thought about the argument she’d had with Adam the night she’d discovered their grandmother’s body. She remembered what he had said about Gabriel: how their lives were easier where they were; how they were better off without him. At the time Rachel had been furious, but now she could see what her brother meant.

She pulled the sack back round her, lay down and cried quietly.

She’d wanted to get away so badly, had been certain it was the right thing to do, had talked Adam into it. But now, within a few short hours of being reunited with Gabriel, she felt as though their lives were no longer their own.

She felt uncertain and terrified and out of control. As though anything might happen.

None of it good.

R
achel was not sure how long she had been asleep when she was woken by Gabriel; how long since the truck had stopped. This time she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. Adam was already awake, and Morag and Duncan stood next to each other at the back of the trailer, suitcases in hand, ready to go.

The driver had already left by the time they jumped down from the back of the truck and looked around.

“What’s that smell?” Morag asked.

“Gasoline,” Adam said.

Rachel could smell something else. They had pulled up in a vast lorry park, the huge wagons lined up side by side. In the distance, she could see a ragged line of lights moving slowly across an expanse of blackness. She stared until she saw the blackness heave and shift and realized that the line of lights was actually a huge boat.

“It’s the sea,” she said.

A high chain-link fence ran along three sides of the lorry
park with a long, low building making up the fourth. A cafe. Through the steamy windows Rachel could see groups of men gathered at tables inside, eating or reading newspapers. She read the sign:
MY OLD DUTCH
. “I don’t get it,” she said.

Adam pointed to a far bigger sign high above them:
HARWICH FERRY TERMINAL. CROSSINGS TO THE HOOK OF HOLLAND
.

“That’s where they wear clogs,” Morag said. “Where the tulips come from.” Adam nodded and Morag looked pleased with herself.

Rachel looked at Gabriel. “Why are we going to Holland?”

“It’s the quickest way out of the country.”

“Why do we have to leave the country?” she asked. Gabriel said nothing. “Why this way though? Why not just catch a plane to Africa or Australia or whatever?” Rachel continued.

Gabriel began walking towards the exit and shouted back over his shoulder. “Come on, you heard what Morag said. Don’t you want to try on some clogs?”

Rachel and Adam heaved up their backpacks and started to follow. After a couple of steps, Adam looked back and saw that the younger twins had not moved. He trudged back.

“Come on, I know you’re tired, but—”

“We’re hungry,” Morag said.

Adam nodded, immediately aware of his own stomach grumbling. It seemed a long time since dinner the evening before at the Hope Project. He shouted to Gabriel and
Rachel, who walked back to join him. “The little ones are starving,” he said. “
I’m
starving.” He nodded towards the cafe.

“There isn’t time,” Gabriel said.

Rachel was already walking towards the steamy windows, drawn by the inviting smell that had begun to waft across the car park. “We have to eat,” she said.

The place was far smaller than it had looked from the outside; no more than a dozen small, Formica-topped tables lined up around a serving hatch. While two fat men worked at an enormous, sizzling griddle, an equally large woman, with her grey hair pulled back and wearing a dirty apron, bustled between the diners with steaming mugs clutched between her fingers, or carrying plates, three at a time.

“It’s not like Mr Cheung’s kitchen,” Morag said.

Adam stared as a plate piled high with bacon, eggs and baked beans passed within a few centimetres of his face. “It’ll do.”

They crowded round a table in the window and Rachel waved the waitress over. A badge on her apron said “Dawn”. If she was curious as to what five unaccompanied children were doing ordering breakfast at two o’clock in the morning, she didn’t show it.

Gabriel said he wasn’t hungry. Morag and Duncan each ordered beans on toast, while Rachel and Adam plumped for what the menu described as the “Hungry Trucker’s Breakfast Special”. Dawn looked blank when Adam asked for eggs over
easy and even blanker when he asked if there was any maple syrup. She pointed him towards the plastic container on the table, brimming with sachets of ketchup, vinegar and brown sauce.

“Brown?!” Adam said, when she’d gone. “That’s just the colour of it, right?”

The portions were enormous, but they each cleared their plates easily enough. Nobody spoke, and Gabriel stared out of the window as he waited for them to finish.

“Are we done?” he asked, as the last knife and fork clattered on to an empty plate.

“Duncan needs the toilet,” Morag whispered.

Gabriel nodded and watched as the girl led her brother away. He had emptied a sachet of sugar on to the tabletop and was absent-mindedly tracing a pattern with his finger. Rachel looked across, instantly recognizing the familiar shape: the three interlocking blades.

“You mentioned others?” she said. Gabriel looked up. “When we were in the truck.”

Gabriel went back to tracing the shape of the Triskellion with his finger. A quick, smooth motion: his fingertip squeaking against the plastic table.

“You never really answered Adam’s question,” Rachel continued.

Gabriel glanced to his right and saw the waitress coming back to clear the table. He looked into Rachel’s eyes and casually scraped the grains of sugar over the edge of the table.

“There are three of them,” he said quietly. “Three Triskellions.”

When Morag returned with Duncan, the waitress came back to the table and handed over the bill. Gabriel picked it up and looked at her as if he was confused.

“We’ve paid this already.”

“You what?”

Gabriel kept looking, spoke a little more slowly. “We’ve paid this already, Dawn.”

The waitress shook her head for a few seconds as if trying to clear it, then rolled her eyes. “Sorry, I think I must be going mad. Course you’ve paid it. Course you have…”

They watched her walk back towards the counter, muttering, and began to gather their things together.

“I wish I could do that,” Adam said.

“You can,” Morag said. “We
all
can. You just need to get the hang of it.”

“Come on,” Gabriel said. “There’s a ferry leaving in five minutes.”

Outside, it had begun to rain gently. The children gathered undercover and Gabriel urged them to hurry. On the other side of the fence, the sea had begun to roll and swell, slapping against the dockside.

Gabriel stepped out, eager to get down to the ferry. Rachel reached out to stop him. “This is the quickest way out, you said?”

“Right. So can we—?”

“The quickest … and the most obvious.”

Gabriel looked at her. “What are you thinking?”

It had struck her in the cafe; just an idle thought at first, but now she was certain of it. “It’s the way they’ll be expecting us to go,” she said. “They’re probably watching the port already.”

Gabriel nodded, stared out towards the North Sea for a few seconds, then turned back, resigned to it. “Any bright ideas?”

Rachel could see by the look in Gabriel’s eye that this was some kind of test. “Where were you planning to take us?” she asked.

“Across to Rotterdam, then down through Belgium and into France.”

“What’s in France?”

“Just a stop we need to make.” He flashed Rachel half a smile. “Maybe a little bit of sightseeing.”

Adam had been distracted by Morag and Duncan and had only half caught the conversation. Now he stepped across. “What’s going on?”

“Ask your sister,” Gabriel said.

Adam looked at Rachel. “There must be other ways to get to France,” she said.

They stood discussing the options, and when it had been decided, they waited a few minutes longer, until a likely looking candidate emerged from inside the cafe.

He wore jeans and a padded waistcoat over a red
lumberjack shirt. He turned to say his goodbyes to Dawn, his blonde mullet highlighted by the glare from the sign above his head.

“Dutch,” Gabriel whispered. “Probably just got here on his way to London.”

“He’s perfect,” Rachel said. She watched as Gabriel followed the Dutchman across the car park towards a huge lorry with a foreign number plate.

“What’s happening?” Morag asked.

Adam and Rachel watched. Gabriel was deep in conversation with the lorry driver. He pointed back towards the children still gathered under the awning outside the cafe and the lorry driver stared and nodded enthusiastically, waving his arms around and smiling.

“Whatever he’s saying, it seems to be working,” Adam said.

When Gabriel beckoned them across, they ran through the drizzle and huddled together by the side of the Dutchman’s lorry. Rachel raised an eyebrow at Gabriel. He gave her a small nod: sorted.

The driver opened his arms wide and beamed at them. “Hi, you lot. I’m Ronald. You’re welcome aboard.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said.

“No, no. My pleasure,” Ronald said. “Now climb into the cabin and you can ride up front with me.”

The children did as they were told and moved around to the far door while Ronald climbed into his seat. He patted
the seat next to him and beckoned Adam across. “Come on, sit over here next to me.”

“OK…”

Rachel helped Morag and Duncan up, then climbed in herself, waited for Gabriel to join them and shut the door. It was a tight squeeze, so Rachel lifted Duncan on to her lap.

“There we are,” the driver said. “All set?” He turned the engine over and the lorry juddered into life. “Hold tight…”

They pulled out of the car park on to a rain-swept road that curled slowly around the terminal before joining traffic filtering on to a main road and, finally, a motorway. Rachel stared straight ahead, listening to the squeak of the windscreen-wipers and the driver’s constant, sing-song chatter as he told them all about his journey across from Holland.

He had been delighted to offer them a lift and seemed friendly enough.

But people seemed to be a great many things, and Rachel was learning a lot of lessons, fast.

Number one: trust nobody.

T
he blue sign at the side of the motorway announced that London was just another twelve miles away. Rachel had counted them down from nearly a hundred and now the city loomed, an orange glow on the horizon.

Duncan and Morag were still asleep, as they had been for the last hour or so, in the poky bunk positioned above the cab. Rachel was squeezed between Adam and Gabriel on the seat behind the driver, and every now and again, Ronald would turn and wink at them, offering them gum, before continuing to hum a tune that sounded like the theme from a kids’ TV show.

Twenty minutes later, with the sky getting lighter, a vast, silvery city of skyscrapers and massive glass towers seemed to grow in front of their eyes. Lights sparkled in thousands of windows and multicoloured neon signs shouted corporate names from the rooftops: Citibank, HSBC, Barclays.

“Welcome to London Town,” Ronald said cheerily. The
lorry driver’s accent was thick, even though his English was excellent. He opened his mouth in a wide yawn that made Rachel realize how tired she was herself. She yawned in sympathy and saw that Adam was doing the same.

It was not the London they had expected to see. Where was St. Paul’s? Where were Big Ben and the Tower of London? This was something far more modern, newer than New York.

“I don’t recognize
any
of this,” Rachel said. “Where are we exactly?”

“The Docklands,” Ronald said. “This is the new bit, where the old East End and the docks used to be. It’s fantastic.”