Blood, Glass and Sugar Read online

  A torrent of footsteps descended the stairs. She saw their boots as they marched out into the alleyway. The leader was the last to leave. There were red gemstones in his buckles, she saw them gleaming when he stopped at the threshold and turned back to face the counter. Evie closed her eyes again, imagining that she was Zen and had become one with the shop floor.

  “I will get answers. Some form of order’s going to have to be brought to this forsaken kingdom.” He stood silently for a moment, as if waiting for a response.

  Evie could feel his frustration emanating through the air and crashing against her.

  The men started shouting in the street. Their leader sighed, and Evie heard his boots turning on the broken glass. “Inform your most hospitable host that I was here again, and tell him I know more of his secrets this time.”

  He slammed the rickety door behind him.

  Chapter Three

  Evie waited, afraid to move in case they returned. The unmistakable sound of horses’ hooves clattering and fading away outside was the final piece of weirdness to conclude the event.

  She crawled out of her hiding place on her hands and knees, and stood up, carefully brushing the shards of glass off her hands. They were covered in thread-fine slices, but she couldn’t feel them stinging. Her whole body felt awkward and numb, as if her soul had been transported into a wooden mannequin.

  The man groaned from the stairs above, and her organs did a wild flip inside her. She drew in a deep breath of air and stepped out from behind the banister.

  He was lying on his back at the top of the staircase. His wavy hair spread over the floor and spilled on to the second step like a black waterfall. Evie stared at him numbly and wondered if she should call the police, or an ambulance. Then he coughed and rolled onto his side, sitting up slowly on his elbow and squinting down at her.

  “What happened?” he said.

  She couldn’t find her voice for a moment. All the time she’d been hiding she’d imagined he would be a fat, bald man in a vest with bulging biceps and grinning skull tattoos. He did have nice arms, but they were slimly muscled and fully clothed in a long-sleeved, old-fashioned shirt. The laces at his chest had loosened and it hung off at one shoulder. Even at a distance she could see bruises already forming on his pale skin. His collarbone looked particularly red and swollen. Blood trickled from his bottom lip and he reached up and touched it gingerly.

  Evie cleared her throat to speak. And squeaked like a mouse.

  His gaze snapped back up from his hand at the embarrassing sound, as if he was only just realising she was there. “Did you do this?” He sat up straighter, though he flinched with pain at the movement.

  Evie shook her head and attempted to speak with a human voice. “You just got the crap beat out of you by some gang.” She motioned to the state of the shop behind her. “I think I should call an ambulance and the police.” She walked forwards, stopping at the foot to the steps.

  “Police?” He used the counter behind to haul himself to his feet. He looked perplexed. “Oh, the public guard.” He limped forward and surveyed the damage that had been done in silence.

  “Do you know who they might have been?”

  “Who who might have been?” His tone was irritated, as though she was talking nonsense.

  She frowned, and took another step up towards him. “The people who did this.”

  He wiped more blood from his lip and sat back down on the stairs, resting his head in his hands. “I have an idea.”

  “Is it about drugs?” Evie asked. She felt naive and ridiculous asking him, she knew nothing about the matter. She stepped on to the next stair, wanting to get closer and look at his wounds better in the light of the lamp on the counter, but he fell further back when she stepped in to the light, and stared at her.

  His eyes were brandy coloured, wide and all seeing. He stared without blinking for a long time, and she stood self-consciously, staring back. He had just been attacked, and still she was a hundred percent certain that he looked more attractive than she did, standing in her stiff maroon blazer and pleated grey skirt.

  He leaned forward, something like recognition lit inside his eyes. “Alison?” he asked. His voice was gentle, like she was a dream that he would wake if he spoke too loud.

  He reached his hand out to her. Then drew away again with a jerk, as if an invisible cord had pulled him back.

  She shook her head, “No. I’m Evie. I…I came to ask about getting a tattoo.” She realised her own voice was barely a whisper. Her heart was fluttering in her chest, and she wished for one bizarre and illogical moment that she were Alison after all.

  He looked like she’d asked him if he would sell her an African monkey, and she realised that if she wasn’t Alison then she didn’t belong here.

  “Look, I’m going to call an ambulance okay?”

  He only looked confused, then swayed suddenly on his feet. She came up the rest of the steps and placed a steadying hand under his elbow. He stared at her hand against him for a moment, and then looked into her eyes with piercing intensity. “It is dangerous here.”

  “I gathered that already.” She helped him back a few paces to the support of the wooden counter. He shrugged her off when they reached it, and she felt stupidly disappointed.

  “Thank you for your help, but you will leave now. I need to sort these matters out.”

  “You need to lie down.” She looked behind her at the shop floor. “Those guys wrecked this place. If you don’t call the police…”

  “Girl, I do not need the police, or anyone else. My shop is now closed. You shouldn’t come to places like this in the dark.” He limped around the counter to a curtain against the back wall. “You shouldn’t come to a place like this at all.”

  Evie followed him, ignoring his warnings. “Do you live on your own here? You might have concussion. I really don’t think I should leave you alone.”

  He laughed quietly and pulled the curtain back, revealing a door. “You are strange. What should it matter to you?” He glanced back at her, but his eyes barely rested on her before he turned away again, reaching out and opening the door.

  “Wait,” she called. “If you don’t let me see that you are going to be okay…I will have to call an ambulance.”

  He released the door handle, and turned right around to face her. “Is that a threat?” His eyes looked a thousand times clearer now, a sharp wine red light gleamed within the brown.

  Evie raised her eyebrows, hardly imagining an ambulance as a worthy threat. “It would be rotten of me to leave you alone like this after what’s just happened to you.”

  “I don’t live alone.”

  Disappointment flooded her, she wondered instantly if he had a girlfriend sleeping unaware up above. “Do your parents live here?” she blurted.

  He erupted with laughter, and Evie felt her face light up like a beacon. He wiped tears from his eyes, which were beginning to bruise badly, and shook his head disbelievingly. “Thank you for putting some cheer into this charming evening.” He made to walk through the door again.

  “What about all the jewellery out here? Someone could just come in and steal it. All your windows are broken if you haven’t noticed.”

  He gave a casual shrug. “No one would steal from here. Trust me.” His voice was almost sinister when he said it.

  Evie suppressed a shiver and began to make her way down the steps towards the door.

  “Evie.”

  She stopped, feeling a white-hot glow spread inside her. He remembered her name. She turned back to him, not knowing at all what to expect. He was facing her now, watching her go.

  “Don’t ever come back here. I don’t want to see you around this area again.”

  The glow froze inside her, becoming a hard lump of ice plummeting through her chest and into her stomach. She wondered what had made him say it. He looked so serious. His words held a weight that was dark and horribly tangible.

  His eyes burned into hers relentlessly. They we
re eyes she knew, eyes she had known for a long time. Eyes that she instantly forgot when he shut the door.

  The loud and final click broke the spell she was under and she dashed down the last few steps and ran out into the black, cobblestone alleyway wondering what the hell had just happened to her.

  Chapter Four

  The street remained mostly deserted. A warm light still shone out of the bar’s window, making a yellow square quiver on the stones. She walked through it, glancing in to see that the place was thriving with even more people than when she had gone past earlier.

  Earlier seemed like it had been a very long time ago, but Lou hadn’t yet called her.

  She pulled her mobile out of her pocket to check it wasn’t on silent. The screen was cracked, and the phone dead.

  “Shit,” she whispered, stuffing it back in her pocket. She’d completely forgotten it was broken. She hurried out of the alleyway. Then stopped dead and stared at the dark street.

  Every shop was closed and shuttered. The wind clanged off the streetlights and echoed in the emptiness. Panic shot through her like a bullet. She pulled her phone out and stared at it again as if it would suddenly switch on and rewind time. Why hadn’t Lou come down the alley and found her?

  She walked towards the antique store and gazed up at the windows above the shop. Only one light was on, shining at the very top of the building. She shivered in the cold, feeling warm tears prickle her eyes like needles.

  She was only a small walk from home, but she felt like a child deserted by her parents in the middle of London. The day had been too long and weird.

  Loud shouting broke the silence, a burst of laughter and out of key singing. Drunks. She looked down the street and saw a gang of young men stumbling in her direction, shoving and tugging at each other like schoolboys. A wheezing wolf-whistle told her it was time to start walking.

  “Evie!” Her father’s voice boomed out over the singing.

  Evie felt relief wash over her. She looked up to see him running towards her, Lou clinging to his arm. As they came into focus Evie could see how pale and haggard her stepmother looked. As if she had aged a decade since Evie had last seen her.

  Lou flung herself at Evie, squeezing her so tight that it hurt.

  “Oh my God, Evie. I thought you were dead. I thought you were gone. I thought…” Her voice broke into a sob, and Evie put her arms around her and squeezed back. She looked up to see her father’s face looking down at her with stern intensity.

  “Evie, where have you been?” he asked, glaring at the drunken boys as they weaved past.

  “Sir.” One of them nodded, tipping an imaginary hat and attempting a casual smile. They stopped a few yards up and that same boy heaved loudly into a trashcan.

  Lou let go of Evie, her loving mood sobering into disbelief, anger treading close on its heels. “Evie, where the hell did you go?”

  Evie’s tongue felt swollen in her mouth. She swallowed. “I went to the tattoo parlour, remember? You said you’d call me, but I forgot I broke my mobile earlier. I thought you’d come looking for me.”

  Lou’s eyes widened. “I did. The man in the shop said he didn’t see anyone in a school uniform.”

  Evie’s father was furious. “Evie, you better start telling the truth. Where were you? We’ve been looking all night. It’s half eleven for Christ’s sake!”

  “I don’t understand.” Evie looked at Lou, “How could he say he didn’t see me? I was there the whole time.” She turned to point down the alleyway, and found herself staring at a broken down house. All its windows were boarded up, its white paint flaked and dirty. She felt the blood drain from her face, and her mouth was suddenly arid.

  She looked up and down the row, but there were just shops and houses. Her eyes came to rest on a stand up sign, fastened to a shop door with a rusty chain. It read ‘Gemini Ink’ and was plastered with cheap pictures of arms sporting patchy dragons and white skulls. In one photograph the artist posed with a piercing gun. There was a metal ring the size of a Victorian doorknocker in his nose. He was not the young man she had met that night.

  She looked back at her father, not knowing what to think or what to say. He was wearing a smart black suit, but his tie was pulled loose and the top few buttons of his shirt undone. He wasn’t supposed to be coming home until next week. Lou had probably called him away from an extremely important case. Yet here she stood, not kidnapped, not murdered. Just afraid, and apparently insane.

  “Evie.” His voice was more of a growl than anything else. “What the hell is going on?”

  Evie scanned the street again, looking in places where the alleyway couldn’t possibly have been. Looking anywhere but at Lou, or her father.

  “Why would you do this, Evie?” Lou sounded exhausted. “I thought you were looking forward to our evening all week. If something came up…we could have just rescheduled it.”

  Evie shrugged. She couldn’t form sane words. If she spoke the truth out loud she was afraid it wouldn’t be real. That the boy in the shop was something bizarre she had made up. One of the people she liked to draw. One of the characters that came to her head with a fully formed story and a presence that was more real to her than her distant father.

  Do they speak to you Evie? Do they tell you to do things?

  That was what he’d asked when she told him about her art, and the characters. When he’d found out about Dungeons and Dragons he had flipped. Some parents claimed it was from the devil. Richard Edlin thought it fostered bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia and altogether anti-social behaviour.

  “Did you sneak off to meet someone?”

  This shocked her. The slightly hopeful tone in his voice told her he’d be happy if she was trying to meet a boy. That he’d tell her to invite him home, that Lou would make some dinner for them. Then he could sleep peacefully in his firm-paid hotel bed, knowing that his daughter was on the way to being half normal.

  She couldn’t lie. Not when Louise would see right through it. They shared things. They didn’t keep secrets from each other. Evie could see that fact written clearly in Lou’s honest, narrowed eyes.

  Evie said nothing.

  “Well this is mature Evie, very mature. You’ll be seventeen in two weeks. Next time you disappear I won’t be dropping everything and running around Camden looking for you in the middle of the night. Hopefully when that happens you won’t actually be lying dead in a ditch somewhere.” He looked at her with disgust and began walking towards Main Street.

  Moving to Camden had been a charity act on his part. He had thought she’d meet more people, since to him it was the freak capital of London. But she wasn’t like Trix, she didn’t have the gift of people speak, whether it was being friendly or telling them to clear off.

  She couldn’t even communicate properly with her own family.

  The three of them walked back to Delancey Street in silence. Evie could feel Lou’s eyes on her, questioning, worrying. Hoping that Evie would confide if something had happened. Evie tried to think of what to say when they were alone. The truth wasn’t the truth. It was something other, something that made her belong in a mental institute.

  The sparkling jewels in the gang leader’s boots gleamed on the backs of her eyelids when she blinked. And the boy’s sleek raven hair was almost touchable in her memory.

  Her father slid his key into the lock and opened the door to their period terrace house. Evie pushed past him and ran to the stairs.

  “You’re grounded, Evie!” he yelled at her back.

  She pounded up two flights of stairs to her room at the very top, so fast that her legs ached. She locked her door behind her and flopped on to the bed, gathering her silk red duvet tight around her. Her palms bled, lots of tiny cuts where the glass had sliced her. Her knees stung too from where she had crawled on the floor. She was glad neither her father nor Lou had seen them.

  A photograph stared at her from the bedside table. Her father held her mother. His rugged profile looked down, eyes fixed on t
he beautiful young woman as if he could keep her there forever if he didn’t look away.

  But she gazed out of the picture at her daughter on the bed, the daughter she had only held for a fleeting moment, and her light blue eyes were far too understanding.

  Evie buried her messed up, hallucinating head under her pillow and wondered, not for the first time if her father would trade her and their seventeen years of distant, unsure love for another moment inside that picture, holding on to something perfect, something fragile and wonderful that wouldn’t last forever.

  Before she drifted into a deep sleep she tried to picture the boy in the tattoo shop, as if he could ward off her reality, but for some reason she couldn’t even remember the colour of his hair anymore.

  Chapter Five

  Evie woke on top of her covers. Her blazer was off, draped on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her sore eyes and peered down at the mess that had spilled out of its pockets all over her carpet. Money, pencil shavings, sweet wrappers and balls of maroon fluff.

  She groaned, scratching her cheek, and feeling creases where the duvet had been pressed hard against her face all night. She was still wearing the rest of her uniform. A great way to start the first day of the Christmas holiday.

  She rolled off the bed, and stood up. Undoing her shirt and wriggling out of her skirt she tossed both on the pile of dirty wash accumulating in the corner of the room. She pulled her dressing robe off the back of her door and shrugged it on, fastening it around her as she went out onto the landing. She could hear the TV blasting in the kitchen, and she followed it like a zombie. The smell of bacon cooking made her stomach growl. Lou was making breakfast.

  Evie paused outside the living room door and debated going back up to her room and starving herself to avoid the impending questions about the night before. They were going to come eventually. She just wished eventually didn’t have to be right now. Maybe her father would be there to ward it off.