The tree-lined road bends and then opens out, and across the slightly larger road ahead of us there is a wall. A high brick wall, dark like slate, slightly curved.
It’s not much, but it’s different at least.
“Seriously?” Chiu says, dismayed.
“We’re walled in,” Farah says.
“No,” I say. “Look. The curve is convex. We’re outside the wall.”
“Is that any better?” Chiu says.
“I think so,” I say. “If we can find a way inside.”
I set off. I know I’m right now. I can feel the arc of the wall and I know that the gates are up ahead somewhere. On our right, the bay-windowed houses with apple trees and magnolia trees watch us resentfully. They know we’re escaping and they can do nothing to stop us.
I can feel Its surprise. Its head tilted to one side inquisitively.
We walk for a long time. On our left, the wall arcs round and it feels like an anchor, a single fixed point in space and time. It made the rules, but It has to follow them like we do. I think about a physics YouTube I watched once about a beetle walking across a football. It doesn’t realize that space is curved and so it keeps going, thinking it’s travelling in a straight line, until it inevitably loops back round and ends up where it began.
If the beetle wants to get somewhere it needs to fall off first, I think.
“Kyle, please,” Chiu groans.
I glance back and Farah has slowed down as well.
“Kyle,” Chiu says again. Irritable now.
“We’re really close,” I say. “I’m sure of it.”
The treeline is thicker up ahead and for a heart-stopping moment we lose sight of the wall. But then we round the outcropping of bushes and on the far side there is a gate.
Standing open.
Tall: three times my height at least. Made from wrought iron and ornamented so extensively that it reminds me of a storm that’s been frozen in time.
“That doesn’t exactly look inviting,” Chiu says, doubtfully.
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s where we want to be.”
I can’t exactly explain the excitement rushing inside me. Escape, my mind says. Deliverance. It didn’t want us to get this far. I turn and grin at the others. They seem less impressed than I’d expected them to be.
On the other side of the gate is a park of some kind. Winding paths cut through dense treeline, cutting back and forth, rising up a steep hill. I take the map off Farah and look. There’s lots of green spaces on the map and it’s impossible to tell which one we’re in, if any of them. But I’m certain that if we get to the top, it’ll become clear.
I’m sweating and my breath is tight in my throat. I stumble, scramble my way up the hill. We’re close. Chiu and Farah call from behind me, but I don’t stop. They’re following, that’s enough and we’re moving faster again.
It’s not exactly a mountain, but I’m thinking about all the mountains Mum and Father Michael like to talk about. “Mountains are closer to God,” they like to say. Like Mount Sinai where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and Mount Nebo, where he saw the promised land. This is my mountain, I think. But it’s not taking me closer to God. It’s taking me somewhere better.
I’ve given up on the paths now and I’m scrambling through the brambles and the ferns. They catch on my jeans and claw at my T-shirt. I stumble into a patch of stingers and feel the angry needles like tiny electric shocks across my palm. The others are calling after me. They sound scared as well as angry now.
Then the brambles give way and we’re in a wide-open field. It’s been well looked after, more of a park than a field, with a broad, gravelled path and trees carefully planted to obscure the view until you are at the very top.
We climb. And then we’re there and beyond the brow, between the trees.
London.
Laid out, like a meal on a plate.
Just like the photos I’ve seen on the internet, just like all the tourist information and visitor sites I’ve trawled over the years. There’s the Shard, spearing upwards like it’s slicing the sky in two. The dome of St Paul’s below it. The Gherkin off to the left, swollen and unlikely, like a seed pod ready to burst. To the right, the Walkie Talkie, which could be a regular tower block except that it’s somehow warped and half melted in the heat.
The breath leaves my lungs and I feel for a moment as if I’m floating.
The London skyline has always looked unworldly to me, but seeing it now, after everything we’ve been through in this world, I find it hard to imagine that the architects who built this place haven’t spent some time in the Stillness.
“It’s Parliament Hill,” I say.
“It’s London,” Farah says firmly, as if to say: This isn’t Barnet.
I sit, feeling my own exhaustion now, but elated as well, because here is the place I’ve wanted to come for as long as I remember and here I am, towering over it, as if I could reach down and pluck one of the ripe, succulent buildings and eat it like a grape.
“We can’t stay here,” Chiu says, his voice tinged with panic. “We need to get inside.”
I shake my head. “We should rest here. It’s OK.”
“But we’re outside,” Chiu says.
“Don’t you feel it?” I say. “The danger isn’t about inside or outside, it’s something else. People come here; they feel safe here. So long as a place has weight, we’re OK.”
I can feel It considering me, appraising me. I know I’m right.
