I quicken my pace, walking with purpose now, turning back frequently to check on Chiu and Farah. The brow of the hill takes them out of sight sooner than I would have thought. I reach the trees and find a little clearing with a bench that I hadn’t seen before. Oddly, the bench faces the wrong way: not out towards the city, but back down the hill towards the undergrowth and the layered banks of trees that we came through to get here.
The bench is overgrown with creepers and lichen, weather-beaten and half rotted like it’s destined to fade into the earth some time very soon. I wonder if the bench in the ordinary world is actually gone altogether, destroyed a long time ago and what remains here is just the slowly degrading idea of it. I turn and look at the banks of trees and the arching dip of the grass as it drops away in the middle distance. It causes something to swell in my throat, a sense of wonder, of awe, as if the sweeping folds of land might swaddle me if I knew how to let them.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” a cracked, dry voice says.
I startle and reach instinctively for my knife. An old woman is sitting on the bench. She’s been there all along but she is so weathered herself, so much a part of the bench and half buried under fallen leaves and branches, that she is hardly visible.
“I met an angel here once,” she continues. “I think they come for the view. We think we come for the view as well but we don’t. We come because of how it feels to be near the angels.”
“Are you … OK?” I say.
The woman smiles tiredly. Her skin looks like bark, her white hair looks like a spider’s web that’s breaking under its own weight. “I’m dying, dear,” she says, kindly. “But other than that, I suppose I’m doing OK.” One arm has grown its own shoots and leaves and begun to merge with the bench so that she can hardly lift it; the other, I realize now, is gone entirely and looks to have blended with the bench a long time ago. “I used to come here with my husband, you know. I like to imagine that he came here as well after he died.”
“I can help you,” I say, moving towards her, my knife outstretched. “I can remove the Puzzles, cut you free—”
The woman makes a sudden effort to shake her head. “No, no, I’m past all that. I was surprised to find myself here at all if I’m honest.” She laughs dryly, returning to her previous thought. “Most people came to Parliament Hill to see the city, but my husband and I always sat here. We preferred the green. Silly really, to live in London all that time. We should have moved out to the countryside as soon as we got married. We used to talk about it often enough, but we always thought there was more time… People always think there’s more time than there is, don’t they? We live like we’re going to be here for ever and then suddenly we’re not.”
“Please,” I say. “Let me help you.”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I think you are here to help me.”
She catches my eye with a warm, regretful look and suddenly I understand what she means. “No,” I say. “I … I can’t.”
“Come on, dear, I need you to be brave now.” I start to back away and she stretches her head forward, as if trying to reach out to me. “The view is very nice and all,” she continues, matter-of-factly. “But I’ve been here too long. I’m done.”
“I can’t,” I say.
“You’re afraid? Look at me … so scared I’m rooted to the spot. But it’s such a small thing, really. Fear. I’ve had a long time to think about it and I’m ready to move on.”
“Where will you move on to?” I say.
Her laugh is playful, an echo of a younger woman. “How could I possibly know a thing like that?” she says. “Probably nowhere, but that’s not a reason to hang on indefinitely, is it? The only thing wrong with dying is doing it when you don’t want to.”
I could leave, I think. Go back to the others and head down the hill. She’ll fade away soon enough.
“He’s still coming for you, you know,” the woman says.
I turn quickly and stare at her. Jonah. “How do you know?”
She smiles. “The same way as you know, my love.”
“I have to get Farah back,” I say. “She’s sick, she needs treatment.”
The woman’s face breaks into a smile. “Young love!” She beams. “You are lucky, my boy, to feel that. Oh, I was wretched with it in the early days.” Her eyes mist as the memory comes back to her. “I remember it so well. I remember the feeling, but I can’t for the life of me remember why it felt that way.” She frowns. “You think you’re in control of your brain, you think you’re a pilot flying an aeroplane. It’s not true. You’re more like a jockey riding a horse. You can direct it, you can hold it back, nudge it this way or that, but really you’re just holding on for the ride for as long as you can.” A pause. “If it’s not you, then it’ll be him. He’s not far behind and he’s been busy.”
“Busy how?” I say.
“Please,” the woman insists. “I’d rather it was you.”
I can’t stand it any longer. The sound of her crackly dry-leaves voice. Begging me. I do it in one quick motion. I take out the knife, step and thrust it into the side of her neck.
“It’s only death,” I whisper.
The old woman lets out a breathy sigh. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
Roots and leaves begin to sprout from her shoulders and arms, pooling and running into the slats of the bench like blood. The woman’s mouth moves like she’s trying to say something. I lean closer to hear.
“You need to be careful, son,” she whispers in a sepulchral voice. “You have caught God’s attention. It’s not a good thing.”
“I don’t believe in God,” I say.
“It didn’t believe in you … either,” she murmurs. “It was better for you that way.”
THIRTY-FOUR
We drop down off Parliament Hill on to another row of bay-windowed terraces. The fear of getting lost again bats against the inside of my head like a moth.
Fear of dying. Fear of forgetting. Fear of being trapped. Fear of the unknown.
The fear of Jonah.
He’s still coming for you.
My footsteps beat a rhythm in my ears and I hold on to it. Just. Keep. Walking.
The road opens out into a wider road and a huge 1970s block of flats extends in both directions, alternating red and white garages and strips of balcony behind faded glass. We cut right and then left and the next road has shops, a park and a church.
