Page 46 of Out of the Blue
I close my eyes. A split second later, a body hits the pavement.
TWENTY-FIVE
The screams come like a tidal wave, roaring over the crowd before sweeping back into a horrified quiet. Police officers push through the scrum, yelling at everyone to get out of the way. The crowd staggers backwards, sending me stumbling into Calum. My eyes are shut tight, but there’s an image behind the lids: small body, arms at odd angles, the ground spattered red.
But when I finally look up Leah is still standing on the roof of the hotel. She, her mother and several other members are staring down at the pavement, some crouching to clutch at the tiles. The black-haired woman drops the loudspeaker as she scrambles past the chimneys; it slides down the roof and catches in the rain gutter.
‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Who jumped?’
‘You didn’t see?’ Allie’s voice is shaking. ‘That man, the one standing right beside Leah. He – he just stepped off the edge.’
The ground dips and the sky spins towards me, but I push past the people telling me to take it easy, and I run towards the hotel. The cult members are pouring out of the hotel doors now, wading through the crowd towards the vans parked illegally outside the train station. Some of them make it; others are caught by police officers, like reeds snagged on river rocks, and dragged away.
As I rush forward, I catch a flash of grey slipping past an elderly couple by the pedestrian crossing. The two kids make it to the van, followed by the black-haired woman. She stands by the door, screaming at the others to hurry up. As she passes, I lunge forward and catch Leah’s arm. Her mouth falls open when she sees me.
‘The Being,’ I say. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘What? What do you mean?’
Frustration rushes over me, but I can tell from her expression that she’s not lying. ‘I’ll explain later,’ I say. ‘I need you to take us to the Standing Fallen base. Now.’
‘What?I can’t, Jaya. I told you . . .’ She looks over her shoulder. One of the vans revs and jerks backwards into the road, sending tourists scattering. ‘I have to go. I have to go back with them—’
‘No!’ She tries to pull away, but I tighten my grip on her arm. ‘You have to get away from them! I saw you up there! You were going to . . .’
I stop myself from saying it, but Leah fills in the blanks. Her face crumples. She looks so weak, so devastated. And the worst part is that I don’t know if it’s because she was pushed to the edge, or because she didn’t step off it. I don’t understand – she won’t walk away from the Standing Fallen without her mother, but she was ready to throw herself off a building to escape? It doesn’t make sense.
‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ she whispers, as if she’s read my thoughts. ‘You don’t understand the kind of power they have.’
I try another tactic: guilt.
‘Please, Leah. You owe me this.’ I grab her hands, tug on them until she looks up at me. ‘My mum’s gone, you disappeared . . . This Being, she’s my friend. I don’t want to lose her too. Not like this.’
Slowly something in Leah’s expression changes. It hardens. She sniffs and rubs her sleeve across her nose.
‘What do you need me to do?’
As I start to tell her, I see the black-haired woman look towards us. She takes a step towards Leah, but she’s blocked by a policeman saying something about ‘trespassing’ and ‘breach of the peace’. Before Leah has a chance to change her mind, I grab her hand and drag her across the road, back towards Allie and Calum.
‘Quickly! Let’s go – now!’
‘This way,’ Allie shouts. ‘I can drive us there.’
We follow her down the road, weaving in and out of the buses lined up on Princes Street. Allie is wheezing heavily now, her pace dropping, but she keeps going. She leads us through Waverley Station, up the escalators and on to Market Street. It’s only when we reach the car that I realize Calum’s followed us all the way here. He pushes past a group of tourists and sprints towards the car, beating Allie to the driver’s seat.
‘I’m coming with you,’ he says. ‘Please. I want to put things right.’
The anger I’d put on hold outside the hotel comes rushing through me now. ‘No way. All of this is your fault! You practically handed Teacake over to them. You as good as sold her.’
He winces. Allie pulls open the passenger door, but pauses before she gets inside. ‘Jaya’s right. Teacake won’t be able to trust you now. You’d just make things worse.’ She closes it and goes round to the driver’s side. ‘Get out, Calum.’
I usher Leah into the back seat and climb in beside her. Calum half chases after the car, even as Allie pulls out of the parking spot and starts off down the road. I watch as he grows smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror, until we turn a corner and he disappears altogether.
It’s strange having Allie and Leah in the same place. They both look pale and tired, both clearly shaken up after what happened outside the hotel, and yet they’re so different: Leah sits in the back seat, her knees pulled to her chest, nervously grasping at her hair; Allie’s hands are steady on the steering wheel, and her expression is calm and determined as she drives us out of the city. My life in Edinburgh has collided with the one I was living a few weeks ago, and it’s just . . . surreal.
Awkward too. Allie is one of the most talkative people I’ve ever met, but even she doesn’t know what to say to someone who was contemplating throwing herself off a building just a few minutes ago. When I close my eyes, the scene repeats itself behind my eyes: the swarms of people, the noise, the crashing sound as the man’s body hit the earth. And Leah, ready to follow him.
Just remembering it makes my heart race and my eyes prickle. But now isn’t the time to talk about it.
