Broken City

Chapter Five

“I promise you Deeta, we’ll all come home safe and sound.”

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Tom has left when I go up to make breakfast the next morning and the children are unusually subdued. I have greenhouse duty again and Professor Jepsjon School to teach this morning and all the children will attend.

So it happens that I pass the morning quite lonely and have the uncomfortable luxury of having plenty of time to dwell on my own thoughts undisturbed. Despite Toms promise I am still uneasy, with Nell it is not so bad, as a woman she will be given more protection.

Tom will not.

In fact I have an uncomfortable feeling that if anything he will take the most dangerous assignments himself simply as a matter of course.

And so the first day of Tom’s absence passes quietly. By the second day the children have recovered their bounce and the house is rowdy until they leave it to pursue more scholarly activities in the classroom. Spending most of the night worrying about the others who are ‘out’ has taken its toll on me and before eleven o’clock is reached I have what promises to be a blinding headache.

 Having already tidied the house, washed the bedding and baked enough food for the five thousand I sit in Tom’s armchair with my cup of tea in the vain hope that a moments rest and the drink will scare my headache off.

I’m not sure how it happens but the next thing I’m aware of is the faintly groggy feeling you get when you’ve been woken from sleep quickly. A glance at the clock tells me that forty minutes have gone by, but the room is still silent with no noise to rouse me from what had obviously been a deep sleep. I stand up and meet my own eyes in the mirror above the fire place; I’m staring at myself in a kind of dazed way when I realize that mine is not the only figure reflected in it.

I suppose it must have been the second time he walked through this room and the first time he didn’t notice me curled up in the sinking depths of the large arm chair, he is quite as shocked as I am to see he is not alone.

I think a full second elapses before I utter a strangled scream and leg it through the door and into the passage way, as the first thing I come across is another camouflaged figure my panic is absolute, the first thing I think of is the children who in about fifteen minutes time will joyfully be free of the shackles of their lessons. The only way to go is up as the two strangers are behind me and so I run up the stairs even while I know that I am leading the intruders towards the children. With the sound of pursuit hideously loud in the stairwell, coherent thought is proving difficult. I’m half way up the forth flight when I hear Dec’s jubilant voice proclaiming himself the winner of some unseen race.

“Dec run!” my voice cracks and my throat, already sore, tightens making my breathing even more laboured.

Dec’s voice exclaiming above my head is cut short as he sees my pursuers, I hear the door onto the stairwell open and close above me and a moment latter something hit the floor behind me with a dull thud causing a cheer to reverberate around the walls.

Dec, bless him, hadn’t ran away when I told him to but had brought a large book from the school room above and hurled it at one of my attackers, as that man was at this very moment out cold on the steps his aim must have been pretty accurate.

The last of the men is felled by some sort of encyclopaedia this time lobbed by Roydon. I reach the landing they are standing on completely out of breath and Roydon and Dec seize a hand each and drag me after Ricky who has Tarri in his arms and Carris’s hand tucked in his.

From the direction in which they are going, I think their destination is Ralph’s house, but we keep running into the strangers that have breached the building and our efforts bring us almost full circle. We come to a standstill in one of the rooms with a connecting door and, breathless though we are, endeavour to regulate our breathing.