The Apothecary Page 0,16

tried the door handle, but it was locked.

I heard a violent explosion upstairs, and it made us both crouch behind the shelves. There were footsteps and voices, speaking what sounded like German.

“Do you understand them?” I asked.

Benjamin shook his head.

We listened while the men searched the office. I could hear Benjamin’s breathing in the dark, and my own, which was unsteady. He looked at the heavy book on his knees, and I knew he was wondering if it was worth more than his father’s life. I could tell he wanted to go upstairs and fight.

“There are too many of them,” I whispered. “Your father said to keep the book safe.”

We waited what seemed a long time, then heard a scraping of metal above us, and Benjamin pulled me back further into the dusty shadows behind the shelves. The grate was pulled away, and a man’s head peered into the cellar. He had a long scar across one cheek, and the hideousness of a face hanging upside down. He seemed to be grinning, or gritting his teeth: They were bared in the dim light as he looked around. Then we heard the clang of a police car’s bell on the street, and someone shouted in German. It was clear that the voice was urging the others to leave. The horrible upside-down face disappeared, and the grate was lowered again.

Benjamin and I crouched in the darkness, barely daring to breathe. As the immediate terror faded, I realised that his arm was across my shoulders, and the side of my body against his. He seemed to become aware of it, too, and he relaxed his grip on my arm. We moved an inch apart and my arm tingled where his fingers had been. The police bell had faded into the distance: They must have been after someone else.

When the shop was silent above us, Benjamin and I crept back out, pushing the heavy grate open. The place had been ransacked. Papers were thrown on the floor, drawers opened, chairs toppled. Broken jars of herbs filled the air with sharp, strange smells. Things had been pulled off the shelves in the front of the shop: bottles of pills, boxes of bandages, bags of cotton wool.

The apothecary was gone.

CHAPTER 8

The Pharmacopoeia

Benjamin and his father lived in a flat above the shop, and we decided that it would surely be watched. So we went to my flat, where my parents were sitting at the card table we’d set up near the tiny kitchen. I could tell I was interrupting some serious conversation, but I didn’t have time to wonder what it was. We had decided not to tell them what had happened, because they would want to call the police, and the apothecary had told us not to.

My father turned in his chair and smiled. “How was the rematch?” he asked.

“It was . . . fine,” I said. I’d forgotten all about chess.

“Who won?”

Benjamin and I glanced at each other. “The game got interrupted,” I said. “His father had to go to Scotland to visit his aunt. She’s sick.”

“I’m so sorry,” my mother said, all concern. “I hope she’s all right.”

I felt suddenly and sadly grown up—not because I had brought a boy to meet my parents, but because I had told them a lie. “I wondered if he could stay here tonight,” I said. “I mean, his father asked if he could.”

My parents glanced at each other. “I don’t see why not,” my father said, after a pause that suggested that he did see why not.

My mother made scrambled eggs again for dinner, and we ate at the little card table, where we all had to sit too close together. Benjamin was formal and polite, and everyone seemed uncomfortable.

“We haven’t really figured out shopping yet,” my mother said. “So we’re relying heavily on our landlady’s eggs.”

“They’re delicious,” Benjamin said. “It’s hard to get eggs.”

There was an awkward silence.

“So what do your parents do, Benjamin?” my father asked.

“My father is the apothecary down the street.”

My father pushed back his chair with a screech of wood. “No kidding!” he said. “The source of all our heat. And your mother?”

Because my mother worked, my parents always made a point of inquiring about other kids’ mothers. Nowadays it seems a perfectly normal thing to ask, but in 1952, most kids’ mothers stayed home, and the question was sometimes embarrassing.

“She died when I was little,” Benjamin said.

I stared at him. I’d never thought to ask about his mother, but he