The Apothecary Page 0,70
he would take them all in, and the voyage would be over.
But then Pip appeared beside me with a bright look in his eyes. I don’t know how he spotted me, when I’d left only the tip of my nose out of the invisibility solution, but I was no longer surprised by anything Pip did. “Get ready,” he whispered.
Before I could ask, “Ready for what?” Pip strolled down the dock with his hands in his pockets, passing the policemen as if he hadn’t noticed them. He stood at the bottom of the Kong Olav’s guarded gangway.
“Hey, mister!” he called up to the count at the rail. “I left my cap on the boat! Throw it down, will you?”
Vili glanced at the detective on the dock. Pip followed his glance and jumped in surprise, as if noticing Montclair for the first time.
“Crikey!” he said stagily. “Coppers!”
He ran back up the dock, zigzagging between the two policemen. Detective Montclair tried to grab his sleeve, but missed and chased after him. Officer O’Nan hesitated, looking at the boat, then took off after Pip, too.
Grateful to Pip for the distraction, we followed Mr Shiskin invisibly up the gangway to the boat, our light footsteps masked by the clang of his wooden leg. I looked back to see if Pip was coming. He had a good lead on Detective Montclair and was running towards the Port of London’s gate, just out of the detective’s reach. He had given all of us the chance to get away.
On board, Benjamin and I avoided the crew and went straight through the saloon to the cabin full of empty suitcases where we’d seen our trunk. We closed the door while no one was looking, climbed into the pile of luggage, and dug into the trunk. I pulled on silk long underwear, wool trousers, a jumper, and the peacoat over my freezing invisible nakedness. The Kong Olav’s engines rumbled to life.
“Soon we’ll be at sea,” I said, feeling better and warmer already.
“Soon?” Benjamin said, his invisible head shrouded in the hood of Sarah’s brother’s ski coat, and his hands missing at the ends of the sleeves. “We’re in London, Janie. We’ve got forty miles to go before we get out of the Thames.”
“Forty miles?”
“Have you ever looked at a map of England?”
I had, of course, but not closely. I hadn’t realised there would be such a long stretch when the police could stop us or the apothecary could put us ashore with train fare home. We heard the calls of the crew casting off, and I pushed the blue curtain away from the cabin’s porthole, to look out at the busy port. The whole world, the boats and docks and cranes, seemed to be gliding past us as the boat began to move out into the Thames, with the sound of the churning engines reverberating through the hull. The effect made me a little queasy, and I let the curtain drop.
I pulled a blanket from the trunk and drew it over my legs. We just had to stay hidden for forty miles, that was all. And then we had to stop Shiskin from disabling the boat and turning us over to the Soviets. And then, presumably, we had to help the apothecary with his plan. And meanwhile my parents would be getting home from their location shoot to a tipsy Mrs Parrish, who would tell them that I’d spent the night with my friend Sarah (or Susan) No-last-name, at no given address, to do my Latin homework, and had never come back.
CHAPTER 29
The Kong Olav
Sarah Pennington’s butler had included a bundle of things to eat in the trunk. We found tinned salmon and crackers from Fortnum & Mason, bottles of apple cider, and a pack of playing cards. I thought I would enjoy having a butler to think of everything I might need, but then realised that my parents mostly did that.
We sat among the empty luggage and played silent games of gin rummy as we waited for the Kong Olav to get out of the endless Thames. As parts of Benjamin returned, one at a time, I noticed the way his sandy eyebrows brushed up towards his forehead. It was part of what made him look so curious and intent, as if he was looking hard and slightly sceptically at the world. There were two freckles joined into one on the left side of his nose. His fingernails were round and still clean from the bath, in spite of