were heading toward a cliff top. A single tent billowed in the wind on the peak above it.
CHAPTER 28
Allie and Heather kept a close watch over Sarah, but she didn’t need it. Allie scarcely recognised her.
The days had passed so slowly that at times it seemed that the leaves falling from the trees would freeze in mid-air and the clocks would wind back on themselves. New Canterbury’s militia took turns on sentry duty, scouring the hills and forests for any sign of change. But things seemed frozen, shut up and waiting.
Allie couldn’t take it, sitting up on the rooftops, jumping at every shadow.
What are we waiting for? For our families to come home? Or for the fire-starters?
It was getting harder to tell by the minute.
They had quickly run out of things to say. The hollow ring of the silence between them was more frightening than the night watch. They were friends, good friends, she and Sarah and Heather.
They were best friends and they had nothing left to say to one another.
All they could do was sit and watch and wait.
This isn’t me. I don’t worry. I never worry. Even when Dad died. I always knew I would be okay.
But this was different. She had fought long and hard in London to be somebody, and scratch out the label of Town Gossip hanging over her head. Before she had been assigned to Norman and Lucian’s scavenging party to Margate, she had been content to wallow on the sidelines, taking what she needed and doing the bare minimum on the duty rota. Going into the wilds had been sobering.
She would never forget the sight of the skeletal refugees crawling toward them, desperate for help. She would never forget riding away from them as though they had the plague.
The game’s changed. New rules, and nowhere near as many players.
So here she was, sitting in the hot seat. People looked at her as though she had a clue as to what she was doing—and that was the most terrifying thing in the world.
Looking back, she could barely recall the old her. Only in the blur of distant memory could she make out a shadow of the stupid, little ignorant snot she must have been.
Who would have guessed?
Presently she sat up on the rooftop of an old Edwardian three-storey house beside Higgins and his young companion, whittling away the hours playing a card game she didn’t understand, nor cared to learn the rules for. She could feel a thin smile stretching her lips, though she did her best to hide it. Smiling at a time like this felt inappropriate, but she couldn’t help herself.
“What’s so amusing?” the kid kept saying.
“Nothing.” She would play her hand, lose, and the deck was reshuffled.
It took her a long time to work out why she was smiling. She didn’t pursue it, just let it simmer away in her subconscious and bubble to the surface. When it finally popped up, she had to stifle a laugh by masking it with a cough.
Norman. It was him.
She realised with sudden piercing clarity that she was holding it all together for him. That scrawny, clueless idiot who everyone thought was a saint—but she knew was just as clueless as she was—was why she had gone all the way to London, had patched up that girl, had dragged her sorry behind all the way back here to stand guard and babysit the city folk. He brought out something in her, the part of her that made her what she wanted to be.
Bloody hell, I love him, a voice whined in her head. I can’t believe I’m in love with that fool.
But there it was, bared in front of her. You didn’t get to pick who you loved.
The more she thought about it, however, the more inevitable it seemed. They were in the same boat, she and him. Not long ago he had been just as lost, just as useless. Sure, he had a public face, and he hadn’t been able to get away with slacking off, but they had shared that same unignited spark.
Despite the pain and suffering of all this mess, it had brought out the good in both of them.
What if he doesn’t come home?
He will. He has to. If he doesn’t, I’ll kill him.
She shook away mental images of the horrors he and the other riders might be facing up north. There was no use thinking about it.
“Hold the fort,” she muttered. “Keep them safe, keep them breathing. They’ll be back.”