As we walked up the steps from the shadowy Underground station, past the line of armed guards at the entrance and out into the sharp, spring light, the world felt new. There was the hum and chatter and shout of the crowd, the smell of frying onions and cigarette smoke and something else in the air too. Even on the Tube on the way there we could feel it. Something different. Something crackling in the air and for once it wasn’t anger or fear, although those hadn’t gone away.

Dad had left early that morning and was up at the front of the march helping to set up the stage. There were speakers coming from all the political parties, and from families of people who’d been detained and deported, and even some celebrities, although he wouldn’t tell us who. ‘Couldn’t he have got us in to meet them?’ Mischa said, but Dad had made it very clear that wasn’t going to happen so we’d arranged to meet him afterwards.

People were nervous, you could feel it. There had been rumours of a counter-protest, but Dad said the police would keep the two groups apart. They didn’t want trouble any more than we did.

‘I didn’t realize there’d be so many people,’ Mischa said.

‘There’s going to be thousands, my dad says. Like, tens of thousands.’

‘Do you think they’ll try and arrest us?’ she said, looking at the ranks of police and army lining the route. ‘My mum didn’t want me to come. She’s convinced I’m going to do something crazy and get myself into trouble.’

I smiled. ‘I mean, why would she think that, Misch?’

‘You don’t think there will be trouble, do you?’

I shrug. ‘I think it’s fine. Dad says it’s all been agreed with the police and the army and everyone. I mean, he wouldn’t have let us come otherwise.’

‘I suppose. But if I get arrested or something, my mum will actually kill me.’

‘We’ve got Billie with us. They’re not going to arrest a little kid, are they?’

‘Hey,’ Billie said. ‘I’m not a little kid. I’m the tallest in my class. Nearly.’

‘Yeah, Clem,’ Mischa said, ‘stop bullying Billie.’

‘Yeah, Clem.’ Misch and Billie always ganged up on me.

We moved slowly along from the Tube station exit but there were so many people we didn’t get very far. I held Billie’s hand tight. ‘Don’t let go,’ I said to her every few minutes. ‘Make sure you don’t let go of my hand.’

‘I know, Clem. You told me a billion times already. You don’t have to hold so tight, you know.’

We walked slowly in the pale sunshine, along Oxford Street, people packed in across the whole of the road that was usually full of buses and taxis. There were people as far as I could see in all directions and after a few minutes everything slowed down, so that eventually we were at a standstill.

‘My feet are killing me,’ Mischa said.

‘Told you heels were a stupid idea.’

‘Yeah, but I do look amazing.’

I shook my head, laughing at her. ‘Course you do.’

‘Seriously though, how much longer till we can move? I’m starving. Do you reckon we could quickly go to McDonald’s?’

‘I don’t even know if it’s open. Anyway, they’re keeping everyone together on the road. They won’t let you through.’ I nodded at the police and army and cadets lined up along the pavement.

Mischa gave me a duh look. ‘I can be very persuasive you know. I’m going to try.’

‘Can I go?’ Billie said. ‘I’m starving too. I want fries. And I need a wee.’

‘No, B,’ I said. ‘You need to stay with me.’

‘Why?’ Billie whined.

‘Because that was the deal. I’m looking after you. You’ve got to stay with me and hold my hand.’

‘You hold too tight. Your nails dig in.’

‘I don’t want you to get lost, that’s all. We’ll find toilets somewhere further along.’

‘See you in a minute,’ Mischa said, calling over her shoulder as she turned and walked away. ‘I’ll bring you some fries, B. If I can’t find you, I’ll call.’

‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ I told Billie. ‘They won’t let her through.’

‘They will,’ Billie giggled. ‘She’s Mischa.’

But as time went on and nothing happened and Mischa didn’t reappear, Billie started to whinge. Suddenly the crowd started to move.

‘Let’s wait for Mischa,’ Billie said. But we couldn’t. The crowd was too tightly packed and we had to move with it. I remembered with a lurch how much I hated being in big groups of people.

‘I’ll message her,’ I said, but when I tried the signal kept cutting out. ‘Too many people all on their phones,’ I told Billie. ‘I’ll try again in a minute.’

Losing Mischa and the lack of phone signal just added to the feeling of being not quite in control. I tried to squash down the anxiety. The drone of helicopters overhead buzzed in my ears.

We moved on towards Oxford Circus and turned down Regent Street. For a while we moved along quite freely, Billie looking longingly at the boarded-up windows of Hamleys as we went past. As the road curved down towards Piccadilly Circus we slowed. The people in front of us couldn’t go fast enough, there must be a bottleneck or maybe they were being blocked by the police. People were still moving up from behind, so we were being squashed closer and closer together.

‘What’s happening?’ Billie said.

I stood on tiptoes, trying to see what was going on, and glimpsed a line of police on horses in high-vis jackets blocking the road ahead.

‘Ooh, horses,’ Billie said when I told her. ‘Can we stroke them?’

Surely they’d move and let us through in a minute? The panic that I get in small spaces bubbled up inside me, pressed in among all these bodies, not tall enough to see over people’s heads to know what was going on, but I tried to breathe slowly and tell myself there was plenty of air for everyone, it wasn’t for long, we’d be moving soon. I looked up at the big sky and focused on all that space instead of the crush of people around us.

My phone started ringing in my pocket. I assumed it was Mischa, but when I looked I saw it was Dad.

‘We’re nowhere near Trafalgar Square yet,’ I said, having to shout to make myself heard. ‘We’re not even at Piccadilly Circus. They’re not letting us move. And I’ve lost Mischa.’

‘Clem, listen to me.’

Even in all the noise I could hear there was something weird in his voice. I let go of Billie’s hand and put my finger in my other ear to try and block out the voices around me.

‘What is it, Dad? Are you okay?’

‘Can you get away from where you are? Can you get to the station?’ His voice sounded tense, like he was trying not to sound panicked even though he was shouting.

‘I don’t think so. There’s so many people… I can try.’

‘Okay—’ His voice cut out. ‘… as quick as you can.’

‘What?’

‘Just do it, Clem!’

‘Do what?’

‘You need to get away from the march.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Get to the station and get on a train. Or, if you can’t do that, walk, run—’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Dad, we can’t even move.’

His voice cut out again.

‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Can you hear me? Dad?’

I looked at Billie who blew a bubble of gum at me until it popped with a crack. I pulled a face back.

‘… and Billie—’ His words became garbled.

‘Dad?’

Silence.

‘I’ll call you back in a minute, Dad,’ I said. ‘When the signal’s better.’

But the line had already gone dead.

‘Can I speak to him?’ Billie said.

‘He’s gone.’

I called Mischa’s number but it went straight to voicemail.

‘Misch, call me back will you—’

As I was speaking, something changed. There were shouts and screams and then like a wave crashing towards us there were people running, pushing, crushing. People started to fall over as the crowd tried to push through the barriers at the sides of the road. I saw police on horseback, truncheons raised—

‘Billie!’ I shouted. She stumbled and almost got trampled. I grabbed her and tried to lift her up as best I could but I was being jostled from all sides, trapped among people taller than me so I couldn’t see ahead, carried along by the surge of the crowd, my feet barely touching the ground.

‘Are you okay?’ I gasped. ‘Can you breathe okay?’

She nodded at me with wide eyes as we came to a standstill again. I knew I couldn’t keep carrying her like that for long. My arms were burning and I had to put her down.

‘What is it?’ I asked a woman in a purple puffa jacket next to me. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Run,’ she said. And she was gone, swept away by the crowd, and we were being pushed, squashed together.

If we could just get to a shop doorway out of the tide of people—

‘Come on, Billie, we have to—’

I looked down and somehow—

‘Billie!’

Jesus.

‘Billie?’

Somehow she was gone.

‘BILLIE!’ I yelled. I looked all around, between the running people, but I couldn’t see her. I stood, frozen. I wanted to run, but in which direction? I could be running away from her.

‘BILLIE!’ I screamed, blind and paralysed with panic. Oh, God. Please. ‘Billie!’

She couldn’t have gone far. She couldn’t have. She’d been there a second ago. I’d been holding her hand…

‘Billie!’ I couldn’t breathe.

And then—

And then…

Then I saw her. Standing, crying as she looked around her blindly, calling out, ‘Clem! Clem!’

‘Billie, I’m here,’ I called as I ran towards her, but it came out as a gasp and she didn’t hear me in the noise of the crowd.

‘Billie!’

And then she turned and she saw me. I reached her and grabbed hold of her and she wrapped herself round me like a limpet.

‘I thought you’d gone, Clemmie,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought—’

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t leave you, would I? Now come on. We need to get away from here. It’ll be okay, B, but we’ve got to get somewhere safe as quick as we can, yeah? Can you do that? Can you run?’

She nodded.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That’s it. Hold my hand. Don’t let go.’

Polly’s watching me.

‘A lot of people died at that protest,’ she says quietly.

She waits for me to say more. I say nothing.

There is a blank hole of unguessable time after that day.

‘Clem?’ Polly says. ‘Are you okay?’

Flashes of memories surface and then disappear into the dark.

Blood on a pavement above me, the sky below—

The beep of a heart monitor—

The hospital smell, detergent and fear—

‘You were in hospital?’ Polly says. ‘You were hurt at the protest?’

But the beep of the heart monitor drowns her out.

Someone is crying.

Through a window, clouds heavy with snow—

‘And so, you left London,’ Polly says. I nod.

Things had changed in that blank, empty time. I remember being in the car with Dad, driving home through grey streets, past the army patrols and the slushy remains of thawing snow.

He was talking, far away.

‘There were riots after the protest march,’ Dad said. ‘Knight blamed all the violence on the protesters – “Extremists who didn’t care who got injured or died in their cause”. He’s declared a State of Emergency. This is what he planned. It’s why he let the protest go ahead.’

I wanted Dad to stop talking but I couldn’t say so. I couldn’t say anything.

Opposition politicians had been arrested, he told me. Others were in hiding, trying to form a cross-party emergency government. But the army was with Knight, so far. Judges, journalists, anyone who spoke out, all being rounded up.

I leaned the side of my head against the window and looked out and watched the small cloud of my breath grow and fade, grow and fade on the glass.

‘They’ve cancelled the election “until security concerns can be addressed”. He planned the whole thing! The violence… it was all for this. An excuse to bring in martial law. To deny people the chance to vote him out.’

Dad’s face was tight with anger. His voice shook.

‘Democracy had to be protected, Knight said. Can you believe he actually said that?’

I could believe everything and nothing. None of it made sense. None of it mattered.

‘People who can leave are getting out. Out of the city, out of the country… You need to leave too, Clem. Like we agreed. You need to go. Clem? Are you listening to what I’m saying?’

I just needed him to stop talking.

‘Drop me off by Mischa’s flat,’ I told him.

He refused, so I tried to get out of the moving car.

Dad yelled at me. He held my hand. He cried.

None of it made sense. None of it mattered.

He stopped outside the block of flats.

‘Ten minutes,’ he said.

I climbed the stairs to Mischa’s, stopping at every floor to catch my breath. I hadn’t been able to call her. My phone had gone in the panic and crush. And you couldn’t go on social media now. They said terrorists and dissidents were using it to plan attacks. Most people couldn’t even go on the internet half the time.

See you in a minute. I’ll bring you some fries.

That was the last thing she’d said to me.

I stood out in the corridor, still breathless from the stairs, shivering, imagining Mischa’s mum answering and saying—

Her mum telling me with gestures and tears, breaking into rapid-fire Polish—

But there was no reply. I sat down with my back against her front door and closed my eyes.

‘You’re not here for Mischa, are you, my love?’

I opened my eyes. How long had I been sitting there? Wendy, Mischa’s elderly neighbour, was looking down at me, cigarette in hand. Mischa had always liked Wendy, with her dyed black hair and jingling bangles and her many, many cats. She did tarot readings for Mischa sometimes, and Wendy had given her a crushed-velvet tunic with medieval sleeves she’d worn in the sixties. She’d once told Mischa she’d ‘had it off’ with one of the Rolling Stones when she was very young. Mischa hadn’t known whether to be impressed or horrified. ‘Not in this top though, right?’ Wendy had just laughed.

‘I’m so sorry, love,’ Wendy said now, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze. ‘She’s gone. Didn’t you know?’

The world faded to grey as I stood up and I sagged dizzily against the door until the faintness passed.

‘Gone?’ My voice sounded like someone else’s.

‘Gone,’ she said dabbing under her eyes where tears and black eyeliner were mingling. ‘God bless her.’

‘Gone where?’

Wendy shook her head.

‘Do you mean… Wendy, do you mean she’s gone away to, like, family in Poland, or…?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart,’ Wendy said. ‘I just don’t know. There’s so many gone and everyone’s heard something different. You don’t know who to believe. I was at my sister’s for a couple of nights – no one to feed the cats of course, I was worried sick about them but I had to go because she gets herself in a right state, my sister. And when I got back, next door was empty and someone told me… oh, my lovely Mischa.’

‘Told you what?’

‘They told me they’d heard something… something bad had happened. She was on that march, you see. And her mum, Renata, bless her, she was so distraught she’s gone away, to family, back home.’ She took hold of my arm as I felt my legs sag under me. ‘Now, now, lovey – don’t lose heart. There’ve been all sorts of stories going round – none of them true. They told me Nathan from number thirty had died – said he’d been trampled by a horse – then I saw him this morning with my own eyes. Miserable as ever, like he always is. Wild rumours, you see, love. Or wishful thinking in Nathan’s case.’ She gave a short cackle of laughter. ‘But not Mischa. I’d know if she was gone,’ she said fiercely, stabbing at the air with her cigarette. ‘I’d know.’

And then there was a yowl from inside Wendy’s flat.

‘That’s my Benjy. They’ll all be wanting their tea. Stay strong, my darling. She’s still with us. Believe it. I can feel her vibrations.’

And Wendy disappeared into her flat, the door clicking shut behind her. I was left standing in the corridor, just a waft of smoke where she’d been.

I didn’t want to leave. I wrote: Please be okay, Misch. Call me as soon as you can. Love you, Clem on a page in my notebook, because you don’t write notes to people who aren’t coming back, so if I wrote her a note she couldn’t be gone. I was about to rip it out and post it through the letter box when I realized she couldn’t call me: I had no phone. So I crossed it out and wrote instead I’ll be at my grandpa’s. This might or might not be his number. I wrote out a row of digits that seemed like Grandpa’s number but might not be. It was the best I could do. I sat and folded the note into a paper crane and posted it.

I thought I’d be able to find out what had happened to Mischa in the end, because of course I would. How could I not? For all my life till then, almost nothing was unknowable. It could all be googled, all possible information was everywhere. You had to work really hard – as hard as Mum had done – to leave no trace. It had been almost impossible for people not to know where you were all the time, and what you were doing and who with, even when you didn’t want them to. Now, with no phone, no internet, I didn’t know how to find out anything. Secrets and rumours and vanishing acts were possible again. People disappeared. You could lose them in the moment between one heartbeat and the next.

Mischa is one of the things I lost in the darkness.

She smiles over her shoulder at me from the other side of it. See you in a minute.

‘You didn’t see her again?’ Polly says. ‘After that day, the march? You didn’t hear from her?’

I shake my head.

‘I’m sorry. It must be hard not knowing what happened to her.’

I nod.

‘And you must miss her.’

Miss her? I don’t just miss her. I can’t be me without Misch. There’s a whole part of me that only exists with her. If she is gone for ever then so am I.

I remember lying on my bed at home. Dad sitting on the edge of it.

‘We’ve run out of time,’ he’d said. ‘You need to leave. First thing tomorrow.’

Most of the people he worked with had been arrested already. Someone had reported on them. They didn’t know who. Maybe someone inside the group betrayed them. It would only be a matter of time till they got to Dad. I begged him to come but he said it would put us in too much danger, and anyway he had to carry on the work he was doing, it was more important now than ever. He couldn’t tell me where he’d be, I wouldn’t be able to contact him. But once it was safe, he’d come.

He gave instructions. Train tickets, maps, cash – not much. It was all he had. In the inside pocket of the rucksack, false ID.

‘But won’t they know if they check?’

‘No,’ Dad said. ‘These are good. The best. I promise you, Clem. It’s safer than you being linked to me or Claudia. But keep your head down. Try not to get stopped.’

Then he’d had to go out. I hadn’t wanted him to.

‘I’ll be back before you go,’ he’d said. ‘And if I’m not, go anyway.’

He kissed me. He was crying.

I’d half-woken in the night to find Billie curled up next to me in bed, her eyes fluttering open.

‘Try to sleep, B,’ I murmured.

‘Tell me again about the magic forest,’ she said, only half-awake.

‘It’s waiting for us,’ I told her.

‘Clem?’

Dad’s voice didn’t belong in my hazy dream.

‘Clem! Wake up!’ I forced open heavy eyelids. The room was still shadow-grey, the sun not yet risen. I blurrily thought of summer holidays, Dad hauling me out of bed in the dark in order to get on early-morning planes or ferries, cases packed the night before, promises of bacon sandwiches at the airport and swimming in the sea before teatime.

‘You need to go. Now. The back way. Quickly, Clem.’

Pulling on clothes, grabbing my purse, my notebook, a photo, Claudia’s mirror.

‘We mustn’t forget Luna,’ Billie said and I grabbed the owl toy.

Running downstairs.

Dad waiting with the rucksack he’d packed for us, lifting it onto my back. Saying goodbye. Dad’s face.

Polly watches me remember.

‘And so that’s what happened?’ she prompts. Her voice is gentle. ‘Your father got away? You and Billie made it to safety?’

Running over the lawn, heart racing, past Claudia’s vegetable patch, across the patio to the back fence. Shouts from the front of the house. Dad. He must have gone out there so that we could get away out back.

My face, wet with tears.

The grip of Billie’s fingers, tight around mine.

Scrambling over the fence, swearing, falling into the rose bush on the other side, splinters and thorns embedding themselves in my hands, barely felt till later. The gap at the bottom of the fence, where Billie used to crawl through to play on the trampoline in the back neighbours’ garden.

‘That’s it. Stay with me, B.’

Panting through the garden towards the back of their house, a mirror image of ours. Through the looking glass. Round the trampoline, dodging patio furniture. No risk they’ll see us, the family left weeks before. The neighbour’s dog yapping as I squeezed through the narrow passage between the houses, trying not to get entangled in the rusting bikes abandoned there. Holding my breath, waiting for a voice. If there was a voice, would it help us or report us? Impossible to know. Best not to find out.

Silence.

Deep breath. Then through a side gate with its broken lock, thank God. Quickly through the square of front garden, hidden from the road by an overgrown hedge, and out onto the pavement, walking as fast as possible without actually running so as not to attract attention.

And then thinking of Dad, panicking. I need to go back. I can’t leave him. I can’t go back.

Dad—

‘Clem?’ Polly says again.

I open my mouth to speak but words don’t come. I close my eyes and I feel like I’m falling.

I can’t breathe.

I see –…

I see a bird, flying in a blue sky far above us, far, far away.

Make a wish.

Don’t let go.

‘Yes,’ I say to Polly. ‘That’s what happened.’

   

FLIGHT

The action of flying or moving through the air with or as with wings. The action of fleeing or running away from danger. An extravagant or far-fetched idea, an exuberant display of imagination.

The girl tried in vain to claw her way through the wall of thorns but the spikes tore at her skin and she could not fight her way through.

She wandered the forest in despair, the blue feather in her hand. She had lost her sister and even if she could find her, she had no idea how to break the witch’s enchantment.

At last, bleeding and exhausted, she lay down under a tree.

‘I wish I could see you again, my sister,’ the girl said, tears falling onto the ground where the tree’s roots spread deep. She curled up among the roots, in a space that was just the right size and shape, as if it had been made just for her. With tears still flowing from her closed eyes, she fell asleep.

The girl did not know it, but the tree she lay under was an ancient and powerful one. It was said that if you made a wish beneath that tree and left it an offering, your wish would come true.

The girl had wished and she had given the tree the gift of her tears.

As she slept, she dreamt of a blood-red flower that only grew on a faraway island. The flower bloomed once a year and could only be picked at midnight on midwinter’s night. Its petals were able to break even the most powerful of enchantments.

The girl woke knowing she must find the flower.

It was the only way to save her sister.