Carlos Zafon - The Midnight Palace

‘Guess,’ Ben suggested. ‘Most likely a bank. Isn’t that what they always build when they knock something down in any city? It’s the same the world over.’

Siraj had joined them and was considering Ben’s prediction.

‘They might turn it into a theatre,’ the skinny boy proposed, gazing at Isobel, the impossible object of his affection.

Ben rolled his eyes and shook his head. When it came to flattering the girl, Siraj had no dignity.

‘Maybe they won’t touch it,’ said Ian, who had been listening quietly to his friends, stealing a few quick glances at the picture Michael was drawing on a small sheet of paper.

‘What are you doing there, master?’ asked Ben.

Michael looked up from his drawing for the first time. He looked as if he had just stepped out of a faraway world. He smiled shyly and exhibited the sheet of paper.

‘It’s us,’ the club’s resident artist explained.

The six other members of the Chowbar Society examined the picture for five long seconds in silence. The first to look away from the drawing was Ben. Michael recognised the enigmatic expression that crossed his friend’s face when he suffered one of his strange attacks of melancholy.

‘Is that supposed to be my nose?’ asked Siraj. ‘I don’t have a nose like that! It looks like a fish hook!’

‘That’s exactly what you’ve got,’ Ben stated with a smile that did not fool Michael, although it may have fooled the others. ‘Don’t complain; if he’d drawn you in profile all you’d see is a straight line.’

‘Let me have a look,’ said Isobel, snatching the picture and studying it in the flickering light of a lantern. ‘Is this how you see us?’

Michael shrugged.

‘You’ve drawn yourself looking in a different direction from the rest of us,’ observed Ian.

‘Michael always looks at what others don’t see,’ said Roshan.

‘And what have you seen in us that nobody else can, Michael?’ asked Ben.

He joined Isobel and analysed the drawing. Thick pencil strokes depicted the group next to a pond in which their faces were all reflected. There was a large full moon in the sky and below it was a forest disappearing off into the distance. Ben examined the blurred faces on the water’s surface and compared them to those of the figures by the edge of the pond. Not a single one of them carried the same expression as its reflection. Isobel’s voice rescued him from his thoughts.

‘May I keep it, Michael?’ she asked.

‘Why you?’ Seth protested.

Ben placed a hand on the Bengali boy’s broad shoulders and gave him a brief intense look.

‘Let her keep it,’ he murmured.

Seth nodded and Ben patted his back affectionately. As he did so, he caught sight of an elderly woman, elegantly dressed, and a young girl of about their age, crossing the orphanage courtyard and heading towards the front door of the building.

‘Is anything the matter?’ whispered Ian, next to him.

Ben shook his head slowly.

‘We have visitors,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the woman and the young girl. ‘Or something like that …’

When Bankim knocked on his door, Thomas Carter was already aware of the arrival of the woman and her companion. He had seen them through the window as he watched the party below. He turned on the desk lamp and told his assistant to come in.

Bankim was a young man with very marked Bengali features and lively, penetrating eyes. He had grown up in the orphanage and, after working for a few years in different schools around the province, had returned to St Patrick’s as a physics and maths teacher. Bankim’s happy ending was one of the few exceptions which, year after year, gave Carter hope. To see him there as an adult, helping educate other young people in the same classrooms he had once sat in, was the best possible reward.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Thomas,’ said Bankim. ‘But there’s a lady downstairs who says she needs to speak to you. I’ve told her you aren’t available, that we’re having a party, but she won’t listen and was most insistent, to say the least.’

Carter gave his assistant a puzzled look, then checked his watch.

‘It’s almost midnight. Who is she?’

Bankim shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t know, but I do know she won’t leave until she sees you.’

‘She didn’t say what she wanted?’

‘She only asked me to give you this,’ Bankim replied, handing Carter a small shiny chain. ‘She said you’d know what it was.’

Carter took the chain and examined it under his desktop lamp. Hanging from it was a gold pendant, a circle with the shape of a moon. It took a few seconds for the image to jog Carter’s memory. He closed his eyes and felt his stomach knot. He had a very similar pendant hidden in the box he kept under lock and key in his glass cabinet. A pendant he had not seen in sixteen years.

‘Is there a problem, Thomas?’ asked Bankim, visibly worried by the change in Carter’s expression.

The headmaster shook his head and smiled faintly as he put the gold chain into his shirt pocket.

‘None at all,’ he replied. ‘Ask her to come up. I’ll see her.’

Bankim eyed him with surprise, and for a moment Carter thought his former pupil was going to ask him a question he didn’t want to hear. But in the end Bankim simply nodded and left the office, gently closing the door behind him. Two minutes later Aryami Bose entered Thomas Carter’s private sanctuary, removing the veil that covered her face.

Ben looked intently at the girl as she waited under the arches of the main entrance to St Patrick’s. Bankim had returned and, after being asked to follow him, the old lady had instructed the girl in no uncertain terms to remain by the door. It was obvious the woman had come to visit Carter, and considering how lacklustre the head of the orphanage’s social life was, Ben assumed that any midnight visit from a mysterious beauty, whatever her age, must definitely be classed as unexpected. He smiled and concentrated once more on the girl. Tall and slim, she was dressed in simple though unusual clothes that looked as if they’d been made by someone with a unique personal style and obviously not bought in any old bazaar in the Black Town. Her features, which he couldn’t see clearly from where he stood, seemed to be soft and her skin was pale and luminous.

‘Anyone home?’ Ian whispered in his ear.

Ben signalled towards the girl, his eyes still transfixed.

‘It’s almost midnight,’ Ian added. ‘We’re meeting in the Palace in a few minutes. Final session, may I remind you?’

Ben nodded absently.

‘Wait a minute,’ he added and started to walk resolutely towards the girl.

‘Ben,’ Ian called behind him. ‘Not now, Ben …’ Ben ignored his friend. The curiosity he felt was stronger than all the ceremonial delights of the Chowbar Society. He adopted the saintly smile of a model pupil and walked on. The girl saw him approach and lowered her eyes.

‘Hello. I’m Mr Carter’s assistant – he’s the head of St Patrick’s,’ said Ben. ‘May I help you in any way?’

‘Actually, no … Your … colleague has already taken my grandmother to see the headmaster,’ said the girl.

‘Your grandmother?’ asked Ben. ‘I see. I hope it’s nothing serious. I mean it’s midnight and I wondered whether there was something wrong.’

She gave a weak smile and shook her head. Ben smiled back. She was not such easy prey.

‘My name is Ben,’ he said politely.

‘Sheere,’ replied the girl, looking towards the door as if she expected her grandmother to emerge at any moment.

Ben rubbed his hands.

‘Well, Sheere,’ he said. ‘While my colleague Bankim takes your grandmother to Mr Carter’s office, perhaps I can offer you some hospitality. The head always insists we be polite to visitors.’