Hannah Emery - Secrets in the Shadows

And then, past Seaton’s sweet kiosk, past the ticket kiosk and next to the closed doors of the Indian Pavilion, Rose saw the boy, his face a shadow amongst the bright, swirling colours of the pier. He smiled and beckoned her, and although there was a flurry of noise around her, Rose’s world fell into a blurry, underwater silence.

As Rose moved nearer towards the boy, she noticed that he was holding a small, glistening box. Could this be her gift? Her heart fluttering with all kinds of ideas about what a small silver box could contain, she broke into a run. When she reached the boy, she was breathless and laughing, although she didn’t quite know what she was laughing at.

The boy didn’t speak to her. He took out of his pocket an odd, gold key, and without looking like he was doing anything he shouldn’t, unlocked the grand, high door of the Indian Pavilion. Rose stared at the boy, wondering how he looked so confident when he was doing something he wasn’t allowed to. Rose knew that she would have dropped the key and been caught red-faced straight away. The boy turned to her and grabbed her arm.

‘Quickly!’ he hissed, and they tumbled into the giant room, the door blowing shut behind them with a bang.

The Pavilion looked different in the daytime. Although Rose had thought it beautiful when she had visited the other night, the crowd of people and roar of the orchestra had hidden much of the extravagant decoration. It was even grander than the Winter Gardens. Rose lay back and rested on her elbows so that she could stare up at the huge glass skylight that ran along the centre of the roof. She could make out gulls circling ahead of them, their grey wings bouncing on the blustering winds.

‘You know, I am going to live somewhere like this one day,’ the boy announced, making Rose sit up and look at him.

‘It’s true,’ he said, seeing Rose’s doubtful expression. ‘It’s meant to look like an Indian temple. And I have Indian blood.’

‘You can’t be all the way from India,’ Rose said, wrinkling her nose in confusion.

‘Well, my grandfather was. I could be an Indian King for all we know. And one day, I’m going to travel there, and I’m going to find out. And my palace will look just like this.’

‘Can I come and visit?’ Rose asked.

The boy shrugged as though he didn’t care either way, and Rose wondered, not for the first time, if she had found the right boy after all. He flicked open his silver box, but before Rose’s heart could begin fluttering again at a possible gift, he picked out a drooping cigarette and lit it with a matchstick.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Rose said, suddenly feeling very much like her mother.

The boy stared at her with his violet eyes, smoke floating out of his mouth and curling around Rose’s face. The smell was heavy and almost pleasant in a way, and Rose took in deep breaths until her head was filled with grey, making her cough delicately into her powder blue sleeve.

I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in here , Rose was going to say. But something stopped her. Not the fact that the boy might be an Indian King, or the fact that Gypsy Sarah had told Rose to find him, but because Rose wanted this moment to last. She wanted to be in the Indian Pavilion in Blackpool with smoke curling around her ears and weaving through her hair and her mouth, with the boy and not with her parents. She felt as though she had left a grey world behind and had stepped into a world of power and movement and colour, and she didn’t want to leave it. Not just yet.

And so they sat, with the colours of India all around them, yellowed and hazy with smoke.

After a time of sitting, the boy jumped to his feet, tossing his cigarette end away. ‘They’ll be coming in to set up for tonight’s concert soon. You’d better go. I’ll lock up again.’

They walked to the doors of the Pavilion and Rose looked out to the sea which was glinting with the dipping sun, and then back at the boy.

‘You can come and visit me, if you like,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘When I’m King.’

Rose smiled at the boy. ‘Goodbye.’

She skipped a little as she headed back to the north of the pier. She liked the idea of seeing the boy again, in a land as exotic as the Pavilion. She pulled her collar up to her nostrils and inhaled the smell of cigarette smoke, smiling as she did so. She surely hadn’t been with the boy for too long. She would be able to get back to the hotel in plenty of time for the train home.

But as Rose neared the end of the pier, she saw that the swarm of people in front of her had swelled. There were screeches and wails floating out from the crowd, and Rose felt a prick of fright at trying to find a path through it. People were gesturing, clambering over one another. They all seemed to be looking past Rose, behind her.

She turned, and what she saw in that moment haunted her forever.

The end of the pier was a terrifying orange. Flames roared up into the sky, shooting higher and higher with each second. The dark smell of burning wood was suddenly thick in the air.

‘The Pavilion!’ she heard someone wail.

At that moment, a burst of sparks flew from the pier and shattered the sky into fragments.

‘Good thing the Pavilion is empty,’ the man next to Rose murmured.

And suddenly, Rose was running towards the pier, snaking through the gasping crowd, the flames pulling her like a magnet. She thought of nothing but his purple eyes as she moved closer and closer towards the rumbling pavilion. The crowds trickled to nobody but two pier officials, who launched buckets of water towards the flames in panic. They didn’t see Rose: didn’t see her pause for half a second for fear of being eaten by the flames; didn’t see her sneak down the side of the crackling wooden sweet kiosk. They didn’t see her pull a boy underneath the tangled iron of the pier, into the safety of the sea. Everybody watched the frightening, flashing sky, mesmerised by the cloud of black smoke dancing above their heads.

The water tasted black, and Rose struggled to swim and clutch the boy’s bony body at the same time. He seemed to be dozing, his eyes half closed in a sort of dream. Rose tried to shout, but the sound of her voice was washed away with the waves. She pounded her legs against the heavy water, trying to move away from the splitting pier. Shards of glowing wood floated around her and slices of fire hurtled beside them.

She pounded, and moved, slowly, slowly, until the boy’s eyes began to open.

‘Swim!’ Rose shouted as his eyelids flickered. ‘Swim!’

And soon, his weight became lighter, as he began to move beside Rose in the littered waves. The tide was working with them and carried them towards the shore. Rose felt her legs give way as they reached the sand, and she felt herself retching, her body forcing black water from her stomach out onto the sand. She felt his arm around her and his smoky breath next to her face as they lay together. Still, nobody saw them, nobody noticed their entwined bodies, for everybody was staring up at the flashing sky.

‘My train,’ Rose moaned, and tried to shuffle herself up on the sand. She lifted her hand to her hair, which was slick and cold. ‘My parents,’ she said next.

‘I’ll come with you. I’ll tell them what you did for me,’ said the boy.

Rose looked at the boy, who, even after almost drowning in water, was still filthy. She looked at his nest of knotted black hair and his jutting collarbone and his clever smile.

‘No. You mustn’t do that. They wouldn’t like you.’ She stumbled to her feet, which squelched beneath her like two jellies. ‘I have to go.’

The boy lay on the sand and stared up at her. ‘Come back to me one day, won’t you.’