Mike brought Billi to a building site. Barbed wire topped the whitewashed hoarding, and floodlights cast their stark white glare over the skeletal black frame of a half-erected tower. Billi stopped in front of the display board.
‘ Elysium Heights,’ she said. She followed the spine of the building upwards. It looked like the skeleton of some ancient giant, reaching out of his grave and grasping for Heaven. The sky hung low and brooding over it like an angry thought. ‘Who’d want to live up there?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Mike. ‘Haven’t you noticed how you can’t see the dirt from up high?’
Billi shook her head. ‘It’s unreal. Living up so high… it just cuts you off. But some people might want that.’
‘Want what?’
‘To be above everyone.’
Mike smiled. ‘You might feel differently once you’ve seen for yourself.’ He made his way to the gates. ‘Follow me.’
The gates were steel mesh, and Mike scrabbled up and over them in seconds. He dropped down on the opposite side. ‘Come on.’
Trespassing. It was trespassing.
‘No. This is stupid, Mike. Come back.’
Her dad would flay her alive if she got caught.
Mike looked up at the tower. ‘We’ll be quick. I’ve done it before, Billi. Up there you get a different perspective on things. Your troubles don’t seem to matter so much.’
She shouldn’t do it. She should be a good little girl and obey her dad.
Billi hooked her fingers into the chain-link, and jumped over. She stumbled as she landed, but Mike caught her. His arms lingered round her and Billi could sense his strength, just held in check.
Then he straightened her up and moved further into the dark.
Portakabins, stores and temporary sheds lay scattered across the muddy pitch-sized site. Tractors, bulldozers and yellow-painted lorries stood idle and menacing like dormant monsters. The harsh floodlights threw deep shadows as well as glaring brightness, and it didn’t take long for Billi to get lost in the labyrinthine alleyways between the piles of cement and steel.
‘This is it.’ Mike stopped beside the goods hoist. The steel cage took men and materials up and down the building, fixed to the side via a rickety-looking yellow scaffold.
Billi stared awestruck at the scale of it all. The frame rose out of huge concrete columns, each a couple of metres wide. A complex web of steel beams climbed higher and higher into the darkness. Spotlights erected on the elevated platforms drew her gaze: small isolated islands in the tower grasping at the darkness.
Mike pointed upwards. ‘The view is awesome.’
‘You’ve been that high?’
Mike looked into the sky. ‘Oh, much higher.’ He lifted up the steel cage door of the lift.
Billi followed him in and slammed the gate down. Mike took hold of the red handle and pulled. The lift trembled as it shook itself free of the earth, then climbed upwards.
The city spread out under her. The roads were golden ribbons twisting through the diamond-sparkling darkness, the buildings glowed in the floodlights and the Thames wound through it all, as black as marble. The wind-wrapped raindrops stung her cheeks and the cold air electrified her skin. Higher and higher they rose, the lift rattled and shook, the noise of the gears on the scaffold was deafening. The city and all her problems were so far below. Mike was right: it was beautiful.
The lift halted with a jolt.
Mike rolled up the gate. ‘Follow me.’
‘Are you insane? I’m not going out there!’
‘C’mon, Billi. I’ll take care of you.’ Billi hesitated. No one had promised her that before.
She walked to the edge of the lift. The floor hadn’t been fully cast yet. It was just a matrix of beams with patches filled in with concrete, like a massive crossword. She gazed downwards and had to clutch the side as her head swam with vertigo. There wasn’t much between her and the ground, two hundred metres below. She slowly crossed the solid section of floor, keeping well away from the edge.
But Mike was already out there. He stood waiting for her, standing on the narrow flange of an ‘I’ beam, maybe less than ten centimetres wide. The wind howled through the steel, cut and sliced by the metal so it sounded like screeching voices calling in the dark.
Mike proceeded to a ladder and started to climb up it. ‘The view is to die for.’
‘I bet it is,’ said Billi, but Mike didn’t hear her.
She put a foot out on the beam. It wasn’t wide, but she’d worked on narrower in training. She’d take one step at a time, not rush, concentrate and try not to worry about the rain. Or the gently swaying tower. Or gravity.
One foot, then the next, she worked her way, shuffled her way, to the ladder. It was further from the lift platform than she’d thought, or at least seemed that way. But she reached it. Her hands gripped the ladder rails tightly, and she could see it was clamped firmly to the vertical column. Maybe she’d just stay here for a while. Until they finished building the tower.
‘We can go back down if you’re scared. I don’t mind.’ Mike looked back down the ladder at her.
Scared? Billi scowled. If only Mike knew what she did at nights. She carried on climbing up. Her fingers were freezing and she had to force them to close round the rungs. But she climbed.
Mike stood at the end of a beam, suspended alone in the sky, his coat flapping in the wind like the wild wings of a giant bat. He was lost in the sight of London below him. Billi could see the pale white dome of St Paul ’s, the gleaming lights, the black star-sprinkled sky. And Mike, poised above it all.
‘Careful,’ she said. Like that was a great piece of advice. She held on to the column; the tower was definitely swaying.
‘Come out here, to the edge.’
‘The view’s fine from here, thanks. It’s a long way down. Don’t fall.’ Oh, very helpful thing to say.
Mike shook his head. ‘I can’t fall. I’ve never fallen.’
‘It may not be up to you. Accidents happen. Earthquake, sudden wind.’ She wasn’t helping, but she thought he was an idiot to be up here. ‘Things beyond our control. Force majeure. Acts of God.’
Mike stiffened. ‘Why is it they call them that? Acts of God?’
‘Call what?’
‘Disasters. Catastrophes. When something terrible happens it’s always an Act of God. Why is that?’
Billi started to feel nervous. Mike obviously still had as much stuff to deal with right now as she did. But this really wasn’t the place to be doing it. ‘Come back, Mike. Let’s talk on the ground.’ But he wasn’t listening. He leaned out; it looked as if he was ready to jump. Or fly.
‘I’ll tell you why. It’s because when people are afraid, they turn to Him. They remember their lives continue purely on His whim.’ He snapped his fingers. The loud crack was like a gunshot. ‘Lives that could end in an instant.’
This sounds like seriously Crazy Talk. Billi reached out, one hand on the column, the other stretched towards his back. ‘Mike…’
‘It takes a terrible thing to remind people of their obligations to God. The more terrible, the better. Wouldn’t it be something if that happened?’
‘What happened?’
‘Something so terrible that everyone returned to Him. To fill the churches on Sunday instead of Ikea. To fill the mosques, the synagogues.’ He spread out his arms. ‘An Act of God that would restore faith.’
Billi hung on to the ladder. It wasn’t the night cold that made her shiver.
‘Mike -’
‘Your father, he’ll make you suffer – you know that.’
Billi said nothing. Mike was crossing the line – that was her business. She wanted to get down. The wind picked up and invisible claws pulled at her. She wrapped herself tightly round the column.
‘You owe him nothing, Billi.’ Mike stroked the long spike along his neck. ‘Help me, Billi, and I’ll make you free.’ Mike turned towards her, those golden eyes peering down at her like an eagle’s. Predatory and surging with power. ‘Where’s the Mirror, Billi?’