“I haven't said I would yet,” he said, but the ensuing silence between them spoke volumes. She already knew that he was interested in her. Now she wanted to know why.
“This way,” he said, nodding along the street. “Let's keep moving and I'll tell you as much as I…” He started walking, and Lucy-Anne followed. Rooks drifted above them, like shadows of a shattered night. Much as I want to? she thought. Or as much as I remember?
“I was living in Collier's Wood with my mother. Dad left a few years ago. Met a stripper in Soho, fell in love, took her to live in Cornwall.” He grinned without humour. “Sordid, eh?”
Lucy-Anne did not reply. She was finding it strange enough imagining Rook with a mother, living in a house. Something normal for this extraordinary boy.
“When Doomsday hit, me and David were on the way home from school. We'd stopped at a pizza place and were eating with some friends. Heard about an explosion at the Eye, didn't think much of it. Bit of a shock, but we were just kids, you know? There've been bombs before. So we were just eating and messing around, and then we left and started for home. There was me and David, and…” He frowned, shrugged. “A few friends. Can't remember their names anymore.
“It wasn't ’til we passed Collier's Wood tube station that we saw something weird. Loads of people rushing from the tube. They all looked scared, panicked. Most of them were on their phones, not looking where they were going or communicating with anyone around them. A fat guy was hit by a car. No one stopped, no one seemed to care. So we took off towards our street, our friends tagged along—they lived past the end of our street, usually came into our place for a play on the Wii or something after school. At the end of the street, they just…dropped. Hit the pavement. One second they were walking with us, the next they fell.”
He was silent for a while, and Lucy-Anne tried to imagine this strange, deadly boy playing computer games and walking home from school with friends. They were such mundane activities that she could not make the connection. But Rook's expression made it for her; she had never seen him looking so human.
“A load of pigeons gathered on the rooftops took flight and flew in tight circles above us, like living tornadoes. David looked terrified. I knew it was him—I'd known for a while about what he could do, or some of it—but he'd always been afraid. I reached for him to…hold his hand, or something. But they were falling everywhere. Along the street from us two cars crashed head-on, and another flipped over onto its back and smashed down the front wall of a house. There was a really big explosion, and screaming, and then my vision started blurring. David grabbed my hand. I passed out.” Rook held up one hand as if to illustrate his brother's touch, but then Lucy-Anne realised that he had called a halt. A rook drifted down to land on his shoulder, he tilted his head, and the bird took off again.
“It's okay,” he said. “Irregulars. Come on.” They walked on, past the entrance to an indoor market and a jeweller's with rings and necklaces still scattered on the pavement amongst broken glass. Lucy-Anne looked around but saw no one watching them. Whoever it was the birds had seen must have been hiding.
“What happened when you woke up?”