Her voice sounds sharp, even a little bitter – not like Allie at all. Teacake peers at her over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised in concern.
‘And, of course, you won the Oscar for your incredible performance in Still Alice,’ she says, the interviewer’s crisp English pronunciation sounding almost robotic in her voice. ‘How did you prepare for the role?’
Allie laughs. ‘Don’t worry, Tea. I’m fine.’
The Royal Mile is mobbed: a current of hundreds of people flows in both directions, forming whirlpools around the performers and fake Beings. For the first time, I notice how much noise there is. Even behind the sounds of the shows, I can hear a kid laughing, a couple arguing, a car alarm whining in the next street. Perry joins in with a few excited barks. Teacake tenses beside me.
‘It’s OK,’ Allie murmurs, squeezing her hand. ‘This won’t take long. Just keep walking, OK?’
I hold on to her arm and edge slowly down the street, past magicians, mime artists and countless tourists. I’m amazed at how well our plan is working: in her tacky wings and make-up Teacake blends seamlessly into the chaos. A few people point or raise their cameras in our direction, but their attention is soon tugged away by other sights and sounds. As soon as we reach Starbucks Teacake comes to a halt. Something in her face changes – bewilderment giving way to horror. I follow her stare: on the other side of the street, footage of the Edinburgh Falls in flickering on to the huge LCD screen. No. 13 falling past the Forth Road Bridge; No. 70 slumped across a garden lawn; No. 8 crashing through the roof of St Giles’ Cathedral.
My heart sinks. ‘Don’t look, Tea,’ I say. ‘Don’t—’
I tug on her hand, but she pulls out of my grasp and staggers through the crowd towards the screen. She reaches for the image, where a male Being is tumbling through a bright blue sky. Calum and I have shown her a few YouTube tutorials for learning English, but we couldn’t tell if she understood that the pictures weren’t just shapes and colours on a screen – that they corresponded to something living, something real.
But now there’s no mistaking the horror creeping over her face. She knows. She understands what she’s seeing. The footage keeps playing over and over: Beings falling, spinning, flailing, screaming, over and over . . . No. 8, No. 33, No. 42. Only to her, they were never numbers. They are her people, and now she is watching them die.
‘Come on, Tea—’ Allie begins, but it’s too late.
A low, guttural cry spills from Teacake’s mouth. One of the Wingdings spots her; a group of them starts to swarm around us, most with smartphones in their hands. They film Teacake as she puts her hands to her cheeks, digging her fingernails into her skin. Her knees start to buckle. I grab her under the arms, and a piece of tinfoil slips from her right wing; the feathers beneath glow bright pink in the flashes of the phones.
Allie shoots me a panicked look. The crowd is pushing forward as more and more people try to see what’s happening. Perry yaps, straining on her lead. But then Calum steps forward, spreading his arms in front of Teacake. He bows and thrusts handfuls of Allie’s fake flyers towards them.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is a preview of our new play, The Way We Fall.’ He clasps his hands together and gives a wide smile. ‘See us at, um, the Playhouse. Next Thursday. At 4 p.m.’
Some of the audience begins to clap; others let out a sigh of disappointment. As the crowd disperses, Calum and I grab one of Teacake’s arms each and haul her along the street. She’s properly crying now. Tears run down her face, revealing streaks of skin below the foundation.
‘We have to move, Teacake,’ I say, tugging at her hand. ‘Please! We have to keep going.’
Slowly, her feet start to move. She sobs all the way along George IV Bridge and across the road to the university. McEwan Hall is half hidden behind scaffolding, but I remember the building next to it: a student union with Gothic windows and lots of turrets. Mum and I went to see a crappy musical here last time we came down for the Fringe. I fish for the memory, but my head is too busy with Teacake; it sinks into the mire and disappears.
Heads turn as we usher Teacake through the crowd. The square outside is almost as busy as the Mile. Allie pushes flyers into their hands to distract them. Most end up on the ground: her shaky illustrations of falling angels litter the pavement.
Calum points to the road on the right. His hand is trembling. ‘This way. Quick, before anyone sees.’
But a screech of tyres makes us all spin around. Four vans are pulling up on the other side of the road, just outside the student union. The doors slide open, and dozens of people pour out: women in scruffy, ripped clothes, with matted locks and greasy skin; pale, gaunt men with downturned mouths and dull eyes.
‘Shit,’ Calum says. ‘It’s them.’
Allie clutches at my sleeve. ‘Oh my god, this is perfect! Hurry – let’s go while everyone’s distracted.’
I hear her footsteps scuffle down the road, but I don’t follow. I can’t take my eyes off the Standing Fallen. Passers-by are already starting to surround the building. A few seem to be calling 999, but most are just getting ready for the show to start. Two of the members hold a long ladder against the wall; the others climb on to the roof of the student union, surprisingly nimble for being so frail.
There are dozens of them, more than I’ve ever seen – so many it’s a wonder the ceiling doesn’t cave in. They line the gable and ridge of the roof, squashed shoulder to shoulder. Either the Edinburgh group has doubled in size since the day we arrived, or they’ve joined up with another chapter – Glasgow, maybe, or Aberdeen.
That’s when I see her. Treading the slate-grey tiles, her arms stretched out for balance. Tattered jeans, a stained grey hoody.
Leah.
EIGHTEEN
The girl on the roof above me is a smudged sketch of the Leah I knew. She’s lost a ton of weight – she was always quite curvy, but now her jeans hang loose on her hips – and her once-sandy hair is mousy with grease. There’s an angry spattering of acne across her cheeks, and her clothes look as if they haven’t been washed in months. To her left is a young boy, the same kid I saw on the rooftop opposite our flat the night we arrived. To her right, her frail arms wrapped around one of the roof’s turrets, is Leah’s mother.
After four months of trying to make sense of it, the situation finally comes into focus. This is the reason they left so suddenly; this is the reason Leah hasn’t been in touch since April. She and her mother were never in Stirling, staying at her aunt’s house. They were with the Standing Fallen.
‘Jaya!’ Allie shouts. She’s standing by the entrance to McEwan Hall, staring at me with a bewildered look. ‘What are you doing? Hurry!’
For a few seconds, I’d forgotten all about them: Allie, Calum, Teacake in her tinfoil and blue leggings. The Edinburgh chapter leader starts to scream into his loudspeaker, the usual rant about sin and death and doom. Allie hurries over to me and gives a sharp tug on my sleeve; I stagger forward, head spinning. Before the roof disappears from my view, I take one last look back. Mrs Maclennan’s eyes are closed, but Leah stares straight ahead, barely flinching when a gust of wind sends her staggering to one side. She doesn’t look scared. There’s no expression on her face at all.
‘Come on!’ Calum is waiting by the side entrance to the building. ‘Quick, before the police get here.’
He glances over each shoulder, then ushers us through a narrow passageway in the scaffolding towards a door with a sturdy metal padlock and a ‘No Entry’ sign. His fingers tremble as he tries each of the keys in the lock.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he keeps mumbling. ‘Dad’s going to kill me.’