3. That someone else is Sarah Rathbone.
4. The photo is NOT flattering.
‘Sarah posted that?’ I ask carefully.
‘Yes … And the caption is “Hot or Not?”’ The words bring Brianna to another spasm of tears. Her shoulders shake and her make-up dissolves further.
‘I take it the comments weren’t … positive?’
She shakes her head. ‘She took that picture before I’d put my make-up on after a sleepover and I’d hardly had any sleep and …’
Now I fully understand what has happened, but I feel like I understand nothing. Who cares about a spot of make-up? Still, I try to be sensitive to Brianna’s tears. ‘But … why would she do that?’ I ask. ‘I thought you were friends?’
Brianna tears off some toilet paper and dries her eyes. ‘Me too –’ she sighs – ‘but I guess she wanted to show me who’s boss … That we’re friends because she lets us be friends.’
I shake my head. ‘That doesn’t sound like much of a friendship. Why do you hang out with her?’
Brianna shrugs, but doesn’t say anything. Her tears seemed genuine, but I feel uneasy – Brianna has been as mean to me as Sarah and Ruth since my first day at St Regis. What’s changed now? Everything seems too convenient, too much like a trap. Everywhere I go, she turns up and with what’s going on in London, I don’t know who I really can trust.
‘Brianna, I have to ask – what were you doing outside the hospital last night?’
Brianna stops drying her eyes and looks right at me. She seems to have forgotten the photo, forgotten Sarah’s betrayal. For a moment, she looks defensive, her old, cocky self. Then she looks away.
‘I … I can’t tell you here.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t tell you … someone might overhear. Come to my house … tonight.’
We leave the cubicle. She takes a piece of paper from her school bag and writes a mobile number and an address. ‘If you come, I’ll tell you.’
She hands the piece of paper to me and goes quickly, leaving me dazed and confused in the girls’ lavatories.
Finally, after the slowest Friday on record, the bell rings, and we almost run out of the gates. I need to do some urgent research into London’s water supply. With Liam at my side I flag down a black cab.
‘St James’s Square, please.’
St James’s Square is home to the London Library – my favourite place in the whole world. I have a young person’s membership, which I begged Dad to buy me as a combined birthday and Christmas present. The library is full of rare books, manuscripts and old newspapers. Agatha Christie used to be a member, and sometimes I pause and wonder, romantically, if I’m reading the same monograph on blood-spatter patterns that she did all those years ago.
But this is no time to be whimsical – something nasty is going on! If this isn’t an opportunity for greatness, stretching its hand out to mine, I don’t know what is. We spend the taxi ride talking about what we need to search for. Part of my mind is still on Brianna, and what happened in the toilets.
‘Liam, can I borrow your phone for a minute?’
‘Sure – what are you looking for?’
‘Oh, just something to do with the algae,’ I lie, taking it from him. Quickly, I search for Brianna’s social media account, where she posts all her photos. It’s all there for anyone to see – countless pictures of Brianna smiling, pouting, posing. She’s wearing all sorts of designer outfits, standing in front of palm trees or next to swimming pools. I scroll through them all, trying to decide if I’m imagining the hollow look in her eyes.
‘Find what you’re looking for?’ Liam asks, frowning a little.
‘Oh, uh, no …’ I say, closing the page and handing the phone back.
I’m not ready to tell Liam about what happened with Brianna, or her promise to tell me more. I don’t know what I think about any of it. I think he would tell me not to visit her at home, but I’m curious to hear her story.
The receptionist at the library recognises me.
‘Afternoon, Miss Agatha.’
‘Afternoon, Clive. This is Liam. Would it be all right for him to come in with me?’
‘Well, I really shouldn’t …’ Clive starts. He taps his nose and winks. ‘But so long as you don’t tell anyone …’
‘Thank you, Clive – I owe you one. Can we have a locker for our satchels?’
‘Of course.’
He hands me a key, and presses the button to open the gate. We hurry in, place our things in the locker and practically run up the grand staircase. The portraits of the library’s illustrious patrons look down on us. We pass Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and, looking particularly disapproving outside the men’s toilets, Winston Churchill.
We reach the second floor and go into the stacks where the books are stored. The stacks of the London Library are unlike any others – all the floors are made of cast iron, with slats for ventilation, so you can see several floors below and above you, and glimpse people passing underneath as they browse.
‘Wow,’ Liam says, looking up, then down. ‘I feel a bit dizzy.’
‘You’ll get used to it. Come on, follow me.’
I move quickly, knowing already where I want to go. Halfway down the shelf of engineering periodicals, I find them – a dusty bundle of plans for the London water mains. As we browse, I can hear someone’s footsteps echoing through the iron frame above us, coming closer. They seem to stop, right above us, and I look up. Strangely, the lights for the next level are switched off. Though they can see us, we can’t see them.
‘There’s someone there,’ Liam whispers, flicking his eyes up.
‘I know,’ I whisper back. ‘Come on – these are all we need.’
We gather the plans and hurry to the Reading Room. If there’s a crisis quietly spreading through the rest of London, you wouldn’t know it here. It’s quiet in the Reading Room, just like always. The leather armchairs are filled with ex-Oxford dons and retired politicians writing their memoirs. They’re not disturbed by the rising red gunge around them, but the arrival of a couple of thirteen-year-old schoolkids is greeted with frowns and murmurs.
I sit down at one of the reading desks and lay the contents of the bundle out in front of us. Liam pulls up a chair next to me. There are more frowns as his chair legs scrape on the wooden floor. The first map I come to is an overview of the water supply for London, titled ‘Location of Ring Main Shafts and Tunnels’. It shows a rough circle drawn around the city, north and south of the Thames.
I read the description of the supply pipe, called the Ring Main – a gigantic loop, eighty kilometres long, and two and a half metres in diameter, encircling all of London. Strung along the line are shafts connecting the pipe to the surface. This is where the problem must be – somehow the red slime has found its way into the Ring Main, pumping in an endless circuit around London like diseased blood around a body. But where has it come from? And how can it be growing underground, without sunlight, in the deep tunnels?
‘So this is where the slime is coming from then?’ Liam says.
‘I think so. But how is it getting into the pipes?’ I say, before someone shushes me.
I rummage through the other papers, which are all plans for the shafts. There seems to be something missing. I check the index for what the bundle should contain, and tick off everything on the list except one