The City's Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

screen: pure muscle memory. She recoiled and hurled the phone away. It clattered onto the pavement. Beth ran down the street as though an army of ghosts marched in her wake.
    It had been raining, and the streetlights bled over the pavements like molten copper. Tears blurred her vision and she navigated the streets on instinct.
    The chain-link fence alongside the old railway sidings reared up in front of her and she threw herself at it and clambered over, ignoring the rust and the loose wires that snagged her hands. The tracks she dropped onto were disused and inert, part of an old extension no longer served. She stumbled along them, kicking at the crisp packets and rain-melted newspaper that littered the ground. A tunnel entrance opened up in front of her and she ran in.
    It was only after Beth had snapped on one of the three powerful torches she kept in the underpass that she finally felt able to be still. She stared around at the walls.
    Lithe Chinese dragons chased tiny bi-planes across the brickwork, jesters and skeletons waltzing together in their wake. A massive hand chose from a fruit-bowl full of planets.Octopuses coiled around anchors and wolves reared and snakes fought and cities soared from the strata of dense clouds. This little burrow under the Mile End Road was Beth’s sanctuary: five years of her imagination was sprayed and stencilled onto these walls.
    She spread her hands across them, and their texture was like grazed skin. ‘What’m I gonna do, guys?’ Her voice echoed in the tunnel, and she burst out in a strained laugh. She only talked to her paintings when things got bad; it had to be death-of-the-firstborn-bad for her to do it out loud .
    Normally she used stencil and aerosol to reshape the city, carving a safe place for herself amid the concrete, room to breathe. Not tonight. Not without Pen to share it with. Tonight she felt shut out of her town.
    Pen.
    The anger went though her like a spark lighting a gunpowder fuse, leaving her cold in its wake. I fought for you. When did that stop being enough? If you’d only kept quiet, we’d’ve been safe. When had Pen stopped trusting Beth to protect her?
    One picture caught her eye: a simple chalk sketch, repeated over and over amongst the more outlandish images: a woman, long-haired, her back turned, glancing over her shoulder as if in invitation.
    ‘What’m I gonna do?’ Beth asked again, but her mum didn’t answer. She only lived in two places now: in Beth’s mind and on Beth’s bricks, and she wasn’t talking back from either.
    Beth pressed her cheek to the cool, rough wall. She stood like that for a moment, and then pressed harder and harder, until hot pain spread from the grazes on her face and hands, as though by sheer force of muscle she could burrow under the city’s skin.
    A low sound cut the night, snapping Beth out of her reverie. The sound came again, urgent and familiar. She sniffed her tears back. She was miles from anywhere where she ought to be able to hear that sound.
    It came again, echoing off the bricks: the low moan of a train.
    Beth felt a sudden heat on her back. She turned and found herself gaping at what she saw.
    Two blazing white lights rushed at her from the dark of the tunnel, litter and leaves fluttering alongside them. A bulky shape formed out of the black, all jagged edges and momentum. Blue lightning arced and spat, illuminating clattering wheels. The sound of it crashed in on her ears like close thunder.
    Thrum-clatter-clatter—
    Her clothes snapped in a sudden gust of air. She tensed her legs to jump, but it was too late. She screwed her eyes shut.
    Thrum-clatter—
    The screech of metal on metal made her shudder. Every muscle in her body locked, but there was no pulverising impact, no shattering of bones …
    Barely daring to breathe, Beth opened her eyes.
    Headlights, barely inches from her face, blinded her instantly.
    She stumbled back in the glare and lost her footing, crumpled and sat on the ground. Her