Writing On the Wall by Lynne Reid Banks

Author:Lynne Reid Banks [Lynne Reid Banks]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 1998-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

12 · Blue Room

The Dutch train ran across the flat Dutch country. I sat holding Kev’s hand too tight and thinking to myself in time to the wheels, I must, I must, like Amsterdam. I must, I must, like Amsterdam. I was facing the engine-end of the train and I kept looking ahead all the time. I didn’t want to look back. Or think back. It was hard not to – hard to help wondering what Con’d think when she heard we’d gone, and of the fun the others’d have in the youth hostel that night. Where would I be that night? I didn’t want to think of that either. So I just tried to think of Amsterdam, and discos, and nice food. And being alone with Kev, and him being nice to me because I’d stuck to him and stood up for him to Michael.

Pity, though, never going up that Euromast tower. . . .

It was about four o’clock when we got there. We got our bikes and gear off and lugged them into the main hall of the station. Looking out the windows I could see water, lots of it, and it made me feel better somehow. Kev was dead quiet. He’d hardly opened his mouth the whole way. Now I took a look at him, wheeling our bikes across the first of about a thousand bridges. He didn’t look good. It was an hour and a half, about, since his row with Michael but he was still white and screwed-up looking.

“Kev?”

“Yeah?”

“D’you feel bad or something? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Lemme alone.”

We walked a bit further. The big canal had loads of boats and barges on it. Along its edges were big brick houses with all different fronts. Some of the high roofs kind of went up in steps at the edges and others had curvy bits, or like scrolls. They looked ever so old. There was a big old tower, too, on the edge of the water. I wondered what that was . . . Michael would know, with his guide-book at the ready . . .

We rode about the streets for about an hour without really knowing where we were heading. If I hadn’t been sort of upset and uncomfortable about us being here and about Kev acting so quiet and strange, I think I’d have liked Amsterdam better than Rotterdam. I like old places best. Not grotty old places like Horn Lane with its horrible dirty old houses with the windows broken and the gardens all gone wild and full of rubbish, but old buildings and that, that’ve been kept up. There were whole squares of them here. One or two looked like palaces. There were loads of statues. We even saw a nice one of Jesus. They’d done his halo like a plate on the back of his head. I thought that was a bit silly, but then how do you do a halo out of stone? Anyway Kev wouldn’t let me stop to look at things much.

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