by Jonathan Coe
When they reached the sign, Claire found that a large crowd had gathered beneath it. People were sitting on the grass, sometimes talking to each other but mainly waiting in silence and looking quite serious. Many of them seemed to have brought food, but instead of eating by themselves, they were taking it over to a number of large trestle tables which had been set up on one side of the crowd. Peter went over to one of these tables and from his rucksack took out sandwiches and fruit, salads and cheese. ‘Thank you,’ said the woman behind the table. ‘Help yourself to anything that’s here. The idea is that everybody pitches in and shares.’
Peter and Claire took their paper plates of food and sat down on the grass next to a woman they both recognised: it was Mrs Daintry, who had once been their history teacher.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘I knew that you two would be coming.’ She reached inside her handbag and brought out her fragment of broken mirror. ‘Did you bring yours?’ she asked. ‘Of course you did. You take them everywhere with you, don’t you? Just like the rest of us.’
Peter and Claire took out their mirrors, and laid them on the ground next to Mrs Daintry’s. The evening light was fading and the final rays of the setting sun danced off the glass and sent dazzling shafts of light in every direction. All around them, people were doing the same.
‘What’s going on?’ Claire asked. ‘What are we here for?’
Mrs Daintry explained that it was time to try an experiment. All the people who possessed one of these mirrors had been blessed with a precious gift; a gift which allowed them some fleeting vision of how the world might look if it was a better place. Now it was time to try combining these gifts to see if, together, they could create a reflection that was bigger, more powerful and more lasting than the glimpses their owners had been able to catch by themselves.
‘We will have to work in the dark,’ Mrs Daintry said. ‘But it won’t be difficult. Not really. You just have to remember two things. You have to remember to THINK HARD AND WORK TOGETHER.’
And those were the words which Claire, and all the other people who had gathered on that hillside, tried to keep in their heads as they carried out their task all through the night. The sun went down and a full moon rose, and together they pulled down the sign until it lay flat on the ground. Then, working by the light of the moon (and sometimes by the light of the torches on their mobile phones), they started arranging their fragments of mirror on the surface of the sign, fitting one against the other, piecing the fragments together as though they were parts of a massive jigsaw puzzle, trying to blend them into one, seamless whole. ‘THINK HARD AND WORK TOGETHER,’ they kept repeating to themselves, as they gradually put the new, enormous mirror into place, piece by piece, so that, by the time it was finished – just before dawn – it covered the entire hoarding, from top to bottom and from side to side.
After that they used ropes and pulleys to raise the sign into an upright position once again, and there the mirror stood. The light of the moon shimmered back from its flawless surface.
Then they sat down together on the side of the hill, and waited for the sun to rise.
They waited to see what the mirror would show them. They waited to see if it would show them how to make their town a better place to live.
Slowly, from behind the crest of the hill, the first rays of sunlight started to appear.
And gradually, as the sky became lighter and lighter, the image reflected by the mirror started to take shape, to become clearer and more distinct. The details started to emerge, one by one. And the crowd watched in silent wonder as the giant mirror revealed to them a vision of their town, their world, that was in every way better and more beautiful than the one they had for so long been used to.
When the vision was complete, they continued to stare at it in silence. Nobody said anything for a long time.
*
What had they seen in the mirror?
That’s for you to decide.
This edition first published in 2017
Unbound
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All rights reserved
© Jonathan Coe, 2017
Illustrations © Chiara Coccorese
The right of Jonathan Coe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed
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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78352-417-4 (trade hbk)
ISBN 978-1-78352-418-1 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-78352-419-8 (limited edition)
