by Tim Major
The girl shrugged. She looked utterly exhausted. “What does it matter?”
With a new sense of conviction Caitlin gazed around the room, the daylight, the patterned walls, the glistening window. “It means we’re not the same. You may only have been around for a couple of days, but you’re already a different person. Sod the fact that we look alike and that our minds sort of work the same – if we were sisters, that might have been the case anyway. You’ve only had a short life so far, but it’s your life. We’ve separated, which means that you’re a person in your own right. And that means that you should have rights. Right?”
“Yeah. Whatever.” The Skin looked down at the restraints that held her in place.
Caitlin’s mouth was dry. “I’m sorry.”
The Skin was silent for a while, then said softly, “What is it you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know. I want to know who you are.”
“You already know that.”
“There’s no point in thinking of you as me. You’re a three-day-old new person. What should I even call you?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
“It isn’t. And I know for sure you’ve thought about it.”
The Skin rubbed a thumb along her bottom lip, back and forth. Caitlin imagined she could feel the touch of it on her own lips. She’d never thought about it before, but it was the same action she did when she was lost in thought.
Finally, the Skin said, “Kit.”
Caitlin smiled. When she was six or seven, she had tried to get the children at school to call her by that name. It hadn’t stuck and only her mum had used it for a few weeks. Eventually, Caitlin had begged her to stop.
“It suits you,” she said. She reached out so that her fingertips touched the clear barrier. She mimed shaking hands. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Kit. I like your dress.”
The Skin – Kit – looked down at her plain blue smock. She snorted a laugh, then mimed shaking Caitlin’s hand in return. She arched her back, then shook her head as if to clear it. She rubbed her eyes. The skin all around them was cracked and dry.
“You look like hell, Kit,” Caitlin said.
“It’s this place. It’s not easy to feel rested.”
“I thought it was quite plush, all things considered.”
“This room, yeah. The ‘residential areas’, as they call them, not so much. You know what they say about removing all distractions in order to have space to think? Well, I can do plenty of thinking in my room.”
“So it’s just for show? All this luxury?” Caitlin pointed at the garden courtyard through the window. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t be saying that if Dr Stoneface was still here. What about—” She nodded at the nurse standing beside Kit’s chair. He gazed straight ahead, looking increasingly uncomfortable.
“Don’t worry about Ayo. He’s a love.”
He’s a love. That sounded more like Janet Hext than Caitlin. It was as though Kit was trying out other peoples’ characteristics, remembered quirks and oddities. Trying to find a new template for herself. It’s what Caitlin would do.
Ayo appeared as though he didn’t know where to look.
Kit shrugged. She bent forwards in her chair as much as the restraints allowed. “He brought me a banana when I cried because they’d all been taken by other people. And he even—”
Gently, Ayo placed a hand on her arm. Kit clammed up.
Caitlin looked from one to the other. What kind of a relationship did they have? Then, suddenly, the thought of Kit having her own life – her own secrets – made her feel immensely grateful. “Are they leaving you alone, though? Letting you do your own thing?”
“There’s nothing here. Each day’s the same as the last, apart from visits, which they prefer kept as short as possible. There’s nothing to do and nothing to be done.” She wiped at her eyes, which had begun to tear up. There was a slight tremor to her movements. “Sorry. Tired. It’s tough getting any sleep, for whatever reason.”
Caitlin frowned. “What do you mean? Do they stop you sleeping?”
Kit shrugged. “We all look like this. Knackered. Can you blame us? We Skins aren’t in the best place, geographically or, you know, emotionally.”
“Seriously. Kit. Answer the question. Do they stop you sleeping?”
Kit’s head bobbed. When she raised it again, she appeared years older. The dry skin around her eyes looked terribly painful. Her bottom lip wouldn’t stay still. When she spoke, her voice cracked.
“I don’t know.”
TEN
Russell rang the doorbell three times. Nobody answered.
He skirted around the Blackwood house, taking care to tread lightly on the gravel of the driveway. Ellis was away on his mysterious trip, and Nell had taken Spencer to her parents’ house for the weekend, but North Oxford was full of busybodies who might inform the Blackwoods about somebody sneaking around.
Of course, there might be CCTV cameras, too. But surely nobody would check the footage, without a particular reason to do so? As he pulled up the hood of his dark coat he thought of Ixion dressed in the same way, and experienced an odd pang of satisfaction. He was determined to find something in the house that might incriminate Ellis and reveal what the GBP was really up to. Whether it would satisfy Ixion or not, it was his only route towards understanding how to help Nell.
The house was far larger than the Blackwood family needed. It would have taken half a dozen more children to warrant its size, with its vast garden crammed with hedged enclosures and outdoor dining areas.
He breathed more easily once he passed from gravel to grass. A strip of lawn led to Nell’s lean-to workshop. The outer wall was mottled plastic that was only semi-translucent. Russell kept low to the ground and every few metres he peered through the plastic, trying to see inside. There was no sign of movement.
The workshop door was slightly ajar. Despite his hurry, Russell felt a sudden impulse to enter. Inside, the thick tree trunk, Nell’s work in progress, seemed to glow as though from some natural phosphorescence. It appeared brighter than the daylight that seeped through the filthy plastic windows.
Nell had been working hard. The tree that lay lengthwise on its struts was now almost entirely hollow. The hole in its side was a couple of feet wide and five or six long, rounded at the corners. Russell frowned. The hole had the dimensions of a body, or at least an abstraction of one, like the shape of a coffin. The insides of the tree trunk were rough and splintered. Running through its precise centre was the sapling Nell had revealed. It looked absurdly fragile. Instinctively, Russell kept his distance. His anxiety that he might snap the slim tree within the hulking, fossil-like exterior had nothing to do with concerns about his break-in being discovered. It was something more unconscious. It was real fear.
He backed away and found himself outside in the bright daylight. He must get into the house. The longer he stayed out here, the greater the chances of being spotted.
The kitchen door was overlooked by the top floor of a neighbouring bank of executive apartments. All of their balconies were empty. Likely, the apartments were second homes, pieds-à-terre for city bankers, and most would be unoccupied for months on end. Even so, he jogged the remaining distance. For a moment he thought he had forgotten to bring the keys, which he had kept after his stint as a waiter at Ellis’s party. Finally, having located them in his jacket pocket, he fumbled with the lock and then he was in.
He stifled his instinct to turn on the light. Though the kitchen window was half obscured by vines, the natural light was enough to allow him to see. One half of the wooden farmhouse table was strewn with debris, all of which he attributed to Nell and Spencer – two hardened half-crescents of croissant, a packet of jeweller’s screwdrivers upon a demolished computer motherboard, an array of chisels and other woodworking tools apparently abandoned part way through cleaning, judging by the sawdust sprinkled all around. Only one corner of the kitchen was immaculate, with packets of cereal aligned in order of size
, and a stacked coffee cup and plate arranged on a crumbless chopping board. Russell pictured Ellis hunched over the counter beside the window, intently preparing his breakfast. There were a couple of small, cuboid paper packets, too. Medication. Perhaps Ellis was not a well man.
He made his way deeper into the house. It was darker here – the kitchen must have been a later extension to the main building, which had far smaller windows, some with stained-glass elements that made the light duller and sadder. The oak door to the drawing room was open. Russell pictured the Party officials and their guests milling around on the night of Ellis’s ‘soirée’. It occurred to him just how dramatically his opinion of them had changed. Once he had been impressed at powerful Charmers’ confidence, their decadence. Now he felt only suspicion and resentment.
The walls of the drawing room were lined with antique curios. A glass dome covered a tiny bonsai tree. A pair of crossed swords hung on the wall opposite the large fireplace. Russell flinched as a carriage clock on the mantelpiece rang the hour. A tiny figure emerged from the lower part of the clock. Its loose arms shook as it juddered along its semicircular path. It was little more than a skeleton, its limbs joined with pins. He held his breath until it re-entered its housing.
With a renewed sense of urgency, he hurried along the corridor. The window at the half-landing of the staircase was laced with lead strips which cast a cross-hatched pattern onto the hallway tiles and onto Russell. He wondered what he might discover if he went upstairs. Did Ellis and Nell sleep in the same bedroom, or separate ones? It was difficult to imagine them spending any amount of time close together, even unconscious. He thought of his theatre outing with Nell and Spencer. He would give anything to have the two of them as his family.
He passed further into the dark depths of the house, past a dining room and into Ellis’s study. It was small, and a mahogany desk took up almost half of it. The shelves behind the desk held only a few books. Russell plucked one out to read the title. Herding Cats: Overcoming Stubborn Behaviour. Ellis must be having problems with those hidden-away colleagues in the office complex. Next to the photos were framed photographs of Nell and Spencer, alongside a few monochrome images of a boy who must be Ellis himself.
Beside the desk was a cabinet. Each of the three drawers was locked.
Russell discovered two additional drawers beneath the surface of the desk. Both were locked, too. He suddenly felt an idiot for expecting anything else. He spun on the spot, hunting for anything that might hold a key. On instinct, he groped around underneath the surface of the desk, then felt even more foolish – the locks were clear to see, so they couldn’t be operated remotely.
He froze. Perhaps he was simply in the wrong room. Locks or no locks, this study was in the centre of the house, visible and vulnerable. If Ellis had secrets, surely he would keep them better hidden away.
And he had already seen a likely route to such a place, when Nell had emerged from the servants’ corridor on the night of the party. Perhaps she had been snooping around, as he was now. But then, what if Nell hadn’t been investigating, that night? What if her dazed reaction hadn’t been fear of some physical threat, but instead fear of Russell learning something he oughtn’t to know? But he simply didn’t want to consider that she might be an insider to Ellis’s secret. His need to characterise her as an innocent victim was overwhelming.
He crept in darkness towards the front of the house. He pushed the heavy curtain aside and found the narrow corridor more by feel than by sight.
A glow greeted him at the corner of the passage. Light leaked from the edges of a white door. It appeared new, in contrast to the original oak doors elsewhere in the house. It had no window and instead of a normal lock, there was a brushed-steel keypad fixed to the wall beside it.
Russell told himself that a light didn’t mean that anybody was in there. He listened for sounds from the door, but heard nothing. He examined its edges closely, but all he could make out in the gaps was yellowish light. He dropped to his knees, awkwardly bunching his body to fit sideways within the corridor. If he pressed his cheek hard against the floor, he could see through the slit beneath the door.
The room appeared no wider than the corridor. His view was limited, but he could see low shelves to either side. On the left-hand side were coloured boxes that might be cereal packets. These weren’t the box files and folders full of secret plans that he had hoped to find. The items on the opposite shelf were easier to make out. Tins of food, stacked three deep. Baked beans, tomatoes, sweetcorn, potatoes.
He sat up. It was a dead end. It was just a larder.
But then, what could possibly be the need for a keypad-operated lock? There must be something in there that required being locked away.
He bent to look again. The wall directly opposite him, only a few feet away, appeared blank, but something about it confused the eye. Light reflected oddly on its surface – the narrow slice of wall gradated from dark to light.
He stared at the keypad. Ellis wasn’t an imaginative man. The code might well be something straightforward, to ensure that he remembered it. His birth date? No. Nell’s, perhaps, or Spencer’s? Not that it mattered. Russell had no idea what any of those dates might be.
With a start, he realised he could hear a noise, a regular thudding. He dropped down again to look beneath the door. The tiny room was still empty. The thudding continued. What could be making the noise? It was possible that he had triggered some security system, but surely the result would be a siren.
The thuds sounded tinnier now. Russell realised what they were.
Footsteps.
Specifically, shoes clanging on metal.
The opposite wall transformed with this realisation. The light appeared gradated because the wall was sloped. And the wall was sloped because—
The top of a head appeared at Russell’s eye level. Somebody was climbing a staircase that must lead downwards from the tiny room behind this door.
The head had wild, curly black hair and the hint of a widow’s peak. A face followed.
It was Ellis.
He was more ruddy-cheeked than normal, his eyes less sore and tired, even though he was unkempt and stubbly.
And he kept climbing.
Before Russell bolted backwards he noticed that Ellis was wearing a loose grey tracksuit. He had never seen Ellis wear anything but a business suit.
He clambered away from the door, willing his shoes to squeak less upon the shiny floor.
The footsteps stopped.
Five beeps sounded from the keypad. Russell turned and sprinted away around the corner of the corridor.
He stumbled through the dark house and burst out through the kitchen door.
The daylight stung his eyes. He spun around wildly. He couldn’t risk retracing his route to the front of the house.
He scrambled up the tall fence and dropped down on the other side. Pain shot up his thighs upon landing. Limping, he navigated the low hedges of a well-tended garden and slipped along the side of Ellis’s neighbour’s house, muttering thanks to some nameless deity for its windows remaining dark and no neighbour appearing. Then he sprinted away along the street.
* * *
Caitlin let herself into Ivy Cottage. Even after only a couple of days, its proportions were as unfamiliar as a home remembered from childhood.
“Dad!”
There was no answer.
The journey from Reading had taken far longer than it ought. The train driver had announced a temporary halt just before they arrived at Didcot station. Forty minutes later, he had revealed that the reason for the delay was a suspected suicide. An hour later, one of the carriage staff had admitted to Caitlin that the body was still trapped under the wheels. Along with all the other passengers, Caitlin had watched the fire engine arrive and the men set to work. She had winced as the train eased backwards a few metres to reveal whoever was beneath. It was another ten minutes before the train driver explained, breathlessly, that the ‘suicide’ had been a dog.
When the train finally arrived at Woodstock, the taxi queue was immense. Caitlin had walked to Ivy Cottage in the dark.
Her dad wasn’t in the kitchen. Perhaps he was already in bed. She hoped he hadn’t been worrying too much. On the train, her pager battery had died before the dog had.
Upstairs, she eased open the door to her dad’s bedroom. “Dad? Sorry, I wanted to—”
The curtains were wide open. The bed sheets were in a tangle.
She padded downstairs. Perhaps her dad had gone looking for her. Perhaps, when she hadn’t returned, he had taken the train back to the care home. Perhaps he was there now, speaking to the Skin, Kit.
The front room was empty, the kitchen too. She was pulling on her boots when she heard someone cough.
The sitting room in the eastern wing of the house was lit only by moonlight. Ian stood facing the bay window. His shoulders were hunched. Caitlin sighed with relief when she realised that he was stooping only because he was looking through the telescope on its fixed stand.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” Ian said. He didn’t turn.
“Sorry I’m so late. There was an accident. The train stopped dead.”
Ian exhaled noisily.
“Are you all right?” Caitlin said.
Her dad said nothing for a long time. Finally, he said, “Saturn’s bright as anything tonight. I keep thinking I can see the rings, but I haven’t used the telescope for so long. It took me ages to realise I was staring at a hair on the lens.”
“You used to look up at the stars every night.”
One of Ian’s hands reached out blindly to fiddle with the focus. “I did. It felt important.”
“Because of the Fall?” She resisted the temptation to add, Because of Mum and me?
“I was trying not to think about anything, Cait. I suppose this is my calm place.” Seconds passed. “Yes. Because of the Fall.”
