by Holt, Tom
‘But isn’t this the—?’ She frowned. ‘And what’s he doing here? Look, just what exactly is going on here, because—’
‘Miss Pettingell,’ Mr Wells said. ‘You are at the office, in the closed-file store. Several weeks have passed since you fell asleep, during which time you were a prisoner of the Fey. You are safe now, and everything is under control.’ He peeked at his watch again. ‘I suggest that you and Mr Carpenter go home now; and, under the circumstances –’ a ghost of a smile flitted across his face ‘– I think you might as well have tomorrow morning off work. I shall, however, be grateful if you would both report to me in my office at two o’clock sharp.’
Paul breathed out, something he hadn’t done for some little time. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Thanks, we’ll be there. Um, Mr Wells, what about Mr Wurmtoter, and Mr Shumway? And we’ll need a new receptionist, won’t we, because that wasn’t the real—’
‘I shall deal with all of that,’ Mr Wells said firmly. ‘You two run along; it’s well after half-past five, and the goblins will be about, so please be careful on your way out.’
Paul reached out his hand to help Sophie to her feet; she ignored him (she didn’t hold with patronising gender-stereotypical conventions) and wobbled for a moment before her legs remembered how to cope with her weight. ‘Is that right, Paul, what he just said?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been held hostage for weeks, and all we get is one lousy morning off? Didn’t I always say, this firm is such a—’
Paul smiled feebly at Mr Wells, put his hand behind Sophie’s shoulder and shoved her out through the door.
Chapter Sixteen
Paul and Sophie arrived together at the office next day, and immediately separated. Sophie didn’t say where she was going; Paul headed for his office, where he sat down and started to work his way through the bauxite pictures, which were now severely overdue. As he ran his fingertip over the smooth surface of the photographs, he did his very best to keep his mind from wandering; but it was as hard to control as a large, bouncy dog that’s been kept inside for a whole rainy week.
All the way home Sophie hadn’t said a word. Hers was the sort of silence that well-meaning chatter sinks into and disappears without even a ripple, so he didn’t try. Paul sat next to her on the bus, staring at the back of the seat in front of him, and tried to figure out a few things, trivial as well as crucial. He didn’t get very far. He couldn’t concentrate.
When they got home, he’d offered her a cup of coffee. She said, ‘All right,’ in a neutral sort of voice, so he’d fled into the kitchen and made the best possible cup of coffee that he could engineer, using all his skill, experience and flair. He took it through and put it on the table beside the chair she was sitting in. Sophie made no move to drink it.
That was Paul all gambited out, so he sat on the sofa with his hands folded in his lap. By rights he should be shattered – violence, precious little sleep, fear, outwitting the Queen of the Fey, near as made no odds killing her, dying, let’s not forget that, and when was the last time he’d had anything to eat? He just felt numb, the way your mouth feels when you’ve had a tooth pulled but the effects of the jab haven’t worn off yet – you know the pain is there, smothered under the anaesthetic, but it’ll be along soon enough, and when it gets loose it’ll be no fun at all. He could sleep now, actually close his eyes and stop fighting off the pack of ravening sheep that had been poised at the foot of the wall for as long as he could remember; but he didn’t feel sleepy. Or anything much.
‘Paul,’ she said at last.
‘Hello?’
Sophie wasn’t looking at him. ‘When old Mr Wells told me I wouldn’t remember anything about the dreams, he was wrong.’
‘Oh,’ Paul said.
‘I can remember it all,’ she said, ‘right from the start.’
‘That’s—’ Yes, Paul, what was that? Sum up in one appropriate word everything Sophie’s gone through. Alternatively, shut up.
‘Everything,’ she said. ‘Being her – that thing – all that time. Being someone else, someone who wanted to kill you, and everybody, all the people in the world.’
Just a minuscule flicker of annoyance sparked across the back of Paul’s mind; right, it said, I think I’ve got that, but what the hell am I supposed to do about it? ‘That must’ve been – pretty bad,’ Paul mumbled.
‘Pretty bad,’ Sophie repeated. ‘Yes, you could say that. The whole fucking deal was pretty bad, actually. Like feeling great chunks of me, who I am, just leaking out and not being able to do anything about it. You see, she was sort of growing inside me all the time, getting stronger, I don’t know; but every time she grew, a part of me got displaced; and it’s not coming back, Paul. It’s gone for ever. Memories, feelings, things I used to like or hate. Like, when I was a kid we used to go to the seaside, and I know that one of my happiest memories was scrabbling about in rock pools for those little snail things with the shiny shells. But I can’t remember that, Paul; there’s just a hole, like an empty folder with nothing inside it.’
‘I see,’ Paul said.
‘While she was still there I didn’t really notice,’ Sophie went on, ‘because all the gaps and holes were filled with her stuff, her memories and emotions and all the things she was. Now she’s gone, there’s just the empty folders. I don’t know, maybe they’ll fill up again as time goes by, but the stuff that I lost won’t ever come back. It’s all gone.’
Paul knew what she was going to say next. ‘Drink your coffee,’ he told her. ‘It’s going cold.’
‘One of the things I lost,’ Sophie went on, cold and precise, as though giving evidence, ‘was us. I think she made a point of getting rid of it quite early on, because it was something I could hold on to, fight her with, even. But she just sort of flushed it out, and I could feel it drifting away, like a dream when you wake up. I know, in an abstract sort of a way, that I’d felt a certain way about you, before she came; but it’s just a historical fact, like I know who Edward the Third was. I can’t find those feelings again. They won’t be coming back.’
‘Right,’ Paul said. ‘I understand. That’s it, then.’
Sophie nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘You don’t think – if we tried really hard . . .’
‘No.’ She turned her head away so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Not your fault,’ Paul said.
‘I mean, you did save me,’ Sophie said quietly. ‘Sort of. You got me out of that place she took me to; and I know it was Mr Shumway who did all the fighting and had the plan and everything, but at least you tried, as best you could. So I probably owe you my life.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Paul said. ‘Any time.’
Sophie shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s important, because you came to rescue me because you thought we were still, well, us. It’d be wrong just to say, “Very sorry but it was all false pretences.“ I need to make it right, or else she’s won.’
Paul closed his eyes. ‘But there’s nothing you can do, is there?’
‘I suppose not,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s over, I can’t pretend or anything. I’m sorry, Paul. I did love you, and I thought, maybe now she’s gone, maybe I’ll fall in love with you all over again, from scratch. But now I look at you and I just feel guilty.’
Sophie had insisted that Paul had the bed; she’d had plenty of sleep lately, she reminded him, and now she felt like staying awake for a while, which she could do perfectly well on the sofa. So he lay on top of the undisturbed sheets, his hands behind his head, staring at the lighter darkness where the white-painted ceiling was, and begged sleep to come along and rescue him from the nightmare that he’d fallen into. At seven o’clock, he gave up and went into the kitchen. All the milk in the fridge had turned to runny cheese, and the one tomato that represented his entire stock of food had white hairs growing on it.
She came into the kitchen an hour later and made herself a drink. ‘This isn’t the usual coffee,’ she said.
&nb
sp; ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Ricky Wurmtoter drank all the Nescafé and got me that horrible muck instead. He said it’s better for keeping you awake.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes,’ Paul replied. ‘But it tastes disgusting.’
Sophie nodded, and tipped it down the sink. ‘What are you going to do this morning?’ she said. ‘We’ve got a half-day holiday, if you remember.’
Paul shrugged. ‘I think I’ll go in anyway,’ he said. ‘I was supposed to scry a whole lot of photos for Mr Tanner – you know, looking for minerals – and I never got round to it.’
Sophie nodded again. ‘I’d better go in too,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel like hanging around here on my own. And there’s some stuff I need to find out about before we see Mr Wells.’
So here Paul was, at his desk, fingering two-dimensional slabs of some bit of Africa. The bauxite seemed particularly elusive today – either that or he’d lost the knack of finding it, which would probably grieve Mr Tanner more than himself. Maybe you couldn’t find bauxite if your heart was broken. Probably something like that.
Julie came in around mid-morning. ‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ she said.
‘Very true,’ Paul replied. ‘I keep thinking that, but here I am.’
She wasn’t having any of that. ‘Mr Wells gave you the morning off. Why aren’t you at home, enjoying yourself?’
‘Well, Mr Tanner told me that I had to have all these done this morning. So I thought I’d better come in and enjoy myself here. I’ve done this batch, but I’ve still got these to do. Tell him that I’m sorry, and I’ll bring them up to him as soon as I’ve finished.’
‘Can if you like, but he’s not in today. Had to go to a meeting in Bloemfontein, so he won’t be back till tomorrow. So there’s no rush,’ Julie added. ‘You could’ve stayed home this morning after all.’
Paul’s smile was like the mathematical definition of a straight line, the shortest distance in two dimensions between the corners of his mouth. ‘Life’s little ironies, huh. Never mind.’
Julie shrugged. ‘Please yourself,’ she said. ‘I only came down to tell you that it’s Mr Suslowicz’s birthday tomorrow, so that’ll be a fiver.’
‘Huh?’
‘For the cake. We always get him a cake on his birthday.’
‘A fiver each? That’s a bloody big cake.’
‘He’s a giant. I can come back after lunch.’
Paul sighed and disbursed five pounds. He’d been intending to buy his dinner with it, but what the hell, he wasn’t hungry. ‘Do we each get a slice of the cake?’
‘No.’
‘Fair enough. Do you want to take on these pictures or not?’
Julie shook her head. ‘I’ll come back when you’ve finished, otherwise I’ll have to make two trips.’
Paul struck bauxite on the last photograph but one, ringed the spot in blue marker and looked at his watch. Quarter to two; that gave him fifteen minutes before he was due to see Mr Wells. Under normal circumstances the thought of an interview with the senior partner would’ve puckered up his intestines like a tulip about to burst into bloom, but he wasn’t bothered in the least. When you’ve died twice and lost the only girl you’ll ever love twice and done everything you could to kill the Queen of the Fey, getting frowned at by the boss slips a notch or two down your list of things to be upset about.
The door opened, and Sophie came in; Paul knew it was her by the way the door started to open, which was as weird as a ferret in a blender, but that’s love for you. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ he replied.
Sophie sat down in what used to be her chair. ‘We’ve got to go and see old Mr Wells in ten minutes.’
‘That’s right.’
She picked at her fingernails with a biro cap for fifteen seconds or so, then took a small glass bottle from her jacket pocket. ‘I’ve been up in her office,’ she said; no need to ask who she was, in this context. ‘They’ve locked the door, but it’s one of those combination locks, and I’ve got her memory of what the code was.’
Paul frowned. ‘What did you want to go in there for?’
‘For this.’ She held up the bottle. ‘I remembered she kept some for emergencies.’
‘Ah, right. What is it?’
Sophie was looking at him. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘I told you last night, everything I’ve ever felt for you’s just gone for ever, so I can’t love you any more. But there’s this stuff.’
Then Paul knew exactly what it was. ‘That’s the love philtre,’ he said.
Sophie nodded. ‘It’s not fair on you otherwise,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s not right that I don’t love you any more. If I drink this stuff, I will. It’ll be back how it was, more or less.’
Paul stared at her. Inside his mind was a huge, complex tangle of thoughts and feelings, ranging from joy and relief to anger and disgust, and there was no way of knowing which part of the tangle was which. ‘You’d do that?’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t really matter what happens to me, and you’ll be happy. And me too, I suppose. After all, being in love with someone who loves you back – that’s the main thing, isn’t it? That’s what we’re all supposed to want, more than anything in the world.’
The tangle unravelled itself in a blur, and the blur became a mental image of Melze, the fake Melze, the one who loved him with every fibre of her synthetic being, and whom he’d loved back, until he found out that she didn’t really exist. What had become of her, Paul wondered; and realised that he couldn’t care less. ‘But it wouldn’t be real,’ he said. ‘It’d be an illusion, like the stuff she used to do – effective magic.’
‘So what?’ Sophie shrugged, a slight, understated movement of her thin shoulders. ‘It’s better than nothing, isn’t it? And anyhow, it’d be as near real as makes no odds, because I did love you, very much. It’d be different if I couldn’t stand you before, but it’s just, well, like rebuilding a damaged house or something. Well? Do you want me to or not? I’m not bothered one way or the other.’
‘No,’ Paul said.
‘Suit yourself, then.’ Sophie put the bottle down on the desk. ‘I offered, so don’t go around looking all tragic and sad. Obviously, you don’t love me as much as all that.’
He looked at her. ‘I’d have thought it was obvious that I do,’ he said. ‘Which is why using that stuff wouldn’t be right.’
Sophie yawned. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘If you’re going to be all picky, then forget about it.’ She reached out to take the bottle back, but left it where it was and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Which of us is going to stay in the flat? I can move back to my parents’, I suppose.’
‘Up to you,’ Paul replied. ‘I don’t think I want to stay there.’
‘Once I’ve gone, you mean. Couldn’t bear to be alone with the memories.’
‘Don’t say it like that.’
Sophie shook her head. ‘You should try sharing your skull with the memories I’ ve got,’ she said. ‘I think I’d be better off going home. Being on my own wouldn’t be a good thing right now.’
Paul looked at the wall. ‘If you’re sure,’ he said.
‘It’d be better,’ she replied. ‘I’ll get my stuff at the weekend. If you want, I’ll pay my half of the rent till you can find someone to share with.’
He grinned bleakly. ‘I’m not the sharing kind,’ he said. ‘I’ll look for somewhere smaller. Anything larger than a shoebox gives me agoraphobia, in any case.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘No, it isn’t. Does it matter?’
‘No.’
Sophie was still looking at him. ‘Paul,’ she said, ‘what happened to her?’
Not a question he wanted to answer. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I remember her leaving me, but that’s all. Is she—?’
Paul shrugged. ‘I don’t know, is the honest answer. Mr Wells did something to her, sent her through th
e Portable Door. Said something about the Isle of Avalon, if that’s any help.’
Sophie frowned. ‘That’s in Somerset, isn’t it? Where they have the big rock festival.’
‘Is it? I don’t think that’s what he could have had in mind. I thought Avalon was where King Arthur went; and probably Elvis and Princess Di and JFK and Shergar and all that crowd.’ He thought about that for a moment. ‘She’ll fit in well there,’ he said. ‘Her kind of people.’
‘I suppose.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘What I mean is, she can’t come back, can she? I couldn’t stand it if I thought she could come back.’
Good question, Paul thought, and he remembered what Mr Wells had said, about Countess Judy continuing to do consultancy work. Saving the human race was one thing, but JWW was in business to make money, and that, apparently, had been something Countess Judy had been very good at. ‘Absolutely no chance of that,’ he said.
‘But what about the stupid Door thing? If that’s how she got there—’
‘Yes,’ Paul said, ‘but I’ve got that, and nobody’s going to get their hands on it except me, promise. Unless you want it. You can have it if you like.’
Sophie looked at him, and he didn’t know how to begin to interpret her expression. ‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘You keep it, it’ll be safe with you. After all, you’re a hero, aren’t you?’
Paul actually managed a laugh. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘with me, it’s about as safe as the Stock Market. But I think I know somewhere where it will be safe, if I can face going there again. Come on,’ he added, ‘we’d better go and see Wells.’
‘Essentially,’ Mr Wells said, steepling his fingers on his desktop, ‘everything you’ve been told is true. You were both of you bought from your respective families by this firm, which is why we can force you to continue working for us against your will. Furthermore, Mr Carpenter, you were indeed bred – if you’ll pardon the expression – with the sole purpose of concluding Ernest Carpenter’s work against the Fey and their proposed invasion of our side of the Line. Ernest Carpenter was for many years a partner in this firm.’
