Back in the first pub, sitting at the bar cursing his luck, a young businessman spun a fifty-pence coin on the wooden surface and thought about what he was going to do with his life. In another world, another time, a woman would have appeared at the bar beside him and asked to use the telephone. They would have started speaking and he would have charmed her and married her and they would have had Gillian three years from that very night. But now he span his coin, went back over the day’s events and tried to work out what he should do. “Doug,” he said. The fat barman with the bristly white moustache looked up from cleaning a glass
“What’s up?”
“Pass me the phone, will you?”
“There’s a call box outside.”
The man who might have been Gillian’s father had sworn, slipped off his stool and walked out into the rain. In the red box he’d dialled a number on the back of the business card he had in his pocket
“Mr Bryson?” he’d said. “I’d like to take the job after all.”
And that’s how he’d ended up sitting on the terrace of his house in Australia thirteen years later with a can of Fosters in his hand, watching his three sons play cricket in the garden
2
The body of The Master was cremated on a pyre in the corner of the school grounds that even at that time was called The Dips
The ground was marked by a series of ancient furrows and hollows where Viking boats might be buried, or which might have been the remains of a prehistoric settlement. It was a bleak, wintry afternoon
In accordance with the Master’s wishes, only Mrs Sharpe, Will and the three other teachers were in attendance. Mrs Sharpe watched sadly as the smoke and flames fought valiantly against the snow, which had been coming down, on and off, for most of the day. The pupils and villagers would pay their respects at a service at St Catherine’s, which was scheduled for the next morning, weather permitting
“Leave the body out tonight,” Mrs Sharpe told Will as she crossed herself and made to leave. “It’s what he wanted. What’s then left by nature, gather up to be buried at the church tomorrow.”
Will walked back to the ruined abbey with the proud, handsome Ayland, who looked as suave and sophisticated as ever, despite the weather. “You really shouldn’t stay for too much longer, dear Will,” the well-spoken young man was saying. “One of the tunnels is bound to collapse under the pressure of the snow before long. Why don’t you come with me to town and stay a few days? Move on when the weather breaks? The pupils have been told to leave for their own safety. No reason why you shouldn’t follow suit.”
“I need to finish things.”
“Ah.” Ayland nodded. “The play, I presume?”
“Yes. Almost done. The quiet will do me good.”
“Mind you don’t get snowed in with it. That wouldn’t do anyone any good.”
“I won’t. Plus –” Will gestured back towards the old house – “if I stay it’ll give me a chance to keep an eye on Mrs Sharpe. Make sure she stays on an even keel.”
“Very thoughtful of you.” Ayland stopped at the dark doorway. “Will you be joining us again next term? We’ll have The Quad mapped out by then. Work should start as soon as the flowers pop up.”
“I don’t think so,” Will answered. Voicing this thought made him both embarrassed and sad. He was slightly ashamed that The Master, Ayland and the others had taken him in, taken him under their wings, only for him now to go running away from them, but he also knew it was what he had to do
“Don’t worry. We didn’t expect you to remain here for long, you know.” Ayland touched Will’s cheek. “Ulric is going too. He’s never been content here.”
“Oh, but I have been happy. I’m only sorry that my departure has to be so abrupt.”
“We’ll always be thankful for the work you’ve done in the library.”
“A pleasure, really. It’s all been a pleasure. It’s just sometimes you feel you have to move on, I suppose. I feel I have to go.”
“We’ll always have your plays, eh?”
Will reddened. “I hope so. For what it’s worth.”
“We know so,” nodded Ayland, and both men ducked inside the ruined abbey. “In fact, I have something to ask you about that, Will.”
“Oh, yes?”
“A rather delicate matter, I’m afraid. Money. Sorry to be so vulgar.”
Will shook his head. “Don’t worry. My position on that is simple: I have none.”
“And I much.” Ayland watched Will
“Aye, well, some of us are lucky, I suppose.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it. It’s all about land, Will. About owning things.”
“One does not choose where one is born on this globe, Ayland, where one ‘pops up’, as it were. I didn’t choose my life and you didn’t choose yours. ‘Twas luck, or something like it, that’s all. One makes the best of what is given.”
This little speech caught both men by surprise. Will felt as though he had spoken his thoughts out loud and shocked himself by going on. “I like to think that it doesn’t bother me where I was born, you know. If I’d been rich, I would have been rich. If I were poor, I would have been poor. As it is, I’m somewhere in the middle, sometimes rich, sometimes poor. Be that as it may, I’m a writer and the world is my subject. I simply write what I see as I hope I would if I were richer or poorer.”
“Very noble.” Ayland nodded. “But you must want for an audience, surely?”
“I do of course.”
“And that’s what I’m saying.” Ayland patted Will on the shoulder. “That’s how I can help you, you see.”
“My brains and your money?”
“Our brains and my money,” Ayland replied, laughing. “What say you?”
“Sounds good.”
“Shall I have someone draw up a contract or shall we shake upon it? Shakespeare?”
Will smiled and held out his hand. “We shall do both. In this handshake, my agreement. In the contract, the details.”
Will had the strange feeling, as he shook hands with the tall boy, that he was part of someone else’s plan, playing a role in a great drama that he would never quite understand. It was almost the same as it had been with the Master: as it had been with everything at the school. Some places on earth had a magic and spirituality to them which was almost tangible, he felt, and this was one of them. He sensed it all around him, in the ruins and in the people. He felt it in Ayland. Perhaps it was simply charm, a kind of chemical magic. It was seductive, though, whatever it was, and Will wanted to believe in it
“Will?”
Turning at the top of the narrow staircase down which Ulric and now Ayland had already descended, Will looked behind himself into the shadows and saw Bethsabe with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, holding out her hand to him
“Quick. Come here!”
“But?”
“Please, don’t argue. Come here!”
Will went across to where Bethsabe was, ducking under the heavy, hanging tapestry she’d lifted, and found himself in a small room littered with great cubes of hewn stone lit by candles. The walls had been decorated with chalk or charcoal, not images but patterns, and Will knew instinctively that Bethsabe had made the designs
“I wanted to say goodbye,” she told him, taking his arm to pull him towards her as he examined the swirls on the ceiling
Will looked back at the fabric door. Ulric was never far away from Bethsabe. Will and Bethsabe hadn’t spoken to each other since the day in his room, if indeed that had ever happened. They were never alone. Only via their eyes had they communicated; or lying in bed at night, apart, together in each other’s minds – but then one never knew if any of that were true either. “Are you leaving?” he asked
“No. I thought you were. I heard you saying goodbye to Ayland.”
“No, no. I’m staying here a while. Until I finish my work.” He had never been this close to her: her soft, caramel face, so perfectly curved, was all he could see. Her eyes were a
deep, soothing brown, with flashes of amber. “Why do you ask?”
Her face hardened. “I didn’t want you to go without saying goodbye.”
Will looked down at their hands. She had taken hold of his and he felt a current pass between them; it brought guilt and pleasure. “We shouldn’t be in here together, Bethsabe. If Ulric comes …”
She took a step forwards, her nose just below his. “He’s leaving.”
“So Ayland says.”
“I am alone here. Like you.”
“I’m married!”
“You left your wife, Will!”
“But I am married!”
“Do you love her like you love me?”
“I will not answer that, Bethsabe.” Will broke apart and stepped back
“Because you know it is not true! It’s our love that’s true. You profess to love truth, yet you run from it. You run from me. You run from love.”
“I feel a duty.”
“Your only duty is to the truth and love!” She placed a hand on his shoulder and rubbed her hand down his back. “Your duty now is to me. To us.”
“If I give myself to you, you may destroy me.”
“So? Let us both burn in the fire of our love! Turn around, Will. Kiss me. Kiss me like you want to. Stop fighting what you know is right.”
And she pulled him around and clasped him close to her body and they kissed and it was as wonderful as he had dreamed it would be
3
Kizzie woke up just after two in the morning. Priya was coming back from the toilet with a dead-eyed look on her face. On any other day this might have been comical but after a deep sleep, in the chilly midnight shadows, it creeped Kizzie out. “Are you all right?” she asked as her friend stood stock still inside the dorm, at the door, holding the handle
Priya didn’t, or wouldn’t, reply and Kizzie was caught in two minds. Was Priya sleep walking? Weren’t you not supposed to wake a sleepwalker? Wasn’t it dangerous?
Just as Kizzie was thinking about getting up, Priya turned and walked across to her bed, pulling the rustling duvet over her body in a single movement. A few mutters and sighs later and she was snoring
Kizzie turned to the wall, aware that she was wide awake – all she could think of was Gillian – and concentrated on the firework shapes in the darkness on the back of her eyelids. Behind her, above Priya, the bunk bed Gillian had slept in was gone, the wall bare. Nobody had said anything that night as they’d gone to bed, not Angela, Priya or any of the other girls who’d come and gone in the noisy hour before lights out
Gillian had simply never been to the school
I’ll think of her like I think about grandma, Kizzie thought. Kizzie’s grandmother had died when she was ten years old and she had a better relationship with her now than she’d ever had when the old lady was alive
Kizzie shook her head and said, I’m sorry, Grandma. Sorry for what I’ve done. She often spoke to her grandmother as others might speak to their god
For a terrible moment, eyes clenched shut, Kizzie thought that even her grandmother was going to forsake her but then she noticed a bright light, like an indistinct sun, shining through the darkness of the back of her eyes. Blinking them open she saw a glow on the bobbled wall in front of her face and turned slowly over to face the dorm. What she saw made her stomach contract with shock
In the centre of the room, a cowled monk with bright blue eyes was hovering above the shiny floor. The monk looked impossibly old. His skin was drawn and wrinkled as though he were made of paper and had been folded in a box for thousands of years. As Kizzie stared, he raised a finger and she heard the words:
You know what you have done.
You know what remains to be undone.
Kizzie whispered, “I’m sorry” in the most pathetic voice she’d used in years. It was her childhood voice, her homesick voice, her helpless voice – a voice which had long since been taken over by a more confident, slightly arrogant tone
Not knowing what else to do, Kizzie lifted both hands above the sheets and pressed them together in prayer and as she did so the monk seemed to smile, bowed his head and slowly disappeared, fading away with the light
The tight ball of nerves in Kizzie’s stomach told her what she’d seen hadn’t been a dream or vision. The horrible, wide-eyed realisation that nothing was ever going to be the same again announced itself and she lay there wide awake, thinking on the monk’s words, trying, in her mind, to make this all somehow not her fault, not her doing. What she really wanted, and not for the first time, was a rewind button. Oh, for a rewind button, to zip backwards in time and not do what she had done!
But there was no way out. She had made all this happen
She lay awake for hours and hours with no escape from herself
The worst, she knew, was yet to come
“Oh my God, Kizzie, what’s the matter with you? You look terrible!”
“I don’t know.” Kizzie shook her head. “Bad sleep. Nothing.”
“I feel yuck too, today.” Angela was pulling hard on the laces of her sport’s shoes
“Why? What’s up with you?” Priya asked Angela. Priya was standing in front of the mirror with two pink hair clips poking out of her mouth
Angela leaned against her bedside cabinet to stretch her calves. “I dunno. I just feel like I’m going mental.”
Kizzie was buttoning up her school shirt. Part of her was happy Angela was not feeling well. It made her feel less awful about feeling horrible herself. But as soon as she thought this, she talked to herself. Don’t make this worse than it is.
“Tell us, then,” Priya was saying
“It’s that bloke. The Shakespeare bloke.”
“You saw him again?”
Kizzie glanced over at Priya and thought how bright the wall looked where Gillian’s bunk should have been. Right about now Gil would have been peeping her head over the duvet and moaning about the light or the time
“It’s got to be an actor or someone who’s like a fan or something,” Priya said. “Someone from the village. Amateur dramatics or something. Some of the Year Nine girls dress up as me. It’s normal.”
“No, but –” Angela scrunched her face up – “I don’t think it’s normal, you know. I don’t think it’s something I should have seen.”
“What? Like a ghost?” asked Priya in the reflection. She smacked her lips. God, she was gorgeous
Angela shrugged. “Maybe.” She wanted to tell them a few things she was known for in her family but they were subjects you couldn’t just blurt out. Stories about how she’d had invisible friends when she was little. About how she’d once told her mother about a previous life she remembered. Stuff that had faded away as she’d got older. Things that now made no sense and couldn’t possibly be true. “Ah, it’s nothing.”
“Why don’t you speak to someone?” Priya asked. “If it’s doing your head in you should talk to someone.”
“Talk to Leana,” Kizzie said. She knotted her tie and tried to smile but all the life and hope had been sucked out of her. It was true that morning – daylight – had improved things but the knot in her stomach was still there and the normality of the day, the humdrum routine of the morning, made everything hurt
She felt like a ghost must, when they realise they’re a ghost. How sweet are all the normal, boring things we take for granted when you can’t have them? Friends. Chit-chat. The view from the window and nothing to worry about but the usual stuff?
“I tried,” said Angela. She stood up. Her face was very pale from the cream she’d used for her spots
Kizzie was surprised. Angela was usually closed to suggestions. “And?”
“She ignored me.”
“Try again!” said Kizzie. “She’s the one you have to talk to. Seriously. Just ask her again.”
Angela looked shy. “I don’t know.”
Priya held Angela’s hand. “You do look so tired.”
“I’m all right,” Angela replied. “I’m just tryin
g to work out what it all means. A run’ll help.”
“Coming, Kiz?” asked Priya, and the three of them left the dorm, which smelled of shampoo and wet towels and aerosol sprays, and walked out into the corridor
The heaters were on and girls passed by in the opposite direction, some in bathrobes, some in PE kit and others heading the same way, to the main staircase and down to breakfast
Kizzie dropped behind the other two when they got to the queue for the breakfast hall. She looked over the shoulders of the children in front of them and saw, through the steamed-up window, Zak laughing with Sol at their usual table. Kizzie’s eyes watched Zak’s until her boyfriend looked up at her, caught her eye, and winked. He held up a pen drive and waved it and she forced herself to smile as the door opened and the Consul let in the next six children
Kizzie was cut off from Priya who made it through into the warmth – she pressed her hands and nose against the glass from inside the door like a prisoner – but there was nothing the Consul was going to do to change his mind. He was a big, burly sixth former with stubble and a double chin who went back to his mobile phone without even acknowledging Kizzie’s protestations
“Kizzie?”
Kizzie turned and got a shock as she saw Alain Verne. “Oh, hello.”
“May we have a chat?”
He looked the same as ever. Recovered, but ever so slightly wild about the eyes
“Ah, it’s just – you know. Breakfast.” Kizzie shrugged and pointed at Priya who immediately looked up and, for some reason, whistled. “I need food. I didn’t sleep well.”
Alain leaned in to her ear. “Did you enjoy your visit from The Master last night?”
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