Dear Thief: A Novel
Page 22
I ran downstairs in jeans and T-shirt and whatever shoes were to hand. No, let me pause one more time to tell you what happened before I ran. I took my keys from the chest of drawers in the bedroom and I looked at the pillow and projected a day forward, when Nicolas’ face might be half buried there, swampy with jetlag—and a thought occurred to me that seemed to be the first truly religious thought I have ever had. It went: If she is here and he wants her still. It was not, as you see, much of a thought, not even complete. This is how I recognised it as religious—one of those enormous broken offerings we make, someone stammering in front of the Lord. It was a thought that was braver than the person who had it, which is why cowardice stopped the sentence halfway through. If she is here and he wants her still. The rest of the thought had to be had unconsciously, and directed at me as if it had come from a better mind than my own. If she is here and he wants her still—it told me—then you will stand aside and be good enough to let them both go.
Then I picked up the keys and thought, as I went back through the living room, past the escritoire where this letter is kept, that this must be grace, to be defeated by one’s better nature. I thought there must be nothing beyond this left to say on the subject, that defeat had come in one passing moment of imagining Nicolas’ head so conspiratorial on my pillow—and how sweet it was, and uneventful, and how it shocked me.
I ran downstairs in jeans and T-shirt and whatever shoes. By the time I was out on the pavement there was no sign of you; I ran all the way along until my street met Guilford Street, but by that point you could have gone in any direction—left towards Russell Square, north towards Euston, right towards Gray’s Inn Road, which led on to a hundred streets I didn’t know at all, and so I stood in the rain for what I suppose was much less than a minute, but felt like ten, peering almost aggressively into the darkness before I gave up. I called out: Nina? Your name rushed to my lips like that, and left them warm. And just for a moment the years slipped back to times when it was only us, and you were in that chair in the dark. I thought I would go back and find that man you had left in the rain. I went back, and not only was he not there, but the whole street was empty. I think I have never seen it empty before; it was as if I had imagined not just you, but humankind as a whole, as if I were the last person on Earth.
Photo: Matthew Lincoln
Samantha Harvey has published two novels, The Wilderness and All Is Song. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and won the AMI Literature Award and the Betty Trask Prize. She was recently named by The Culture Show as one of the 12 Best New British Novelists.
She has contributed to Granta magazine and to Granta online, has held a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, and is a member of the Academy for the Folio Prize.
She lives in Bath, UK, and teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
Also by the Author
The Wilderness
All Is Song
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
DEAR THIEF. Copyright © 2014 by Samantha Harvey. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. For information, address Atavist Books, 555 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Originally published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 2014.
First U.S. Edition: October 2014
ISBN 978-1-937894-46-7 (trade pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-937894-45-0 (e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014945997
Cover Designer: Chip Kidd
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