Mirror Mirror: A shatteringly powerful page-turner

by Nick Louth

  ‘It was your idea,’ Mira retorted.

  ‘Not to go to the gig, it wasn’t. It was a completely preventable fuck-up. No more PFUs, understand?’

  Mira shrugged and stood up ready to head off to a photoshoot in Paris, but Kelly walked in. ‘Got a few bits of fan mail for you to read on the plane,’ she said. ‘As you seemed to enjoy the previous one, I’ve included the latest from Broadmoor. More Latin, I’m afraid.’

  She passed the sheaf to Mira who started to put them into her huge Louis Vuitton bag.

  ‘Can I see them first?’ Virgil asked.

  Mira looked heavenwards, and passed them on. Virgil leafed through the post until he reached the Broadmoor envelope, which had been opened. Again there was a handmade card, a beautiful watercolour of a pair of doves in flight. Inside was written:

  ‘Did you translate this?’ Virgil asked Kelly.

  ‘No, I just assumed that it was more of the same,’ Kelly said. ‘I do have a lot to do, you know? There are other clients; they all get post.’

  Virgil quickly typed it into Google translate.

  Only ninety days! Do not forget your promise to me.

  He read it out and looked at Mira. ‘What promise? Does this mean anything to you?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ she said impassively, holding her hand out for the letter which she added to the sheaf and put in her bag. ‘The car’s here now, so I’ve got to go.’ She headed out towards the lift.

  ‘It sounded vaguely threatening to me,’ said Virgil, looking to Kelly and Jonesy for support.

  ‘What do you expect from Broadmoor?’ Jonesy said. ‘Effing sanity?’ He took a look at the envelope. ‘Virgil, it invites us to notify them if the letter is unwanted or offensive. Why don’t you fill out and return this form? We’ve got proper problems here without worrying about this crap. Honestly, Virgil, if we could cut this zombie connection once and for all we’d get more brand money upfront and could fund a back-up for you.’

  ‘But it’s the fans of Village of the Dead who got her to where she is now.’

  ‘Okay, but our job is to build from here. And right now, most of the dosh she earns is conditional; back-end loaded or dependent on sales uplift a year or more out. She ain’t a hypermodel yet, not by a long chalk.’

  After that downbeat assessment, Virgil didn’t want to bring up the website, for fear of revealing he’d been spying on Mira’s Internet usage. But the countdown on the site must tally with these cards. There could be no other explanation. Virgil worked forwards from the postmark on the card and the website counter. The deadline day was Saturday 25 April. He checked for anniversaries, birthdays, famous moments in recent British history and could find nothing that seemed relevant. This day must be personal, notable only to two people who really should not know each other. And what was the promise she had made?

  * * *

  EIGHTY-FIVE DAYS

  Virgil had wanted the following day off to equip his new flat, but it wasn’t to be. Mira returned from Paris and had decided to visit her mother, who was in a private care home in Swindon. In the past she had driven there alone, but Jonesy was insistent that she be accompanied.

  ‘We’ve already had a report that the press have tracked her mother down,’ he told Virgil. ‘Any half decent tabloid reporter will have greased the palm of someone on staff to tip the wink if Mira is there. So she’ll just turn up unannounced for a quick visit which should keep PFUs to a minimum.’

  What Jonesy hadn’t told Virgil was that Mira was determined to drive herself. He had barely finished his breakfast when he heard someone leaning on the horn outside. He looked out to see a midnight blue S-type Jaguar parked all over the pavement outside, amid a crowd of wheelie bins. Mira emerged from the car, dressed in quilted afghan coat, white Beatles-style breton cap, sunglasses and flared jeans, as if she had just escaped from the seventies. He bolted the last of his toast, and grabbed his coat and phone. The moment he got down there she was revving to go, and he only had a moment to slide into the passenger seat before Mira gunned the engine and pulled a fast U-turn into traffic. She had already taken two turns before Virgil had managed to find and fasten his seat belt.

  ‘Are we late?’ he asked, as Mira overtook a van in the face of oncoming traffic.

  ‘Not really. But I reckon the sooner we get there the less chance of any reporters snooping around.’

  As Mira tore through the Sunday morning traffic Virgil found he was unconsciously pressing his non-existent brake pedal and sucking in hissed breaths. After one particularly deadly manoeuvre in which Mira mounted the pavement and scattered pedestrians to get round a vehicle indicating right, she looked at him and laughed.

  ‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’

  ‘Bloody terrified, actually. Since you asked.’

  She stared at him in amazement. ‘But you’ve served in Afghanistan, under fire, seen friends die, haven’t you? This is nothing compared to any of that, surely?’

  ‘Look out for the cyclist,’ he squealed, as Mira barely glanced ahead while squeezing through a non-existent gap. ‘Mira, I am allowed to be scared. I’m not immune just because I’ve seen bad things. It makes you more careful, not less.’

  ‘Really?’ She turned to look again as they stopped in a queue to get onto the South Circular.

  ‘Of course. Some of my oppos came back and can’t cross the road. When you see death, it tears away the kind of protective skin that protects us from our imagination. We can no longer take risks without fully imagining the consequences. It’s a kind of accelerated ageing process.’

  Mira shrugged and then asked: ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

  Virgil sighed and looked at her. ‘The best answer I can say is: probably, yes.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ She gave a short disbelieving laugh. ‘How can you not know?’

  ‘Easily. I’ve shot in the direction of incoming fire, through a window of a building half a mile away. Then it’s stopped and I’m not sure why. I’ve directed air strikes onto a transport depot from which we were taking Taliban fire. After it was blown up, there were no more shots. If you can find and identify the bodies, you can be fairly certain, but not always.’

  ‘Civilians?’

  ‘I always hope not. The Taliban uses civilian areas for cover, knowing it inhibits us returning fire. I’ve seen dead women and children, lots. If you had the time, you could probably work out who killed them, the enemy or us. But it’s not like we can call in forensics. We’re too busy trying to stay alive. All I can say is that the rules of engagement are right. We never knowingly target areas where civilians may be present, but knowing that for sure and guessing are different things.’

  Virgil’s mind was drawn to the first dead civilian he saw, on his first week in Helmand. His unit had worked its way under fire laboriously through a series of apricot orchards, and when the shooting finally stopped heard a child crying. They found a little boy, less than two, frantically pulling on the arm of a dead young woman, under the base of a tree. The back of her skull had been blown off, her brains lying grey and bloodied in a mound. But the kid still thought he could wake her up.

  ‘If you see death when you are young, and can’t talk about it, it must mess you up,’ Mira said. ‘I think it would screw you up completely.’

  Virgil noticed that she had moderated her speed. ‘It’s not even a matter of being young. We’re human. Of course it does. Though not everyone. It all depends. I’ve got no end of friends with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s what they use to call shell shock. They are quiet and withdrawn, and then they get furious at the smallest thing. Most of them are now divorced. They are permanently in a different world.’

  ‘What’s the worst thing you saw?’

  Virgil sighed. ‘It’s not easy to talk about.’ He looked at her, and saw the hunger in her expression, the huge green eyes. This to her was more than a curiosity.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to. I’m probably being insensitive.’r />
  For five minutes there was no word spoken between them. Mira drove through the congested streets of Wandsworth. Finally Virgil scratched his head and then said: ‘In Helmand, five of my best mates burned alive when an IED blew up a personnel carrier. I had been in there with them just thirty seconds before. I turned back to open the door, but it was too hot. When it did open…when I did.’ He paused. ‘I cannot describe it. I see it every day, and I dream it most nights, but I cannot describe what I saw in there.’

  Mira said nothing for a while, then said: ‘I’m sorry I asked.’ Virgil doubted it.

  She then switched to small talk about fashion, and Virgil tuned it out, stuck in his own dark world. They were on the elevated section of the M4, heading west out of London, before Mira asked him another question.

  ‘Some of my friends say that the army should never have been in Afghanistan. That professional soldiers are just guns for hire, paid to kill.’

  ‘It’s a point of view,’ Virgil responded. ‘Particularly now the Taliban seem to be gaining ground since the moment we left. And I don’t want to discuss it because I might get annoyed, on behalf of those who never came back.’

  ‘So could you ever kill, just for money?’

  He turned and stared at the side of her face: That exquisite profile, the fine cheekbones. She looked so youthful, so innocent. But what a question.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  She laughed. ‘Hypothetically, I mean.’

  Virgil shrugged. ‘No. I don’t think so. Not in cold blood. I need to have skin in the game. To kill to protect someone I love, someone who couldn’t protect themselves, that kind of thing. Then maybe. Why, did you have anyone in mind?’

  She didn’t answer for a while. The reply when it came was quiet. ‘No.’

  * * *

  They arrived at the care home before 10am. It was a dull two-storey building in tan brick at the end of a tired parade of suburban shops. The car park was almost empty. When Mira walked in, the elderly Asian man on reception clearly didn’t recognise her. Mira signed in as Lydia Nikolayevna, then led Virgil along a beige, potpourri-scented corridor.

  ‘I try to come every week. I think the idea that I’m her niece doesn’t fool some of the staff.’

  Mira knocked on a door and went in. Virgil stood back while Mira and her mother embraced. Svetlana Roskova was a handsome woman, quite tall and fine featured with her hair in a dark bob. Virgil had somehow imagined Mira’s mother would be old, bent and grey. In fact she was just fifty-seven. But the stroke she had suffered two years ago had robbed her of coherent speech and stifled her movement and balance. Mira had to interpret her words.

  ‘She’s very glad that someone is looking after me,’ Mira said, after Svetlana had snuffled her way through some noises and touched Virgil’s arm. She still had a wonderful smile, and eyes that sparkled. Virgil looked around at the spacious, comfortable room, with only an orthopaedic bed and the walking frame betraying that this wasn’t just ordinary sheltered housing. On one wall was an extraordinary framed drawing of Mira as a teenager, sitting on a stool. Just a few careful lines, it showed the child but hinted at the adult she was to become.

  ‘Who did the drawing?’ Virgil asked.

  ‘Good isn’t it?’ At that moment Svetlana said something, and Mira translated. ‘Virgil, she says that someone from a newspaper did come to see her. When they discovered they couldn’t understand what she said, they asked her to write down the answers to their questions. She agreed, but chose to write with her left hand, so it was illegible. They went after about five minutes.’

  Svetlana laughed uproariously, the sound a shock because it sounded utterly normal. After a few minutes Virgil slipped out to the corridor. A young woman with tufted pink hair and square glasses and wearing a staff lanyard was huddled by the snack vending machine, whispering on a mobile phone. When she saw him, she sidled away into an office looking a bit guilty. ‘Yes, she is. Here. Right now,’ was the only phrase that Virgil caught. His suspicions raised, he slipped quietly back into Svetlana’s room, where Mira pointed out that the tea she had made for him was getting cold. Virgil considered trying to hurry Mira away, but seeing how animated they were together, he shrugged it off. If the press has been called, it could only be a local photographer. Fleet Street wouldn’t be able to react this quickly.

  An hour later when Mira was ready to leave, Virgil went ahead to reconnoitre the corridor and exit to the car park. A mileage-soiled estate car laden with silver camera cases and black bags was parked by the entrance, with someone sitting inside, eating a pasty, long lens camera on the seat beside him. There was no one else. Virgil went up and tapped on the window. It slid down.

  ‘Local or national press?’ Virgil asked.

  ‘Whoever pays,’ said the man, a greasy fifty-something with a ponytail and flecks of pastry in his moustache. ‘You the bodyguard?’

  ‘Yeah. So let’s be civilised,’ Virgil said. ‘Show us your card.’

  The man flashed a press card which identified him as Bob Newsome, freelance.

  ‘Okay Bob, it’s your exclusive, so you’ll have ten seconds to get a posed pic or two of her by the door, right?’

  ‘Suits me.’

  ‘But if you ever photograph her mother, or try to follow us, or do anything sneaky, you have to remember that I never forget a face.’

  Newsome smiled nervously.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Virgil said, pointing a warning finger. ‘So is that a deal?’

  ‘Fine by me,’ Newsome said.

  Virgil thought he was on top of media worries until he got back inside and heard shouting coming from down the corridor. Mira was demanding that the young female care assistant Virgil had seen earlier should hand over her phone. ‘Don’t you dare sneak pictures of me with my mum!’ Mira shouted. ‘Is nothing private?’

  ‘I didn’t take a picture,’ the woman said. ‘Honest.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ Mira said, reaching for the phone.

  Virgil ran to her side, and rested an arm carefully on Mira’s shoulder. ‘Cool it,’ he whispered. A middle-aged tank of a woman was approaching from the far end of the corridor, with a thunderous look on her face. ‘Sandra Clarke, what IS going on here?’ she bellowed.

  ‘Shit! Mrs Delaney,’ said Sandra.

  ‘Simple solution, Sandra,’ Virgil said, bending down to speak into Sandra’s ear. ‘Give me the phone, I’ll delete the picture, and we’ll say we were mistaken. Then we don’t have to complain, and you don’t get sacked. Okay?’

  ‘Yeah, s’pose.’ Sandra complied, scowling at Mira as she walked haughtily past. Virgil edited the phone and handed it back, then as agreed smoothed the way with the manageress.

  Five minutes later they were on the road, with Mira breaking every speed limit by a factor of two. He kept his counsel until they roared past a nursery school at sixty-five.

  ‘Squash a school kid and you can say goodbye to your career,’ Virgil muttered.

  ‘When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you,’ she growled, dropping the Jag down into second to overtake a fuel tanker on the brow of a hill. ‘You’re just an old woman.’

  ‘If that means I’m paid to lie awake at night and worry about your safety, I agree. Right now you’ve got a two-for-one bonus: I’m worried about my own safety too.’

  Mira let out an involuntary chuckle and braked hard. ‘Look,’ she said, banging the steering wheel. ‘Let me tell you something. Every time I see my mother it reminds me why she’s in here. That stroke didn’t just happen. She was beaten up by a loan shark. It caused a clot on her brain and three years later, bang. A stroke destroys her ability to speak.’

  ‘That’s awful, when was she beaten up?’

  ‘June 2007. She had borrowed two grand and a few months later they reckoned she owed twenty. We moved house, from Dewsbury to Bradford, which is what we usually did when debts got out of hand, but they found us.’

  ‘Were you there when it happened?’

  ‘No.
I’d seen the enforcer before, a really huge tattooed guy, black eyes, like a monster really, who had banged on the door one evening and scared us all to death. But the guy who beat her up was a smaller bloke. He bent her left wrist back so far she it dislocated some tendons, and now she can’t get up to third position on the violin. But the stroke was caused when he knocked her about and she fell and banged her head.’

  ‘Did they catch the guy?’

  ‘No. She was too scared to report it. He was from some Manchester crime family, and we knew they would take it out on us. So we fled and used another version of Mum’s name.’

  ‘I had no idea. I assumed a well-thought-of classical musician wouldn’t have money problems …’

  ‘Yes, well, you’ve been reading too much of Jonesy’s PR,’ Mira said, flicking her hair, and running fingers through imaginary tangles. ‘My mother is a gifted violinist, but after the divorce she got into debt. We had to leave London when we lost the house, and couldn’t afford another. So we moved around from one town to another, first Birmingham, then Leeds and Bradford, then into Lancashire.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Why would you? She started doing private tuition but she still got into debt. She just wasn’t used to making do without lovely clothes. She rented homes that were beyond our means because she wouldn’t live in squalor. She still gave plenty of violin and piano tuition, but once she borrowed from loan sharks, she soon realised there was only one way to earn the money she needed to make the repayments.’ She turned to Virgil, her eyes flashing angrily, daring him to reproach the choice.

  ‘That must have been difficult for you, as a teenager.’

  ‘Not normally. My mother worked hard to keep it all away from me. I was generally at school during the day, when she had her gentlemen callers. Those I met at evenings and weekends were mostly genuine music students. The neighbours didn’t suspect, because there was always classical music playing. But still, I could always read in her face what kind of day she had endured. She developed a kind of melancholy expression in repose, even though she could still occasionally manage the gaiety which I remembered. Then the stroke came, just as my modelling career began. I was in New York, and came back to look after her. It was only when I started to make some money that I could afford to get her proper care. But the first thing I did was to pay off her debts.’