The Keeper

by Natasha Mostert

  Her mother was relaxing into the strong crook of her father’s arms and his eyes were hooded as he looked down at the woman whose head rested on his chest. Molly’s gaze was fixed on a spot somewhere behind the photographer’s shoulder and there was a small smile on her lips. It was a smile that said, ‘I am beautiful and I am adored.’

  The voice in last night’s dream had belonged to Molly, and because her mother was the one calling her, Mia had followed. Why would her mother make her walk into a nightmare?

  As Mia looked at Molly’s smiling face, a sudden thought entered her head and she felt cold.

  Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  Because it wasn’t possible, that’s why. None of her guys was about to enter the danger zone. Valentine had retired after his wife had the baby. Jeff wasn’t due to fight for another three weeks. And Okie had an injury and wasn’t even allowed to train.

  But now that the thought had entered her head, she knew she wouldn’t be able to relax until she had talked to the men, heard their voices and made sure they were OK.

  She glanced at her watch. A little early still, maybe too early? Fighters were a superstitious bunch at the best of times. They insisted on wearing their lucky trunks for a fight, carrying around a lucky penny, following exactly the same pre-fight rituals. If she told them she was calling because of a bad dream, they would be spooked. She was going to have to play it cool. Lifting the receiver, she started to dial.

  Jeff answered on the first ring. Everything was fine. He had already made his weight, his training was going great guns. ‘Everything is good, Mia. No problems, no injuries.’

  ‘The fight is still scheduled for two weeks from Saturday?’

  ‘Yes. So remember to do your thing the Friday night before.’

  ‘I will. And, Jeff, you call me if the date changes. Promise?’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And say hi to Bonnie.’

  She could sense him grin on the other end of the line. ‘Are you serious?’

  Bonnie was Jeff’s wife. She had never liked Mia. She knew there was no romantic relationship between Mia and Jeff, but she didn’t like the closeness.

  It was the same with Amy, Valentine’s wife. She really, really didn’t like Mia. In fact, Mia was convinced Amy had made Valentine move from London to Liverpool just so she could get him as far away from her as possible.

  Okie had no partner, so no static to contend with there, thankfully. She caught him just as he was about to leave for work.

  Okie was feeling sorry for himself. No, things were terrible. His rib hurt. JC wouldn’t allow him back into the gym until it was fully healed. Life was hard. Life was—in fact—hardly worth living.

  ‘Okie, hang on. You’re basically fine, right?’

  He sighed. ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

  ‘Nothing seriously wrong?’

  Another deep sigh. ‘No.’

  That left Valentine. Of the three, she was the least concerned about him. He was fully out of the danger zone. When Amy fell pregnant with Tom three years ago, he had retired from the ring and since then they had kept in touch only sporadically. She couldn’t remember when last they had actually spoken to each other. A year ago? Longer?

  In fact, she thought as she called Valentine’s mobile number, it was time she found someone to take his place. Nick was the obvious choice. Since his return to the neighbourhood eighteen months ago, she had pondered the idea more than once. But there were problems with this scenario: problems she did not want to deal with right now.

  Valentine wasn’t answering. All she could do was leave a message on his voicemail to call her.

  So that was that. And she couldn’t sit around moping for ever: she had a full day ahead of her.

  As if to confirm this thought, she heard the door to the studio slam. Lisa was here. She’d better get moving.

  Quickly Mia dried her hair and pulled on a cotton dress. As she was about to leave the room her eye fell on the sketch pad, which she had brought with her to the bedroom after saying goodbye to Nick.

  She opened the pad and stared at the face with the withered eyes.

  ‘Mia? Are you there?’ Lisa’s voice floated up the stairs.

  Mia ripped out the page, crumpled the paper into a tight wad and lobbed it into the bin.

  So much for bad dreams.

  • • •

  When Mia walked into the studio, it was to find Lisa peering into a mirror. Lisa was always in grooming mode, constantly checking to see if she had a blemish in need of attention.

  ‘There you are.’ Lisa lifted an eyebrow. ‘I was wondering if you were in.’

  ‘Sorry. I went running with Nick this morning.’

  ‘Ah. How is the cutie?’

  ‘Overweight. Unfit.’

  ‘As long as he has those blue eyes and curly hair, it doesn’t matter. And a guy has to have a little flesh on him.’ Lisa nodded emphatically. ‘It’s a sign he’s into the good things in life. Good food, good sex…’

  ‘Nick won’t be making love in the ring. He’ll be up against an ugly stranger who’s trying to knock his block off.’

  ‘Oh, man.’ Lisa sighed. ‘I love all this fight-talk stuff. it’s so primal.’ She turned back to the mirror and started to apply lipstick in an eye-popping shade of red.

  Lisa liked bold colours. In fact, there was nothing shy about Lisa. Six feet tall, sloe-eyed and with Queen of Sheba hair, she looked like a close relative of both Kat Von D and Xena, Warrior Princess. Embedded in one nostril was a tiny diamond. Nose jewellery was not Lisa’s only body jewellery: she was pierced in just about every body location you wanted to think of. Or didn’t want to think of, as the case may be.

  They had met a year ago when Mia was advertising for someone to take Izzy’s place. She had inherited the old man from her mother and he had partnered her for six years until a bad fall finally forced him to retire. Lisa was much prettier than Izzy and inspired less apprehension in customers—Izzy with a tattoo-gun in hand had been an unnerving sight. Lisa also didn’t have the hacking cough. But Mia missed the old boy.

  Lisa was now starting to prepare a tray, meticulously setting out petroleum jelly, ink caps, surgical gauze, tape and a disposable razor. The ‘sharps’—needles—were in a covered sterilised container. Angelique, Mia’s favourite machine, was autoclaved and ready to go. Mia walked over to the washbasin and began scrubbing her hands. As she pulled on her latex gloves she heard someone at the door and looked over her shoulder. Her client had arrived. It was colour-me-crazy time.

  For the next three hours she had no thought of anything else as she worked on the final stages of inking an elaborately designed giant carp onto the back of her client—a woman by the name of Una. Usually her clients explained to her the significance of the tattoo of their choice, but not this one. It was her third visit and Mia still did not know anything about the woman except her name and that she must like big fish. Unlike most of her clients, Una did not expect Mia to make conversation while working. In fact, Mia thought, it almost looked as though Una had gone to sleep, which was pretty amazing considering that needles were constantly plunging into her skin at the rate of about three thousand punctures per minute. Receiving a tattoo on the back rarely made anyone scream out loud—it was tattoos on the sensitive, private areas and the bony parts of the body that required you to grit your teeth—but, still, a three-hour session was not for sissies.

  It was past noon when Mia finally finished and gestured to Lisa to clean Una’s skin with a water and alcohol solution in preparation for the dressing.

  She moved her head slowly from side to side, trying to get rid of the knot in her neck. Tonight at the gym she would need to do some serious stretching.

  The thought reminded her of something else and she frowned. Valentine. He had not called back.

  Mia picked up the receiver and called his mobile phone once again. But again she was directed to his voicemail.

  She supposed she could try him at home. Sh
e dialled the number, all the while hoping Amy would not be the one to answer.

  There was no answer at the Scott household. Slowly she replaced the receiver in its cradle.

  Valentine. Where are you?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BOOK OF LIGHT AND DUST

  FOR ROSALIA

  V

  How to meet death.

  The light will be terrible, warns the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The light will make your spirit cringe, you shall avert your eyes, your terror will be great and consciousness will leave your mind.

  This is one way. This is the way chosen by the faint of heart. The experience of dying so dreadful, you cannot bear to look it in the face. Choose this way and you will be plunged back into the river of reincarnation, the journey to be repeated once more.

  But the Bardo speaks of a second way. Turn towards the light consciously. Stare into the sun and let it burn through your retina. Take the terror to your heart, look into the light without flinching.

  This is the way of the courageous heart. It leads to enlightenment and you are given a choice: to be born yet again; to be born never again.

  There is a third way. The Way of the Dragonfly. Do not meet death. Steal light. Live forever.

  THE WAY: FALLEN EYEBROW

  BLACKLIGHT: DIR: GB2 K4, FRC: 9 TIME: 9, SUs: LU2 PC1

  WHITELIGHT: K3 GV14

  CHAPTER SIX

  He loved this neighbourhood. As Nick walked the few hundred yards from his flat to his office, he realised again how pleased he was to be back. These days he could afford to live in a much swankier part of town, but he never even considered it. This was home.

  The houses round here all looked as though they could do with a coat of paint. The shops were small with dusty windows. There were a few signs of creeping gentrification—one or two chichi coffee bars, a shiny yummy-mummy gym, which had recently opened its doors close to Scorpio—but this area of south London was still a neighbourhood in the purest sense of the word, with people knowing one another well. When he made the move back eighteen months ago, he had been surprised by how many of the families who had lived here when he and Mia were kids were still around.

  Nick’s mother remarried just before his sixteenth birthday and Nick’s new stepfather took his bride and her son with him to his home in Scotland. At the time Nick was heartbroken to leave London but, had he stayed, his life would have turned out very differently.

  In Scotland, Nick entered a far more affluent world than the one in which he grew up. His stepfather was a banker and Nick suddenly found himself in one of Edinburgh’s finest schools, where discipline was strict and expectations high. Never a particularly enthusiastic student, Nick discovered—much to his surprise—that he had an aptitude for numbers and an appetite for risk. Even at that early age, his stepfather taught him to play the market and gave him a sizable account with which to experiment. Nick relished the rush. He had found something besides fighting that he was good at.

  After secondary school came university at St Andrews, but academia did not excite him and after eighteen months he dropped out and headed for New York and five exhausting, exhilarating years of trading on the floor. But his heart remained right here in London, which was why he had returned, giving a lie to the cliché that you can never go back.

  During his twelve-year absence he had visited only twice, both times to see Mia. The first time was a year after his mother’s marriage and their subsequent move to Edinburgh.

  It was not a successful visit. Everything felt wrong. His mother was perfectly groomed and dressed in a Chanel suit and he was in flannels and a blue blazer. The two of them looked hopelessly out of place in Molly’s haphazard kitchen. Molly herself, still beautiful but so thin, was in one of her distracted moods. Mia hardly said a word.

  The second time was six years later, at Molly and Juan’s double funeral. Mia had changed. There she was—all grown up—no longer the little girl with the wild hair and gangly limbs who used to roam the streets at his side. Her face was tight with grief and her eyes shadowed, but she still had the ability to make his heart flip over. She was happy to see him and grateful he had made the trip, but if her own heart was doing aerobics she did an excellent job of keeping it to herself.

  Still, he kept up the relationship over the years that followed, unwilling to allow her to disappear from his life. Even during his years abroad, he stayed in touch. Christmas cards, birthday wishes, sporadic emails—he made sure to keep the link intact. And then came the decision to return to London. He was making excellent money in New York but he was tired. Life was short: it was time to go full-out for what he really wanted. But in this he had to admit to being only partially successful. He was now a part of Mia’s life again, but it was astounding—and exasperating—how easily they had slipped back into their roles of childhood friends.

  In front of him was the building where he rented an office and which he shared with Flash, his partner, who was responsible for the technical wizardry that kept the Kime online community rolling. On the face of it, Kime was a two-man operation but this was deceptive: Flash commanded an army of techies who operated from places as far afield as Israel, India and Croatia. A global village in one room.

  Nick had expected his partner to be at his desk, but as he entered the office Flash was nowhere to be seen. But he couldn’t be far away: there were tell-tale signs that he was in the vicinity. An unopened can of Coke—Flash’s engine fuel—and a half-eaten tray of Jaffa Cakes sat on top of a stack of papers. And Flash’s iPod was docked. Flash rarely moved anywhere without it.

  Nick had the desk at the window, Flash the one behind the door. Flash did not like sunlight. As if to confirm this peculiar aversion, there was a gigantic poster on the wall behind his chair showing a vampiric-looking female clutching a bunch of gerberas in one hand and a bloody heart in the other. Nick had never been able to fathom the symbolism but, then, Flash’s world was pretty much outside his ken. Flash was also involved with some other social networking sites that were rather esoteric in their interests. The poster on the wall was the logo for Night Tramps. Nick had browsed that site only once, before deciding he was still not grown-up enough for certain things.

  He dropped his bag on the floor and sat down behind his computer. As he logged on to Kime, he felt that familiar flutter in his stomach. He was still excited by the entire project. And how could he not be? He was no Mark Zuckerberg, but Kime was drawing serious investment money and had the potential to become huge. What had started out as nothing more than his own private blog—a Post-it note with random observations about fighters and the fighting world—had turned into an ambitious social networking site and the premier forum for fighters and fight aficionados of all persuasions: boxing, martial arts, kickboxing, Muay Thai, and MMA, with its rock-star fighters and obsessive fans—the fastest-growing American spectator sport. Kime allowed members to post profile pages with personal information, and encouraged them to take part in whatever discussion was taking place on the communal discussion board. And because Kime provided a flexible environment, allowing members to add applications to their pages, there were even members running small businesses via the Kime platform.

  The name of the site was unusual and he had Mia to thank for it. Kime was a Japanese word and a martial-arts term. Truth to tell, Nick had never been one for all that martial-arts window dressing of spirit shouts and chi and searching for the path. He was a kickboxer: he liked to punch and he liked to kick and was not expecting spiritual enlightenment as a perk. But Mia had explained to him that Kime referred to the unique physical and mental focus required of a warrior. He liked that.

  ‘Hey, tough guy.’

  Nick looked up. Flash was lounging against the door. Tall, ultra-thin and with permanent shadows under his eyes, he looked like a cartoon character from a Tim Burton film. He was nineteen. He made Nick feel old.

  Flash slid into his seat and reached for his Coke. ‘Have you checked out the board yet?’

  ‘I
’ve just got in.’

  ‘Some guy died. Some fighter.’

  ‘In the ring? I haven’t heard anything.’ Nick was surprised. Many of the fights covered on Kime were humble, local fights which would not necessarily receive TV attention. But a death in the ring—even in an unimportant fight—would have made the news.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Flash was adjusting the earpieces of his iPod. ‘But there’s loads of stuff on the board.’

  The shock when he read Valentine’s name was like a blow to the stomach. Nick felt himself actually leaning forward. With disbelieving eyes he continued to read the death notice that someone had posted on the Kime communal board:

  Valentine Scott had never won a championship belt and his name will be unfamiliar to people who do not follow combat sports. He was merely one of the thousands of weekend fighters who fight in small, local bouts in unglamorous locations for very little money. But he possessed something that no amount of training or natural talent can give you. Valentine had heart. Knock him down—and in his career he had suffered quite a few of those—and he will stand up again. Hurt him and he will not back off. Hurt him badly and he still will not quit, even though victory is already beyond his reach.

  Valentine died in his living room at his home in Liverpool, a few days after his Muay Thai victory against Gerald Burke. This was the Wolfman’s comeback fight—his first after a retirement of three years. His death is a mystery: Valentine had not received any serious injuries during the fight and was given a clean bill of health afterwards. Three days later, his heart simply stopped.

  Nick leant back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He still couldn’t believe it.

  Valentine Scott. They had lived two houses away from each other, attended the same school and chased the same girls. As kids they had also trained together at Scorpio gym, where they had affectionately beaten the crap out of each other more than once. Despite his sweetheart name, Valentine was a ferocious fighter. Nick was bigger than Valentine, but the guy had punched him to a standstill more times than he could remember. After his mother’s marriage and their relocation to Scotland, he and Valentine had lost touch, but he remembered Mia telling him that Valentine had moved to Liverpool.