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by Claire North

  Theo walks barefoot across a floor of cold black stone, leaving his shoes by the still-hot stove, socks dirty and wet.

  Runs his fingers over the wall as he walks.

  Feels paper, picture frames, portraits and family snaps.

  Stops a little while in the living room, pine needles on the floor where the cleaner missed the last remnants of the Christmas tree, embers orange in the fireplace, the TV on standby, a canvas of splashed ochre and red across one wall, longer than a sleeping man’s body, colour to the edge of the world, dragging in the eye, spinning the universe.

  Climbs the stairs.

  Passes the master bedroom, hears snoring, sees the faint movement of shadows against low light under the door as a woman crawls into bed beside her already unconscious husband.

  Moves on to the study.

  Sits a little while behind Simon Fardell’s desk.

  Opens it.

  Rifles through.

  Finds the gun in the second drawer from the top on the right-hand side. It’s one of a pair kept in an old wooden box with padded purple lining.

  It is a familiar gun. He feels its weight a while, then sights down it. He isn’t sure if this is the gun that the real Theo Miller sighted down the day Philip Arnslade killed him. Maybe it’s Philip’s gun. The thought makes him feel unclean, and he puts the gun back in the box, the box on the table. Pulls out his own gun, thinks about things for a while, then puts it away.

  Finds pen and paper in the desk.

  Starts to write.

  It takes eight pages to say what he wants to say.

  When he’s done, he folds it, puts it in an envelope, writes his daughter’s name. The room is growing cold. There’s a fireplace against the eastern wall. He throws on some logs, pressing them down into the char with a black iron poker, sits back down at the desk, turns the TV on. The TV automatically goes to a financial news channel. There is a camera in the top of the screen for conference calls and so many buttons on the remote he struggles to find “Mute.” As he looks for it, voices blare out, announcing the latest turbulence, falls in stock prices, speculation, speculation, speculation you have to believe in the future, if you don’t then everything falls apart and right now the future is …

  The noise disturbs someone in the house.

  A light comes on.

  Footsteps move.

  Theo manages to coax the TV into obedience, and sits behind the desk, feet up, waiting.

  The door opens.

  Simon Fardell stands in the frame.

  He looks at Theo, and is instantly afraid, and manages to hide it a moment later.

  Looks round the room, and is confused.

  Sees the open box on the desk, two guns in velvet, and does not move.

  Theo said, “I’m here for my daughter.”

  Simon licked his lips. To the wiser, richer man it seems for an instant that this moment in time has been coming his whole life, that there is mist rising by the River Thames that Theo Miller—the real Theo Miller—is dying at his feet that soon there shall be mist again and the sound of the fire in the hearth and that for just a moment there is something about time and this second which

  But then the feeling passes because he’s got shit he needs to get on with, and people who depend on him, and no time for this kind of crap.

  Simon stepped into the room, closed the door behind him so as not to disturb the house. Glanced towards the muted TV, looked back towards Theo, the box, the guns.

  “I remember you,” he said at last. “I’ve been thinking about it. I remember you.”

  Took a step towards Theo, stopped, testing the motion, discovered that moving didn’t cause offence, took another step, stopped again, a little over a metre from the desk.

  “There are alarms,” he added. “Security are coming.”

  “No, they’re not,” sighed Theo. “Markse has betrayed you. He attacked the convoy. Your wife has cut the alarms. She doesn’t like the fact you’re going to sell my daughter into a life of slavery. She doesn’t like my daughter either, but I think …” A smile crackled at the edge of his lips. “I think it might be the principle of the thing. No one is coming. The Company is dead, and all that’s left is tonight.”

  Simon’s head turned a little to the side, lips thin and eyes narrow. He wore striped flannel pyjamas, done up to the topmost button, pushing against the pale skin of his throat, cuffs clinging to his wrists, as if flesh were toxic to the touch. He took another step towards the desk, and when Theo didn’t move, sat down in front of him.

  For a while they watched as the TV danced with light behind them, silent. Then: “The Company is fine. A lot of jobs have been lost, a lot of investment gone to waste, but we’ll recoup. This is a global age. This is an innovative time. I remember you. The little coward, Theo Miller’s second. You were useless, I remember thinking, do I have to waste my time with this boy-child? but of course, I did. You have to put up with such things, for a little while.”

  Theo smiled again, nodded slow agreement. “That was me. I suggested we put blanks into the guns. I thought you agreed that this was a good idea. I was wrong. If I hadn’t been so afraid, I probably would have been smart enough to know I was wrong. Amazing the capacity of the mind to convince itself of certain things, under pressure.”

  “And now you’re here to kill me?” No fear; polite enquiry.

  “I’m here for my daughter.”

  “Your daughter is sleeping upstairs. I’ve already sold her to a company in Marseilles that specialises in girls like her. I thought maybe I could get a high-end deal, but actually she’s not worth it. She’s barely worth the cost of the flight.” Watching, face framed in firelight on one side, digital glow from the other, hot and cold mixing to strange shadows beneath his eyes, around his lips. “Do you think you’re going to stop it? I don’t think you can. The boy I remember from Oxford couldn’t do anything worth a damn.”

  “Which one?” asked Theo. “The boy who lived, or the boy who died?”

  Silence a while. Simon’s eyes ran over the guns on the table between them, box open, metal eating in the light.

  Theo flicked the envelope around between his fingers, then laid it on the desk. Simon’s eyes darted to it, then away. Theo planted his feet, sat up straighter, lacing his fingers together on the desk in front of him, chin down, eyes up.

  Then Theo said, “You shouldn’t let these things get personal.”

  Simon raised an eyebrow, waited.

  “Killing Philip … destroying Newton Bridge … you strike me as a deeply infantile man, if I may say so, so some of this probably won’t make sense. The patties whisper prayers to their goddess, a goddess without a name; a higher power—blessed is the water blessed is the moonlight between the bars blessed are they who cry out to the dark and hear no answer blessed is …

  At the heart of it we find beauty in the darkness and the moonlight, and meaning in shadows because without that we really are just slaves to other people’s fortunes, crawling our way from the cradle to the grave and so …

  Am I here to kill you?

  I suppose in a way I am. Lucy might not even be my daughter, but I suppose … and I’m ashamed to admit it … that I can’t see any other way to …”

  Simon lunged forward, grabbed the nearest gun from the box, sweeping it up off the desk, levelled it at Theo, fired.

  He fired four times.

  Theo flinched, frozen still, and waited.

  Simon lowered the gun.

  Lifted it again.

  Lowered it again.

  “Blanks, of course,” Theo mused. “Just so we’re clear, it was always going to be—that’s how these things …”

  Simon looked down again, raised the gun, fired the last three shots at Theo’s head, clicked on empty, nodded once, put the weapon back down on the desk.

  Theo pulled his gun from his pocket. Rested it on the edge of the desk, one hand on top of the metal.

  Simon licked his lips. Murmured, “Killing me is … I
have money, we can still settle this there are …”

  Theo shook his head. “You shouldn’t have taken my daughter.”

  “Your daughter!” A guffaw, half-hysterical, swallowed down into indignation. “You just said she’s probably not even your daughter you think this, for her, all of this for her it’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard it’s the most pig-headed selfish bloody thing and if killing her would save this country from someone like you then …”

  Theo’s eyes flickered to the door, and Simon stopped speaking. Listened. Fire and steam, the hum of the TV, two people breathing, and two more by the door.

  Simon turned in his chair.

  Lucy, wearing pink pyjamas with teddy bears on, juvenile and absurd, she hated them, but Heidi hadn’t known what else to buy, didn’t know what teenage girls liked. Behind her, hands resting on the girl’s shoulders, protective, Heidi, leaning against the frame of the door, pale green nightgown stitched with thin yellow daisies, squinting a little without her contact lenses.

  Time is

  who knows what time is this moment is the moment when the universe turns and it is

  tick tick tick

  the counting down of infinity

  tick tick tick

  and it strikes Theo as briefly strange, and then briefly laughable, and then finally as correct, that the adults in the room are paralysed as a child stands in judgement, and looks down upon them all, and has in her power the final say of truth and

  the universe spins

  and the child judges

  and her face condemns them all.

  Until at last there is a flicker in her eyes, and she chooses a path, and Theo sees a choice.

  “You got any cash?” she asked Theo, voice clear and capable.

  He shook his head.

  She nodded and vanished back into the darkness of the hall. Heidi put her head on one side, then followed her without a sound.

  A while the two men sat, waiting, as the universe spun towards destruction.

  When Lucy returned, she was wearing jeans, a large fleece jumper, a coat, scarf and gloves. She had a rucksack on her back, and carried an orange plastic bag in her right hand. “It’s his mum’s jewellery,” she explained at Theo’s raised eyebrow. “Also he keeps, like, a grand in cash hidden in this box in the garage.”

  Theo contemplated this, then nodded, and rose.

  He walked to the door, glanced back at Simon.

  “Things don’t change,” blurted Simon. “That’s just how the world is. This is how the world is. The Company is full of people. They won’t change. Change will hurt them. That’s what makes them right. That’s what makes—”

  Theo turned away, walking down the stairs.

  After a moment his daughter followed.

  The gate to the outside world was locked.

  There were sirens in the distance.

  High walls and no easy climb, the oak tree was on the other side. Theo glanced at Lucy, who shrugged, unimpressed.

  Then a crunching of footsteps on hard gravel. Heidi Fardell behind them, a coat and boots pulled on over her nightdress, a handbag slung across that, and a plastic bag containing water and the remnants of yesterday’s curry in a Tupperware box, waves the key as she pants breathless up behind them, and blurts:

  “Room for a little one?”

  Chapter 83

  A while they walk, three travellers through the new year’s snow.

  They do not talk.

  A while they rest on a bench in a village without a name.

  Then walk again until they come to a railway station.

  Heidi rifles through her wallet, finds some money, buys a couple of tickets. Lucy chooses the destination, going further north towards a place she thinks sounds not shit.

  They sit a while on a bench waiting for the train. Lucy sits in the middle. Theo and Heidi do not look at each other.

  The service is delayed. There is the wrong kind of ice on the line.

  Lucy uses her stolen money, buys coffee for Theo, tea for Heidi, hot chocolate for herself.

  They drink from cardboard cups, and afterwards he takes the cups to the bin, and they sit a little while longer.

  When the train comes, it is packed, sticky and wet, breath condensing on the windows, they lunge for handholds, find a little space at the back, the door connecting the train carriages won’t stay shut it goes bang flop bang flop bang flop until Theo puts his knee in front of it. Lucy watches the land. Lucy wasn’t tall enough to grab the bar on the ceiling, so clung on to a strap by the window, even though it means she’s pressed next to a man reading a magazine about pony trotting in the Welsh valleys. Heidi and Theo press next to each other, awkward and silent as the train goes clacker-clack. Heidi opens her bag, pulls out a thin tube of something pink. Daubs a little something on her fingers, smells her skin once, twice, three times in a slow ritual, rubs her fingertips round and round her temples, lets out a sigh, moves to return the tube to her bag, hesitates. Offers it to Theo. He shakes his head. She shrugs and returns the tube to her bag.

  And after a while Lucy reads the letter her father wrote.

  When she’s done, she folds it and puts it back in her pocket.

  They travel north, until they get to Penrith, where she says, “Just so we’re clear. It’s my money.”

  Theo nodded, Heidi looked like she might object and stopped herself.

  “I didn’t come with either of you. I just left there.”

  Theo nodded again.

  “Did you really do all that that shit they said you did, the stuff in the letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a nut-job.”

  Theo shrugged.

  “What was …” She stopped herself, glanced towards Heidi, then looked away. “I don’t want you to tell me what my mum was like. Not yet. But when I want you to, you tell me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know if you’re my dad.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “And you’re not my mum.”

  Heidi nodded once and stared at her boots.

  “I don’t care neither. It doesn’t fucking mean anything. You’ve both never been there for me my whole fucking life, so fuck you if you think you get to just turn up now and be all …”

  They rocked in silence a little while longer, as the Scottish border patrol shuffled onto the train. Outside, a woman stood on the platform, selling carrot soup from a vat. The locomotive gently rumbled, a slow spinning of disconnected fans.

  “You got a plan? Cos I haven’t got a fucking clue what the fuck I’m doing here.”

  Theo thought about it, then smiled.

  “I’m sure we’ll work something out.”

  “That don’t mean nothing that’s just something people say when …”

  “Hey, luv, you okay?”

  Neila sits on the side of the canal, and can’t remember where north is, or which way the Hector is pointing, or where she’s meant to go now.

  The woman who sits next to her wears a jumper adorned with waddling ducks and a black cap that would look bad on anybody.

  “Luv? You all right? You okay?”

  Neila is not okay.

  She realises that she is not okay, and it is a blessing of majesty, it is the revelation of the divine, it is the most wonderful thing she has ever known, a truth that shines upon her soul. She is not okay, she is not fine, and it is beautiful.

  “Come inside,” says the stranger. “Have a cuppa tea.”

  Markse stands at the queue for airport security, a false passport in his pocket, a ticket to somewhere hot in his hand, and wonders what the hell he’s going to do now that he’s got principles and no pension plan, and concludes that it’s probably all a disaster anyway.

  Corn watches the water run through Nottingham and says to the man who stands beside him, “Next time I’ll open my mouth whenever I please and give people a piece of my …”

  Crows pick at a hand rising from a half-buried ditch
in a field, and soon there’s only bone and a bit of pink left clawing at the sky.

  As the police leave his empty, cold house, Simon Fardell turns off the TV in the study.

  It doesn’t go immediately to black.

  The TV has a camera in it.

  The image shows the side of his face, as he listens to a man sitting at his desk.

  “You shouldn’t let these things get personal.”

  He watches in silence as he raises the gun, fires four times. Then raises it again, and fires another three. He isn’t sure now why he fired those last shots, and looking at his own face on the screen it seems a lot like the man who pulled the trigger isn’t entirely convinced about this course of action either.

  The footage has been streamed around the world, of course.

  That’s just what technology does these days. He’ll be fine, of course. He’s on a plane to Monaco tomorrow and has more than enough assets to recoup any losses. It’s just a question of how the Company views these things, the board as a whole. When Philip became a liability they had to get rid of Philip and now Simon is …

  He’s fine.

  He’ll be fine.

  He’s fine.

  His secretary phones, and asks if he wants to take the helicopter to the airport. He instinctively opens his mouth to say yes, then changes his mind and says he might drive instead.

  They claim asylum at the Scottish border, and are put into a transit house just north of Kirtlebridge.

  They sign the paperwork as father, mother and daughter, only because it’ll make it easier for the officials to …

  only because of that.

  Lucy rereads Theo’s letter a couple of times when she thinks he isn’t looking.

  They have bread and jam for supper, and he sleeps in the men’s wing, and Heidi asks if she can pay for a hotel, and Lucy’s given her own private room for kids, which has pictures of steam trains and dinosaurs on the wall, which she finds patronising but gets over quickly enough because actually it’s sorta …