He feels it still.
Pushing Christopher and Goldie from his thoughts, Leo stands and, with one look back at the exquisite edifice of King’s College Chapel, walks away. By the time he’s reached the end of King’s Parade, they’ve returned.
7:59 a.m.—Liyana
As the Cambridge commuter train hurtles onwards towards King’s Cross, all Liyana can think of is Goldie. Her half-sister. Her white sister. Mazmo, the Slade, and even Kumiko are forgotten in the light of her. The shock of finally meeting this sister has even eclipsed the extraordinary events that led Liyana to Goldie in the first place. However, while the immediate past has faded into the background, the more distant past is starting to sharpen. Something once engulfed by mists and fog is beginning to come into view.
Absently, Liyana places her hand on the window, watching the fields flick past, sensing something she can’t yet see. She wonders: Is it possible that she’s already met her sister somewhere before?
As her thoughts drift, Liyana starts to daydream of a place, a game, a skill she once had, a power to manipulate the elements. The train rocks her and Liyana closes her eyes, her thoughts floating free . . . When the train jolts to a halt in Royston, Liyana opens her eyes, pulls her sketchbook out of her bag, and begins to draw her half-sister a story.
9:01 a.m.—Bea
It looks like a heart attack, the male paramedic had said.
Highly unusual in one so young, the female paramedic had said. He must have had an underlying condition.
How soon they’d started talking about him in the past tense. But then, what did they care? They’d never known him in the present tense.
Bea isn’t relieved that she’s not suspected of murder. She wishes she was. She wants to suffer interrogation, prosecution, the full punishment of the law. She wants to suffer, ought to be punished.
When the police arrived, asking only gentle, tentative questions, Bea had been on the verge of turning herself in. So many times she’d almost shouted, I did it, you idiots, it was me! But what would she say after that? How could she explain stopping a man’s heart? That’d lead to plenty of awkwardness and probably land her in the loony bin—and she’d prefer anything to that, even the death penalty. A shame, she thinks, that it’s been abolished, because those enforced Sunday afternoon visits to Saint Dymphna’s have left Bea with an abiding determination to never again set foot inside such an institution.
12:08 p.m.—Scarlet
“Please, I can’t wait three weeks . . . No, I mean, it’s my livelihood, I need you to come today . . . Okay, tomorrow—next week? At the very latest . . .” Scarlet waits, while the unknown woman on the phone, in an unknown office far away, tells her that this is impossible. “I know, I know. But I—please. Please—”
When the refrain of refusal doesn’t shift, Scarlet starts to sob for the second time in as many days.
“You never called.” Walt reaches the counter. “I hoped you would.”
“Sorry,” Scarlet says, discreetly brushing cement dust out of her hair and slightly embarrassed at being caught wearing dungarees and tattered trainers, even though she isn’t especially interested in impressing him. “I just—it’s been, things haven’t been easy around here lately, I—”
Walt holds up his hand. “It’s okay. You don’t need to explain. It’s—I know we didn’t exactly have a frisson, like you and that ridiculously handsome bloke. But I thought we had . . . something.”
“You and your frissons.” Scarlet steps over to the coffee machine. “I’m not selling the café and I’m not seeing him again—look, do you fancy a coffee? We could have our date now. I could do with a break.”
Walt brightens. “Absolutely. And yes, you are looking a little . . . dishevelled—in an incredibly attractive way, of course.”
Scarlet feels tears pricking her eyes again. “The kitchen ceiling caved in last night. I’ve spent all morning cleaning it up. Grandma’s still in bed, thank goodness, or I don’t know—”
“Shit,” Walt says. “Look, forget the coffee and let me help. We’ll have it cleaned up in no time.”
“Really?” Scarlet’s shoulders drop. She should decline—he’s done her enough favours—but she’s too exhausted, too overwhelmed. “Are you sure?”
“Are you kidding?” Walt says, already rolling up his sleeves—though his shirt looks far too pristine for the job. “I can’t imagine a better date than this.”
Scarlet gives him a grateful smile. “We can dine on cinnamon buns afterwards.”
“Perfect.” Walt extends his hand across the counter. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
As she shakes his hand, Scarlet glances down. Not a single spark. Shame.
7:29 p.m.—Liyana
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes.”
Liyana stands beside Kumiko at the crossing on Chantry Street, waiting for the light to turn green. She reaches for her girlfriend’s hand, but Kumiko pretends not to notice. For solace, Liyana’s thoughts go to Goldie and Cambridge. She’d always imagined London to be the busiest city in England but hadn’t reckoned on the thousands of bikes in Cambridge, those eddying streets like rivers conveying so many cyclists darting like minnows in every direction. At least, she thinks, cars are easier to see when crossing the road.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine,” Kumiko says.
“I don’t believe you. You don’t seem fine.”
Liyana wants to say that she knows Kumiko isn’t fine but furious—otherwise she’d have enquired after her sister. Instead she’s playing a passive-aggressive game and pretending she’s forgotten. Which means Liyana will be damned if she’ll be the one to bring it up first. A light rain begins to fall, and Liyana takes comfort from it. Her girlfriend may not want to talk or touch her right now, but at least the rain always will.
“Well, I am. So you can believe me. Or not. It’s up to you.”
Liyana’s about to ask again but resists. It’ll only annoy Kumiko, to suggest that she’s lying. And Liyana doesn’t want to dig an even deeper hole with the Mazmo debacle, about which Kumiko has made her disapproval quite plain. So for now Liyana must let everything slide, even lies.
“Fancy seeing a film?” Liyana tries.
“Where?”
“The Everyman’s showing a double-bill retrospective tonight,” Liyana says. “Moby Dick and In the Heart of the Sea.”
Kumiko shrugs. A few weeks ago, Liyana wouldn’t have tolerated shrugs. But that was before.
“The pub?” Liyana persists.
This time, Kumiko doesn’t shrug. Instead she crosses the road without waiting for the light to change. A car honks its horn, but Kumiko walks on. Liyana hesitates, then hurries after her.
“I’ve not said I’ll marry him, you know,” Liyana calls out. “And I’ve got a trial shift at Tesco tomorrow.” It’s not true, strictly speaking, since she’d only had an email offering her one; she’d been putting off accepting it.
“I give you a day,” Kumiko says, quickening her pace. “No, you know what? I’ll be astonished if you last an hour. You’ll be in that rich boy’s bed before the week is out.”
“Koko! How can you say that?”
“Because you’ve been spoiled all your life, Ana.” Kumiko stops and turns back to Liyana. “And if you’re given the choice between having to earn something and being given it for free, I know full well which option you’ll take.”
11:59 p.m.—Goldie
I’ve invited Leo into my bed again. I didn’t want to be alone tonight. The sofa feels strangely empty without my sister here. Anyway, I want to be with him. I always want to be with him, as if I have an ache in my chest that abates only when we’re together.
“Thank you.” I kiss him again.
“For what?”
“For being here. For rushing over as soon as I called.”
“Of course.” Leo shrugs. “I’ll always come when you call.”
I smile, but his expression is serious. �
�What’s wrong?” I ask. When he doesn’t answer, I nudge him.
“I’m sorry, I’m just . . . it doesn’t matter.” Leo lets out a sigh, a long breath that sits between us. He seems about to say something, then shrugs again. “It’s nothing.”
I look at him. I think of those scars he hasn’t let me see since last time. I try not to think of them, to focus only on Leo, to stay in the uncomplicated, unsullied peace of being with him. I open my mouth, about to change the subject, to tell him all about Liyana, when he starts to speak again.
“I need to tell you something,” Leo says. “About who you are.”
22nd October
Ten days . . .
1:01 a.m.—Goldie
I study his face.
“Stop,” he says, turning away.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m just wondering if there are any more enchanted worlds to which you have secret access. Narnia, perhaps? Or Wonderland? I’ve always wanted to go to Wonderland.”
I’m smiling, but Leo’s still serious.
“So, if this place is real, why can’t you take me there?”
“I told you, I can only go on the night when the moon is at its first quarter,” Leo says, an edge of exasperation to his voice. “And I’ll take you then. But we shouldn’t wait so long, you need to go yourself first, without me, so you can—”
“I know,” I interrupt, not wanting to hear the whole weird story again. I love Leo and I don’t want to confront the fact that he might be a fantasist. I think again of his scars. I wonder again if he’s a member of a satanic cult. I pray he isn’t.
Though it would be even worse if he was telling the truth. And some of the things Leo said, the way he described Everwhere, tug at denied memories and dismissed dreams. But if I followed those threads, then I’d have to allow the possibility of dangerous things: that I am the daughter of a demon, that on my eighteenth birthday I’ll have to fight a soldier to the death, then make a choice between good and evil. And a fantastical land is one thing—perhaps no more improbable than life on other planets—but a fate like that, quite another.
7:11 p.m.—Liyana
Liyana sits on her bed, drawing. Her fingers hurt. The shift at Tesco’s was only five hours—half of what she’d be expected to do in a day if she takes the job. She’s trying not to think about what Kumiko said, but she can’t. Is she so spoiled? Is it true that she always takes the easy route, that she’d rather be given something than earn it? No, that’s not fair. She crafts her illustrations until they’re perfect; she swam until she passed out—one doesn’t become an Olympic hopeful without working damn hard for it. Harder than most people ever do. But then . . . she loved swimming more than anything in the world, and she loves drawing almost as much. The question is: Would she be willing to work a sixty-hour week of night shifts at Tesco?
Temporarily ignoring that awkward argument, Liyana focuses on shaping BlackBird’s current exploits to reflect her own, wondering if her heroine might find a long-lost sister she never knew. If so, which bird-woman would she be? A white girl with blue eyes and blond hair. Liyana scans her internal list of yellow birds but finds none with suitable superhero potential. A chaffinch? No. Goldfinch? No. But what about the blue eyes—a peacock, perhaps?
Liyana chews the end of her pen. She’d surely do night shifts to put herself through art school, wouldn’t she? Standing, Liyana crosses the bedroom to her desk and picks up the tarot cards sitting under the lamp. Unwrapping them from their silk cloth and shuffling as she walks, Liyana returns to her seat on the edge of her bed and deals them out onto the duvet.
“What should I do next?”
First is the Eight of Swords: a fairy, dazzlingly dressed, is blindfolded and bound by thorned brambles snaking up from the soil, twisting around the swords, four yellow, four green. Entrapment, limitations, waiting to be rescued. Next, the Four of Pentacles: a skinny girl sits in the branches of a thorny winter tree, clutching her pentacles to her chest. A forlorn catlike creature hangs on beneath with one slipping paw. Ownership, protection of possessions, materialistic. Then the Two of Swords: an Elizabethan woman crosses her swords, averting her gaze from a mirror behind her back. Birds fill the sky while one nests in her hair. Compromised judgment, fear, hiding from the truth. Followed by the Ten of Wands: a boy is bent-backed by the ten sticks roped to his body and the ten boulders he lifts at his feet. He stares sadly at a wilted plant while a parched dog howls beside him. Overwhelmed, exhausted, pressurized.
“Yeah.” Liyana sighs. “Tell me about it.”
She deals the fifth card and scowls down at it. The damned Devil again: that green-skinned, red-eyed, horned Satan and his Mardi Gras bride, flashing a stockinged leg, sit atop a locked treasure chest on a mosaic floor. Spiders hang above weaving webs.
Liyana picks up the card from the bed, squinting at it in the darkened room. The woman is chained to the Devil’s hoof, but she’s also caressing his cheek, and the look on her face isn’t despairing but flirtatious. Had she never noticed that before? The Devil has captured his bride, but she’s been complicit in her capture. Greed, temptation, selfishness, entrapment, addiction.
Liyana stares down at the cards. They seem to stare back up at her. She waits for them to shift, to tell a different tale, to give her a different answer.
They don’t budge.
8:09 p.m.—Bea
“What the hell did you do to yourself?” Her mamá sits forward, leaning across the table, seizing hold of her daughter’s hand.
Bea twists out of the grip. “Nothing.”
Once a month her mamá visits, taking her out to lunch at the Ivy. It’s their tradition. Rather, it’s Cleo’s tradition. Designed, Bea thinks, to keep her under a watchful eye.
“That’s not nothing. What did you do?”
What did I do? ¿Y ahora, que hice? What the fuck did I do? Every thought other than this has left Bea’s head since that frightful night. Three days later, she’s still stumbling about in a daze, unable to focus on anything else. She can’t read a fucking book, can’t hold a two-line conversation, can’t close her eyes without seeing Vali’s body, without feeling his still-beating heart in her palm before she . . . What the hell had she done? Stopped his heart.
“I was washing up. I picked up a knife at the wrong end.”
Her mamá cranes for a closer look. Bea tucks her hand into her lap, clenching it into a fist.
“You know I’m all in favour of lying, niña,” Cleo says. “Just don’t try it with me.”
Bea skewers a roast potato with her fork but doesn’t lift it to her mouth. She nods.
“Vale, you’ll tell me in time.” Her mamá swallows a sliver of bloody steak. “Was it the reason you rudely postponed our lunch?”
Bea sighs. She has spent three days trying to rationalize, to explain (in the infinite maze of the internet one could surely find an explanation for anything, no matter how otherworldly weird it might be), to exonerate herself. But she’s failed. After all, this was a man. A man. How was it possible to stop the heart of a not-insubstantial man? How the hell had she done it?
She looks up to see her mamá smiling.
“I’ve a sneaking feeling that, when you finally tell me what happened, I’m going to be rather proud of you.”
Bea takes a bite of the potato, though she can’t taste it. “How’s Little Cat?”
“Está bien,” Cleo says, allowing the non sequitur. “Misses you, stalks the corridor outside your bedroom protesting your absence.”
“I miss him too,” Bea says, thinking what a relief it’d be right now to bury her face in his soft purring belly. Cleo had bought Little Cat for Bea after her final release from Saint Dymphna’s, a furry bribe to entice her wary daughter away from the fifth foster mother, tempting her to visit more often than the court-mandated once a month. And it’d worked. Bea wants to cuddle her cat now, to forget Val, if only for a moment.
“Why don’t you visit us next weekend?” Cleo takes another bite of bloody meat. “Looks l
ike you need a break.”
“In London?”
“Sí, claro. Can you think of anywhere better?”
Pushing the rest of the roast potato around her plate, Bea makes a noncommittal noise. Under usual circumstances she’d do anything to avoid returning home unless absolutely necessary. But now all she wants to do is curl into her childhood bed and cry into Little Cat’s paws. No, that’s a lie. What she really wants is to curl into Vali, to bury her face in his fat, furry stomach.
Bea has often thought, while delving into the depths of philosophical questions, that it must be the very worst thing, the cruellest form of mental torture, to not know oneself, to think you’re one thing only to suddenly find out that you’re quite another. And now this is her state. She’s like a brainwashed CIA agent, who one day discovers she’s committed mass murder because she’s been subconsciously programmed as a killing machine by the government. Except that Bea wasn’t brainwashed; she’s woken one day to find that she’s evil when she has always believed she was just a bit of a bitch. How deeply she regrets, now, being so cruel to Val. If only she could have stayed her tongue. If only she’d been kinder, gentler with his heart.
“Well, what do you think?”
Bea looks up. “Sorry, what?”
Her mamá narrows her eyes. “I was saying you should come and stay next weekend.”
Bea hesitates. She doesn’t want to be stuck in Mamá’s tiny Kensington flat. She wants to stay, wants to be closer to Val—assuming, as she does, that he’s still residing in the Addenbrooke’s Hospital morgue.
“We’ll celebrate your birthday.” Her mamá smiles. “I’ll take you to the Ritz for tea. Like we did when you were little.”
The Sisters Grimm Page 27
