Fellside
Page 43
She stood up and waved away the furniture of Stock’s dream with one hand. So, she said. I’m not going to hurt you. And I’m not going to ask Lizzie to hurt you. I’m going to do something else.
“What?” Stock asked, terrified for no reason she could explain. It’s not a good thing to be awake in your own dream and then have someone walk in out of nowhere and hijack it. “What are you going to do?”
I’m going to show you everything – every last thing – about what happened here, Naseem said. I want you to understand what you did and who you did it to. I want you to remember her the way I do.
She took Stock’s hand and they walked together through the memories of the women of Goodall. Everyone had seen something, and some people had seen a lot. But nobody had seen it all except Naz herself, so the last thing they did was to stroll, still hand in hand, into Naz’s own soul. Stock walked that Möbius strip road with her, and it was the hardest road of all.
So she got to remember all these things she’d never seen. She saw her sins and regretted them bitterly. She knew that the harm she’d done couldn’t ever be put right. That she’d have to carry the weight of it to her grave and find out after that if there was going to be a chance, ever, to put it down.
But the harm she hadn’t done yet was still up for grabs, and it might yet make a difference. Who knows, really, how the system works? That was Naz’s revenge on Sylvie Stock, and her mercy too. When it was all over, when Stock had lived it all and acted it all and suffered it all, Naz told her goodbye and good luck and went away. Stock would have to figure out for herself what she did next. She wouldn’t get to see Naz any more.
Stock wasn’t sure if that last thing was part of the revenge or part of the mercy.
100
There were more aftershocks besides, some of them trivial, others not so much.
Save-Me Scratchwell survived the riots by two days and seven hours. He dug his heels in and refused to resign, claiming that he’d shown superb leadership during the disturbance and that he’d been on the brink of uncovering Grace’s drug ring when Grace pre-empted him by dying. The N-fold directors sacked him and withdrew his pension rights, inviting him to sue them if he was feeling brave. He didn’t take them up on that invitation.
N-fold itself was another casualty. In the wake of that one indelible night and the morning of revelations that followed it, all the new licences they were hoping to get vanished like shadows at noonday. Three successive quarters of negative profits were followed by a zero dividend and an abysmally unsuccessful share issue. A year after that, the whole company was swallowed by a Swiss pharmaceuticals giant which had whimsically decided to diversify into public utilities. They left Scratchwell’s successor in place but made her answerable to a board of trustees, including a Howard League representative and the current editor of the Guardian.
John Street got a life sentence for setting the fire that killed Alex Beech. Nicola Saunders wrote a book about her relationship with him, portraying both herself and Moulson as victims of his Svengali-like charm. It sold in reasonable numbers, but her attempts to reinvent herself as a talk show host didn’t come to anything.
Earnshaw is a lifer too now. They got her for Grace’s murder and – on much more questionable evidence – for Moulson’s. She didn’t mind at all. Fellside is where Naseem lives, so it’s Earnshaw’s home too. The only home she wants or needs. If they ever try to take her out of there, they’d better send an armed response unit.
The two of them are happy together. Although happy, all things considered, is a pretty pale word for it. Naseem Suresh lives in Liz Earnshaw’s soul. They’re never going to be separated, not while they live and not in what comes after.
It’s changed Liz. And Liz and Naseem between them have changed everything else. Women who’ve got shit happening in their lives that they can’t deal with, whether it’s going cold turkey (G block is about ninety-nine per cent clean now) or relationship hassles, or just the despair and stir-craziness that comes over you sometimes in a place like Fellside, they go to Liz. If they don’t know to do that, some old stager will point the way. Po Royal, maybe, or Hannah Passmore. One of the women who were there when all this went down and who know what the deal is.
You come to Liz’s cell in free association time and you wait outside until she calls you in. Then she sits with you, holding your hand in complete silence, while Naz takes you to places inside yourself that you didn’t know were there. If a queue builds up, which it does most days, it’s a very peaceable queue because nobody wants to do anything that will lose them their place in it. The women don’t talk afterwards about what happened, but they come out of Liz’s cell with a different way of looking at things. Sanity, serenity, solace, something like that. But not something you’d be quick to give a name to.
Dr Salazar’s ghost never found its way to Fellside, and neither did Dennis Devlin’s. Perhaps they both had other places where they needed to be. It was a women’s prison, after all.
And then there’s Moulson.
No news there really. There haven’t been any sightings of her since that night of death and madness.
But Naseem still keeps a lookout for her. At night, when Liz is asleep – properly asleep, not walking in the Other Place – Naz will slip away from that endless, perfect embrace to go and sit at the edge of the abyss.
She never sees anything moving in there, but she knows it’s a long way down. Days, months, years, there’s room for that. Maybe Moulson managed to pull free before she and Grace hit the bottom. Maybe she’s been climbing all this time, and one of these nights she’ll haul herself up over the edge, brush herself off and come home.
Or maybe not. There was one time when Naz was walking a long way out in that silent immensity and she saw something. Footprints. Naked. Human. About a size 6, if she had to guess.
She traced them back to the edge of the pit, and forward as far as she could go. But the prints were heading away from the pit, and away from Fellside, in a direction Naz had never gone. You could get lost out there and she was afraid to risk it.
Naz didn’t give up her vigil (to some extent she’s also watching out for Grace; you can’t be too careful), but when she thinks about those footprints, she thinks two things.
First, there’s no need to leave prints in the Other Place. You would have to work hard to do it. So whatever feet those were, and wherever they were going, their owner most likely put the prints there as a signal. As a message.
Like, just for the sake of example, goodbye.
And secondly, that Jess Moulson takes her obligations seriously. Perhaps she’s gone to see someone who she knew when she was alive and still cares about. A friend, say, or a close relative.
Or it might be something else again. There might be another ghost out there, a real boy this time, who died by fire after hardly living at all. Who doesn’t know the ropes. Who’s lost and waiting for her to come.
Across how many miles and years of distance?
How many lives?
If it is that, Naz hopes he’ll still be there when Jess comes looking for him. She wants that happy ending for both of them.
I’ve been where you’re standing, she whispers to the boy (and sound carries a long way in the dark, so maybe if he’s out there he hears her). I know what it’s like. When the night goes on for ever and the little light of you is going out and there’s nothing to grab on to.
You just hold on tight, kid.
And keep saying your name until she comes.
BY M. R. CAREY
The Girl With All the Gifts
Fellside
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COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
PART ONE: WHO BY FIRE CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
PART TWO: THE HARDEST TIME TO BE ALIVE CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
PART THREE: STATE OF GRACE CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
PART FOUR: WE MAKE THE THINGS WE NEED CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
CHAPTER 86
CHAPTER 87
CHAPTER 88
CHAPTER 89
CHAPTER 90
CHAPTER 91
CHAPTER 92
CHAPTER 93
CHAPTER 94
CHAPTER 95
CHAPTER 96
CHAPTER 97
CHAPTER 98
CHAPTER 99
CHAPTER 100
BY M. R. CAREY
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COPYRIGHT
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Mike Carey
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ISBN 978-0-316-30030-8
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