The

Wood Between the Worlds

S. Lewis Silverwood

Version 2.6 Fem

there is the palest shape.
steady your weeping face.

lay the pillow to your cheek,
we are failing it seems.

this funeral lies inside
my mourning head.
what was between us

is now become a wedge

Shannon Wright

Method of Sleeping

Chapter One

Black Poplar

I was going to start with a lie but it became true. Now I don’t know where to begin.

I should explain: the Taj Mahal poses on the banks of the river Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh, India. It is one of the wonders of the world; a “tear in the face of eternity”; a siren luring backpackers into the mire of deceit that calls itself Agra. It is also a broken twin. There are supposed to be two.

The Taj was built by Shah Jehan, the Emperor of India. They called him the King of the World. He was man of aesthetic passion who lived for the arts and for things of beauty, like some colossal cross-breed of Ramses II and Toad of Toad Hall. He fell in love at the age of twenty with a Persian girl and decided to marry her even before he learnt her name. But it was discovered that she was not of noble birth. Her beauty was so great that he pursued her regardless. She became his second, and most beloved, wife. They had fourteen children together until, perhaps unsurprisingly, she died in childbirth.

Shah Jehan ordered the Taj Mahal to be built out of white Makrana marble in honour of his dead wife. The cost was too high but he could not be stopped. He was driven so mad by his grief that he bankrupted the empire in his architectural monomania. He went on to build the Red Fort in Delhi, countless mosques and palaces and insane jewel-encrusted thrones.

He personally squandered a fortune on the renovation of the old fort in Agra. Towards the end of his life, he had to watch his sons tear the ruined dynasty apart in a battle for succession. They may well have been fighting to avoid the inheritance: it was something of a white elephant, after all. The kingdom was on the edge of bankruptcy after a lifetime of his madness. To keep their father out of trouble while they tried to kill each other, his sons locked him in a turret of Agra fort so that he could watch over his precious Taj while he lay dying. They buried him next to his wife.

Before he died, the Emperor drew up plans to build a second monument: the Black Taj. It was to be situated on the opposite bank of the river, facing the White Taj. He designed it as his own mausoleum but the work was never begun. The scholar Travernier wrote that his sons opposed the plans. History does not record their exact words. I doubt there was even any marble left.

I wanted to use the image of the second Taj at the beginning of this book. The missing twin could have been my sister, it could have been a gender thing, it would have been a good way to introduce Brook: how do I introduce him neatly without it? The Black Taj embodied themes of death, love and duality that I wanted to emphasise and it seemed to be a cute way of doing so. I thought it would be clever and novelistic. I was going to fabricate an event whereby an artist had actually built a temporary replica of the Black Taj and I was going to situate my opening scene in this installation. Today is the 16th September 2005. I have just learnt that the Indian artist Sudharshan Patnaik is going to start work on this very project tomorrow.

My only consolation is that it will be made from sand, rather than marble, as there is at least some symbolic mileage in the materials to be used. Sand is such a temporary medium and so unsuited to construction; it is almost too perfect. While the imagery of sand castles and castles built on sand are well established, here is my offering: a monument to dead lovers that is as insubstantial and temporary as the heart by which it was devised. No doubt it will also be more economical for the present rulers of India.

However, my scheme is undone and I am left with nothing but the truth: when I left him, I left him sitting in the boring, white, obvious Taj Mahal. There was nothing symbolic about it, it was just saddening. I will start before, then, in 1999, back in the old house.

I was late. The plane was due out in two hours and where was I? The others had gone on ahead. They were already at the airport: checking in; putting their bags through the machines, tucking their thumbs into their passports, ready to go.

Brook was still sitting in the house on his own, waiting for me. He looked at his watch again. He was worried about missing the flight, disappointed in me for being late and worried I might be lying dead somewhere- in that order.

He cursed himself for trusting me. Why did I always let him down? He crossed to the window and sat on the wooden ledge overlooking the street below. There was nothing he could do but sit and wait for me. It made him feel useless and angry, a bumble bee in a jam jar. The minute hand would not stop chasing circles around his watch-face. There was still time, still time to make the flight. If I would just appear. But the minutes would pass and I would not appear and he would narrow his eyes at the street and wonder where the fuck I was.

He never liked being alone in that house. It was too big and he felt too small. The corridors reminded him of youth hostels; the damp walls gave off tangs of exchange trips, sour pen pals, alienation and flick combs. Somewhere modern and purpose-built would have suited him better. He liked to think of himself as a modern, purpose-built man. His body was built to feed his brain, not the lusts of women, he said. In his weaker moments he confessed to feeling threatened by his own sexuality. I don’t know if this was a fear that I had stirred or whether it was something I softened. There are things about me that would confuse anyone in that way I suppose.

The rooms were huge and white and endless. He had always felt oppressed by the unnecessary scale of the doorways and the cobwebbed remoteness of the ceilings. Now that everyone else had packed up their possessions, the feeling was even worse. He was afraid of them. He never even seemed to have a good basic geography of the house. He rarely ventured upstairs and almost never spent the night in my room. It’s too cold up here, he would say. He expected me to accept this statement as final. There was an implied assumption that I should just move down permanently into his bedroom. Instead, I kept my own room for the whole year. We never discussed it out loud.

All of his things were already packed away. There was nothing left to toy with or to poke through. Most of the boxes were gone. Our lease was up: another academic year to bed. He had packed his life into tea chests and nailed them shut. They were big, heavy wooden boxes, taller than they needed to be. Each of them was labelled carefully with a neat index of contents: textbooks, cutlery, miscellaneous. They were stood waiting in the hallway for his parents to collect. He had arranged everything weeks in advance. I had just left it until the night before.

Brook had wanted me to telephone his parents and thank them for storing my stuff. I told him that it would feel artificial and forced. I refused. He did that thing where his features were frozen and there was no way of knowing he was upset bar the sudden draining of blood from his lips. It had the effect of erasing any sign of emotions. It reminded me of shaking of an etch-a-sketch to clear the crude picture away. I hated it when he did that.

Our housemates had cleared their things away into storage for the summer. It never occurred to me to follow suit. Brook and I had the next few years planned out together as neatly as his boxes in the hallway. It made sense to put all my belongings with his.

Only the basic furniture of the house remained. We had taken the place fully-furnished at the start of our final year. Everything was worn and frayed and the beds were insubstantial but we had not minded at the time. We had all felt too young and too brilliant to care. It just seemed easier to accept whatever the adult world had left out in the rain for us.

Brook sat perched on the fringes of the living room, more than ready to leave it behind. Everything was wrapped in dust sheets for the decorators. The furniture looked shapeless and ghostly beneath the white sheets. Objects lost their silhouettes and then, in turn, their meaning. It changed the room into an abstract installation of a crime scene: here, the corpse of a whale; there, the inevitable shark.

Brook stood and paced the room. His footsteps echoed strangely in the hollow space. “Where are you?” he might have said out loud. His voice would have come back to him dead and unfamiliar. The old acoustics were changed. It would have scared him if he had tried it.

There was the key in the front door. I was back at last. Brook picked up our travelling bags and his sunglasses and burst out into the hallway, calling ahead “Well, I don’t know what you think you’ve been doing but if we don’t leave right this second, we’re going to miss the bloody flight,” he stopped silent at the sight of me.

My name is Violet Kane. I stood in the doorway, my car keys in my hands. I must have looked hellborn, shrouded in my long black overcoat and framed by the dark wooden door behind me. I wore no makeup. My hair was a mess. I had a strange expression on my face; Brook wondered if I might have just killed somebody. He put the bags down carefully “What is it?” he asked.

I exhaled and dropped my jacket onto the floor behind me “We’d better go into the living room. I need to talk to you,” I said.

Brook’s mind flicked over his options like colour-swatches. He was considering whether he would be able to ask me to just tell him about it on the way to the airport. But when he looked into my eyes he knew that it would not wait. I stared out of my skull into nothingness. My eyes were laser beams coming out of my head, scouring the world away in front of me so that I when I stepped forwards it was into a blasted void. Something had happened and nothing else seemed important any more. He led the way back into the living room. I put my hands to the walls as I made my way in after him. The floor sloped awkwardly.

“What’s happened?” he asked again.

I crossed to a chair and sat down on top of the dust sheet “I don’t think we can go,” was all that I could say.

Brook continued standing. He was not sure he had heard me correctly “What are you trying to say?”

I took a cigarette out of the packet and lit it. I took a hard lungful before speaking again “We can’t go to India.”

Brook held out his hands and shook them as if steadying the air in front of him. His voice assumed a shrill edge, stressing each individual word with a shaking hysteria “Everybody-is-at-the-airport. Their stuff has already gone into storage. They are checking in right now. We are going to miss our plane if we do-not-leave right now.”

“My father died.”

“Oh god,” he sat down.

“There was a message for me… my little sister Katy…”

I had visited the university to drop off some paperwork with a tutor. My DPhil application had been approved and we were waiting to hear about the funding. While I was there, they told me that Katy had been phoning the department for days trying to find me. Of course she didn’t have my number. She didn’t even know where I lived. I had not seen her since the night I left home, the night I kissed goodbye to the life I used to call my own. She was only fourteen then. I could not picture her a day older. I wondered if she could picture me at all. I could still see her sitting on the stairs crying with my father throwing my bags down the hall. It was the last time that I had seen him alive and I had told him to go to hell. I realised that I would never see him alive again “She’s been leaving messages about the funeral,” I dropped the cigarette onto the floorboards and crushed it under my heel “It’s next week.”

Brook rose and crossed over to me, one hand resting on his cheek. I thought he was going to sit down and hold me, but he stopped and picked up the cigarette butt. He carried it across the room and dropped it out of the window. While he stood with his back towards me he spoke “Violet, I’m so sorry. I, I don’t know what to say.”

“So I can’t leave now,” I said “We’ll have to drive down there tonight. And then there’s the house. We’ll have to sort out what to do about the house and my sister and everything else. Who’s going to look after her now?”

“Violet,” he did not turn around “I don’t know what to say,” he paused to sequence his words “But the tickets… It’s too late to get a refund now.”

“I know.”

“But we were all supposed to be going together- the whole house- that was the plan. We’ve been talking about it for years. It was your idea. You know, we graduate, we fuck off to India for the summer, you come back and do the DPhil, the whole plan,” Brook crossed the room and sat down next to me. He took my hand in his lap “But if we don’t go today: that’s it. We can’t afford to replace these tickets.”

I pulled my hand back “What are you trying to say?”

Brook lifted his eyebrows in sympathy and tilted his head “I know it’s hard to decide now, but I think maybe we should still go.”

All of my thoughts were drowned out by the rumbling sound in my ears. I could not put my mind back together again “I don’t know what to do,” I said helplessly.

“You haven’t spoken to your family for a long time. It’s not as if they’ve been helping you financially. Surely they don’t suppose you to just drop everything at the last minute and cancel all of your plans.”

I pictured my sister trying to contact me. It was true: my family did not even know my telephone number or where I lived. But they were still my family “Katy’s only a kid. She’s not old enough to sort everything out. She’ll be expecting me to come.”

Brook moved his wrist around carefully so that he could glance at his watch without me noticing. He must have been worried about the time “But they don’t know whether you even got the message, do they? You can always say that you didn’t know about it.”

“It feels wrong,” I said. As I stared at his face I tried to read whether he knew how amoral his suggestion was. If he had said it in innocence without thinking it through, then I would have known that I could still trust him. And if I could trust him then I could follow him and allow him to lead me to safety.

“You need this,” Brook said, taking my hand again “We need this.”

At his emphasis on the word “we”, I understood. Brook was letting me know the truth. He would not stay with me if I decided not to go. I would have to face the funeral alone and I would lose him forever.

“Just come to the airport with me and think it over on the way. Give yourself a chance to work it through before you just throw your whole future away,” he said.

I was too weak to stop it from happening. I knew that I could not face up to the challenge on my own. It was so much easier to fall under his wing and pretend it was not real. I allowed him to steer me into the hallway and out of the door. By instalments and careful guidance, he managed to herd me to the airport and onto the plane. The next day, we were in India.

I sat on the upper roof of the hotel in a deckchair. I could see the whole of Agra spread out below me in the Indian night. It was hard to believe I was really there. India was India. How can I describe it? If you have been to India you will understand already but, if you have never been, then what words could I use that are not clichés? Yes: it reached up and battered my senses with an overload of data. Yes, everything was strong and unfamiliar: the sounds of the traffic and the music on the radios, the smell of the city borne about by the undying heat. I was scorched and reeling. Schoolboy kites danced around the rooftops, dodging in and out of the overhead cables. I could see the Yamuna River in the distance and the domes of the Taj Mahal before it. I sipped at my Kingfisher beer and tried to stay focused on the view. A small group of sadhus passed slowly by in the street below. What can I do? This is how it was. If the sadhus came to London, it would just as likely be wrapped in fog.

Agra was an insane city. It was the most paranoid place on Earth, a weird distillation of espionage into tourism. Everyone was entrenched in a new take on the Great Game. The taxi driver warned us that the hotelier was a crook who would try to poison us. The hotelier asked us if the taxi driver had said anything bad about him. He warned us against the cook of a nearby restaurant. It went on. They were either conmen or they were mad, we could not say. I found it hard enough to think anything at all unless I was sat directly beneath the air conditioning. The heat was heavy in the very light itself. It could boil your brain in your skull if you stood still long enough. I moved across India, crossing from shadow to shadow like a lost vampire in the daylight.

Brook was drinking on the lower roof garden with the other housemates. We had all managed to find each other at the airport and the great summer plan had continued unabated. I could hear them laughing at their youth and joy. They were lost in a crowd of backpackers. A stoned Israeli couple were singing Bob Marley songs on an acoustic guitar while two American girls sat, pretending to juggle. They celebrated their insipid lack of originality. They passed chillums and “Bom Shiva” and lazy ethnographies and genital herpes.

I could see them enjoying the holiday but I could not bear to join them. The thought of my father’s funeral had been rattling at me since we had arrived. I was amazed at Brook’s easy ability to slip the concern away from himself. There was a ruthlessness in his pursuit of the target that I had not seen in him before. It made me feel alone.

The whole situation confused me. I did not love my father and I was not grieving for his death. I did not miss England and would have preferred to stay away forever. It would have been stupid for me to have stayed behind and risk losing everything. But I could not commit myself to the summer. I could not let go of the doubts. I knew that I was supposed to be having the best time of my life. I had thought of nothing but travel for years. It was all that had got me through the difficult end of my studies. But I had not enjoyed an instant of my first day in India. I was deadened to joy.

Two jackdaws padded through the branches of a black poplar in the street below. It reminded me of a legend, half-remembered: Hades changing some reluctant girl into a poplar tree and planting her at the gates of the underworld so that she would always be near him.

There was the sound of movement behind me. I sat up, aware that I was not alone. I felt momentarily foolish, as if I had been caught in the middle of an embarrassing act. If it was one of the housemates, I did not feel I would be able to give a good account of myself. They would want to know why I was sitting alone and I would not be able to find the right words. A figure stepped into view. I steeled myself and looked up. It was the hotel owner, Manoj.

Manoj was only a few years older than me, but he ruled the hotel like a patrician. Everyone responded to his natural authority. I envied him in physical comparison. Where Manoj’s body had a commanding gravity, mine was a willowy tree. While Manoj’s features were smooth and steady, mine seemed long and harsh. His masculinity was secured by a naïve machismo of moustaches and motorbikes that seemed clumsy and elegant at the same time. Back home it would have looked strange, gay even, but he posed with such dogged conviction that it worked. His maleness was boyish and contrived but it was unmistakably male.

Manoj walked to the ledge with sure steps and set his hands down gently on the brickwork. He gazed out at the skyline “Have you ever seen anything like our Taj?” he said “I wonder… will you build a Taj for your love when he dies?”

I put the beer down and stood up next to him. He made me feel lazy for sitting down. He was looking over at Brook and the others “I don’t know,” I said “Maybe.”

Manoj continued “If he had not died without power, the Emperor would have built a second mausoleum, one for himself: the Black Taj, in the same proportions but a negative to the White Taj. They would have faced each other across the river forever like two betrothed stars separated by the Milky Way… but perhaps you are not familiar with that story? No… Can you picture the twin Taj like an opposing force of chess-men?”

I smiled “Yes,” I said, thinking that I had understood the implication “I would probably have just built the Black Taj for myself,” but Manoj’s face showed no reaction. I wondered if I had misinterpreted the meaning of the words. I felt suddenly ashamed of my confession of selfishness “This is a good view,” I said quickly, trying to move away from the issue.

Manoj turned to lean his back against the ledge and waved his hand out towards the body of the hotel “My father left me this hotel when he died. I was in England, reading literature, Mister Shakespeare, but I came home. Yes,” he paused “This is a good thing. It is a powerful transmission. I will expand the business and then pass everything to my son when I retire.”

The words bit into my ears beyond the intentions of his lips. How like fate to throw such a determined and oblivious messenger to deliver its command. I realised that if I stayed in India I would eventually forget about the funeral and start to enjoy myself. Once I did this, my heart would be forever lessened. No matter what the past had done to me and no matter how much it had decided to destroy my future plans, I had a sister that needed me. I would have to return to England and return to the past that I had forsaken. It was the only way to redeem myself “Thank you,” I said “I have to go.”

Chapter Two

Churchyard Yew

I wanted to tell Brook straight away but I didn’t know how. I lay awake all night sweating on top of the hotel sheets, trying out different ways to explain myself. I ran the conversations backwards and forwards in my head and none of them worked. I must have used every word I had ever known and by the morning my tongue was still blank. My heart sank into the dirt like a clockwork counterweight to the rising sun. I had nothing.

I woke Brook before the alarm had a chance to ring. We got out of bed and dressed quickly. He ran down the hotel stairs ahead of me to join the others. The only reason to be in Agra was to catch the sunrise over the Taj. I stumbled into the streets behind them with bleary eyes. Other tourists sprouted from doorways and joined the press of untanned skin as we passed through the gates and into the plaza. I don’t think any of us could truly believe that it was real. The domes were larger and more beautiful than I had allowed myself to expect. The vision burned at me, urging me not to leave India. Everywhere I looked, the white marble was coloured amber and gold with the dawn’s light. My breath was taken. It was supposed to be.

As the other housemates posed for pictures before the famous pond, I pulled Brook to one side and steered him around towards the Paradise Gardens and onto the terrace. I was glad to get away from the rest of them. The trip had already begun to reveal the pedestrian nature of their faux-bohemianism and they were becoming embarrassing to be around. When street children were hitting us up for chapattis in the Paharganj, you could hear them above the noise of the traffic: “How old are you? Seven? Wow, that’s amazing.”

Besides, I needed a cigarette and it seemed that we were in the one place in India where this was actually frowned upon. It was a good idea to get some privacy.

We paced before the river. I think Brook knew I was struggling with something but he did not speak. I sat at the base of a chattri and nodded for him to sit next to me “I have to go back,” I said.

I had been so withdrawn since our arrival that I thought he might have been expecting it but the wounded look in his eyes told me otherwise “The funeral? But the return date is fixed- it’s non-refundable,” he said.

“I’ve still got my share of our spending money. It’s enough to buy a ticket home.”

He could not hide the anger in his voice “But that’s all you’ve got- how will you get back here afterwards? What will we do?”

“You could come back with me.”

He moved in closer to me “You could stay.”

I held his hand as he shivered in the final morning breeze. His eyes darted around my face in search of a gap in my armour. It was over. He read it in my face like the instructions in his Lonely Planet.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No. I’m sorry,” I said.

Our apologies lingered during the solitary flight home. I had a long time to consider them. He had truly been sorry that it did not work out, but there had been a crueller subtext. My actions had not engendered any tender emotions in him. Something in his delivery confirmed that he had already begun to stop loving me. And my own apology had been bitter. I felt that he had betrayed me. Not so much in his staying behind but in his act of consuming two years of my life without the will to sacrifice even a season of his own.

It took me a few days to retrieve my boxes and the car. I telephoned Katy to confirm my attendance at the funeral. I contemplated staying with her the night before but decided against it. Just being there at all seemed to be enough of an ordeal. I slept on the sofa of a university friend and drove down in the early morning of the day itself.

The day had come. I stood under the tree in my funeral clothes. It was hot. I felt awkward. I had not been able to gather a decent outfit. There had been no time. There had been no money. I had done my best to put a suit together but it had not worked. It felt like a bad fancy-dress costume.

I wore a long, black coat. It had to cover for a nonexistent suit jacket. There were subtle militaristic touches about it. I had bought it when I first met Brook. Drunk on my good fortune, I had marched into town and purchased the jacket in a fit of madness. It was the last day I would ever truly believe that the universe loved me. It had an expensive-looking lining that nobody had ever looked at. I was very attached to it.

I looked down at my blouse and tried to pull the jacket sleeves over the cuffs. They were split. The edging was frayed. The colour had been bleached out by cheap detergent. The dye was faded from abuse and neglect. It had slipped irredeemably from charcoal into grey. The buttons were loose and occasional. I couldn’t even remember where it had come from.

There were no smart outfits in my wardrobe so it had to be the black rubber skirt and the seamed hold-ups. They were capped with a worn pair of boots. The yellow stitching had been blackened out by boot polish. I couldn’t bring myself to ruin the look of the hold-ups with socks. This is always a mistake in boots. The hard leather rubbed against my toes.

I was aware that I would eventually have to face the other mourners. I tugged around inside myself for the correct emotional display. So far, my reactions had been as unconvincing as my outfit. I imagined the other family members as professional mourners, seasoned death people. They would have funeral suits at home. They would know what to wear. Their directions would be issued from some unknown authority that I could not access. They would know what to say and they would know how you were supposed to feel.

I didn’t even have a tie. I should explain.

I had been strongly disliked at school. I was bullied. The principal architects of my suffering were a small gang of rough-necks that marked me out as different and made sure my days were full of misery. They seemed to take offence to my aptitude for mathematics and computing. In many ways, I suppose it was probably less than that; I was just weaker than them.

I longed to break free of their shadow. When I was 16, I transferred from my local comprehensive to a sixth-form college in a different town. It presented a great opportunity to reinvent myself.

On my first day at the new college, I decided to style myself as a retro 1950’s Left-Bank intellectual. It was a high-concept look. I wore a vintage suit and a thin tie. I felt good. I felt new. Nobody would know me and I would be able to become whoever I liked. They wouldn’t be able to hold me back from my potential anymore.

When I arrived in the college grounds that first morning, I found the old gang waiting for me there. They had chosen the same college en masse. I hadn’t known. They laughed at my new image. My suit jacket was thrown into a skip and spat upon. They wrestled me towards a tree and knotted the end of my tie around a branch. “This is the hanging tree,” they told me “Where we lynch the freaks like you.”

I dangled by my tie, choking; I nearly died. They laughed at me and went home. I managed to pull myself up so that I could hold on to the branch and support myself. I clutched onto the branch, gasping for breath, my neck raw from the noose. Everybody had gone home. It was the fag-end of a bad day. I held onto the branch for an hour. I couldn’t reach the place where they had tied the knot without letting go. I wasn’t going to let go. There was nothing I could do.

I had a lot of time to think about my future. Eventually the caretaker found me and cut me down. I asked him not to tell anyone about it.

The next day, I dressed in my normal clothes. The gang ignored me. They had decided to become more mature. I always thought that they were just biding their time. I switched all of my A-levels from maths and computers to sociology and politics. I started reading the underground comics and beat poetry that are supposedly such a clichéd part of adolescence and yet were so utterly absent from the lives of my fellow pupils. I put forth radical arguments. Slowly, I began to carve out a new future for myself. I rejected suits and ties as bourgeois. I fell in with a new crowd. They taught me how to smoke dope and I asked them to call me Violet. I even felt comfortable enough to start wearing makeup around them. In the most part they accepted me. Sometimes one of them would ask me about the clothes I was wearing on my first day at college. I used to tell them that it was just a joke. One time, I claimed it had been a situationist prank. Anyway, I got past it.

When I came to write my final sociology essay, I chose the topic “Against Ties: a Symbol of Phallocentric Capitalism.” I never wore one again.

I am a woman of principle. My father’s death would change nothing and a capitulation to convention would not bring him back to life. As I stood beneath the yew tree in the graveyard, I did not honestly know whether I would have wanted to bring him back or not. There would be little of worth to be said to each other if I did. We would argue about my mourning suit. My father would lift the lapels in distaste and let them fall back onto my breast. He would try to offer me a tie. There would be a scene.

I was standing on the top of a landscaped hill, a little distance from the chapel of rest. The yew tree branched over my head, giving shade from the June sun. A line of bushes ran down from behind me towards another part of the cemetery and then out towards the gates. There were rows of cypress and discreet pathways into the graves. Every dab of grey stone was surrounded by evergreens and foliage. They were little vistas of misdirection, polite frames for the plots. The whole effect was one of a stately garden discreetly harvesting the dead.

A stone angel stood next to me under the tree. I tried not to look at it. The face had been eaten away by lichen and moss. It held one hand outstretched in some forgotten gesture and the wings were open and wide. There was an inscription on the plinth but it had faded in the seasons of a century and had become unreadable. I was uncomfortable at the sight of it. The face made me think of decay and my mother.

I was too hot in my jacket. I was sweating and it was still only nine in the morning. There was dew on the statue. It looked like perspiration. I tried not to wonder what it would taste like.

Then there was the chapel at the foot of the hill beneath me. My relatives had arrived early for the ceremony and were waiting for it to begin. I stepped closer to the trunk of the tree and wondered if they had seen me yet. They clustered around the chapel doors, fanning themselves and smoking cigarettes in their suits and dresses. Some of them even wore armbands. I would have thought them slick but their deportment betrayed them. They sighed at the inappropriate weather, tutting at the heat as if it were the centrepiece of the day. They made carelessly cheerful greetings to each other, blithe to the purpose of their reunion. There was no keening and no show of grief. Clearly, I decided, they would not start the performance until the real audience arrived. So they had not seen me yet then after all.

I could see the area of graveyard behind the chapel. As I watched, the backdoor of the chapel opened and the preceding funeral filed out onto the grass. My vantage point on the hill gave the process the appearance of a drive-through.

The strangers walked through the gardens following their own strange coffin to its grave. It was odd to see them in the same suits and dresses as my own family. I felt that they were performing some kind of impersonation, a mockery of a real funeral. I was angry. How could they hold the services so close together? Who were these people: why weren’t they being quarantined? What were they doing in funeral suits? It was my father who had died, not theirs. Their tepid and unknown realities were spilling all over my clean day. I did not want to share my planet with any one else’s bereavement. In spite of the paucity of my actual grief, the feeling of territorial resentment was still powerful. I felt that little enough in my life was discreet, considerate or sacred, I had hoped the funeral would be different. But everything was just as profane and clumsy and fuck-you as the rest of my life. Fine, then. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I heard a jangle of chains coming from the opposite side of the hill. The sound moved towards me. I turned away from the yew and stepped around the statue to see. There was something familiar about the sound that I could not recognise at first. The memory hovered in front of my head, waiting to be swatted. I realised what it meant as soon as the figure came into view: Katy, my sister.

“It’s you!” Katy stumbled as she saw me; she stuck her hand out in greeting.

“Katy,” I felt relieved “You’re here.”

She came to a halt a short distance below me. The jangling from her motorcycle chains stopped “Yeah…” with her worn leather jacket, tight suit and wild black hair, she would have looked dishevelled had her face not been so childish. She had the air of a cherubic rake. Her clothes had aged but the rest of her had grown almost younger. The skin on her face was as white as porcelain; it looked lost amongst the darkness of so much leather and chrome.

My relief at the sight of her began to sour when I considered what she was carrying “You’ve got your chains there with you.”

Katy held the chains up to her eyes, studying them as if they were living, moving snakes “Yeah.”

“You didn’t lock your bike up properly.”

“No,” Katy nodded.

I squinted at her face. Why had she brought them with her? Something was wrong but the diagnosis took a moment to come. Then it clicked “Oh, Jesus Christ, girl!”

“What?”

“You’re on acid?” I tasted the words in disbelief.

“Well, yeah, but…”

“Never take LSD at a funeral.”

“I know.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know.”

I walked down the slope towards her and put my hands on her shoulder. Why would she do something like that? It was bad enough that I had to be there at all. I had not agreed to baby-sit someone demented enough to take hallucinogens at her own father’s burial.

Katy looked up at me. Her eyes were brown and dilated like mismatched conkers. I could see tears forming in their corners. I had to take it easy on her.

I could feel the fragility of the trip. Katy could be pushed either way. I forced myself to ignore my frustration and disappointment at her stupidity. I had to fake enough kindness to keep her stable. I clapped my hands to strike the scene and then I put on a big smile.

“How are you though, I mean, are you okay to go on with this?”

Katy continued to stare. Something passed between us “You never came back home for the holidays,” she said.

“What?”

“Christmas and summer. You never came home to visit us.”

I was stung by the change of attack. It was true. I had left town and I had never returned. I had been someone else then, someone I did not want to be anymore so I had stopped. Coming home was not an option.

Katy plunged down onto the grass. Her movements were abrupt. She let go of the chains and they clanked away, glinting in the light. She threw her legs out in front of her and slumped forwards, tugging at the grass with her fingertips.

I knelt down carefully. I didn’t know whether to put my arm around her or not. I thought that it might help but we hadn’t seen each other in so long that the gesture might have seemed artificial. Looking back around the side of the hill, I saw that we had now been spotted by the other mourners.

“Christmas was the worst,” Katy said “Just me and Dad. And those fucking paper hats from the fucking crackers.”

I wondered if I could manoeuvre Katy around to the far side of the tree out of view but I dismissed the idea. If Katy struggled, it would backfire and draw more attention to us. The best thing I could do was to try and talk her back to reality while praying that none of the relatives came over to see what was happening.

I put my hands to my coat for a cigarette. I hadn’t even unstitched the pockets yet. I padded my chest and pulled the packet from an inside pocket. I took two out, put one in between my lips and handed the other one to Katy. Katy rolled it around in her hands before letting me light it for her “It feels like a finger,” she said “Like a dead finger.”

I cupped a hand and lit my own “I’m serious, though, I’m… I need to know if you’re going to be okay. We’re going to have to go down there and deal with everybody. Now I can do the talking, you just need to hang back and stay cool, okay. Just try not to say anything, just, just try not to freak out or do anything.”

Katy looked afraid “I don’t want to do this, please.”

“We can’t let Dad down. We’ve got to give him a proper send-off.”

Katy’s expression changed. I couldn’t read it properly. It was singed by something feral. “Fuck Dad,” she said.

“Jesus, Katy, what is wrong with you? I’ve… Oh Christ…” I slumped down against the tree. I held the cigarette between my thumb and index finger, tugging on the filter with pursed lips. It was a tight situation. My gut was telling me to walk away, just leave Katy on her own to embarrass herself. Forget her, it said, you don’t need this. Go and bury your father, make peace with your family, be an adult. But another voice told me to stay, that the living were more important than the dead. After a while, the wood grounded me and my heartbeat began to slow. The bark was warm and solid against my spine.

Katy picked up the chains and wrapped them around her arms “I want to climb the tree,” she said “Like we used to do. You remember.”

I remembered. We had been arboreal children. Every school holiday and summer evening had found us climbing trees. We climbed all the trees that we could find: in the park, on the downs, in neighbouring gardens. There had been a magnificent “pulpit yew” in the churchyard at the end of our block. We passed hours of our childhood hidden together in its branches, camouflaged from the world. Trees were the one place that we could outdistance our parent’s reach and the church yew was our most precious secret “This is a yew tree,” I said “You remember the one in Saint Luke’s?”

Katy stroked the bark. It was a strange shade of purple and felt flaky to the touch, like filo pastry “Yew trees are coffin-nails for the dead. You always see them in churchyards. You know the churches were built over pagan burial sites? They put the yews there to stake the dead into the ground and stop them from walking,” she stood and reached up to the lowest of its seven trunks “Yggdrasil was a yew.”

Katy pulled herself upwards and disappeared into the leaves. She moved quickly and easily. I watched her go “I thought Yggdrasil was an ash,” I called up. If Katy heard me, she didn’t reply. I felt left behind. I had always been the advanced climber when we were young. It felt wrong letting Katy go on ahead of me. I stood up and jumped for one of the trunks. My fingers gripped and I felt the weight of my body like an unfamiliar thing. I swung by one arm for a while. It occurred to me that I had not climbed a tree for several years. How easily we stop being children once we begin to wonder who we are, I thought. The words came from a sunken recess of my mind. Before I could decant their meaning at leisure, I found that I had already hoisted myself up into the tree.

There was a wide seat where the varying trunks divided. It was only about eight feet from the ground but was fully enveloped by the spread of branch and leaf. I slid my body along so that I stood vertically on the point of divergence. I could see her perched on a branch overhead. Her black clothing hung down around her like the wings of a battered raven. I settled down into the tree and let my mind go. My breathing steadied. Katy’s chains chimed against the trunk with the rhythm and weight of a Dickensian metronome.

Time passed.

I opened my eyes, unaware that I had even closed them. Katy was curled up in a foetal ball on the grass below me at the foot of the angel, crying gently. A woman was standing next to the statue, her eyebrows raised.

I sat up and stared down at her “Auntie Janet…” She was a narrow, prissily bourgeois woman with a Breton hat and nasty gold earrings. She worked as a receptionist in a dental surgery.

“Violet?” she lowered her eyebrows and the eyes beneath them disappeared into the folds of her squint “That is what I’m supposed to call you now isn’t it? Violet? Anyway, the vicar says he’s ready for us now. We have to go in. It’s time.”

I stood up quickly. I caught a headrush and put an arm out against the rising trunks. I saw that the hearse had arrived down at the chapel. The mourners milled around the vehicle. They cleared enough room for it to reverse into position. I was too high up to see the coffin inside. But I knew it was there. My heart lurched inside my ribcage. I felt sick. Still staring ahead, I said “Start without me. I’m going to stay and look after Katy.”

Janet’s lips pulled together “What’s wrong with her then?”

I turned my head slightly “What do you think’s wrong with her?”

Janet flinched. I hadn’t meant the words to sound so harsh but some truth of myself was pushing free. I fumbled another cigarette into my mouth. My hands were trembling “I’ll come down to the chapel when she’s feeling better.”

Janet didn’t move. I was too young to ignore her instructions and it made her defensive “Well why don’t you just come down from your little tree-house for a while, pay your respects and then come back and see if she’s any better?”

I continued to face away from her. Smoke drifted over my shoulder “No. I’m going to stay here and look after my sister.”

She shook her head and marched away, her arms folded “Fine,” she said, as if my words made no sense at all.

I finished my cigarette and wondered if they even did.

The reception was held in Janet’s house.

She lived in a suburban street with fussy front gardens and a near total absence of background noise. Lime trees ran in rows along both sides of the street. There was a wide strip of grass between the pavement and the kerb. The tarmac rolled with speed bumps. It was the kind of silent death all of my poorer relatives aspired to. It was a place in which to breed and decay with a stiff look on your face as if the whole world smelt bad.

I parked the car down the street and walked with Katy towards Janet’s house. It was a ridiculous place with fake beams and diagonal mullions in the windows “Look at it,” I said “Look at those fucking Tudorbethan windows. It’s all just so phoney it makes me want to vomit.”

Katy nodded as she disappeared upstairs “I’m going to lie down now.” She didn’t even seem to be paying attention to me at all.

I pushed across the ryalux carpet and made my way to the garden. There was an American porch-swing with a striped canopy and a mechanised awning over the bay windows. I popped a bottle of lager and sat, chain smoking, on the swing. I felt too big for the swing, but it gave me some welcome camouflage. I had been avoiding this very situation for over three years.

For a while I was invisible beneath the shadow of the shade but in due course the other mourners began to spill out of the house towards me. Once I was discovered, my solitude was terminated. Relatives and family friends formed a queue of commiseration that led from the lacquered drinks cabinet indoors up to the swing outside like a string of ants ferrying fallen sugar across the grass. I was not left alone for a second. A succession of vague relatives and family friends, each more tedious than the last, loomed up to me with freshly filled glasses while my beer warmed and dwindled.

They all knew me as Him. I was disappointed to find they all could recognise me at all, let alone so easily. I didn’t mind the thought of people realising I wasn’t born as a woman as much as I disliked being identified as Him. Him in a skirt. I had left Him castrated and discarded but He continued to haunt me, the ghost-face I could never fully slough off. The boy I was born to be, the boy I had killed.

The mourners would come and shake my hand, firmly at first and then softer as their hands slowed in response to mine. Were they expecting me to squeeze their palms like a builder? Not one of them tried to kiss my cheek.

“I’m so sorry,” they would say.

I would nod in response.

“Why weren’t you at the funeral?”

“I was with Katy. She’s not very well.”

“And where is Katy now?”

“She’s lying down.”

“It must be hard for you with her so young.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re the man of the house now.”

“I am a woman. My name is Violet now.”

“And how is university going?”

“I finished. I might be able to go straight into a doctorate if the funding comes through.”

“So tell me, what are you going to do with the house?”

Each one rattled through their platitudes before they settled on the final question of the house: the real order of business. They were wearing me down. I had overestimated them in thinking that my gender would be the focus of their curiosity. No, the vultures were after the carrion of my father’s estate, not the vanished penis of his prodigal son.

After an hour of this, I decided on a change of tactics. I couldn’t escape them in the garden, so I might as well try to hide in the house. I stepped over the begonias and made my way indoors. But I was blocked before the doorway by an elder cousin. The sanctuary was snatched away. I was cast back into the routine.

“There you are, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. I was just going into the house.”

“Why weren’t you at the funeral?”

“I was with Katy. She’s not very well.”

“And where is Katy now?”

“She’s lying down.”

“It must be hard for you with her so young.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re the, the man of the house now.”

“Right.”

“And how is university going?”

“It’s over. I finished last week and I went to India and I broke up with my boyfriend and then I came here today. I don’t want to be here. I’m not even supposed to be here. I should be on my way down to Goa by now. But what am I supposed to do? Katy called and I said that she needed me here. She’s just a kid. Dad left the house to me. It’s in my name. Can you believe that? Last time I saw him he told me that I was a freak and he didn’t even want me to live there anymore. But he left it to me in his will. Now somebody’s got to sort everything out and there’s nobody else and it’s not my fault. It shouldn’t even by my responsibility. I mean, you’re born and you start to discover the world and before you know it they put you in this big institution, this system, this big machine and you’re off on the treadmill and god forbid you if you show any kind of intelligence at all because the other prisoners will hate you and the teachers will mark you out and people start getting expectations of you so you go on to college and you go on to university and there’s no escape and then finally you’re free and your life is suddenly your own but then they grab you and they say, you know, by the way, your dad just died so there’s that part of your life gone and the lights are just going out left, right and centre and it just gets darker and darker and less and less of you is visible and then you realise that you’re dying off, little by little and you sit there in the darkness and it gets to you and you think well, maybe I should just fast-forward the rest of this because it’s just decay now, it’s just rolling downhill into this darkness anyway and what’s going to happen between now and then that could give it any shape or meaning?”

“Yeah, no, so tell me, what are you going to do with the house?”

I sighed and shoved through the bodies towards the French windows. Before I could reach the living room, a hand reached out and grabbed my arm. It pinched the flesh. I looked up to see an aunt I had never liked. She held my arm tighter and whispered into my ear “I think I speak for God when I say that you make him sick.”

I twisted at her grip. She flicked her hand open and my arm popped away from her spiteful talons. The crowd around us shifted and she melted back into the folds before I could even respond.

I was not upset. At least, not enough for her to see. It was the “welcome home” I had been expecting. I should have been ready, I should have prepared a response. Oh fuck it, yes I was upset. Why did I let her get to me? I forced my body through the wall of black suits and dresses and made my way into the lounge.

At first I couldn’t see properly. I waited on the threshold while my eyes adjusted to the light. Then I noticed that the living room was full of expectant faces. A battalion of elderly relatives were scattered around the sofas, their floral print dresses and bad shirts camouflaged against the chintz. They had been waiting for me. It was an ambush of false teeth and sympathy. I was trapped.

“What do we call you?” one of them said.

“I,” the kitchen door was too far away. There was no way I could make it “I’m sorry, pardon?”

“What are we supposed to call you, dear? You won’t use your old name anymore, will you?”

Another one joined in “Are you post-operative yet or are you still pre-operative?”

“Did you get it on the NHS or did you have to go private?”

In my exile I had assumed that they would have grown to consider me some kind of monstrous freak, a betrayer of the family’s normality. But I had not accounted for their minds’ possession by true life stories in gossip magazines and daytime TV chat shows. The tacky truth descended horribly: I was the extreme makeover-story they had been dining out on for the past four years. Having a freak in the family made them more interesting. I was appalled by their curiosity and yet I knew they would expect me to be flattered. I had experienced it before with some of my flatmates: they expect me to be some kind of confessional drama queen diva who revels in the attention. But I’m not gay and I never was. I’m just a girl. The rest of it isn’t my fault and I didn’t want people to make the gap between me and Him by the focus of their prurient fascination. Revulsion would have been easier to bear.

I turned on my boot heel towards the kitchen. There were tuts and sighs of disappointment. I tried to exude a sense of overwhelming grief to assuage them. I did not believe that it had been very effective.

It was not until I was halfway out of the room that I saw Joseph. I stopped dead. The last time I had seen him, I was still a man and he still loved me.

Chapter Three

Pulpit Yew

Joseph was sitting on the arm of a chair, his legs crossed. His hair had been cropped short and he had bleached it pale but I recognised him immediately. He stood up and walked towards me. It seemed impossible, but he was taller and thinner than I remembered. He wore a black mourning suit and tie. In one hand he held a glass of red wine; the other hand reached out towards me.

“Joseph… What has it been- three years?”

He put his hand to my hair and gave me a wry smile “What’s this, Violet? A bob?”

I was electrocuted by his touch “No, it’s nothing, I…”

“A Fitzgerald bob?” he withdrew his hand and sloshed the wine around the glass “How jejune,” he said as he sipped the wine over his lips, his eyes rolled up at me with raised brows.

I took him by the elbow and steered him through the house. The day was starting to thin and the light was already dying. I moved him carefully before me. He allowed himself to be guided and I felt his arm turn limp and yielding in my hand. We walked out through the open front door. I kicked it shut behind us.

I had not seen him since the last day of the sixth-form. There had been a graduation ceremony a few months later but neither of us had gone. We both pretended that we were too cool and cynical to go but really we just could not face seeing each other.

The road was quiet outside Janet’s house. Street lamps were starting to blink into life. It was still warm. We stood by the side of the house in a corner swamped by rhododendrons. I lit a cigarette and offered the packet towards him. He shook his head “You quit?” I said.

“To be honest, I can’t say I ever really committed to the vice in the first place.”

I smiled “And to think you gave me my first cigarette.”

His face drifted away “How ironic, considering your eventual mastery of the discipline.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m worried about Katy,” he replied.

I stared at him. I did not know whether he had really answered my question.

He ignored my stare and continued “Where have you been? I had to deal with everything myself.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing? Trying to finish my degree.”

“Katy said you didn’t even come down to see your dad when he was in the hospital.”

“He’s been in and out for years, every time they said it was serious, and what, how was I supposed to know this was the, you know, this was the time?”

“You were supposed to be there for Katy.”

“Hey, what, you know how it was with my dad, why do you think you can dump this stuff on me now, you know, you’re not my fucking boyfriend anymore, you don’t get to push me around like this.”

“I was hardly your ‘fucking’ boyfriend even then, was I? I think your other boyfriend was the one for the fucking. I was rather more of a mother-substitute I would say.”

He leant back against the wall and downed the rest of the wine. He titled his head towards me in search of an aggressive response. Finding nothing but restraint in my eyes, he stuck his tongue out and tossed the glass over his head. It tinkled into pieces in some other garden.

We heard shouting coming from upstairs. Standing away from the wall, I saw Katy stick her head out of an upstairs window “Is it time to cross the streams?” she said. I didn’t know if she was talking to me or not. She didn’t look down towards us but kept her face tilted towards the moon.

“What did she say?” I asked as Katy’s head disappeared back inside. Before Joseph could answer me, Katy reappeared with a brass fireplace poker and began knocking out the window panes. She smashed at them one by one, wide-eyed and giggling “What are you doing? Jesus!” I shouted, ducking back inside the house.

I ran upstairs and burst in on the front bedroom. Katy span around with the poker in her hand “You know he’s out of your league, Violet.”

I pulled her out into the hallway “Yeah, we’re going now,” I hissed. The stairs had begun to fill up with aggressive uncles come to investigate the noise. There would be confrontations and inquisitions that neither of us could possibly handle. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do “Fire!” I shouted “Everybody get out! There’s, er, there’s a terrible fire!”

It was mayhem. I never knew how violent old people could be. The younger ones were thrown to the carpet in their mad panic to escape. You would think that the elderly would be calmer in the face of mortal danger but if anything they are worse. It’s not that they have less life to lose I suppose as the fact that they’re that bit closer to death and have seen enough of it already thank you. Either way they know how to use their elbows and their zimmers in a narrow corridor.

By the time we had made it outside and far enough down the street to stop running, I realised that Katy was now wearing her motorcycle helmet. I lit a cigarette and waited for things to cool down. Joseph caught up with us “Hey Kate,” he said as he picked a spider from her shoulder “Where you going?”

I was aware of the kindness in his eyes, blackened with late nights and banned from meeting my gaze by his temper.

Katy paused and knocked a gloved hand against her helmet “Where’s my bike?”

I sat down on the verge “We left it at the cemetery. You don’t remember me driving you back here?”

“One of you give me a lift will you? I’ve got to get out of here,” Katy said, kicking a lamppost in desperation.

Joseph took her hand “I’ll take you. I think me and the Violet were finished talking anyway.”

I flicked my cigarette butt up into the air. It landed in the street in a detonation of sparks “I really don’t think she should be riding the bike yet. What was that all about upstairs? She needs a few more hours to come down.”

“Hey, I’m still here, fuckhead. Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

I stood “Okay fine, girl. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. Just take care, that’s all.”

Katy paused in front of me. Neither of us moved. I could see my own reflection in the visor of her helmet. I looked distorted and weird.

Katy chuckled and turned away “Cool. I’ll see you back at the house then.”

Joseph unlocked the doors on his car and let Katy climb into the passenger seat. She was still wearing the helmet. Joseph leant into the car and spoke with Katy quietly. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. After a minute, he came back up the garden path and stood a few feet away from me. He continued to face the street “There’s a demo tomorrow,” he moved his eyes around to mine “You do still demo don’t you?”

“What’s it for?”

“Do you want to come with me or not?” his voice faltered but did not break “Because that is where I’m going and I’m asking you if you want to come with me. I’m not asking if you want to know what it’s for.”

“Okay. Okay, yes I want to go with you. I’ll call you tomorrow. Just make sure she’s alright before you let her get back on that thing, will you?”

“She may be a baby but she’s not your baby you know.”

“She’s not your damn baby either.”

“She’s nobody’s baby now.”

“Touché.”

The street lamps began to flicker on. They hummed a pink glow, threatening the night with their unending orange light.

“So tell me something, Violet.”

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do with the house?”

“Shut up, Joseph,” I said gently.

“You are the man of the house now,” he said, his voice a parody of the inquisitive mourners.

I felt the words pump into my brain. I wished people would stop saying it. It was my father’s wake and I wanted to be able to feel something other than dread. I wanted to feel sorrow. I wanted to cry. But my tear ducts had long since run dry and their currents moved away somewhere else inside, the herald of internal weeping.

I was not ready for the power of land ownership. I was Hamlet playing King Lear, too in love with my own personal disaster to administer the dissolution of the kingdom. He looked at me like I was a fool. It may not have been his intention. I never could tell. Part of our childish love had been built upon the mystery of his judgement. I was sure that his words were always innuendo, codes of subtle meaning. The sensation of running behind his to catch up the whole time had been unique. Nobody else had ever seemed worth the effort.

Joseph drove Katy away. I waited on the doorstep for a while before getting into my own car. I managed not to go in and say goodbye before leaving. There was no more time to waste on the people inside. There were more important things to do.

I drove the car down the old streets. It was dark. The heat of the day had lasted beyond the sun. I drove with the windows down. Halogen lights flashed into the car, off and on. Everything smelled like it was partially melted. I could taste that there was going to be a storm. The roads were empty.

I drove with the music on full. Something with a piano, the Divine Comedy, I didn’t listen. I shoved the steering wheel in the right directions and the shapes around me realigned themselves. I didn’t even really concentrate on the road. The streets around me were too familiar to pay attention to. It was disappointing. I had wanted it all to look unfamiliar. I wanted to be such a different person that it all looked tiny and false. But my years away had not been long enough. I had not altered. These were still the roads that led to home.

I slowed the car at the turning past the lights and stopped. I got out. I walked back down the street. There was a new shop. It was a late-night place that sold cigarettes and bread. The lights were too bright and the radio was playing house music. It was at odds with the downbeat plastic racks and the sleepy Iranian family behind the counter. There was a tired child gazing sleeplessly at the CCTV monitor. If it wasn’t for people like me, I thought, you’d be in bed. I bought a bottle of Bushmills and headed back to the car. I didn’t wait for my change. It wasn’t much. Even though I was broke, I didn’t care. The shop was too depressing and it was the kind of day where you could just let things go.

I climbed into the car and dropped the whisky bottle onto the passenger seat. I liked having the scotch ride shotgun. It made me feel tough. I adjusted the rear-view mirror and checked that my face at least had changed. I was pale and thin in the moonlight.

I was procrastinating. Not wanting to go home. I knew that. I took the car for a walk around the streets, searching for the evidence of time. There was not much to find. I gave up and headed for the house.

I rolled down the hill and killed the gas. The car continued forwards. I nudged around the turning into the terraces and let the momentum carry the vehicle up along the hill. It was enough to climb the pavement and park.

I stepped out of the car and wandered up and down the street. On the opposite side of the road stood a string of terraced houses. Bombs and renovations had kept them from any kind of uniformity. Some were festooned with loft extensions and skylights. Most were unkempt. Each had a small yard and steps leading up to the front doors. I delayed looking at the old place. I did not know what effect first sight would have.

The side of the street behind me was bare. There was no pavement. A low wall ran along the length of the hill. Behind it loomed a scrub of hawthorn and wild roses. The plants were all black in the darkness, black weeds and black roses. Beyond them was a steep drop down to the train tracks below.

I pushed away from the car and walked towards the house. The windows were dark. The house was empty. I longed for the sight of Katy’s bike and when I couldn’t find it I knew that I would be alone in the house. All the curtains were drawn.

It was a parrot house: there were the same number of rooms as a normal house but each one had a floor to itself so it very tall and very narrow. The houses on either side were much shorter so it looked like it had been concertinaed into its present shape. The only multi-roomed level was the ground floor with its kitchen and conservatory built out as an extension like a whalebone bustle onto the back of the living room.

I was suddenly struck with repulsion at the place. It was lanky and deathlike and I twisted away from it instinctively. I felt that something had gone wrong with the world. I was overcome with claustrophobia. It was a trap. I had to get away but there was nowhere to go. My old life was over. University was finished, forever. The flat was gone. The friends were gone. The boy was gone. My future was as empty and filled with ghosts as the narrow house up ahead of me, bathed in sickly orange beneath a dying street light. The house was mine now. My responsibility. It owned me.

I walked up to the front door and felt in my jacket for the key. It wasn’t there. I padded every pocket. Nothing. I returned to the car and rooted through the glove compartment and a selection of my luggage. No. It wasn’t there. I turned back to size up to the house. I unscrewed the cap of the whisky and took a series of belts. By the fifth, there was drool on my chin. “Yeah?” I said, my eyes never leaving the house “Well fuck you too.”

I pulled the long black coat from the backseat and slipped it over my shoulders. The whisky bottle fitted perfectly, mirabilis, in my inside pocket. There was only a slight sound of tearing.

I walked around the block to the church on the corner. There was a locked gate into the yard at the back. I checked that the street was empty and that I was unwatched. I rattled the gate. The street was deserted. Gingerly taking a fistful of wire mesh, I hurled myself up into the air and over the gate. I landed on my back and rolled into the yard. A series of disturbed cats flew out of the darkness like junkies in a spotlight. I could smell bibles and catnip.

The steeple hung in giddy suspension to my left while the main body of the hall lay directly ahead. The roof was low to the ground on the street-side of the yard. I managed to jump up and scramble across the slate without too much difficulty. Once I reached the apex of the roof, I saw what I was looking for: the pulpit yew. It rose up out of the boneyard at the rear of the church like smoke. It was my childhood sanctuary, scene of endless afternoons spent in the avid pursuit of nothing more than the total absence of my parents. One of the trunks still branched out over the roof, just as I remembered. I was not sure if it was the tree or if it was my own body that had grown, but the jump between the roof and the nearest branch was smaller than it should have been. Even as drunk as I was, I could not have failed to miss. I landed clear inside the branches, swayed backwards for a moment and then quickly made my way to the safety of the big trunk. Once I reached it, I sat astride the branch and helped myself to some more whisky. The moon winked down at me in approval. I winked back.

Local legends stated that the tree had been used as an impromptu pulpit to preach the gospels before the church itself had been built. There was a great slash in the hollow trunk where a wooden platform had allegedly once stood, allowing the sermoniser to stand over the heads of his congregation. On our very first climb as children, the pulpit had been our target. It lay below me somewhere in the darkness of her swart canopy. I could not see it. There was a carpeting of green scarf over the trunk and branches and a rustle of disturbed squirrels in her upper branches. Everything smelt familiar and carried with it the tang of scraped knees and the memory of lost afternoons.

Peeping through the branches over the ridge of the roof, I could see the back of the houses in my street. The windows were unguarded. I saw directly into the neighbour’s lives. The scenes were unpretentious: a body slumped before a television, a child practising the violin, a woman ironing socks, teenagers sitting at a table laughing; nothing of consequence but shocking still in their lack of self-consciousness. I drank in the private moments and tried not to be seen. They were vignettes of honesty. Truth is the prerogative of the voyeur.

Something hooked my eye and drew me towards a distant window. It was skin.

Of all the windows on display, my vision had been focused immediately onto the one with the naked girl. According to evolutionary biologists, neurologists and paleo-anthropologists, the brain of Homo sapiens sapiens is significantly larger than its predecessors. This fact is often fodder for vanity. We’re bigger: therefore we are smarter, surely? But the new regions are not there for philosophy or poetry. The extra space is just there to recognise patterns. Patterns and subtle changes in patterns. This improved ability to notice slight changes in colours and shapes made us better hunters. But it didn’t make us any smarter.

I smiled as the naked girl in the window ran a towel through her hair. I tried to count the houses. I wanted to know which number she lived at, but it was hard to tell in the darkness. She bent over and began to pull on her stockings. I took another drink and settled myself. Her hair was dark red and her body was ripe like a berry. If there was any guilt to feel, I couldn’t find it. The moment took me as natural: we were just two organisms floating by. There was an innocence in my passivity. I couldn’t’ see how my eye was capable of violence. Besides which, art receives the audience it is worthy of. Stolen nudity belongs in the gallery of windows and rooftops and rogues.

Then she looked at me. I sat back slightly. Her expression changed but she was too far away for me to be sure of her exact response. Her eyes had widened. I felt their whiteness catch at me. But I could not tell if she was shocked or smiling. Her hand moved across her chest and snatched the curtains into place.

I realised that it was time to move on. The bottle stowed neatly away back inside the jacket and I edged down from the tree and back onto the roof. I made my way towards the guttering. I peered over. The drop was much higher on the other side of the roof. It was at least a storey and a half to the ground. I swallowed. Glancing up once, I noted that the curtains were still drawn. Then I jumped.

The landing was not as bad as it could have been.

After a while, I got up and brushed myself down. I was standing in a small yard at the back of the church. The concrete floor was covered in cigarette butts. The yard was bordered on three sides by the church and the adjoining vicarage. On the fourth side was a plain wall. I stood on the tips of my shoes and peered over. Beyond the wall was the back garden of the first house in my street. My own house was seven doors down. That was only six gardens away. I climbed up onto the first wall and checked out the gardens ahead. They were empty. If I was quick and silent, nobody would even notice. I turned up the collars on my coat. “OK,” I said out loud to myself “You’re a ninja bitch.”

I jumped down into the first garden. I landed in a flower bed and twisted around in the loose earth. I checked the house, crouching. The windows were dark. I was safe. It smelt of peat and moss. I sprang across the lawn towards the opposite wall. I peered over the top.

The next house was different. Lights were on in most of the windows and I could hear noises coming from inside. Some of the windows were open so I guessed that I might not get across without being noticed but I had no choice. I stepped back and took a running jump at the wall. I hurtled up and over.

The second garden was covered in decking.

I landed heavily and almost cracked the planks beneath me. The crash echoed uncontrollably. I slipped and scrambled upright, heading for the next hurdle as quickly as I could. There was no time to check whether I had given myself away. I did not even stop to look into the next garden. I just pulled myself up and dived over.

The third garden was darker than the others. As I landed, I knew that something was wrong but I could not see what it was. The ground felt strange. It seemed to give way under my weight. I had to extend my arms to steady myself. There were noises coming from the second garden behind me. French windows were sliding open. The crash was being investigated. I jumped forwards. The ground moved out of my way. I staggered. I was sinking into the earth. I stopped moving, unsure how to proceed. Someone turned on a porch light in the second garden. It was enough for me to see by. I looked down and realised that I was standing on a tarpaulin. It didn’t make any sense. There were people in the second garden. They were bound to spot me if I did not hide. I stepped forwards. The ground pitched downwards at least half a foot. Water sloshed around my shoes. A corner of the tarpaulin popped free of its fixture. I fell to my knees. “Shit!”

The people in the second garden heard me. I had only seconds before their heads would appear above the wall. I tried to run but another corner of the tarpaulin came unfastened. I toppled headfirst into the sudden water beneath my feet. I was standing on a swimming pool. The realisation closed around me, quick and freezing.

The pool was surrounded within minutes. The people from the decking house had roused the people from the pool house. Together they all stood around the garden waving torches about and poking at the tarpaulin with sticks. There was a deal of discussion as to what had caused the noises. After a while, it settled into a badger-versus-burglar debate. Someone continued to poke at the tarp during the whole thing.

A heart beat beneath the water. It boomed like a depth charge, lonely and afraid, cold as the grave.

Eventually the neighbours all tired of talking and they drifted away. Before the owners retired, they fixed the pool cover back into place. Then they shut off the lights and went to bed.

I crouched in the shallow end, my chattering head poked above the waterline for air. I waited for a while before pushing at the tarp above me. I was waiting partly to ensure it was safe, but also to delay the inevitable disappointment. I pushed. It was tightly secured. I really was trapped.

The water did not warm up and my prospects did not appear good. I tried to take hold of the tarp to yank it free but my hands could not get any purchase on the material. I began to seriously worry about hypothermia.

I could catch my death.

I wondered about the catching and what it meant. It made me think of children in the playground: little grim reapers in hooded tops and trainers, shrieking like monkeys. It seemed to me a bold and foolish inversion. Of course Death was the one who did the catching, after all.q

I had never shivered so much in my life. My body was little more than a rattling skeleton. I tried everything to escape. I even tried biting at the tarp but my wet face kept sliding away. It was hopeless. I tried to stare-out my mortality but there were still too many tasks to be undertaken before I was ready to die. I had to look after Katy. And more, I could not give up until I had dealt with the house. It was everything that the world had ever done to me. Facing my death in the freezing water, I found determination where there should have been despair. I had been beaten too many times to surrender.

Chapter Four

Maple

Then I remembered the whisky bottle. I took it out of my jacket pocket and unscrewed the cap. There was not enough space between the water line and the tarp above for me to tip the bottle up to my lips. I had to duck under the water to get the bottle high enough for a drink. After a few dunks, I realised that the warming benefits of the whisky were entirely offset by the freezing water. I proceeded to stage two of the operation- breaking the glass. Taking the bottle upside down by the neck, I tested it against the tiles on the edge of the pool. The resulting klang echoed around the pool, amplified by the tiles. Plan B, then. I ducked back under the water.

My jacket swirled out behind me in the floating darkness. I brought the bottle, two-handed, against the bottom of the pool. I had to push against the water with all of my strength. It was like trying to run from a ghost in a nightmare. The first time, I only managed to crack the neck, but the second time I smashed the bottle in half. Slivers of glass eddied around underwater.

I bounced upwards and plunged the broken glass up into the tarp. It ripped straight through the fabric. The sound of the tear was a dawn chorus at the end of a bad comedown. I dragged the glass joyously across, slicing a window into the sky.

I climbed out of the pool. A shooting star flew through the air and disappeared into a cloud. A dog was barking in the distance. I lay for a while on the patio, just breathing. My clothes were stuck to me like sheets of ice. But I was free. My hand still gripped the broken bottle neck. My fingers were white. I was free.

I rose, climbed the fence and passed through the next few gardens without event. By the time I reached my own garden I had lost count and was about to pass straight on. It came as a shock when I realised that this was the house I had grown up in and yet had nearly failed to recognise. I had to check it was really the right place.

Everything had changed while I had been away. The gardening had been abandoned and the ornamental rows had fallen into dereliction. The grass was uncut, the vines had untangled and there were no more tomatoes in the greenhouse. The flowers were all dead.

I walked up to the back door. It would be unlocked. It had always been left unlocked.

A pile of bricks and a metal grill, the vague intention of a future barbecue pit. I shoved them aside and pushed at the door handle. It did not open. The back door was locked. I leant my forehead against the frosted glass window and sighed. Lifting my eyes up without moving my head, I whispered to the house “I hate you, you venomous bastard.”

Without warning, as if it no longer took orders from my brain, my neck moved. I snapped my head back and hurtled it forwards. My forehead smashed into the window and punched a circular hole clean through the glass. I staggered back, a palm to my forehead, a bolt of lightning through my temple at the shock of it. I reeled at the sight of the hole. I patted my face for blood: nothing.

The neighbour’s lights were coming on again at the sound of the breaking glass. Quickly, I thrust a hand through the hole, unclicked the bolt and opened the door. I slipped inside.

Joseph rang the doorbell. He tipped his ear towards the house. There was no sound; the battery was dead. He leant back and rapped on the wood with his knuckles. No answer. He knelt down and shouted through the letterbox “Hey ladyboy! Stop playing with yourself and let me in!”

There was a noise from within. It sounded like a chair being dragged across floorboards.

He stood back and smiled to himself. As he waited for me to open the door, he patted his cropped hair and smoothed the arms of his summer jacket. He wore Clarks shoes and Buddy Holly glasses. On his wrist was a large studded bracelet. It was incongruously macho.

The morning was still. There was no ambient noise, no traffic. The sky was devoid of wind or birds, as if something had sucked them all away.

The door swung open and bounced against the wall. I stood in the doorway. I was just wearing a bra and skirt. My shoulders were set at an animalistic angle, closing off the corridor behind me. I winced, a hand over my eyes at the brightness of the day.

“Ouch,” I said, deadpan.

Joseph produced a silver-plated hip flask. He held it up in front of him and tipped his head to one side “Hair of the dog that bit you? Cure for rabies.”

“Come in,” I said, moving back into the gloom of the hallway, rubbing at my corpse mascara.

He followed me inside. He was not ready for the scene.

An oversized papier-mâché skull lay at the foot of the stairs. It was an Aztec mask from the Day of the Dead carnival. Joseph found it grotesque. “Okay, that’s got no place lying at the foot of someone’s stairs,” he said.

The hallway was otherwise normal. The décor was plain suburban drab: beige and creams, dark wooden furniture and carpeting; militaristic maps of the colonies in gold leaf, barometers and dust. In contrast, the skull was a violent interloper, lent a particular viciousness by its careless landing. I kicked at it as I walked into the lounge “It’s called a calavera.”

“Yeah, but what’s it doing there?”

I paused “Found it in my bedroom upstairs. Don’t know where it came from. Didn’t want it in there.”

“So you threw it down the stairs?” Joseph asked. He was joking.

“It shouldn’t have been in my room,” I replied.

“Oh,” he said.

I led him through to the living room. It had been overturned. The signs of recent violence were everywhere. The room had taken such a kicking that it was almost comical. Toilet paper streamed across the ceiling, caught up around the frills of the lampshade and draping to the floor. The three piece suite had been tipped upside-down like a child’s fort. The rugs from the floor had been scooped up and dumped on top of the chairs to camouflage them. Tomatoes were stuck to the walls, partially exploded. The little red stains looked like bullet holes in the chest of a giant.

I had uncaged my father’s racing pigeons. They flapped stupidly around the living room, covering the floorboards in shit and panicky feathers. Joseph covered his hair with his hands as he entered the room, as if the pigeons were vampire bats. His knees bent slightly, cowed and afraid, trying to reduce his height to avoid the chances of a pigeon flying into his head. The gesture betrayed his nervousness at the scene. I could tell that he wanted to leave immediately.

There was a mattress on the floor of the living room. I had dragged it down from upstairs the night before. There were no sheets. I had not thought about it. I had just spent the night wrapped in my overcoat for a blanket.

I sat down on a corner of the mattress and rubbed my eyes “Do you want a coffee?” I asked, fumbling for a cigarette.

“Look, I’m going to go. This was a bad idea,” he said.

“No wait,” I lifted my head up and tried to say something. I could tell that he was staring at my eyes, trying to work out if I had been crying, “I’m sorry,” I said “Give me a minute. I know it must look pretty fucked up…”

“No, it’s cool…”

“I just couldn’t sleep upstairs last night. I don’t know why. So I pulled the mattress down here to sleep, so, you know, it was the only way I could get off to sleep, I don’t know. It was weird being back in the house again. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a night here alone before. I don’t think I’ve ever slept anywhere alone before you know, I mean, totally alone in the house or the flat or whatever. There’s always been people around, I’ve never been that alone and here there’s always been, you know, Katy or, you know, um…you.”

“I understand,” he said. I did not believe him.

“You’re lying.”

“Of course I am,” he laughed “I have no idea what you’re talking about, you pretentious art terrorist.”

“Oh,” I smiled; glad to switch the mood. I gave him a taunting expression “So you think this is a ‘piece’?”

“Well, it’s a piece of something, that’s for sure.”

I flicked the cigarette ash on the floor with a deliberately camp motion “Are you making me that coffee or not?”

“You’re shaking.”

“When I was nine years old I came down with something called Sydenham Chorea, the Saint Vitus Dance. It was a couple of months off school, I don’t remember exactly. There’s no cure and they don’t prescribe much apart from bedrest and diazepam. I don’t remember getting any diazepam, but I do remember being pumped with whisky and valium from my mother’s supply. I used to have to omit them up when she gave me too many.

“I just lay in bed shaking like a maniac, half-drunk and my mother laughed. The whole thing amused her. To honest, I wouldn’t really call it abuse. I would save that for some of the other things that happened.

“You know why they call it Saint Vitus Dance? You know Saint Vitus? Saint Vitus was a Sicilian kid. Vitus is means ‘lively in Latin; it’s a pretty cool name. He converted to Christianity at the age of twelve. I guess this was considered spiritually precocious. Tales began to spread that the young convert was able to produce miracles. There are all these stories about his adventures with his tutor and his servant. When I first read about his adventures I always thought that they would make a good animated series for children, especially in some big religious country like Italy. I don’t know why, but I always imagined they had a dog with them on the adventures. I don’t know whether the dog could talk or not. I never really gave it much thought. The dog was white though, a little Jack Russell like Snowy in the Tintin books but less yappy; more stoic.

“Vitus’ dad told him to stop being a Christian. This was all in like 300 AD. But he didn’t so they boiled him in oil. Now he’s the patron saint of actors, comedians, dancers, dogs and epileptics. He’s got the power to protect against lightning, animal attacks, oversleeping and, guess what? Against the Dance Mania.

“You ever read about this? It’s like a thousand years later in Europe, right, the Middle Ages, and the Black Plague is everywhere and then this Mania appears. It starts with headaches and hallucinations, then mad laughter and shaking, gurning and these sudden erratic movements. Then you start lashing about and people gather around to watch and then, get this, then they too start dancing along with you. So it grows and people start cults and you’ve got hundreds, thousands of people just dancing for days, jumping around in fields like mad bastards and the women are tearing their clothes off and everybody’s naked and they’re all fucking and singing and dancing and the priests are just standing around trying to exorcise them and they dance them right into the chapels to Saint Vitus to conduct these banishing rites. Then they go in there and people are playing music, right, the Tarantella? One time a bunch of people are supposed to have danced non-stop in a circle for a whole year! These people tried to pull their daughter out of the circle but they just pulled her arm off and she carried on dancing. By the end of the year they’ve worn a hole in the ground.

“Nowadays they say it was all caused by ergot, this hallucinogenic fungus in the bread. You know Robert Louis Stevenson, yeah? When he had TB his doctor injected him with ergotine to stop the bleeding in his lungs and two weeks later he wrote Jekyll and Hyde.

“The feast of St Vitus is on 15^th June, my birthday. I used to drop a lot of acid on my birthdays. I never wrote a horror novel, though.”

Joseph ignored me “Where’s Katy?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said “Katy’s not here.”

I propped myself up at the kitchen table. Joseph put two mugs of coffee down. They clunked heavily. He scraped a chair back and sat opposite me. Light came in from the windows behind me, fractured into gold and green by the odd coloured panes.

“So,” he said, facing the broken glass in the back door “You didn’t ask me what I’m doing now.”

“OK,” I blew on my coffee to cool it down “What are you doing now?”

“So kind of you to ask. I’m working at the Herald. It’s in the sales department and I’m acting up as manager now.”

“But you were going into journalism, weren’t you?”

“Yeah? And I am in journalism. It’s not all just about celebrity interviews and columns.”

“Yeah, but, shit, I mean, telesales? You’re what, you’re a salesman?”

“No, don’t be so annoying, I coordinate the advertising contracts and manage the accounts with our regular clients. It’s not like I’m cold calling or anything. Fuck you, anyway, it’s a good job, I’ve got my own place now and I’m saving up to go travelling. Do you remember how you used to talk about going to India? You used to talk about it all the time.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think I’ll be doing that,” I did not want to tell his the truth. It would mean giving too much light to something that was still vulnerable. The past was a snare that had entrapped me and this weakness had to be disguised, above all from Joseph “I’ve seen through it,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well that’s how they get you, though, isn’t it? You work to save up to get away from work and then you go away and spend the money you made at work and then you come back and you start all over again, the whole time telling yourself that the two months a year that you spend getting dysentery and smoking chillums on a beach in Thailand is your real life but all the while you’re just another wage-slave, you’re still just as chained up to all the bullshit but your chains are so long you can’t even see it.”

Joseph kicked my seat as he crossed his legs. Whether I was doing it deliberately or not, I was assassinating his dreams and mocking his values. He resented my idealistic arrogance. It was uncorrupted by reality and so it was untested. It was worthless to his “So then,” he said “You’re never going to get a job?”

“I don’t need that shit,” the more that I allowed the words to come, the more I felt that this was the truth. India had never happened “It’s so pavlovian- the alarm bell rings so you go to work and run through the maze like a good rat and then the home time bell rings so you go home to your cage and push your buttons for some food. It’s a life sentence.”

“So why go to university then?”

“I don’t know,” I felt angry “To get away from here?” I regretted the snap of my words. We both knew that the word “here” could easily be substituted by the word “you”.

If he was affected, he concealed it “So how are you going to pay the mortgage on the house?”

The house again “God, right now I just feel like burning it down.”

He put his hands solidly onto the table, gripping the wood “I like this house.”

“I hate it,” I took a sip from my coffee “There’s something wrong with it. I can’t sleep properly here.”

“Hey- remember that time we took a shower when we supposed to have double politics?”

“Yeah,” I chuckled. I was surprised at his comfort with the past. In my years away I had forgotten how easy he was about things like that. Brook had been the opposite: so buttoned-down, straight-laced and repressed. I had lived with him for so long that I had forgotten men could ever act differently. Brook was one of those vigilant feminist-collaborators whose abhorrence of all things sexist was actually the mask of a puritanical and Victorian attitude towards sex. Any display of female sexuality, even mine, especially mine, was tantamount to a betrayal.

“And your dad came home and you could hear me downstairs- do you remember?”

“Yeah,” I said “And I told you to hide in the laundry basket and you said-“

“You hide in the fucking basket!”

We replayed the moment in our heads, laughing at first and then, as the memory of our nakedness and vigour came back to us, a meaningless embarrassment settled over the table.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to break the moment and hoping somehow that other words would follow. They didn’t come. My lips failed me and I returned to my coffee. It was bitter and black.

“Violent Radical,” Joseph said, his train of thought having carried his onwards “That’s what your sociology teacher used to call you. God. You were always so tediously political about everything.”

“Tedious? Moi?” I affected a mock indignation “What are you doing here anyway?”

“The demo.”

“Yeah, but I never called you. Whose idea was this demo anyway?”

“I don’t know,” he replied in petulance. He regretted coming around without waiting for me to call his first. He was beginning to worry about how it would all look, how I would interpret his motives. He did not even know what he was doing there with me. This kind of action without premeditation suited his but he liked to be the first one to guess at his impulses. Nothing was obvious to me. He need not have worried. I had no idea what he was doing there, nor myself; me in my old life, him in the doorway of it “Yours probably.”

He kicked my seat, deliberately this time.

“What?” I said.

“I’m annoyed with you. You’re not being serious.”

“About what? My legendary tediousness?”

“No,” he was no smiling “About the house.”

“Oh.”

“If you don’t sort out your mortgage then they repossess the house, don’t they?”

“Well, say they do? I’ll just get a new place and, to be honest, it creeps me out just bloody being here, like I haven’t grown up or something, I don’t see why you, why you think I should sell out and get some bumfuck job just to keep this museum going.”

“I don’t care what you do. It’s Katy I’m worried about. There’s something wrong and she won’t say what it is. She won’t really say anything. Since your dad died she’s just been really withdrawn and there’s things I don’t understand, like the scar on her chest, she wouldn’t tell me where it came from but I could tell that it was something, you know…”

I did not know why it bothered me but I did not like the idea that Joseph had seen the scar. I wondered if it was because I did not like the idea of him seeing Katy without a top. I remembered him stroking my own chest once, years ago. How strange that I did not even have breasts then and yet I feared that he might have compared our physiques and found his memory wanting “How did you see her scar?” I asked him, surprised that I had even vocalised the bud of my jealousy.

“She showed it to me, that’s the thing. She wanted me to see it but she didn’t want to say where it was from. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me.”

“It was my mother,” I kept my face turned towards the wall while I talked. I couldn’t stand to look at him while I explained. I did not trust my eyes to mask my feelings as I spoke “When we lived on Maple Drive. That was why they took us into care. And then we had to come and live here with Dad. None of us wanted it that way, not really, I think sometimes Dad just went along with it out of shame for what happened to Katy.”

“What did she do?”

“She was doing the ironing and she was listening to the radio. She always wanted to listen to the radio while she did the housework. And Katy was there and she was reading out loud, trying to learn to read and she used to have to practise out loud because of the dyslexia and she told her to shut up because she couldn’t hear the radio. But Katy carried on reading out loud, she was just a kid, you know. And so she held her down and put the iron on her chest to make her shut up.”

“Fuck… I never knew.”

“Yeah, well,” I scratched my head and tried to move on “It didn’t stop her reading. She was obsessed with books for years. Dad used to have to force her to stop reading and go outdoors. ”

“Well that’s what I’m trying to tell you, your Dad’s not here anymore and you’re the only one Katy’s got to watch out for her now.”

“Shit, Joseph, she’s not a little kid anymore, you know, she can look after herself now.”

“Yeah, though, but I don’t think she can. I’m serious, she’s been down for a while and I think she’s getting worse and she needs this place to be secure. Think about it, Kane, you know… I can’t believe it now, but I was relieved when I heard you were coming back. I thought, yeah, thank god Katy’s got someone to care. But you’re so selfish and you haven’t even considered her.”

“And, but,” I spluttered “You,” my temper bloomed up at his words, but I could not truthfully deny what he had said. I waved my hands at him as if I was too angry to speak. I folded my arms and returned to my coffee in silence. I wanted to ask him more about what was happening with Katy but I couldn’t face another lecture. I remained mute. He ignored me.

After an age he asked me the question he had been biting down since our reunion at the wake. The gender question. I felt mildly betrayed at first: was this really just all he had come round for? But then I started talking and it just ran out of me and I realised that he had every right to know. We had been virgin schoolboys when we met. I used to tell him I wasn’t gay. Almost every time we had sex I would tell him. I always knew I was straight in some way but it took a while to reconcile this with my proclivities. It’s not the first thing you think of exactly: “I am a straight woman”, not an easy thing when you’re born a man. Being attracted to other men was just the first irrefutable part of it all.

“If I could have afforded to do the whole thing private, believe me darling I would have. The NHS route is horrible. It’s all mental health assessments and 12 month waiting lists. You have to nag everybody before they even agree to see you, let alone start talking about surgery. I just wanted the ‘outside me’ to match the ‘inside’ one, you know?… I was self-medicating from the internet and living as a woman for over a year before they even prescribed any legitimate hormones… in the meantime I just got on with whatever I could afford privately as I went along: electrolysis, speech therapy, augmentation… Every time I had to go to the stupid identity clinic I felt degraded, patronised, insulted, it was awful. They treat you like shit. They actually see it as a mental illness: they call it gender dysphoria. It’s in their book, the fucking Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, do you know what I mean? They just think you’re crazy.

“Once you’ve fought your way through all of that, the surgery isn’t so bad… not really…  I had rhinoplasty, vaginoplasty, labiaplasty everything… I was lucky, the surgeon was the best I could have got and I’m fully sensate, thank God. I can get wet. I can come. I actually feel real.

“It didn’t end there, though, you’ve got estrogen injections, progestogens, anti-androgens, agonists, God, everything… I’m a woman now, I mean, I’m living in a different body, the right one, my sweat even smells differently, my skin is thinner but it feels soft. I have to keep out of the sunlight but I think I look better pale anyway… but my body still fights against me. My body thinks that my vagina is a wound, can you believe it? A wound… so it wants to close and I have to use dilators every now and then to maintain the volume but I mean, you know, well... I just wish my body would accept me the way I want to be, even if the rest of the world won’t.

“University was hard. I was cross-living for the summer before I started, so I just went in as a woman. They call it RLT, Real Life Test, you have to do it legally for two years before you can transition. I was undercover like James Bond or something. They were all new people there and nobody knew me as a man so I didn’t tell them the truth. I didn’t even see that it was the truth, not really. They call it living by stealth. I just wanted to be accepted, to just be a normal woman in my new life, but almost every day was crashed by His little guest appearances. “Him”… the man I used to be, the boy you knew. People would see Him hiding in the corner of my eyes, disguised by all the slap and the body support stockings but still there in the back of the code like a Trojan virus. They would double-take, whisper, stare… they had detected the trace of Him in me and it turned me from a woman into a freak right in front of them. A monstrously invisible mutation from an ordinary woman to a shameful tranny… God I hated it…

“But I had friends. I even had lovers… there were a few other people there who were as outcast as me and we formed our own new world beyond the privet hedges of normality. I can’t say I was an anti-conformist. Not really. I was desperate to conform but I just wasn’t able.

Five hours later, we stood in the road as the world tore itself apart around us. The riot was a maelstrom, spiralling in circles. Faces blurred in the swirl, rioters running first one way and then the police running back at them. Joseph and I were stationary figures within the spinning top. We were locked into each other’s eyes. The chaos was somewhere else.

Night had fallen early. The pressure of the summer heat had finally cracked the sky. A thunderstorm ripped down at the streets, pelting fists of water and barrelling winds. Fires burned in improbable places. A double-decker bus had run across the pavement and ploughed into a shop front. A meat wagon lay on its side, blue lights waving desperately. A gang of young warriors stood tall on its prone side, brandishing the crude tools of revolution- bottles and bricks, sticks and stones.

We continued to stand in the middle of the road marvelling at each other. The plastic casing of the traffic island next to us had been overturned. Uncovered, the strange bulb cast expressionist shadows at our faces. We didn’t notice anything. A phalanx of the Tactical Support Group struck out, less than ten metres behind us. It ploughed into the gang around the fallen van, shields out, truncheons raised. We didn’t take any notice.

The air was heavy with violence but we didn’t feel it. The sounds were deafening but we didn’t hear them.

Something more important was passing in the air between us.

Chapter Five

Yggdrasil

The looting had begun an hour ago. We had ducked into a pub to escape the first police charges. As we stood in the dark wood interior, squinting through the frosted windows, it became apparent that the pub had already been abandoned to the night. It was completely empty- no customers, no staff, and no landlord. I had raised one eyebrow at Joseph. Within minutes, we were behind the bar, our mouths wrapped around the optics. Within a few minutes more, we were on the floor behind the bar, our mouths wrapped around each other.

Later, we stood in the middle of the road, shocked at the discovery of ourselves “I still dream about you,” I said.

“Good dreams or bad dreams?” he asked, twisting the word “bad” about so that it meant everything and nothing.

“Good dreams that we were still in love and that we never broke up and that I never fucked things up so badly and we were happy together and you know how, in a dream, it can last for years, and some of these dreams would last until we both died of old age, but it felt so real, like you lived every single moment, but then I would wake up in the morning, having dreamt these lifetimes of happiness out for us, and for a moment I would think that it was true, and that it was real, but then I would realise that it was just a dream and it would hit me like a javelin in the face and pin me back to the bed.”

“I know what you mean;” he said “Maybe we are still in love.”

And he kissed me.

At that moment, the riot police surged past. They were nearer this time. A truncheon jabbed out of the phalanx and coshed me around the back of the head. I span around on the spot and fell back into Joseph’s arms. The phalanx charged away. I put my hand to the back of my head to check for blood “The bastards...” I looked up at his for permission “We weren’t doing anything,” I said, by way of justifying my unspoken request.

“It’s OK,” he said “You go. We’ll get separated in this mess whatever we do. I’m going to go home. You’ll call me?”

“Yes,” I jumped back to my feet, picking a discarded brick up from the tarmac. I kissed his cheek, whispered goodbye and sprinted off into the fray. I raised the brick above my head before loosing it “Police bastards!”

“Number forty FIVE! please.”

I sat in the Jobcentre. It was an open plan office on the ground floor of the Inland Revenue building. The ceilings were low and the carpet was thin and mean. Grey-skinned men in plastic jackets stabbed uselessly at the job computers. They took slips of paper from the machines and trudged across to queue up in front of an unmanned desk, holding the little slips in their hands.

“Number forty SIX! please.”

I was sitting on a shallow chair in Waiting Area B. Two girls sat opposite me, their hair tied back in buns. They wore pyjamas under their padded jackets and were sucking on dummies. I tried to ignore them. They looked like trouble.

“Number forty SIX! please.”

Where was number forty six? Maybe he had killed myself and was lying dead behind one of the job computers, a little slip of a Death Certificate in his hands, printed on greasy fax paper.

“No? Number forty SIX!, please.”

The two girls opposite me slouched upright and made their way slowly to the desk marked “Fresh Claims.”

I continued to study the carpet. The windows were tinted brown and the day outside just looked dull. There was no point going in search of hope out of the windows. I thought about my hair. It was shabby and brown like the world outside. I should get it cut, I thought, but I didn’t know what style. It might look worse. It was probably better just to leave it.

I was looking for Katy. She had not come home. I had a lead on someone who might be able to help me find out where she was, but so far I had been sitting around waiting for over an hour without results. It was frustrating. I needed to find her and make sure that she was OK. Joseph had started to get me worried. I did not want to let on but I was starting to think he might have been right.

The two girls were having an argument with each other at the desk. One of them stood up and told the other one to fuck off. She walked out of the doors and into the street. The woman behind the desk was photocopying a form. When she got back to the desk, the second girl had left. She shuffled the papers for a while. Then she took a white card from the chain around her neck and plugged it back into the computer on the desk. She sighed.

“Number forty NINE! please.”

I double-checked the ticket in my hands. Number forty nine. I got to my feet, crossed the space between Waiting Area B and the Fresh Claims desk.

“Have a seat,” she said without looking up.

I sat down.

The skin on her face was green from the computer screen’s antique glow. She wore a cheap top and a pinched expression “Name please.”

“What happened to number 48?” I asked.

“No, I’m sorry, what?” she looked up. Her mouth fell open at the sight of my face.

I cracked a smile “Alright, Green?”

“Excuse me,” she said “It’s just you look almost like…”

“Yes. It is me,” I said “I’m a woman now.”

“Je-sus!” she pushed back from the desk and sat upright “Kane! What the hell are you doing here?” Green dropped her hands into her lap and shook her head as if dislodging cobwebs from her face “Kane, mate, I never thought we’d see you in this town again. God, it must be, what, only a few years since college but look at you, I mean, wow,” she reached her arm over the desk, half standing. We shook hands.

I bowed slightly. I felt cocky. I had the element of surprise “Now what’s this I hear about you working for Babylon?”

“Steady on, mate, it’s only the bloody DWP. Some of us got to make a living too you know,” she laughed and tutted her head at me “Bloody students.”

“Not any more, girl. I finished.”

“How’d you get on?”

I shrugged “Don’t know yet. Listen, do you still live up in Compton Street?”

“Compton Street? What, haven’t they demolished that shithole yet? No, mate, I moved out of there years ago.”

“Ah,” I scratched my neck “You see I’m trying to find Katy, my sister, She’s not come home yet and I thought she might’ve been with you lot?”

“I don’t really knock about with most of them anymore, bunch of slags and wankers up there,” Green appeared pensive for a moment before brightening “Hey, do you still see Joseph?”

“Saw him yesterday as it is. Why?”

“Nothing, it’s just, well, it’s funny innit, what happened with him and Katy and that…”

“What happened with him and Katy? What d’you mean?” I didn’t realise that I had raised my voice until I noticed the slight silencing of the air around me.

A needle-faced supervisor peeled away from a filing cabinet and positioned herself behind the chair “Everything alright here, Ms Green?” she asked, her voice awash with suspicion.

“Yes, yes, everything’s fine, thanks,” Green replied, blushing.

She maintained her hovering position.

“Er,” she went on “We’re just making a fresh claim.”

“Oh,” she said, her head moving slowly towards her shoulder “It just appeared to be a social call,” she spat the words “That’s all. But if you’re fine…”

“Yes, yes, thanks.”

“Good then, good-good,” she turned and left.

Green leant over the desk and whispered, one eye following her away “Look, Kane, I’m sorry mate, but I’m at work, you can see how it is.”

“Sod that. I want to know what you meant.”

Green leant back and exhaled “Well, if you want to carry on sitting there you’ll have to make a claim for benefits.”

I nodded “Go on then, sign me on then.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Name please?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Green.”

“Alright, alright, keep your voice down will you; what can I do?”

“OK. Violet Kane.”

“Violet? Oh well, whatever. National Insurance Number?”

I shrugged “I don’t know, do I?”

“Alriiight,” Green slapped her fingers on the keyboard “What’s your date of birth?”

I answered the endless stupid questions curtly, constantly eyeing the flow of the interview for a chance to grill her about Katy. Was I blind? No. Was I pregnant? Ha ha. Was I living in a care home? The process took a long time. The longer it took, the less I liked Green’s face. It had aged since I last saw it. The skin around the eyes was puffy and worn. It was like sitting across the desk from a stranger. It was not that I had forgotten what she looked like as such but more that I had never really looked at her properly to begin with. Green had been a side player to my social life in college, somebody I assumed was a good friend just because she was always there. I had never questioned it. Now, I realised, I had no idea who this woman really was.

“What was your last job?” Green asked. She had settled into the routine. I was now just another jobseeker to be processed.

“Student. Look, how long does this take?”

“Well, did you do any work while you were studying?”

“Look, man, I had the same crappy summer jobs that everybody else had and if you think I want that in your computer, you can forget it. I’m not doing that kind of shit anymore.”

“Alright, well, I have to put something here under “Usual Occupation”; it’s so we can decide what sort of work you’re going to be looking for once you start signing on.”

“OK, well, put “Sociologist” then.”

“Come on, Kane, we don’t want to be here all day do we?”

“What’s wrong with that? I studied it for three years, girl- it’s what I’m trained to do. Just put it in the box.”

Green rubbed her forehead “It has to be computer coded. You get it? I can only put an occupation down if there’s a code for it, can’t I?”

“So, what, a job doesn’t exist if it isn’t in your computer?”

Green’s patience had run thin so she pulled the monitor screen around to face outwards “There, go on, have a look, go for your life.”

I scanned down through the categories and the codes on the screen “Well, look, what about under “Social Work”, if you cross reference it with “Information”, hang on, can I borrow the keyboard?”

Green motioned with her hands to say “Go ahead.”

“OK,” I rattled away on the keys, pulling up drop-down menus and options. Green watched incredulously as I zipped through the software as if I had been using it for years. I narrowed my eyes. I had always been quicker than she was and now I was outperforming her in her own job. I enjoyed making her suffer about it “Yeah…” I paused “Here it is. Sociologist. Code number 451/J,” I looked up “Don’t you want to write that down?”

“No, I don’t want to write it down.” Green snatched the keyboard back “Thank you.”

I could tell that I had soured my chance to push for more information about Katy and Joseph. I decided to switch onto something new “So, listen, what happens about my dad’s mortgage? I think she’s in arrears already, you know, so do I claim Housing Benefit or what do I do?”

Green raised her eyebrows at me “Well yes, you need to go to the Housing Department and complete the requisite forms but, well, no, there’s a bit of a delay but it will be fine, just ask down there and they’ll let you know what to do…”

“What you mean? Is there something else I have to do, or?”

“Listen,” Green nipped “I just do Fresh Claims for Jobseekers Allowance alright, if you want to know about housing you have to go to the Housing Department. At the end of the day, that’s it.”

I knew that she was not telling me everything. There was a catch and Green knew it, but I had no way of making her talk “OK, fuck it, are we done here?”

“Almost,” Green sneered, throwing a grey form across the desk “You need to fill that out and bring it back to this office.”

I flicked through the form “What? Is this serious?”

“Yes. You need to write down exactly what you’re going to do to search for a job and how many times a week you’re going to do it and exactly what kinds of jobs you’re searching for. Then you sign it. Then we sign it. And that’s your jobseeker’s agreement and you have to stick to it. Make sure you keep some proof of what you’re doing as well, because we’ll check, every time you come back to sign, and you will receive your benefits only as long as we’re satisfied that you are doing everything possible to find work. Alright?”

“You’re enjoying this, you cow. I can’t believe you and me were ever mates.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah,” I leaned forward “My sister.”

“I told you, I haven’t seen her. Why don’t you go and see the junkies up at Compton Street? I’m sure they’ve been taking care of her for you.”

“My sister and Joseph.”

Green leaned back and tapped a biro against her fingernails “What do you think happened?” she stared into my face with a hostile vacancy “She was onto that one the second you were out of town. Can’t say I’m surprised that no-one got around to telling you. Although, I’ll tell you something, the look on your face now is priceless. Shame they missed out on it.”

I jumped to my feet and gripped the sides of the desk. I yanked upwards, meaning to turn the desk over. It was bolted to the ground. It did not move.

Green was grinning “See you in two weeks, then. Signing Point 2. And be on time.”

I lay on the mattress in the living room and slept. The room was dark and warm. In my sleep, I dreamt that I was standing at the top of a huge tree, fifty feet above the ground. The branches waved in the wind. The tree stood in the centre of a corn field amid rolling downland. The tree was simultaneously a vast plant and yet also a vast ladder rising up into outer space. Beneath me, I could see the shadows of a crop circle spiralling out around the base of the ladder in delicate mandelbrots. Wild horses ran and jumped below, trampling the corn. They were white Iberians with hooves like hammers and legs full of delight.

I watched the wild horses expand the pattern of the corn circle. The fractal began to widen and loop outwards. The horses unfolded and carried the design in separate directions towards the four horizons. I wondered whether they were coming back. A bray of squirrels was climbing the ladder towards me. Their teeth were filed to points. A drag racing car overtook them and sped up the trunk, flattening branches. It was going to run me over. The perspective and the angles were all wrong. The gravity made no sense. I felt sick. The horses in the distance turned and charged back towards me. I found the head of a baby doll in my pocket. It dribbled onto my palm. The horses were bearing down on the tree. They swarmed and struck the trunk, uprooting it from the ground. I was free-falling, the squirrels snapping at the air around me. The horses were flying up to meet me. I was about the hit the ground.

I sat upright, awake. It was still dark. I was aware instantly of a figure sitting on a corner of the mattress. A slash of streetlight through a chink in the curtains revealed a face. It was Katy. She was perching, cross-legged, and toying with something in her hands. It moved through the light and flashed. It was pointed and metallic. She saw that I was awake. Carefully, without moving her eyes, she slipped it back into the inside pocket of her leather jacket. Her arms were wrapped around with motorbike chains. They rattled in the gloom.

“Violet… I need to know that you wish me well,” Katy spoke quietly; her white moon face searching for me in the dark.

“Katy,” I fumbled for my cigarettes and a lighter “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I’m scared, Violet,” Katy’s voice was hushed and pressured. She was furiously concentrating on it, as if only a supreme effort of mind could stop it cracking and flying apart “You used to be a boy and now you’re a girl. I know it’s you inside the armour but how do I really know it’s you and not a trick?... I think that I might have done something bad… maybe they’re going to try and kill me now.”

Katy’s eyes searched my face in the darkness. They probed in wonder as if it was something surprising and unknown. The thought appeared fully formed in my mind that these were the eyes of a madman. But they were not the eyes of a cinema lunatic: all cartoon flashes of white around the pupil and whirling brows; the disturbance was visible in more subtle gestures like maybe somebody had just oiled the sockets too generously. The room was dark. It was hard to say.

I lit the cigarette. The tip glowed in the darkness. I took time to settle the smoke in my lungs and to exhale. I was relieved to see Katy again but the situation was uncomfortable. My head had not yet woken up, so I could not tell if her words were meaningful or nonsensical “Who? Who are you talking about, girl? Are you okay?”

Katy shuddered “You’re not allowed to talk about the Assassins. Not out loud. I could send a message to you but you haven’t been fixed up properly to do it. That’s why I can trust you, isn’t it?”

I propped myself up gently. I could feel the manic energy coming from my sister’s body like a back-draft “I’m missing something here; you’ve got to give me more to go on. Why do you think that…” I struggled for the phrase that Katy had used. It didn’t seem to mean anything. I wanted to engage with her in a way that she would accept but the idea of using the same phrase seemed wrong. I was reluctant to play along with a reality that I did not understand. It seemed distasteful “That… someone wants to hurt you?”

“Because!” Katy kicked away from the bed and edged around the wall towards the window “Because I couldn’t do it, could I?” she snorted, somewhere between a nervous laugh and a gulp.

“Okay, listen, start at the beginning. Where have you been?”

Katy reached the window. She crouched down beneath the sill. Gingerly, she lifted a corner of the curtain up and peered out at the street “I went to see mother tonight.”

I let the lighter slip from my fingers. My tone dropped “You’re lying.”

Katy laughed “No.”

I would have jumped up, but I was naked beneath the sheet “You’re really fucking starting to do my head in, Katy.”

Katy turned her face from the window. The amber light fell across her cheek. I could see that her face was wet. Had she been crying? “You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you, do you?” she wiped at her eyes “I got there and I saw her and I even talked to her but I couldn’t do it.”

“Who fucking told you to go and see her?”

“The order! Why can’t you understand? But I couldn’t do it, could I?” she began to cry again “I sat on her bed and I put the knife up against her throat and she woke up, even though I didn’t make her wake up, and then we talked for a while but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do anything. But I wanted to, that’s the thing, even though I was just following their orders, I still wanted to go there and do it. You wanted to do it too, didn’t you? You remember what you said to the social worker when we were taken away so don’t lie to me.”

“What are you, insane? All I ever said was that I wanted to come and live here with Dad instead.”

“You liar!” Katy’s voice snapped on the exclamation. She halted. There were splinters in the air from what she had said. She was scared of herself. She tried to control her voice and measured out her words carefully “You said that you wished that she was dead.”

“I only meant it in the sense that she was cruel and, yeah, she was, but I never in a million years wanted anything like this to happen. For fuck’s sake, Katy, what did you think you were doing?”

“Well I didn’t do it, did I,” she sneered and turned back to the window.

I shoved the cigarette into the ashtray headfirst and gripped my temples “Katy, Christ, what’s wrong with you? Listen, I think you should just sit down, I’ll get someone, and I, I just need to work out what to do here…”

“I’m next, don’t you see? I’m the next name they’ll give out. You can’t just quit on a mission. You have to see it through,” she closed the curtains and knelt down by the side of the bed “But I’m safe here, I’m safe inside the house and you can protect me,” she turned around “I can’t see anything. I think I’m going blind. Oh Jesus Christ, I’m sorry, this is all wrong isn’t it? You’ve got to help me.”

I felt the sweat run cold on my back. The hairs on my forearm rose up in response to an invisible charge. I swallowed hard. I was terrified “I promise,” I said “Everything is going to be OK.”

Chapter Six

Apple Tree

The telephone rang. I was asleep on the mattress in the living room. Katy was gone. Her chains were pooled up around the windowsill.

The room had not been tidied since my first night in the house. The chairs were still tipped on their sides and the paintings ripped away from the walls. I had not been upstairs since the first night either. I had just stayed living on a few square feet of the living room floor. The pigeons huddled on the curtain rail, pacing and cooing. Their filth was everywhere.

My mattress faced the TV. It was surrounded by a moat of filth. Cups and plates were piled up within arm’s reach. They were starting to fill with mould in response to the summer heat. My bags and my boxes from the car had been carried in, incrementally, in order of use. Their contents lay on the floor where I had dumped them. Dirty clothes mixed with clean clothes and old tapes with new tapes. Paperwork spilled out on top of every surface. Unpaid bills, letters about the mortgage arrears, bank charges, funeral expenses, private medical bills, invoices from the undertakers, utilities reminders, expired licences, neglected hire-purchases, bailiff’s notices and final demands. After reading a handful of them, I had resolved to ignore the rest. They remained as unopened as my father’s coffin.

The phone continued to ring. I rolled out of the bed onto the floor to wake myself up. It was late morning and the room was already warm for the day. The mattress seemed shabby and stupid on the bare floorboards. I took in the nest that I was building around it and was shocked by the dereliction. It was not right. I would have to move everything back upstairs and start behaving normally. I had no idea what I was supposed to do about Katy. Nothing seemed rational and there were no obvious courses of action. There were rule books and life maps for normal people in normal situations, but Katy and I had both wandered off into uncharted spaces and there were no maps and no threads to tug on to find your way back again. All I had left were my instincts and they were telling me to get things straightened out. Start with the mattress. Then the floorboards. Anything. Make everything as normal as possible. I wanted to start immediately, to trawl everything out and start purging the house. The broken window on the back door still needed to be fixed. I needed to clean up the mess in the living room. I needed to get the pigeons back into their cages and stop living like an animal. This was Katy’s home, not some abandoned tree-house in the woods where I could keep cigarettes and pornography. What was I doing? The phone kept ringing. It could have been Joseph. It would have to be answered, even still.

I realised, simultaneously, that I was naked and that the curtains were open.

I stepped quickly into the hallway and pulled the living room door closed behind me. I wondered whether Katy was still in the house. It was cold in the hallway and I felt self-conscious. I took my long black coat from the rail and wrapped it around myself before picking up the phone. My voice surprised me with its depth and rasp. I sounded old “Yeah?”

“Good morning,” the voice said “Can I speak to Violet… Kane, please?”

“Speaking,” I replied out of one corner of my mouth, an unlit cigarette in the other. I patted the pockets of the jacket for a lighter.

“Good morning Ms Kane, this is the Job Centre Plus speaking. We’d like to talk to you about a job opportunity that has recently arisen that we think you might be interested in.”

“What?” I found a box of matches and tried to light the cigarette. They were still damp from the neighbour’s swimming pool “Already?”

“Yes. Well, we are able to match suitable vacancies to people’s qualifications and, as you are about to become a graduate, your options are very good.”

I could not light the cigarette. I sat down on the stairs. The voice on the phone was beginning to annoy me. I sighed heavily into the receiver. I had decided not to accept the job, whatever it was. Taking a job would ruin my dole prospects “What is it, then?”

“Well, a vacancy has come up for a frontline member of staff in your local Job Centre office. You would be helping people to get back to work and…”

I cut in “Signing people on? I only just came in there to sign-on myself and now you want me to come and work there?”

“Well, you would be conducting work-focused interviews with the clients on a fortnightly basis when they come into the office…”

I tried to light the cigarette again. The last match folded uselessly in half and refused to ignite. I threw the box down the length of the hallway. It was unsatisfying. The box was too light and too small to make a decent projectile and I put too much effort into the throw. It hurt my arm. Distractedly, I tried to make the correct noises down the phone “Is this full time? How much does it pay?”

“You would be working 35 hours a week, pro rata that’s around ten thousand pounds with a good holiday package…”

“Ten thousand pounds? A year? That wouldn’t even cover my student loans!”

“Well, if you need time to think about the offer…”

“No, sorry, I’m not really interested in that kind of work. I’m looking into some openings for sociologists right now,” I had ceased to care how I sounded.

“So, if I am to be correct, you are, are you not, turning down this offer of full time work?”

“Yeah, that’s what I just said... Why?”

“Well,” there was a pause on the other end of the line. I listened carefully. It sounded like a palm had been placed over the receiver to muffle a conversation in the background. The voice returned “If you refuse to consider applying for this job then I am afraid that I would have to say that you were not currently actively available and searching for work.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” the voice’s tone was patronising and sarcastic, satisfied with its victory “That we would consider that you are therefore no longer eligible for Job Seeker’s Allowance as you are not complying with your Job Seeker’s agreement.”

The reality dropped on me like guano “You son of a bitch… Green put you up to this, didn’t she? Is that her in the background I can hear?”

The voice was smiling through the line “I am sorry, madam, I don’t know what you mean. Your claim will be terminated at the end of the day. Any remaining payments will be sent to you in the form of a giro cheque.”

“Motherfucker!”

The tone of the voice flattened out. It was full of sated malice “What’s the matter, mate? You too good to work for Babylon?” The line went dead.

When I was a girl I would spend the summer holidays kicking around a gang hideout in the disused railway station. Our gang was a loose collection of local oddballs, united by our outcast status. They were pretty interchangeable and I can’t remember any of their names. One year when I was around ten, we were caught setting fire to dirty magazines by someone’s mother. As a punishment, I was sent off to the sea with my grandparents and with Troy, the family mongrel. I treasured Troy’s imaginary pedigree. To me he was part wolf, part Alsatian, part bulldog, part hellhound. Best friend.

My grandparents left me to amuse myself, preferring to spend their days in the safe darkness of run-down cinemas and dance halls. I devoured the Summer Holiday Special editions of the comics and terrified myself in a Museum of Curios by feeding change into a glass box that contained a satanic wooden sailor-boy. His laughter was intended to be a pleasant diversion to holidaymakers. In reality, his mechanical screams were fingernails in blackboards, tinfoil on teeth, slugs in socks, banishment to the seaside.

I fell vaguely in love with a red-haired boy while I was there. He was on holiday with his parents. They were from London. It was something about the mirror shades he wore, something about his freckled cheeks and his repressed smile. He spoke to me only once, in the queue for the heated swimming pool in the public baths: it nearly killed me.

It was a viciously hot day and he wore black Speedos with silver lightning across the back. As I stood on the wet tiles, childish cartoon-towel under my skinny arm, I swore silently that I had never seen a more sophisticated boy. Nobody ever wore such cool costumes in our local pool and nobody ever spoke with that radio accent. I had been watching him for weeks, destroying myself with my cowardice, never daring to approach him no matter how many times I played the scene through in my mind. When he turned his head over his white shoulder to speak to me I wondered if he was going to tell me that he loved me and fall into my arms, but all he said was "He wants you to take your dog home."

While I had been distantly daydreaming about his swimming costume, Troy had slipped his lead, followed me into the baths and was sitting on the tiles, scratching. The Life Guard had been shouting at me to remove myself and my bastard dog from the premises but I had not heard a word.

I avoided company for the rest of the holiday and spent most of my time taking long walks with the dog by the cliffs, exploring rockpools and discovering the drowned kingdom of starfish and crabs, alien anemones and jellyfish. It was on one of our magical marine inventories that Troy ran away.

A crab pinched his nose in response to his aggressive investigations and Troy bolted off down the grey beach into the setting sun, howling like the sailor in his glass box. I tracked his paw prints in the wet mud that stretched from the rocks at the foot of the cliffs out for miles to the shallow sea. I followed the trail like a sleuth, hunched over with a toy magnifying glass, drunk and giddy from my bedtime readings, all Christie and Sherlockian. The trail led out towards the Atlantic and then back in to land and was lost in the rocks by the caves under the stony chalk cliffs. I searched until it became dark and stormclouds closed in around me, hissing on the endless sea winds.

I was discovered by my paternal grandparents, shivering and delirious with my leg broken and my body lodged in between two eroded boulders, raving about the dog. As they carried me home I was unplacacted by their reassurances that Troy would return to the hotel before morning. Like a homing pigeon, my grandfather said, or, he added whispering, like a husband on the piss.

I can remember lying in my bed under unfamiliar blankets, my attention focused on the moment by the intense sharpening of physical pain. My grandfather sat in a chair next to the bed and told me about his own boyhood. He had once fallen from an apple tree while scrumping. It was during the war. He had been evacuated to the country and it had gone to his head. He had broken several bones in both of his feet. The friends that he was scrumping with had panicked and run away, leaving him alone in the orchard. He could not stand nor could he walk. I asked him how he had gotten home. “I dragged myself like a sack of coal,” he said.

And it was thus, recovering from a broken tibia, my flu turning to fever, feeling guilty over wasting so much of my search for Troy into some kind of detective game and unwilling to abandon hope for his return, that I was informed of my parent's divorce. My grandmother told me not to worry, but as we left Troy behind and drove home, I knew that home was now forever lost and that I would always merely be travelling away from Troy.

I stood outside the employment agency. I wore a variation on my funeral clothes. I was trying to look smart. I was too hot. I felt unconvincing.

I wore the black coat. It was still damp from where I had fallen into the swimming pool. I didn’t think that it would ever dry. I remembered that I had bought it to wear to job interviews. It was poetic. The coat was now fulfilling its destiny. If it was a parasite on my back, then it was a more successful organism that its host. The universe truly loved that jacket. It was like one of those people who are born lucky and just keep on getting lucky. Rich, good-looking, talented people. Bastards. The world just rolls over and exposes its neck to them. They don’t even have to try, while the rest of us are banging our heads against the swimming pool walls underwater in the deep end.

I smoothed the creases in my unironed shirt. It was a replacement for the faded grey nightmare I had relied upon in the past. I had found it hanging in my father’s wardrobe, some relic of his younger age. I had only been inside the wardrobe to see if there was anything worth selling as vintage. Then I found the shirt. I took it and tried it on. The shirt, like everything else inside the house, technically now belonged to me. I decided to take the shirt, but I could never figure out why it felt like I was stealing it.

I still wore the rubber skirt and the stockings. They were all that I had been wearing since I had arrived. They were beginning to smell. They threw up the occasional hit of stale smoke and dead skin. I could not get the doctor martens to dry out, so I had to cap the outfit with a pair of trainers. They were black suede. I consoled myself that at least this time I had managed to find a pair of socks.

I was aware that I would eventually have to enter the employment agency and face the people inside. I knew that they would all be correctly dressed. They would own real suits and proper shoes. I would look ridiculous and fake. I wouldn’t even know their language.

I wore no tie.

I felt that I was betraying myself already, simply in the act of standing outside an employment agency. I had gone far enough. I was not yet ready to sign my name in blood on the contract for my soul. In all of the efforts I was trying to make on Katy’s behalf, swallowing my revolutionary pride was the hardest. I knew that this was not going to be easy for me.

The street was busy with shoppers and workers. Who were all these people? I felt like an alien in my hometown. The old shops and businesses still seemed the same. The bland, depressing high street was still just as bland and depressing. But the people were unfamiliar. I had the feeling that I should recognise everybody, a feeling that this was where I came from and so this was where I should belong. But I didn’t recognise any of them. There was no real reason why I should know them. I knew that. But the notion persisted.

It was another boiling day. The sun unglued flesh from bone and stuck bodies down to the pavement in muscular blobs. Everybody had peeled off and stripped down, sweating their skin out freely into the air. Even the seagulls were languid in the heat. They barely rolled out of the way of traffic. The townsfolk moved gloopily around me as I stood sweltering in my heavy jacket. I envied them. They were all moving with underwater steps and I was the only one who was drowning.

I steeled myself to go inside. Maybe the office would have air conditioning. Before I could make it to the door, a figure bounced out in front of me “Violet? Violet ó Catháin! Look at that, it really is you!”

It was Joseph’s mother. “Mrs Sheehan,” I winced and held out my hand.

She stood with the sun behind her and a glint of fire in her eyes. I had always been intimidated by her. She shared Joseph’s height and tempers but was supported by a broad frame of body. I had little doubt that she could floor me with a punch.

“How are you doing?” I asked, too nervous to correct her pronunciation of my name.

“Grand,” she crushed my hand between hers and gripped my forearm like a politician, smiling “Joseph told me you were back. And I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

“Yeah, well… thank you.”

“Now, don’t you look nice? Joseph didn’t tell me how much you’ve changed your style. Don’t you look nice as a girl, though. You know I think it is better like this, no more of that funny business, experimentation, you know my Joseph only goes out with girls now? Yes, girls and boys, boys and girls, that’s just nicer isn’t it? And don’t you look smart in that blouse?”

“No, it’s just, I’m just hunting for a job,” I had finished my sentence but she continued to stare at me without saying anything. I was compelled to continue talking. She would have made mincemeat out of a spy “I inherited the house but it’s in arrears and, you know, they cut off my dole money so I have to just take the first job I can get, and I don’t have any choice about it, you know, I’m supposed to be going back to university to do my doctorate but, well, I don’t know what else I can do. I guess I have to just stay here and get things sorted out…”

If she was paying any attention to the words then she kept it well hidden “And Joseph tells me you took him to the demonstration. Now,” she pulled me in closer “You weren’t one of those naughty children we saw on the news, now were you, one of the troublemakers?”

“No, Mrs Sheehan.”

“Oh, that is a relief now because we saw the pictures and one of these children who was fighting with the police: she looked just like you.”

“No, Mrs Sheehan.”

“Right then, and how is your dear little sister, Katy?”

Why don’t you ask your son, I thought. He only does girls now anyway. But I said nothing “I’m sorry, Mrs Sheehan, but I’m late for my appointment and I really have to go,” I tried to extricate my limb but it was held fast in the bear-trap of her hands.

“Yes, of course you are, but you’re going to have to come around for tea to visit us. We can ask Joseph to come over as well. I’m sure he will be wondering where you’ve got to, won’t he, after you left him to make his own way home from the demonstration?”

I was surprised by how much Joseph had told his mother about that day. I had imagined that the events were a secret between the two of us. This would have made it easier for me to have erased them from reality. Now that the outside world had crept inside of our reunion, it would be harder to sweep it away. The thought of Joseph and Katy together was too difficult to face. I could not agree to go. “Yeah, maybe we can work something out, but I’m going to be very busy for the next few days so I’ll call, yeah?”

“I’m not going to take no for an answer, Violet,” she cut me a glare like cheese wire “Saturday, then, shall we say five o’ clock?”

I meant to protest but she was grinding the bones in my knuckles. If I did not comply with her, she was liable to pulp the whole arm “Yes, well, Saturday, okay, that would be… yes, I’ll see you then.”

She released me. I popped away from her. She flashed her teeth and walked away. I turned, defeated, and entered the agency.

By the end of the day, I had visited six different employment agencies. I was getting nowhere. They all had jobs in the windows that seemed promising. Every time I went inside, the jobs evaporated. They were chimeras, just window dressing. Every agency asked me what kind of work I was looking for: I said “anything”. It did not seem to broaden my chances. They eyed me suspiciously. This was not how they worked and I was wasting their time. They wanted people who were pre-nichéd. They asked me what kind of work I had done in the past. I said “nothing”. Their eyes rolled back into their skulls. I was of no use to them.

My pockets were full of business cards. People had given me phoney assurances of future telephone calls. I had promised to come back next week to see what they had. Both parties were in on the lie. They despised me and I despised them equally. Nobody was going to call anybody.

As the shops began to shutter up, I became desperate. Here I was, not only betraying my ideals but scraping the barrel to accomplish it. These were not even good jobs. They were mouse-pushing jobs for people without good qualifications and I couldn’t even talk my way into one. They were talking about customer services and sales. Both of them were beneath my abilities but my confidence had been so undermined that I doubted I would ever find anything, even if I truly wanted to.

Sales jobs were out of the question. I stood against capitalism and I saw the salesman as the footsoldier of capitalism. The jobs were mainly commission-based and this meant pressuring people into purchasing goods and services that they neither needed nor even wanted. It was tantamount to pushing dope. Besides which, I was secretly intimidated by the prospect of cold calling. So that left customer services. I did not really know what it meant but it seemed a step up from sales.

There was one last agency on the street: Sylvie’s Employment Services. I walked straight past the notices in the window and stepped inside. The office was antiseptic green, with hygienic fake plastic flowers. A few job-seekers sat on low-slung chairs, filling out clipboard forms. They were shrunken and hunched. The agency staff glided around the back office, superior to their unemployed clientele. I walked up to the desk and tried to catch somebody’s eye. Eventually, a round-breasted girl in a low-cut blouse sighed her way up towards me. Her hair was scraped back in a tight bun, the scrunchie clamping her humanity down in case it interfered with her caustic professionalism.

“What sort of work are you looking for?” she asked in a tannoy voice.

“I’m in the market for something in customer services,” I said.

She almost brightened “Right,” she flipped a clipboard at me “What sort of thing have you done in the past?”

“Customer based work, really, while I was studying,” I lied “But I recently got engaged and I’m after something full time,” once the bullshit-genie was uncorked, there was no way to control him.

“Are you looking for permanent or temporary work?”

I had learnt enough from my day to recognise the question as a trick “Oh, permanent ideally.”

“Right. Because we only have permanent work.”

“Yes,” I said. For some reason, all the temp agencies hated the concept of temporary work. They were really just third party recruitment services for big corporations like banks and utilities. The workers were not “temps”. They just happened to be very casualised and disposable.

I filled in the form, inventing a life for myself as the kind of brain-dead automaton slave that they were looking for. I faked a job history that they would never be able to fully investigate- part time work for non-existent employment agencies in different towns at companies big enough to not bother with temps in their personnel files.

They then put me through a series of keyboard tests- “ten key” and “WPM” assessments. I was even asked to complete a spelling test involving bizarre words like Mississippi and haemorrhage. This was followed by an interview. The interviewer wore a white shirt with cufflinks. He was young and bored by the day. I decided to bluff my way through it in the guise of a laddish optimist. I steered the interviewer away from the set list of questions into a rambling chat about the merits of different pubs. After ten minutes, I knew that I was safe.

“Alright mate,” he told me “You start next Monday. There will be a month long induction programme, which is basically sitting in a training room for four weeks and getting paid for it, nice one, and you’ll be on six pound an hour, alright?”

A short handshake later and I was standing outside the agency. I had a job. I was even happy about the fact. The only problems were the final words of the interviewer “Oh yeah, mate,” he had said “And there’s a dress code, yes, even for girls, I know, so you’ll have to wear the corporate tie, alright?.”

I returned to the house. I stood in the hallway and called Katy’s name. There was no reply. I made my way to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I rummaged through the cupboards while the water boiled. They were full of junk. There was no food. The fridge was empty, save for a few cans of Guinness. One of the pigeons flapped around near the bin, snooping for scraps. I had not thought to feed them once.

I went to the living room to find a cup for the coffee. The smell was even worse than it had been in the morning. I collected the pigeons and put them back into their cages on the roof. I even gave them some food. Returning downstairs, I opened all the windows and the conservatory door. There was no breeze. The air just hung in the room, unmoving. It had almost changed states from a gas to a solid. I returned to the kitchen and brewed the coffee.

After one sip, I slammed the mug down “Right,” I said.

I picked the papier-mâché calavera up from the hallway and carried it up the stairs to the first landing. Katy’s bedroom was the only room on the first floor. I put the head down carefully and knocked on Katy’s door. There was no reply. Katy had hung a biohazard sign on the door. It was shut tight but there was no lock. I could have pushed it open to see whether Katy was there or not. In truth, I was not sure whether I could face him. I still did not know what I was supposed to say or do. I left it and went back to the living room. “Right,” I said again. I took my shirt off and set to work.

The first thing I did was to get some music going. I found an old CD in one of my boxes, the Beastie Boys. I set the stereo to full volume and turned to face the room.

I grabbed the mattress and lifted it up from the floor. The detritus of my sloth scattered across the floorboards. I kicked everything out of the way and threw the mattress out into the hallway. It crashed against the balustrades and flopped in half onto the carpet. I waded into it and manoeuvred it to the bottom of the stairs. Once it was lined up, I leapt onto it and dragged it up the stairs to the top of the house with my whole body. I shouldered the door open to my old bedroom and tossed the mattress back onto the bed base. I only glanced up at the room for a second. It was enough to spur me on. In the years that I had been gone, the room had become a dumping zone for all the unwanted household goods. A broken lawnmower sat just inside the doorway. It shouldn’t even have been in the house.

My room was a loft conversion built over the existing attic. They had tried to retain as much of the attic space as possible and so my room was never big enough. A small doorway on the hall gave out to the ladder for the flat roof above my room where the pigeons lived. Their persistent nicker overhead kept me awake at night for years. They gave me a lifetime hatred for the call of the urban rock-dove. I used to lie on my bed in that tiny room kicking at the ceiling and cursing my father for his inane obsession with racing the damn things. I did not have fond memories of the space.

I would not have wanted the room to have remained in stasis like a museum piece but I could not dampen my anger at the lazy use it had been put to. All of my childish possessions were buried somewhere beneath the jumble. They had not even been thrown away. It did not appear to have been worth the effort. I took it as a symbol of my family’s ambivalent feelings towards me. I shut the door and walked down to the next floor. There was a small set of steps leading down to the bathroom and above them was my father’s bedroom at the front of the house.

The curtains were drawn and the bulbs were weak. It was hard to take anything in “You’re next,” I said to the empty room.

I jumped back down the stairs and found some bin liners in the kitchen. Returning to the living room, I divided everything into two categories- rubbish and valuables. Most of the room was categorised as rubbish. I filled a score of bin bags and carried them out through the back door to the garden. Then I took down all of the pictures and ornaments and put them into bags. They were tossed out through the windows into the garden. Temporarily distracted, I hastily patched up the broken glass with a piece of spare chip board, in lieu of a replacement frame.

By this time the living room was thick with dust motes. I tipped the furniture back into place and swept the floor clean. I fetched a wet rag and cleaned the tomatoes from the walls and dusted the surfaces. In a short while the whole room was purged. I left nothing but the sofa, two armchairs, the TV, stereo and a coffee table. Everything else had been bagged and thrown outside.

I performed the same task in my old bedroom. Initially I concentrated on getting the junkpile sorted. Hardly anything was worth keeping. There were rolls of carpet and linoleum, spare tins of paint, shoe boxes full of postcards, redundant printers, worn clothing, broken irons, rusted toasters, chess sets with missing pieces, nothingness piled on top of nothingness. There were photo albums with pictures of the family before my parents split: mum, dad and two little girls posing on forgotten beaches on unremembered holidays. I barely even recognised these dated portraits. There were other sets of my father’s single life when Katy and I had lived with our mother. Here my father was with a strange woman, here he was with a new beard on a canal barge and here he was at a Halloween party. They were saturated clips of his independence, his second chance at happiness and freedom. All of that had been crumpled by the reacquisition of his daughters. We had never really seen him during this period. I threw them into the rubbish sacks. They were no use to anyone now.

After a while, I had uncovered the lower strata of my own lost days underneath the junk: old books and toys abandoned in favour of a new life on campus, tiny shoes and faded annuals, cheap handheld games and schoolboy fashion statements. I tore through them all with no compassion. I stripped the room bare in a vehemence that was without satisfaction.

I rolled the bags down the stairs and out into the garden. There was a hill of black plastic piling up on the concreted yard. I spat and blew my nose to clear out the dust. The bags bulged, their contents poking through here and there as if trying to bargain for their release “This isn’t a balloon debate,” I said “You’re all history.”

I was working without pausing to smoke. The nicotine fit that had taken over my body was allowed to persist. I took a sip of the cold coffee in the kitchen and went back upstairs, enraged by the task.

Ripping open the curtains, I pitched some light onto my father’s room. It was fortunately sparse. I had run out of bags. I had to settle with scooping up my father’s things into my arms and casting them down to the foot of the stairs. I worked through the wardrobes and drawers in shifts, making piles in the hallway and then bundling everything out into the garden and dumping it on top of the pile. I saved nothing of my father’s.

When the room was cleared out, I carried the vacuum cleaner upstairs and ran it around the carpet. Then I took the curtains down and put them in the washing machine. I scrubbed the windowsills down and swapped the bed around with the bed in my old bedroom; I was going to seize the room but I was not going to sleep on a dead-man’s bed. Then I carried my boxes up into my father’s room and put their contents out in the drawers and cupboards. I took the lampshade down. The room was mine now.

It was time.

I knocked on Katy’s door again “Katy?” I called “It’s Violet.” I turned the handle and eased the door open. The curtains were drawn but there was enough light from the landing to see that the room was empty. I walked inside.

Katy had covered the walls in posters of superbikes and studs with tattoos. The furniture was adorned with death chic: ivory skulls and candelabras, black velvet drapes and crucifixes, leathers and motorbike chains. One corner of the room was given over to a collection of pornographic magazines and videos. The other housed a bookshelf full of hardbacks on history and the occult.

She was not there but there was some weird presence in her room. I could sense it on the back of my neck. There was a computer on his desk. I crossed over towards it. Katy always had an intuitive gift for computers and programming. She understood how they thought. She said that he preferred them to people because they didn’t do anything unless you asked them to do it. There was a printer on the desk next to the computer. I saw a manuscript in the paper tray. I just glanced at the first page for a second. My face fell as I read what my sister had written. I sat down on the bed and continued to read.

The Dark Assassins

You got William Burroughs and Hakim Bey and David Bowie and Eco and everyone, and they’re all into the fedayeen, the Persian Assassins, because the word hashish comes from the word “assassin” so it’s like “Hashshashin” because the Old Man of the Mountain (Hassan i Sabah) was the leader of the Assassins (and he used to do this thing where he’d give you an overdose of cannabis or well Burroughs swears it’s heroin but then he would but the Old Man would take you to this garden of earthly delights full of rivers of wine and honey and a hundred virgins and you’d think you were dead and you’d gone to paradise and when you woke up the next day he’d tell you that he’d killed you and brought you back with his power and now you had to be his Assassin and then you’d go to paradise when you’d die so people would do anything for him and they’d jump off the mountain if he told them to or anything) and then the crusaders came down and the Knights Templar and he taught them stuff and everything and they had their own secret society (and this is where the Templars became powerful because they learnt it all on Alamut, in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea) but then everybody said that the Assassins were wiped out by the Mongols at the time of the Great Khans but they lied because he really went to Japan and he became a ninja but not like a normal ninja. Nobody knows about it and it isn’t in the history of anywhere regular but the Old Man of the Mountains survived and he formed a new secret society in Japan. And this is the Dark Assassins. And they’re the most secret order of ninja. The order never meet each other and they never know who the other members are so they can’t ever betray the order, so they have to communicate telepathically and when they started (this was before electronics and mass communication) this was what they did- they got these little scrolls of paper that had these special symbols on them and you had to get your skull trepanned and then they put the scrolls inside the skull cavity and so then you could talk with the other members in secret in your head but then they got computers and then people found a way of listening to them talking so they started using microchips inside the brain but now they just beam the words into each other’s heads using infrasound (which is like low-frequency sound that human’s can’t hear and it travels for hundreds of miles and this is how giraffes talk and for years people thought that giraffes didn’t have any language) but the Dark Assassins got their name because they can see in the dark because when he was on my way to Japan, he went through India where he learnt to see people’s auras and he got so good at it that he could pick out people’s body parts and nerve points and weaknesses just by looking at their chakras. And after a while he realised that you don’t even need daylight to see auras because they’re like a light that comes from inside the person, like their chi or their manna or their orgone or just energy or astral body or prana or whatever you want to call it but then he realised that you could even learn to see them with your eyes closed so this is the secret of the Dark Assassins. And everything has an aura, even inanimate objects and you can feel them with your hands, like Reiki healers. It doesn’t matter even if you’re blind or anything so they could find you in the dark and know who you are and then just see your nerve points and kill you with a finger if they wanted to and you wouldn’t even wake up unless they made you wake up. So the Dark Assassins don’t know who they’re working for but they get their orders straight into the brain and it tells them the name of the person that they have to kill and where to go to and then they just have to follow that order and if they fail in their mission then their name is the next name that gets sent out and the person that comes to kill them never even knows that they were once in the same order. So you have to kill whoever you are told to kill, no matter that it could be anybody in the world and they might choose you for the job because they need to assassinate someone that you know so they choose you because you have access and it could be a friend or someone you work with or it could even be your own mother.

“I was here,” Katy said.

I jumped up off the bed and dropped the manuscript to the floor.

Chapter Seven

Plum Tree

Katy stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light from the landing. “I’ve been hiding in the attic. You didn’t look for me very well. I was playing hide and seek but you’re not a very good seeker, are you?”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. I was trying to buy time as I kicked the manuscript under the bed “Come on, you’re joking right, you know. There’s nothing up there but dead wasps and old board games.”

Katy dangled by her arms from the top of the doorframe. She swung slowly in and out of the room. Her face was impassive behind wraparound sunglasses. “What are you doing?”

“The house was a mess. I wanted to straighten it out, to make it nice. And then I came up here to find you so that I could show you what I’d done,” I tried to sound causal but my heart was beating heavily.

Katy let go of the doorframe and dropped to the floor “Okay then,” she said as she stepped aside “Show.”

I led her through the house. We went from room to room. I busied myself narrating the changes that I had made. She just nodded mutely. I was shaken by her sudden appearance in the doorway. I did not know whether she had seen me reading what she had written. I hid my nerves in details, expounding at unnecessary length about the removal of individual items. As the tour continued, I became increasingly uncomfortable at the signs of my mania. The idea had been to equalise the environment. I had wanted to make the house seem like a place of normality. I had wanted to make some gentle changes to make it nicer for Katy. But as I took Katy into our father’s old room, I wondered if my actions could be perceived more as a desecration than a purification.

Katy remained inscrutable. I tried to justify my decision to take over the master bedroom on the grounds that it was our house now and that we should make new rules on how to conduct ourselves within it. I found that I could not explain the true nature of the forces that motivated the ritual of cleansing. In truth it had been somewhere between a banishment and a reclamation. I suggested that Katy could even have the room for herself if she wanted. There was little in the way of a response.

I led Katy downstairs and out to the garden. As we passed through the kitchen, I picked up the kerosene bottle and tucked it under my arm. Katy brightened at the sight of the rubbish-mountain “Yeah, cool, that’s all the old stuff. Look at this… I hated that lampshade. What are we going to do with it?”

I could not resist smiling. I was unsure as to how Katy would react to my plan but the thought of its conduction filled me with joy “It’s a pyre,” I said “We’re going to burn it. We’re going to burn the fuck out of everything.”

Katy took off her sunglasses “No way…” she turned and walked back into the kitchen.

My body tensed as if I had been struck. I had made a mistake. What was I thinking? Katy was not in any kind of state to handle something so drastic. I should have been making cups of tea or phoning a doctor. Anything but destroying the contents of her childhood home.

Katy walked back outside with two cans of Guinness. She put them down on the window sill and tapped them with her fingertips. She tapped the lids and then the sides with each fingertip once in turn. It seemed that she had forgotten that she was not alone. She repeated the ritual twice before suddenly jerking upright and catching herself, freshly aware of my presence. She turned sheepishly and cracked one of the cans open. She handed the other one to me, trying to appear casual, trying to play it down.

I did not know what to do. I pretended not to notice how strangely she was behaving. I did not want to upset her. I just took the can and held it in my hands.

Katy gulped and wiped her mouth on the back of her arm “Well,” she said, waving the can at the pyre “Go on then.”

“What?” I clicked at the ring-pull “You’re cool with this?”

Katy laughed and knocked back from the can “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, bitch. Fucking do it!”

I put the can to one side and opened the kerosene. I splashed the entire bottle freely over the pyre and stepped back. Katy held up a Zippo. I reached out for it “Wait, do you want to do this or shall I do it?”

“Let it all burn,” Katy said. She ignited the Zippo herself and threw it on top of the pile.

The fire took immediately. There was a flashing roar as the petrol caught at once. A blue wave rolled out across the bonfire. As the petrol burnt away, the flames turned their way downwards into the heart of the pile. Wooden objects began to sizzle and pop. The skins of the bin liners evaporated in the heat. The plastic burnt quickly in a shower of green flakes. The contents spilled out into the fire. Sheets of paper lifted up away from the bags and floated out into the darkening sky on the thermal updraft. Following after them, the smell of burning plastic dissipated. It was replaced by the honest tang of fire on wood. My life to date was engulfed. We had to both step back to make room for the intensity. The flames drove through to the ground beneath the pyre and shot back upwards with renewed glare and vigour. Within a minute, the fire was completely beyond our control. It blazed out in all directions. The sudden height was terrifying. We both shared the silent fear that this was it: the last fire, the one to engulf the world. It was all we could do to watch the monster as it consumed everything that was set before it.

“It’s like a djinn,” Katy said.

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“You won’t know. You’ll just hear the whistling kind of hissing coming across the wind from a lipless mouth but you won’t know... You know they say the Inuit have a thousand words for snow?” she kicked at the pile “How many words do you think they have in Hell for fire?”

We watched the rest of the bonfire in silence. At its peak, the flames were ten feet high over our heads. Katy kicked the burning debris back into shape every time it seemed that the fire was moving too close to the house. Her overblown biker boots seemed impervious to the heat. She showed no concern for her safety. I contented myself by poking at the stubborn furniture pieces with a steel curtain rod. Every time it seemed that the monster’s passions were dwindling, the fire would open up a new and unexplored area of the bonfire; the empire expanded into these new lands with a keen hunger, first by poking a finger out and then by swarming forwards unopposed.

It took a good hour for the whole mass to become ashen. A soft wind came over the garden fences and fanned the ashes out across the grass until we had a lawn of fine, grey dust. The plum tree at the back of the garden stood out like a blackened finger in the pale lawn. Eating the blossom of the plum tree was supposed to make you immortal. I had never dared to try it.

The sun went down. The evening would have been warm even without the roasting embers. Katy went into the kitchen, leaving me outside. She opened the fridge door and pulled out the last two cans of stout. They felt cold against her glowing skin, still hot from the fire. She put a fresh CD player in the living room stereo and opened the conservatory doors. Pushing the CD to skip ahead, she got it to the right track. She took the Guinness back outside. The music came on: Jane’s Addiction, Jane Says. We sat together on the back doorstep and finished the cans. I lit my cigarettes from a coal.

“How you doing, though, girl?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I’m okay, you know?” Katy sniffed and shivered at the invisible breeze. She hugged her knees to her chest “The other night though… I was acting weird, I know, but that wasn’t me. Not me me. You’ve been away for years and now you’ve only just come back and you don’t really know me but I don’t want you to think that this, that the way I’ve been acting, that’s not me.”

“Listen, it’s fine, you’re cool… But what you did was really not cool.”

“You mean about mother?”

“Yeah, girl, I can’t understand why you did that shit.”

Katy rubbed her eyes with her knuckles “Do you ever look at the mirror for hours at a time?”

I scoffed “No, what? Like from vanity? No.”

“No well,” Katy went to stand “Forget it, then. I thought you might understand.”

I realised my mistake. I was asking for answers but I wasn’t trying hard enough to understand; I pulled Katy back down “No, I’m sorry, I was just being stupid about it… Why not just tell me what you mean?”

“I don’t know, it’s like,” Katy struggled for the words “I must have read it somewhere. It’s supposed to be a way of opening your third eye, like, a way of opening your psychic powers, and you do that thing where you look in the mirror for so long that it suddenly, it suddenly doesn’t feel like it’s your reflection looking back anymore but something else, somebody else.”

“I know what you mean… it happens for just a second and then it’s gone.”

“Sure, but it’s like lucid dreaming, you have to train yourself to stay asleep when you realise that it’s all just a dream. It’s the same thing. You have to learn to stretch out the moment when it’s not you anymore. After a while, you can make it last for hours and it really isn’t your reflection anymore and it’s like this mirror-ghost and it can move around and pull different faces and, and you’re not even controlling it anymore and it can get to the point where you can’t even just snap out of it. Do you know what I mean?”

“I don’t know. It sounds… it sounds wrong, like maybe you shouldn’t be doing stuff like that right now, you know? I don’t know if it sounds completely… completely safe.”

“But we all have these things, we’ve all got a thousand different faces, like “my name is legion”, who was it that said that?”

“I’m not sure,” I said “It might be from the bible. You mean like a split personality?”

“Yeah but not just two of them. More like a million than two. Well that’s what it feels like, but, but I want to be me, but maybe, you know, if I have different levels or different layers of my consciousness like my Superego and my Id then maybe that’s all it is, just a manifestation of the subconscious and maybe it’s not anything more serious than that but I need to get things under control, I think that’s the thing. Jesus, I promise I won’t let anything like that happen again, deal?”

“Okay, deal,” I shook her hand and tried to lighten the moment “Were you really in the attic?”

Katy looked away slowly.

I realised with grim horror that Katy had not been joking. My heart felt like it had been taken out and slapped.

“I’m going to sleep in my room tonight,” Katy said “You won’t be sleeping in the living room anymore, so it will be okay.”

I understood the implication “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting too, girl. I don’t know why I couldn’t bear to sleep in my old room. It just felt …” but I couldn’t finish; I did not understand “God though, this place is strange without Dad here, isn’t it?”

“Not really. Not any more,” Katy stood and said goodnight to the fire “I think that everything is going to be alright from now on.”

Before we went to bed we brought the pigeons down from the roof. They were safely back in their coops. I’m not sure who suggested it first but the idea seemed to fit the evening perfectly. As I unlatched the cages, I was gripped by a giddy thrill of insurrection and the curious fear that we might somehow be caught in the act.

Katy casually loaded a magazine into her air gun. It was a semi-automatic, CO2 charged Berretta copy with a .177 calibre. It looked cool, like a glock. It was more powerful than a BB gun and fired heavy lead pellets that were like baby bullets. In spite of its looks though, it was only deadly on animals and would do little to a human.

Katy nodded at me and I shook the pigeons out of their cages. One by one, they emerged dazed and flapping. They pecked around the yard, skirting the hot embers of the fire. “You were right,” I said “They’re not going to go anywhere.”

Katy unlocked the safety catch and pointed the gun at the ground, smiling “Guess we’ll have to make them.”

She fired a few rounds into the ground around the pigeons. They took off immediately and shot straight into the boughs of the plum tree. Katy trailed after them through the scope, running across the lawn, and loosed another few pellets into the air.

“Easy,” I said “We just want to scare them away. We don’t actually want to hit them.”

Katy gave me a strange look. I realised that our behaviour would seem strange to an outsider. The expression on her face suggested that we had come so far, why stop now?

The birds did not return.

Before going to bed, I crept downstairs and threw the air gun away. I did not want to have it in the house anymore. I did not like the idea of Katy having access to anything dangerous.

That night, as I was finally moving sideways into sleep, a thought came upon me. I was lying on my mattress in the room that had once been my father’s. I was half dreaming. I knew that. A series of warm visions passed around in the gap between my eyeballs and my brain. Cut into the mix was the sudden presentiment that I now understood why I had decided to move into the master bedroom: I had not only buried my father but had participated in the death by seizing his territory. It was the final, posthumous, bullet in the head. And it felt decent, correct and satisfying. Katy had aimed to miss the birds but I had hit my target dead centre, executioner-style.

I remembered the day that my father came to collect us from the care home. We had been there for months. At the time I always believed that he was just waiting to be allowed to come and get us. I realise now, of course, that this was a last resort. Presumably, he had been hoping that we would be fostered.

It was a misty November day and everything was sodden from the constant damp. The rain watered the dumped cars behind the houses, green for the weeds, orange for the rust. We were playing in the boughs of a willow tree in the back of the grounds. I had invented some silly game and Katy was delightedly playing along with me. We were singing and laughing so loudly that we did not hear him calling our names. He became angry. We were suddenly aware of him, standing below us at the bottom of the tree, red-faced and screaming at us to come down. He thought that we were deliberately ignoring him. We scrambled down and stood to attention. We felt very foolish. I can still feel the pang of that emotion. It was so palpable and strong that it reverberates towards me through time. We had been awaiting him in our minds for months and now, when he finally arrived, we were playing in a tree. We felt like history’s most unforgivable fools. He paced up and down, his hands clenched behind his back, shouting great wads of spittle at us. They had been looking all over the care home for us. What did we think we were playing at? They had gone to a lot of trouble. He had driven a long way. What were we doing in the tree? Who did we think we were?

Katy and I stood there staring at the grass on the ground. We had not seen him in two years.

The last time that he had come to visit, I had been delirious with my Saint Vitus Dance. I was so drunk on my mother’s whisky and valium cure that I had not even known he was there. He had come to tell me that my grandparents had died. I could not even hear him. I had to be told again, after I had started to recover. It was left to my mother to explain.

“Your father’s parents are dead,” she said, sitting on the chair next to my bed. It was the first time she had sat down on the chair next to my sickbed. I remembered my grandfather spending hours with me when I had lost Troy, telling me stories of his misspent boyhood. They were the only adult force of goodness in my life. Now they were gone. My mother sat on the bed and fiddled absently with the unstitched hem of my blanket “They’re both dead,” she said “Within a week of each other. Isn’t it funny? First his mother and then his father. Of a broken heart. That’s what they said, anyway. Broken heart, my eye. I dare say it was the strain of having to look after you that summer. Finished them off. Now, then,” she stood “Finish your milk.”

The milk was rotten with whisky and pills. The taste is still there somewhere at the back of my tongue, scarred into my taste-buds. I refused to drink it. I was crying for my grandparents and I just could not face the wretched taste of it one more time.

“Finish your milk you ungrateful, spiteful little cow,” she said “Or I’ll be the one to finish you.”

My father telephoned our house on the day of his father’s funeral. My mother told me to come downstairs and speak to him. It was the first time that I had been in bed for weeks. My legs felt unfamiliar and weak. She was impatient. She shouted for me to hurry down the stairs. By the time I had got there, she had walked away, leaving the telephone lying on the sideboard, coiled in the cable. It looked like a dead forest animal, curled up in a ball and abandoned. I was unsure whether I was allowed to pick it up. “Hello?” I whispered into the receiver, not daring to touch it.

My father’s voice came down the line to me, metallic and difficult to hear. He was drunk. It sounded like he had been crying. He was telling me off for something. I could never work out what it was. Eventually, he must have hung up.

In the morning when I awoke, a memory of my dreaming revelations came back to me. The notion that I had exorcised my father from the house did not seem so wholesome in the morning light. I dismissed it with conviction as the deluded ramblings of the night’s mind and forgot the notion forever.

The next day was a different kind of day altogether.

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

It was there in that moment, standing beneath the sign above the doorway, wearing a second-hand tie, that I knew my body had been irrevocably corrupted by the world as fully as if I had sold it. “No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship,” Dickens wrote of his first job “And felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man crushed in my bosom.”

Here I was: an intelligent human being in the bright future of a post-modern dawn. I was twenty-one years old. I was at the height of my powers. I had left behind me a golden academic record. I was tipped. They wanted me to go on to postgraduate studies: a doctorate, my pick of tutor, my choice of topic. I had once been invited to an inter-departmental seminar and had acquitted myself as an equal.

Here I was: a chain-smoking firebrand. The Violent Radical. Libertarian, non-conformist, anti-capitalist, anarchist. I had protested in the streets with hand-made placards against injustices too numerous to recollect. I had taken direct action against the machines of oppression. I had launched bottles over the barricades and bricks at the battalions of the oppressor. I had marched and I had chanted. I had ranted into the loudspeaker at a rally in Hyde Park. I had led the charge that broke the shield line in Trafalgar square. I was an earth warrior, agitator, trouble-maker, rebel, Boudicca.

And there I was: wearing a smart blouse and coloured tie. I was standing before the doorway to a portacabin in the complex of a telephone call centre. And I had arrived weighed down by my psychic luggage stuffed with academic promise and political credentials. This was the threshold of my future. And the sign said “The University of Customer Satisfaction.” Each word, each separate syllable, was the thrust in the groin of a corporate Satan ramming the Cock of Hell into the back of my throat and laughing at the choking suffocation of a pretension brought to its knees. This was my university now, and all my dreams were molested by the reverse Midas touch of the sign. It was the end of me.

“This way please,” the voice said. It had all the tones of clipboard authority. I stalled. I tried to resist. But my legs buckled and capitulated. How like the body to betray the woman. I was powerless. Katy needed me. I needed the job.

I sat in the portacabin. There were ten new temps, all sitting around the desks at the edges of the room. There were new computers on the desks, one for each of them, with a plasma screen and an optical mouse. They had given us revolving chairs. Everyone sat with their hands folded in their laps. I could not seem to get the posture right. The men all wore shirts. The girls wore nondescript blouses. They all wore ties. Most of them were young, with few exceptions.

We sat facing the trainer. Her name was Kali. She was South African, white with bleached blonde hair and a beige twin set. She was too old to be working in such a middle-management position and she knew it. I guessed that there was some kind of desperate scandal behind her. The withering of her sexual appeal had left her bitter and aggressive. Her features were shaped like a predatory bird. She stood with her arms folded. “I am a bitch,” she said “And I will destroy you.”

I shook my head. She had been talking for an hour in a droning voice. My mind had zoned out within minutes and I had not been paying attention. I had no idea what she was talking about. The others did not seem perturbed. Perhaps I had misheard her. She moved on to another topic and the words were left prone on the floor in front of her.

She had a digital projector set up on a pedestal, connected to a laptop. It projected various corporate slogans in a tedious PowerPoint slideshow. She narrated each slogan, reading the various commentaries directly from the screen. It was as if we were not expected to be able to read it for ourselves. She added nothing to the projected script, no derivation. She moved through the presentation with grinding leisure. There was no apparent compulsion to move at a decent pace. The presentation was designed to be understandable to even the dullest trainee. It was agonisingly slow. I remained impassive but my mind was screaming in boredom. I was not alone. We were all condemned to sit, unmoving, silent in batteries of revolving chairs, as the youth was bilked out of us.

After an eternity, we were allowed to take a break. This consisted of a period of orientation. Kali led us around the entire building, introducing us to each and every despairingly obvious feature. Pointing at the sign indicating the toilets on each floor, she would say “And here are the toilets.” Pausing in front of what was clearly a flight of stairs, she would inform us “And here are the stairs.” We were forced to file in a crocodile behind her as she worked her way around a baffling series of departments “This is Credit Protection,” she said “And that is Credit Recovery,” and “This is Recovery Services”.

The building itself was a vicious slice of brown concrete on the outskirts of an industrial estate, some distance from the centre of town. All of the windows were tinted brown and were bolted shut like the Job Centre. The entire building was kept in the temperature of an unpleasant autumn morning by the air conditioning and other environmental controls that would randomly blast us with stale air as we wandered around the dim corridors. The doors were locked by an electronic card-swipe system that prevented any unauthorised entry. As we had not yet been given swipe cards of our own, we were effectively prisoners in the building.

The walls were bedecked by plastic boards bearing the various slogans and platitudes now familiar from the presentation. They emphasised the company’s dedication to its customers. Each board featured sepia portraits of the smiling face of customers and employees. The images had been designed to emphasise the kind of proactive multicultural culture that the company wanted to present. The faces included elderly Chinese women and young Indian men with earrings. It reeked of bogus platitudes to political compassion.

There were over ten floors. The highest levels were reserved for senior management. Our tour only took us around the lower levels. These consisted of vast, open-plan offices: the call centre itself. There were no partitions in any of the floors. The hundreds of workers sat in clusters around circular desks that housed six people at a time. These were known as pods. They were centred round hubs for the computers and the telephones. Each separate workstation on the pods was screened off from the next by a carpeted board, presumably to dampen the noise of the conversation. It was impossible for one worker to talk to the person sitting next to them without pushing their chair back and standing up to speak over the top of the screen like a meercat. Nobody appeared to be doing this. All of the workers wore telephone headsets to keep their hands free for typing data into the computers. The twisting plastic cords that ran from the headsets down to the telephone turrets kept them chained to the pods.

As we passed through one floor, somebody leant back to watch us pass with narrowed eyes “What are they trying to do?” he asked the air around him “Trying to see how many people they can fit in here?” I tried not to meet his eyes. I felt self-conscious and stupid.

Eventually, Kali led us out to the car park and showed us the smoking area. It consisted of a metal drum full of sand propped next to a bicycle shed and a sign that said No Smoking. We were free for the next five minutes. It was a beautiful summer morning. The sky was cloudless and the air was still fresh. Half of the team followed Kali back inside to the cafeteria. The rest of us stayed outside to smoke.

I watched them pull cigarettes and lighters out of their pockets. They were ignited and exhaling within seconds. I fumbled with the pouch of tobacco, the rizlas and the matches that I had bought with the last of my money.

The boy that I had been watching all morning laughed at my efforts. He was African: Cameroonian or Congolese, but by his accent I could tell that had lived in England for most, though not all, of his life. His face was urgent and muscular like a big cat but it was offset by a childish and almost silly air about his eyes “I don’t know how you can smoke that stuff,” he said. We were all wearing name tags. The one on his breast said “Leon”. He wore a bright tie with a floral pattern and a tight pink shirt. It clashed with the rosewood colour of his skin. The effect of him was confusing. There was strange danger in his brattish limbs but he had the packaging of a toy doll. His eyes harpooned me to the wall. I could not reply.

One of the other trainees took the rolling-papers out of my hand. He had a military haircut and a St Christopher around the open neck of his white shirt “These are just for dopeheads and students, love, what you smoking them for, eh?”

I shrugged my shoulders. No words came to my mind, nothing of any use. I felt like I was back at school.

“I smoke a pipe!”

We all turned around.

It was one of the younger trainees. His name tag said “Gimp”. He was overweight, with clear sweat marks under the arms of his short sleeved shirt. His hair was dyed black and styled in an asymmetrical faux-hawk, like a death-worshipping parrot. He wore a ball-closure piercing in his left eyebrow and a retro Eighties tie with a piano-key design.

He was smoking a Marlborough “I smoke a pipe,” he repeated. I found out later that The Gimp came from a steady working class family. He had always hoped that his contrived flamboyance would be a great concern to them. To his disappointment, they were irritatingly comfortable with it. They were even prepared to tolerate his baseless claims to having a boyfriend. He regaled them with endless stories. They nodded politely and never contradicted him, more out of pity than respect. In truth, they all knew that the boy in question would never countenance the idea. There was nothing between them bar the attentions that The Gimp paid him. The boy had once deigned to allow him to sleep on the floor of his bedroom. The Gimp spent the next week announcing that he had finally slept with someone. The boy in question found out and was furious. In recompense for the boast, The Gimp had been obliged to act as his chauffeur for a month. He tagged him as his gimp and the name had come to stick.

“No you don’t,” Leon sighed and exhaled upwards “You smoke a Marlborough.”

The Gimp was flustered. My eyes widened. It was incredible how easily his facade had been undermined. I considered Leon: His words had been careless and brutal as if he had not even been paying any real attention. It was such an obvious retort that it might not have even been deployed in a playground. I considered The Gimp: he was an oaf. I had already found him to be excruciating in this brief exchange. I would have liked to have been the one to cut him down. I could have easily spoken the same simple words of disbelief. But the fact was that I did not have the nerve to embark on something so cruel without at least some subtle choice of words. But that was Leon’s brilliance. He had not waited for guile. His subtlety lay in the speed of his attack. I found it wonderful.

“I leave it at home when I go out,” the Gimp protested. When he spoke, he flapped his arms like a great grounded sea-bird “I don’t smoke it outside,” he cast about for supporting eyes, found something that apparently reassured him in mine and continued “Yeah, I love pipes, true, true. Everybody smokes them now in my house. It was my idea. You can get strawberry flavoured tobacco. Even Neil Hannon smokes a pipe.”

“Urgh,” Leon flicked his ash with his arms folded. He kicked at the ground with his heels and turned his attention back to me “So,” he said, a cruel smile cracking across his cheeks “Do you?”

I was lost “Sorry, do I what?”

He rolled his eyes as if I was being deliberately obtuse “Do you smoke spliff, then? Is that why you’ve got rizla?”

“No,” I could not shake the feeling that I needed to protect my real identity. I had created a fictionally straight version of myself in order to get the job and I was compelled to continue the drama “No, I’m just waiting until we get paid so I can buy some proper cigarettes.”

“Ah, no,” he said “You’re a dopehead, man, check your eyes! They’re all bloodshot aren’t they?”

“No, really, I just didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.” I was aware that the rest of them were watching me.

“Ah, shame,” he said in a childlike voice as he pulled a joint out from his handbag “You won’t want none of this then, will you?”

There was an intake of breath from the other smokers. It was as if he had introduced something monstrous to the moment. It had the effect of a hand grenade at a polite dinner-party.

The Gimp was alone in his glad reaction. He jumped up and down on the spot. He punched the air. He was ridiculous “Yes! Total result! Two’s up!”

Leon kissed his teeth and smiled at me. He spoke to the Gimp over his shoulder “You don’t get any of this spliff, you nonce,” he said as he lit the joint “You can stick with your pipe and your strawberry shit now. This is just for me and Miss Beauregarde.”

“Yeah…” I rubbed the back of my neck. The reference was painfully familiar to me: Violet Beauregarde was a character in A Roald Dahl book, the girl with the bubble gum who turns into a blueberry. It was a name I thought I might at least have outgrown “Can you try not to call me that, please?”

He grinned with enough teeth to bite my shoes off and passed the joint towards me “But you are going to have some of this, though, aren’t you?”

I took it from his, cupped my hands around it and inhaled deeply. The smoke rolled into my lungs and passed out into the capillaries. The THC fairies skipped through my body and dispensed happiness to my muscles and bones. I exhaled like a roaring lion.

Leon laughed and slapped my back. The Gimp continued to shuffle eagerly on the spot. He reminded me of a small child in need of the bathroom. The other trainees communicated their distaste of the enterprise by ignoring us and discussing what they thought about Kali. Leon took the joint back, took once last blast and then chipped it out against the wall. He put the remains back inside his pocket and lit another cigarette. He did not say another word to me for the rest of the break. The Gimp sidled up to me and engineered a conversation that consisted entirely of a fanciful account of his life to date and his opinions on the new Divine Comedy album. I was not listening. I did not take my eyes away from Leon.

I walked home. The sun was still high when the working day had ended. I felt good, in spite of myself. I felt decent. I could hold my head up and meet people in the eye. All the other workers making their way home were my equals now. I may not have been able to look down on them from my lofty idealism but at least they could not look down on me as an unwashed dropout anymore.

I passed cohorts of holidaymakers, stripped down and tanned from a day on the beach. Teenage boys and men turned their heads as I passed by. It was an unprecedented reaction. I felt like I had discovered some arcane secret of vitality, when in truth I knew that it was little but youth and a clean-ironed shirt. The weekend’s haircut had been a contributing success. A bowling gait crept into my stride.

Their girlfriends strutted alongside their menfolk, bras bouncing in step with their pony tails as if their heels were made of rubber. They swaggered boozily like the last wasps at the wake of summer. I matched their stares and popped their heads in psychic feminine warfare. I was not to be cowed.

I walked though the seaside summer and smiled. My chin was raised. Even the crushing humiliation of my job could not thwart me.

The door was open when I got home. I walked straight in and closed it behind myself. At first it did not strike me as strange. Maybe Katy was just airing the house. This would be a positive sign. There were ladybirds on the lavender. A window was open and the net curtains fluttered silently.

I walked into the living room. Joseph was sitting on the table in a green suit. He had been crying.

Chapter Eight

Elm

“What are you doing here?” I asked his. My voice was calm as snow. There was a contradictory joy and a disappointment in my heart at the sight of him but these were overruled by a blank hostility. I felt betrayed by my own heart. I had allowed myself to fall back into my old feelings for his and I had been hurt. I had no idea how much I had loved him that day in the riot. The defence mechanism of my blame was a cold armour. Nothing penetrated. I raised my shield and approached.

“Katy’s gone,” was all that he said.

No matter how serious the situation with Katy, surely we had business of our own to deal with. I was not ready to talk about Katy. My own pain was too strong. I was not ready to even consider anyone but myself “What do you mean ‘Katy’s gone’?”

He stood up “I shouldn’t have come here,” he picked up his backpack and began walking towards the door “It’s obvious enough that you don’t want to see me,” as he approached the doorway he pulled up short and shouted “Are you going to get out of my way so I can leave?” I stepped back, bitten. He pushed me in the chest as he passed. I bumped against the wall.

“Wait,” I said.

He stopped walking without turning around. My single word hit him like a bullet. It made him sit straight down on the hallway carpet like he had been shot. His legs were too long to fit comfortably in the space and so he sat almost doubled up. How strange that legs which had once wrapped themselves around you could later turn to kick you when you were not looking.

He put his head in his hands.

I was overcome with visions of Joseph and Katy together. They soured every soft emotion I had ever held for him. I wanted, against all impossibility, to have never left him behind. How much sweeter the last years would have been if I had not betrayed him first. But I knew that, wherever his words would go, he would never mention my infidelity again. He had said his piece at the wake. In spite of wishing otherwise, I knew that he was too honourable to return to the past. The conflict with my personal obsession was nauseous. He was a much better person that I was. And I hated him for it “What did you say to her?” I asked him.

Joseph noted the lead in my voice “Nothing,” he replied, exasperated.

“You came here to see Katy and now she’s left and you didn’t say a single word to her?”

“I came here to see you!” he kicked at the wall “You arrogant fuck. I asked her where you were and she tried to hit me.”

I was confused. I could not allow myself to trust his, even though I knew that he was not lying “She wouldn’t just do something like that, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would she just try and hit you? You must have done something to make her do that.”

“Oh, that’s nice, that’s really nice, I should have known you’d be good in a situation like this. She’s gone, don’t you understand?”

I folded my arms. I wanted to erase the trouble between us but the thorn was mine. I could not let it go “Why didn’t you tell me about the two of you?”

There was a pause. Joseph did not lift up his head “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t twist me around like this!” I threw myself down onto the stairs “You’re not ‘gay’ anymore, is that it? Fine: neither am I and I never was. I’m just a girl, I always have been, I’m just a straight girl born in the wrong body. But I did something about it, I did something expensive and painful and horrendous about it but you, you just wake up one morning and decide that you prefer girls now? Well I don’t buy it and I don’t believe you.” I was wrecking everything and I could not stop myself. I wanted him to see me as ugly as possible.

When I first became a teenager, I had been so horrified with myself. The self-loathing at my own mutation had propelled me to sit for hours in a locked bathroom making slices of my arm with a razor. I would suck the blood from my arms into my mouth. It was the same desire for distortion that motivated me again. It was the desire to push up against something cruel and real, something to regain control of my body and to punish it.

I was scarring the air between us and the first taste of blood brought me headlong into fear “I know you slept with her,” I said abruptly.

“So?”

“So why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“Did you ask Katy about it?”

“Of course I didn’t ask Katy about it.”

“So now you’re jealous, is that it?” he stood up and faced me “That was three years ago!”

“So what was it about, then? Were you trying to get back at me, is that why you did it? You were trying to prove to yourself that you don’t really like boys?”

“If I was doing it to hurt you, don’t you think I would have told you about it?”

“So why then? Do you love her?”

The word had power enough. Thrown into the storm we were creating, love floundered. We watched it drown, unwanted and ill, before we continued “She was lonely,” he said after some time “I was lonely. We both just needed someone. It was an act of friendship, that’s all it was.”

“Nobody fucks somebody as an act of friendship.”

He was provoked by the acid in my tone. His mercy evaporated and he decided to return the venom “No. You don’t. But other people do. We’re capable of doing that. Because we can have sex and it isn’t just some fucked-up story we buy into just to make us capable of pretending we have genuine feelings. Look at you, you bang on about people being robot slaves but you’re the biggest robot there is. You can screw a thousand guys just to prove that you can but it doesn’t mean you’ve got a heart. It doesn’t mean you’ve got a soul. And it doesn’t mean it makes you a woman…”

I said nothing. My eyes rolled away.

“You see, I knew you wouldn’t be able to understand. That’s why I didn’t tell you anything about it,” he said.

I did not speak.

Joseph laughed “So at least I know why you didn’t come to see me. We waited all day for you last Saturday. My mum kept asking me where you were, what time are you coming. I must have phoned here about ten times. God, what a stupid idiot I was to ever think that you and I…” he trailed away “Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck you. And fuck this.”

He slammed the door shut behind his. I did not try to stop him leaving.

I waited for a while before going out to look for Katy. I did not find her.

The Revenue Protection officer walked into the portacabin. He took a chair, turned it around and sat with the back facing forwards. He rested his arms on the backrest and leaned forwards.

“Right, then,” he said, leering out at the new trainees “Kali tells me that you’re going to be working in customer services,” he winked at Kali. She smiled coquettishly “You’re taking inbound calls from domestic consumers who are having problems with their key meters. Now. Have any of you ever lived somewhere with a key meter?”

The group were silent. I had lived in a shared house in my last year as a student. We had a key meter. It was a nightmare. They were designed for people on the dole who didn’t have large sums of money to pay bills. So we had to ration out our electricity along with their food and clothing. This meant going without on a regular basis. I did not want to admit to having had one.

“No? OK,” the officer cracked his knuckles “The key meter works like a prepayment mobile phone. You take the key,” he held up a small blue token, the size of a cigarette lighter “And you have to charge it with money before the electricity will come on. You can charge it at a paypoint in your local newsagent or wherever. Once the money you charged on the key has been used up, then the electricity supply will shut off automatically.”

Some student landlords fitted them to their houses to stop the tenants running up huge bills and absconding without leaving a forwarding address. Everybody hated them. They were inconvenient and unreliable. They keys were always breaking or not charging properly. They were always getting lost. And the machine was an open mouth swallowing your money. The electricity cost more than a normal meter. Ostensibly, this was because you were not paying VAT. In truth, though, it was because you were poor and you always paid more for everything.

“Now, generally, the key meters are installed when dickheads have not paid their bills. Now this is where I come in. We send them letters and if they don’t do anything about it then we apply to obtain a warrant. Once we get the warrant we go to their house with the police and we see if there’s anybody home. If they’re not there then what do we do? That’s right. We break the door down. It’s a rush. Then we remove the old meter and leave them with a key meter. We put the outstanding debt onto the new meter, so they have to pay that off while they’re charging the key. Now if you’d seen the idiots that we have to deal with then you would understand that this is the only way that we will ever see our money again.”

His team was called Revenue Protection. I had to sit through a two hour presentation on the subject. He showed us Polaroid pictures of half-derelict houses occupied by senile old women and obsessive old men with newspapers stacked in their gardens and rooms they never used any more. He reminded me of an ingratiating gym teacher passing around pictures of his naked wife.

This was not the only training that I received. I was also taught that my voice was my uniform. Without it, apparently, I would be naked. I was taught to speak on the phone with a smile in my voice. I learnt how to smile through gritted teeth.

I was introduced to the standardisation of phrasing. It was the ultimate corporate rape of the English language. Certain words were prohibited. Certain euphemisms were prescribed. I would be working with my voice but it would not be my own voice and the words would not be my own words. They would be standardised phrases from a book of phoney platitudes. It was Newspeak. I was instructed that I would have to answer each and every call with the “Corporate Opening.” In my case this meant “Good morning/afternoon/evening, you’re through to the Key Budget Metres department, this is Violet speaking, how may I help you?” This ludicrous mouthful was my new face.

The meters were to be referred to as “Key Budget Meters” at all times. The word “budget” stuck in my throat as a particularly twisted interloper. Everyone knew that it had no place in-between the other words. By rebranding the devices, they were trying to create a meme of value in the things. It was nauseating.

You were not permitted to ask “how can I help you”; you were not permitted to say “problem” as this was considered negative; you were forbidden from using the words “mate” or “love” as these were too familiar. There was a list of forbidden words. The trainees amused themselves by constructing the most forbidden versions of the corporate greeting. The Gimp was to top them all with “Wotcher, cock. What’s the problem, then?”

I could feel the worms of their induction burrowing into me. I was being reprogrammed and there was nothing I could do. I still needed the job.

Katy did not come home. I spent evening after evening trawling around Brighton looking for her. I felt responsible. I became obsessed with finding her.

I spent more and more time around Compton Street in the hope that Katy might appear. There were fleeting rumours, unlikely sightings. I followed every lead I came across. People told me to give up and go home. They said that Katy would turn up when she wanted to. But I did not listen. In part, I was desperate to find my sister and fix things. At the same time, though, I really had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. If I wasn’t out chasing phantoms then I would just be sitting at home drinking alone.

The house in Compton Street had not changed since I had left town. The TV screen still stood next to the sound-system bins. The screen was still warped a sickly orange by the magnetism of the speakers. The pot plants were still dead. The people living in the house were the same floating crew of deadbeats. None of them really knew who I was. None of them really cared. I brought beer when I came round. I scored dope from them. I didn’t talk too much. I was okay. I showed them a trick with their key meter that involved an electrical gas-stove lighter and free juice. I was handy.

TV guides were stacked in towering piles by the sofas. The carpet was full of tiny burns from blims of hash. The Playstation was always on. The music in the background was always terrible. Heads lolled on weak necks, drooping onto shoulders. The dope flowed around the room, left to right, a burning substitute for the text of their invisible conversations.

The house was owned by a friend of theirs. They told me that he had lost his mind one night on ketamine and had to be taken away. He had to go into a psychiatric hospital and now he lived with his parents. They never saw him any more. They just sent his parents the rent money and kept kicking in balustrades every time the fire went out. “What did he care?” they said.

I would stay as late as I could before going home. The telephone failed to ring. I failed to find my sister.

After a week or two of living in stasis, I awoke at 4AM with the sudden realisation that Katy was not coming home. I had been dreaming. It was the same dream again. I was standing in the branches of a huge tree towering over the ground miles beneath me. Horses ran in the field below me, so far away that they looked like mice. The sky was black. It was not like a night sky. It was more like somebody had painted the sky with tar. The dark matter was dripping down into the field below, splattering fractals in the crop circle.

Something permanent and unprecedented had happened. I was certain that Katy was not just staying with friends or hiding out in a squat somewhere. Joseph had said something about Katy being gone. I could feel it as an unalterable fact. Katy had disappeared from the map. I did not feel that Katy was dead; more that he had simply ceased to be Katy any more. I got out of bed and splashed water on my face in the bathroom. The street lights were dimming in the blue dawn. I sat on the edge of the bath and tried to penetrate the fog in my head. I felt as if the answer lay within it somehow. The ceramic shelf of the bath was a cold rail beneath me. It pierced through to the bone. I shifted my weight but did not move from the room. And then it hit me. How did Katy know where to find our mother that night? There had been no contact with her since we were taken into care. I was certain that our father would not have known. It would not have made any sense. For some reason, the same name kept coming into my mind: Janet.

Aunt Janet had always been close to my mother. She was my father’s youngest sister and they had both been in the same class at school. It was possible that they still shared mutual friends. It was possible that she knew where to find her. And it was possible that she had told Katy.

I drifted through my working day like a ghost. I had not been able to get back to sleep. I was tired. When the end of the day finally came, I got straight into my car and drove to Janet’s house. She was not in. Her husband answered the door. He worked the nightshift as a security guard and slept during the day. He was not happy to be woken up. They were looking after an Alsatian for a colleague of his. It had been barking throughout the day and he was in a bad temper. While we were trying to find something to say to each other to pass the time, the dog bit me on the hand. I decided to wait outside in the car. My uncle beat the dog and returned to bed. I mopped up the blood with a tissue.

After an hour, Janet arrived home from the dental surgery. She was even less happy to see me that her husband had been. She knew why I was there “This is about Katy isn’t it?” she said.

It became clear that she was not going to ask me to come inside. I had to talk to her standing outside on the pavement “You told Katy where to find her, didn’t you?” I asked her.

“’Violet’,” she widened her eyes to stare me down “Do you think she would have ever gone away if I didn’t? She’d been coming around everyday asking me and she just bloody kept on. I didn’t want her in the house, the way she carried on. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with her and I don’t know what’s wrong with you either. You’re all like that and you know who you get it from and it’s not your dad, I can tell you. And now I suppose you want to know where she is, don’t you? Well, then, we won’t have to piss about because I’ll tell you so long as you don’t ever bloody come back here giving me a headache.”

I agreed. There was no person in the universe that I wanted anything less to do with than my mother. But I had to see her. She was the one person who might know what happened to Katy. Maybe she had called the police and Katy was locked in a cell without no phone. Maybe she had done something to her and she was in a hospital and she couldn’t talk. It could have been anything. I had tested scores of improbable possibilities in my head and none of them seemed to work. I believed my mother to be capable of anything but my belief was a crude caricature, like a child’s crayon picture of a bedtime monster. I truly had no idea who she was or what she could really have done.

I left Janet. I was holding a scrap of paper with an address. It was clear what I had to do.

I drove the car up out of town to the edge of the downs and sat in a lay-by. A trio of magpies hopped around the fence of bushes. The ground was littered in bottles and newspapers. A cat howled on heat in the distance. I turned the piece of paper over and over in my hands. Every hour or so, I steeled myself and I was sure that this time I would definitely do it: I would put the key in the ignition and I would drive to the address. But the hours came and the hours went and I did nothing. The thought of seeing her had rendered me immobile.

I wanted, more than anything, to find Katy. I had visions of rescuing my sister from danger. We would return to the house and live in peace. We would be happy and I would be a hero. I would do it, then. I closed the door and took the car keys out of my pocket.

Then the face of my mother came into my mind. It was a smudged recollection, blurred by mildew and moss like the statue in the cemetery. Her features were angry and angular, distorted out of recognition by hate and by the distance of time. My heart beat heavily in my forehead. I got out of the car and slammed the door behind me in disgust at my failure. I smoked the last cigarette and berated myself. I was weak. I was afraid of her. I paced the length of the lay-by in the darkness, tracing wide circles around the car on the gravel and the grass. An owl hooted on the other side of the gathering clouds. The magpies flapped away.

I had tried not to think about her for so many years. The blank wall I had erected in my mind was prohibiting me from action. Blocking her out had also blocked me out of taking action to see her. I had never wanted to even think about her until that day and so I had never noticed its construction. I had only seen her in my dreams: unpleasant nightmares of repressed confrontations that left me crying out in my sleep; they had only reinforced my conviction to erase her. She had rejected me first, but my rejection was so utter that it had become a matter of pride.

I needed more cigarettes. I told myself that I was just going to find a shop and buy some. My legs seemed to work. I kept promising myself a smoke and my body kept responding. I got back into the car and put the keys in the ignition. It’s just for fags, I told myself, that’s all. I was able to stop shaking and get the car back down onto the road. The radio was broken. I drove in silence. The night was a smear of ocean blue, punctuated by the orange flashes of halogen. It was still warm. As I rolled past the first exit I told myself that there was a service station ahead. It was just a little further on. I could get my cigarettes there. I got onto the motorway out of town and began following the signs for the address on the scrap of paper. The craving for another smoke had overcome me. This way, I told myself, just a few more miles and then I will buy some.

In this manner, I was able to complete the journey. I arrived at the address a little after ten o’clock.

It was a small village, off the motorway and into the countryside by the coast. There were no street lights and no cars on the road. I passed no pedestrians. Barely a light was on in any of the houses along the route. The fields on either side were flatlands of obsidian. It felt like driving into the heart of darkness. The house was at the end of a worn drive, set back from the road. I turned the engine off and walked up towards it past a twisted row of dead elms.

It was an old cottage, converted into a bungalow. The front face of the building was overgrown with ivy. There were no outside lights and I could not make out much of the features of the house or any of the land around it. As my eyes became adjusted to the darkness, I realised that there was no land around the house: it was perched on the edge of a cliff hanging over the shoreline below. The waves crashed into the soft chalk beneath it, steadily wearing it away. I realised that the land the house stood upon was slowly crumbling away into the sea. Most of the back garden had already fallen away. The rest of the house could not be far behind.

I rang the bell. Through the glass in the doorframe I could see the hall light come on. There were noises inside, some kind of hurried discussion. After a time, a woman opened the door.

Chapter Nine

Pulpit Yew II

She was just a few years older than me and she was wearing a blue apron. She reminded me of a dinner-lady. I was struck by her haircut. It was a tragic home-made affair, as if she had been cutting it herself for years and nobody had ever told her to stop. She had given herself a clumsy fringe and this coarse black wire just rose uncontrollably around it. I stepped back. Perhaps I had the wrong address.

“Oh, what,” she whined “Not you lot again. We told you everything last time. I mean, I know you’re only trying to help and that but it’s not our fault if you got nothing else to do, is it?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, intending to make my excuses and leave.

My mother appeared behind the girl in the hallway “Who is it, then, Gina?”

The fluid inside my skull turned to ice. The sight of her flipped my world into a photographic negative dangling from a wire in a darkroom, sick with chemicals and lost in the interplay of light and shadow. Everything was wet with loathing. I looked at her as if peeking through a crack into the past. I felt nothing but hate. My mother was diminished and old but I knew that it was she. I saw her in the hallway, hunched over a table, her face half-paralysed by a recent stroke. She was breathing hoarsely. I cursed myself for being afraid of her. She was nothing.

Gina tutted and replied “It’s just one of the detectives again, Mary, go back in will you.”

My mother pushed her out of the way. She squinted up at me “Who are you, then?” she asked.

I was taken aback. It had been a long time and I had changed my body and my face but I had at least expected to be recognised. I did not know what to say.

Gina tried to elbow her way back into the doorframe. My mother slapped at her arm “Now, now, Mary,” she said as she shouldered her backwards “Don’t get yourself exited like that. I don’t want to have to call the doctor again do I?” my mother shrank and retracted herself as if she had been kicked. She leant against the radiator and her mind drifted away. Gina took hold of the door once more “You’ve come about that mad girl, haven’t you? The one who broke in the other week?”

“Yes,” I said. I did not know what else I was supposed to do apart from play along with their mistake.

My mother seemed to wake up. She turned sharply towards me “Well, then? Have you caught her yet? Do you know who she is?”

I was shocked again. So she had not even recognised Katy when she was sitting over her chest with a knife to her throat? I was wounded somehow by the information. She may never have loved us but I at least felt that she should have remembered what we looked like. Had we all changed so much? We had both entered into a game of rejection: the mother of her children and her children of their mother. Both parties had been satisfied at the bifurcation of their lives. No attempts had ever been made at reconciliation. I boiled inside at the thought of her perfection of the art of rejection. I had wanted to hate her more than she could hate us back but I knew then that she did not hate me or Katy. She did not have to spend years wishing that we did not exist. She had simply forgotten what we looked like.

“She’s…” I tried to continue with the charade but there did not seem to be any point. I was wasting my time. I could not believe that I had been so desperate to find Katy that I had even considered this course of action. She knew nothing. I wanted to leave “She’s nobody.”

Gina shrugged her shoulders “They don’t know anything, do they?” she shouted back at my mother “So why don’t you go back to your little drink then?”

My mother shuffled away, whispering hatefully to herself. She disappeared around the corner into another room.

I found that I was still standing on the doorstep. I had to think of something to say to get myself out of there. Gina was obviously slow-witted but there was still only a limited amount of time left before she realised that something was wrong. I just needed to think of some pretext for my being there at all. She lit a cigarette and continued to stand in the doorway. There was a vacant, faraway dampness in her eyes as if her brain had let go of whatever it was doing. She did not even appear to be waiting for me to say or do anything. After a while she began to speak in conspiratorial tones “God, I hate living with that sour old bitch.”

Something occurred to me “You’re her carer.”

“Yeah, but still, they don’t pay us to like them, do they?” she said, flicking her ash into a plant pot.

My mother’s face appeared suddenly behind the living room window. It made us both jump. She had not turned the lights on in the room. She screwed her face up at us “I can hear you out there, you little cow,” she said through the glass. Then she turned her attention to me. Her face changed shape. She looked like someone else, someone familiar. It was hard to interpret what she was thinking. Her brow furrowed. She pushed her face closer to the glass and spoke in a whisper, her voice almost terrified “Who are you?”

Either she had forgotten meeting me two minutes beforehand or she was beginning to suspect the truth of my identity. Either way, I had to leave “I’m nobody,” I said.

I turned and stalked back to the car. I could feel her eyes digging into my back as I went. I paused momentarily before climbing in. The door of the house slammed shut. There were raised voices from inside. I climbed into the car and drove home. It had been a pointless visit to see an old witch whose mind had crumbled away with the clay beneath her house. Let them all fall into the sea and be sucked into the deep oceans, then, what would it matter to the world. Her two damaged princesses were loose in the world; her work here was done.

I pulled into a motorway service station to buy cigarettes and sat, smoking, in the deserted carpark outside. I was no closer to finding Katy but I began to realise that for some reason I actually felt better. It was the thought of my mother: living for all eternity in a battered cottage with an idiot who hated her; it pleased me. Where hope fails I shall always have my petty cruelties to see me through.

The next day, Kali took us out onto the call centre floor for “hands-on training”. I felt exposed having to leave the confines of the portacabin. It had been a bore but the metal shell had come to act as a cocoon. My life made no sense at all but I had the rhythm of the training and the claustrophobia of the room to sedate me.

“Today you will learn the job for real,” Kali said “No more baby-stuff in the University. You will be buddied with the more experienced workers. OK, then? Go and get your chairs.”

We had to go back to the portacabin and wheel our chairs all the way down the corridors and onto the floors. We felt stupid. You had to bend over to reach the backrest and steer the chair. It was very awkward to walk in that position and the chairs were hard to steer. I could not work out whether it was just bad planning or whether it was a liminal humiliation.

Kali made us stand in the middle of the floor where everyone else could watch “These are the rules of the floor,” she said “There will be no drinks at the desk. No tea, no coffee, no water. There will be no sweets and no gum. Anybody who needs a throat sweet will have to get permission from a team-leader. You will eventually be assigned your own team-leader. Until then, you belong to me. The team-leader’s job is to watch the call statistics on their computers. If you are falling behind then they will come and talk to you. Gossip is not allowed. You should not be chatting to your friends. You have come here to work, not to waste time. The call statistics keep track of everything that you do. They show who is on a call, how long the call has been, how many calls you have taken that day, that hour and how many people are away from their desks. You are not supposed to be away from your desk. If the team leaders see you leaving your desk, they will ask you where you were going. At the start of the day, they will give you the reports of your performance the day before. The target is ten calls and hour. If you do not make the target then we will want to know why.”

The buddies took the calls and worked the computers while the trainees sat next to them. I had to sit there with my Madonna headset, just listening to the calls. They were an unending stream of complaints and breakdowns. It was hard to put a face to any of the voices. I tried visualising them at first. It was not easy. I would mistake old women for young girls and bohemians for pub-men. After a few hours, I gave up. I could not even tell if they were black or white. There was a random intensity to the calls. As soon as one call was terminated, another would come straight in. There was no pause. You were not allowed to pause. One caller might be reasonable but the next might be immediately hostile. Whatever problem they were having with their key meters, the response was seldom as good as they had hoped. People with no power were made to wait for hours, and sometimes days, before an engineer would bother to attend. Some of the callers had already been waiting a long time. Sometimes they were waiting for jobs that had not even been booked. Mistakes were made all the time. They would hurl abuse into the telephone. There was little that you could say. Your job was to soak up the abuse and offer bogus reassurances.

The company had not been privatised for very long. As a nationalised utility, it used to run at a happy loss. There used to be shops all over the country where people could charge their keys and deal with their problems. New keys could be issued on the spot.

With privatisation, the company was attempting to make an impossible conversion to profits. They closed all of the shops and opened up a bigger call centre. It was cheaper. Now the customers had no direct interface with the company. You could not help but to reify it. It had become a faceless miser. Whereas before the customers might have had a replacement key within minutes, now it took days.

I sympathised with the callers. The system was terrible. Privatising the company had put money in the pockets of people who were already rich and took the light and heat from the homes of the poor. This was the true meaning of my job: to act as an apologist for the sale of the century. I was a whipping boy, a phantom for a face.

On my first day on the floor we took a call from a lone parent. I could hear her children crying in the background. She had run out of electricity on the meter and could not heat the bottle of milk for her baby. When she had charged the key in the shop with her last five pounds, the machine had not worked. Something had been corrupted in the key. My “buddy” told her that they would send a new key out in the post. In the meantime she could try and put more money on it. She started to cry. The buddy put her on hold and turned to me “Silly mare,” he said. He returned to the call and lectured the woman. He told her that she should always charge the key when there was still money in the meter. Why had she waited until it was gone before trying again? It was her own fault that this had happened, after all. She explained that she had been delaying putting money on the key. Her giro was late and she did not have any other money. The five pounds was supposed to have gone on food. The buddy told her to call back tomorrow. They might book a job in the morning. He was lying. She didn’t believe him but there was nothing she could do. She just hung up the phone and went back to her life. Her problems evaporated. We had never seen her face, never met her or seen the tears. She did not exist any more. We were already into the next call.

This went on all day. My frustration at the caller’s situations increased. The buddy did not understand my reactions “She was lying,” he said “They’re all lying. That’s why they’re on key meters, because they don’t pay their bills. All key meter customers are lying scum. If we called out there tonight you’d see that she probably still had a whole pound left on the meter. She was just trying it on.”

This perspective seemed to get the buddy through the day. It probably even got him to sleep at night.

They did not ask me to identify with the customers or to sympathise with their complaints. I was only asked to deploy a simulation of empathy. The irony of my growing irritation with the callers that day was the central characteristic of my new identity. I was asked to defend the company’s honour, to justify their arbitrary regulations, to rationalise their costs and encourage a relativism towards their mistakes. This is what was being sought through the ongoing process of my indoctrination. I played both roles in the game. I became the principle of my own subjection. It worked in the same way as a cult suicide.

Jim Jones got a thousand of his followers to knowingly drink poisoned grape juice in Jonestown. In the Raskol immolation, twenty thousand people committed suicide. The people who followed the cult leader’s instructions to kill themselves were not mindless automatons or suicidal maniacs. Their own sense of self was often at odds with the actions they were being asked to perform. This situation created static in the mind, a psychological feeling of dissonance. The cult members did not have the power to challenge the decisions of their organisations. They could not alter the nature of the actions and so they could not reduce the dissonance. The only way for them to break out of the unpleasant mental conflict was to reconstruct their identity, to retune themselves. In this way, their commitment was achieved through a careful fabrication, rather than an oppressive alteration.

The same dissonance was in play in the portacabins of the “University of Customer Satisfaction”. It was like the crying woman who just wanted to heat her baby’s bottle. My compassion clashed with the weary cynicism of my “buddy”. The buddies kept telling me “All key meter customers are lying scum.” The belief was so common that it had become an organisational taboo. In logging notes on files the customer was referred to as “CONS”, short for consumer. Reports always began “CONS claims...” as if doubt preceded all else. Teamleaders actively discouraged any display of sympathy outside of the repetition of standardised platitudes. Crusading on behalf of unjustly disconnected households would be regarded as an offensively emotional display of gullibility. In my first day I had witnessed the static in action within my own mind as I had become increasingly frustrated with the clash between my unwanted sympathy and their mandatory cynicism. The workload was demanding enough without the extra conflict. At some unknown point, I feared that I would begin to make the adjustment to scepticism just as a means to cope with the day.

A sociopathic disregard for the customer was endorsed as part of the work culture. The promotion of office values was undertaken on the floor by the teamleaders. On that first day I witnessed several examples of teamleaders encouraging a callous attitude that far outstripped the answering-machine-indifference I had expected of a call centre. An old woman’s key meter ran out of money and disconnected her supply, leaving her trapped halfway up her stairs on her electric-powered chairlift. I had been shocked by my teamleader’s response. They had refused to prioritise an emergency callout and suggested that the situation was the fault of the woman concerned, who should have foreseen such a possibility. I also overhead a situation where a caller had been fitted with an electronic tag by the probation services to enforce a house-arrest. They had lost their key and were unable to recharge their meter. Once the few pennies left on their machine were used, the power on the tag would be disconnected and the police would be automatically summoned to return them to prison. The official company response was beyond the usual “he shouldn’t have a key meter, then”. I was told that if the customer had not broken the law in the first place, none of this would have happened.

The call centre was like a McDonalds burger bar. It was built to obliterate any trace of the personal. It was institutionally solipsistic.

Halfway through the day, I stole outside for a cigarette. To hide the smell on my breath, I decided to chew some gum. I was not going to be speaking on the phones so it should not have mattered. Returning to my seat, I continued listening-in to the calls. After a few minutes I noticed Kali out of the corner of my eye. She was heading straight towards us. She stopped in front of me and held out her hand, palm upwards, barely looking at me.

I considered giving her a high-five but decided against it. She was not happy. I tried to smile up at her. She ignored me and kept her hand held out towards me “Er, yes?” I said.

“The gum,” she replied.

It took a moment to process. Then I realised: she wanted me to spit the gum out into her hand. It was a profoundly sadistic moment. The other trainees were starting to gawk over at us. I was taking so long to comply that it was beginning to look like a battle of wills. Kali was the first to pick up on it.

“Now,” she said.

I could not bring myself to comply. The gesture was a theatrical set-piece from junior school. The teacher would be sending the signal out that they were the alpha member of the tribe through the fact that they betrayed no squeamishness at the thought of the chewing gum being spat into their hands. No child would have permitted such an action from another child. The thought of the saliva on the gum and the infant’s primal fear of the contagious would prevent them. But here was authority, here was adulthood: superior, unafraid, disgusting.

Her eyes widened. I had taken too long to respond. I was now in open defiance. She flared her nostrils in preparation of attack.

I swallowed hard. I opened my mouth mockingly to show that the gum had gone. Gulping the gum was the last vestige of the playground rebel. I had removed the forbidden object so the infraction itself had ceased but I had not obeyed the order literally. So my dignity was retained.

Kali was furious. This was the worst outcome for her. She needed a new strategy. She turned her back on me as if I did not exist anymore. “My enemy”, her body language said, “Has been vanquished and is no longer a threat.” She coughed and addressed the floor out loud. Her voice was strong enough to carry from one end of the room to the next. There was not a trace of weakness or intimidation in it “The next person found chewing gum at their desks,” she paused, eyes blazing around to catch every worker’s attention, even those on calls “Will be sacked. That is all.”

She returned to her desk without another word and without another glance in my direction.

That evening, in an act of industrial defiance, I stole a telephone. I picked it up from one of the empty training rooms and slipped it into my bag. It was a simpler model than the turrets on the training floor but it still came with a headset rather than the domestic models with handsets. There was an LCD display of incoming and outgoing numbers. I was smiling as I drove home. I felt like I had taken the first step in defending my humanity.

Eventually, our induction came to an end. We got our first wages on our final day of training. It was a special occasion. We had to travel to a hotel in town instead of going to the call centre as usual. This was for a final assessment in telephony skills. I never understood why it would not be conducted in the call centre where they already had a thousand telephones. But I never asked. I was just grateful to have a day away from the place.

I spent the first taste of my wages on some new clothes and bought some peroxide to bleach my hair. I wore sunglasses. It felt like the last day of term. I walked down the hill in the morning, my legs full of Friday. The road shrank beneath me until I came upon the hotel. It was a grand Regency building just off the seafront. The plaster was crumbling slightly around the cornices but it still held its dignity and charm. The interior was submerged beneath layers of chipped mahogany and scuffed brass. I checked at the desk and discovered that I had arrived an hour early. There was a café across the street so I crossed over for a coffee and a read of the newspapers.

The café was called Pasta La Vista, Baby. It was painted red from pavement to chimney and was bedecked in driftwood furniture. A large wrought-metal sculpture hung from a flag pole above the door. The inside was overflowing with green-leafed plants and Sunday supplements. Two Italian students sat slumped behind the espresso machine, poking absently at the pasta in the salad bar. They were listening to a tape of Ennio Morricone soundtracks at full volume and making a job of ignoring the customers. The place smelt of cakes and cigarettes.

I managed to order a coffee and even dragged a smile out of one of them. The coffee came in rectangular fashion-china. I took it upstairs and sat by the open window watching the morning sun mess about on the surface of the sea. I thumbed through the papers. They were full of mania for the upcoming solar eclipse. I blew on my coffee to cool it down and took a sip.

“Hey, Beauregarde!”

I turned around in my seat to see who was being shouted at. Leon appeared on the stairs. He was shouting at me. I put the coffee down “Oh, hi,” I said.

“Boring person,” he snorted. My response had disappointed him. I wished that I had thought of something more exiting to say. I had not noticed before how keen I was to impress him. He climbed the stairs with his feline gait and crossed over to me. His hair was closely cropped and he wore a bright, summer-patterned shirt. I noticed that he was wearing leather shoes. They were white with rhinestones on them that frittered away the light that they caught. He was also wearing glasses, for the first time. They were oblong slits with black frames.

“Glasses,” I said “They make you look like a space captain.”

He hit me on the shoulder gently with his menu “Wanker.”

“I was being nice!” I protested.

“I don’t wanna be no space captain. I wanna be a contract killer for the Cosa Nastra,” he said, pointing his hand at me in the shape of a gun.

He took the chair that was facing me and pulled it around the side of the table to sit closer.

“So that’s why you work in customer services, is it?” I asked.

“Eh, fuck you, cafone,” he replied “This is just my cover.”

“I better watch out then, you might whack me or something.”

“Tell you what, Blueberry, you buy me a coffee and we’ll forget about it.”

“Eh, you fuggedabahdit,” I said.

His smile disappeared and the playfulness dropped out of his face “What was that?”

“What?” I said.

“Was that supposed to be a mafia accent?” he fanned himself with the menu, leaning back in his chair “Shit, I think I’m going to need that coffee.”

I went downstairs to buy his a drink. It felt good. I was joking with a handsome boy in a café in the summer by the beach. Everything else seemed a million miles away. When I went back upstairs and sat down, he put his hand on my knee momentarily. I was charged by his touch. He was awash with scents: jasmine shampoo in his hair and coconut butter on his skin. They lounged into my head and drifted around inside. It was a beautiful day.

And then The Gimp arrived. He was wearing a faux-fox-fur coat and a panama hat. There were traces of eyeliner and glitter about his face. I was dismayed to see that he had also decided to bleach his hair. It was a disaster.

“Twins!” he shouted, pointing at my hair.

“Oh no,” Leon whispered, grabbing my arm “We have to escape.”

I stood “We were just going,” I explained with what I hoped was a disappointed air.

The Gimp flourished a pocket watch from his waistcoat and held it up to his face “We’ve still got twenty minutes!” he laughed “Don’t be such a teacher’s pet, maaaan.”

Seeing how close Leon was sitting to me seemed to inspire him. He dragged a chair around and parked himself right in between us. We were practically sitting in his lap. I pushed my chair back to make some room. It scraped on the floorboards “Not so close,” I sighed.

The Gimp pretended to be hurt “But I just want to be loved!” he laughed and slapped his fist on the table. While we tried to blank him, he snatched up a menu and started planning his breakfast “What are you two lovebirds having?”

I almost blushed. I looked over at Leon but he was ignoring us both.

The rest of the day was a breeze. The Gimp managed to irritate the trainer so much that she let us go early. The whole team was in a good mood; so much so that we even agreed to the Gimp’s plan for a post-work drink. We found a rowdy Irish pub near to the hotel and piled in. Bedraggled locals welcomed us in over their drinks, glad for the company. The bar staff were drunk already. The Pogues were on the jukebox and all of the window shutters were open. Everything was made of stripped wood that glowed maroon in the strange glow of a Turkish-glass chandelier. Within the first round, the pub had set out to sea as a pirate ship full of screaming buccaneers. The Gimp was riverdancing by the speakers while we cheered him on. I chain-smoked and flipped beer-mats over the edge of the table. Leon hammered back the shots and the rounds kept coming. We were all flush. We were all free and it was a Friday afternoon.

The pub filled up with drinkers. They poured into the bar one after the other until the place was rammed. The jukebox switched to the Kinks as the daylight trickled out of the battered sky. The other trainees began to drift away in mad quests for something to eat, desperate timers counting down in their stomachs to find something to soak up the booze before it overtook them. Leon and I kept drinking steadily. We watched them all go. Amateurs. After a while we moved into the lounge bar where it was quieter.

The music dropped away quite suddenly. The volume of voices in the bar diminished. The next song on the jukebox had begun quietly. Everybody strained to listen. A thin baritone struggled out over tom-toms “Atmosphere,” I said “Joy Division. I haven’t heard this in ages.”

We sat in silence for a while, listening to the music play. After a time, Leon’s face took on a faraway frown “He was an epileptic,” he said.

“Who?”

“Ian Curtis. All the best people are epileptics.”

“I’m not an epliptic,” I said.

“Yes,” he nodded “As I was saying…”

I thumped his arm lightly.

“Seriously though,” he continued “Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Dostoyevsky, Van Gogh, Socrates, Byron, Kierkegaard…”

“Henry Winkler.”

He scrunched up his face “Henry Winkler?”

“Yeah. Well, you were scraping the barrel a bit with Kierkegaard anyway. Henry Winkler’s an epileptic. Don’t ask me why I know that. I have literally no idea.”

“Who the fuck is Henry Winkler?”

“The Fonz! The shark-jumper!”

“The what?”

“Nevermind. Television trivia isn’t your thing, fine. How come you know so much about it anyway?”

He seemed reticent to speak about it, but I continued to stare at him stupidly without saying anything and I left him with no choice “My mother and my father,” he said, sighing “They both have epilepsy. I’m supposed to have it to but I don’t believe them. I only had a tiny fit, once or twice, when I was a little boy. I’m sure I don’t have it anymore. But I used to read about it in the library, all the time. I was practically terrified that any day- bam! – I would suddenly develop it from nowhere. But it never happened.”

“You know, Saint Vitus is the patron saint of epilepsy.”

“No, it’s Saint Valentine.”

“Well they can’t both be,” I said. I felt that I was the expert on the subject, having studied the life of the saints in detail at the end of a wooden cane in Sunday school.

“Well maybe Valentine is the saint of epileptics and Vitus is the Saint of epilepsy.”

“No, that’s stupid.”

“You’re stupid,” he said.

I loved the juvenility of his insults. I tried to respond in kind but I think that he had tired of the discussion “At least I know who Henry Winkler is.”

“Shut up and buy me another drink.”

“What are you, a teamleader? Set the clock, then, time how long it takes me.”

When I got back, Leon told me a story about his neighbours. He lived on the top flat of a converted house. The window in his room overlooked a row of houses and gardens. At night, he said, he liked to sit out on his balcony drinking wine and watching them go about their lives.

“I saw one of my neighbours naked once,” I said over my pint.

Leon’s eye brightened “What did he look like?”

“Young. Girl. Red hair.”

Leon sat on the edge of the chair and gripped both of my knees “Tell me exactly how it happened, all the details. Omit nothing.”

I was compelled to tell him the whole story. The hot beam of his attention propelled me along. I told him everything, how I was sitting in the branches of my secret yew tree with the whisky when I had seen her, how she caught me spying at her; Leon’s excitement only grew.

“Show me her!” he said.

“What do you mean? You’re crazy, guy. You have to climb up on top of a church. And it’s a big church. And you have to sit up a tree. And what if she’s not there? It was a one-off. It only happened once. She’s not gonna be there again.”

“No, she will, she will. She’ll be there again. We have to do everything just exactly the way you did it. We’ll stage a re-enactment of the whole thing, just the same, exactly the same. It will be an act of magic, dark magic. You believe in magic? It will work. We will go there and he will come back again and we can see him.”

I let him talk me into it. It was a stupid plan but I was drunk and I liked the idea of spending more time with him. Besides, I had nothing else to do and nobody else to do it with. I could feel the chance of his company like a bane to my lonely existence in the house.

“Valentine’s Day started in England, you know?” I didn’t get the feeling that he was listening to me but I rambled on regardless “Because they used to think that February the 14^th was the day that birds paired off for mating. Don’t believe me, it’s in Chaucher and a Midsummer Night’s Dream. The only thing is, we used to have a different calendar in the sixteenth century: everything’s moved forwards now by ten days. The day we used to call February the 14^th, the day the birds pair off, well now that’s what we call the 24^th. And who celebrates that? But people still follow the legend about the birds. A woman’s supposed to be able to tell what kind of man she’s going to marry from the bird she sees flying on Valentine’s Day. If you see a robin you’ll marry a sailor. If you see a sparrow you’ll marry a poor man but you’ll be happy. If you see a goldfinch you’ll marry a millionaire. It didn’t say whether you’ll be happy or not, though. I can’t remember ever seeing anything other than pigeons on Valentines Day… and there’s no magic or precognition in a city pigeon, just nasty bugs and pollution.”

We went back to the shop where I had bought the whisky. I thought nothing of the money. The people in the shop watched me carefully. The little boy was still sitting by the till. It was as if he had not moved since the night of the funeral.

As we passed my house, I asked him if he wanted to come in. I was going cold on the idea of sitting in a tree all night. He was not interested “Just take me to the church. I don’t care about your stupid house,” he said.

He was not daunted by the sight of the fence to climb or the scale of the sloping roof. I doubted that he would have minded even if it had been twice the size. His mind was set upon it and there was nothing that could be done. He kicked off his ridiculous shoes and just left them behind in the street.

I jumped up and climbed over. He followed me quickly. His movements were swift and sure. He pulled himself up onto the rooftop like he had been climbing there his whole life. I was careful in my directions to take the gap between the roof and the tree with caution but he managed the jump with a feral grace that put me to shame. We were able to sit two abreast on a flat section of the trunk overlooking the back gardens. There was not much space so we sat close together. He sat on my left.

“Which window was it?” he asked.

I pointed it out “That one. So what now?”

“Now we wait,” he said.

I uncorked the whisky and offered his a drink. We sat drinking together, passing the bottle back and forth while I told his about the last time I had been there. He seemed to be paying attention while I recounted the mad scramble across the garden fences. I watched the expressions play across his face in reaction to the story. I was reaching the climax of the tale where I was struggling to escape from the pool. He nodded in interest. But the moment he spotted movement in the window, he put his finger to my lips and whispered to be quiet.

The naked girl appeared through the window frame. Time seemed to stop. She shook a towel through her wet hair. There must have been music playing inside the room. She was dancing slowly as she dried herself and began laying out her clothes.

Leon put his hand inside my skirt. His skin was as cold as electricity. I was moved by his touch. He was facing straight ahead at the girl in the window. It did not take me long. The girl put on her underwear piece by piece, turning and moving to the invisible music. I came, and Leon took his hand away. He smiled at me and climbed back down onto the roof of the church without saying anything. The girl finished dressing and left the room. By the time that I had composed myself, Leon had disappeared into the night. He had taken the whisky bottle with him.

There was a hangover the next day. It was an all-consuming horror. My skull and my stomach were competing to see which one of them could inflict the most torture. I lay on the bed for hours, twisting myself into knots beneath the sheet. The curtains had not been closed properly. Wounds of light cut into the room. They were blinding spotlights that pierced my forehead. I wanted to get out of the bed and close the curtains but I was afraid to move. I knew that I would vomit as soon as I rose. There was no way of preventing it. Somehow I schemed to avoid the event by staying in bed. This only appeared to prolong the overture. I was lost in a timeless pity of the self. No amount of procrastination would really save me, I knew that. I was only stalling. The bitter bile would still be waiting for me even if I fell into a coma for the next twenty years. In truth, the only thing that would save me was a glass of flat coke and a walk around the block in the fresh air. But I was too young to have learnt such lessons yet.

How I regretted the amount that I had drunk the night before. It was almost inconceivable that anyone could be so negligent of the laws of cause and effect. Was there not a point, some obvious moment when I should have stopped? When the pub began to revolve around me like a zoetrope? When I dropped my glass on the way back from the bar? Why had I not given a single thought to the next day? Was I now suffering the revenge of some self-loathing pursuit of oblivion? Did I truly hate myself that much or was it far simpler: was I just a fool?

The pain in my skull came in waves while the pain in my stomach boiled ceaselessly. I was overcome with the urgent need to urinate. This was it. This would be my downfall. Short of soiling my own sheets, there was no way out of the trap. I would have to get up. At least I would be in the bathroom when it happened.

As it turned out, I did not make the bathroom in time. While crouched on my hands and knees vomiting onto the landing carpet, I became aware that the need to urinate had subsided. And yet it had been so pressing only moments before. I retched again. Could it be possible that my bladder was also conspiring to punish me? Had it all been an elaborate setup? I retched again. This time there was precious left bar thin bile and drool. I felt winded. No, the setup was hardly elaborate. Crisis passed, I still needed the bathroom.

Once ensconced in the bathroom, my belly regrouped and sent forth a second salvo. I could not move from my seat, preoccupied as I was. This time I projected into the bathtub.

Cleaning up the house afterwards, I considered how much it resembled a crime scene. Multiple homicides. One dead upon the landing, another taken down in the bath and one more, the walking wounded, attempting to get rid of the evidence.

I wallowed in a dressing gown and cups of tea and children’s television. The painkillers had little potency. The phone rang once. The bells stung my ears. I put cushions over my head and tried to block out the noise. It stopped eventually. I went back to the screen and prayed for sleep.

The phone rang again in the afternoon. I had not left the sofa all day. Cursing my misfortune, I went out into the hallway and picked up the phone.

“What?” I said.

“Violet?”

It was Katy.

Chapter Ten

Beech

“Katy, Christ! Where the fuck are you? I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Where have you been? Are you okay?”

“Violet,” Katy spoke with difficulty “I’m in a psychiatric hospital.”

“No, seriously, where are you?”

“I am not joking.”

I sat down. My first thought was that there had been a mistake. Something had gone horribly wrong and they had locked her away by accident. They must have been holding her against her will. I thought about the chemical lobotomies of the dissidents in the Psikhushkas and the death of Wally Hope. It had to be some conspiracy, a government plot or a secret police kidnapping. I remembered a story about how they would take your shoes away so that you could not escape. How fortunate that Katy had found a telephone. I would rescue her from them and I could still be a hero to my sister “Right. Tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you. Do you need me to bring shoes?”

“What are you talking about? Why do I need shoes?”

She did not know what I meant. I was confusing her. She sounded angry and I felt stupid “But tell me where they’re keeping you, I’ll come and get you out.”

“No,” the line went quiet for a while “I want to be here. I’m sick.”

“What do you mean, you’re sick? You’re not sick, you’re my sister,” I could feel something stinging the backs of my eyes. I did not realise that it was the herald of tears “I don’t understand what’s happening!”

Katy mumbled something. It sounded like she was talking with her mouth full.

“Say that again, I didn’t understand.”

“I said it’s hard to talk. The medication. It’s making my tongue swell up. It’s a side effect,” then she said something that might have been “So I can’t talk anymore. I need to go now.”

“Just tell me where you are! I’m coming straight there!”

“No,” Katy coughed and tried to swallow “Tomorrow. It’ll be better tomorrow. Come midday. I am in Magdalene Ward.”

“Which hospital? Which hospital is that in?”

Katy tried to say something else but her words were incomprehensible. I could hear her sobbing. There was a sound of the telephone receiver being dropped on the floor at the other end of the line.

“Katy? Katy!” I hung onto the phone even after the line died. There was a digital tone, a long beep like the flatline on a cardiac meter. It sounded like an air-raid siren. Then a mechanical voice came on the line, female and clipped “Please hang up the phone. The other caller has disconnected. Please hang up the phone. The other caller has disconnected.”

I smashed the telephone against the wall “Fuck!” I took the telephone in my hands and slammed it against the wall, again and again until it began to splinter and burst “Fuck!” microchips and wires and fragments of plastic rained out of it “Fuck!” I was crying. I kicked the balustrades out of the staircase, one by one, in bare feet, until the hall was full of broken wood and the sides of my feet were bleeding “Fuck!”

The fight left me. I was left clinging to the handrail while my body fell away beneath me. I sat there until it grew dark, my chest rising and falling. And then I started drinking again.

The next day I woke early. I still needed to find out which hospital Katy was in. I had a plan for a way to do it, but I would need to make a telephone call and the telephone still lay in pieces on the stairs. I picked up the fragments. There was no way of repairing it. I was sunk. I needed to find out the last number that had dialled but there was no way I would be able to buy another telephone receiver on a Sunday. Without a new telephone, there was no way of finding out the number. And then I remembered: the telephone that I had stolen from the call centre. I ran upstairs and rooted around in the drawers until I found it. I took it back down to the hall and plugged it in. Slipping the headset over my ears, I heard the dialling tone. It purred like a Siamese cat on a hearth rug. My fingers dialled 1471. The robotic voice gave me the number of the payphone that Katy had called me on. I hung up and dialled again. The payphone rang twice before being answered. It was a woman. I prayed that she was a nurse or an orderly at least. I asked for the name of the hospital. The voice at the other end started laughing. I asked again. This time she let out a stream of obscenities and hung up. I dialled again. She answered again. I was getting nowhere.

I decided to try a different tactic. I dialled another number. It was one I knew by heart. A digital voice asked me to pick a number between one and ten. What a joke. You should never give the fucker the satisfaction. I just ignored the voice. After pleading with me to push a button, any button, it abruptly put me through to a ringing tone. Within a minute, I had a human. A few seconds later, I connected to the key meter call centre. I did not recognise the voice that answered but I told her who I was and that I needed to speak to Revenue Protection. She put me through. A man answered. It was the officer who had lectured us in the portacabin. I could just picture him going in on a Sunday for the overtime. I pushed my hatred aside and began the pitch. I told him that I had a tip-off from the police on a bypassed meter and I just needed to verify the meter serial number. I gave the name of the hospital ward and the telephone number that Katy had called from. The officer clicked away on her keyboard and came back with a serial number “This is a bit weird,” he said “This meter is for a mental hospital.”

“Really? Which one?” I asked casually.

“Saddleworth Hall.”

I hung up. It was all I needed to know. I went upstairs, logged on to the Internet on Katy’s computer and googled the name. They did not have a website but their address was listed on an NHS site. I even managed to find a map.

Saddleworth Hall was a long drive out into the country. I drove quickly. The city behind me dropped down into stunted developments. The green overtook the grey. The houses I passed grew smaller and smaller. The landscape reduced, runting away from the hills into the flatlands between the downs. Everything became increasingly squat and mean. The trees were black thunderstruck stumps along the roadside, wrecked around with hawthorn and nettles. Clouds dropped down low to escape the sun, blotting the sky in muted colours.

I slowed the car as I left the main roads. A pale horse followed the car as I passed by a fenced-in field. The horse had yellow eyes, bereft of will. It came to the edge of its prison and turned away, abandoning me to continue the journey alone. Twisted bushes and hedgerows crowded the roadside. Collapsed sections of brick wall dotted the path. I passed the ruins of a gatehouse and drove through into the hospital grounds. There was a small sign at the turning with the name of the hospital embossed onto its dented surface. It had been left to fester and rust. The decision had been taken in days past to allow it to degenerate. It was considered discreet. In truth it was hard to believe that the entire establishment had not been closed down some long time ago. I wondered whether my sister might just have been squatting an abandoned building in the hope that it might return to its former purpose. But a car passed me on the turning, travelling in the other direction. The hospital must still have been in use.

The buildings were low and pathetic. They looked like the sort of things you might see at the back of a playing field, rotting. An ugly beech stood inside of a derelict gate-house, pushing up and out through the windows. Its trunk, visible through a collapsed section of wall, was horribly distorted and swollen. Many of the branches spiralled off from it, pointing downwards towards to the ground as if afraid of the sun and rooting out for the darkness of the weird earth that spawned it. The tree looked like it had been hacked into shape by successive generations of insane gardeners, pruning the burrs in mockery of good surgery. It made for a grim welcome.

A huge clock tower dominated the hospital grounds beyond the gate-house. It rose out of the depressed landscape and shoved an accusing finger at the empty seat behind the clouds. Around its base lay the rubbled foundations of earlier buildings. Clearly, some decades of demolition had stripped away the rest of the supporting architecture. The tower must once have been surrounded with three or four storey blocks. Now that they were gone, the tower was lent an awful aspect of loneliness and dementia; it had become a folly by default. Each of the four clock faces revealed a different time. It added to the sense of dislocation in the grounds. I could not imagine how four broken and contradictory clocks could possibly aid the confusion of mental illness. The tower would have cast four separate shadows if it could.

I remembered how, on the day of the funeral, Katy had claimed that a yew tree in a cemetery will act as a pin to hold the spirits of the dead in place. If she was right then the clock tower was there to perform a similar act of sorcery; it nailed insanity down into the earth. Fractured souls would be snared by its warring faces and forever kept from the sane and the shallow outside. It was a pronged and barbarous device.

There were two long, low wards near to the gates. A few cars were parked outside them. The two buildings were little more than Nissen huts. I sensed that one of them had to be Magdalene. I got out of the car. There was nobody else around. Behind each ward was a yard enclosed by fences like a school playground. They were dark in the shadows of the wards. Rings of trees behind them had crept up to the fence itself and sealed them in. I walked around to the front. The paint was peeling on the walls. A broken bench stood outside a set of double doors. They were painted blue and were heavily chipped. Someone had carved “Jesus, I don’t want to die alone” into the wood. Beneath that, someone had written an obscene sonnet to his niece. It was written in marker pen. It would have been easy to wipe it off or at least to paint over it. But I could tell by the stain of the ink that it had to be at least a year or two old. It was the first thing you saw when you approached the threshold and yet nobody had ever seen fit to remove it. I felt sickened by the neglect and carelessness.

I found a sign next to the entrance. This was the correct ward. I pushed through the doors and walked in. The ward was on two floors. The ground floor was essentially a wide corridor full of low chairs and a few tables. There was no carpet on the floor. Immediately next to the door was a disorganised board of notices and posters. They were all out of date. Heaps of leaflets were pilled up around a table. There was a diary for guests to sign. I ignored it. To my right there was an office with plastic glass in the windows. Two nurses sat inside, talking to each other over a clipboard. They glanced up to see me come and then, without acknowledging me at all, returned to their work. I walked on inside.

Everything was covered in grease and dust. The wipe-down surfaces had been wiped down so many times that they were full of holes. The air smelt like weak, diluted detergent and piss.

The sound levels were wrong. A television was playing in an unseen room. The sound had been turned up to a deafening volume. Competing with this, a tinny speaker piped Sinatra into the ward. In the background, I could hear raised voices and what sounded like a woman screaming. A furious machine was trying to blast conditioned air into the ward. I passed the whirring fans but the only air to stir was that in front of the vents that pumped heat out away from the overcranked motor. There was a constant hum beneath all of this, like the engines of a steamship. I guessed that it was either the plumbing or some laundry machines in the basement. The effect upon the ears was alarming. It shook shoehorns into the brain. But the faces before me were silent and impassive. There was little in the way of bedlam about the patients. It seemed that it was the building itself that raged in madness.

There were a number of people in the ward. They wore baggy sports clothing, bathrobes, slippers, tracksuit bottoms and t-shirts. Their haircuts were uniformly misarrayed. Few of the men had shaved. Almost all of them were smoking. I understood this at least. The cycles of craving and redemption inherent in the nicotine addiction would give you something to hold onto in the long hours of your own unravelling; something to do with your hands besides killing yourself. Although bereft of energy, the patients managed to exhibit some of the classic symptoms of madness that I had expected- the pacing up and down, the mumbling speech, the rocking back and forth in the seat, the drooling and the weary inertia of despair. I did not realise what I would come to understand: that these were not the signs of insanity at all but were in truth the side effects of the hateful medication.

There were few nurses or auxiliary staff to be seen, but then it was a Sunday. Maybe the staffing was better during the week, I thought. Not that the days would make any difference to the people forced to live there. They were bored. They seemed to weave their way through the ward with a fatalistic effort to avoid contact with the patients.

Katy materialised from behind a partition. The first thing that I noticed was her feet: she wore trainers, not slippers. At least she had some decent footwear if she wanted to leave. But Katy always wore boots and I did not recognise the shoes that she was wearing. I wondered what had happened to Katy’s boots.

Her wild black hair hung thinly against her head like the wings of a dead bird. Her chestnut eyes were set back inside the skull, surrounded by a moat of grey skin. She wore a sleeveless black T-shirt and leather trousers. Her mouth hung open; dehydrated and brave. She was trying to smile.

I embraced her and spoke into her ear “I found you. I found you. I’m going to look after you, from here on in, I’m going to do it properly, I’m sorry, I swear.”

“It’s alright. I’m okay,” Katy placed her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back. She was conscious of the eyes of the ward. She was embarrassed by the emotional display. She did not want the other patients to see her with me “Come on, V, we’ll go outside. We can walk.”

Katy led me back outside through a set of French windows in the flank of the hall. I was surprised that nobody even checked where we were going. I almost asked Katy if she was sure it was okay.

Katy walked me away from the ward. We passed through the overgrown ruins of an ornamental garden. The pathway rose and fell as it traversed forgotten flowerbeds, overgrown with mossy grass. It was a gloomy morning beneath the low clouds. The clock tower was forever in our line of sight. I did not know how or where to begin. We walked together in a silence that was both awkward and intimate.

Beyond the garden there was a complex of buildings. Most of them were strung about with dereliction signs and notices of imminent demolitions. The windows were glassless and boarded over. A single building remained intact. It was shaped like a hayloft but had been fitted with heavy security doors. The walls were covered with bars. There were dim lights coming from inside, but the place was as silent as a salt lake. Katy pointed to the building “That’s the lock-down ward. It’s where they put me in when I first came here. You can’t go outside when you’re in there. It’s a secure ward, for psychopaths. Like Arkham for the criminally insane. I shouldn’t have been in there. I got beaten up and they took me out and put me in Magdalene.”

“You got beaten up?” I saw my sister in my mind, lying on the floor of the ward with a bloody nose. I thought it was the worst image I had ever seen. I could not imagine a more saddening event.

Katy sat against a low wall “Give me a second. I’m not used to the walking.”

“We can go back in if you need to.”

“No. No, I want to show you the grounds,” Katy trailed off. I lit her a cigarette and she seemed to come back into focus as she smoked. It obviously required a large amount of effort for her to concentrate, like jogging underwater. Katy set her chin forward; resolute that it would not defeat her “They’re closing this place down. I might be the last person that ever gets admitted here. They want to move everyone to this new place they built so they’re letting all of the old hospitals fall down. Then they’ll have to close them all. It’s a money thing. There’s only the three wards left going here. But it’s not the end of the world. It’s just the end of the pier.”

“What do you mean?”

Katy tried to smile again. Her lips formed a crooked shape. She gave a nervous laugh and it fell away “This place is screwed. The nurses couldn’t give a damn about any of it. They’re all going to lose their jobs. And we don’t care because we’re all mad. This is Auschwitz and the Americans are coming.”

“What happened, Katy, how did you end up here?”

Katy inhaled the smoke like it was a spliff. She breathed out towards her chest, her chin down low “It’s just like, that’s not the easiest thing to talk about.”

“You’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I’m the only family you’ve got now and you’re the only person I’ve got. We have to be straight with each other.”

She looked up at me with her head cocked to one side “Do you remember when we were kids? When we used to fight all the time? Why were you like that? You were three years older than me. You should have been looking after me, protecting me from bullies and teaching me to read a bike and shit.”

“I’m sorry, I know I haven’t always been the best sister to you and I…”

“No, no. that’s not how I meant it. Shit. Everything’s coming out all wrong. It’s the medication. It mongs your head so you can’t put things the right way. I didn’t mean it like I was telling you off. You did what you did for a reason but it wasn’t your fault, I know that now. You were just a kid too. What I meant was: do you know why you were like that? Did you ever work it out? Because I understood it when Dad died and I realised that I still hated you,” Katy turned and fixed me with a look of pride in the face of fear “I always hated you. When you were a boy.”

“I know. I think I always knew that. I don’t blame you,” as an admission of culpability, I realised that it did not go very far. I had never really faced up to my own capacity for cruelty and was happier to just accept the effects of my behaviour rather than seek atonement. Katy’s forgiveness would not have undone the past nor would it have made an adequate substitute for the punishments that I felt I deserved.

“But on the day of the funeral, when I was lying down at Janet’s waiting to comedown off the acid, I was just staring at the ceiling and thinking about how weird it was that dad was gone and I still felt the same about you. I don’t know. It’s hard to put it into words even if everything else was straight. At the time I saw it like the thoughts in my head were projections on the ceiling or, like, you remember those Viewmasters? They were like these plastic red goggle things that you put over your eyes and there was a slot for these disks, these reels to go into and they projected these slides onto the lenses of, like, cartoons or scenes from the Bible or Snoopy and stuff and the picture was always really oversaturated with colour and kind of 3D so you felt like you could touch it? It was like that, but it was the thoughts in my head and my emotions and I was watching them and they were like these little plays and they didn’t make any sense. I mean, we fought all the time because no one loved us. There was so little attention or affection to go around. When we lived with mother she might have one good word to say to one of us in a year. The rest of the time it was just discipline and the stick and random punishments… So we had to compete with each other and we had to fight and if you were dead then I would be the only one and then maybe she would be nicer to me, you know, just like, maybe she would love me then. And then when we were sent to live with dad and she didn’t want us either… it was the same. They were both cunts.”

“I used to think that I gave you a hard time because I was being picked on at school,” I said “But, yes, that was just an excuse because it was better that way. I didn’t want to believe that I needed love from anybody. It was easier to tell myself… I don’t know. But I don’t see how this relates to what happened, Katy? Why did you leave?”

Katy sighed heavily. She summoned up the strength to begin again “Someone was going to die.”

Chapter Eleven

English Oak

“It was the police that picked me up,” she said “They stopped me in on the railway bridge… I was barefoot, I guess I don’t know what happened to my boots. I had this thing inside me, this thing that I knew was going to make me hurt someone and I didn’t want it to happen. I would rather be dead than let it happen so I went down to the railway tracks to walk on the line because I thought that would do it. But I was climbing down the bank and I realised that somebody from the trains was running down to catch me. She chased me and I ran into the woods and hid myself there while she went away. Then I got back up to the road and found the bridge over the railway. I thought it would be high enough to kill me if I jumped off so I went up there but there were so many people around, I couldn’t do it without someone stopping me. So I went to a chemist’s. I thought I could buy some pills but they kept telling me I had to go to my GP and I couldn’t get anything so I just walked around until it got dark and then I went back to the bridge. I climbed up onto the wall and there was this old woman just came out of nowhere and told me to stop. She asked me my name and I told her “Katy” and she kept saying “Katy, we can sort this out, don’t do it, whatever it is, we can sort it out” and I started thinking, you know, she seems nice, maybe I do want to talk to someone about it so I thought about climbing down. But then I saw these two policemen running towards me and I just jumped. But I missed the jump and I slipped and I just fell over so I was still on this ledge on the side of the bridge and they caught me and pulled me back up before I could jump off. Then I don’t really remember much. I was kind of agitated. The duty sergeant in the police station sectioned me. Then I was in the lock-down ward and they were giving me drugs but I still felt the same way. I still needed to stop myself, to terminate the mission. I tried to get out, so that I… to jump from the roof… but the nurses caught me and took me to this room. While they were there this other one went off and then, and then they searched my bed and found the knife I had made… I was going to cut my throat. I’d stolen two plastic knives from the meal times and hidden them in my mattress. They’d given me a razor to shave with and I managed to take out one of the blades before I gave it back and I did it carefully so they didn’t notice. I used a lighter to melt the blade in between the two knives. But they found it under my mattress and they took it away. After a while I got out of that ward and they put me here because I said I didn’t want to do it anymore. And I don’t. I don’t know what changed but one night it just fell away like a bag of cement from my back and I felt lighter and I didn’t have to do it anymore, I knew that I didn’t need to stop myself. The danger had passed over, like the black angel in the night, like the Passover. This was a few weeks ago now, I’m not really sure how long exactly I’ve been here, how long I’ve been away…”

“It’s been over a month.”

Katy could tell that I was about to press her for information again. She was not ready to talk about it and she needed to deflect the moment. She stood and brushed her trousers down “Come on,” she said “Let’s carry on walking, there’s more to see.”

The grounds were in an advanced state of ruin. We walked through them together. I felt like an ant among the bones of a decomposing giant. The decline was so pronounced that I was often unable to tell where the buildings stopped and the trees began. Everything was unrecognisable from its original form. Sections of wall ran away into nothing without any visible intent. We followed pathways that may have once been roads or may just as easily have been the wearing over of the tracks of rabbits. It was a collapsing of wintry civilisation into nature. There was something frightening and insane about the whole place. A cricket pavilion stood ensnared in a field of dense bracken piled up over its roof. It was impossible to tell where the playing field would have been. Katy dragged me through a bush into a clearing in the undergrowth. A rusted metal frame ran through the foliage, holding the bigger plants back. A gate hung from a broken hinge, leading into the interior of the frame. It was a large cage, the floor thick with a deep carpet of weeds and grasses. The cage was bisected by a tangled netting of rope and vines. Beneath the weeds I could make out the intermittent stain of white paint marking lines across the ground.

“What is it?” I asked Katy.

“They have activities and occupational therapy and sports for the patients to help you recover. You know what this is?” she laughed her nervous laugh “This is the tennis court,” she frowned at me with force in her eyes, desperate to make sure that I understood the point that she was trying to make. For a second I became disconnected from the world under the pressure of her stare. I stepped back out of my body to reflect objectively on the scene and all that I could see was the madness in her eyes. I came back to myself, nodding. I think I understood what she was trying to say but I am not and never could be sure.

We clawed our way back out into the open. The dereliction was disorientating. The whole hospital seemed designed to unhinge minds, rather than cure them. We walked onwards. It was hard to believe that we were still within the boundaries of a hospital anymore. We had entered an open countryside of fields and distant forests. Deer lumbered through the trees. Everything smelt of cut lavender “I want to show you the altar,” Katy said.

From the way she said it, I got the idea that this was something to do with the reason why she was in hospital. I still barely knew anything and it was tearing me up. She showed me what she meant and any thoughts of an easy answer soon disappeared. The “altar” was a large boulder in the middle of a field, shadowed by a large English oak. There were no other rocks or stones around it. There was no clue as to how it had got there. It was as if it had dropped out of the sky. The top was flat and smooth. It made a perfect seat “You can sit here,” Katy said “This is where they killed Aslan.”

I wanted to ask Katy whether she was joking or being serious. Her face seemed to suggest that it was both, or at least that she had ceased to believe there was a difference.

Narnia: I had forgotten about Narnia. Hearing the word took me back to the care home. Neither of us had much in the way of memories about the time we had spent there. I remembered a big, empty house, like an old hotel. I could only just about picture small details with any clarity. The rest of the building had faded away, leaving fragmented and insignificant elements: the pattern of the lead in the windows, the texture of the wallpaper in the downstairs toilet, the smell of food from the kitchens before mealtimes. Other children came and went like nothing, little more than pale ghosts in the halls. The experience of actually physically being there had left me more or less untouched. It was a kind of non-place, a waiting room with blankets and beds, somewhere for children to wait around in while the adults straightened their heads out. But we both remembered the books.

There had been a bookshelf in the communal room. It was piled up with old annuals and outdated technical manuals, a sort of earnest stab at a library by someone who probably couldn’t read. But somewhere on a high shelf amongst the detritus was a boxed set of the Chronicles of Narnia. They were old, hardback printings with heavy type and mouldering pages. The smell of the dank and ancient pages came back to me with Katy’s oblique reference to Aslan, the great lion. As girls we had taken it in turns to read all seven books. The embossed numberings had worn away from the spines and the books were hopelessly out of sequence. But the narrative was uncorrupted by the dislocation; the confusion of their ordering served only to heighten their strength as accounts of an impossible world.

Both of us were affected by the sacrifice of Aslan. Our mother had once spent a year in thrall to a local church and we knew the symbolism well. I remember Katy was also heavily troubled by holes in the mythos. She would pick over inconsistencies and obsess about them as if worrying a splinter. They did something strange to her suspension of disbelief, not breaking it as such but becoming bound up with it in absurdist logic. I never understood her issue. Why did it matter if there was a question about the timeline of the Telmarines? They were stories, they didn’t have to behave just because you told them so.

I was more intrigued by the perplexing notion of there being a degree of permeability between the different worlds. The painting of the Dawn Treader, the magnetic rings, Digory’s wardrobe, the Wood Between the Worlds: they were my girlhood grail. I could remember exploring the loose attics and cupboards of the care home in a desperate search for doorways out of my own reality, my head banging against dark wood and dust. It was not the dream of adventures in the land of Narnia itself that enthralled me, but the promise of eternal escape into Aslan’s Country, somewhere over the edge of the world.

I had been bitterly disappointed by my failure to find a door. For a long time, I had felt that my imprisonment on Earth was a cruel injustice against me. Though as I sat down on the stone altar in the field with Katy, I realised that the books themselves had been the keys we had needed. They had provided another reality for us to dwell in for a while and had provided an escape from the uncertainty of our lives in the care home. However tenuous and impermanent, they had been a doorway, or at least a crack, through which we could escape ourselves.

That time in Narnia, though, there had been a map to the new lands. The world outside my reality had Order in spite of magic and it had a protector in the form of Aslan. Now that Katy had lost her way and was without a map in a place of malevolence, I wondered if the reference itself was an appeal for protection. Was I meant to play Aslan to this lost child? I was unsure whether to respond to the notion directly. Katy seemed fragile, perched as she was like a bird on the edge of the altar. I decided that I would not risk pursuing it out loud. I hesitated before sitting down “How about climbing the tree?”

Katy smiled broadly and turned her face away before exhaustion cracked her mouth back into a frown. She did not want to disappoint me “I wanted you to say that. It’s an easy climb but I’m not myself today. We’ll just go to the lower branches.”

I paused. I expected Katy to go first again but she stood aside and motioned for me to go ahead of her. I stood upon the altar and jumped up to grab hold of a sturdy branch. The wind stirred and rustled across the filed towards us. The branch took my weight politely. I was able to scale along to the trunk and kick against it to rise up into the boughs. I moved upwards onto a higher limb to make room for Katy. She followed behind me. She climbed without speed or daring, making her way into the tree by incremental gains upon the trunk.

It was a sturdy oak, probably two or three hundred years old. There would have been at least a quarter of a million leaves inside its branches. It was a city of insects and birds, all of them near-oblivious to our blundering ascent. I sat above Katy and waited for her to settle. I could still see the crumbling weather-vane of the clock tower, looming above the tree line in the distance.

“How long do you think you need to be here?” I asked.

“Until the doctor says I’m normal again.”

“Well, what are they doing to help you? Do you get counselling or therapy here? What do they do?”

Katy snorted. It was bitter and weird, more like a cackle, a world away from her usual nervous laugh. “There’s no counselling, no. You just get the medication. You only see the doctor once a week and she decides what medication to give you. They have to keep changing it to find the right thing for you. They keep changing what I’m taking because of the side effects. I can’t even remember what I’m on anymore.”

“Well, have they even given you a diagnosis?”

“You don’t really get a diagnosis. It can take years to tell what’s wrong with you. The doctor said it might not be schizophrenia. If I’m lucky it might just be drug-induced psychosis. At least then I’ll know it’s not degenerative.”

“So they say you’re ill because of drugs and then their cure is just to give you more drugs? You’re right. This place is fucked. I want you to come home.”

“Not yet,” Katy shivered “I’m not ready.”

“What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”

“You read what I wrote, didn’t you? When you were in my room. You read what I wrote.”

I felt ashamed “I... I wasn’t spying. I just found it and I had to try and understand what was happening, what was happening to you.”

“I was trying to make sense of everything. I needed to have a system, some way of making it all, I don’t know, ordering it all so that I wasn’t going…” she trailed off “There were voices. In-my-head voices. I never saw anything that wasn’t there, at least I don’t think so, not like you imagine, but I just heard these voices. And they were talking. Not at me. At first it was just in the background and they were just talking. But it was like I had a radio in my head or like my head was an antenna and I was just hearing all these voices that are out there the whole time and nobody can hear them, like: where do ideas come from? When you wake up and you have a piece of music in your head that hasn’t been written yet, somebody somewhere might be singing it and they’re just a voice in the air, or a voice in your head or a djinn or the collective unconsciousness or something. But then they kind of came into focus and I noticed that some of the voices were coming in clearer than the others and they were louder and I could start to get a feeling about their personalities and I could make out what they were saying better. And then they started talking to me. And they would tell me things. And some of them were normal but some of them were not normal and they were bad and they would tell me that I had to do things. Little things, at first. Like cross your legs or turn left or lie down or say these particular words to this particular person. And I had to do it. I had to do what they said. And then they started giving me missions. It’s hard to explain. I want to put it all so it makes sense. And I started having to read certain things and find things in the library and go on the internet and type in specific words they gave me and then I read the pages that came up and they seemed to fit with what was happening and I started putting two and two together about the assassins and about ninjitsu and it all started to make sense in a way. I had an explanation at last: this was the reason why I was hearing the voices, then. They weren’t demons. They were the voices of the assassins. And it made sense and I felt better, like I had some control over it. But then they wanted me to do bad things and I didn’t want to do them and I got scared but now I’m here and I understand that they were just voices in my head and they weren’t real but, you know, it made sense and I believed in it at the time. And I still… even though I know it’s not true and I’m just not well, even though, it still makes sense. It still feels real.”

The wind moved through the long grass of the field and stirred Katy’s hair. It blew over her eyes but she did not reach up to brush it away. She just left it there. I chewed my lip for something to say “Do you still hear the voices?”

“Sometimes,” she said sadly “It depends on the medication. Some of them are assassins still but now there are some machine-voices. I don’t know if they are the same thing. It’s hard to know if they’re inside you, like micro-personalities, people you could have been, bubbling up from your subconscious like the people you meet in your dreams. Or they might be from another quantum dimension or a parallel world, another you reaching out to ripple the waters. Or they might be outside of you, floating around in the air, attacking people. Have you ever noticed how many mad people there are on the streets? Sometimes I think it’s an invisible war between humans and these voices in the air and they keep coming in and destroying our troops and they’re the walking wounded, these schizophrenic veterans of a war going on in psycho-space and they’re wandering around among us all the time, trying to tell us what’s happening but their heads are scrambled and we’re losing people all the time and we don’t even know it’s happening and we can’t understand them any more. That’s what it feels like with the metal-voices, the machine ones. You know in the past people used to think they were possessed by demons but now they think they’ve got microchips in their heads? We used to see fairies but now we see aliens and the CIA. What happened? Did they change or was it us that changed? Maybe the metal voices are just nature spirits like fairies but they’re spirits of an industrial environment, rather than a pre-industrial, what… what do you call it- agrarian? There’s a girl I met in here who believes the Earth is alive. You know the Gaia hypothesis, like the Earth is one big animal, one big living organism? But she believes that the Earth has been sleeping until now because it was alive but it didn’t have a central nervous system, it didn’t have a brain. But now with the internet and telecommunications and satellites and computers, it has started to grow a brain and it has started to become conscious of itself and of us. It is aware of humans. She thinks that it will realise that we are a virus and that we will be deleted. Another guy in here used to work for the government and she says that it is not the planet that is conscious but the institutions that man has made. Like we used to believe in gods and we invested them with belief and that faith gave them power but now we just believe in science and universities and government departments and bureaucracies, idea-machines, factories for producing paperwork, all that crap. And that these institutions have developed minds, brain-systems of a kind in their complexity and in the power we invest in them. And these machines are more powerful than us. We are just the fingers and the toes of a much larger animal- not a human animal but the animal of human society. But I try not to get too caught up in it. I have to stay focused... You know, a nurse said something to me when they brought me out of the lock-down ward. I told her that I could hear voices and you know what she said to me? She said ‘Only listen to the good ones’. Only listen to the good ones. So I do. And it gets me through. It’s working. I feel better. I feel that I’m going to get well again. I only listen to the good ones.”

“But there’s something else, isn’t there?”

“Yes. Yes, there’s something else.”

“About why you left. About why this happened.”

“Yes. But I can’t talk to you about it now and I don’t want you to ask me about it again. But I will tell you one day. Maybe after I come home.”

“I want to help you. I want to get you out of here today and…” I could not finish the sentence. I did not know what I could do. I had come back from India to sort things out and they had got away from me far more quickly than I could possibly have imagined. I had to change, I had to engage myself to somehow affect the flow of events or else I should have stayed in India. If I could not fix things then I should never have come back.

“When I come out it will be when I’m better. But they need to cut my dosage down first and they’ll do it bit by bit until they can see that I’m alright. So I need to rest. And try to get better so I can come home. So I have to show them that I don’t need the medication anymore and I just need to act normal. But I need a secure place to go to when I get out. I need you to sort out the house. Dad’s not there anymore and he’s not coming back and I can’t do anything so it’s up to you but you have to swear that you’re not going to fuck things up. You have to save the house, Violet.”

“I’m not going to fuck things up. You just get better.”

“No,” Katy’s sad eyes looked into mine. A breeze swept over the meadow “We both get better. That’s the deal.”

I went to the bank at nine in the morning the next day. I made a payment on the mortgage from my wages. It was as much as I could possibly spare and still have enough to live on for the month. It would hold the bank off for a short while but it wasn’t enough. There were arrears and interest on the arrears. The backlog of missed payments was growing and my chances to surmount them were dwindling exponentially. I wasn’t even treading water: I was sinking. They needed more money. If I did not come up with a solution, then I would lose the house.

I walked home alone. It started raining. I had no umbrella. Work started in the afternoon. I was only booked to work six hours a day. The pay was so bad that it was barely enough even without the house and the debts. I was going to fail. There was only one thing that I could think of to do and it was the one thing above all others that I did not want to do. But I did it. I asked for overtime. They were so short-staffed they said yes. I began the first of my twelve-hour shifts the next day. It crushed the bones inside of me and left little but a husk for the homeward journey. The day after was the same. And the next day. And the next. At the end of every day I would prepare a basic meal from my tiny budget and then fall asleep. The meals were never nutritious: potatoes and cabbage; pasta and cheese; maybe rice and beans. My body began to suffer from the lack of nutrients. I lost weight. But I was making good on the payments, most of them anyway.

Every day I tried to talk to Leon but I never managed it. Kali was always there: sitting by the fax machine, watching me on her monitor, waiting for me to slip up; she intercepted me at every chance. Whenever she was not there, it would be Dick or one of the other team leaders. They tended to deputise to the floor-walkers, unlike Kali. Floor-walkers were supposed to be “buddies”. Their job was to help you with any technical problems or to resolve advanced customer complaints. In reality, though, their job was to act-up as team leaders and to report any aberrant behaviour. They lacked the management training that taught people how to coat their bullying in team-speak. Bereft of such insidious niceties, they were worse than the team leaders. They had all been promoted up from the floor and were determined to ensure that they never returned there by keeping everybody else down.

The call centre’s hierarchy was a fluctuating, yet vertical, chain of command, something like a wicker ladder in a strong wind. I sat at the lowest rung with all of the other customer service agents. We represented the epitome of post-Fordist flexibalisation: temporary and interchangeable. We were directly overseen by our “teamleaders”; promoted from the ranks of the timid, they somehow become the most enthusiastic of intimidators. The higher levels of management were removed from the office floor and secreted elsewhere, upstairs in the hidden heights of the building where we were not allowed. Our passes did not have clearance. But despite their bondage to the process of control, neither the teamleaders nor the higher management could be said to possess true or total control over us. So who were our puppetmasters? Were they hiding behind the computers? Did the machines protect them?

I never knew why did there always have to be a “boss”? I always was averse to simplistic class politics. It was always the middle class radicals at college who pointed the finger at the “boss class”. Anything to assuage their own bourgeois guilt. No. Maybe it was the shareholders, then? They were the ones who wanted nothing more than profit. Maybe it was the whole thing: the multinational company directors, the politicians and the share-owning public themselves? Maybe the men in the hospital were right about the social institutions taking over.

But sitting there on the lowest branch of the tree, getting defecated upon by everyone higher up than me, I never took to that line of thinking. It was a dead end. I was chasing after nothing. I knew that power and control and money didn’t behave like that, but I could not get it straight in my head. I was too busy. I was too tired.

I would stare at the clock until my eyes wanted to bleed, begging it to move faster so that I could escape. But by the time I got out I could never remember what I had wanted to do with my freedom once I got it. I spent a lot of my time wondering how different things would had been before they had invented clocks. Farmers would get up with the sun and stop working when they got tired. There was no need to be in the workplace at nine and clock off at five. Who had decided that this was a decent length of a working day? And worse: they were paying me by the hour. It was a central device of managerial control, their main tool for measuring my output. The clock was tied to their statistics. How long was I away from my desk? How long did I take, on average, to answer every call? The clock was their meter of obedience and deviance. Its passionless regulation of my every move was the chief weapon of my bondage.

So who started the game? I was back to Ford. Timing people and simplifying the action of each worker down to a minute cog had started in the car factories. They called it scientific management. The idea was to take away any decision making ability from the worker. This prevents them from holding onto power for even a moment. Factory workers were the first people to have absolutely no control over their work and no freedom in how they used their tools. They became isolated tools themselves. It wasn’t just that the work became boring and alienating, it was that their actions were so over-prescribed and controlled.

I did not even have a job description. I was a temp. I was switched between inane tasks arbitrarily and without warning. I was constantly being moved around in the office from one pod to the next. It was humiliating. I experienced no greater consideration of my humanity than a multitask domestic appliance. I was viewed, like all the other workers, as a negative expense against profits. I was a tool, an instrument, a thing. And the more that I became an instrument, the more they used “empowering” words to define my life. They turned my coercion into an individualistic consumer choice through self-determining terms like “incentives” that were actually threats and “work benefits” that were actually compulsory. Every time they intensified my work, they used euphemisms like “performance targets” and “teamworking”. I had not even realised at the time: every single word was an act of repression. This practical enslavement was concealed through a corporate discourse that promoted the illusion of choice. If I didn’t like it I should quit. But I had nowhere else to go.

I would log into my computer, ready for the nine o’clock start. I did not have my own desk. The call center operated a policy of “hot-desking”. This meant sitting wherever you were told to sit. Some places were better than others. Other seats were not so good. You might be sat next to a team leader or directly underneath one of the air conditioning units. You could expect to sit there all day shivering. Sitting with your back to the wall or to the window was good because it meant that nobody could sneak up on you or watch what you were doing. I was not doing anything wrong but I felt compelled to hide my actions from my superiors wherever possible. I could not explain it. Not having a desk of my own meant that I never acquired any sense of ownership in the space or any sense of belonging in the organisation. I could be murdered on my way home and the machine would still function perfectly the next day. I was an ant.

Before I had even started the day, I would be aware of the big ticker-screen. There were screens everywhere. No matter where you put your eyes, you would find one. They displayed statistics in burning red LED lights. The figures rotated hypnotically. They showed how many customers, or “consumers”, were in the queue waiting for their calls to be answered. They displayed the average time of the wait. They displayed the percentage of workers whose turrets were set to “Not Ready”. “Not Ready” meant that they were on a call or away from their phones dealing with a fax. It usually meant that they were working. On the ticker-screen it only meant that they were not answering inbound calls. The ticker-screen seemed to think that this was a crime. It made you feel guilty just to look at it.

The worst display on the ticker-screen was the “Target Success”. Each department had a target of the number of calls it would take every hour and another for the length of time that people would wait for their calls to be answered. The targets were impossibly high. There was no way to meet them. Nobody knew where the targets had come from or whether they were based on any research about the physical possibilities of meeting them. But they were taken very seriously. The team leaders were measured according to their target success percentages and they did not like to look bad.

Every morning the Target Success was reset to 100%. It began to drop immediately. I could feel the points falling away into my stomach where they grew and festered, swelling up as the numbers diminished from the screen. By midday they were usually down to 40 or 50%. By the time they came off the phones at eight, they would be down below 10%. There was no way of beating the targets but they refused to go away. Every day I hoped that we would somehow hold them back up, but every day was another slow, bludgeoning disappointment.

I tried not to watch the ticker-screens but it was impossible. They were everywhere like the peeping eyes of a paranoid god. Even if you kept your head down, there was a secondary ticker-display running live on all of the computer monitors. It was a black band across the bottom of the screen, flashing the same demonic red numbers. There was no escape from it. The band was still there when I closed my eyes, running across the bottom of the void. It began to appear when I was falling asleep at night, a running total of my domestic task times and percentages: Journey To Work- 35 mins, Total Number of Dirty Plates Cleaned- 65%, Number of Friends- 0.

I would spend the mornings at work waiting for Leon to arrive. I fielded call after call. A lot of my job was detective work. People would phone up because something had gone wrong. The cause could have been one out of a hundred things. I would have to ask the right questions to get to the story behind the events. I had to think fast. There was little time for manoeuvre with the disembodied telephonic voices. They were impatient from their long wait and frustrated by the call-filtering system (“if you want to speak to a customer services operative, press five now”). They were hungry for solutions.

Most of the problems were caused by a technical fault somewhere: either in the key, the meter or the machine in the shop where they charged the key. I would have to get people to take complicated sets of readings from the meter or read out strings of code from the shop’s receipt. A large number of the callers were unable to read. They were good at hiding it. After a while, I became sensitive to the signals and managed to work in ways of asking questions that they could feel comfortable answering. It was the same with people who had caused the problems themselves by miscalculating the amount of money that they had to charge or by damaging their keys. I found that they were less offended if they were allowed to come to the conclusion by themselves.

Then there were the bad calls. The ones that started in aggression and ended in abuse. The callers were in search of solutions but they were also looking to have a go at someone for the misery of their situation. I could not bring myself to hate them for it but the negative effects of their battering were profound. People could shout into the headpiece or slam their telephones down to hurt my ears. The psychic toil was draining and it made the hours drag. How had it come to this? When was Leon coming in?

I watched the clock, hungry for the minutes to pass. It was immune to my attempts at telekinesis. The clock moved so slowly that it was hard to believe it was even moving at all. I was often physically pained by the sheer tedium of its unticking hands. The only humane use for time is the invention of a time-machine that can travel back to the invention of the first clock with a sledgehammer and a hand grenade.

Leon would arrive at a quarter to two every day. Kali would be there again, floating, lurking. Leon had to go straight to work to get logged in before his two o’ clock start. It was days before I even got to say hello to him. Leon understood. I could read it in his eyes. He was suffering too. Once we had located each other visually across the floor, we would sneak glances and try to exchange telepathic messages. I found it hard to read his face but he seemed to be begging me to end his days in the call centre somehow.

We tried to synchronise our breaks. Each worker on a six hour shift was allotted fifteen minutes to get to the canteen, eat something and get back onto the phones. The queue at the canteen was often five or ten minutes long. It was hard enough to eat anything in the given time, but if you were angling for a cigarette as well then you could count on going hungry. I was allowed a whole hour in the day because of the length of my shift. I broke it up into smaller pieces to scavenge scraps of food and maximise my cigarette trips. We only managed one break together before Kali changed the system and began allotting specific break times. They were rolled out through the shifts and were designed to keep people from taking a break with their friends. The theory was that this would prevent tardiness. Its effect served only to further isolate each individual worker and to keep me apart from Leon.

Our mutual break was a brief and loaded exchange. We forsook the gloom of the canteen and decided to sit out on the small lawn in front of the car park. Leon took his shoes off and sat with his feet in my lap, wiggling his toes in search of a response. I tried to explain what it felt like to watch him come in after me and leave before me every day. It was strange to see him without being allowed to speak to him and tell him what I was thinking. Leon was not listening. He had assumed an absent, coquettish character, and would not be drawn into a conversation about work. I asked him if I would see him that weekend and he refused to really answer at all.

His mobile rang. He told me to hush as he answered it. I pretended not to listen. He used a girlish voice that I had not heard from his before. He apologised for missing some kind of appointment on the previous Friday. He winked at me while he spoke. I realised that he had been with me at the time. He played with his hair with his fingers while he spoke, his voice changing into a soft lilt as he lied and said that he had been in church. I did not understand why he used an alibi. I found it insulting but I said nothing. The caller was pressing him to commit to something for the following weekend. He tilted his head to one side and giggled into the mouth-piece.

Abruptly, he snapped the phone shut and put it back into his bag “My girlfriend,” he sighed. I must have looked surprised “I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”

“Why would you think that?” He had never mentioned one before.

“Oh don’t worry. I’m going to dump her. But she’s going to get me that big clock first. Don’t worry, I’m not a two-timer. She’s, we’re finished anyway. She works in that smelly old shop on behind the arcade. You know the one? Where they sell all those old wrist watches and cuckoo clocks and things. You know how old she is? She’s fifty three. Fifty three! She has to take pills, you know, to keep her bones from breaking when we... I just, I can’t stand her anymore.”

He checked the time on his phone again “Shit. We’ve got to go back in or I’ll have that bitch Kali on my back again. She’s trying to break me but she can fuck off and die. I’ll call you about this weekend. Okay?”

By Saturday night, I still had not heard from him. I decided to get drunk. I had been sitting in Katy’s room all day using the computer. I browsed the internet for anarchist pages and warez sites. Some of the groups I knew were developing new viruses to attack banks and government systems. I understood their mechanics and wanted to see how they were put together. At the time it seemed like a logical way to attack capitalism. Bankers and politicians were not interested in dialogue; protest had failed. All that was left was direct action. Impatient for change, I concluded that history would judge us fairly.

I remembered the endless political arguments with my father that had so characterised my last months at home. How I had come to despise the sight of him.

He was a military man; his mind had been locked into position with bolts and deadlocks and rivets. There was no reasoning with him. There were no alternative views, just enemies and bad soldiers. I can remember him barging into the bathroom and criticising the manner in which I brushed my teeth. It was all wrong. Everything I did was wrong. There was a better method, a system for your ablutions. He would show me.

I could only imagine that some sadistic sergeant major had drilled these petty tics into him through violence and that their aggressive manifestation in the home was in part some attempt to reconcile these mental scars and resentments within himself. That and the simple fact that he did not really want another adult in the house and this is what I was fast becoming.

Perhaps the entirety of my rebelliousness and political radicalism was some strange reaction against his regulations and reactionary attitudes, rather than the heartfelt and reasoned libertarianism that I took it to be. Perhaps. I personally have doubted this and similar arguments. We are products of complex factors, not simple plate tectonics. If I have truly taken anything from my father it is a tendency towards alcoholism. It is not that he drank a lot so much as the fact that my capacity and tolerance for alcohol was the only thing that he ever gave me praise or respect for.

Hours passed. I had not left the house. The night air was a cool slap that brought me back into reality. I was amazed at my ability to waste the weekend. Having spent so many hours in torture on the telephones, waiting in desperation for the week to end, here I was too tired to do anything about it once it had arrived.

On my way back from the off-licence, I found Leon sitting on the doorstep of my house. He was wearing only his underwear.

I stopped. The scene was too surprising. I fell into the details: The underwear was a deep violet, patterned with yellow paisley and a red trim. It seemed out of place on my doorstep “Where are your clothes?” I asked him.

“I threw them away. They were dirty,” he said “Are we going to sit out here all night or are you going to let me in, Beauregarde?”

I managed to find my key and open the door to the house. He ran inside and disappeared upstairs. I followed him and found him lying under the sheets of my bed. His underwear lay on the floor. I put the bottles down on the side “What’s going on, here?” I said.

“Blueberry, you can stand there and we can talk all night or you can get into bed and shut up. It’s up to you but I feel like shit and I just want somebody nice and clean and young to hold me and I thought that you might want it to be you. I can go if you want me to go.”

“No,” I bent down next to the bed and took his hand “No, I want you to stay.”

Chapter Twelve

Silver birches

A taxi arrived in the morning with his clothes folded out on the back seat. There was a shoebox with a large Chinese clock inside, wrapped in red and yellow crepe paper. The driver told me that the fare was already paid for. I asked him where the clothes had come from. He ignored me and drove away. I carried the clothes back into the house and took them up to Leon. He stepped out of the bed and dressed. The way he moved was unselfconscious. It was not that he was proud of his body or delighted in his nakedness as such but more that he simply did not care. I did not attempt to ask his about the clock.

We spent the whole day together. It was a Sunday and the weather was good. Leon bought a new pair of trunks so that we could go swimming in the sea. He was a strong swimmer, unafraid of the water or the tides. He raced me out to the end of the West Pier. Where I turned back, disturbed by the loose platforms dangling overhead and the great spikes of wreckage beneath me, he kept on and swam clear around to the other side. By midday we were lying together on the beach, staked to the ground by the debilitating heat of the sun. The beach began to fill up with day-trippers. They reeked of chip fat and suntan lotion. The seagulls started dogfighting overhead, barking and needling. We got back into our new clothes and walked into town. I took his to a quiet pub. We drank Guinness, listened to reggae and had a Sunday roast. It was a good day. I kept up a flowing banter of flirting and jokes. I was overtaken with the warmth of his physical company and tried hard to convince myself that I was not still alone. He responded to me but his mind was somewhere else as well. He was lost in secrets and memories. He fluttered different faces out towards me, each one more of a mask than the last and each one more charming.

He put his hand in mine while we walked tipsily through the dusk. I could feel his cold skin and the light bones of his skeleton, like a strange little baby bird without wings.

I was surprised at how often I thought about Joseph during that day. I had hoped that Leon’s presence would cure me both of my loneliness and of my longing. But Leon only reminded me of how much I was dying inside. He was the remembrance of a love without ever materialising enough to become one himself. I wanted to force Leon’s soul to land and walk next to mine. I failed. My thoughts were not with his and he was not with me. I squeezed his hand tightly. He squeezed back. Both of us were desperate just to be with each other and to want to be together and for that to be enough. But it was not going to work.

He was in orbit around my planet but my atmosphere could not sustain him. We had to break it off before he ran out of energy and crashed. He slipped his hand free and kissed me goodnight. We parted beneath the lights in the Pavilion gardens and went our separate ways. I turned back to watch his go but he had already gone.

The strangest part of my working day was the late shift between eight and ten at night. The phones were switched off at eight o’ clock and the remaining workers were ascribed random processing tasks. We would queue up to collect a stack of papers from the team leader. When we took them back to our desks, we would work our way through them. The work mainly involved calling up customer accounts and resolving inconsistencies created somewhere else in the system by unknown forces. It was a monotonous data-entry task without creativity or friction. Sometimes the issue couldn’t be resolved and it was passed to a floor walker to search through the micro-fiche in the basement. I envied them. I was not permitted to enter the basement. It was just another stripe of status. There were no CCTV cameras in the basement.

The work was target-monitored by the stack. When I had finished my pile, I would have to ask a team leader for more work. It always made me feel compromised, as if I was gathering the bricks and the bars for my own prison. “Please sir, can I have some more?” What an idiot.

The only benefit of the evening shift was that you were allowed to talk to your fellow workers; “within reason”. You were also allowed to eat at your desk. The other workers took a childish delight in this concession and would fall upon packets of sweets and mints with vocal delight. They could be bribed to fetch you a drink or post a letter for a handful of Maltesers. It was a bizarre chocolate economy.

When they weren’t eating, they were playing office politics. I had seen them gossiping amongst themselves, scrapping over useful information like junkies over a telephone box. Everything was about controlling information. I despised their petty strategies of self advancement. It wasn’t even a tangible resource that they were fighting over.

I just wanted to see something to inspire hope, some sign of resistance somewhere in the chain. I spent a lot of time watching people for anything that looked remotely like deviance. For a few days, I was lost in the inebriation that there was something subversive in these information games. I had seen people withholding information for their own gain. This tactic had the effect of disrupting the vertical flow of data. Could it be a way, albeit indirectly, of sabotaging the machine? Or was it just Robert Anton Wilson’s SNAFU principle in action?

The GIs in Vietnam had coined the acronym first. It stood for Situation Normal (All Fucked UP); for Wilson, SNAFU was a principle, a law of society: it stated that you could only ever really communicate truthfully with your equals. When you spoke to your superiors, you had to talk like them and pretend that you saw the world in the same way that they did. It was important that you demonstrated conformity in your perception of reality. And even when you did surrender information, your superiors were not supposed to listen. The more advice they accepted, the more power they surrendered. Reality didn’t travel uphill. If this were true, then it would be impossible to use information as a tool of resistance. In fact, the main flow of information in the call centre was downwards through the statistics on the computers and the ticker-tape displays. All the office politics of the sweet-eaters were little more than fighting over scraps beneath the table.

Nobody ever wanted to work the late shift. The hours were unsociable and the work was unglamorous. The reasoning amongst the day-workers was that anyone prepared to pull a late shift was a loser. I knew that I was counted among their number but I could not find much to argue with. What did I have in my life that I hadn’t lost? The only difference between us all was that I was fighting back. I was not going to take it and like it.

The building was almost deserted on the night shift. It reminded me of staying late at school for a detention or a PTA meeting. The familiar daylight sights were transformed into weirdly unfamiliar spaces. I half expected them to be nonexistent in the evenings, they were so antisocial and unlike other evening environments. But they persisted in their own way, unaffected by the hour but affected by it nonetheless.

On my next Monday back after the weekend with Leon, I found myself sitting on a pod with the usual crew of misfits and deadbeats. The Gimp had insinuated himself onto the seat next to me. I didn’t know why he would not leave me alone. He kept up a constant witter of self-aggrandisement. Nobody listened to him. He would continue to talk even when everyone else was talking amongst themselves. He spoke to the air above, fly-fishing for the attention of others. He delighted in being told to shut up by exasperated team leaders. He took his chastisement as a symbol of rebellion and believed himself to be a revolutionary hero. All of these victories were pyrrhic. The team leaders would move him to empty pods to sit by himself, or to different floors. Once, they even moved him out into an empty hallway with a laptop that was not even connected to the network. They would deliberately assign him the most loathsome tasks. He spent an entire week sitting in the basement cleaning the dirt from defective meter keys only to return in a state of ecstasy as if he had survived a lobotomy with his mind intact.

One of his housemates worked in the Erroneous Transfers department. Over a cigarette at a break time, he told me that The Gimp was a hopeless attention-seeker. Living with him was becoming unbearable. The previous month, he had been tap-dancing at the top of the stairs with bottle-tops sellotaped to his feet. The hallway was full of people ignoring him. He tried singing at the top of his vocal range, but they kept on ignoring him. He became desperate. After a while, he walked away from the landing into his bedroom. Everybody assumed that he had given up, when suddenly he came running back out of his room and hurled himself down the stairs. He crashed down two flights before landing at their feet in the hallway. He nearly broke his arm. The housemate said that such things were not uncommon. He was driving them all mad.

I had tried talking to The Gimp over the weeks but it was pointless. The Gimp was unable to take any interest whatsoever in the life of anyone but himself. He was solipsistically egotistical.

Tara sat on the other side of my desk. She was a failed academic with a slight Eastern European accent that may have been a complete affectation. She claimed to be in the final stages of a DPhil in abnormal neurology but would, apparently, not submit to any formal assessment. It was a matter of academic principle: she didn’t believe in standard definitions of intelligence or the measurement thereof. She wore a brown shirt with a black tie. It was the same outfit that she wore every day. She said that she was undermining the corporate ethos by wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth; she was a self-proclaimed Zen nihilist. One time, she told me that she suffered from an undefined and mysterious illness that had persisted from childhood. It had rendered her parents into paranoid guardians of her constitution. While her mother treated her for ME with poultices and her father treated her for MS with snake venom, an army of grubbing specialists treated themselves to expense accounts and consultations. Nothing was ever elucidated. A radical change of diet appeared to alleviate the major symptoms but strange and interconnected intestinal maladies would recur periodically throughout her life, particularly when low on self-esteem. Educated at home in a hypoallergenic environment by germ-free paranoiacs, she was destined for late-night genius and lonely mornings. The evening shift was perfect for her.

The three of us were surrounded by the flotsam of the evening shift: rusting alcoholics who enjoyed the unsociable hours and divorced parents without children to go home to. The Gimp sat with his head on the computer keyboard, occasionally reading sections from a book of quotes from Oscar Wilde: “What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.”

Tara snorted “Why did you bring that book in here for?”

The Gimp peered over the dividing wall of the pod with a wounded expression. His oversized lips were down-turned but his eyes were impenetrable behind a pair of novelty sunglasses. They gave his face a vacancy that could not project emotions of any depth “I thought it would be nice. Look at this. Some of these are really clever.”

“Please,” Tara turned to those around her for sarcastic support “Please continue.”

The Gimp picked up the book with a smile and continued as if it had been a genuine sanction “In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

Tara leant back in her seat “Only three tragedies in this world? Had he ever made your acquaintance, the list would no doubt be longer,” Tara winked at me “You agree of course, Kane?”

I resented Tara looking to me for support. It was far too easy and cruel to abuse The Gimp and I did not want to be implicated. I got up to root for a new pen as a diversion “What about this place for a tragedy of the world?” I said, allowing my feelings to have free reign in the assumption that I would be joined in chorus.

“You’re talking shit,” Tara said, a mean expression playing upon her face “There’s nothing wrong with this place.”

I laughed “You can’t be serious, girl. This is a terrible place and this is a terrible job.”

Tara steepled her hands “No. No, you’re the problem. You’re the problem because you believe in this place.”

“What are you talking about? I hate this place.”

“Just because you hate it does not mean that you don’t invest belief in it. For some reason you want to believe that it exists. You want to believe that you’re condemned to something awful but it’s nothing, this place, it’s not even a place, it doesn’t exist. It can’t touch you. You just want it to.”

The Gimp stood up. He held the book close to his face and read out loud “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious,” he turned to grin at the other workers seated at the pod, smiling in the happy notion that he had put the final capping-stone on the debate.

“Sit down, Gimp! Get on with your work!” a team leader called lazily from the far end of the floor.

The Gimp sat down.

I walked out of the call centre at ten. Tara and The Gimp were next to me in the hallways. Suddenly, The Gimp pushed past us “I have to go now,” he said dramatically. We ignored him. He flourished his jacket theatrically and marched away. I swiped my card wearily through the punching machine. I was exhausted.

In my fatigue, I could not seem to get my head around Tara’s blasé acceptance of the call centre. It did not seem to make any sense to me. Our debate continued as we left the building. Like a fight in a pub, it sprawled into the car park and out onto pavements without a word, as if the whole thing was meticulously choreographed. I was aware that we were not walking in the correct direction for my house but I wanted to finish the conversation. It was late but neither of us appeared to have an elsewhere to be.

“But it’s not just me who hates it here,” I said “Everyone hates it. You speak to any of the people who used to work here before it was privatised and they’ll tell you how bad it’s got. They never used to be like this, issuing summonses and tearing people’s meters out. And it never used to be just one big call centre. There used to be shops in the high streets all over the country where people could go in and talk to someone face-to-face and get things sorted out, the way they should be. And, do you know, the engineers used to actually turn up when they said they would turn up and if they didn’t you could talk to someone about it, you know, now there’s nothing, there’s no-one, it’s just people complaining down the telephone to a complaints department they’ll never see. And they’re not just complaining because the service is bad, they’re complaining because they’re customers now. They used to be citizens, you know, of the nation and the nation belonged to them and they owned things like the telephones and the electricity and the railways and now they just consume it. Instead of political action, all they can do now is make a consumer demand. Forget about your human rights, will this affect my statutory rights? They used to carry their party membership cards, now they just carry loyalty cards for discounts.”

“Privatisation wasn’t political!” Tara interrupted “It was economical. People just want economic freedom.”

“What does that mean? ‘Economic freedom’? I just want freedom from the economy. ‘Not political’… of course you’d think that, they won, didn’t they? The whole thing was about depoliticising the country. If you’re in a train crash now you don’t blame the system, you just kick off and hope for a refund. ‘Not political’… just like Henry the Eighth and the monasteries or the Nazis and the Jewish businesses? Ah… The call centre is not just a shitty place to work; it is a device: a machine for castrating the nation.”

“So you want to nationalise everything?” Tara scoffed, crossing the road in front of traffic. I had to follow to keep up with her “Fine, so you’re a socialist and we know where you stand so we don’t need to finish this discussion because I can guess what you’re going to say or think about any given subject because you’ve already let somebody else make your mind up for you.”

“I’m not a socialist and I never said we should re-nationalise. I never said that. I’m just saying that we all played into her hands.”

“Who, Thatcher? Well you don’t look like much of a yuppie to me…”

“That’s it, though, she didn’t want us to turn a nation of shopkeepers into yuppies, she wanted to turn us into a nation of shoppers.”

“But look at you: you’re still a bohemian lotus-eater hedonist with the work-ethic of a tangerine. She didn’t get to you at all half as much as Bob Marley did. Privatisation was about getting everyone to buy stocks and shares in failing companies like this one, that’s it. There’s nothing symbolic about the call centre, it’s just another workplace, they’re all the same, it’s just what you’re reading into it, that’s all.”

I stopped walking. I felt that she was deliberately missing the point of what I was trying to say in order to provoke me “What do we do all day?” I asked “We sit there and listen to people moaning. They bitch, they whine, they shout, they bleat, they swear and sweat and they cry. They complain. All day. To us. And we don’t care. And we’re paid to act like we give a shit and to listen to their complaint and tell them there’s nothing we can do.”

“So?”

“So instead of complaining to muppets like us on the telephone, people should be out on the streets fighting the state. If they don’t like getting shafted because they’re poor then they should start fighting for a revolution. But the state has removed itself from their worldview. It doesn’t own the railways and the utilities anymore. Private companies do. And you can’t have a revolution as a customer of a private company. All you get to do is complain. You see? This is the new political participation. If you get shot by the police by accident you make a complaint and maybe you’ll get some compensation.”

“Whereas: what? You should be parading around the estate with their head on a spike?”

“Why not.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?”

“Not really. You just think you do. Just like you think you should be all pissed off about having to work here. I mean, when you look at the subhuman intelligence of the other people that work here I can see why you would look at yourself and think you’re better than them, but…”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t believe in objective measurements of intelligence or standardised testing. People have intelligence in different ways. Just because you’ve studied doesn’t make you any better than anyone else. That just sounds like social-Darwinist Futurist Mussolini crap.”

“So there’s no difference between any of us? Just because you want us all to be equal doesn’t mean that we already are. You’re setting your cause back by pretending it’ that way… what about you and me and Leon, are we just as dense as all the others?”

Why did she mention Leon? I did not even realise that she knew him. I had never seen her talking to him. Did she know about him and me? Did it matter if she did? I don’t know why but I resented her even using his name. It seemed as if she was presuming too much of a connection between the two of them to do so. It bothered me because I wanted to keep him secret to myself and this desire to possess him and objectify him also bothered me. I did not realise that I was like that. My heart did not seem to be bringing out the best of me “Look, it’s all such a bogus concept, you know, as if intelligence or wisdom was just one of many statistics like running or weightlifting. The mind doesn’t work like that.”

“Well, that’s up to you if you don’t think you’re any better than The Gimp.”

“Nobody’s better than anybody else. No, what gets me is the feeling I have in the morning when I wake up and it hits me that it’s still not the weekend and maybe it’s only Tuesday and I’ve got no choice but I have to get up and come here and do a twelve hour shift and I feel like I want to be dead before my body has even left the bed and there’s this crushing, kind of pressing down on my head like doom, like I’m trapped in Hell forever and there’s never going to be any way out and I’m not saying that my life is worse than anyone else’s because what basis of comparison do I have, but this is my life and it feels like Hell because everyday I have to get up and come here and that’s why I hate it, not because I think I’m clever.”

“So your default setting is complaining too? So leave, then.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Of course it is. What are you doing, trying to pay off your student loans?”

“Don’t be so fucking absurd.”

“What, then? It’s not like you have to pay off a mortgage or something is it, I mean, you can’t be older than twenty.”

“I’m twenty one,” I said. And as I said the words, my mind added “I’m twenty one and my sister is insane and nobody is going to come and make it alright,” but I remained silent and the words were only written in my eyes. I turned and walked away in the other direction.

It was one of those nights where you can see through to the rotten crack in the ceiling of your life. I plunged headfirst into it, that onanistic mire of autoanalysis where you ask yourself unanswerable and torturous crossword-questions. What is the point of me? What am I for?

I walked. There was nothing to distract me from my thoughts bar the shadow circling me as I passed from streetlight to streetlight. As I passed shopfronts and headlights, they threw up new shades of black and grey in the shape of me. They revolved, chained to my feet, less like hungry sharks and more like the globes of an orrery. These orbiting shadows were as my whirling thoughts, distinct and conflicting with each other, spinning around my legs, some light, some much darker.

I stalked through the streets. Dark figures moved past, their pale faces moving towards me and then away. I kept my eyes to the ground and pushed my body forwards. I lost myself in backstreets and blind alleys, kicking through the night until I found myself on the peak of a great hill. The road fell back down into town. I looked at the lights and they repulsed me. There was high wall on one side of the street. I could see a range of silver birches beyond it. I was overcome with the unstoppable desire to lose myself amongst their branches, to hide from my adult life just as I had once hidden myself from adults. I crossed over the road and put my hands on the wall. It was made of a powdery red brick, solid yet crumbling. It would have lasted forever in a world without acid rain. I came upon a fence, tall and wrought in iron, and climbed inside the wall.

I found myself in a vast and unlit garden. The landscape was sculpted into miniature hills and valleys, scattered around with thick trees and bushes. There was a stretch of tarmac running through the garden like a river, lined by a row of cypresses. It reminded me of somewhere familiar but I could not place it. I moved further down into the darkness, exploring carefully. Slowly, as the clouds uncovered the moon, I became aware of strange shapes all around me. Some looked like children, hunched over on the ground. Some were the size of cars. Some looked like angels.

And then I realised where I was: The cemetery where my father was buried. The gardens came into focus suddenly, without politeness. The reality of my discovery lay upon me. I continued inwards, wishing to be among the unfeeling. I traced a spiralling pattern through the mausoleums, monuments and slabs, through the cemetery of infants and the garden of remembrance. After a while I became aware of a lone voice, sallying out across the night. There was somebody else in the graveyard with me. I crept towards it, keeping low and quiet behind the tombstones. I got nearer. The voice was a man’s. It was reading something like poetry, chanting lyrics in a flat tone.

“Sheets-O
Save the life-less
Less misery, less eh-O
Sheets-O
Save the life-less
Less misery, less eh-O,”

As I drew closer I began to play my daytime game of putting a face to the voice. But it was even more difficult than usual. The voice seemed too familiar. I dipped down behind an overturned cross and sat with my back towards the voice. I stretched my ears out into the darkness. I knew it. I knew who it was. But it did not seem possible. I stood and walked around to a nearby copse of silver birches a few meters away from the source. I peered around a trunk. I was right. It was him. It was The Gimp. He was wearing a cape.

“Small less sick
Malikai Gangan will seek the life
Small less sick
Malikai Gangan will seek the life
Save the life-less
Less misery, less eh-O
Less misery, less eh eh eh-O.”

I stepped on a twig. Stupid. The Gimp span around. There was the sound of a bottle falling over “Are you another ghost?” he shouted into the trees.

“Yes,” I replied in spite of myself.

The Gimp rolled his stomach in and his chest out. He addressed his words to the woods in a clipped baritone “Why are you here?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I wondered whether I should simply step out of the trees and reveal myself. The situation was ludicrous and I did not have the right state of mind to continue.

“You shouldn’t be here. You should move on. People are waiting for you,” The Gimp had affected a stentorian tone. He accompanied his words with extravagant gestures, flinging the cape around his shoulders as he moved. He reminded me of a child over-acting in a school play.

“Believe me. Nobody’s waiting for me anywhere,” I found that I was more annoyed than I was amused by the performance. I wanted to finish the game but the thought of having to account for my presence was too embarrassing.

“You don’t remember them. That’s all. But they remember you. You didn’t meet them in this world. They’re the ones who kissed you goodbye before you came here.”

It was too much. The Gimp’s uncomprehending self-delusion was indigestible “Who do you think you are- the exorcist?”

“No,” his face resolved into a mad stare in honour of his conviction “I am a shaman.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“No. I am a fool.”

“Whatever. It’s the same thing.”

“I don’t think so,” he stood and picked up the bottle “Are you coming out from behind your tree, little ghost?”

“Fuck you.”

The Gimp took a swig from the bottle. He sloshed it around in his mouth and spat it out towards the trees in a fountainous spray. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. I could not countenance that he was wearing a cape. It looked bizarre on him “Fuming spirit,” The Gimp said, lost in the delusion of his psychopompology “You hate us all, don’t you?”

“Who?”

“The living. You hate the still-breathing ones. What did we do to you?”

I did not reply.

“Oh,” The Gimp put his hands on his hips “My money is on a bad death.”

“Actually, it was a very pleasant demise.”

“Bad childhood, then. One of the two. It always is. Well, you can’t do anything about it now. There’s a portal open for you. You see the light? I want you to walk forwards.”

“What do you know about my childhood?” I knew that I was being dragged in to something against my will. I was offended by The Gimp’s presumption of perception and wanted to shatter his petty fantasy. But it was a trap. By engaging emotionally, I would be drawn further into the game. I could feel my control of the situation dwindle as I gave vent to my feelings.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he continued “Somebody hurt you. Your parents maybe. Somebody hurt them. Maybe it was their parents. Maybe it was you in a previous life. Who gives a shit? It’s all just one big circle and it keeps on going round and there isn’t fuck-all anything we can do about any of it. Least of all you because you’re dead. So if you’re thinking about haunting somebody then you might as well give it up because it won’t do anybody any good anyhow. So come out from your tree and walk into the light.”

“I hurt my sister. I used to bully her. I used to beat her up.”

“The light, ghost-girl, walk forwards.”

“You’re a fucking idiot and you don’t know anything. I don’t care what they did to me, it’s what I did to them that hurts. Being hurt by other people is nothing. You either deal with it or you go under. You can be a victim, you can be strong, you can be anything... but when it’s you that hurt somebody else you can’t do nothing.”

“Not real. It’s just another mask. You can let it go. If somebody hurts you, you can forgive them. If you hurt somebody else then it’s up to you to forgive yourself.”

“But I’m not getting forgiveness from anyone and I won’t forgive the ones who hurt me,” and then, in a softer voice I said “I want them to fucking die.”

“Well too bad because you’re the one that fucking died.”

Another voice came out from the woods “No,” it said “She’s lying to you. I’m the one that died.”

My father walked out of the trees beside me. He was wearing his best suit. He glowed dimly like ashes on embers, but otherwise appeared perfectly normal, just like the last time I saw him alive “But I wish it had been him in my place,” he said, and I knew that he meant me and when he looked at me he saw a boy he did not love in a dressing-up box approximation of womanhood made of borrowed silicone and stockings. I may have had my Adam’s apple shaved off but to his dead eyes my soul was male. I hated him.

The Gimp stepped back and turned to my father “Can you see it?”

“Yes, I can see it.”

“Go into it.”

My father stepped forward and disappeared.

The Gimp turned back to the woods “You have to go now. You’re not dead so I won’t talk to you anymore.”

I turned and ran.

Chapter Thirteen

Sweet Chestnut

“Once upon a time…”

“’Once upon a time’?”

“That’s how it starts. What?”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“Okay. Once upon a time there was a fisher-monkey who lived by the banks of a mighty river. He lived in the trunk of a hollow chestnut tree with his childless wife. Everyday the monkey went to the river to catch fish. Everyday he caught a fish and took it home to his wife. Her belly was not wanting for food but it would not take his seed to root. Years passed and still no babies came to them.

“One day the monkey caught a fish and it did not want to be eaten. It said to him “If you set me free, I will grant you your heart’s desire.” The monkey squeezed the fish and made his wish. He let it go. As it swam away into the river, the fish called out “Keep fishing until you catch something, and give your next fish to your wife to eat. Keep nothing for yourself.”

“So the monkey sat and fished until it got dark but he did not catch anything. He sat alone throughout the cold night but still he did not catch anything. Early the next day, as the sun was just beginning to rise, he caught a small fish. He ran home and gave it to his wife to eat.

“Nine months later, she gave birth to twins.

“He fed the bones of the fish to a water buffalo. It gave birth to a litter of two.

“The monkey boys grew up. They trained the buffalos like horses and rode them around the woods. When the monkeys came upon their adulthood, the older brother grew tired of his life by the banks of the river. He wanted to leave and seek his fortune in new lands. He gave a bottle of white wine to his brother and told him “While the wine is white you will know that I am well. But if the wine ever turns red, you will know that I need your aid.”

“He set off on his water buffalo and said goodbye to his family. After a long journey, he came at last to a new country. This new land was ruled by the king of the monkeys who was famed for his wisdom and for the beauty of his daughter. But the land was plagued by a demonic beast, a great bird who scourged the countryside, killing everything. It had the arms of a man beneath its wings and it wore a mask to hide its hideous face. The king was desperate to rid his land of this monster. He promised the hand of his daughter in marriage to the man brave enough to slay the beast.

“Now the twin was aware of the beauty of the princess and he meant to marry her for his own. He stalked the countryside for signs of the bird and, after a long time, he tracked it to its foul nest. It was high in the branches of an evil tree. The twin scaled the tree and crept upon the nest with his knife in his paw. At once the bird attacked and the twin engaged him in battle. They fought for many days, through swamps and clifftops, in the branches of trees and in the bowels of the earth but finally the twin bested his opponent and the bird lay dead. To prove that his hand had been the one to slay the monster, he reached behind the mask and cut out the tongue as a token of his deed and started out in search of the castle.

“But the monkey-king’s knights were also abroad in the land in search of the bird and one of these knights had been following the twin. When he found the body of the bird at the foot of the tree, he decided to claim the victory as his own. He cut the head away from its body and fastened it to his horse. Knowing the way to the castle, he rode ahead of the twin and was the first to arrive.

“The king was delighted to see the bird's masked head, and he arranged for the marriage between the knight and the princess to take place immediately. The head of the beast was mounted on a large plaque above the throne. The twin arrived just as the wedding was being arranged. He saw what was happening and rode into the party “So this is the bird I have heard about,” he said “But how can he boast of his crimes or commune with the dead when he has no tongue in his head?”

“The knight knocked him from his buffalo and lifted the bird’s mask to prove himself. But of course the tongue was not there.

““The beast talked aplenty when my knife was in him,” the twin shouted “And this was the tongue he used!” as he spoke, he pulled the bird’s tongue from his bag.

“The king turned on his knight and banished him from the kingdom “The wedding continues,” he announced “With the same bride but with a more noble groom.”

“They lived together in peace for some time, but the twin found the wanderlust upon him again. He decided to go on a hunting trip into the forest. His new wife was afraid of the forest but the twin was strong of will and his decision prevailed.

“While he was in the forest, he came across an old gorilla woman “Good morning, my lord,” she said to him “I wonder if you would lie with me for a while on the blankets of my bed.”

“The twin opened his mouth to chase her away, but the words turned to stone in his throat and his throat turned to stone around them. Within seconds, his entire body had turned to solid rock. She had cursed him.

“At that moment, in the small hut on the banks of the mighty river, the bottle of wine turned blood red. The younger twin noticed the change and remembered his brother’s words. He left immediately and bade his parents farewell. He did not look back. He did not know where he was going or where his brother had gone before him. He put his faith in the instincts of his water buffalo and after a long journey he came upon the castle. He stopped to ask for news, but found instead a strange welcome. His arrival was celebrated with trumpets and banners and he was embraced by the princess “You have returned to me, my love and yet I feared that you were lost forever in the forest,” she said.

“He realised that they had mistaken him for his brother, so similar did their faces appear. He was inexperienced in the world and was afraid of their reaction if they would discover the truth, so he said nothing. He remained silent through the banquet in his honour and did not reply to the princess’ tender-hearted words. She led him through the castle to their bed chamber but instead of the love she expected from her husband, she found a cold response. In his desire not to dishonour his brother, the younger twin laid his sword between their bodies. He did not cross the sword.

“He lay awake all night and left the castle with the next sun’s rise. He made straight for the forest. He was naive in the ways of the world but he had developed a keen sense for things of the spirit. He knew as soon as he saw the trees that the forest was evil. As he entered its dark canopy, he met the gorilla “Good morning, my lord,” the witch said to him “I wonder if you would lie with me for a...”

“Before she could finish the words of her spell, he had jumped from his buffalo and knocked her to the ground. He pressed his sword into her throat so that it drew a little red blood and said to her “Take me to my brother or it will be my sword you say goodnight to.”

“The gorilla took him to a clearing. Inside the clearing was a life-sized statue of his brother on the back of his buffalo. The twin did not understand what it meant. The witch reversed the curse by applying a balm to the statue and his brother returned to life before his eyes. His first act was the execution of the witch and the restoration of light to the forest. He slew her and took her magic potions for his own. His encasement in stone had made him impatient and his swift actions troubled his younger brother, but he said nothing.

“They rode back to the castle, overjoyed at finding each other again. The older brother made his twin wait in hiding while he surprised his wife with his return. The younger twin counselled against it but his brother had grown rash and did not listen. He embraced his wife and kissed her fully upon the lips “My lord,” she said “I have longed for your return since you left my bed this morning.”

“At her words, the brother was overcome with grief at his brother’s betrayal and anger against his own cuckolding. He strode fast to his brother’s hiding place and took away his head. His brother’s body fell lifeless to the stained grass. He left that place and descended into a black temper that would not abate. His wife found him to be inconsolable. He would not talk to her of his discovery “My love,” she said to him “I fear this melancholia that has found you will destroy us. I beg you; tonight let me embrace you as your wife. Do not place your sword between us as you did last night.”

“The older twin understood that he had murdered his brother in error and haste. He ran from the castle to his brother’s hiding place and doused him with the witches’ balms.”

Katy closed the book.

“Is that the end?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“It’s a little abrupt.”

We sat on the grass, cross-legged in the shade of the bell-tower. The book lay open on Katy’s lap. It had been difficult for her to concentrate on the words. She had taken her new medication and found that her attention-span had been seriously diminished. The letters kept tumbling away from meaning and memory. She had read the story twenty or thirty times to get it straight in her head before reading it out to me.

“Yeah, well, it’s an old story,” Katy said “But what did you think?”

“I don’t know, I mean, the white/red wine bottle theme was familiar. I think I might have heard something like it before but I don’t remember there being any monkeys or a monster in it.”

“No, no. You’re being too analytical. I want to know what it means to you. It has to mean something.”

I rubbed my forehead “Where did you find this again?”

Katy held the book up towards me “I walked into the hospital library yesterday. I didn’t even know there was a library until yesterday. Something just made me walk in there and I just went straight in and up to the first shelf and took out the first book and this was it and then I opened it up and this story just fell out at me, you know? There must be a numinous coincidence at work. I had to steal it and learn it and I knew that there was a reason why I found it yesterday, the day before you were coming to visit me.”

“You mean synchronicity?”

“Yes, that feeling you get… I’m not sure anymore. Forget about it.”

We had found a quiet patch on the lawns near the ward where Katy could read me the story. The sun had chased us around the grass in search of shade from the roving sundial-shadow of a sweet chestnut tree. Katy found the light too disorientating. She had become accustomed to the gloom and inertia of the ward. It felt like her body was now tamed to institutional life and she wondered out loud whether it would ever be reset. She had hoped to climb the tree with me but its branches were too high and she could not reach them. There were other trees in the grounds but she was too tired to look for them. She began to feel that the setting had spoiled the story, and that she had failed somehow. Maybe if she had managed to find a good tree then I would have been more responsive. She thought that I needed the branches over my head to be able to decipher the message. I didn’t really understand.

The hospital grounds were deserted. It was a Saturday but few of the other patients had visitors. You could get why they wanted to stay away. Even in the warm summer, the place was as bleak as night. It felt like the whole grounds were covered in a fine grey dust of madness that would stick to your clothes and the insides of your nostrils. It would contaminate you and drag your spirit into the boggy ground.

“No,” I said “No, I want to try to understand. I’m sorry, ignore what I said. Let me think about it for a minute,” I was concerned by Katy’s obsession with the story and worried that it might a sign of degeneration in her mental state. But I was secretly relieved to let my sister guide the conversation. I had not recovered from my night in the cemetery. I was glad to avoid any silences in which I might feel compelled to share the events with Katy. There was no way that it could be a narrative that was conducive to re-entering reality. Not discussing it with Katy saved me from having to think about it myself for a while. I was supposed to be the sane one. I would have to shove it away and let it die unwatered. “Alright,” I said finally “So you think that we’re like the twin brothers? Because we’re sisters?”

“I don’t know what I think it means,” Katy replied. Her voice was strained and desperate beneath the medicated monotone “I want to know what you think.”

“Well, I am the older sister and I did leave home but I don’t, you know, I’m not too sure about who the monster would be or that witch-gorilla thing, I don’t know what that was about… The princess maybe…”

The princess was obvious enough, I thought suddenly. They brothers had shared the same woman’s bed, after all. But in the story the younger one did not sleep with her. He kept her sword between them. Was Katy trying to tell me something? Did she see the princess as Joseph too? She had not discovered that I knew about what happened between them so there was no reason for her to try smoothing things over with me. But perhaps she was trying to confess, in her way. And perhaps she was trying to explain some significant aspect of things from her perspective. The sword, then. In the story the sword was a pre-Freudian symbol of loyalty, a bridge that the younger sibling did not cross. In sleeping with Joseph, I had assumed that the loyalty was broken but something in the story suggested otherwise. But what? That Katy had merely slept with a man who reached out to her, that she had not truly betrayed her sister/brother. Could the sword that lay between them have been the purity of her intentions? There was no malice, then, in her act?. But I had not feared any cruelty from Katy. What then? That Katy and Joseph both had retained their honour. I had left them behind after all, having abandoned them both with no promises to return. Their lives were their own. I had no entitlement to my feelings of betrayal.

I realised then that I had fallen into my silent thoughts and had neglected to speak. I feared that Katy would be able to penetrate my mind and flung the first words I could find out into the air between us “The decapitation,” I said “The younger sibling lost their head. Just like you.”

Katy laughed “I guess,” she was not uncomfortable laughing at her illness at least.

I wondered: Was she trying to tell me something else? “Do you feel that I brought this on you? Did I have something to do with your breakdown?”

Katy sat back. I felt that I may have said too much. I might have found a safer path in discussing Joseph.

Katy scratched her head. Flakes of dandruff fell upon the dust jacket of the book. She was not looking after herself properly. I was not looking after her properly “Yes is the simple answer,” she said “I had the feeling that, before the breakdown, I had the feeling that the house was protecting me. I don’t know if you remember…? Well I wanted to stay inside. And after everything with mother I just thought, well, I’ll stay here now, I won’t go out for a while even if they tell me to.”

“But you did go out. That day Joseph came round. Is that why you left? Because he was there?”

“No,” Katy smiled “I knew you would think that. No. I was leaving when he came. I had to leave that minute but he wanted to speak to me and told me to stay.”

“That’s why…”

“Yes, that’s why I tried to hit him, if that’s what you were going to ask me. And more than anything else that I did afterwards, that’s the one thing I regret the most but I just had to get out that second, that instant, um, and I couldn’t explain it to him. I just had to go.”

“So what was it then?”

Katy glanced up at me briefly. Then her face fell away. It was grim “Because you were the next name that they gave me,” she said.

I felt sick “The voices?”

“The Assassins, yes,” Katy summoned the courage to lift her head up and look me in the eye while she spoke “They wanted me to kill you. And I knew you were on your way home.”

I could tell from Katy’s voice that she was letting me know the truth. If I had come home and found her, she would have tried to go through with it.

Katy continued “They were upset about my failure with mother. So they gave me another target. And they were clever. Part of me did want to kill you for everything you’ve done. But I beat them. I beat the fuckers. I didn’t do it.”

At that moment, I felt closer to my sister than I had ever done before. I was renewed with the desire to put things right. We hugged. It did not feel awkward.

I stayed with my sister for hours that day. We walked about the grounds and played cards for a while. Katy took me around the ward and introduced me to some of the other patients. Some of them were severely institutionalised. One old woman had been in and out of hospitals all of her life. She wasn’t crazy, she told me: she’d just got addicted to prescription drugs when she was a teenager. They were different times, she said, people had different attitudes towards addiction so she was sectioned for her addiction. I asked her what treatment she was getting now. She fixed me with an angry smile and recited a list of her current medication. I understood what she was trying to say.

Later in the day, I was mistaken for an inmate by a nurse. He asked me aggressively what I wanted for tea. My bemusement at the question seemed to irritate him further. I did not understand why he would be asking me about my daily routines. I was only a visitor. We were practically shouting at each other before Katy realised what was happening and intervened.

After tea, I watched the patients queuing passively to receive their medication. The scene appalled me somehow. The patients would line up in front of the nurse’s office before swallowing their pills. Then they returned quietly to their seats and slumped into nothingness. I tried to lighten the mood by asking the nurses if I could have some too, like a shill. Nobody laughed. My embarrassment only increased my bitterness at the system. I watched the old woman take her pills. Nothing seemed to have changed in her lifetime. Some of the patients were being forcibly medicated against their wills. Some of them had even had corrective brain surgery, like mini lobotomies with a laser. Some of the patients were still receiving electric shock therapy. I wondered if the doctors still practised exorcism on their demons. It was depressing how far we had failed to come.

Katy became tired after taking her medication and I started to say goodbye. I wanted to stay with my sister but the environment was too miserable. I felt guilty leaving her behind but there was nothing I could do. They were not about to throw me a bed up.

Katy told me not to worry “You going back to work next week?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I picked up my bag. I did not want to tell Katy how much I hated the work. It was my burden to carry, not her.

Katy smiled softly “And here I am and they tell me that I’m mad and they give me drugs for it and there you are and they fucking pay you.”

“What’s that?”

“They tell me to ignore the voices but then they go and they fucking pay you to listen to voices in your headset all day. It’s the world that’s mad, not us.”

I hugged her again and walked outside alone. The day was on the wane and the sky was crumpling up at the edges. As I made my way back to the car, I saw a figure move towards the twilight glow of electric light from the wards. I stood up straight. It was Joseph.

“Joseph!” I called out to him before I could stop myself. My initial response to seeing him had been gladness. I regretted it instantly. We had said too much to each other to meet again and pretend that it was nothing. I had not prepared myself for it.

I realised that he had seen me already and was trying to get past without me noticing. He would have ignored my call if he had been prepared but it jarred him in surprise and he missed a step. He stopped walking but remained facing forwards.

My body was heavy as I crossed the gravel path towards him. I slowed down before I came too close and then it just started to pour out of me “Joseph,” I said “Listen, I’m sorry about everything, can’t we just, I don’t, I mean… I’ve been an arsehole I know, and not just about the things I said the last time I saw you but about everything, I mean, I’m sorry about that Sunday with your mother and I’m sorry about leaving you behind in the riot and I’m sorry about three years ago and every stupid thing I’ve done before or since and I know you’ll probably just tell me to piss off and I understand if you do but I saw you just now and I was glad to see you and I’m happy that you’re here and Katy needs friends right now and…”

He turned his head towards me “I thought that you would be cross that I’m here to see Katy,” he said. There was ice in her voice but her eyes were not cold. He seemed to be forcing the distance between us with a wedge of contempt that would not hold forever. I could feel that I had been recast but I wanted to make amends and I could see that he did not have enough bile in his soul to keep it going.

“I know that this thing with Katy doesn’t change everything between us and that we’re probably never going to even get to be friends again but I am glad that you’re here and that we’re all pulling together for her.”

“She told me that you got a job in a call centre and that you’re paying the mortgage off. At least you came through for her in the end. She loves you, you know. She idolises you. When you went off to university, she was devastated. She was only a kid.”

Tears stabbed at the back of my eyes. I had to get away “I’m just glad that she’s still got you as a friend, that’s all I wanted to say” I turned and darted towards the car.

He called after me “You’re becoming less of a cunt every day, Violet Kane.”

I jumped into the driver’s seat and sped out of the grounds.

The next day was the day that they caught Leon.

I had arrived in the call centre early that morning. I had been thinking about him the night before and I was inspired to take action to see him properly. None of the team leaders were on the floor. Most of the pods were empty. I made my way straight for my favourite seat. It was at the back of a pod with my back towards the wall near the exit. A large pillar stood between me and the team leader’s pod. As long as the floor walkers sat elsewhere, I would be safe from prying eyes for the whole day. It was not that I had anything to hide, but the sense of constant exposure in the other seats was unnerving.

The day went quietly. I managed to keep my head down and get on with my work. I thought about Katy’s joke; the disembodied voices rolled towards me through the telephone wires and I left them roll straight over. My skin had become less permeable. The calls were easier to process as long as I focused on their words for the solutions to their problems and negated any sense of them as real people. There were too many of them. It was suicide to even try. After the morning shift clocked off, I reached over and disconnected the turret on the seat next to me. Unplugged from the hub, it would not be able to obtain an inbound line. Several people tried to sit down and connect their headsets but it would not work for them. It was a simple matter of reaching under the desk and plugging the cables back in, but none of them bothered to investigate the fault. In this way, I managed to keep the seat free until Leon arrived. I waved him over as he stepped through the door. Hidden from the eyes of the team leaders, we would finally be able to sit together for the evening shift.

I reconnected the lead and told him what I had done. He seemed impressed. “A man of many talents,” he said as he unpacked his bag and hunted around for a pen.

“Well, I mean, I haven’t barely spoken to you in weeks, you know,” I said.

“I know,” he touched my arm and chanced a despondent grin. Of all the forces keeping us apart, our own personal private tragedies were the strongest. His smile seemed to acknowledge what we both knew: we would never really be together but we should at least be capable of kind words and company. To date, we had barely even succeeded in that.

The evening was quiet and there were few calls in the queue. By seven in the evening, the inbound flow had dried to a trickle. The team leaders wandered out onto the floor and dispensed stacks of processing tasks. It was easy work to fill the time and was not being target-monitored as it would be in the late shift. Kali walked up to us and handed me a wad of queried meter readings “I want these reconciled against consumption estimates,” she said “Let’s see how you do.”

Kali looked across to the seat next to me and saw Leon. Her eyes narrowed “Oh. Very cosy,” he said. Leon stared back at her with slits for eyes. Kali sorted through the stacks and pulled out a ream of paper “These are crossed meters,” she said, letting the wad fall heavily onto Leon’s desk “I want you to trace each one back through the key charging history on both accounts. And I don’t want you two gossiping all night,” her birdy eyes did not leave Leon while she spoke “If I see you’re not working then I will move one of you to my pod where I can keep an eye on you.”

As she walked away, Leon leant his head towards me, close enough for me to smell his shampoo “That fucking bitch, you see what she’s like.”

“She’ll hear you,” I whispered.

“Fucking let her hear me,” Leon replied.

We talked quietly, making our way through the paperwork. Every now and then, an inbound call would interrupt and we would have to deal with a customer, so we had to keep our headsets on while we were working.

“I came in to work on the weekend,” he said “I thought I might see you but you weren’t here. God it was so boring. If I didn’t need the money so badly I would never have even thought about doing it.”

“Was it busy?” I asked, thinking about my own weekend.

“No, it was mostly processing while we waited for calls. So I had to do all of these updating people’s addresses when they moved out or whatever so they could send them their bills. But it was so boring I started reading the notes on the accounts and some of them were really sad, you know, these old widows who couldn’t pay their bills and then they were going to have to have key meters put in. It was horrible. This company treats us like shit and they fuck over their customers, you know? So you know what I did?”

“No, what?”

“I deleted their debts.”

“You did what?”

“I just deleted them,” he said, laughing “So they wouldn’t have to pay anything. I just changed them to zero, gone, that’s it. I must have written off about ten thousand pounds at least.”

I was taken aback “Well, Christ, I mean, that’s, you know, that’s ethical sabotage and that’s cool but you know, what if you get caught?”

“Fuck them. What can they do? And anyway, I don’t care. I know what it’s like when you owe so much money to everybody that you can’t even breathe, you know what I mean, I mean what else would I be doing in here on my weekend if I wasn’t desperate? So I know what it’s like for them.”

At that moment, I saw Kali moving across the floor. She had a strange look on her face. I was not sure what it meant. But I recognised the expression. I had last seen it on her face when she caught me with the chewing gum. She moved herself over to stand above Leon. She stopped. Leon looked up. A cruel grin spread across Kali’s face. She reached over without a word and unplugged Leon’s headset from the turret. The line went dead. The lead coiled away across the desk. Kali stepped back slightly and dug her eyes into Leon “You can go now,” was all that she said.

“What is it now?” Leon pushed his chair back and stood up to face her.

Kali said nothing. She was enjoying the slow moment. She was the cat who caught the wounded bird. There was no rush.

I guessed at it first “They listen to our calls,” I said “When the customers phone in.”

Leon did not understand “Yeah, so? I knew that.”

“No,” I said. The awful reality had fallen upon me. I could not even lift my head. I could not believe that I had not realised sooner “You don’t get it. They listen all the time.”

Leon reached a hand up to his headset. A finger touched against the microphone in the mouthpiece. It slipped from his head into his hands. His mouth began to open.

“You will see,” Kali said “The telephone makes for a poor confessional.”

Leon spoke quickly “I was only joking, man. It was a joke. You can’t prove anything.”

Kali sucked her lower lip as if savouring the taste of her own smile “Everything is recorded in the basement server,” she said “Every keystroke. Every call. Every conversation.”

Leon looked to me for support but there was nothing that I could do. I felt impotent and crushed. Other workers were standing up and watching us. He span around to Kali “I really need this job.”

Kali snorted “Oh no. Oh no, I really do not think so. No, there’s nothing I can do. I am afraid you will have to be leaving us now. And there will have to be an investigation.”

I rose up from my seat. I wanted to protect Leon but I could not see any course of defence “What do you mean? What are you going to do?”

“This is a very serious matter, Ms. Kane,” Kali said “This is called fraud. No. There will be an investigation. We will be forced to notify the police.”

“Police?” I threw my headset down onto the desk “Listen: this is nothing. He didn’t mean to cause any trouble. You’ve got all the records, you can go back and change what he did, you can still undo everything.”

“It is very nice of you to volunteer to tidy up the terrible mess that your friend has made, Ms. Kane. You can start work on it tomorrow. But now you can sit back down and finish what you were doing and you,” she put her hand on Leon’s shoulder “You are going home now.”

“Please,” Leon buckled slightly under the pressure of Kali’s hand “Don’t do this.”

“Now,” said Kali.

Leon bent in towards him and whispered “Then I hope you fucking die alone you miserable bitch.”

He snatched his bag from the floor, turned his back on Kali and walked to the door. I grabbed my jacket to run after his. Just as I was stepping away from my desk, my turret began to ring. It had picked up an incoming call. Kali raised her eyebrows at me “You have a customer, Violet,” she said “Don’t you think you should plug your headset back in, now?”

The turret continued to ring. I was trapped. I needed to think clearly, but I was so overcome with loathing that I could not help myself. I gritted my teeth “I’m going after him,” I said.

Kali folded her arms “Then I will be asking your agency for two new temps tomorrow, will I?”

“You can’t do this.”

“I’ve seen your personnel file, Violet. I liked your CV. It was very… creative.”

I understood the implication. She knew full well that I had lied about my career history to get the job. None of the other agencies would take me. If I followed Leon outside then I would never work again. I thought of my responsibility towards Katy. I had no choice. And he knew.

She span away on four inches of heel and left me standing there, rooted to the floor.

I tried calling Leon that night but he never answered. Eventually his phone stopped even ringing when I dialled. It was the same computerised woman on the line, telling me to hang up or try again. I tried again. Nothing. I would have understood if he felt that I had betrayed him. He would think that I should have followed him out of the door. He would think that I was weak and spineless. I should have stood up to Kali. I should have told her to fuck herself and keep the job. But I could not do it. I was their prisoner.

I saw Tara outside the gates the next morning. She was bent over, straightening her Hitler-Youth tie in the wing mirror of a car. The sky was grey with clouds. I guessed that the summer was going to surrender already.

Tara stood up as I approached and gave me a strange look.

I walked up to her. Something was wrong “What?”

“You didn’t hear about Leon?” Tara asked.

“What do you mean? That shit with Kali yesterday? I was right with him when it happened.”

“No,” Tara swallowed “Afterwards. He killed himself last night.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jacob’s Ladder

Tara’s words reached up into the air and tore the world in half as if it were no more than a sheet of paper. I was smashed into pieces. Important parts of my brain disconnected themselves and shut down. Nothing worked properly. My vision blurred and distorted. I tried to focus, to get my head around the words but it wouldn’t happen. I kept sliding back down into static. I felt sick. I was dimly aware of Tara. She was trying to say something but she was not forming sentences. I could not stand to wait. My legs began moving before I was conscious of them. Soon, Tara was behind me, calling out as she disappeared into the distance. I was running. I was just running. Nothing else was happening. There were other people in the street. They weren’t doing anything important. None of them were real. How could they be? I pushed them out of the way and ran through them. They shouted things at me but it didn’t matter. They were barely alive. They weren’t even living in the same universe as me. I shoved into a crowd at a bus-stop and fought through to the other side. I ran across the traffic. Why was it there, why was it in my way?

I ran home and picked up the telephone, dialling his number by punching the buttons.

A woman answered “Who the fuck is this?” I said.

“This is Violet- who the fuck are you?”

I could hear the woman talking to someone else “She says her name’s Violet, yeah, I don’t know, the one he worked with,” the voice came back towards the phone “Where are you? Where are you right now?”

“I’m in my house- who are you and what are you doing on this number?”

“I’m Leon’s brother and don’t think you can just curse at me- what’s your address? I’m coming there now.”

The door was open when she arrived. She vacillated at the edge of the hallway, bouncing on her heels “Hello? It’s Benoite. Leon’s sister. Hey!”

I appeared. I was smoking “Is it true? Is she really…?”

Benoite moved inside. She was tall and wide like an enlarged photocopy of the average woman. She wore a padded jacket and walked with her chest out in front of her. There was a hammer in her hand “Get inside,” she said, closing the door behind her without turning around. She started for the living room and stopped suddenly, turning back to check that the door was properly shut. She composed herself, resettling her shoulder blades and rolling out her chest again. Her frame dropped down and steadied around her centre of gravity. She had the shape of a bear, meditating and ready to slash out with the hammer.

I stepped back into the living room. Benoite flinched and moved forwards, her composure shattered. She stepped sideways through the doorway, her face jabbing between mine and the rest of the room “Who else is here?” she asked.

I did not understand what was happening. Everything was out of control “It’s just me.”

Benoite looked me over. She was probing for something. Eventually, she seemed to be satisfied “OK. Sit down,” she said, nodding towards the sofa.

I refused to sit down. I was not going to be told what to do in my home. I stood and faced her “Is it true?”

Benoite frowned “Hey, man, I told you to sit down so sit down, alright?”

I did not move “Tell me what happened!”

Benoite frowned, her fingers tensing around the handle of the hammer. Her shoulders rolled forwards. She stared into my face, waiting for a flicker. But nothing came. I stared back, shaking in anger. Benoite waited for long seconds. We stood unmoving. Her fingers were sweating and she lost her grip on the handle momentarily. I did not respond. Benoite exhaled. She seemed to feel that the moment had revealed something to her. I had some of the answers that she needed. She allowed her hand to relax completely and slid the hammer down onto the table “Alright,” she said, sitting down next to it “My mum’s in a wheelchair, her legs… she’s in pain all the time and she has these painkillers, I don’t know what they are, but they’re the strong ones, the ones that they don’t give you if you’re ever going to get any better… So last night after we’ve all gone to sleep Leon goes downstairs and he gets a glass of water and he swallows about a hundred of these pills. Nobody would have woken up, except the pipes from the toilet go through my bedroom and it’s noisy when someone flushes the toilet during the night, you know what I mean. He was throwing up and up and up for hours and he kept flushing the toilet like he didn’t want to make a mess or nothing and… when we got to the hospital they pumped his stomach out but they couldn’t do anything. He was too… fucked up to speak and he didn’t leave a note. The doctor said that nobody ever leaves a note… And yeah he’s dead. And he didn’t leave a note. And you call me today and you ask me who the fuck I am. So what am I going to do? I want to know who the fuck you are and I want you to tell me everything you know: he was my little brother.”

“I was with him yesterday at work,” I said “He got fired. I tried calling him all night but nobody answered. I go to work today and they tell me that he’s killed himself and I can’t believe that he would just do that and why and no, I don’t know why he did it any more than you do and, and probably less.”

“Is it? He got fired?” Benoite was surprised by the news “I called them this morning and told them, told them. I told them he wasn’t coming in and they said well is he sick or what and I said no he’s dead and they never told me he got the fucking sack. What the…? Why didn’t they say anything? Why did he get the fucking sack?”

“That doesn’t matter, what matters is finding out why he killed himself, surely!”

“That’s what I’m asking you, man! What do you think I’m doing here?”

“He was wiping off people’s debts on the computer and they caught him doing it. And they said they were going to call the police.”

Benoite stood up and began pacing the room “No, man, no that’s not it. He wouldn’t just… no. That’s not it,” she span around, picked up the hammer and pointed it at me “Did you fuck him?”

“What?”

“Well, who the hell are you, then? How did you know him? I said: did you fuck my brother?”

“I,” the hammer was only an inch away from my teeth “We work together. He stayed here once but he wasn’t really like my boyfriend. He only slept here once… he only slept with me once. I didn’t really even know him…” I closed my eyes and reopened them. The hammer was still there “But I really liked him but we couldn’t connect, I don’t know, I know that he had problems. There was this other woman, some older woman he was seeing, he told me that she was his girlfriend but that he was going to finish it with her. I don’t know. But I liked him. He was nice to me. And, no, I didn’t have anything to do with why he killed himself and you can either get that thing out of my face or you can crack my head open and piss off if you think it will make you feel any better but I’m just as in the dark about everything as you are.”

Benoite lowered the hammer “You know why I came here, though. I had to check you out. I don’t know you. You’d do the same thing. I just want to know what happened,” she dropped the hammer onto the floorboards and turned to leave. It fell heavily, splintering the wood “This other woman, this older woman,” she paused as she stepped out of the room “You know her name?”

“No. She’s a watchmaker or a watch-mender or clock-maker of something, I don’t know what you call it. Leon told me she’s got a shop behind the arcade. But I don’t know her name.”

Benoite thought for a moment before moving on “Don’t worry,” she said “I’ll see you again.”

“The funeral,” I stepped after her “I want to come to the funeral.”

“No. No, you’re not going to get to come to the funeral. You don’t get to do that. You let her family deal with this.”

I sat in Katy’s room. The curtains were drawn. I poured myself another glass of whisky and turned the computer on. Within a few hours, I had already made progress. I had downloaded a polymorphic mutation engine and was customising the code to make it more powerful.

I was making a virus. It was designed specifically to exploit the security holes in the call centre’s computer network. Their database of customer accounts had been tailor-made for the company a few years earlier. As such, it had been updated several times. Every time it was updated, it became more complicated and, with each complication, the numbers of coding errors and bugs increased. The whole system was like Emmental cheese. Every single one of the errors in the code was a big door, wide open and waiting for a malicious program. And, with its deviant mutating heart, my virus would not only be able to infiltrate, but it would be able to avoid capture forever. I would not even have to worry about it being discovered. Every time it replicated itself in another part of the network, it would change itself and re-encrypt. If they found it somewhere in the network they would only be able to identify it by that occurrence alone. The other replications would appear to be completely different. And the speed with which it replicated itself would forever be faster than their attempts to follow it.

I leant back in the chair and swigged on the scotch. It made me smile. I felt demented. I knew that my actions were not those of a sane man but I could not stop myself from pursuing them.

Leon was dead. I already knew that he would leave little but a mystery behind him. My mind fixated on the scattered things that I did know and they gave me faith and purpose. I knew that Kali was a bitch but I knew that the individual did not matter. Personalising disputes only obscured the truth. The call centre was a machine for crushing human souls. Individuals were instruments with it. They were no more capable of evil than a coiled spring. I knew that the call centre had to be stopped. It had a hand in Leon’s death, somehow, in some way. And it would pay the price. I was going to kill it.

In order to kill your enemy, you must first identify them:

It wasn’t Kali. That was too simple. Her face had haunted me as much as Leon’s had. I was desperate to move beyond that point. It would be too easy to hate her and miss the real target. It wasn’t Kali. It was the organisation itself. It was every organisation that had ever existed. I saw them as all structures of control, designed to strip people of their power. But that conclusion removed all free will from the equation. No, I thought, organisations are not total and people are not powerless. I closed my eyes and shut out the world. Models and metaphors span in three dimensions as I tried to get a grip on them: organisations as pyramids, organisations as organisms, organisations as machines. Nothing was encompassing enough. I screwed my eyes shut and let the vision come to me. I began to picture them in my mind as criss-crossing lines of energy, covering the Earth in the night. I saw it as a network like the national electricity grid. The vision rolled out before me. The organisation itself did not truly exist in any legitimate physical sense. It was just the people inside of the organisation. They were generators, creating power that flowed around them and between them and through them. Some of them had more power to shape the grid than others, but none of them controlled it completely. Without this human movement and action, the organisation would have no meaning. The grid would cease to exist. It wasn’t the structure itself but the conflict within the structure that defined it as an organisation. Temps like Leon and me were in blackout zones. We had no connections to seize the flow of power. We had been rendered impotent.

Control itself was not something possessed by the ostentatiously powerful but something suffered by the ostensibly powerless. Everybody in the grid got some kind of temporary control over the resources as they moved through the network. The people who looked like they were at the top of the pyramid were just more generators dispersed throughout the grid. All they did was to find a way to increase the number of times they had this temporary hold on things and then they tried to make those moments last longer. And that was their only power. And that was my powerlessness. How could I ever prolong my hold on things?

I knew the answer and it lay in the potential of the virus to force a point of rupture in the grid, to bring the whole thing down like Alice’s pack of cards.

There was a heavy knocking at the door. I ran downstairs and opened it. Benoite was standing on the doorstep. There was another woman on the ground beneath her. Benoite lifted the woman’s face up towards me. The light was dim from the hall and I could not make much of her features. She was so badly beaten that she might have been unrecognisable even if I had known her. Her face was covered in blood. Her mouth hung open as if she was still trying to speak. She was barely conscious. Benoite grabbed her face by the jaw and held it up higher “This bitch here,” she said “Is this the one you mentioned? Is this the other girlfriend?”

I looked down at the face. It was contorted in a pitiful expression of pain and compliance. I shook my head “I don’t know,” I said “I never met her, how would I know? I don’t know her, no.”

“Alright, fuck it then, thanks for nothing,” Benoite span around and dragged the limp body after her. I closed the door slowly and went back to my work.

It was a long time before I was finished writing the virus. Forty eight hours straight at the computer: tweaking the program, testing it and refining it. I dismissed the world outside the room as a triviality. The anticipated solar eclipse came and went. I had the curtains drawn and the lights on all day. I did not even notice it. The work was my only existence.

The virus had to be perfect, a neutral instrument of death and destruction, a killing machine to kill machines with. It had to work. And it was two days before I was sure that it would. I kicked the chair back from the computer and let it fall to the floor. I pushed away from the desk and stumbled into my father’s old room, my eyes just a pulped red mess in the middle of my face. I threw myself down onto the bed and passed into an insane half-sleep that would not permit unconsciousness.

My mind would not cease. It was roving inside my skull, looking to put an name to the virus so that my personal Hiroshima might have some kind of face. I thought about naming the virus Saint Vitus in tribute to my childhood illness, but I thought it might bring bad luck. I had been lucky so far and I did not want to tempt fate. I had only contracted a mild form of the disease. So far I had escaped my grandmother’s death: Huntington’s Chorea. It works on your body in a similar way, tearing you up inside and giving you the jitters like somebody’s dancing puppet but it also does a number on your head. My grandmother tried to set fire to her own house, just like Woody Guthrie’s mother. Except my grandmother was stopped before she got too far. Guthrie was unlucky. The disease caught up with him several years before Bob Dylan ever did. When Dylan finally tracked down his distant mentor, he was lying half dead in a backwoods sanatorium. There was nothing he could do but play him the guitar. It’s an iconic image and part of the mythos of modern music, this passing on of the Olympian torch from one man dying to his next incarnation. Felix Dennis keeps a life-sized bronze sculpture in his garden of Dylan serenading Guthrie in his bed. The sculpture is respectful and reverent but it doesn’t do the scene justice. Guthrie was in the later stages of the disease, wracked with the shakes and unable to keep still; Dylan was bouncing on his heels at the gates of his masterpieces, he could keep still neither mentally nor physically, constantly on the move both on stage and on the Kerouac road. Dennis’ statue is a misrepresentation. Neither of the figures move.

So I left Saint Vitus out walking his dog solving metaphysical crimes and changed the name of the virus to Jacobs Ladder. I remembered the story from my mother’s brief obsession with the Bible: Jacob was one of those deranged figures of the Old Testament who achieve virtue through apparently villainous sprees. He almost killed his brother in the womb and later on he swindled him out of his birthright when he was starving for food. One time he got into a fist fight with an angel and, so the story goes, came away wiping his hands. The Jacob most people know is the somnambulant desert wretch with his visions of a heavenly ladder, like David Niven in ‘A Matter of Life and Death’. In truth, he was probably just watching the angels on the ladder and wondering whether or not he could kick their arses.

I liked the multivocality of the name. My grandfather had once made me a toy called a Jacob’s Ladder. It was just a series of blocks of wood tied together with string and it didn’t look like much, but when you held it up at one end, the blocks would cascade magically up and down the string. A Jacob’s Ladder was also a genital piercing and at the same time a chess move where you force a check using your king. My favourite Jacob’s Ladder, though, was the mad-scientist device that produces huge blue sparks of electricity, like a primitive Tesla coil. We had built one at the after-hours science club at school. Of course, none of us had a clue what we were doing and, after the inevitable fire, the club was abruptly closed down.

I finally began to fall asleep, then, with spiralling arcs of electricity dancing in my head as they tore the computer systems of the world apart before them.

It was still dark when I awoke. Lost to the world and all alone, I turned over and forced myself back to sleep. My sleep was uneasy and restless. I dreamt of falling trees.

The next day, I put on my best shirt and wrapped a tie around my neck, “For the last time,” I told myself. I picked up the disk from the computer and slid it into the inside pocket of my jacket. I stood in front of the mirror and ran my hands through my hair. For a moment I noticed that my face had changed. Someone else looked back at me. Someone older. Someone halfway between myself and my mother. I grabbed a handful of water and slapped it onto my face. God, throughout the entire realignment process I never once thought I would end up ever looking like her. I left the mirror broken behind me and went to work.

Kali was not there.

“I need to use your computer for a second,” I said to The Gimp “I just need to check something.”

The Gimp squinted at me suspiciously “Why don’t you use your own computer?”

“I’m not logged in. There’s a problem with my account. Listen,” I pulled some coins out of my pocket “Go and get yourself some chocolate from the machine.”

The Gimp snatched the money like peanuts in a zoo and scampered away. I sat down in his seat and pulled myself towards the desk “Right,” I whispered, steeling myself. My hands found the disk in my jacket. I pulled it out and set it on top of the keyboard. I kept my head straight and looked around me. Nobody was watching. Now was the time. I picked up the disk and reached underneath the desk. I pushed the button on the front of the computer and the drawer slid open. The disk dropped lightly from my hands and fell into the slot. I pressed the button again and the disk glided inside.

I checked around me again. I was still safe.

I turned to the monitor. A box had appeared in the middle of the screen. It was disguised to look innocent. Even if anybody was watching me from behind, they would not be able to tell what was happening. The text in the box read “Do you want to continue?” There were three options: Yes, No or Cancel. I placed my hand on the mouse. All I had to do was to click “Yes”. An animated ladder would appear on the screen, surrounded by cyan sparks, signalling that the program had begun. The virus would instantly upload onto The Gimp’s machine and would start to spread to the other computers via the network connections, infecting each one as it moved on, changing its skin each time. All I had to do was to click “Yes.” It would not even take a second. My hand rested on the mouse without moving. I looked at the screen. My breathing became laboured. I could not move. At first I did not know what was wrong. I started to sweat. Then I realised: I was afraid. I was scared of what would happen. The destruction would be swift and fatal. It would be unstoppable. I would pull the place apart as surely as if I had ripped the pillars down. I would be Samson. It would be apocalyptic.

I could not move. The thought of it was too big. It was too much. I could see The Gimp in the distance out of the corner of my eye. He was already coming back. There was no time to lose. I had to just click “Yes”, eject the disk and leave. That was it. I could still do it. The Gimp came closer and closer. I was almost out of time. I heard my own voice screaming inside my head, screaming at me to do it, do it, to just push the button. But my hand would not work. It just lay there prone on the top of the mouse, undecided.

The Gimp returned. He stood behind me “Are you done yet?” he whined.

I deflated “Yes,” I said “I’m going now.”

And I stood and walked off the floor and out of the building and got into my car and drove to the hospital. I still had one chance left to do something right.

Katy was shocked to see me “Violet?” she said, getting to her feet “You’re supposed to be at work.”

I put the rucksack down and took in the sight of her. She wore a filthy grey dressing gown. It was speckled with toothpaste and cigarette ash. Her fingernails were long and chipped. Her skin was the colour of wax paper. Her body was becoming misshapen by the medication. Where she had once been whip-thin and lean, she was starting to become fat around the edges. The weight was not on her stomach but on her back. It looked monstrous and wrong. There was no telling how badly she would warp and corrode if she continued to stay there.

“It’s over,” I said “This place is killing you.”

Katy shrank back, afraid “What are you doing here?”

I reached down and pulled a pair of Katy’s old boots from my bag “You can put these on,” I said “I’m taking you home.”

Chapter Fifteen

Churchyard Yew II

I jumped across the gap from the church roof and landed in the branches of the yew tree. The sky had been raining and the branch was damp. Brown and green stains slimed upon my clothes. My hands slipped in search of a grip upon the trunk. It was going to be a difficult climb.

The smell of rainwater on leaves filled my head. It was narcotic; a school-time summer holiday memory of afternoons and the escape from boiling vegetables. I pulled my way upwards through the wet branches, moving higher and higher into the upper boughs.

I had a mission. Ever since my failure to upload the virus, I had a lot of time to ask myself why it happened. But the thinking about it never took me anywhere. I had run it around in circles in my mind like an untrained horse until I had worn a groove in my brain, a dirt track of self-loathing and confusion. Now I decided that the time had come. My plan was to climb the tree and stay up it until I had worked it out. It was important. If I let it go, I felt that I would be letting them win in some way. It would have been a small suicide; abandoning myself and leaving my destiny out in the rain to rust. So no, I would climb the tree and I would stay there until I got somewhere.

I started with first principles: why did my failure sting so much? I was a rebel. This was the start of it. I was schooled in resistance to the machine. It was my duty to bring the system down. I had the means and I had the opportunity. I was willing. It was my destiny to destroy. But I had failed.

And then I asked the hardest question: had I become another obedient slave, passive to their control? I looked into myself. If I was unable to act in the way that I wanted to, then my will had become the possession of another.

So what was the purpose of these mechanisms of control? Was it capitalist exploitation or was it designed just to create obedient slaves for the machine? Neither answer seemed complete; neither seemed to satisfy me. The worst thing about the call centre had been the endless intensification of the workload, the drive towards ever more impossible targets. All of the aspects of control seemed to work in some way to defend this drive and prevent me from taking action against it. The most heavily defended power was the power to direct the workflow, to stem the tide of calls, to disconnect the telephone.

I was tired of the simplistic anti-capitalist sloganeering of the barricades and the campus. It had not saved me when I needed it. No, I had to be specific about what was happening and capitalism had no meaning in itself. It was the intrinsic reliance on progress that gave it meaning. It was there in the history of the last hundred years, the boom and bust economy, bulls and bears, wars and depressions. Capitalism was a shark organism. Anything other than forward motion would cause its death. There was only one way of continually marching forwards without a catastrophic nuclear war or a global economic breakdown and that was increasing productivity. This meant an ongoing intensification of the workload that would be impossible to enforce with anything but the most docile and obedient of workforces. And this was the game that the call centre had played upon me. This was the heart of it.

And it was all wrong. Christ knew it. Kropotkin knew it. Dylan knew it. Where the industrial revolution should have led to the abolition of labour, it had instead led to the pacification of labour. But they couldn’t fool me; I had been on an exchange trip to Germany and I had seen the sign above the gates of Auschwitz: Arbeit macht frei, the blackest joke in the world. Before she shot Andy Warhol, Valerie Solanas said that we should overthrow the government, eliminate the money system and institute complete automation. If I had been there when she shot him, I would have helped the crazy bitch to reload her gun. She was Jesus’ sister.

The call centres weren’t about slavery, they were more subtle than that. They were about the religion of slavery, that servile mentality of management, Protestantism, Fordism… It was a culture of slogans, mission statements, rambling rhetoric, teambuilding exercises and corporate workshops. All of the manipulative posters on the walls of the call centre with their fantasies about customer loyalty. We were all victims of it, these invidious techniques, even the managers themselves, none of us actually controlled the thing. Control was a process, not a possession. Discipline, monitoring, measurement and surveillance. We were all caught up. I was unable to deflect the techniques of control deployed against me by these slaves or to exercise them over others. But more than this, I was unable to resist. And the other workers, the other agents, they too failed to resist. They all accepted the situation like meat in an abattoir. They allowed it to continue; their passivity was the very reason why it continued.

I began to lose my train of thought. I looked around me. I was surrounded by the tree, enveloped within its green world. Anyone walking underneath would not be aware of my presence. I could stay hidden there forever, I thought. But this was not getting me closer to the full truth. Perhaps I had used up all the magic of these branches, I thought. I rose to my feet and steadied myself against the trunk, looking for a foothold to ascend higher. The closer to the sky, the closer to the truth; it seemed to make sense. I climbed up and found a better place to sit. Two branches struck out at a ninety-degree angle from the trunk, creating a perfect bench. As I settled down I wondered if these were the branches I had sat in as a child when the tree was smaller.

I made a joint with the last of my grass and lit up. As I exhaled from the first blast, I leaned back into the tree and let my mind go into the roots. I thought back to my time at university and the friends that I had lost. I saw myself reflected back at me in them, some different person who would never have failed to use a weapon like the virus. I had been changed by my time in the call centre and I did not know how this had taken place. Until I discovered what the call centre really was, I doubted that I would begin to understand how or why. I needed answers and I was getting nowhere.

I climbed down from the yew tree. I was late for Leon’s funeral.

The bell rang. It clanged out across the landscaped fields of the cemetery like a death knell, over and over again. Echoes bounced from tree to tree and every few seconds a new intonation rolled out into the soup of sound before it. The noise reverberated in the dead centre of my brain. All other sounds were flattened out. There were no winds in the leaves or birds in the branches. It was the soundtrack of shootouts, boot hill, high noon.

I walked up to the stone angel where I had hidden from my relatives on the day of my father’s funeral. Cigarette butts littered the roots of the tree we had climbed. They were probably mine, I thought. I should take them home with me. Looking down the hill, I could see the mourners gathering for Leon’s burial. His sister, Benoite, had told me not to come and I did not want to disturb things. I would have to content myself by paying my respects from a distance. I did not mind. It seemed to be a pattern. I watched Leon’s family moving around the plots. Most of them were elderly and black. Some of them wore hats. They looked like a nice family. As I observed them (“Yes, like a peeping tom,” I said in my mind to his ghost), I began to feel relieved that Benoite had warned me away. What on earth would I possibly have to say to any of them? My presence would only be disruptive and confusing. How could I do anything but harm in that situation?

There was movement behind me. I turned, almost half-expecting to see Katy again. What I did see was almost as surprising. It was The Gimp, on time and exactly as expected, only he was walking next to Tara. This was troubling.

I had asked The Gimp to meet me in the cemetery. There was a piece of final business that need to be taken care of and I did not know of any other way to go about it. He had not asked too many questions at least and had seemed to understand. But there was no reason why he should have brought Tara with him.

“Violet!” The Gimp called out, pausing to catch his breath on the brow of the hill “You… made it… That’s great… Did you bring… everything… that I… asked you?”

I patted the rucksack on my back “It’s all here. So… Hello, Tara,” I said, trying to leave enough polite surprise in my tone to inspire an explanation of his presence.

“Yes, excuse me,” Tara said. She wore a dark blue mourning-outfit “I’ll see you both afterwards,” she nodded, one hand folded over the buttons on her suit jacket as she brushed past me and headed down the hill.

“Come on,” said The Gimp “Leave her to get on with it. We’re got to start getting things ready,” he dropped a hand onto my shoulder and patted it slightly, manoeuvring me away from the sight of Tara’s back shrinking away into the crowd of mourners below.

An hour or so later, Tara returned to find the two of us waiting in a clearing of the graveyard woods. It was a covered grove of pines, littered with an old carpet of needles and cones. We had been busy in her absence. I had gathered firewood and stacked it into neat piles, corresponding to size; from kindling up to the larger branches. The Gimp had made his own preparations. They were peculiar, theatrical little arrangements that may have been genuine or may have been entirely fanciful. I had no idea. He had bottles of unlabeled spirits and little animal skulls and candles and leather pouches filled with herbs, all of them laid out in a just-so pattern. I did not know what to make of him. At least he had not brought the cape this time.

Tara sat down to join us. I looked at The Gimp. He seemed to be avoiding my eye. I just wanted to get some indication as to how long Tara would be staying. I felt foolish enough already without adding an audience to the mix. So we talked about the funeral and we talked about work, and eventually we got around to talking about Leon. I found it difficult. I brought the conversation back to work again.

“You know what?” I interrupted, talking over The Gimp “You know that they’re listening-in the whole time? I don’t just mean when we’re on calls, but in-between calls, whenever we’re talking, whenever we say anything. As long as we’ve got our headsets on: they can hear us.”

The Gimp laughed. He thought it sounded stupid “No, that can’t be true… you’re just being paranoid.”

“Well how do you think they caught Leon?” I said.

“But, but that’s terrible,” he was taken aback and spluttered desolately “I mean, that’s a violation, that, that violates every human right in the book, they couldn’t do that… there’s no way… So, what, even when we’re slagging them off they can hear us? God…” the notion was unthinkable. He was forced to turn to a display of rebellious nonchalance to be able to cope with the violation “Well I don’t care…” he said “I don’t care if they know what I think of them.”

“I don’t care either,” Tara said suddenley “What does it matter now? It doesn’t change anything. ”

I snapped a stick in half and dropped it onto the pile “I feel like I’ve been living in a spy movie... You know they weren’t just gathering information on us, they were gathering intelligence. It was this… I don’t know, this, this militaristic peekaboo… whoever gets the most dirt gets dominance… It was espionage, what’s the difference? They were spying on us and they used it to find out what we were doing. They used it to hang Leon. And they used it to turn our life into numbers: our targets, our records, our statistics, everything on that fucking ticker-tape display… They turned us all into numbers, data, statistics… and I don’t think that this was just some technique in their strategy either, it wasn’t just like some aspect of it, it was their whole strategy from the start.”

The Gimp crumpled up a piece of paper and pushed it into the heart of the kindling. It seemed to have something written on it, some kind of esoteric symbols. He lit a match and pushed it inside “I don’t get you, what do you mean?”

“They harvest all of this data, right, they farm this intelligence and this, this process of doing it, this mechanism, it creates reality, you see? The world doesn’t exist except through the way you see it… the map becomes the territory. Take me, you know, I’m still conscious of myself: I’m not a robot inside the machine, I wasn’t brainwashed. I’m still me, really, but I couldn’t…” what couldn’t I do? Everything that I could not say out loud to them: I couldn’t release the virus, I couldn’t save Leon, I couldn’t stand up to the system and the bullies and tear it down. Like all young warriors, I had believed that the world was just sitting there waiting for me to take it up and shake it and I had never figured that it did not want to be moved and that it knew full well how to stop me. But I could not share this with The Gimp. I could not be explicit with him. He would not understand and I could not trust him with the knowledge. He was still a fool, in spite of everything. Tara took advantage of the pause in the conversation to get up and go in search of more wood. I sensed that she was not enjoying herself.

The fire had taken and the kindling paper ignited. The pine needles beneath the sticks immediately crackled and blackened, forming a dark circle around the blaze. The smoke was alpine and fresh.

“Can we not talk about something other than work?” Tara said as she left the clearing.

Her comment annoyed me. The disparaging tone implied that my topic of conversation was unimaginative but I did not think that we were just “talking about work”. This was not mundane office gossip or shop-talk. I felt like I was on the verge of piercing the veil and I thought that she at least would understand. I ignored her and continued talking to The Gimp “They got to me somehow, like they tied my hands or they put me in an iron mask but I helped them, I don’t know. You ever read Camus? The essential rebellion? I’m just standing on the beach but nothing’s ever going to happen because I’m crippled. I’m a prisoner.”

I had been living under constant surveillance. As a technique of control, it was simultaneously the most crude and the most sophisticated. Any unregulated activity became a quantifiable deviance in my personalised statistics. These figures were monitored in real time on the supervisor’s screen diagrammatically, with colour-coded alarms triggered by “emergencies” like if I was taking too long on a call. These statistics were also collated and packaged for daily, weekly and monthly review where they could be checked against my “performance benchmarks” or targets. And they were obsessed with targets. The targets were received as these categorical imperatives. They defined an area of superhuman effort, anything below which was designated as immoral and shiftless. The stats then served the process of ideation as ergonomic “maps” to assist the supervisors in their construction of us, the employees. It was a Faustian deal, the “doctrine of employment at will”: the employer is free to set any condition of work providing that the employee continues to accept the wage.

And I had nowhere to hide. The open plan office was in itself a structure of control. The prevention of privacy (both visual and, as I had learned, acoustic) that it entailed, was a product of the long relationship between the workplace and the art of surveillance. The office was built to handle information. Surveillance opportunities were pre-wired from the foundations up. I could not avoid the comparison: “The call centre is the Inspection House,” I said.

The Gimp looked up “Huh?” he had been busying himself with the fire, kneeling down to blow on the kindling to get it to life. It crackled and spat. We were using the wrong kind of wood. I did not know how long it had been since he had stopped listening to me “What’s that?”

“Do you know Jeremy Bentham? He invented the Inspection House in, like, the late 17^th century or something. You never heard of it? Sometimes they call it the Panopticon. No? It’s like a total-surveillance building. He designed it for places like prisons, factories, poorhouses, hospitals, asylums, schools, all these kind of institutions. It’s this big building, like, sort of like a hollowed-out volcano or a big dome, kind of thing, with a ring of cells, and all them face outward to a central point, a little chair where the inspector sits. So he can see them, all of them, in their cells all the time and the main thing is that they can’t tell where he’s looking exactly at any one time. You really never heard of it? It comes up as a metaphor when people are talking about society sometimes…”

Tara stepped back into the clearing and dropped a load of branches onto the stockpile. She brushed his hands off and stood above the burgeoning fire “Yeah, but how is that like the call centre? We don’t, none of us sit in cells or anything and it’s just a normal office building, it’s nothing like it,” she must have been standing just outside of the clearing, listening to me speak. It felt a little like an ambush.

“Well, no, but it’s better than that,” I explained “It’s more sophisticated: you’ve got an open-plan office so there’s no hiding anything and you’ve got this dyad of the telephone and the computer and they way they come together to monitor you and keep tabs on everything and it’s so advanced it makes the Panopticon look stupid and crude and corporeal. But the thing they have together, the thing in common is that they are more about subjective imprisonment than objective imprisonment, like, it’s not so much how high or how thick the walls are that matters, it’s how anxious you are, how constantly you’re under surveillance.”

Tara threw a log down on top of the fire. It flattened The Gimp’s careful pile of sticks and sat there, coughing up thick smoke that blew straight into my face as the heat wormed its way underneath the flaying bark. My eyes stung and watered. I could see nothing but I could feel Tara pacing around the clearing “This is bullshit,” he exploded “You’re confusing a set of practical methods for a rationale, this, you can talk about capitalism and privatisation and multinationals and exploitation and labour and class and all that and it doesn’t get you anywhere.”

“But that’s not what I’m saying at all!” I could not understand why she continued to misrepresent me. It seemed awkward and defensive. What had I done to upset her so much?

“No, so you’re not a socialist are you, what are you, some kind of libertarian decentralisationist?” he laughed and pulled some of the twigs out from beneath his log, lowering it deeper into the heart of the fire “Well the Panopticon is a prison and the call centre is not a prison, is it? It’s a workplace.”

“Personally I can’t see any difference at all between the call centre I work in, the prison they sent my mother to or the hospital my sister’s in,” I would not have brought either of them into the debate, certainly not my mother, but I felt provoked. There is nothing like an inappropriate familial revelation to quieten your opponent “You can’t talk to anybody; you can’t get out of your seat without permission; even the lighting is institutional and oppressive. We may as well be handcuffed to the desk! Bentham said he couldn’t tell the difference between work-houses or poor-houses or correction-house, he said the difference was microscopic. So, no, it’s not a prison but what is the difference really?”

“But you’re not being listened to or watched all the time, are you? I mean, I know that the stats are sort of monitoring your performance all the time but the physical eavesdropping, if it happened at all, it’s not constant is it? There aren’t enough teamleaders to listen to everybody all the time. The actual time they could possibly listen to each of us is minimal. They’re not omniscient. Or, alright, rather, they are omniscient but they’re not omnipresent.”

“Yeah, but we’re blind! Because you never know when they might be listening, the effect’s the same as if they’re listening all the time. It’s the exact same kind of… permanent self-consciousness, that, that Bentham wanted. He wanted to improve on this earlier device, the Dionysus Ear, Dionysius… anyway, that you could use to listen-in to people in prison without their knowing, but Bentham’s plan was different. He wanted you to know about it. So their surveillance, their mechanisms for controlling your behaviour, the whole thing, it becomes automatic and permanent even when it’s only really transitory. So it’s even better than the Inspection House because instead of a constant warden you’ve got an inconsistent warden and that’s worse. You start second-guessing and then you start censoring yourself and then you become your own policeman.”

It was no wonder I had failed to upload the virus, really. The more teamleaders a department could have, the more floorwalkers and buddies and expert users, then the greater the chance of deviant behaviour being apprehended. The greater the consequent anxious awareness of being observed among employees, then the lower the rate of deviance. The intimidation and harassment of staff like The Gimp merely served to amplify the stress of answering streams of randomly abusive calls. Everything that I had experienced was panoptic: a reduction of the sense of privacy, increased uncertainty, reduced inmate communication and lowered self-esteem. And I was continually mocked by the ticker displays of real-time statistics. They were inescapable like the walls of a prison. And, like the voter in a democratic society, I was helping to build the walls of my own incarceration.

It was fear that kept the agents in line. My own angst came from the constant sense of underperformance induced by the unfeasible targets and unavoidable statistics. Fear increases the capitulation to command. Obedience is incremented by supervision and fear because it’s easier to discipline people when they’re worried about the consequences of disobeying. Fear and the knowledge that if they don't like what they hear they will be talking to you; maybe in half an hour, maybe tomorrow or maybe next month in your performance review. This is the disciplinary gaze: the power to induce conformity on the basis of a potential detection and response.

The Gimp crumpled a handful of leaves in his hand. He stood up and sprinkled them over the fire top “You blame Kali for what happened to Leon,” he said without looking at me. I saw Tara flinch.

I sighed “No. No I don’t blame her, in spite of how much easier it would be if I did. No. The teamleaders are just hired voyeurs, they’re just peeping toms, but they’re spying for someone else, you know. It’s not CCTV cameras that arrest people. The teamleaders only have free will to process the intelligence they get, to decide whether or not to do anything about it. They don’t decide whether or not to spy. They’re also caught up the web. I mean, people like Kali are monitored by her own supervisors. Like in the police station: there’s a guy watching the cameras in the high street and there’s another camera in his office watching him. It’s mutual slavery. It’s the same in the Inspection House. Anyone who wants to see how hard the watchman is working only has to poke their head around the door. It’s all open for anyone to see, even the prisoners.”

Tara sat back and folded her arms. A smug expression began to play across her face.

“What?” I said. I was getting tired of her persistent niggling.

“Oh, nothing,” she smiled “It’s just that I can see where this is leading to, I mean, you say you’re not a socialist but have you listened to yourself? This is all just some kind of call to arms, isn’t it, I mean, you’re saying it’s not an individualised thing, then what is it: a class thing? I mean, that’s what you’re saying, you want the lumpenproletariat to rise up against the slave masters?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant, I mean, I’m talking about an anarchistic question about the resistance of the individual, not some antiquated social notion about the mass of the exploited rising up.”

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Well,” Tara leaned forward and jabbed a finger at me “You don’t like this job. You think it’s beneath someone as wonderful as you to have to do something so menial and slavish and yet you’re confused why you haven’t destroyed it yet, am I right? And so maybe you’re not so wonderful as you think and you don’t like the sound of it,” she held up her hand before I could interrupt “Let me finish. Say you left the job tomorrow: would you look back? Would you fight for the ones that didn’t make it out? No. You don’t actually care about the other workers or the fact that they might suffer. You don’t really care that people have to do bad jobs or that bad workplaces exist. You just don’t want to be one of those people.”

“It’s pointless to even think about collective action, girl, don’t you think they thought of that? It’s the system, the system won’t permit it to ferment. It’s like colonialism, it’s like all totalitarian empires, the call centre, it’s controlled by divide and rule. You’ve got these massive vertical partitions, physically and institutionally, you’ve got them everywhere. The organisation’s fragmented into a million different departments, and they’ve all got overlapping roles and objectives. We’re made to compete with each other to meet the targets and we don’t even know who they are or what part of the production line they’re on. Collective consciousness or collective action is impossible, it’s a non-starter. Are you in the union? Neither am I. There’s no unions for us, we’re just temps. We don’t even really have jobs.

“The point is that we need to overcome our stupid personal politics. It’s a trap to start hating individual teamleaders, the agents of control, rather than the managerial controls themselves. If you see the teamleaders as individually predisposed bullies then you’ve missed the the structurally prescribed nature of their position, of what they’re doing. This personalisation of structural politics is how the corporate culture keeps you depoliticised: it kept your protest personal.”

“Imagine what it’s like for them,” The Gimp said “Listening to us slag them off… If they know how much we hate them and they keep this secret them how badly must they hate us?”

“I think the voyeur always secretly hates their victim…” Tara gave me a strange look when she spoke. Her eyes seemed to be saying that she knew something about me, some sort of secret. It was as if she was defying me to read her mind. It occurred to me that maybe Leon had told her about the night we spent in the yew tree, watching the girl in the window. The thought of this disclosure troubled my mind. As it did, I saw a slight grin flicker across her face. My expression must have betrayed my thoughts. So she did know about it and she disapproved of my behaviour and she wanted to let me know. I felt like she was trying to drag me into a bad game. I did not want to play it with her and I don’t know how she’d gotten to peek at my cards. I held her gaze and she held mine.

“But it was Kali that caught Leon, wasn’t it?” The Gimp said, intruding upon our adult moment like a monstrously oversized baby “Violet? Wasn’t it?”

Tara clenched her fist. She was standing very close to me. For a moment I was really not sure what she was going to do.

“Wasn’t it?” said The Gimp “Violet?”

Tara turned suddenly and pushed her way out of the clearing.

I watched her go before speaking softly to The Gimp “What the fuck was that about, do you reckon? What was she even doing here today? Did you bring her with you?”

“No,” The Gimp said “She came alone. She said she wanted to say goodbye to Leon.”

“Shit,” I scratched my head. How did I miss it before? “She had a thing for him, didn’t she? Shit… I never…”

“OK, this is it!” The Gimp hopped to his feet “Let’s do this.”

Chapter Sixteen

Ash

“Trees are the standing people,” he said, moving slowly around the grove “Each type of tree speaks a different language and each tree speaks about the place where it stands. They are the guardians of humanity.”

It was night time. The sun had set quickly and sharply. I had forgotten how early it got dark outside of the summer. There was a crisp September smell in the air. It reminded me of fireworks and Halloween. I stood alone in the copse with The Gimp. He was wearing a headdress of feathers and snakeskin. It looked like some voodoo nightmare from a Tina Turner video. There was no way he could have made it himself, it was way too elaborate, but I could not imagine a shop that would stock anything remotely like it. He also had two bumblebees with tiny silk belts tied around them. They were attached to the temples of the headdress. One of them was in flight around his face. The other sat gloomily on his forehead. It almost made me want to see the cape again.

I had my shirt off and a stripe of black camouflage paint across my eyes. I was naked from the waist up save for the black jacket over my shoulders. I must have looked insane.

“I want you to find a tree. Do not be afraid to venture beyond the copse,” he said “You must find the perfect tree. This is your first communion.”

I looked around the clearing. We were bordered on all sides by pine trees. None of them really called out to me. I could not tell any of them apart and didn’t really know their names “How am I supposed to know when I have found the right one?” I asked.

“You will know,” he said “You will know.”

Great, I thought. So we wandered around the pitch woods of the cemetery for what felt like hours, The Gimp shaking some kind of rattle made out of old hamster bones, me groping my way around the trees looking for something “perfect”. Eventually, I settled on a beech tree outside of the clearing. It looked okay. It was slightly better than indifferent. It would have to do.

“Right,” The Gimp flourished his arms “I want you to talk to your tree. Tell it what it looks like, compliment it. The tree has no eyes. It needs you to look at it and experience it with your senses. This is what the world is. The universe is conscious matter that can experience itself. And it does this through us, through you. So tell it what you think of it.”

“I feel stupid,” I said. I sounded whiney.

“You talk to people all the time. It’s your job.”

“But this is a tree, it doesn’t have a face or a body or anything like that.”

“Nor do the people you talk to everyday on the telephone.”

“OK. Whatever,” I let my head fall forwards and knock against the bark of the tree “Hey,” I said to it “How you doing?” Nothing happened. I felt numb. I gave it a few minutes but I could not get beyond my embarrassment. What was I even doing there? “I don’t think my tree likes me,” I said.

“What do you mean?” The Gimp asked urgently.

“It doesn’t feel right, I don’t know.”

“Move. Immediatley. Go to a different tree.”

I stepped back, looking up at the beech. The trunk twisted away awkwardly into a bulge where the first branches intersected. I was glad to leave it behind. I took a few steps and came to another tree. It felt right.

I found an ash. I stroked its bark. I talked to it. It was good.

“Sit on the ground with your back hard against the trunk of the tree.”

It did not seem like a strange instruction. I had come this far, I was ready to continue along the path, however far it took me. I took my coat off, lay it over the arm of a protruding root, and sat down.

“Now you have to begin to relax… Your body is full of knots and blockages where you’ve got yourself all stuffed up and it’s going to kill you one day if you don’t untie it. Your eyes are prisoners in your skull and your face is going to tear itself apart one day: it’s your tear ducts, they’re jammed up from years of tensing, years of inhibiting the tear-response. You have to cut through the Gordian knots, you have to start to relax. Now breathe like I showed you.”

I followed the breathing pattern, the rhythmic counting and the alternation between the nose and the mouth. I concentrated on my breathing and whited everything else out until I was just a set of human bellows. I pictured the tear dusts inside my skull all twisted like the Gordinan knot and tried to let them go.

“Start by tensing your toes. Make them rigid and hold it, hold it for seven seconds before you let them go. When you let them go breath out… Now tense the rest of your foot…” The Gimp went on in this way and we moved through the whole of my body from my feet up along my legs, through to my stomach and chest and arms, tensing and holding and releasing, right up over my face and out of the top of my head. My body was left entirely still, all my muscles fluid within it “Now you must open yourself up to the life-force of the tree. It will come to you slowly, don’t try to rush it. You will know when it has reached you.”

The Gimp fell silent. Infinite minutes passed. I could have been there for days. I could feel my body around me and, surrounding that, a kind of pulsing force-field, like the heat being generated by my body had somehow taken a tangible form, a kind of antithesis to the shadow. I had never experienced anything like it before, not even on psychedelic drugs, this was different, it had a similar quality but it felt real. Drugs are cinema, this was the theatre.

After a while I began to feel something. My eyes were closed but I could almost see a deep green glow move towards me, enveloping my body-space. It was emanating from the tree like an exhalation, as if the ash were facing me and breathing right in my direction. A singular sensation took over me. It reminded me of descriptions from epileptics of the onset of an attack, the strange warning signs and voices and tingles that herald the spasms and the loss of consciousness. But this felt utterly benign and wholly invited, this aura, this green breath.

By the end of the first hour, I felt that I had journeyed deep inside of the tree. It was as if I had been taken as a confidant. I shared the sensation of having roots burrowing like moles into the black moistness of the earth’s perpetual night. I felt the birds in my branches, the night-moths nesting in my boughs, the armour of my bark and the ever-flowing manna of my sap charging through me, an electricity of succour.

And then the vision began. I saw Katy, vaguely at first, like a face in a sepia photograph, eaten away by mould from damp storage. Then she began to come into focus, piece by piece. I saw her feet, shod in sandals on a flagstone floor. I took the rest of her in. She was wearing a different face, that of a young Persian warrior, and dressed in white robes for his initiation, but I knew it was the same person, the same soul.

She stood on the battlements of Alamut, the castle fortress of the Assassins, high among the peaks of the mountains as if they were eagles. She was preparing to meet the Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan i-Sabah, leader of the order, to conduct the rite of death wherein he would be able to visit paradise. She was smiling and she was looking right at me.

This was part of his psychosis, these dreams of Alamut. Was I to believe that they were derived from some past-life trauma? In spite of what I could see in the vision, I still did not accept that such things were possible. I was an atheist and a sceptic in the absence of hard evidence. There was no way of proving the truth of it. I wanted to believe in the existence of the soul but I wanted more to be certain of my beliefs. I had to simply take what I could from the experience.

I believe that I was supposed to take away some clue as to the cause of Katy’s madness, or at least to the shape of its manifestation. It was death, somehow, that lay at the root of it, though whether my father’s dead or some deeper spiritual loss within Katy’s mind, I could not say. Perhaps something of her soul died in the bitter cauldron of my mother’s heartless womb. Perhaps she secretly pined to return to the tomb of her gestation and her fantasies of assassination were an inversion of the power of birth. Whatever it was, she reeked of the grave.

She was smiling at me. She was not calling for my help. Why had I come running back from India, really? I doubt whether it was to fulfil some belated spirit of familial responsibility. It was more likely that, just like Katy, I too was attempting to bring about my own destruction. Could I be reborn? Could I take up arms against the world like she had dreamed of doing and could I succeed where she had failed in the singular weakness of failing to identify the correct target? There was no sense in renouncing death. It was my greatest gift to the world. It was our birthright. I just had to make sure I pointed the weapon in the right direction. Not at my mother, not at my sister, not at myself; we were bullets in need of a bull’s-eye.

“Wake up,” The Gimp whispered urgently “Wake up.”

I tried to open my eyes. They were like heavy portcullises. It took me a while. The Gimp was kneeling over me, his face contorted in the dim glow of the fire dwindling in the grove nearby. He looked scared.

“Look!” he hissed “Up in the tree! Up there, just above your head!”

I followed the line of his chubby finger, stabbing upwards for me to see. A pair of eyes flashed like two sliver coins, up in the branches of the tree. It was a cat. She was a black Siamese, coiled around the trunk with her tongue sticking out at us. She wore a vermillion collar with a miniature bell attached. Her ears were flattened backwards like wings. She watched us without moving or making a sound.

From the look on The Gimp’s face I knew that it was significant. I remembered the night in the woods with my father’s ghost. It seemed impossible the next day, but sitting there, with the strange cat perched in the tree I had selected, the reality of that night came back to me all over again “It’s a Fetch,” I gasped “It’s Leon come back to us,” the words seemed to come out of me without the intervention of my conscious mind. I must have been groggy from the trance and the vision. A rational voice somewhere inside was trying to protest: the cat has a collar, it was saying, it’s just someone’s pet. But its appearance was too coincidental. Why that moment? Why that tree?

“I don’t know what that is,” The Gimp said, his voice a shaky whisper. He put his hand on my shoulder as if to keep me from standing up or getting closer to it “There are disincarnate spirits on the other side of the barrier between life and death. Some are good and some are bad. The good ones are the ones who are happy on their side. The bad ones are the ones who try to come through into our world. They’re jealous, jealous of our bodies and they’re hungry for the light. They prey on the weak and the confused and on the seeker who’s lost his way. Remember before, when you were telling me about your sister? And I said she was beset by spirits?.. I think this is the spirit who tried to get into our world through the cracks in her head. This is her demon, her madness.”

“No. You’re wrong. My sister was not possessed by spirits, she was just sick. No. It’s Leon. Ask it why he killed himself.”

The cat cried out. It was a sharp noise that began as a rumbling growl and ended as a shrill bark.

The Gimp just looked at me. There was fear in his eyes. “Quickly,” I said “What did it say?”

The cat continued to cry out. It was like nothing I had ever heard. The Gimp suddenly seized my forearms “Let’s see your arms,” he said “You’ve been cutting yourself!”

I pushed him heavily in the chest. He rolled backwards into the bracken and landed on all fours. He stayed crouched in that position. The cat began to howl.

“Why did he kill himself?” I demanded.

“It doesn’t know,” The Gimp whined “It doesn’t know anything!”

“What is it saying?”

“I don’t know what it’s saying! I don’t want to listen!” Then he began to sing, a variation on the song I had heard him sing before. He tried to pitch himself above the cat but it continued to wail.

I jumped up over to him and pushed him back down into the leaves. The cat screeched once and leapt out of the tree and into the darkness. I sat over him and shouted into his face “What did it say?”

“Ask the old woman!” he shouted back.

The old woman. I sat back down heavily on the pine needles “Leon’s lover.”

We finished off the ritual in silence afterwards. The Gimp spent a lot of time thanking the trees and tying small ribbons into their branches as gifts. He gave me a leather pouch that he said contained special rubbed sage. He instructed me to sprinkle it around the base of my tree as a thank-you to it for sharing its power with me. I put my fingers in the bag and sniffed my finger tips. It smelt like it was actually herbs d’provence but I said nothing. I did not know where I stood with The Gimp anymore. After I had practically attacked him he would have every right to despise me. But at the same time I felt that he needed me, that he needed my faith in him. And no matter how strange the night’s events had been, he was still The Gimp, it would always be impossible to take him seriously.

I pushed open the shop door and stepped inside. A brass bell jangled overhead. I looked around me. I was alone. Thick green blinds were pulled low over the lead-lined windows. It was dark inside. The place was intimate and close, like a pole dancer or like theatre in the round. The dust lay everywhere undisturbed. There were rows of old display cases and cabinets displaying banks of old clocks. The dark wood around the shelves and shadowy panelling upon the heavy walls was littered with the fallen bodies of dead flies and wasps, victims of gravity and lightless rooms. Everything was pervaded by the twin forces of inertia and nostalgia, the physical remonstration that time takes with us: when we stop moving forwards, we have nothing to do but look back. This was old age and decay. This was a chronomatic hinterland. I was in the old woman’s shop.

A backroom door creaked open in response to the bell. The old woman emerged in a slice of electric light from behind a velvet curtain. She was proceeded by the scent of aniseed “Yes, hello,” she said “Feel free to look around.”

The greeting threw me. I had half-expected her to remember me. I didn’t know how to initiate the kind of conversation I had come in search of. I made a pantomime of looking around the shop. As I proceeded from one tatty and broken skeleton clock to the next cracked and listless regulator, I tried to sneak glimpses of the old woman’s face. It was battered and stitched. I winced at the thought of it. Benoite had not pulled her punches.

The old woman had done her best to cover up the bruises with makeup, but her face was still a few good weeks away from healing. Underneath the powder and the swollen discoloration was a face that I could not reconcile with my knowledge of Leon. I could not conceive of how someone so young and beautiful would choose to seek out the bed of someone so… well, old. She was not unattractive, nor was her body in bad shape. She was not even that old. Leon had said that she was fifty three but she looked a lot younger. But she was just such a different type of animal to us, she was almost another species, the generational gap was too wide and it made no sense to me. I was too young to understand.

“That’s an Act of Parliament, I don’t get many of those anymore.”

“Hmm?”

“It’s a very nice piece, recently restored,” she said. When she spoke, it was with a finishing-school accent with the clipped suggestion of a Russian or Slavic background. It drew you in to a story that she alone could tell “Are you a collector?”

“Er, no, no, not really,” I stammered.

“William Pitt was the Prime Minister who passed it: the Act, you see,” she lectured me comfortably from behind the wooden counter, easy with her salesman’s chatter “It was a tax against clocks, would you believe it? Five shillings. Well, it was very expensive at the time. People couldn’t afford that much just for a clock. So the innkeepers had these large clocks made, you see how it’s the biggest one we have? And they hung them in the taverns so that people would see them and come in to get the time and then they would have more custom. And that’s why they’re called Act of Parliament Clocks. They’re the big-screen TVs, the Sky-Sports, of their day. Would you like a peppermint?”

“What?”

“A peppermint. Would you like one?” she held out a white paper bag filled with sweets. It seemed anachronistic somehow.

“No. No, that’s not why I came here, the clocks I mean, I didn’t come here to buy a clock.”

She put the bag down on the counter-top “No,” she said, her face fallen slightly “I do know who you are, you know. I know why you’re here.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, yes I think I would have recognised you anyway, even if we had not, well, had not met before. Leon described you very clearly to me.”

“Look,” I said “I didn’t have anything to do with what happened. I’d never even met Benoite before. I don’t know why she brought you to my house.”

“I know. She told me everything. She felt terrible, afterwards, for what she’d done,” the old woman did not hesitate to begin. Everything began quicker and easier than I had imagined, once the talking began “She brought me back here to help me clean myself up after it happened. She wouldn’t leave. She cried, you know. She sat in my chair upstairs and she cried for two hours after beating me to within an inch of my life. I have not forgiven her for it. Nor am I about to…” she lifted the hatch and drifted past the counter onto the shop floor beside me. She produced a piece of silk cloth and brushed it across the face of the clock “I once promised to give this clock to Leon,” she said, her voice barely leaving her lips “It was just a joke, but he always took everything I said very seriously,” she smiled, as if recalling something and then turned to get a closer look at me “Yes. I can see what he saw in you. You’re wondering what he ever saw in an old mother like me, aren’t you?”

“I, look, I came here…”

“I know why you came here,” she cut me off firmly with a wave of her hand. There was something recognisably militaristic about the mannerism. It reminded me of my father “You came here for the same reason as Benoite,” she smiled at me suddenly: I realised that I must have flinched at the implication “Oh, no, don’t worry,” she said “You’re more of a one for words, I know that. You want me to talk to you, I know. No, I meant that your desired outcome is the same, isn’t it? You don’t understand why Leon decided to end his life and you think that I know.”

I chose to be unabashed about my motivation. There seemed little point in concealment and little chance of success “Yes.”

“He couldn’t do it anymore. That’s why.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mean? I don’t mean anything. That’s all there is to it. Why does anyone decide to stop? Why do you bother to continue? He was just too sad. He needed someone to love him but he did not think that he was worth anything. So he pushed you all away… But I lusted after him. Like an aging tigress, I had to pursue the wounded deer. If he was not injured then he might have eluded my capture. Oh… Do my tactics shock you? Bring your shock back to me in thirty years, darling. Then it will be worth something… It made him sick to let me catch him, but he let me love him and he waited for it to make him come alive, but it just got worse. I felt like I was killing him but I could not refuse him physically. I kept hoping that it would work. And then he told me about you. He said that you were perverted, you were a voyeur, and he liked the idea of you. But you did not love him. He did not think that you could. And he did not love you, either. He blamed the call centres. They had ruined him. They had bled his love and compassion and turned him into a machine.”

“An instrument. That’s what he said once.”

“Yes. He had worked in them for years and he had nothing left to shield himself but his nerve and his sarcasm. By the end, he had become wrapped up in his tiny acts of sabotage and defiance. He was the only one of you to even try. But a machine can’t rebel, even a pretty one. And he failed. I think that is what killed him. The final defeat: his failure to do something, to fight back. He had become nothing more than a tool, a spanner or a monkey wrench and he wanted to jam himself into the guts of the machine and make it stop. It was their eyes, their electronic eyes, they were all over him, all the time. They watched him so hard that his skin became permeable and they got inside of him.”

“Inside?”

“Look at this box,” she said, moving to indicate an ornate wooden box on the table. She seemed at first to be changing the subject. She picked the box up and turned it over in her hands. It looked like a miniature cottage. Flakes of ancient paint fell away from the intricately carved mantles and doorframes “There is a mechanical cuckoo-bird inside this box. It might be broken, it might not be. I leave it on the table every night and I ask myself: should I look inside? In modern physics, quantum physics, the act of observing phenomena has the power to change them… Perhaps if I do not look it will remain unbroken.”

I had been living under glass for months. Had being watched changed me? Yes, but in different ways. I thought about watching the girl in the window from my hiding place in the yew tree. My eyes had transformed the domesticity of her ablutions into the dance of the seven veils. She became Ishtar, utterly altered.

“Have you ever read Kafka’s Penal Settlement?” she asked me, setting the clock back down “Do people still read Kafka?”

“I’m sorry,” I said “I don’t know it”.

“Kafka wanted to write about a mysterious visitor to a penal colony. When an inmate of the colony broke a rule, he would have that rule carved upon his body by an evil machine, like an Iron Maiden of needles and ink, that they called the Harrow. While he is there, Kafka’s visitor witnesses one such rule become embodied: HONOUR THY SUPERIORS! Tell me, do you honour your superiors?” she laughed bitterly and turned away from me “When I was your age, I was a teacher in Prague. I taught literature. It was just after the Prague Spring, during the crackdown. Literature was a dangerous business back then. But some of us tried to keep civilisation alive in our little pocket of barbarity, like the monks in the Dark Ages, with our replications of treasure: our copies of books. I had a secret library in my apartment. It was not as exciting as it sounds. It was just hundreds of mimeographs stacked up behind a false wall in a cupboard. But it was enough to get me arrested by the secret police. What do you think the name means “secret police”? It does not mean that their existence or their methods are secret. No. Every child even knows who they are. The words mean that they are the ones who police all of the secrets. You see, in Czechoslovakia, the people were not allowed to have secrets from the government.

“They are strange people, are they not? Those that live by torture. I have often wondered what happens to them when the grow old and begin to reflect on their lives. Conscience has slow feet. I wonder if she ever manages to catch up with them before they die of comfortable old age. I wonder if they come to remorse. If I had done the things that they have done, I would suffer more from remorse than I have ever suffered from the consequences of my torture. But I do not think that they are like me. And they do not think, no doubt, that I am like them.

“Still, they are strange people. And I was tortured as a woman both by women and by men. They liked to put things inside of me. I mean to say, I know that the men are also raped, but there is less use of inanimate objects with the male prisoners… This is what it means to be a woman, to be a prisoner, to be vulnerable. We are the penetrated, the invaded, the sullied. This is their technique. They do not torture you to confess. They never asked me a single question the whole year I was there. This is the technique they use to get to you, to break you, from the inside out.

“Well,” she continued “They taught me a lot of things before they let me go and one of the things that they taught me was that authority does not mean anything unless you accept it and put it inside of you. For an institution to function there has to be this, this internal obedience to its values among its members, among the people. It does not matter whether, by its techniques, the authority has secured your true loyalty or just some giddy performance of loyalty. There is no difference in a world without secrecy. Their techniques are so total that they no longer even require a single drop of inner commitment on your behalf. It’s just a pragmatic acceptance, you need the peace and you need the sleep and you need them to let you go back to the streets and so you go along with them. You take it inside of you and you go along. And then, the next thing you know, you’re cooperating, little by little, day after day, you’re helping the machine to run. And it all runs inside you. Your anxiety, your fear of detection, this prevents you from action against it, from even thinking about a world in which such actions were still possible. Your soul is infected. You become unable to define your own identity. They tell you to kill a man and you do it. They tell you to wear a uniform and you do what you’re told. You are no longer yourself. Left naked without a self or a soul: you are finally unprotected from the command to engage emotionally with authority. Of course it is not a total psychic obedience: as you think about it objectively, you’re able to move your thoughts outside of it, to other places, times, other countries, other authorities. But you have accepted the values and you have begun to identify with the mask that they had given you and the performance that they had demanded of you.

“Leon said that he was going to sabotage the system. I laughed at him. We argued. I told him that sabotage was pointless. This was just the petty, pathetic, everyday resistance tactic of the slave, like the black slaves on the plantations... he didn’t like me talking about his colour… the discussion ended badly. He left here that night without his clothes and went to you. It was, I think, for the best in the end. But what about you? Were you able to help him in his quest or were you just another slave in a uniform?”

“I was just the same as everybody, I guess. I phoned in sick when I just wanted a day off, I was sarcastic to the callers, I pulled faces and I made gestures that they can‘t see down the phone. Sometimes I put them on hold and called them names.”

“This is not revolution. This is coping. This is about keeping just enough self respect to drag yourself home at the end of the day and not kill yourself.

She was right. When I had swallowed my chewing gum rather than spit it into Kali’s hand, I had told myself that I was defying her. But this was a lie. When I thought about it again, I decided that I should have spat the gum into her face. That at least would have been a true act of defiance. Pretending to myself that swallowing the gum had been a blow against authority was in itself just another coping strategy. Lying to myself was the only way that I had survived.

It was naive radicalism to present such things as examples of resistance. Callers were disconnected when the agent was exasperated by the stresses of the workload, not as a broadside to the offensive presence of managerial control. That the workload was a consequence of that control was mystified and too veiled to operate as the immediate target of the action. Individual protest or politically-motivated conflict was prevented by the ubiquity and normative acceptance of social controls. These controls, forged in rationalism, appeared so “Reasonable” that any resistance appeared irrational and neurotic. They operated to stifle not only overt conflict but also covert and everyday forms of opposition.

“All of us think that we can rebel,” she said “That we can refuse, that we are bigger and better and stronger than the authority. But what can you do, really? You bow if they tell you to; jump if they tell you to. Kill if they tell you to, even rape. You don’t know. They don’t have military service here anymore. You’ve never really been tested. Your radicalism is worthless if you have never been tested. Someone who does not know their limits does not even deserve to pretend that they has a spine. History contains far fewer revolutions than it ought, and the world far more dictators.”

“That’s a conservative view of human nature,” I blurted out. I did not want it to be true and I wanted to save some sense of dignity in my actions “All political viewpoints are based around one or another view of human nature: communists see people as essentially altruistic and social, fascists see them as essentially selfish and in need of a leader. I don’t think that human nature is this fixed thing, I don’t think you can ever make these kind of generalised statements.”

“Have you ever heard of an experiment conducted in the 1960s by an American scientist, Stanley Milgram? He was interested in obedience. I think that it was a good thing he was born in America and not in Czechoslovakia or Russia. Milgram wanted to test for “the point of rupture”, the moment when an average person will disobey the instructions of an authority figure. So he holds an experiment. He gets people to turn up to an anonymous laboratory where they’re met by a scientist in a white lab coat and a clipboard. This is the figure of authority, a key part of the test, but they don’t know, they just think he’s the man in charge of the experiment. Then the subjects are instructed to administer this quiz, this general knowledge quiz. They ask questions into a microphone and a man in another room gives them the answers. They never see the other man, they just hear his replies. And oh, so it starts off well enough and the man does quite well but then he makes a mistake and gives the wrong answer. The scientist instructs the subject: every time the man gives the wrong answer, they have to give him an electric shock. They just push this button, that’s all they have to do, and it will shock the unseen “victim”. This is all just part of the test, they are told. Well, secretly, ha ha, unknown to them, the victim is really just a confederate of the experimenter. He’s not being shocked at all. He just shouts out in pain a little at the first shock. Well, they go on with the test and for every answer he gives wrong, and of course the more shocks he gets the more answers he gets wrong and the level of the shock goes up and up and up and the man’s cries get louder and louder and more blood-curdling until suddenly when they get to 300-volts, there’s just silence… Just silence. They’re thinking they maybe killed this man. And the scientist tells them “Carry on with the test, you’ve got to ask all of the questions”. Well, the final stages are marked “450 volts”, then “Danger: Severe Shock”, then “XXX”. When he drew up the test, Milgram predicted that most people would refuse to even administer one electric shock and he thought that nobody but “lunatics” would knowingly administer over 150 volts. By the end, do you know what happened, nobody had stopped before 350 volts and only a third stopped before the very end.”

I still wanted to prevent her conclusion. I wanted to stop her being right “And because of that one test you think that all people are submissive?”

“You are not listening. I have been in the dungeon and I recognise the stench. I think that your call centre is a Milgram environment.”

“I…” I tried to speak but my challenge faltered. She was right.

I pulled the Act of Paliament clock from the wall. It fell strongly and smashed onto the shop floor, scattering cogs and slivers of wood around our feet. We stood facing each other in silence. She understood. We both did.

The distant voices of the callers represented unseen worlds of pain. We were urged not to accept that the pain was genuine, to deny succour. An uncooperative impersonation of assistance, the sociopathic pseudo-empathy of customer care, our task was to prevent the customer from appropriating the company’s money as if it were our money. Intensification meant that the guidelines became evermore strict, that the amount of assistance at the agents disposal became ever smaller. Higher and higher does of electricity, greater pain. The caller’s protests became background noise to our anxious performance of conformity, and, as the quality of service was further economised, they flatlined out into one long and abusive bleep. I too had experienced the absence of the possible “point of rupture”- the act of true disobedience, not just petty resistance, but complete refusal. It was in the absence, though, in the structural impossibility, of the point of rupture that the old woman was right, that the call centre really became the Milgram environment. As the depoliticised and individualised agent identifies with the organisation and thus with its reconstruction of our identity, we become instrumental to the dictates of an irresistible clipboard authority.

I had not been able to negotiate control within my part of the grid. My obedience was ensured through the same depoliticisation that characterised the entire post-privatised neo-liberal consumer culture. Marx had not helped me. I had not experienced a class struggle over ownership of the means of production. That battle was over. I had faced a different struggle: the oppression of intensification, the only viable survival of capitalism. The purpose of control was nothing more than intensification without protest.

I had been imprisoned and instrumentalised by the work process. There had been no possibility of escape. I had been switched around from pod to pod and from task to task; I had become a human tool. My alienation was not the result of class divisions or mechanisation but the absence of control over my work.

I had been re-imagined and reconstructed by the eye of superior agents, diminishing the dissonant rebellion of my own internal identity. I was an insect in a web of total surveillance, spun around by a spider with a thousand eyes. It was obedience through anxiety, conformity through voyeurism. The statistical data they collected on my actions was more important to the organisation than the actual work it represented. The map became the territory.

And I was individualised, and the mass of us were individualised, divided and ruled, prevented from collective action or from horizontal unity. I was not allowed to speak to others. In my work and in my private life, I had become a socially isolated being. My only contact with the higher echelons of the organisation was through individual teamleaders like Kali. She was there as a diversion, to personalise the point of potential grievance. My direct subjugation to oppressive control was experienced as a teamleader character trait, rather than an organisational technique. This personalisation of conflict removed the possibility of political action. I had been hoodwinked. I would have to widen my target beyond her. She was no longer relevant. My values had been discretely reoriented through the attempt to nullify the anxiety of cultural dissonance. In this way the call centre engendered a re-identification with my new exterior construction. I had almost become my own mask. Only now was I beginning to see.

All of my attempts at opposition were abstracted into consumer actions that could be harmlessly digested by the consumer/corporate culture. When I stole the telephone and took it home I thought that I was striking a blow but it was a deception. This diversion negated the political potential and disqualified my attempt at rupture by retaining the act within the boundaries of consumerist ideology. Shoplifting is still shopping. I had stolen nothing.

I was as powerless as the distant voices on the line. We were both imprisoned within the consumer culture, both actors typecast by corporate structures and structural adjustment policies. I was told to ignore their pathetic requests for electricity. And I had done what I was told to do. If I had been in Milgram’s experiment, I would have been told to give them electric shocks. And I would have followed the orders, not down the barrel of a gun but under the shadow of a clipboard.

The customers were just unwanted guests, disembodied voices shouting nowhere about nothing, unable to interact with the political structure in any way other than consumerism. Both are political weapons: the worker, the citizen, made clipboard tools.

I left the shop. There was nothing further to be said. She did not try to stop me.

I understood why I had failed. And I knew that I should not blame myself for my failure. In the end, the voices I had been listening to were no more coherent or real than Katy’s voices. We had both been changed by our encounters, both lost sense of ourselves and we had both been spat out by an uncaring institution. But a time would come for both of us. A time to fight back. A chance to strike.

I headed back to the house.

Chapter Seventeen

The Tree in the Centre of the World

“It’s been difficult… different, I don’t know. I had this romantic idea that I’d be able to bring her home and get her off the medication and then she’d be alright. But it wasn’t like that. I mean, she’s better here with me than back in there with those… those, well: they’re not doctors; they’re not there to heal anyone; and they’re against psychiatry even: they’re like vets. Biological psychiatry, that’s the prevailing, you know, the ethos... They think your head’s just a chemistry set, anything goes wrong and it’s just a chemical imbalance. They’ll cure you with a pill and god help you with the side effects, even if it’s pills that fucked you up in the first place. They can’t see the life, the history, the person behind the imbalance. It’s all just genes with them. They see it like this: if you take drugs it’s because you’re genetically predisposed, it’s like, you’re crazy first so you take drugs and then you go crazy. But they’re the biggest pushers in the world. You’re not crazy just because you take non-prescription drugs. You’re just brave and you’re stupid but you’re not crazy. Katy’s had a messed up life. We both have. What with everything with our mother when we were kids and then dad dying and me taking off… I don’t know. One of us was going to go off the deep end. It just happened to be Katy…

“It’s like… I read about this study, you know, this new study, I mean it’s not just R D Laing, this new study about maternal deprivation, about the link between childhood abuse and trauma and schizophrenia and, you know, not all schizophrenics were physically or sexually abused as children and not all people who were abused go on to manifest schizophrenic symptoms but, you know, there’s this massive correlation. So they did this study on mothers who had been considering abortions but kept their babies and so, like they had these unwanted children. And when they followed up these babies as adults they found that they were four times more likely to be schizophrenic. It just suggests that, that maternal deprivation and, and childhood abuse, they’re a large part of this. I don’t think you can say that it’s just this genetic disease and, you know, that doesn’t help, it didn’t help Katy, I mean, when she thought she had this genetic disease she was just, like, so resigned to it, like a terminal illness. As soon as she started putting it into context in terms of her life she was like “Oh, yeah, it makes sense, of course this is happening to me”, so, you know, it’s part of the healing process.”

“So they don’t think it’s schizophrenia?”

“They don’t know what they think it is. I don’t even, I mean, you know how there’s all these paternalistic and maternalistic kind of forces in religion, like God is your “father” and Mary is the “mother” and they’re very prescriptive about behaviour and they have all these powers over you and there’s obviously some subconscious projection going on from your own experience of growing up? I don’t know if you… well anyway, it’s like that, but instead of a benign messiah Katy got this fucked-up psychotic voice in her head that wanted to tear her apart and destroy her and it’s this little part of her coming out, scraping out from the inside and she had to face up to it and deal with it, absorb it and move on, you know, slay the dragon- make it your ally… She’s been through this process of making sense of all of this weirdness coming out of her and attacking the real world… I don’t know what you want to call it. Maybe the best word we have for it is “schizophrenia”, I don’t know. Maybe their drugs are the answer for most people… But I wasn’t just going to have her rot in there while they made their minds up, was I? All we know is that she had a… a psychotic episode. And the medication they gave her was just anti-psychotic stuff. I thought she could come off it straight away but, well, but it’s not that simple.”

“How so?”

“Well, the medication has a half-life. It stays in the brain for a while even after the blood has cleared it out. It’s dangerous to just stop taking it. You have to taper the dose down over a period of time. And we didn’t know, you know, we were just praying that it was all drug-induced, that it was just a blip and that it wasn’t something degenerative like schizophrenia or bipolarity but we didn’t know. We still don’t know for sure, not even now. So we have to be careful and keep a check on how Katy’s doing all the time. If she has a relapse or the voices come back stronger then we’ve fucked it. Even when she feels better, we’ll still have to keep the reducing-dose going. We won’t know if she feels better because she really has got better or if it’s just the medication starting to work long-time, stabilising her. So we’re taking our time, working through it together. She’s still not through it, I mean, she must be over the worst but some days are better than others. So we’re doing everything else we’ve heard about, like the gym, we’re both getting exercise and eating properly. I even bought some fucking aromatherapy stuff. And I got Katy going to every service we could find. She’s got group therapy for substance misuse and I got her into an outpatient counselling thing, dynamic psychotherapy. She doesn’t talk about it that much but she keeps going and that’s the best I can do.”

“I’m glad I didn’t know what you two were doing. I would have told her to go back to hospital. I would have thought it was the best place for her.”

“Yeah well, so far it looks like we were right.”

“No, so far it looks like you were lucky. He was sick and you took a major risk bringing her home. If you’d been wrong and anything had happened…”

“You saw what it was like in there. The place was falling down. I know there’s a risk in what we’re doing but I figured that it was better than letting her become some institutionalised zombie on government drugs.”

“The reason I’m not as angry with you as I should be is… well, I know that you did it for the right motivations, even if your reasoning might have been unsound. It was a selfless thing. I know that you did it for Katy’s sake. I mean, you could have left her there and got on with your life. You could have left the house, left town again, gone off to wherever it was you were going and forgotten about this place. But you didn’t.”

“To be honest, I prefer staying home looking after Katy to going back to work right now…”

“That’s a point, though, it’s been a while since you went to work, I mean, Katy told me you’d been working long hours and extra shifts to get the mortgage sorted out before she left hospital but, surely…”

“That money can’t last forever?”

“Yeah. So… what are you planning?”

“I have to go back to work next week. I don’t really want to even think about it yet. I had to keep phoning in sick for a while but then I told them it was a family crisis and they said just come back whenever. They’re always short of staff and I’m only a temp so they don’t have to pay me if I don’t go in there, so they don’t care what I do as long as I eventually come back and they don’t lose out. It’s not like they’re keeping a desk clear for me. I’m just another drone in the hive.”

“I think it’s been good for you, working. You won’t see it now but… you sound different. I think I like you better like this. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re still in danger of becoming a bitter and twisted old woman but at least there’s hope for you.”

“Oh god, you’ll never guess what- I saw this guy from work yesterday, The Gimp…”

“The what?”

“The Gimp. Never mind about that, listen, he’s this incredible freak and I bumped into him in town and he’s doing a show tonight. He’s decided to reinvent himself as a performance artist since the last time I saw him. Honestly, you’d understand if you’d met him, this is going to be brilliant.”

“So your plan is to go down there and humiliate him by laughing at his show because he’s dared to stick his head above the parapet and actually try to do something creative and you’re safely hidden away in the audience?”

“No. Yes. Well, yes but no, it’s not that simple. I used to think that he was just this giant imbecile and, well, no, he really is a giant imbecile, but there is something else about him, something… I don’t know. I don’t believe in anything… well, you know, but this monstrous idiot… well, I can’t really say, but… part of me genuinely wants to go and see what he’s planning to do. You won’t believe it but he even claims Neil Hannon is going to be there.”

“The guy from the Divine Comedy? Well, I guess he might be. I mean, it is theoretically possible.”

“Yeah, sure, Joseph, like: theoretically you’re living on the same planet as me. Listen, don’t laugh, listen, what I’m trying to say is: me and Katy are going to go. She hasn’t been out in the evening since, well, since ever, anyway, and we wanted to know if you would like to come with us?”

“You’re asking me to come out with you? I don’t know…”

“Yeah, I know. All I’ve ever done is piss you about, I know that. I’m not expecting you to just walk back into my life like nothing ever happened but I need a friend right now and you’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve probably ever had.”

“A friend?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I must say, I do feel marginally safer.”

“Look, I just, I just really think I want you to be a part of my life again and if you don’t… If you don’t feel comfortable with it… I’d, I’ll, I understand.”

“What about Katy?”

“Do you mean ‘what about Katy’ as in ‘am I still going to be jealous and will it be weird’ or ‘what about Katy’ as in ‘does Katy really want you to come’?”

“No, I meant, you didn’t use Katy as a bargaining tool when you were trying to ask me out with you ‘as a friend’ even though I can see how desperate you are. You didn’t try and use your sister. It’s almost as if you actually have some respect for another human being. This is an admirable new side to your personality, Violent. What can I say? I’d love to come with you to watch your Gimp embarrass himself.”

“Then it’s a date,” I smiled, closing the matter, but before hanging up I added “As a friend.”

The summer had given way to the autumn with an easy grace like a retired brass turning one final trick. Wood fires burned in back gardens, filling the streets with antediluvian memories of evenings spent in Eden. The leaves on the trees were turning and dying. Everything had found an honest resignation in decay. The first fall littered the pavement, casting spotlights of colour beneath the streetlights: orange, yellow, red. Katy and I walked through the evening, our skin bumping against the cold like an unfamiliar friend. I wore my black jacket, even though it was almost time for it to retire. Too many days climbing trees in the woods with my sister had corroded its colour and shape. But it was still my best jacket.

Katy wore a new top. She had lost the biker jacket and, thankfully, the chains. The bike itself was long gone. Her hair was shorter but it was still untamed. She shivered slightly against the wind but kept her discomfort to herself. She was secretly revelling in the span of physical sensations that were coming back to her. If she was cold then so be it. At least her mind was lucid enough to notice again.

We walked into the bar together. It was somewhere that neither of us had ever been to before. It looked derelict from the outside, but the interior was modern and mint. Neon sculptures hung from the walls and the bar was a single solid piece of glass stretching along a wall of exposed brickwork. The place was full. It was a rambunctious crowd. I was not able to categorise them easily. They seemed to be a subculture I was not familiar with. Their clothes were strange and expensive. They had a uniformity about them that suggested a new style occurring in occlusion; mod for outsider-fashionistas. A strange sensation came over me and at first I could not recognise it. I was reminded of being suspended from school for smoking and staying at home watching pre-school children’s television all day. It was a feeling of accidental interpolation, something death-like. And then I realised what it was: I felt old.

We made our way through to the bar “I don’t know what to order,” I said.

“I don’t know what to drink,” Katy said.

“Coke? No, wait, yeah, coke?”

Katy smiled “Yeah. That sounds good.”

“Hello, ladies.”

We both turned. Joseph threw us a perfect smile. He wore a silver suit. His hair glowed like a halo from the white neon behind him. He looked like he had stepped out of the sun “I know,” he whispered conspiratorially “Who are these people? They’re like space-vampires from the future.”

“You look fantastic,” I said and then, embarrassed by my candour “Do you want a drink?”

Joseph arched an eyebrow disapprovingly.

The barman passed me my drinks “Two cokes- anything else?” he said.

Joseph laughed with relief “I’ll have a pint of stout,” he said to him before turning to us “What?” he said “Just because you two are on the wagon doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer, does it?”

“Cheers,” Katy said, tipping his glass towards him “Very thoughtful of you.”

“Violet!” The Gimp pushed his way through the crowd. He was wearing a crushed-velvet smoking jacket and a monocle. His breathing was heavy and laboured “You made it!”

Joseph squinted at him. He inspected him like a mysterious specimen “Are you wearing eyeliner?” he asked.

The Gimp grinned. His face was splattered with stage-glitter “I did it myself!”

“Yes, thank you,” Joseph said “I’ve just never seen a man with a monocle wearing eyeliner before. You just wouldn’t think they’d go together, would you?”

“Joseph, Katy, this is The Gimp,” I introduced them with a flourish “Gimp, this is my friend Joseph and my sister Katy.”

“Enchanted,” The Gimp bowed “I’m so glad you came along. I saved you a seat at the front! Shit! Is that the time? Is that the right time? Shit! I’ve got to go! It was nice meeting you… Shit! Sorry, bye!” The Gimp span around and pushed his way back through the crowd.

“That’s not the right way to the stage,” Katy said “That’s the toilets.”

“Maybe that’s his changing room?” Joseph stood peering over the crowd.

“No… no I don’t think he’s going to get changed… This is just the floorshow,” Katy said as The Gimp, mere inches away from the door to the toilets, began throwing up onto the floor. A space quickly cleared around him.

A bell rang to announce the imminent start of proceedings. The crowd moved away and began to cram themselves towards the theatre door.

“I suppose we’d better go in,” I said.

“Do you think he’s alright?” Joseph flicked his index finger towards The Gimp’s heaving body.

“Just nerves,” I said. I wanted to get into the theatre before anyone changed their mind “He’ll be fine.”

We left The Gimp on the floor and made our way through the doors into the theatre. It was a fair space with tiered seating at the back. We crossed over to the cabaret tables at the front of the auditorium and took our seats. Church candles burned on spikes in the ashtrays and the table was covered in pressed autumn leaves. The compere appeared on stage as soon as we were settled. She wore a white boiler suit and a bowler hat, her face hidden behind a kabuki mask. Katy caught my eye and pulled a face. I began to regret forcing him to come along.

“Don’t laugh at me, because I am a fool,” she said. An old vinyl record began playing over the PA, hissing and popping cracks. The girl in the boiler suit sang along. Her voice was tremulous and penetrating. Shivers tingled along my spine. I knew the song without being able to recognise it. A memory of it lived somewhere inside me. While she sang, I peered over at Katy. Hereyes were wet in the corners. I pretended not to notice.

“I’m not good looking, I’m not too smart,
I may be foolish but I’ve got a heart.
I love the flowers, I love the sun,
But when I try to love the girls
They laugh at me and run.

”Don’t laugh at me ‘cause I’m a fool.
I know it’s true: yes! I’m a fool.
No one seems to care.
I’d give the world to share my life
With someone who really loves me.

”I see them all falling in love
But my lucky star hides up above.
Some day maybe
My star will smile on me.

”Don’t laugh at me ‘cause I’m a fool.”

Everyone clapped. The compere announced the next act and left the stage. She was followed by a procession of self-indulgent performance-art pieces, each more oblique and meaningless than the last until I thought that I could not take any more. Every time the compere cleared the stage, I prayed that she would sing again but she contented herself with spoken announcements. I began to pick up my cigarettes and my lighter when The Gimp walked onto the stage. Too curious to leave, I settled back down.

The Gimp had discarded the smoking jacket for a green tweed suit. His eyes sparkled with the moment. He filled the stage with his physical presence. I had to admit, in spite of myself, that he had some charisma. He was joined on either side by a dancer in a green leotard and a young boy with a violin. The boy began to struggle his way through a classical Indian piece while the dancer moved through a series of spotlights. A projector threw up images of trees onto a screen at the back of the stage. There were tulip trees and maples, Cornelian cherries and willows; a London Plane thirty metres high and just as wide; a giant redwood flowering in the spring. The trees were intercut with elemental forces: forest fires and lightning, aurora borealis.

“The tree is life,” The Gimp shouted. I recognised his tone of voice from our nights in the graveyard “The roots in the black earth, the underworld, the dead, the dust of my body’s creation and the grave of its destination. My life in rings in the trunk, one for every year, tattoos of rain on the bark. The branches and the upper leaves reaching into the sky, into god, the stars of my soul’s creation and the heaven of its destination. Water in the sap, air in the leaves, earth in the body, fire in the tinder. The cross of the crucifixion. The immolation of Odin. The maypole. Yggdrasil. Kien Mu. Tree of life. Tree of Death. Tree of wisdom. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of nations. Buddha under the Bodhi, satori in the shade. The burning bush. The tree in the centre of the world. The tree upside down: leaves underground and roots in the sky.”

The dancer dropped to the floor and rolled across the stage. The boy with the violin climbed onto her back and continued to play while she stretched her fingers up towards the ceiling.

“The Jacobs Ladder of the shaman, flying up to the spirit world. The shaman climbs the Cosmic Tree. As I climb higher I achieve knowledge.”

The violin stopped suddenly.

“But I have climbed too high too soon and I have burnt my hair on the face of the sun. Icarus:” he looked at my table “Don’t get ideas.”

The boy began to play again, erratically. He stopped and then started again in a different key.

The Gimp began to dance, spiralling around the tip of his right hand pointed at the floor. He chanted in a soft murmur, words inaudible beneath the juddering violin. The violin began to respond to The Gimp’s chant. His voice flowed in and around the music, pulling it back into shape. Slowly, steadily, they began to kick out the song afresh. The Gimp threw up his hands and stopped singing. The boy continued to play, his bow desperately trying to tear a hole in the marrow of sadness but bathetically hindered by his inexperience. The dancer twirled and skipped and carried him upwing and off the stage. The Gimp fixed his glare at the bright lights behind the audience “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of nations,” he said, bowing, before leaving the stage.

A dark-haired man appeared on stage before any of us could even begin to react. He was carrying an accordion. He sat on a stool by the footlights. A woman with a toy piano followed him. She set the piano onto a small stand as the other musicians filed onstage with their instruments: a banjo, a clarinet and two violins and, finally, a drummer with a military snare hung around his neck. The stage was full. They quietly went about their craft, getting the microphones into place and composing themselves. The audience was silent. Something was going to happen. All eyes were trained upon the stage.

And then Neil Hannon appeared. He walked out from behind the curtain, dressed in a blazer and black jeans. His hair was long and hung down around his face. He smiled at the audience as the musicians got into their positions. “Hello,” he said. The audience recovered themselves into claps and cheers. He settled himself behind a mic stand “This is a song I recorded with Yann Tiersen. It’s called Les Jours Tristes,” he turned to the accordion player and nodded. The music began at once.

”It's hard,
Hard not to sit on your hands,
Bury your head in the sand;
Hard not to make other plans
And claim that you've done all you can
All along
And life must go on.”

At first he sang to the accompaniment of the accordion and the clarinet. The simple lights overhead swung upstage and they were joined by the banjo. I turned, open-mouthed, to Katy and Joseph. They were both smiling. I had forgotten what real a smile would look like on my sister’s face. It lit up the universe.

”It's hard,
Hard to stand up for what's right
And bring home the bacon each night;
Hard not to break down and cry
When every idea you've tried
Has been wrong
But you must carry on.”

And the woman began to play the toy piano. It echoed in tinny rapport with the other instruments, lifting the music up into a chorus.

”It's hard but you know it's worth the fight
'Cause you know you've got the truth on your side.
When the accusations fly,
Hold tight.
Don't be afraid of what they'll say,
Who cares what cowards think anyway,
They will understand one day,
One day.

”It's hard,
Hard when you're here all alone
And everyone else has gone home;
Harder to know right from wrong
When all objectivity is gone
And it's gone
But you still carry on
'Cause you,
You are the only one left
And you've got to clean up this mess,
You know you'll end up like the rest,
Bitter, twisted unless
You stay strong
And you carry on.”

”It's hard but you know it's worth the fight
'Cause you know you've got the truth on your side.
When the accusations fly,
Hold tight.
And don't be afraid of what they'll say,
Who cares what cowards think anyway,
They will understand one day,
One day.”

Everything dropped away and the drummer stepped forward. He rapped out a tattoo on the snare. The accordion stepped around him, pulling the other instruments in, one by one, with the violins rising in volume to join them.

”It's hard but you know it's worth the fight
'Cause you know you've got the truth on your side.
When the accusations fly,
Hold tight.
And don't be afraid of what they'll say,
Who cares what cowards think anyway,
They will understand one day,
One day,
One day.”

After the show had finished, we made our way to the street outside. It was cold and dark after the warm intimacy of the tiny theatre, but there was something refreshing about it. People stood around happily in the chilly night air. The Gimp came out to meet us “Oh god,” he said. His stage makeup was smeared across his face and his body was unable to contain him “He actually came. Oh god. Fuck, there’s going to be a party and everyone’s coming, do you three want to come? Oh god, I think I might have wet myself.”

Katy put her hand on my shoulder “You go if you want to, Violet. Listen, I’ve had a great time but I’m just feeling a bit, I don’t know, I don’t think I’m ready for a party just yet.”

The Gimp pushed in front of him “How can you say no? How could anything ever be as cool as this?”

“Sorry, Gimp,” I said “It sounds cool but we have to go.”

“You’re insane!” he wailed.

“Yes we are,” said Katy, smiling over at me.

“What about you?” The Gimp asked Joseph.

“No. I would like to come but no. I’ve got to make sure these two idiots get home.”

“I’ll see you back at work!” I shouted to The Gimp as we walked away.

“What are you talking about?” The Gimp called back. He shouted something else but we could not hear him. The party crowd from the theatre rolled out onto the pavement and overwhelmed him. Katy and Joseph turned to go.

“Wait,” I ran back across the road and grabbed The Gimp “What do you mean?”

“It’s gone, man!” he shouted “They closed it down!”

“They did what?”

“The whole thing’s been outsourced to fucking India, man! There’s no work to go back to!”

We spoke intently for a minute before Katy, growing impatient, called me to join them. I looked over and nodded. I said something finally, honestly, into the ear of The Gimp and ran back across. The Gimp watched me go, his head titled to one side.

On the walk back, Joseph punched my arm.

“Ow!” I said “What did you do that for?”

“You didn’t have to turn down his cool party just to impress me.”

“Fuck off,” I replied, smiling.

The Gimp had told me that there was no job to go back to. I had experienced a cocktail of bewildering emotions upon hearing the news. I was ecstatic that I would never have to go back there. It was the best news ever. But it also meant that I was out of work and would probably lose the house. It was the worse news ever. Simultaneously I felt that, even though I knew I had failed to seize control and launch the virus, I had always still had some residual chance to strike back at them. Now it seemed that was gone. Either way, whatever happened, I was certain that I would never see The Gimp again. Overcome by this barrage of sentiment, I had found myself expressing a bond of friendship with him that startled him almost as much as it did me. I mentioned nothing to Joseph and Katy on the walk home.

When we got back I opened the door and led the party through to the living room. I put some music on. Katy said goodnight and left Joseph and me sitting alone together. I poured him a glass of wine and sat down on the sofa facing him.

“So what did he say to you, then?” he asked.

“Who?”

Joseph smiled and knocked his drink back “Don’t be coy. You know what I’m talking about. I know when you’re hiding something.”

I fixed him with sad eyes “I don’t have a job anymore,” I said “They outsourced the call centre.”

Joseph put his glass down on the table “So why do you look so sad? You hated the place. Now you’ve got the perfect excuse for never going back and even I can’t have a go at you about it.”

“Because it means I have to go to Plan B and I’m not sure it’s the right time. Not for me, for Katy…” I raised an eyebrow “Or for you.”

Joseph sat forward in her chair “This all sounds very interesting. I had no idea that there was even a Plan A, let alone a Plan B. Tell you what, suppose you tell me what it is and I tell you whether or not it’s the right time. It really doesn’t sound like you have much of a choice.”

“Okay,” I stood and pushed the living room door closed quietly. I paced slowly while I spoke “To be honest, I never really was earning enough to make the payments on the mortgage and clear off all the arrears. I just made enough to keep it ticking over while I bought myself some time. Now things have come to a head too quickly and I don’t know… Katy’s been dependent on the house for security. It means something to her that it doesn’t mean to me. But I’ve been trying to work out whether it’s healthy or not and I still can’t say for sure but, anyway, I need a break. She needs a break. Plan B means selling the house and going on a long trip away. A holiday: the grand tour. Me and Katy, get away from the past and start again somewhere new… And I wanted to take you with us but I’m scared to ask you straight out in case you say no, so this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy three tickets and I’ll post one to you and I don’t want to put you under any pressure but if you want to come with us then you can and if you don’t want to come then you don’t have to say it to my face and I don’t have to tell Katy. But after tonight I won’t be able to see you or speak to you before we leave. If you want to come, then meet me at the airport. Me and Katy have some stuff to take care of before we leave and I don’t want you to be involved with it in case something goes wrong. I can’t tell you anything about it now but you’ll find out later. And I’m sorry if this all sounds insane but this wasn’t the way it was supposed to work out. There was supposed to be more time.”

Joseph nodded “I understand. Let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s talk about something else.”

We sat up together for the rest of the night, talking. We took it in turns to fill the gaps in the past three years, catching up on everything that we had missed in each other’s lives. I was completely candid about my time at university and my disastrous love affairs, much to Joseph’s amusement, but I did not mention Leon. My thoughts about him were too fresh and confused to articulate. It was something else that I could leave for later. For the time being, and with my own feelings about Leon excluded, I enjoyed the newfound ability to look towards the future and laugh at the past.

Joseph did not leave until the sun rose the next morning. I made myself a cup of coffee, smoked another cigarette and then went out to the park to climb trees.

I saw Kali again a few days before leaving England. She was carrying six bursting bags of shopping up the hill by the station. She looked tatty and old. I guessed that everything had fallen through for her and she had taken my place in the chair at the Jobcentre. It didn’t make me feel good but it did make a kind of circular logic.

In a way, seeing her only made it easier for me to take the next step. I knew then that it was not individuals but institutions who had hurt me and Katy. The individual personalities were just secondary flies in the web. They were not the tarantualas and they could not dance themselves free. I knew then with certainty that my next strike would be bold and deadly and far beyond the squabbles of any politically-minded assassins. We were going to kill gods, not men.

Chapter Eighteen

Black Cherry

I ran across the branch as if it were a wooden beam and jumped clear into the boughs of the next tree. I stopped, clutching onto the trunk with one gloved hand, to look back. Katy came close behind me, shooting through the trees like a winged monkey. I rushed onwards, darting from tree to tree until I came to the apex of the high wall. I pressed close into the shadowy heart of the trunk and scanned the grounds below.

Everything was still. A ghostly white film lay across the grass, like milk in the moonlight. The twigs and branches around me were undisturbed by wind or birds. Everything was dark and quiet. I looked up at the buildings ahead. They were black and unlit against the cerulean night. I saw no danger; no electricity; no people.

Katy landed in my tree and whipped around the trunk to the branch where I was standing. She was dressed in combat boots and silent black clothing, a commando hat pulled low over her head. I would not have recognised her “All clear?” she whispered.

I scouted through the field binoculars “There’s nothing. We’re go.”

Katy pulled the straps on her backpack in tighter, pulling the bag closer against her back. She nodded.

There was no time to say “We don’t have to do this” and no point. We had to do it. I walked out on the branch as far as it could sustain me and then launched myself up into the air and over the high wall. I landed rolling on the wet grass below. I tumbled headfirst three or four times before sliding to a standstill. I snapped my face up towards Katy in the tree and signalled for her to jump by waving two fingers across my face. She jumped and landed next to me. It was a much cleaner landing than mine.

We were on our feet instantly and running towards the rear building. We ran hunched and low as if escaping from a helicopter. It felt safer that way. There was less chance of detection.

The building grew as we approached. It was a faceless brick monolith, more prison than hospital, with cruel windows and stone chimneys. It looked like a slaughterhouse. There was a metal door set into an alcove on the side nearest to us. This was our point of entry. We flattened out against the rear wall as we approached it, moving sideways towards are goal. We were upon it quickly. I pulled the short crowbar from the bag on my back and popped the padlock away from the door handle. I fumbled my attempt to catch the broken lock and it cracked loudly as it hit the concrete step below the door frame. We froze. A sweat bead trickled along Katy’s cheek. We waited. But nothing happened. We both exhaled slowly and returned to our task.

The door was stiff but I managed to pull it open. I motioned for Katy to move on inside. As I was about to follow her, we heard the sound of a gate being opened in the distance. It sounded like the main gate, something heavy and large dragging across gravel, about two or three hundred feet away, well within the grounds. I looked at Katy “The gatekeeper,” she whispered “Fuck. What do we do?”

“Wait, just wait, see what happens.”

My heart stamped against my eardrums like a baby demon with a shotgun. I was straining for sounds of detection but my panic heightened and distorted my sense of hearing until I could hear a cacophony of silence and nothing else: blood thundering in my veins, the rustle of my clothing, air in my nostrils, dust in the space between physical objects howling in a maddening stew of watery nothingness. The gatekeeper could have been shouting behind me and I would not have heard him.

After forever, Katy tapped my shoulder with her index finger “Come on,” she said “Let’s go.”

I turned and followed her inside, leaving the door open behind me.

Arsonists set fire to a derelict hospital

The Evening Sentinel, Friday November 12^th 1999.

YOUNG arsonists are believed to have started a blaze that severely damaged a derelict hospital.

Forty-five firefighters tackled the fire which started at around 11.45pm yesterday at the former site of Saddleworth Hall psychiatric hospital. The blaze quickly grew, with flames licking through the roof of the surviving portion of the original structure, and in matter of hours the East Wing was left nothing more than a charred skeleton.

The former workhouse and hospital has been targeted by vandals since it closed earlier this year and is expected now to be demolished now.

It is believed the fire was started in a basement room at the rear of the main building, which has lain empty for several years. Items that may have been suspicious incendiary devices were recovered from the wreckage of the hospital’s morgue. Seven fire vehicles from crews across the county attended the blaze, and a hydraulic platform was provided in case the fragile building collapsed.

The structure was too unsafe for officers to enter the building and tackle the fire directly. The fire was then able to spread to the surrounding buildings. A decision was made to allow the flames to burn themselves out rather than risk officers' safety. Station officer Alan Harker was one of the first firefighters on the scene. He said: "I was desperately disappointed that the fire could not be tackled. We could not save this historic building from mindless vandals."

The fire had burnt itself out by around 5AM hours, and then officers then were able search the charred wreckage of the buildings. No-one was found, and there were no injuries.

Eyewitness, Collin Dowling, 48, night watchman at the hospital, one of several people to call the emergency services said: "Before the fire crews arrived I saw some people climbing trees near the main wall."

Police want to hear from anyone who was in the area between 10PM and midnight.

Saddleworth Hall had recently been closed under the controversial scheme to phase-out local psychiatric institutions. Critics say that conditions in the hospital had been deteriorating for several years prior to the closure.

An application was lodged with the Borough Council, by private firm Securitas Ltd, at the beginning of September to demolish the remaining hospital buildings and construct a medium security prison on the site.

I walked through the grounds of the royal observatory with Katy. We weaved through the monstrously oversized astronomical instruments and sat in the shade of a thirty foot sundial. A troupe of shabby monkeys lounged around the huge astrolabe, chattering over the noise of the traffic and the parrots flying overhead. Across the road stood the palace, flanked by the intricate red sandstone architecture of the pink city, Jaipur.

The heat was intense. We were both dressed in white, for the first time in our lives. Even our shadows seemed lighter.

I addressed my sister “No regrets?” I asked.

Katy looked back at me “No regrets,” she said. Her face had begun to fill out again. The sunglasses suited her “We did what we had to do.”

I lit a cheap cigarette “I’m still not sure it was the right thing. I mean, someone had to do it… but I shouldn’t have got you involved. I don’t think I’m a very good influence on you. Big sisters should watch out for their younger sisters and not get them into trouble.”

“I told you already, it was my decision. It was… therapeutic. Fuck regret.”

I stood up and brushed myself down “Alright, then. This is the last thing. And then that’s it. No more funny business. I promise. You ready?”

Katy squinted into the sunlight “Wait… it’s Joseph.”

Joseph walked through the rusted gates and crossed the thin grass towards us. His hair had really grown long over the past few months. It looked lighter than ever “I know you girls are up to something,” he said.

I slipped the backpack onto my back “I thought you were going to wait in the hotel,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I got bored and I want to know what little scheme you’ve got planned.”

I tried not to look at my sister and I tried not to look as if I was trying not to look at him. It was not effective. Our guilt caused our faces to crinkle uncontrollably.

“Confess!” he shouted, laughing.

“Fine!” I pulled the backpack off and opened it “You see this?” I said, pulling out a computer disc and waving at her “You see that?” I said, pointing across the palace to a large office building in the distance.

Joseph narrowed his eyes at the disc. In spite of the joking, he knew that we had something serious planned “What is on that, exactly?”

“It’s a virus,” Katy said “And that,” he nodded towards the office block “Is where they moved Violet’s call centre.”

Joseph put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips. Katy and I both tensed. He stared at me and Katy as if willing us to wilt before his gaze. After a long wait, he turned his back on us and took a few steps in the other direction. Before he reached the gates he glanced back over his bare shoulder and called out to us “Don‘t be late back,” and then he winked at us “And don’t get caught.”

I grinned. We waited until he had gone before picking the bag up again. As we walked towards the road to find a taxi, I patted Katy on the back “Thanks for all your help with the programming,” I said “But you’re sure it’s going to work now?”

Katy raised her eyebrows “The only thing I’m sure of is that your virus would never have worked. You’re just lucky you never had the balls to use it.”

“Hey, girl! I spent a lot of time writing that!”

“Face it, V, it would never have worked- you’re smart but you just don’t know what you’re doing! But, okay, fine, if you’re sure, we’ll use your old one if you want. But I don’t think you’re going to like Indian prisons.”

“No, no, we’ll use your version. I wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

An auto-rickshaw wheeled over to the kerb next to us.

“You ready?” I asked again.

Katy nodded “Let’s go.”

THE END

94,000 words

380 pages