Kristin Read online

  ‘Oh, we will,’ she said with absolute assurance, and vanished into the underworld without looking back.

  Three

  Thom arrived at his mother’s detached house in Bermondsey at around five-thirty. The temperature had plummeted and snow had started to fall. The door opened and her ageing face cracked with emotion. She held out her arms and hugged him until his ribs hurt.

  ‘My God, I’m so glad to see you,’ she sighed, with relief.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Better for seeing you. Come in quickly, you must be frozen?’

  He closed the door and followed her to the kitchen, watching as she brought the kettle back to the boil with a trembling right hand that had affected her since a severe stroke three years earlier.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shivering against the door frame.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Sorry I wasn’t here.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t even know anything had happened until I switched the wireless on, but it just felt like something was wrong as soon as I woke up. I don’t know, I opened the curtains and everything seemed ... final, hopeless. Does that make sense?’

  He nodded. She handed him a mug of Earl Grey tea and they moved into the lounge. He had so many memories of the room and it had changed little since his childhood. He looked at the old, bottle green armchair in the corner and felt happy for the first time in days. It was here he’d sat as a young boy, with his father, and listened to hour upon hour of wondrous stories from the master.

  His mother had lowered herself slowly into the same chair thirteen years ago as his father had confirmed the news she couldn’t bear to hear, that her youngest son, Nicholas, had died riding pillion on a friend’s motorcycle in the Rotherhithe tunnel.

  And it had been in the chair she’d taken the telephone call informing her that her beloved husband, George, had passed away in hospital of a heart attack following a routine operation.

  Here, too, he’d somehow managed to make love for the first time, with Amy Stanton, a fellow student from Goldsmiths College. Sixteen years on he could still hear her shortened breath, feel the beauty of the naked form that had devoured him with its burning fire. His pulse quickened.

  ‘God, I miss them, Thomas,’ she whispered.

  ‘So do I. Every day.’

  ‘Nick would have turned thirty this year.’

  ‘And Dad would be ... sixty-eight?’

  She nodded solemnly as the old wall clock ticked more seconds away. ‘Have you seen the papers this morning?’ she asked, handing him a neatly folded copy of The Times.

  He scanned the front page with apprehension and loathing: “FALSE ALARM, BUT PRE-EMPTIVE WESTERN STRIKES INEVITABLE,” and tossed the broadsheet onto the floor. Maybe the Islamic fundamentalists had it right, perhaps America really was the “Great Satan”? And maybe all those nations in league with it were equally responsible? After all, it was the Americans who’d started the ball of insanity rolling at the end of the Second World War. Robert Oppenheimer certainly had a great deal to answer for in Thom’s eyes. He must have been a man lacking in anything more than a modicum of humanity.

  Now that the British, American and French embassies in Riyadh, Damascus, and Amman had closed the governments of the West no longer shared a dialogue with the Middle East. It was a complete standoff, and the world held its collective breath. It waited.

  ‘Thom, how has it come to this, isn’t there anything that can be done, isn’t there still time for negotiation?’

  Negotiation? Thom had never understood the grievances of such people, the concept of Jihad. He wasn’t able to comprehend what these people wanted of the West. Surely they could no more expect him to go and live in the desert and pray to Allah five times a day than he would ask them to abandon everything they know and embrace Western culture in all its facets? He’d sometimes wondered if it might all just be a simple question of jealousy — the old story of the haves and the have-nots, rather than being anything to do with which God you happened to believe in, which devotional code you lived by. ‘How do you negotiate with people who have no desire to talk, no clear demands, no rational motive, people without a conscience?’ he answered. His eyes flashed to the paper, and half way down the front page he saw a vivid orange image of a nuclear explosion in full bloom, headed by the simple but bold caption: “NORTH KOREA: JUST A MATTER OF TIME”.

  North Korea’s nuclear arms programme had advanced as rapidly as it had under the guidance of a renegade Russian scientist, Aleksandr Lushnikov. Two decades of his expertise had enabled his new masters to become the superpower of the East, ahead of the Chinese. Kim Hae Kyong’s unrecognized administration had refused to abandon its nuclear arms programme and its missiles were trained upon its neighbour, South Korea, and cities in Europe, Britain, and the United States.

  He sipped some tea and thought about his nightmares, of his need to divulge their content, their cryptic absurdity, and he worried how she would react to hearing what he was about to tell her. ‘I’ve been having dreams, strange dreams. I’m on a hill top, up by Greenwich Observatory I think, and I see the bomb explode. I feel incredibly strong, strong enough to stop it. But last night was different. I was impotent and the mushroom cloud just spread, turned the whole city to dust and then ... ’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘ ... I watched you die.’

  Margaret Sharman stared silently into her cup and swallowed dryly. Now she would shock her surviving son. ‘Do you remember that white cat from next door — you were very young, five or six?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘There was an accident out in the road, we heard the screech of the brakes, but before we do anything you ran out and saw it lying there in a pool of blood. You were very upset.’

  ‘I don’t recall that.’

  ‘No, well you seemed to forget the whole episode and your father and I agreed we shouldn’t mention it again, or try to find an explanation for what happened next.’

  ‘What did happen?’

  ‘Something quite unbelievable. You crouched down next to the cat, placed a hand on its stomach ... and it started to twitch. Then it pulled itself to its feet. You patted it on the head and it ran off.’

  ‘Must have just been stunned.’

  ‘Stunned, with all that blood? No, Thom, it was dead.’

  ‘What are you saying ... that I brought it back to life?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘ ... But that’s not possible.’

  ‘I knew from the second you were born that you were very special, and not just as a son, which you are of course. I knew that you’d have a very important role to play at some point in your life, I just wasn’t sure what it would be.’

  Her words took him back to the awful day he’d said goodbye to his brother forever. Now he would have to reveal a secret, in case he never got another chance.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Nick’s funeral. There’s something...something I’ve never told you. It’s just that, well, before the coffin vanished behind the curtain ... I heard ... a voice.’

  She put her cup down and sat back.

  ‘It was barely discernible ... but it was Nick.’

  ‘ ... He talked to you?’

  ‘He said we weren’t to blame Ritchie for his death, that his friend’s survival would be punishment enough. Then he told me to look after you and Dad. He said that although I may have to make the ultimate sacrifice I would one day realize my destiny, but that I should beware a stranger I would meet in the future as they would not be ... of this world. He said that he loved us all, and wished us happy lives.’

  She stood slowly, picked up the cups and carried them through to the kitchen, where she began to cry as he’d never heard her cry before.

  Four

  Thom had no recollection of Sunday whatsoever, and woke at ten the following morning, slumped at the kitchen table. He found a large glass, filled it with twenty year old
whisky and drank it. Then he phoned work, told them he was sick, and refilled the glass.

  By the time he found her he was barely able to stand. Two girls were antagonizing her, hovering over her like vultures. One of them spat in her face then they stepped away, laughing, and the other girl threw a half-full drink can and its contents spilled down the front of her coat. He ran at them, ‘Piss off, you slags!’

  Kristin looked at the spattering of fizzy liquid, her anger boiling and tracked them as they fled, as their laughter, their stiletto footsteps ricocheted off the icy walls.

  Suddenly, the younger of the two women crashed to the ground holding her head, squealing as blood ran from her ears and her eyes, gushed from her nose. The older girl pulled her up and they ran, hysterical.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Bitches! They have spoiled my coat, the one you gave me.’

  ‘We can get it cleaned, let’s get out of here,’ he slurred.

  He held out a hand and she grasped it, but as her skin made contact his palm burnt. He let her go, and she fell heavily against the wall. She glared at him mistrustfully, breathless. ‘ ... Must have been static, I’m sorry I let you slip.’

  They walked quickly to the northern exit, took the lift and crossed the road to the station. At Canary Wharf they found a coffee shop on the top floor of the mall.

  ‘What happened back there?’ he asked.

  ‘Back where?’ she replied, coughing over another of his Dunhills.

  ‘...With those girls?’

  ‘Bitches have been bothering me for a while.’

  ‘You get a lot of that?’

  ‘Some. That bitch has paid the price.’

  ‘ ... Looked like she hit her head?’

  She glowered.

  He glanced out at the busy lunchtime concourse. People swarmed, laden with bags and trolleys full of food and supplies they hoped might keep them alive a little longer if the worst happened. On a plastic bench outside a boutique a young mother rocked her baby. He wondered whether the child would reach its first birthday? ‘What do you think ?’ he asked her.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Do you think we’ll still be here this time next year?’

  ‘Not all of you.’

  Her words cut through him with their cold certainty.

  His hand began to burn again. He looked down. It was blistering badly. He must have done it himself that morning, on a hot pan or something, that was why it had hurt when he’d helped her up. God knows he’d been drunk enough to have done virtually anything. But now he was sobering fast. ‘It’s a waste,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your life, as it is.’

  ‘I have never known anything else.’

  ‘But we meet, we talk, and then ... I mean, what will you do now?’

  ‘Go back down there, it is where I belong.’

  ‘I can’t let you do that anymore.’ He leaned across the table and made her an offer, one that she grabbed without hesitation, smiling slyly when his eyes left hers for a split second. Her acceptance would change his life forever, and alter the destiny of the human race.

  Five

  Thom opened the lounge door of his apartment and she wandered in, astonished anyone could live in luxury so diametrically opposed to her own, paltry existence. Sliding off her shoes she walked barefoot on the sumptuous pile of the royal blue carpet, and ran her fingertips lightly along the back of the red leather sofa.

  He took off his coat and threw it over the back of a chair as she drifted into the bathroom.

  ‘Is this for bath-ing?’ she asked.

  He followed her. She was staring down into the deep, cast iron tub with fascination. ‘ ... Yes, of course ... ’

  ‘I would like to bathe.’

  He left the room and fetched an oversized white towel, yellow cotton T-shirt and black tracksuit bottoms. When he returned, she’d stripped naked and his need for her burned.

  ‘Shannons?’ she asked.

  ‘ ... Yes ... yes they were Shannon’s,’ he stuttered.

  ‘Is it normal?’

  ‘ … Is what normal?’

  ‘To take off clothes, when one bathes?’

  He was dumfounded.

  ‘Do I look un-pleasant?’

  ‘ ... Unpleasant?’

  ‘Without my clothes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah ... pri-vacy.’

  As she closed the door on her benefactor something inside her required that she despise him, but she fought the overpowering demand and an excruciating pain tore through the fabric of her soul, an experience her innocence would not permit her to comprehend. But she would comprehend. Soon.

  Thom took a sharp knife from a drawer and began slicing vegetables. He switched the portable television on and then off — he’d avoided the media wherever possible since he’d seen Saturday’s paper and had no desire to be informed now. If it happened, it happened, he just didn’t wish to know if it was about to happen ... he jumped as something extrinsic to the world in which he lived, something cold, threatening, closed in behind him. Water drops hit the tiled floor in protracted rhythm. Something breathed, sniffing him with suspicion. But he turned slowly to find emptiness, and inhaled air as rank as rotten meat. On the floor were two wet, bare footprints.

  Gripping the wooden stock tightly in his hand he pointed the knife straight ahead and crept into the soundless, static lounge. He forced his paralysed legs to move, passing through the open door onto the dark landing. Disorientation hit him: Where did the blackened, distorted doors in front of him lead to? What would happen if he opened one of them, entered the room? How would he find his way back to the kitchen, to safety? But the landing stopped spinning and his fear subsided. He opened the first door, looked into the bedroom and closed it before taking three paces to the right and checking the spare room. At the bathroom door he heard her splashing cleansing water over her perfect, ivory skin.

  He shuddered, wandered back to the kitchen and resumed slicing up the vegetables with the razor sharp knife. A movement outside distracted him. He looked down onto the street to see something moving in the gutter — a bird, a magpie. His magpie.

  Thom put the knife down, walked down the stairs and out into the road. He stooped, examined the creature. In the matter of seconds it had taken him to reach it the bird’s agony had ended. It’s beak gaped, its eyes were glassy, extinct.

  With his mother’s recollections of his childhood experience fresh in his mind he placed a hand on the bird but it was still, without life, and he was quite powerless to help it, as he suspected he would be. He picked the magpie up and put its body beneath a thick hedge on the other side of the road. But as he closed the door there was a rustling sound, frenzied flapping and he watched, bewildered, as the bird took noisily to the sky.

  Thom had seen dead creatures before, and creatures that were merely stunned. Some had even played dead in an act of self-preservation. But the magpie had died.

  The neck of the bottle hovered over the rim of his glass.

  ‘More ?’

  ‘Sorry? Oh, yes,’ he said, returning to her.

  ‘This wine is a good wine,’ she enthused, holding her glass up to the light. ‘Look ... it is the colour of blood.’

  ‘ ... It’s a Château Mouton Rothschild — five years old.’

  ‘But I feel strange.’

  ‘I should go easy if you haven’t drunk for a while.’

  ‘I have never drunk alco-hol.’

  There was no lie in her voice.

  ‘It makes you forget every thing. Now I can not remember what the tunnel bitches looked like.’

  ‘It has that effect.’

  She leaned back in the chair and blew her cheeks out, closing her eyes, and he traced the pronounced profile of her naked breasts beneath the thin cotton of the t-shirt. Then she stood uneasily and went to the window. She picked up a vase full of lavender from the sill, breathed its perfume and beamed with pleasure, then pulled of
f several of the flowers and crushed them to a pulp before crossing the room and dropping into the sofa. He finished his wine and joined her.

  ‘I’ve been drinking too much,’ he admitted, his eyes fixed on the ornate ceiling rose. ‘Been seeing things, hearing things that can’t be real. Just now. In my own home. Been trying to blank all the news out too, everything that’s happened. You had no idea what was going on?’

  ‘It is a different world down there. All that matters is that she survives.’

  ‘ ... She?’

  ‘ ... All that matters is that I survive.’

  ‘ ... Didn’t you ever pick up a paper?’

  ‘I can not read, had no education. Never had any friends. I have no childhood memories at all.’

  He turned his head towards her.

  ‘I remember waking. In a cold room with wet walls, hardly any light. I think it was somewhere near Rakovnik, in the north, but I am not sure. I felt empty, soulless, like a box with nothing in it — a box waiting to be filled. In the space, the room, was another girl. Her name was Stella. She was tall. Her hair was long, golden. She was full of beauty.’

  ‘Beautiful?’

  ‘Yes ... beautiful.’

  ‘The friend you came to London with?’

  ‘I didn’t come with her?’

  He nodded his approval.

  ‘I lied to you, Thom. I didn’t beg at Baker Street or Moorgate. The truth is I don’t know how I got here. All I remember is you talking to me. It felt like you’d woken me from a very long, troubled sleep. I didn’t even know what my name was until Stella told me. So you see, I’m a mystery, Thom. In fact, I’m a mystery to myself.’

  He went to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of Talisker and two shot glasses. ‘I think you’ll like this,’ he said.

  When he came round half an hour had passed. She’d moved up the sofa next to him and her head rested on his shoulder.

  ‘Do you have dreams, dreams that scare you?’ she asked.

  He grunted.

  ‘I have dreams. Mine are bad, I dream that I kill people, lots of people.’