This is Theo, at three o’clock in the morning, cycling home from a murder scene, wondering why he doesn’t cry.
This is Theo, at three o’clock in the morning, lying awake on a canal boat pointing north, and behind the curtain that keeps him separate from his host, a stranger who has made him tea and asked no questions, and now he puts his hands over his face to hide his eyes, and in silence cries like the summer rain.
Chapter 18
When the boy who would be Theo was six months away from finishing A levels his agricultural studies teacher said:
“You know you could really make something of yourself you could indeed you could you could do accountancy for Budgetfood! Or work in the logistics division or the management department you could be a real player, a real player in the world of microwave meal distribution you could even run for corporate councillor if you worked hard, kept your nose to the grindstone like this you could have a lovely house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, two bathrooms now that’s something to look forward to that’s something!”
And three days later his maths teacher said:
“Get out. Get out while you can. You are young. You still have a chance to live. You can still be free. I know your dad was… but that’s not who you are, you don’t have to be… you have a talent you could get out just get out and be…”
Sitting on the beach with Dani Cumali, staring at the water as it dragged at the shingle, a bit of stained dark sand visible beneath, a sound like the clattering of crab’s claws across a skull as the ocean rolled, he said:
“I was thinking of applying for university.”
And Dani looked at him, and blurted, “That’s the most fucking stupid thing I’ve ever heard. Do you seriously think they’d have you? I mean look at you, where are you gonna get the cash? Where are you gonna get the references—what the fuck do you think you’d do with yourself, you can’t get out there isn’t any way out there isn’t…”
And then she stopped, and looked at the sea, and knew that no amount of washing could flush away the stench of fish intestine, stomach, heart, eye, head, skin and scale from her skin, and that the maggots as they dropped into the collection bags beneath the nets would go to eat the wounds of rich men in places far, far away, and that her contract would not be renewed and that dreams were for children and she was a grown-up now. Grown-ups just dealt with things. They carried on—that’s what being grown-up meant. She wrapped her arms around the boy who would be Theo and said:
“You should do it. I think it sounds great. I wish I was coming with you.”
And he held her tight, and they watched the sea.
He wasn’t surprised to find the man sitting in his mum’s favourite chair. Mum always hated Jacob Pritchard, said he was a bad influence, a bad, bad influence it was his fault that…
But her benefits had been stopped because she was fit for work (though no one would hire her) and if no one would hire her in Shawford she just had to look elsewhere (there was nowhere to go) but somehow they’d kept going, paid the gas, paid the electric and will you look…
…there’s Jacob Prichard now, rolling his mum’s favourite glass bauble between his ringed fingers, a swan with cloudy blue pigment in its base. They say that once a Dutchman bringing petrol over the Channel tried to double-cross him, and his feet washed up in Lowestoft.
“So,” he mused, as Theo put his school bag down and sat silent in the chair opposite him. “I hear you wanna go make something better of yourself. Mate of mine said Oxford was the business, but if you wanna go somewhere with fewer wankers I won’t stop you. Your choice, boy. Your choice.”
The day after the boy’s eighteenth birthday, there was a bank deposit in his favour.
His dad had always kept his mouth shut about the job that landed him in the nick, and though Jacob Pritchard wasn’t involved in that sort of thing, not theft, especially not those little blue pills for the
well, you know
he respected a man who knew not to grass.
Respect was important to men. One day, when Mike’s boy was all grown up, he’d understand that too.
Dani saw him onto the train to London, a transfer for Oxford in his pocket.
She didn’t stay on the platform once he boarded; there was this new guy she was going to watch TV with, but she felt it was important to be there, to say goodbye, tell him his face was stupid, absolutely refuse to cry.
He emailed, of course, in the first few weeks.
Told her about college, classes, some of the people he’d met. The boy in the room next to his was called Theo Miller, and was unbelievably posh, but also kinda nice, like, a nice kid just a bit… you know…
Dani replied sometimes. She’d met this guy, he was good, it was good. Her apprenticeship was ending; she was hoping to be bumped up on to a full-time contract or at least a fixed-term or maybe even just a six-month contract, out of the fish department into something better like packaging.
After a while his emails became less regular as the work piled up.
She stopped replying.
She was not offered a contract in packaging.
three-month fixed-term contract fourteen hours a week as a cleaning colleague 5 p.m.–7 p.m.
She supplemented her income working the local café 8 a.m.–4 p.m., and that sort of saw her through a bit. And this one time she went to this class down the local church hall where they were making jewellery from recycled stuff from the beach like these pebbles but also washed-up glass and bits of plastic and metal and things and she thought she’d like to do that, as a hobby maybe. But finding the time was really tough because they met at 7.30 p.m. and sometimes she didn’t finish work until 7.10 and then they did these spot-check searches on employees leaving the building and that could take twenty minutes and so by the time she got to the hall it was all finishing anyway and…
If Theo noticed that she was no longer replying to his emails, when they came
rarely when they came
he didn’t say anything.
He told her that he was thinking of joining the rowing club, but that actually maybe he wasn’t right for it after all. The guys who did that sort of thing, they’d done it a lot before and he hadn’t—though he could handle a boat all right, but they didn’t seem to think that would be enough; he didn’t have the attitude.
The attitude, you see the attitude was…
and Theo
the real Theo Miller, the boy in the room next door, laughed and said:
“Fuck them! Fuck them. Come on, you know I’m right! Fuck them all. Let’s have gin.”
And maybe he’d underestimated his neighbour after all, and he was all right deep down.
Chapter 19
On the canal Neila said, “Oh, so you’ve done some sailing before.”
Theo replied, “I grew up by the sea. I mean we didn’t do much, my dad ran this local youth club, mostly football but also sailing sometimes, although mostly it was money laundering. Mostly… that. I think he liked the kids, though. He coached the under-11s. They did well and…”
For a while they sat on the back of the barge, Neila watching as Theo guided it round the lazy bends towards Marsworth Locks. After much consideration, they had removed the blood-soaked padding that pressed across his side, and for the first time Theo had seen the stitching she’d done and stared a long while before finally murmuring, a little green around the cheeks,
“Is that… cornflower blue?”