He runs and for a moment isn’t sure who he’s running from.
He’s a reasonable man in a reasonable world, he hasn’t technically done much wrong, running will only make it worse; they can go to the police station, there is a rule of law there is…
Theo runs without hesitation.
And for a little while, he feels free, alive, on fire. He can’t remember the last time he felt so full of blood.
He thinks, too late, that perhaps it is a mistake to commit to the path that runs between St. Thomas’ Hospital and the river, flagstones singing, wobbling and free where the mortar has eroded away, once you’re there it’s hard to turn off any way, but as his feet ring out he glances back and sees the two men, puffing and huffing behind, one already at a half-jog, half-stagger, overweight and out of breath.
Laughs, and runs a little faster, just because he can.
The security cordon at the London Eye forces him to cut inland, away from the river, past rows of shops selling tourist food: noodles in cardboard boxes with wire handles, slices of pizza adorned with three thin slivers of black-grey mushroom, a kebab shop that offers authentic awful; only a London kebab can burn your mouth so particularly, leave that aftertaste at the back of your nose, it’s an authentic city experience!
He looks back again at the British Film Institute, the faces of the latest idols exploded to two-storey monuments, edited black and white portraits of bygone goddesses smoking the latest branded thing, drinking this season’s newest whisky, as the lights sweep back and forth across the technicians rolling up a trampled red carpet.
He can’t see his followers immediately, so slows and stares properly, and sees them nearly a hundred yards off, puffing and pushing through the crowds huddled around the burrito vans, tourist gazes riveted to the licensed skateboarders who range beneath the painted walls of Waterloo Bridge, or drinking and arguing over the price of dim sum.
Perhaps whatever Dani found isn’t important enough for his pursuers to try very hard.
Perhaps you just can’t get the staff these days.
Theo slowed to a walk, head down, hands in his pockets, turned into the crowd coming out of the National Theatre and let it carry him away, towards Waterloo Station.
By the river in Oxford Philip Arnslade is shaking, shaking, trying not to laugh, or maybe cry, he holds the gun and stares down at the body of Theo Miller and had prepared something really smart, really witty to say but doesn’t have it so he just…
but Simon Fardell, his number two, leans over the expiring form of the boy as the breath leaves his lungs and says, “I suppose we should have brought something for the pain.”
And shakes his head
and walks away.
After, in the ambulance
Theo Miller can’t speak, is gasping for air, tries squeezing tight the hand of the boy who will become Theo, and for a little while he does this, and then his grip becomes loose, and cold, and wet, and the paramedic says
“nothing you could have done it wasn’t your fault”
but with memory
like a night on the beach as the sea washes the stones
the man called Theo thinks perhaps that’s not what he said at all.
Perhaps
now that he’s rewriting the past and everything he thought he knew about it
perhaps the paramedic looked him in the eye and said, “It’s your fault. There’s nothing to be done. It’s your fault.”
And the boy who would be Theo looked into the eyes of his friend, and saw in that instant that his friend knew what had happened to him, and for all his good nature couldn’t help but agree.
Chapter 36
Neila sailed north.
She had sailed for many years by herself, and sometimes it was hard, but in her heart it was easy, and she was fine.
She was fine.
When she was young, and still finding who she was, she’d wanted to matter. To her friends, family and to the world. She wanted the world to tell her that she was of value, that her actions had some meaningful consequence that people could generally see and perhaps even admire. Such actions didn’t have to involve saving children from burning buildings or adopting stray kittens. Kindness, compassion, bringing joy to others—these were surely all worthy of appreciation, and she strived to live by them.
And the world said, “Fuck right off thank you what we really want to know is what kind of implants you got for your tits and backside.”
That had been confusing, for a little while, but she’d joined the rat race and got great tits and a great backside, and the world had seemed generally content with her, as long as she played the game.
Right up to the moment when she hadn’t, and the friends she thought mattered to her, and made her whole, had told her that they didn’t like hanging out with someone who wasn’t like them, and what did she even think she was doing in those God-awful shoes?
The years that followed had been hard. The Neila she had believed herself to be turned out to be more frail than she’d thought. The self-confidence and charisma she projected was only that, a veil draped over the gossamer of her soul, and when the veil was torn, so was she.
She’d bought the Hector on a whim, with some romantic idea about life on the canals. She’d stuck with it, because having decided that this was a thing she cared about, the idea of admitting that she was wrong would be the last blow to any notion of who Neila was.
Who she aspired to be.
And over time she had found a certain something that kept her going, rituals and repetitions that drove her north and south, through the Midlands and along the old coal ways of the country.
She was fine.
She was alone, and she was among the communities of the water, and she was fine.
Then she sailed with someone else and it was…
easier
simple
different.
Every hour of every day she’d sworn she’d throw Theo off at the next lock. She did not need another person. Other people would only make her world unsteady, rip apart without even meaning to the woven confidence she’d created around the frail cocoon of self. Other people were a goddamn mistake.
She cranked the gate on the lock, her breath coming out in great huffing clouds
Pushed her back against the long timber braces
heaved
heaved
heaved
paused to catch her breath as the gate swung open.
Returned to the Hector
started the engine
sailed into the lock
gunned the engine down to idle
climbed onto land
heaved
heaved
the lock gate shut
waited
cranked
heaved
drove
heaved
cranked
drove
After four lock gates the shirt beneath her jumper was soaked with sweat, and her fingers were blue and white at the tips, and more than anything she wished the man called Theo was there too.
She sailed and did not see the man called Theo.
A desperation a terror she
Three of coins, king of coins, the Tower, nine of cups, ace of cups, knave of cups, the Priest, seven of swords, the Hanged Man (inverted).
Seeing the Hanged Man land on her table, she nearly choked with relief, and kept on sailing.
At Norton Junction she came across the Poet’s Rest. The coal barge was moored just before the turning into the Leicester Section and had no coal for sale except a couple of secret bags stored beneath the floor of the deck, which the owners gave to her at best discount because she was a friend, and they knew each other of old.