who knows what time is this moment is the moment when the universe turns and it is
tick tick tick
the counting down of infinity
tick tick tick
and it strikes Theo as briefly strange, and then briefly laughable, and then finally as correct, that the adults in the room are paralysed as a child stands in judgement, and looks down upon them all, and has in her power the final say of truth and
the universe spins
and the child judges
and her face condemns them all.
Until at last there is a flicker in her eyes, and she chooses a path, and Theo sees a choice.
“You got any cash?” she asked Theo, voice clear and capable.
He shook his head.
She nodded and vanished back into the darkness of the hall. Heidi put her head on one side, then followed her without a sound.
A while the two men sat, waiting, as the universe spun towards destruction.
When Lucy returned, she was wearing jeans, a large fleece jumper, a coat, scarf and gloves. She had a rucksack on her back, and carried an orange plastic bag in her right hand. “It’s his mum’s jewellery,” she explained at Theo’s raised eyebrow. “Also he keeps, like, a grand in cash hidden in this box in the garage.”
Theo contemplated this, then nodded, and rose.
He walked to the door, glanced back at Simon.
“Things don’t change,” blurted Simon. “That’s just how the world is. This is how the world is. The Company is full of people. They won’t change. Change will hurt them. That’s what makes them right. That’s what makes—”
Theo turned away, walking down the stairs.
After a moment his daughter followed.
The gate to the outside world was locked.
There were sirens in the distance.
High walls and no easy climb, the oak tree was on the other side. Theo glanced at Lucy, who shrugged, unimpressed.
Then a crunching of footsteps on hard gravel. Heidi Fardell behind them, a coat and boots pulled on over her nightdress, a handbag slung across that, and a plastic bag containing water and the remnants of yesterday’s curry in a Tupperware box, waves the key as she pants breathless up behind them, and blurts:
“Room for a little one?”
Chapter 83
A while they walk, three travellers through the new year’s snow.
They do not talk.
A while they rest on a bench in a village without a name.
Then walk again until they come to a railway station.
Heidi rifles through her wallet, finds some money, buys a couple of tickets. Lucy chooses the destination, going further north towards a place she thinks sounds not shit.
They sit a while on a bench waiting for the train. Lucy sits in the middle. Theo and Heidi do not look at each other.
The service is delayed. There is the wrong kind of ice on the line.
Lucy uses her stolen money, buys coffee for Theo, tea for Heidi, hot chocolate for herself.
They drink from cardboard cups, and afterwards he takes the cups to the bin, and they sit a little while longer.
When the train comes, it is packed, sticky and wet, breath condensing on the windows, they lunge for handholds, find a little space at the back, the door connecting the train carriages won’t stay shut it goes bang flop bang flop bang flop until Theo puts his knee in front of it. Lucy watches the land. Lucy wasn’t tall enough to grab the bar on the ceiling, so clung on to a strap by the window, even though it means she’s pressed next to a man reading a magazine about pony trotting in the Welsh valleys. Heidi and Theo press next to each other, awkward and silent as the train goes clacker-clack. Heidi opens her bag, pulls out a thin tube of something pink. Daubs a little something on her fingers, smells her skin once, twice, three times in a slow ritual, rubs her fingertips round and round her temples, lets out a sigh, moves to return the tube to her bag, hesitates. Offers it to Theo. He shakes his head. She shrugs and returns the tube to her bag.
And after a while Lucy reads the letter her father wrote.
When she’s done, she folds it and puts it back in her pocket.
They travel north, until they get to Penrith, where she says, “Just so we’re clear. It’s my money.”
Theo nodded, Heidi looked like she might object and stopped herself.
“I didn’t come with either of you. I just left there.”
Theo nodded again.
“Did you really do all that that shit they said you did, the stuff in the letter?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a nut-job.”
Theo shrugged.
“What was…” She stopped herself, glanced towards Heidi, then looked away. “I don’t want you to tell me what my mum was like. Not yet. But when I want you to, you tell me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know if you’re my dad.”
“I don’t either.”
“And you’re not my mum.”
Heidi nodded once and stared at her boots.
“I don’t care neither. It doesn’t fucking mean anything. You’ve both never been there for me my whole fucking life, so fuck you if you think you get to just turn up now and be all…”
They rocked in silence a little while longer, as the Scottish border patrol shuffled onto the train. Outside, a woman stood on the platform, selling carrot soup from a vat. The locomotive gently rumbled, a slow spinning of disconnected fans.
“You got a plan? Cos I haven’t got a fucking clue what the fuck I’m doing here.”
Theo thought about it, then smiled.
“I’m sure we’ll work something out.”
“That don’t mean nothing that’s just something people say when…”
“Hey, luv, you okay?”
Neila sits on the side of the canal, and can’t remember where north is, or which way the Hector is pointing, or where she’s meant to go now.
The woman who sits next to her wears a jumper adorned with waddling ducks and a black cap that would look bad on anybody.
“Luv? You all right? You okay?”
Neila is not okay.
She realises that she is not okay, and it is a blessing of majesty, it is the revelation of the divine, it is the most wonderful thing she has ever known, a truth that shines upon her soul. She is not okay, she is not fine, and it is beautiful.
“Come inside,” says the stranger. “Have a cuppa tea.”
Markse stands at the queue for airport security, a false passport in his pocket, a ticket to somewhere hot in his hand, and wonders what the hell he’s going to do now that he’s got principles and no pension plan, and concludes that it’s probably all a disaster anyway.
Corn watches the water run through Nottingham and says to the man who stands beside him, “Next time I’ll open my mouth whenever I please and give people a piece of my…”
Crows pick at a hand rising from a half-buried ditch in a field, and soon there’s only bone and a bit of pink left clawing at the sky.
As the police leave his empty, cold house, Simon Fardell turns off the TV in the study.
It doesn’t go immediately to black.
The TV has a camera in it.
The image shows the side of his face, as he listens to a man sitting at his desk.
“You shouldn’t let these things get personal.”
He watches in silence as he raises the gun, fires four times. Then raises it again, and fires another three. He isn’t sure now why he fired those last shots, and looking at his own face on the screen it seems a lot like the man who pulled the trigger isn’t entirely convinced about this course of action either.