“They hung gunpowder around their necks and when it exploded it took their heads off… but this one bishop had wet wood, which only smoldered, and he kept begging for the fire to get hotter…”
“How do you know all this?”
“I took the walking tour.”
“Really?”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m impressed.”
“I haven’t just been shopping, Dad.”
We find an Italian place in Broad Street, opposite the Gothic main buildings of Balliol College. Charlie is talking about her day. She doesn’t want to go to Oxford University, she says, because it feels like a museum.
“Maybe you want to take a gap year,” I say.
“And do what?”
“Travel. Broaden the mind.”
“People should just call it a holiday,” says Charlie. “That’s what it is.”
When did she become such a cynic?
The waitress leans over to light a candle on our table. I catch a glimpse of her lace-edged bra. Charlie’s mobile vibrates on the table. She ignores it. There’s no name on the caller display.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“No.”
“Maybe it’s Jacob.”
She narrows her eyes.
“I know you’re still talking to him, Charlie.”
“It’s a free country, Dad.”
She wants the subject to end there. I give it a moment and try again.
“Your mum wants me to talk to you.”
Charlie sighs. “Why don’t we save ourselves some time? I’ll tell Mum you gave me a right royal bollocking. You can assure her that I’m straightened out. Everyone is happy.”
“That’s not really the point.”
“I’m not going to stop talking to him, Dad. We love each other.”
“He’s too old for you, Charlie.”
“He’s twenty. You’re five years older than Mum.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Five years is a lot when you’re fifteen.”
“Girls get married at my age.”
“Not any more they don’t.”
“They do in some countries.”
“Arranged marriages to men old enough to be their grandfathers.”
She looks at me defiantly and we both opt for silence. A woman laughs too loudly at a nearby table and two men are arguing about football.
“Maybe we can go back to London tomorrow,” I suggest.
“Haven’t you still got work to do?”
“I’ve done what they asked. We can catch an early train and have lunch at Covent Garden… see the Christmas lights on Regent Street.”
She nods and sips her soft drink.
“I could always go back by myself and stay at the flat. You could give me the key.”
“You’d be on your own.”
“I can cook.”
“I don’t think your mother would like that.”
Charlie has an agenda. She’s testing her boundaries. Separating from me slowly. Growing up. Away. As we walk back to the hotel I notice a dozen teenagers on the street, skinny bow-legged girls in tight jeans and boys with buzz cuts and hooded sweatshirts.
One of the girls whispers to a boy, grinding against him until his neck turns red. He gives her a cigarette for her and her friends.
Charlie notices them, without even appearing to raise her eyes. She walks a few paces ahead, distancing herself from me. Soon they turn the corner and she drops back.
“Friends of yours?”
“Don’t be funny, Dad.”
That night I dream of a girl running as fast as she can, bursting through branches and low undergrowth, her feet bare, frozen. She has cuts on her face and hands, the blood mingling with sweat on her skin.
The snow changes the landscape, covering the paths, the rocks, the tree stumps. She wishes she were running on tarmac, familiar streets. She can’t find her bearings and moves blindly, the blizzard erasing her footsteps. But the darkness can’t conceal her. Something is following, relentlessly.
Stumbling onwards, she climbs fences and thrashes through undergrowth, along farm tracks and through forests. Knee deep in snow, unable to quicken her pace, she can’t feel her feet.
Bright lights suddenly blind her and she’s caught in the beam like a fly on flypaper. The oncoming car slews sideways and she braces for the impact. Flung backwards into a bank of snow, she feels the powder fold around her like a duvet. Her lungs draw icy feathers into her chest.
She’s alive. The wind howls. Trees are lost in white static. A voice calls out. Dragging herself up, she runs again, scrambling over a snow bank, escaping from the thing that hunts her.
In the corner of her eye she sees something moving, a dark shape. An animal. Bounding through the snow, it stops, barks. She shushes the dog. Be quiet. You’ll give me away. They run together, company, their fates combined.
In the darkness she cannot see the brittle edges of the lake until she falls, breaking the surface. The shock of the cold catches her breath, drawing water into her lungs. Ice.
In my dream a figure stands at the edge of the lake. He crouches. Waiting for her. He holds out a branch, wanting her to come, but she doesn’t take it. She won’t surrender. She will not save herself. The cold leaches into her bones. Her limbs cease to work. She cannot hold her head above the water.
In those final seconds of her life, a paralyzing certainty descends. There will be no later. Now is where it ends.
After that first time
Tash went up the ladder whenever George asked. He would come every three or four days to bring us food and water. Once or twice he left it a week and the longest was ten days.
We ran out of food and water, but the worst thing was the stink of the chamber pot, which made the cellar smell like a slum toilet in Mumbai. Not that I’ve been to Mumbai, but I’ve seen that movie, Slumdog Millionaire, where the little boy jumps into the pit toilet and is covered in diarrhea. That was truly gross, but it was a good movie.
Each time he came, we’d hear things being dragged across the floor. The trapdoor would open and he ordered Tash up the ladder. Each time she returned she would smell of perfume and powder. She brought back more gifts for me. Toothpaste. A hairbrush. Tweezers. She wore clean clothes. Wasn’t hungry.
“What did you eat?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Was it nice?”
“No.”
I grew more and more jealous. I wanted to go upstairs. I wanted to be spoiled… to eat nice food and wash my hair properly.
Sometimes we didn’t talk for hours I was so angry. I called her a skanky whore. She called me an uptight virgin, which seemed to hurt more.
She shared her new clothes, but that wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t tell me what happened up there.
“He gave you nice stuff to eat, didn’t he? He let you wash. You smell like a Body Shop.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Why? What did he do?”
She shook her head.
“Tell me.”
I didn’t give a rat’s arse about the gifts she brought back. She was keeping something secret from me. Holding out.
After a day of the silent treatment, we started talking again. Tash told me about the rooms upstairs. She said it was like an old factory full of rubbish and broken furniture. She said there was a yard outside with a shed on brick piers and metal drums against a high fence. She couldn’t see any other houses or hear any traffic.
“George said he might give us a radio and some more magazines,” she said. “And we can get more food, clean sheets and maybe a microwave.”
For everything George promised, only a fraction ever arrived. The clothes we wanted were little girl things-minuscule T-shirts and shorts. Instead of tampons, he gave us sanitary pads.
Slowly we collected more things. Pillows. A clock. Soap. New toothbrushes. Books. But whatever he gave us, he could take away. Tash didn’t like asking, because she wasn’t sure how he’d react. He could flip from being polite and caring to slamming his fist onto the table and telling her to “shut the fuck up!”