“When did you think we’ve met?”
“Ah.” She looks up at nothing. “A long time ago, a decade, I think.”
Clara laughs. “It’s my first registration. You records should verify that.”
“They do, hence I’m puzzled.”
“Then it checks out.” Clara pulls her duffel higher over her shoulder. “I get that often; maybe it’s the genes. Faces tend to look alike when you’ve seen too many.”
“That’s very true.” She raises a hand in farewell and departs easily.
Two decades. She would’ve given the matron a hug and told her how well she has aged over the last twenty years. It was a boy then, nine. A sprightly Malay boy they all called Bang because he talked and acted like a brother to everyone; always fussing, always protective. He had leukaemia and she had held his hands as they wheeled him into surgery. That was the last time she saw him alive. And it was probably the only humane act she was allowed to perform in the misery of her existence.
In the pink-painted room Clara meets Pansy. The girl is watching cartoons on a TV hung from the ceiling. Bone thin, she has a shawl wrapped around her small shoulders, from which her shrunken neck rises modestly and holds up a sweet, tilting face. Clara remembers how she let anger repress her tears when they told her that Pansy and her sister had been abandoned in a sanctuary shortly after birth.
“Aunty Clara!” Pansy opens her arms as Clara moves in for the embrace.
It feels cleansing to sit around and watch cartoons with children. The day is clear and hopeful, and just as they start settling in for a game of Jenga, liveried staff arrive with lunch. Clara is happy to order herself a share. Hospice food isn’t too bad when you’re surrounded by so many lovely people. But without Jenga to break the ice, a small amount of discomfort steals into the void that settles over the clinking of their cutlery. Clara notices how tiny and fragile Pansy’s wrists are.
“Pansy’s a cute name,” she says. “You don’t hear it much in this country. Sounds very English.”
“The sisters at the sanctuary named us after flowers.” Pansy sniffled her runny nose and pushed up her spectacles. “My sister’s named Poppy.”
Clara feels her heart swell. “I knew a Poppy once and he was a boy.”
Pansy frowns. “Poppy’s a girl’s name.”
“So is Paige,” says Clara. “Did you know it came from padius, Greek for young boy?”
“Like a page boy?”
“You’re very clever.”
“Aunty Ratnam used to read us fairy tales.” Pansy shows her a toothy grin. “She still does, but not as often. She’s very busy.”
“I can tell.”
Silence, and Clara feels obliged to speak. “Do you miss your sister?”
Pansy bites into her carrot and let the other half fall back into the soup. “She died when I was four. I don’t remember her very much.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s play a game.” Pansy says, chewing. “We can hold our spoons while playing.”
“Sure, what game?”
“I say a word and then you say another word that starts with the ending letter of the word I said.”
Clara grins and spoons up rice and fish. “That’s easy.”
“In five seconds.”
“You are very sneaky.”
Pansy titters. “And then we’ll move on to Jenga.”
“Deal.”
There’s a poignant thing going when you stay up with a kid till her bedtime. It almost makes Clara cry whenever she puts one to bed. Nine hours—that is how long she has been with Pansy: the time it takes to beat the withdrawals of an unassuageable guilt. She has to dose herself with an act of charity each time the demon wakes and engulfs her. How contemptible.
She has a nice apartment with a pool, and at 10pm she does laps in it, clocking an hour of labour. The pool lights are out by ten, but the guards have learnt to tolerate her presence.
A party is going on in a couple of the poolside gazebos. She can smell the barbeque going stale and the chortling of gruff male voices and undertones of feline laughter. She lazes by the edge, catching her breath and looking at a sky so black you can’t see the stars.
They are looking at her in their drunkenness, she can tell. Clara gets out of the pool and puts on a bathrobe. She’s had enough of leering men. Three years in this place. Two more and she’ll have to relocate. Settling in one place is suicide. If only she’d told this to the ones who hadn’t made it.
And she knows that without her, he wouldn’t have made it either.
After a warm shower, Clara puts on music and reclines on a chaise of black leather. By her side, there is a small table of chrome and glass. And on top of it there is an old lacquered box. Once she had tried dumping it at an old lodging, only to retrieve it later because it contained too much. She cradles it over her stomach and opens it to an old melody
There are hairpins, all of them disused and oxidised. From the top of the pile, she takes out a small monochromatic photograph of a young Asian girl swaddled in European clothes, and edges over it with a finger. It has been snipped from a larger photograph. In it the girl is smiling behind her bonnet because it is her fifteenth birthday. The sun throws nice shadows across her tender face.
Behind it, a date is scribbled in faded ink. It reads January 1856.
From somewhere comes a faint beeping, not altogether unpleasant. She fits an earpiece over her ear.
“You missed three windows,” says a voice.
“I’ll call in whenever I see fit.”
“Made contact?”
“Yes.” Clara reaches for the remote and lowers the music. “Classtwo lead. Amnesiac.”
“Okay,” says the voice. “I don’t want you touching him till we’re done authenticating, and don’t let the Other Side touch him either.”
“Funny you should mention it. A bomb just went off in his face.”
“Pure domestic terrorism—a political hit, Oppo-backed,” says the voice. “Your lead’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Okay. Listen, I want to talk to you about Retirement.”
An audible chuckle from the earpiece. “Not a chance till this job’s done.”
“You could reassign.”
“No guarantee. Trails are hot these days.”
“But you’re my agent.” Clara is displeased at the way that comes across. “We have to meet to talk this over. It’s serious.”
“Sorry, as with everything, even my voice is classified,” says the voice. “That’s five hundred years worth of failsafe for you, love.”
“Go to hell.” She rips off the earpiece.
For a few minutes she fumes, the young girl and Pansy temporarily forgotten, until her finger finds the frayed edges of the old photograph once more. She looks at it and her gaze relaxes into one of fondness. There are good memories, and she thinks the pain isn’t great enough to make her discard them.
“So it is,” she whispers to herself, her mind drifting. “Now your name is Landon.”
The music grows, and soon the overture fills the darkened hall of the apartment.
“Oh, are you ever an idiot, Arthur,” she adds. “Ever an idiot.”
7
AUTHENTICATE
DAYLIGHT POURS FROM the shuttered windows and draws lines on the floor. The kerosene lamp has burnt itself out; the bottom half of its glass shade charred and darkened. Landon sits up in bed and holds his head against the vertigo that accompanies a hangover. His bleary eyes find the digital clock—11.19. He gets out of bed and starts when he steps on the spine of a journal lying page-down on the floor. He finds himself looking at an entry dated July 26th 1938 when he picks it up. The name “Vivian” is circled in pencil.