The library had originally been designed to be much larger, with a second tower rising up towards the Euston Road to give the impression of a vast modernist steamship cruising through Bloomsbury. The project had run into financial problems and the building was cut off parallel with the northern edge of Russell Square. Because of the untimely foreshortening of the architect’s vision, there were corridors that led nowhere, warrens of narrow passages that culminated in brick walls, rooms with no purpose whose air was never disturbed by human breath. These orphaned spaces were Mouse’s realm: it was here that he spent his days, here that he felt at home.
He had discovered hidden rooms where collections of children’s literature of the 1920s and 30s were stored. He would sit for hours staring at copies of The Arabian Nights and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen illustrated by Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. He would take the staff lift to the fourteenth floor and search out Rackham’s Wind in the Willows and Dulac’s The Little Mermaid and then, with a cup of tea held carefully away from the friable pages, he’d allow himself to be taken into other worlds.
His life at the library complemented his existence at the Course. Not only because he was able to watch over Lee, but also because the librarian who was nominally his boss was working on a seemingly endless piece of Marxist criticism, attempting to unpick the economic coding that linked the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita and the Declaration of Independence, and was irritably shut in his office for most of the day. This meant that Mouse was able to work the hours he wanted, was able to take days off to attend Course events. He had no defined holidays but managed to get up to Scotland to see his mum regularly. He felt that his life had a fine degree of symmetry to it: of course he wanted Lee to love him, but until that time arrived, he was able to stay close to her, monitor her, stop her from doing anything drastic. He saw her come back into the pub, followed by Philip. Mouse bought himself a beer and returned to the table. Marcus was sitting with his arm around Abby, who was leaning on his shoulder, her eyes tightly closed.
‘Listen, Mouse, Abby’s knackered. Shall we finish up with a couple at ours? Abby can go to bed. I’ve got some good bottles of wine in the rack.’
‘Of course, sport. Have you got the car? Is Abby chauffeur tonight?’
*
It was ten o’clock. Neil went home. Mouse and Maki rode in the back of Marcus’s Audi while the others followed in a taxi. Abby, almost crying with tiredness and worry, drove. Mouse and Marcus played a ridiculous word game, with Marcus shouting answers over his shoulder as Maki laughed and Mouse bellowed. Abby began to sweat. There was a party being held at the Natural History Museum. Paparazzi gathered on their mopeds, shot long lenses out of car windows. The boys pressed themselves to the glass to see who was there. They continued their game, Marcus screaming now.
‘You repeated. You can’t repeat. You forfeit. Shame! Shame!’
‘I bloody didn’t. You lie! Prove it. Did I, Maki? Did I repeat, Abby?’
Abby felt as if she were floating. She gripped the steering wheel but was rising up above it, vertiginous. She leaned hard on the accelerator and sent the car rocketing along Queen’s Gate, up Kensington Church Street and on to Notting Hill Gate. When she had parked, and Marcus and Mouse had steered Maki to the front of the ugly block of flats, she rested her head on the steering wheel and allowed herself one deep sob. A growling taxi pulled up beside her and she saw the twins get out, watched Lee stagger towards the door on the arm of the tall young man with dark hair she had been talking to all night. Mouse would be jealous. Abby rose wearily from the car. Lee held the door for her and they took the lift up together.
*
Marcus had opened a bottle of wine and passed glasses around. Already there was music playing from the laptop on the table. He heard Abby slam the bedroom door; he turned the music down a little and told Mouse to blow his smoke out of the window. Mouse drew himself up onto the wide windowsill and looked down on the empty street below. The flat was on the seventh floor of a brutal square block that was notably unsightly among the cool white mansions of Notting Hill.
Marcus went to the kitchen to get some olives and saw Abby standing in the hallway, her toothbrush raised to her mouth. She reached her head into the bathroom, spat into the sink and then spoke to Marcus.
‘I thought you had a meeting tomorrow.’
‘I do. I’m fine.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m just very tired.’
‘I know you are. I won’t be much longer.’
‘Will you sleep in the spare room? And try to keep the music down?’
‘Of course I will. ’Night. Sleep well.’
‘’Night, Abby,’ Mouse yelled from the sitting room.
She shut the bedroom door softly this time, and Marcus turned the music down until it was barely audible, opened more windows and moved Mouse’s ashtray to the windowsill.
The night began to dissolve around them. Maki left after the second bottle of wine was finished. She seemed to be quite sober, even though she had drunk as much as the others. Marcus walked her to the lift, whistling as they waited for the creaking machinery to ascend. He stood looking at her in the lift; as the doors closed, she bowed very formally. He mirrored her and held the bow until the doors met.
When Marcus came back into the sitting room Mouse had opened a bottle of whisky and was pouring it into tumblers, thrusting the glasses urgently into the girls’ hands, bellowing at Lee and Philip who were sitting in the corner, talking earnestly. Mouse turned the music back up and began to dance in a strange, rhythmic shuffle, his arms twitching at his sides, his stomach wobbling, his bulging eyes rolling. Marcus took his arm and steered him over towards the window. The twins danced together, expending little energy, occasionally leaning towards each other to whisper something and laugh.
Marcus and Mouse sat along the windowsill smoking, swirling the ice in their glasses, and watching the twins dance. Lee was sitting on Philip’s lap in the corner. He moved his lips very close to her neck, whispering to her. Time passed. They saw people coming back from bars, stumbling along the middle of the street, arms around shoulders in the false bonhomie of midnight drunkenness.
*
Marcus had put a film in the DVD player — something of Abby’s in black and white that was bleak and Scandinavian. The twins were half-asleep, slumped across the sofa. He was still sitting in the window with Mouse, cold but not wishing to move or recognise the stiffness of his joints and the iciness that was creeping through the glass. Philip and Lee continued to talk in soft, serious voices in the corner. Marcus tried to follow the film. The camera swooped low over a lake, a man looked out to a range of mountains, a girl cried in her room, the film ended. Marcus stood up.
‘I’ve got to get to bed. It’s two. I can sleep for four hours. Five if I don’t go for a swim. Feel free to stay. Or go. I mean, do whatever.’
Mouse looked up at him, stretched out his short legs and lit a cigarette. The twins woke at the same time and yawned, rubbing their eyes and smiling as colour crept back into their cheeks.
‘We have to leave now,’ said Lee suddenly. Her eyes were watery, red lines clustered in the milky corners. She groped on the floor for her bag, stumbled as she slipped on her heels and leaned over to place a wet kiss on Mouse’s lips. She stood back, grinning.
‘I’m shitfaced,’ she said proudly.