Strangeness and Charm

by Mike Shevdon

  "How the other half lives, eh?" she whispered.

  Satisfied that the apartment was empty, she went to switch on the lights, but they were dead. She tried another switch, but that was dead too. Maybe there was a power failure? The LED lights in the hallway still worked, though. On an impulse she went back to the door and found a slot where your keycard would fit to switch on the power. She placed her hand on it, but nothing happened. I wasn't that it was locked, it simply didn't work.

  On reflection, she thought that maybe it would be better if no one saw light coming from a room that should be empty. She could manage in the light from the windows and all she really needed was a bed. She locked the door from the inside and put the chain across for good measure. She went into the bathroom and washed her hands, then splashed her face in the sink, dabbing her face with the snowy towels. In the mirror her eyes glowed faintly blue back at her.

  She glanced at her wrist. Dropping the towel, she went back to the main window overlooking the rooftops. Unlocking the balcony doors, she stepped out in to the night and examined her wrists. The buds that had been there had opened into dark flowers, black petals folded back to reveal long stamen. What did that mean? She rubbed at them, but they were dyed into her skin. Tattoos were supposed to be fixed, weren't they?

  The night air was cool and it was somehow private up here. She tried to imagine herself staying here legitimately, but she could think of no circumstance where she would be accorded this kind of treatment. Maybe if she'd stuck to the guitar and been a rock star?

  Closing the door on the balcony, she rubbed at her wrists as she wandered around the apartment. She found a fridge in a cupboard and opened a pack of cashew nuts and a mineral water, eating them laid out on the huge sofa. There was champagne in the fridge, but she wanted to keep her wits about her. This was no time to get silly. She would save the orange juice for the morning.

  In the bedroom she stripped out of her outfit, telling herself she would need to acquire some clean underwear in the morning and that M&S in Covent Garden would be a good place to do that. She left the curtains open. Having spent so many days in rooms where it was always light, she liked sleeping with the curtains open. Climbing into the huge bed, she drew the light quilt across her and laid in the dark, listening to the city sounds filtering across the rooftops. She laid there, eyes open, long into the deep of the night, before sleep finally claimed her.

  TEN

  When I visited Alex's room the next morning, she was still not there. What with my argument with Blackbird and then the reconciliation, plus having to reclaim the baby to the knowing smiles of Lesley, I had convinced myself that Alex would return under her own steam and that she would be in bed this morning and I could take the opportunity to have a calm word with her.

  It was a shock to see that she hadn't been back. The room was exactly as she'd left it. I returned to the suite I shared with Blackbird.

  "She's not been back," I told Blackbird, who was feeding the baby.

  "Stop pacing up and down. You're distracting him from his feed. Maybe she's staying with her mother?" Blackbird suggested. The noisy sucking resumed.

  "If she is, then goodness knows what she's told Katherine."

  "Perhaps it would be a good idea to get in touch and see what the situation is. Alex must realise that she can't stay with her mother long term. It isn't going to work, Katherine must see that."

  "You don't know Katherine."

  Blackbird went back to feeding the baby.

  "OK, I'll call her. I'll go and find a mirror in one of the spare rooms and see if I can catch her at home."

  "Are you cutting me out?" There was a note of warning in her voice.

  "No. No, really. I just thought… Katherine may not be too pleased with me at the moment."

  "If you start excluding me from everything again, I won't be too pleased with you either." She smiled to soften her words. "Call her. It's OK. I'll be quiet as a mouse and your son has his mouth full."

  I went to the mirror and laid my hand on it. "Katherine?"

  Condensation spread out around my hand as the temperature in the room dipped. My son grizzled, but then continued to suckle. There was a hissing sound of random static, then a ringing tone.

  "Hello?"

  "Katherine? It's Niall."

  "Niall! Thank God! I've been ringing every number I have for you. None of them work! Don't you have a mobile that works any more?"

  "No… it's complicated. Is Alex there?"

  "That's why I was trying to get hold of you. She was here, last night."

  "Where is she now?"

  "I don't know. She ran out on me. I tried to call her back, but she'd vanished before I could find her. I've called Kayleigh's parents – they haven't seen her."

  "What did you tell them? She's supposed to be dead."

  "I'm not that stupid. I just asked them if Kayleigh was OK."

  One of the changes in my relationship with Katherine was that I could tell when she lying or being evasive, like now. I let it go. Now was not the time. "Has Kayleigh seen her?"

  "No, no one has. Where is she, Niall?"

  "She didn't come back here last night. Her bed's not been slept in. As far as I can tell, you were the last person to see her. What did you say to her?"

  If they'd had some kind of row, that would go some way to explaining Alex's absence. She was probably sulking somewhere.

  "I didn't get chance. She was in and out before either Barry or I knew she was here."

  The evasion in her voice was getting stronger. "What are you not telling me?"

  "I think… Maybe she got the wrong idea."

  "About what?"

  "After she… after she was gone… I just couldn't stand it, Niall. I couldn't bear seeing her room like that. It was like she was going to be coming home, but she never did."

  "What's that got to do with her being there last night?"

  "She was upstairs. She was in her old room."

  "I don't understand."

  "Barry's been working from home a lot. We'd converted it to an office for him. We had decorators in to do it."

  "What about Alex's stuff, her things? She was going on about wanting her own things around her."

  "I gave them away, Niall." Katherine sniffed down the phone. "I gave them to charity. I couldn't bear to keep them." She was crying down the phone now. I could hear her snuffling and making small noises of distress.

  "But then… Oh God, Katherine. What have you done?"

  "It wasn't my fault," she sniffled. "If you hadn't kept it all from me then I'd have held on to them for her. I'd have looked after them."

  "But she's only been gone, what, a few weeks?"

  "You didn't have to walk past it every day! You didn't have to see it every time you crossed the hall. You have no idea, Niall."

  I could hear Katherine snuffling and sniffling down the phone.

  "I've got to go," I said. "She may come back to you – there's just a chance – if she does, try and make it look like you want her back. I'll try and call you tomorrow." I dropped the call without giving Katherine chance to answer.

  "That wasn't very kind, was it? The woman is clearly upset," said Blackbird.

  "Oh she's upset all right. She knows full well what happened. Alex came back and found she'd been moved out. What's the girl supposed to think?"

  "I don't think she meant it like that."

  "You think it matters to Alex how she meant it? For all Katherine knew, Alex was barely cold in her grave, and she redecorates! She even has a man in to do it for her!"

  "You don't know that, Niall. You're leaping to conclusions on precious little evidence."

  "I know Katherine."

  "Perhaps not as well as you think. It wasn't you having to walk past Alex's room every day, and you've had the comfort of knowing she was alive, even if you couldn't find her. Katherine hasn't had that luxury."

  "Yeah, well. I bet it wasn't long before she was getting quotes for the job, pickin
g out furnishings…"

  "You're assuming the worst."

  "Maybe."

  "Either way, it doesn't help you find Alex."

  "I know how to find her. I've done it before and I'll do it again."

  I turned back to the mirror and placed my hand on it. "Alex? Where are you?"

  Alex woke with the thought that there was someone in the room with her. She blinked against the harsh daylight spilling in through the tall bedroom windows but kept still, listening. She went back through her actions the night before. She was sure she'd put the chain across the door before she'd gone to bed. Surely she hadn't slept through them breaking in?

  Under the city noise and hotel air-conditioning hum there was another sound, out of place. She lifted her head slowly and found the room undisturbed. She slid sideways from the quilt onto the deep-pile cream carpet and pulled her bra and top from the chair, slipping them on quickly. She crept to the door, scanning the sitting room beyond. It was empty. She went back, intending to slip into her knickers and skirt.

  "Alex? Are you there?"

  She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her father's voice. It was coming from inside the bedroom. She retreated, scanning the room, looking for the source. Above the dresser, the mirror was misted in the centre.

  "Alex, I need to talk to you."

  It was definitely her father, and his voice was coming through the mirror. How was he doing that? Come to that, how did he know she was here? Then she remembered, when she had first been at Porton Down she had heard his disembodied voice. With all the drugs and the treatment she had thought it was a dream, but maybe not.

  She reached forward with a tentative finger to touch the mirror.

  "I know you're there. Answer me."

  She jumped back. There he went again, treating her like a two year-old, telling her what to do and how to think. No one told her what to do, not since Porton Down, not even him. She frowned at the mirror and its surface rippled under her gaze, but still his voice came through, jumpy and broken but intelligible.

  "Alex? Speak to me! Where are you?"

  She grabbed her bag and pulled out the red lipstick she had stolen the day before. She wrote 'NO' on the rippled surface of the mirror. It was a crude warding, but it sufficed. Her father's voice ceased.

  "Alex, what are you doing? Answer me this instant!" His voice was coming from the sitting room now. She dashed through, searching for the mirror. The sound was coming through the full length mirror near the door. She scribbled 'NO' on that one too and then went through the apartment, writing 'NO' on every mirror, every picture, every window, until the room echoed with the word.

  Finally there was silence. She looked around. The room looked like it had been vandalised, the word 'NO' repeated like some blood red deranged message all around the room. She dropped the lipstick like it was hot and it rolled across the carpet.

  "I'm not crazy. I'm not!" She was breathless.

  She ran into the bedroom and pulled on the discarded clothes from last night, stuffing her feet into her boots. She grabbed her bag and pulled on her cardie. As she ran back through the sitting room she stepped on the lipstick and it smeared across the carpet.

  "Shit!"

  She stared at the red smear across the cream pile, her hands bunched into tight fists. Her breathing came faster, she couldn't take her eyes off the streak of red. She screwed her eyes shut, biting her lip.

  Then she ran for the exit, wrenched back the chain and threw open the door. She almost crashed into the trolley the chamber maid was wheeling down the corridor. The door to the suite slammed behind her and she flew down the stairs and out through the fire exit, banging the door open in front of startled pedestrians and swerving to avoid the car that swept past.

  She kept running, taking random turns left and right until she was lost in the back streets with no idea which way to run next.

  "She locked me out! How could she do that?" I stared at the silent mirror, no longer responding to my touch.

  "If you paid more attention to our sessions and actually practiced what I taught you, you'd know," said Blackbird.

  "No, I don't mean that. I'm her father. She's not supposed to… hang up on me?"

  "What, you're still going into the bathroom with her, tying her shoe laces, helping her dress?"

  "No, obviously not."

  "So she does have some privacy."

  "This isn't a matter of privacy, it's…"

  "What? I think she let you know in no uncertain terms that she wanted some space, some time to think things through," said Blackbird. "She's growing up fast, if you would let her."

  "But she's only fourteen."

  "Fifteen, Niall."

  "Fifteen, then. It's no age for a girl to be out on her own all night."

  Blackbird smiled. "On the contrary, she seems to be managing extraordinarily well. She's certainly given you the brush off."

  "This isn't funny, Blackbird."

  "No, I don't suppose it is, but you're only going to make matters worse if you pursue her. I didn't help that you came over all Pater Familias with her."

  "All what?"

  "It means Head of the Family, with connotations of ownership of the estate and everything and everyone in it. It's Latin."

  "I was just concerned, that's all. She's been gone all night. As her father…"

  "That's just what I'm talking about. As her father you want to decide where she can go, what she can do, who she sees, where she lives."

  "She's my daughter. It's my duty to look after her."

  "She'll always be your daughter, no one can change that, but she's not a child any more. She's seen too much, done too much, to be comfortable living within the constraints of childhood. She was forced to grow up, too quickly and too harshly, that much I'll grant you, but she was. You can't undo what was done, Niall."

  "So I should let her stay out all night, take drugs, get drunk, get pregnant?"

  "You make those sound as if they're equivalent." There was a warning in Blackbird's tone.

  "An unwanted pregnancy isn't what she needs, Blackbird. Even you must acknowledge that."

  "She may not be able to get pregnant. Have you thought of that?"

  "I'm not sure I want to find out just yet. I'm more worried that she'll be mugged – killed even."

  "I think she can look after herself. She's proven extraordinarily resilient up until now. You brought her up well, and she's chosen her own path. Now it's up to her."

  "She has no common sense. She'll do something rash. What if she's ill? What if she gets run over? She has no road sense at all."

  "Listen to yourself. You're treating her like a four year-old. Have some respect for her. Did she sound like she was in trouble? Was she begging for assistance?"

  "No, but…"

  "You found her last time because she needed you. You rescued her when she couldn't help herself. This time she doesn't want to be rescued, especially by you."

  "What do you mean, especially by me?"

  "You're her father. You're the last person she wants to come to her aid. She wants a white knight on a charger, who'll tell her she's worth the slings and arrows that he faced to reach her. You have to face it, Niall. She's looking for a mate."

  "A what!"

  "Calm down. Not right away, and maybe not for some time, but eventually she's going to want to choose someone for herself, someone to be with."

  I pushed my hand back through my hair. "I'm too young for this," I said.

  Blackbird laughed. "She's been through a lot and she's endured. She's earned her independence. Anyway, there's nothing you can do about it. It seems she's been paying a lot more attention to Fionh's lessons than you gave her credit for, and now that's paying off. If she doesn't want to be found, you won't find her."

  "She's not supposed to use it against me."

  "She's using it for herself. You can't blame her."

  "What am I going to tell Katherine?" I asked.

  "Tell her the
truth. Tell her you've tried to find Alex and failed. What can she say?"