by Claire North
“Bye,” I said, and as Mum looked up she seemed to blink something out of her eyes before whispering, astonished and afraid, “Who are you?”
“I’m Hope’s friend,” I answered. “I was just staying the night.”
Silence.
My mum, frozen in the kitchen door, broken egg shell oozing clear juice between her fingers.
“Who’s Hope?”
“Goodbye,” I said, and let myself out into the morning.
Chapter 25
A thief’s progress.
I began, homeless, on the streets of Derby.
First I stole food – fruit from the grocer, sandwiches, rolls wrapped in cling film – things from the local bakery and market stalls, where I thought there wouldn’t be any electronic surveillance but with crowds to hide in. I stole because I was hungry, and slept at the bottom of the stairs beneath the local library, which led to a community hall where resided the taekwondo, knitting and book clubs, as well as breast-feeding club every other Friday.
On my fourth day I tried stealing from a supermarket, and was astonished when no alarms went off. On the fifth day I tried again, but this time the juice I stole was expensive, and had been tagged, and the alarm sounded, and my heart popped up through my throat like something out of Gracie’s cartoons, but I’d planned for this, and I kept walking, moving quickly into the crowd, and the security guard didn’t even leave his post.
“We’re not supposed to chase thieves,” he explained the next day, when I asked him about his job. “We might get hurt, and that could leave the store liable.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“You know,” he replied, “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just to make people feel good.”
On the sixth day, someone threw beer on me as I slept. I woke, too late to see their faces, but heard boys laughing as they ran away, and on the seventh day I stood by the railway tracks, and told myself that it was time to die, but the trains were suspended that day for a fault on the line, and I lost interest and my nerve.
By the time I saw my friends again, laughing and hanging out at our spot in Westfields, the place we always used to hang together, I’d lost track of time. I stood on the balcony above, and watched my friends below, and they had forgotten too. I leaned against the railing, imagined throwing myself down, head first, tumbling over and over like a gymnast, only no stop, no bounce at the bottom, just white tiles and blood, all over, and my mates screaming and running from my broken corpse, and found that though I could picture every part of my death, feel the wind in my face and the floor vanishing beneath my feet, yet I could not do it.
What was I living for?
I saw a dead rat, flattened on the A38 where it passed Markeaton. Whatever had hit it must have been heavy, fast, because it wasn’t gross, it wasn’t an explosion of organs or blood, it was just rolled down, fur still attached, legs sticking out beneath it, nose turned towards the side of the road, tail behind it, like a carpet waiting to be shaken out. I counted yellow cars. I counted lorries from Germany. I counted suppliers of frozen food. I thought about what I’d look like, flattened like that, my head thin as a pancake, and as the trucks and lorries rolled by, I thought:
Now.
Now.
This time.
Now.
Now I’ll step out.
Now.
This car.
This truck.
Now.
And I didn’t move.
On the twenty-third day of my loneliness, I saw my mum in the centre of town.
She was walking with Gracie in an oversized pushchair, a thing which one day my mum would have to admit should be a wheelchair for her growing child. They were shopping for new light bulbs. I hovered behind them as she made her choices, her judicious demands slowly annoying the acne-plagued boy behind the counter.
And what’s its wattage? she asked, for she always cared about bills.
It seems a very cold light, she tutted. Do you have something nicer?
Grace sat patiently in the middle of the shop, watching a lava lamp. I stood next to her, and at my approach, she turned, and made a little sound, and looked away, and a few moments later I felt a brush of skin, and found that her hand was resting in mine.
“Gracie, stop that!” blurted my mum, scooping her away. “I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed, “my daughter’s a bit like this sometimes.”
“It’s okay,” I replied. “It’s okay.”
I waited then, for what I knew had to happen. For my mum to look at me, smile an uncertain smile, say, “Do I know you?” or “Have we met?” For her to feel a strange, uncommon bond that leads her to turn to me as I stand in the door and say, “There’s something about you…” and invite me round for tea, or ask me my name, or say, “I had a daughter who was like you…” or… some other form of fantasy.
She did not, though Gracie stared at me as Mum pulled her away.
A moment.
Standing by the railway tracks.
The train is coming, the train is coming.
Here.
Now.
Step out.
Step out now.
Out into the railway tracks.
I close my eyes and I can see
my dad walking by
my sister holding onto my leg
my mum, walking across the desert.
Strange, how that image had grown in me.
I painted a portrait of my mum, before her hair turned grey, before she cut it close to look more professional, to be taken more seriously by the men at work.
I dressed her in dusty robes, perhaps lifted in my imagination from Star Wars, or maybe a documentary on the BBC. I gave her a stick to lean on, a sack of water, nothing more. I made her feet bare, hardened to stone as she walked, and then I sat, as lonely as she, upon a dune some few miles off, and watched her – just watched her – walking through the desert of my mind, getting nearer, until her face was visible, and I found that it was mine.
I read a book about the desert, and the people who cross it. For some, it said, the desert is a punishment, torment, exile. The Israelites made false idols and were disrespectful to their god, and for forty years they wandered in the dust, trapped between the Nile and the Sea of Galilee. When the Ottomans killed the Armenians, they marched thousands of husbands, wives, children into the sands of Syria, and there they remain still, white particles of sand-blasted bone that roll away in the wind. Whole peoples have vanished into the desert; the desert eats the people whole.
T. E. Lawrence lost himself and found himself, crossing Sinai. Moses and Job, Confucius on a white bull heading to the west. Muhammad in a cave where a spider wove; Jesus wandered and Satan whispered, and from the sand came prophets and dreams, forty days and forty nights of solitude. Elijah walked in the wilderness; from the desert came John, who lived on locusts and honey, and the loneliness was not damnation, but revelation.
The murderer locked up in a solitary cell. The exile banished from the ones she loves. Lord Byron, on an island in the sea. Robinson Crusoe, talking to the animals, running from the sight of a footprint in the sand. Marco Polo, crossing the world; Galileo Galilei, watching his books burn.
My mum, crossing the desert.
A pilgrim, of sorts.
Alone, you can lose yourself, or you may find yourself, and most of the time you do both.
I stood by the railway tracks as the train roared by, felt the wind of it on my face, saw the blurred-out faces of the sleepy travellers heading home, to their friends, families, jobs, houses, loved ones and acquaintances who would say, “Hey, yeah, I remember you…!” I thought of my mum crossing the desert, felt the world at my back and the sky above my head, and decided that I would live.
I would live.
Chapter 26
The flight to Istanbul took just over an hour and a half. The knife; the threat of the knife; the thought of the knife. What was a girl to do?
I took control of myself.
My breath, my
heart, my mind, my blood.
By the time we began to descend, I had every part of my body at my command, and could run my awareness through every inch, reporting on muscles – relaxed; knees – loose; arms – ready; fingers – casually curled.
Gauguin didn’t attempt to talk on the plane, but sat straight against his seat, eyes half closed, a businessman on a trip, maybe a tourist heading home. Speculation is unhelpful; assumptions will only create problems.
He stayed with me as the plane landed. People got off, and we didn’t. The stewardesses glanced at us from the door, then left. The air conditioning shut down, the engines were silent, and only we remained.
He said, “Stay calm.”
“I am calm.”
He looked at me now, the first direct look in over an hour, taking all of me in, and seemed surprised. “Why,” he murmured, “I do believe you are.”
Feet on the stairs up to the door of the plane; two men, white shirts, black trousers, sunglasses, dark hair, sweat patches on their backs. They knew Gauguin, he knew them. They weren’t overtly armed, but when three people wish to threaten a woman on an empty plane, they don’t need to be.
Gauguin climbed to his feet, stretched, pushing against the small of his back, bending his spine in a crescent curve. He said, “Coming?”
I followed.
A car was waiting on the tarmac by the stairs, Turkish plates, a man in the driver’s seat, engine ticking over in the heat. A smell of jet fuel, two men in yellow bibs unloading the luggage, a truck pulling up to refuel. No one seemed disturbed by the picture being painted in their midst. I considered running, calling for help, but Gauguin stayed close and it didn’t seem smart. Sooner or later he would need to piss, eat, drink, sleep, phone a wife, have a minute by himself. Sooner or later, they’d have to forget.
Or they wouldn’t, and this was a stupid way to die.
I got into the car. Someone threw my luggage in, tagged by the paper strap around the handle, and started going through it. They went past the pot of sun cream without a thought, but that wouldn’t last. I was losing interest in the diamonds. No point being rich, if you can’t spend it.
We exited through a gate in the metal fence that enclosed the runway, no passports shown, and drove along a straight road surrounded by scrubby grass until we hit the motorway. The sky was grey-yellow, shimmering with haze. The taxi drivers were deadly, the buses were full, honking horns and grubby exhaust. We drove towards the city, then turned and began to twist through industrial sprawl, houses of unpainted breeze block, warehouses of corrugated iron. I watched it all, tracking the direction of the sun, counting miles, noting signs, landmarks.
Ads: the newest kitchen utensil for the perfect housewife, the perfect clothes, the perfect car for the perfect family, a picture of Daddy (manly driver), Mummy (holding baby) and three grinning children (all destined to be doctors and lawyers) before the sleek silver curves of their newly purchased vehicle (The Journey is Everything).
Perfect: complete and correct in every way. Without fault.
Fault: a flaw, a failing.
At fault: blameworthy. In a dilemma.
Gauguin watched me watching, then said, “Have you been to Turkey before?”
“Sure,” I replied, not taking my eyes from the road. “I’ve eaten sheep brains.”
“I’ve seen them served, but never tasted.”
“You shouldn’t be put off when they’re presented to you – in this town it’s customary to show you your food before you eat it. Raw meat, raw fish, raw brains. It’s a practice which is unpalatable to our plastic-packaged sensibilities.”
“Are you a gourmet?”
Gourmet: cultural ideal in the culinary arts; haute cuisine, meticulous preparation and presentation of food, often expensive, though that may be an economic irrelevance, often served with rare wines.
A gourmet: a person of refined taste and passion.
“I like to lick the icing sugar up from round the edge of the dessert dish,” I said. “Also I lick the plate when there’s good gravy.” He didn’t reply.
An industrial workshop in the middle of nowhere.
A long concrete wall surrounding an internal courtyard of yellow pressed dirt. A pile of old tyres against one corner of the yard, within which a pair of skinny kittens yawned, reluctant to leave their den.
A square, one-storey building; shutters that could be rolled back to allow a truck inside; metal doors, windows high and barred. Broken glass, weeds growing from the cracks in the bricks, extractor fans above that extracted nothing.
A tatty sofa, once adorned with the images of water lilies, yellow foam now coming through. A new purple kettle on a small stand; several chipped mugs, also adorned with images of flowers, trailing weeds dotted on one bright green pixel at a time, purple buds.
Doors that could be locked.
Gates that could be guarded.
A very unfashionable secret base for secret men.
One of them sat on a beanbag by the door; another sat outside on concrete steps, smoking a thin brown cigarillo, the stench drifting through the broken windows. Gauguin waved me to the sofa. He opened up my suitcase and prodded idly at the contents therein. I folded my arms and waited. A tube of toothpaste squeezed in the middle earned the tiniest crinkle of distaste in the corner of his mouth; my American passport was scrutinised in detail, and when he found the Australian passport at the very bottom of the case, tucked into a book on trekking in Oman, he went so far as to permit himself a smile.
Both passports and my wallet were handed off to one of his men, who took them away. I added up the value of the accounts that were about to be compromised, the identities about to be exposed. The sum was considerable. How much of my digital life would I have to destroy, when all this was done?
Then a woman with a headscarf depicting birds in flight against a cloud-skimmed sky came and took my fingerprints, a sample of my hair, a swab from the inside of my mouth, and the damage to my career worsened.
“In many ways, you are rather inept, for a thief,” mused Gauguin, as the woman bottled her samples and took them away. “How have you survived all this time?”
“I have a forgettable face.”
“You do yourself an injustice.”
“No,” I replied, crossing my legs, my arms. “I don’t.”
His fingers brushed the tub of sun cream, and I became aware of how defensive my body language was, how tightly my hands gripped the tops of my arms, how heavy my legs felt. I wanted to uncurl, and didn’t, not while he held the diamonds.
He undid the lid, peered inside, looked up, studied my face, his head tilting a little to one side, wondering.
I met his eye, let him wonder.
His expression didn’t change, his eyes didn’t move, but he reached down into the tub, rummaged around inside, and without a sound, pulled Princess Shamma’s necklace from within, laying it, still coated in vanilla-coloured goo, on the table between us.
He put the tub to one side.
Stood up. Walked to a stainless-steel sink against a wall, cabinets below, pipes running up the chipped sometime-green concrete to the side.
Washed his hands.
Returned to his chair.
Sat down.
Silence.
I said, “I think I would like to be arrested now.”
Silence.
Gauguin shifted a little in his seat, leant forward so his elbows rested on his knees, his fingers knotted together in the gap between his legs. There was a silver pen in an inside pocket of his jacket, briefly visible as the jacket drifted forward. It seemed an ostentatious, silly thing for a practical man to carry.
I unfolded myself, one limb at a time. Feet flat on the floor, hands flat in my lap.
“I think you should call the police,” I said.
Silence.
I listened to the silence, and all the words within.
Silence.
Awareness, in the silence, of sounds around. Distant traffic, the dr
ipping of the tap, the crunching of footsteps outside the room, buzz of a fly trapped on sticky blue paper by the light. We waited, until the muezzin began to sing, out of tune through a loudspeaker, and a few minutes later, a rival, more tuneful but further off, calling the faithful to prayer.
Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest.
I bear witness that there is no God but Allah.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.
Hasten to worship.
Hasten to success.
Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest.
There is no God but Allah.
Then Gauguin said, “Tell me about your relationship with Byron14.”
I heard the words as if they were spoken through water, slowed down and deepened as they travelled to my brain, and turned my head to look at him more closely, waiting to see if he’d speak again, if there was a meaning I didn’t understand within the sound.
“Did you accept any employment from Byron14?”
Louder, clearer, his head rising.
My turn to be silent. I closed my eyes and tried to assemble thoughts, weave a path through obscurity.
He interrupted. “Miss Why, wondering what you should or should not say is irrelevant at this juncture. The truth will come.”
“We both have something to offer,” I replied. “You want information; I want out.”
“You are mistaken; there is no negotiation.”
I looked round the room. Only one of Gauguin’s men remained, chewing gum, seemingly uninterested in all that happened. Outside there would be more men, guarding the way, but they would be forgetting me already, just strangers lounging in the sun.
I stood, but Gauguin didn’t move. I walked round the back of the sofa, turned, walked the other way. I scanned the room for weapons: a biro, a cigarette tray, a mobile phone, anything. Somewhere he still had a knife. My shoes were flat but not ideal for running in. “I’m a liar,” I said at last. “I lie when scared.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I’m calm,” I replied. “As you can see. Can I make a suggestion?”
“If you want.”
“I think you’re a liar too, Mr Gauguin, mugurski, whatever we call you. I think we are dancing around each other when we should speak plainly. You’re not interested in the diamonds.” How wretched the jewels looked now, covered in cosmetic goo, dripping on the table between us. A proper barney for a few lumps of carbon. “Sure, you need to get them back to Dubai so your boss doesn’t look like a twat, family honour, business acumen, all that. But you don’t really care, do you? Not your business.”