The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

  Inserts coins.

  Dials.

  Says, “The better days of life were ours, the worst can be but mine.”

  If there is someone on the end of the line, they do not answer.

  “Your cousin says hello from Trieste,” he continues, and proceeds to read out Carrazza’s message. When he is done, he hangs up the phone, puts his hands in his pockets, bends his head against the wind, and walks away.

  Chapter 100

  A phone in Greenwich.

  Within three hours, Gauguin had everything he wanted on the phone, the number it dialled, the young man with canine cufflinks, the lot.

  Said the guy with cufflinks: “Oh shit shit fuck shit I just answer the phone, man, like shit fuck that’s all I fucking do. Please, it was just a job, an easy job, I didn’t mean…”

  Said Gauguin: “It’s fine. You’re fine. Now breathe. Okay? I want you to keep answering the phone, and tell me everything.”

  A phone on the floor of a living room in Morningside.

  Just a phone, set in its cradle in the middle of the floor.

  Outside: snow. Grey Edinburgh snow not quite cold enough to settle, not yet, not on the paving stones, but clumping on the cars, thicker in the shadows, cold in the room too, an apartment near the Observatory that hasn’t been heated for months.

  The landlady grumbled, “Well I rented it out nine months ago, and the rent all came in good, and if you just want to have a phone then who am I to complain, there were never any parties or loud noise or problems with the electricity bill!”

  Gauguin looked at the landlady without words, and the landlady left.

  “Is this it?” I asked.

  “It forwarded the call from London – but we don’t know where.”

  “Can’t you…” A gesture, a flap of arms, come on, can’t you…?!

  Gauguin looked away. “Somewhere in Scotland,” he murmured.

  I opened my mouth to say fuck you, fuck this, fucking fuck the fucking desert walking through the fucking desert riding the fucking train…

  and stopped myself.

  Waited for the silence to settle where I would usually have counted backwards from ten.

  Walked away.

  Chapter 101

  Walking through Edinburgh, the last time I was here I stole Mary Stewart’s belt buckle, mostly because I could, and held it to ransom until the Museum of Scotland very grudgingly paid a cut-price £12,000 for its safe return, very hush hush, very much against Lothian Police’s advice.

  The snow began to fall more heavily, and I walked. Up through Morningside, past shops selling alpaca yarn and baby boots, past the second-hand booksellers and hair-styling salons, £95 to have a trim, £130 if you want the full spa experience. Past the purveyors of nonsense and kitsch, the sellers of cupping and ear-wax treatments, the aromatherapists who can cure your irritable bowel syndrome, the yoga studios for beautiful people looking to find themselves through stretching, past the organic yoghurt shops and authentic dealers of finest tartan, made in the Philippines. For a minute, I could burn it all. Yoghurt is nice; yoga is good, but this isn’t yoghurt, this is the organic yoghurt experience, eat it and be beautiful. Be beautiful. Be perfect.

  I could burn the fucking city to the ground.

  I walked until I reached Bruntsfield Links, the thickening snow driving back the last warmth of the day, beginning to settle on the grass, only one golfer left near the kirk, one last hold-out of Scottish sporting passion that even the settling dark cannot drive away.

  I walked, the castle rising to my left and the taller, denser apartment blocks of Newington rising to my right, and realised after a while that I was counting my steps, and stopped, and stood in the middle of the street and screamed a wordless scream of frustration and rage, and people turned to look at me, and I screamed again then stopped, and felt a bit better, and kept on walking.

  I had booked a room in the hotel where Gauguin was staying, and now I cancelled that booking.

  “Filipa is being indicted tomorrow,” he mumbled. “The money – it’s all running out. People don’t take my calls any more, and she’s, I know she’s not her, but she’s… It’s not much, but I should be there, for the end, I just should…” His voice trailed away. A shadow man, who’d spend his days chasing shadows and found no illumination from the process.

  I moved to a hall of residence beneath the Crags.

  Looked up at Arthur’s Seat, thought about climbing it, thought about snow and ice, felt the sun go down, stayed in the warmth of my thin-carpeted, plywood-desked little student room, felt at home. This was better than a hotel; in term time, people lived here, worked here, had sex here, ate baked beans here, pinned posters to the wall, smeared toothpaste over the sink, grew squalid and settled. I could almost close my eyes, and pretend it was a kind of home.

  I opened up a laptop, connected to the slow Wi-Fi, downloaded every note and every photo I’d ever taken of Byron’s life all the time I’d known her, and started again.

  Knowledge.

  What should I do with this place inside me where experience – tears of joy, shrieks of laughter, the anxiety of work, the warmth of friends, the love of family, the expectations of the world – what should I do with that place which was never filled?

  I put knowledge there.

  And in knowledge, I find myself.

  This sounds like an intellectual void where heart should be, but look and you may find…

  The speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.

  Let us not wallow in the valley of despair… I say to you, my friends… I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight.

  The history of the Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan raised it in love of his wife.

  Should guilty seek asylum here, like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin. The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs; and the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.

  The European Space Agency launched the Rosetta mission in March 2004, and ten years later it woke up after a journey of 6 billion kilometres to land a probe on a comet travelling at 15,000 km/h around the sun.

  After killing hundreds of billions of people down the ages, smallpox was eradicated in 1980. Before Edward Jenner tested his first cowpox vaccine; before Lady Mary Wortley Montagu marvelled at the Ottoman physicians of the 1600s inoculating their children with the pus from a smallpox scab, a Buddhist nun up a mountain in China attempted her own inoculations, by grinding up smallpox scabs and blowing them up the noses of willing patients, becoming an anonymous mother of variolation.

  “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.” Hypatia of Alexandria – philosopher, mathematician, astronomer. Died while the great library burned.

  Google search for feminism:

  feminism is

  wrong

  for everybody

  bad

  sexism

  the radical notion

  destroying America

  What is knowledge?

  It is inspiration. It is a call to battle. It is a reminder that there is nothing which cannot be achieved. It is humanity in all its forms, in my heart.

  Byron is in Scotland.

  I am sure of it, and being sure, I trawl through every file, every note, everything I’ve ever had on her.

  “I live alone in a place where no one ever comes. I work alone. I walk by the sea, I go to the shops and hide my face. I dodge cameras, travel by false passport, make no friends, have no need of company. My work is all that matters. I would give my life to see it done.”

  The bank account with which she rented a flat in Morningside was opened with cash and a false ID; the false ID came from the darknet, hard to trace, even the sellers don’t know who they’re selling to, so long as the price is right.

  Files and dead ends, phone records going nowhere, paper trails ending with nothing,
Gauguin sends me messages, where are you, are you there, we’re leaving now, we’re leaving. They’re opening proceedings against Filipa on Tuesday, I have to be there. Will you come? Are you there? (Are you real?)

  I watch the TV reports of the first hearings into the 206 in Milan. Filipa smiles for the cameras, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she is most suspected, and Gauguin is just on the edge of the frame, holding her hand as she climbs the steps to the courthouse. Where be your lawyers now, your PR machine and your men who hold doors ajar? All fleeing, all fled, as Prometheus dies.

  A week, another, just reading, planning, searching, Byron, Byron, where are you?

  A committee is set up in America; another in Brussels to investigate Perfection. Said the head of the US inquiry: “Not just America, but all the nations of the world suffered a loss when the victims of the 206 were so viciously attacked and slaughtered, and it is the duty of any freedom-loving nation to make inquiries into these events.”

  Said Fox News: “So, yeah, we think that Perfection is, maybe, reprogramming your brain.”

  (And ten minutes later: “Tonight we’re asking the question: Is Islam fundamentally violent and incompatible with the American way of life?”)

  In the end, I settled on Byron’s spectacles. I photographed them, when was this? Korea – the first time I broke into Byron’s room, I photographed everything she had, but her glasses might be the best thing I have to go on.

  I bought a map of Scotland from the student union shop, pinned it to my bedroom wall. Marked a dot for every single optician in the country. Not as many as I’d feared, really, not once you were north of Dundee. Couple of hundred at most.

  Printed out Byron’s picture, from several angles, over several years.

  Printed out a blown-up picture of her glasses.

  Printed onto thick paper wrapped in plastic a reasonable approximation of a Lothian Police warrant card, and then bought an antique badge that looked legal enough to stick to the inside of my wallet for flashing in a stranger’s face. How many people knew what an actual warrant looked like?

  Checked out of the hall of residence after a breakfast of baked beans, fried eggs, fried sausages, fried bacon, fried potatoes and a glass of cold milk, and with my one rucksack of worldly goods on my back went forth to find opticians.

  Chapter 102

  In Edinburgh, the poverty is carefully hidden, pushed out by gentrification to the tower blocks and estates, out of sight, out of mind, the cleansing of the streets, the bankrupt crawl of the tram towards Leith, the spreading of high-performance baby prams.

  There are forty-two opticians to see, and only twenty-nine bother to look at my warrant card, ask the nature of my business. The rest just stare at the photo of the spectacles, the picture of the woman in my hand and say no, no no. Even if she came here, we don’t stock those frames. That’s fine: I didn’t think it likely she’d get her eyes tested in Edinburgh, she spoke of a cottage, loneliness, the sea – but I will be thorough. I will eliminate all options.

  In the fashionable shops, their shelves lined wall-to-wall with frames, a woman with legs that never end, a tiny body balanced on their high-heeled protuberances, shakes her head and says, “They’re very last year, aren’t they?” and means it, and looks askance when she sees the look on my face and adds, “Well, I mean, in terms of what we’d sell, yes?” and begins to flush, having been caught Speaking Stupid as a habit of her work.

  In Leith, a man with deep, dark south Asian skin and a turban on his head tuts and says, “Ah, a missing woman. My mother vanished some years ago, but alas, we found her again.”

  At Edinburgh Airport there is a purveyor of glasses on the wrong side of customs. I buy a ticket to London, cross the border, go to the shop, find nothing, wave my police badge to exit the other way.

  I steal a car from the long-term airport parking, and drive to Livingston, Bathgate, Armadale, Whitburn. The accents along the border, in Lindsay and Jedburgh, are thicker and harder to penetrate than in Edinburgh, as if, so close to England, these little Scottish villages have sworn to be more Scottish than the Scots, wearing their cultural identity like a sword and shield. Up yours, English!

  In Jedburgh I have cream tea by a rolling stream carved through a snow-soaked valley. The butcher across the road has won “Best Haggis in Scotland” for nearly ten years running, bar the odd off-year when he was pushed into second place. The butcher wears a white apron, striped red and white sleeves and a little straw hat. When he comes in for his cuppa, the snow clings to the edge of the boater, and his nose is bright red.

  In Hawick, I take refuge from the increasingly bad weather in a pub hotel, and tell the lady behind the counter about my journey through southern Scotland, following the course of a stream from the sea to Teviothead, where it finally shatters into the hills.

  She pours mulled wine and says, “And what’s this woman done, that you’re looking for?”

  “Wanted in connection with a murder inquiry.”

  “Really? But she looks harmless!”

  “We think she helped kill those people in Venice.”

  “No – the 206?”

  Everyone knows about the 206, even in Hawick, with its floral competitions and empty hanging baskets, waiting for the spring; its monument to the soldier-children who drove back English invaders, its betting shops and quietly churning textile mills, its pride in being itself – even here.

  “You know, I think it’s shocking what those people did to themselves,” mused my landlady, as the smell of wood smoke drifted through the pub and a man with flaxen hair cursed two cherries at the fruit machine. “I mean, the things you hear – surgery, brain surgery too, living your life by what a machine tells you, buying what a machine tells you and for what? To be perfect? When did we stop learning to just love ourselves for who we are, that’s what I want to know?”

  I smiled over the rim of my hot cup, and wondered if this woman knew what it was to love yourself, to forgive yourself, to be at peace with yourself, or if these words too weren’t merely the end product of another algorithm churning out words into the void. Love yourself, whispers Perfection, forgive yourself – here, have £5 off your first “love yourself” forgiveness session, two thousand points upon completion of the course…

  In Newton Stewart I took a day to walk the local area, climbed into the forest, looked down on pine and scrubland, found a concrete obelisk raised up to the highest point, sat alone and ate jam and peanut butter sandwiches, met a dog walker on the way back down said, where have you come from?

  Oh, about, about, he replied. I don’t really think about where I walk any more.

  The ferry to the Isle of Arran left from Ardrossan. The sea was sick and bucking, the skies grey, the wind howling, stranding me in Brodick for the night. I walked from one end of the town and back again in twenty minutes, found the B&B already booked up, slept in the back of my car, was woken at midnight by a seagull landing, its fat white body thumping hard against the metal roof. My breath shimmered in the air and in the morning the optician was closed anyway, so I drove round the island, and had fish and chips in Blackwaterfoot, and went to a perfumer and took the tour, listened to an explanation of all their works (“floral, fruity, woody, faecal odours, oh yes, I did say faecal, the low note catches the attention and then the higher scents keep it; ambergris is simply whale poo you know”) said, thank you, very interesting, ate a duck egg for breakfast the next morning and went at last to the optician, who said no, never seen her before, sorry.

  Rode the ferry back to Ardrossan, then over the waters again, to Campbeltown, and up that narrow spit of land towards the highlands and the north.

  A month, two more stolen cars.

  I stayed one night in a spa hotel on the edge of Loch Tay, because I stank, because I hadn’t washed my clothes in weeks, because my eyes hurt and my back was sore. It cost more than I’d spent in the last four days of driving, but I ran along the northern edge of the loch, seven miles to the halfway point, then
seven miles back, and sank into the sauna on my return and stretched out every bone until it cracked, and took my clothes down to the laundry room and sat in hotel-supplied pyjamas and a dressing gown watching them spin, spin, spin, and had blueberries for breakfast and talked with a husband and wife in their seventies, he an ex-neurosurgeon, she an ex-cardiac surgeon, who’d married in Glasgow after the Cuban Missile Crisis and now came up here once a year, every year, to walk the scrubland before the purple flowers grew.

  “Some people call it bleak,” she said, “but I think there is a kind of beauty in emptiness. It lets you remember that you’re there, that you matter.”

  “Have you heard of the 206?” I asked, and the neurosurgeon tutted and said yes, such a tragic waste. Waste of lives. Waste of dreams. Waste of… everything, really.

  “These days, we offer solutions for everything,” she agreed. “Including things that don’t really need fixing.”

  That morning, the snow fell harder, and they were delighted at this turn of events, and strapped on their best walking boots and went out, hand in hand, towards the edge of the lake.

  I waved them off, and drove on towards Perth.

  A month became two.

  The press lost interest in the case of the 206, every detail chewed over, every image inflated and analysed.

  “Disturbing scenes,” said the report, “do not look if of a gentle disposition” and hello, yes please, here we are looking yum yum yum.

  Filipa was confined to a mental institution, then almost immediately freed, then confined again. So were a few other survivors.