by Tom Holt
“Sorry to bother you,” Mr Huos said. “Are you doing Satisfactory Crescent?”
She nodded, like an old-fashioned car mirror ornament.
Mr Huos appeared to hesitate, almost as though he was feeling guilty about something. “Look,” he said, “if you get any screwy-sounding calls about it this morning, just take no notice, all right?”
Words were suddenly scarcer than refined palladium. She made a sort of grunting noise.
“Same with Attractive Close,” Mr Huos added. “It could be that some people might ring in, and what they say may not seem to make very much sense. Just don’t worry about it, OK? It’s no big deal, all be sorted out soon. Just tell them…” Mr Huos’ face assumed a being-strangled look, like an actor who’s forgotten his lines. “Just say we know all about it and it’s under control and we’ll get right back to them asap. Got that?”
She nodded.
“Great. Any questions?”
He’d asked it automatically, she knew, and she had no idea what prompted her, but—
“Mr Huos?”
“Mm?”
“Who chooses the names for the streets?”
Mr Huos looked at her. “Sorry?”
“The street names.” She’d started, so she had to finish. “In Norton St Edgar. Who makes them up?”
It was as if she’d just asked a middle-aged woman how old she was. “I do.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
“That’s all right.” Automated response. There’s no personality in here right now to take your call, but if you’d like to leave a message… “So, remember, any odd-sounding calls, everything’s fine and we’ll ring them.”
“Got that.”
“Splendid.” He paused. “How was the darts match?”
“Sorry?”
“Last night. Against Southern Electricity or something like that. Who won?”
“They did.”
“Ah.” Mr Huos frowned, a bit like God, on hearing that someone in the Garden had been scrumping apples. “Never mind. Better luck next time.” On which note he departed, leaving a hole in the air you could have fitted an elephant into.
It was at that point that Polly once again gave serious thought to getting another job. Boredom she could cope with. Weirdness she could just about handle. But the two together, indissolubly mixed like metals in an alloy, might well prove too much for her. Weighed in the balance against the fact that this was the only job she’d been able to get, it fell short by some way. But it was there. Definitely.
The phone rang. Messrs Hopkins and Allen, in Malvern, re 88 Attractive Close. The file was already on her desk. She reached for it, tucked the phone under her ear and stretched for a pen.
“Number 88 Attractive Close,” said a man’s voice.
“That’s right, yes.” She’d found the place in the file. “Let’s see, we were looking at exchange of contracts by the end of this week.”
“It’s gone.”
Ah, she thought. “Gone?”
“That’s right,” the man’s voice said. “Apparently, my clients went over there yesterday afternoon after work to measure up for curtains, and it’s not there any more.”
Well, she thought. “How do you mean, not—”
“It’s not bloody there. It’s vanished. The whole bloody estate, disappeared.”
Just as well we haven’t exchanged contracts yet. “Disappeared how? A big hole in the ground, or—”
“Green fields, apparently.” The voice at the other end of the line sounded thin, as if a great weight had landed on it and squashed it flat. “Which doesn’t make sense, because they were there three days ago and there was a housing estate, built by your client. And before you say it, no, they weren’t lost, no, they hadn’t taken a wrong turning.”
At that precise moment she happened to glance down at her desk diary, which lay open in front of her. Today’s date; someone had written HELP in big red letters.
Christ, she thought. “It’s perfectly all right,” she heard herself say. “There’s been a little tiny glitch, bit of a nuisance but we’re right on top of it. We’ll have it all sorted in a jiffy and we’re still looking at exchange by close of business Friday. Is that still all right with you?”
The voice that answered her reminded her of the creak of an iceberg about to calve – the unspeakable inner tension, the first crack. “Of course it’s not bloody all right. Look, the house has gone.” Pause. “I’ve been out there myself and had a look. It’s just grass and cows and stuff, as far as the eye can—”
Later, she was quite proud of herself for her reply. “Mr… I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Hopkins. Ed Hopkins.”
“Mr Hopkins,” she said, “houses don’t just vanish. There is a perfectly rational explanation.” Um. “The fact is, we had a bit of a misunderstanding with the planning office and, to cut a long story short, they insisted we didn’t have planning and we had to put it all back exactly how it was. So we did.” Deep breath. “But we went back to them on appeal and now we’ve definitely got planning. I’ve got a copy of it right here on the desk in front of me, so we can go ahead and rebuild the houses, and that should all be done by – what’s the time now, nine fifteen – it should all be done by lunchtime, but give it till this time tomorrow just to be on the safe side, all right? If the houses aren’t back again by then, give me a ring and I’ll see it gets top priority. Or, better still, as soon as we get the word from our contractors, I’ll ring you and you can pass on the good news to your clients. All right?”
(HELP In big red letters. She tried very hard not to look at it.)
“I suppose so,” Mr Hopkins mumbled. “Look, I’ve got your word on that, OK?”
“Of course.”
“Only my clients are really upset. They’ve already sold their old house, you see, and—”
“You have my word, Mr Hopkins, as a fellow professional. You do trust me, don’t you?”
Her heart bled for him as he muttered, “Yes, all right,” and rang off. She recognised the special quality of his voice, a fellow human being suddenly confronted with weirdness so extreme that it couldn’t be questioned or resisted; all you could do was hang on and hope it would stop, before it reached the point where pretending it wasn’t happening was no longer possible.
Someone had written HELP in her diary, in red ink, in great big capital letters. It wasn’t, she hastened to point out to herself, her handwriting. It wasn’t any handwriting she recognised, come to that. The list of potential suspects was, of course, endless; anybody in the building could have sneaked into her office while her back was turned and written HELP in her diary (in red ink, in whopping great big letters, just like she’d done in her dream) and there were all sorts of reasons why someone should do such a thing, just as there were plausible explanations for how work got done on her files without her knowing about it, or what happened to all those cups of coffee. There were even tenable hypotheses to explain how a housing estate in rural Worcestershire could suddenly vanish; she’d been able to think of one just like that, on the spur of the moment, with no advance warning whatsoever. Maybe the dream was just a suppressed memory, and it had been her own hand that had guided the red pen (there was no red pen on her desk, in the drawer, in her bag, fallen down behind the radiator, anywhere in the damn room), and for some reason, presumably connected with some traumatic event which she was also suppressing, she’d chosen to forget all about it. Maybe, while she was talking to Mr Hopkins on the phone, a subconscious memory of the dream had prompted her to write HELP in her diary without realising she was doing it (with a red pen that had subsequently vanished, like all the houses in Attractive Close; and the other one is positively festooned with bells, pull it and you could do a passable Quasimodo impression). Maybe her enemy, whoever he or she was, the one who did her work for her and drank her coffee, had written in her diary and then hypnotised her so she’d have a dream in which—
The phone rang. A Mr Hughes, from Deane
Adams in Worcester. Was she aware that Satisfactory Crescent, Norton St Edgar, was missing? Yes, Mr Hughes, we do know that, thanks all the same, and is there anything else I can help you with? No? Bye, then.
But then, as the darkness seemed to be closing in all around her, a tiny spark of light flickered in her mind. Her dress. Her dress which she’d taken to a dry cleaners that had subsequently vanished-off-the-face et-bloody-cetera; but it hadn’t, had it, because Don, her hero brother, had gone after it, found it and restored it to her. And he couldn’t have done that, could he, if the dry cleaners really had melted away into the air as though it had never been. No way. Instead, there had been some sort of misunderstanding or cock-up, probably something quite simple and straightforward once you knew all the facts. Don had unravelled the mystery, gone somewhere and got her dress, and everything was just fine. So, if that weirdness, which at the time had seemed insuperably baffling, had resolved itself and submitted to the healing forces of normality, then why not all the others: her dream, the diary, the vanishing houses? And besides, Mr Huos knew about the houses thing too, which meant it couldn’t just be her diseased imagination. It was all right. Everything was OK. Silly old her, for getting in such a state.
Clever old Don, whispered the voice in her head she’d never liked very much, for finding your dress so quickly and easily. Now, how did he do it? I wonder. And wouldn’t it be a good idea to ring him up right now and ask?
Her fingertips were no more than a centimetre from the handset when the phone rang. She rocked back in her chair and snatched her hand away, then picked it up.
“Your brother for you,” Reception said, frostbiting her ear.
Ah, she thought. “Don, I was just about to call you.”
“Listen.”
She knew that voice, though its exact significance was rather hard to pin down. Sometimes it could mean you/me/both of us in serious trouble. Other times he’d used it to tell her that he’d been to see the new Star Wars film and actually it wasn’t that great, or that Tim Henman (this to a woman who had trouble telling tennis apart from baseball) had just been knocked out of Wimbledon; and then she’d tell him, “Don, I couldn’t give a stuff,” and there’d be genuine bewilderment in his voice when he replied, “Why not?” Don was funny that way. He actually cared about separatist tendencies in the Anglican communion or who’d won the general election in Portugal.
“What?” she said.
“Look, are you very busy right now?”
“Yes.”
He also had the knack of not hearing answers to questions. “Can you come over here? Right now. I need—”
“Don, don’t be bloody stupid, I’m at work. I can’t just—”
“What? Oh, right, of course you are. In that case, I’ll come to you. Don’t go anywhere; I’ll be right over.”
“Don.”
Click, buzz. She scowled at the phone, as though a vaguely banana-shaped plastic moulding was somehow to blame for everything, then slapped it back in its cradle. Sometimes she wondered if he really understood about work – real work, as opposed to sitting round in a dressing gown making up little tunes. Then it occurred to her that she’d been on the point of phoning him, and why? Because, every time Destiny put a spider in her bath of Life, it was Don who had to leave what he was doing and come sprinting over to hook it out. Whether it was a blocked sink or a broken heart, no hesitation, no recrimination, no squash-your-own-bloody-spiders-I’m-busy. Query, she reflected, whether a man could be so selflessly useful if he had to live in the real world and do normal stuff like everybody else.
She did a bit of work, just to pass the time away, and then he was there in the waiting room, pretending to be a surveyor so as not to embarrass her – but how many surveyors call on important clients dressed in a colander pullover, jeans and sandals?
“Well?” she said.
He turned and looked at her, and she knew at once that it wasn’t Tim Henman or the failure of the Iowa sorghum harvest. “Polly,” he said, “I think I’m in trouble.”
Payback time. “Oh?”
“Yes.” He nodded gravely, looked across the room, then said, “I think I may have killed someone.”
Dead silence, for as long as it takes to change a light bulb. “Let’s go through into the interview room,” she said.
Not the big interview room, of course. She wasn’t nearly grand enough to use that without booking it a week in advance and clearing it with Mr Stevens and the office manager. Nor the middling interview room, because the door was shut and she could hear voices. That left the Confessional, a cramped box where you could just about sit down with a client or a professional colleague without rubbing noses or brushing lips.
“Sorry about this,” she said, as she breathed in to slide past the table to her chair. “It’s a bit cosy, but—”
“That’s quite all right,” Don snapped. “Good practice for when I get locked up for the rest of my fucking life. Did you happen to hear what I said just now? I think I may have murdered somebody.” He stopped, breathed out then deeply in. “I was wondering if I could trouble you for a bit of free legal advice.”
“Of course.” She wriggled her back into the strange angle of the chair and tried to remember back to law school. “The police,” she said. “Have you made a statement? Signed anything?”
“I haven’t called the police,” he said.
“Witnesses? I mean, did anybody see?”
He shook his head. “Nobody. Well,” he added, “maybe an earlier incarnation of me, though I’m not entirely sure about that. Look, shouldn’t I start at the beginning and tell you the whole thing?”
“Oh, right.” She nodded. “Carry on.”
He frowned. “You know,” he said, “I’m not sure I can. On account of I’m really not at all sure whether I believe any of it myself. I mean, I do, because of the table and your dress and the ten pounds and the dry cleaners not being there but showing up on Google.” He looked up at her. “I’m talking drivel,” he said, “and you’re not staring at me or asking if I’m feeling all right. That’s a bit worrying, actually.”
She nodded gravely. “Listen,” she said, and told him about Attractive Close and HELP in big red letters in her diary. “All right? Fine. Your turn.”
He nodded slowly. “What was it Arkwright used to say? It’s been a funny old day. Of course,” he added, “it could be that there’s insanity running in our family and we’re both going mad, but on balance I think that’s probably too much to hope for. Anyway, here goes.”
She listened in dead silence, without interrupting once. That should have been a momentous occasion, something to be commemorated with a special issue of stamps and United Nations Polly-Didn’t-Interrupt Day. As it was, Don hardly noticed. A perfectly good miracle wasted.
Then she said, “You’re kidding.”
Don breathed out heavily through his nose. “Actually, no,” he said. “So, where do I stand legally? Did I just murder an innocent stranger, or what?”
“Magic,” she said. She was looking at him with a curious blend of awe and revulsion, like someone watching John Prescott juggling. “You can do magic.”
“Apparently. Look—”
“That’s amazing,” she said. “You just looked at him and—”
“Yes.” That was Polly all right. For her, tact was the past participle of the verb to tack. “Will you please answer the bloody question? Is it murder or isn’t it?”
She frowned. “Well, they can’t prove anything,” she said. “And that’s all that matters. If they can’t prove it…”
Don made a sort of muffled exploding noise. “Fine,” he said. “Thank you so much. I should’ve known better than to ask, really.” He tried to stand up, banged his knee on the underside of the table and sat down again.
“You don’t seem pleased,” she said.
“What?”
“You can do magic.” She looked like she was watching for an expected reaction; apparently it didn’t come. “Magic is re
al, it actually exists, and you can do it. You ought to be—”
“Are you out of your mind?” He didn’t want to get angry, but it seemed he wasn’t to be allowed the choice. “My whole world view’s just been blown to bits and I’ve killed someone. If there’s anything in that to be cheerful about, maybe you could write it out for me on a bit of paper so I can study it carefully when I’ve—”
“Why don’t you just throw it away?”
He stopped in mid-flow. Indeed. Why not? He’d intended to give the pencil-sharpener thing back to the people in the dry cleaners, but apparently that wasn’t possible. So why not just bin it, or throw it in a pond somewhere?
“I can’t,” he replied. “I’ve got to try and get that poor bastard back, remember. If I sent him away with magic, it stands to reason I’ll need it to get him back.”
She was giving him one of her head-on-one-side looks, the ones that meant, Nice try, only I happen to know you’re lying. “But otherwise,” she said, “if it wasn’t for that, you’d get rid of it. Well?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know, do I?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Look.” He hadn’t meant to shout. He never shouted.“That’s beside the point, isn’t it? The fact of the matter is I’m stuck with this appalling problem and I want to know just how much trouble I’m in. Anything else—”
There was something about the way she was looking at him that he didn’t like. It was almost an accusation. She was good at those, always had been. But this just wasn’t the time. He needed her to be on his side. It wasn’t much to ask. After all, he’d got her stupid dress back for her.
“By the way,” he said, “how was the match?”
“What?”
“The darts match. Who won?”
“They did.”
“Ah well. Better luck next—”
“Don, you’re a complete bastard, do you know that?”