Falling Sideways

by Tom Holt

‘While I’m here.’ David took a deep breath. ‘Would it be all right if I asked you a personal question?’

  Mr Van Oppen smiled. ‘That depends on what it is,’ he said.

  ‘All right.’ David looked at the sugar in the cup. Just sugar. ‘Do you know a lawyer by the name of Alex Snaithe?’

  ‘Alex? Sure.’ Mr Van Oppen nodded vigorously. ‘He does a lot of work for my company. Nice enough chap, for a lawyer, though if you ask me he’s so far up himself he can see out of his ears. Still, I think that’s par for the course if you’re a high-powered lawyer these days.’

  ‘Ah,’ David said. ‘He’s my cousin.

  ‘Really?’ Mr Van Oppen hoisted an eyebrow, Spockwise. ‘Small world.’

  Indeed. Any smaller and you could use it as a ball bearing. ‘Right,’ David said. ‘Well, thanks a lot for the sugar.’

  ‘My pleasure. Oh, by the way,’ Mr Van Oppen added, ‘I almost forgot. I’ve got a message for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  Mr Van Oppen nodded. ‘From my brother,’ he said. ‘Apparently you left your briefcase at his workshop yes­terday. No rush about collecting it; when you’re next passing, he says.’

  ‘Your brother.’

  ‘John.’

  ‘Ah,’ David said. ‘That brother.’

  Now I know, David reflected, how a cue ball feels. He took a deep breath. ‘That’s something else I’d like to talk to you about,’ he said. ‘If that’s all right with you.’

  Mr Van Oppen twitched his nose, like a rabbit. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have to be getting along in a minute or so, or I’ll miss my flight.’

  David nodded. ‘Your flat,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit—’

  ‘Sparse?’

  ‘Yes, sparse. I was wondering—’

  Mr Van Oppen shrugged. ‘Typical of my rotten luck when it comes to moving,’ he said. ‘Mix-up with the vans, or something like that. I phoned the removals people this morning, and they called me back and told me my stuff’s in Durham, of all places. Apparently it’s going to take a week to get it back. They didn’t explain why — I’ve got this startlingly vivid mental image of all my socks lined up in a row, like the Osmonds, singing ‘I’m gonna leave old Durham town’, but I don’t suppose it’s anything as anthropomorphic as that. Fortuitously, I’m just off to Ulan Bator for a week on business, so it’s not going to be fatally inconvenient. Actually,’ he added, his face lighting up like a small floodlit cathedral, ‘you could do me a tremendous favour, if you wouldn’t mind. If I give you the key, could you let the removal men in when they do finally show up? Otherwise, I can just pic­ture me coming home and finding all my worldly goods stacked into a barricade on the landing, like the defence of Rorke’s Drift.’

  ‘Sure,’ David said automatically.

  ‘That’s extremely kind of you,’ said Mr Van Oppen, handing him a keyring. It had an eight-legged pewter horse for a key fob and one solitary key.

  (And nobody, nobody in the whole world had just one key on his keyring.)

  ‘My pleasure,’ David said. ‘And I’ll be sure to get some sugar.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, right. Look, sorry if this sounds rude but I really do have to fly.’

  Mr Van Oppen trotted away down the stairs, his foot­steps inaudible (and that was strange, too: the communal stairs had a tendency to creak like the special effects in a radio ghost story), and David put the key in his top pocket. It was time he went back to his own flat and faced up to his heart’s desire.

  He paused outside his front door and listened; he couldn’t hear her voice. So he let himself in.

  ‘There you are!’ Once again he was knocked com­pletely off balance by the sheer beauty of her voice. ‘You’ve been ever such a long time.

  She was wearing a pair of his jogging pants (he’d never jogged in his life, needless to say) and a dark blue sweatshirt given to him a long time ago by someone who didn’t know him very well. She looked like an angel.

  ‘Sorry,’ he replied. ‘But I bumped into my new neigh­bour, the man who’s moved into the flat upstairs, and—’

  In the most graceful and attractive way possible, she wrenched the carrier bag from his hand. ‘Danish butter,’ she said, wrinkling her nose ever so very slightly. ‘Oh.’

  ‘They didn’t have Normandy,’ David explained.

  ‘Really?’ She seemed genuinely shocked, disap­pointed, as if she was five years old and someone had just shown her irrefutable proof that there was no Santa Claus. ‘Oh, well,’ she said, sadly but with a degree of genuine compassion for the world. ‘Just have to make do, that’s all. Where’s the gruyère? In the other bag?’

  ‘They didn’t have any of that, either.’

  Just briefly, a little flicker of fire sparkled in her eyes; small and fast as a spark plug, or the divine flame pass­ing between fingertips in Michelangelo’s painting. It faded immediately, but it left a burned patch in the middle of David’s vision, as if he’d watched somebody arc-welding. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘We’ll just have to get a couple of spare pats when we go to Sainsbury’s. Which reminds me; if we leave now, we’ll get there just as they open.’

  ‘Before we do that—’ The sound of his own voice amazed him. That was no way to speak to a lovely young woman, especially a lost, frightened, vulnerable one who’d only just— She looked at him. It wasn’t even a frown, let alone a scowl. Compared with some of the looks he’d been on the sharp end of over the years, it was pretty innocuous, simply a polite warning intended to put him on notice that there were unexploded scowls hidden in the vicinity. But it hit him like a rake in the grass.

  And, most remarkable of all, he kept on going, like the Light Brigade charging the wrong way down a one-way street. ‘Before we do that,’ he repeated, ‘maybe we should talk about a few things.’

  ‘Can’t we do that on the way? Only I’m starving, and I thought we could grab something to eat in that little café next to the railway station — you know, the one that does the Danish pastries with the yellow custard in the middle—’

  ‘How the hell do you know about that?’

  Silence; the quality of silence that follows the moment when the waiter drops a towering pile of trays on the tiled floor. ‘Excuse me?’ she said.

  ‘How the hell do you know about little cafés in Ealing Broadway?’ David demanded. (Either that or there was a ventriloquist hiding behind the sofa; he still couldn’t believe he was actually saying the words, and in such an aggressive tone of voice.) ‘You can’t know about that. Dammit, you’re less than twelve hours old.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  The penny dropping, like a shooting star, streaked his mental skyline with agonising red fire. The only sur­prising thing was that he hadn’t thought of it before—

  He only had Honest John’s word for it that she was a clone. All he knew for certain was that she’d jumped up out of an overgrown fishbowl, covered in green slime. The one didn’t necessarily follow on from the other. Wasn’t it far more likely that she wasn’t a clone at all, just some perfectly normal female who for some reason had been curled up asleep with no clothes on in a tank full of green yuck? Improbable, yes, but a stone-cold certainty compared with the odds of her being a con­struct extrapolated from the hair of a centuries-dead witch in a shed in Ravenscourt Park by a man who called himself Honest John. ‘Excuse me,’ David asked, very quietly, ‘but who exactly are you? And what are you doing here?’

  Another look from those starlike eyes. They left David feel like a clumsy Jedi Knight who’d been cleaning his lightsabre when it went off. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Could you answer the question?’ David pleaded. ‘Please?’

  ‘Sure.’ She was looking at him with wide, round eyes. ‘My name is Philippa Levens—’

  ‘You’re certain about that?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. My name’s Philippa Levens, and I’m in my first year at Exeter University, reading chemistry, and Uncle John said I could e
arn some holiday money working for him in his factory.’

  ‘Factory,’ David repeated.

  ‘All right, it’s a bit small for that. Call it a workshop, then. Anyway—’

  ‘Your uncle,’ David interrupted. ‘Honest John?’

  She giggled. ‘I think he meant it as a joke to start with,’ she said, ‘and then it sort of stuck, somehow.

  Anyway, I think it’s got a sort of ring to it: “Honest John’s House of Cones”.’

  ‘Cones?’

  ‘Cones. You know, the plastic pointy things they stick in the road. Like orange-and-white witches’ hats. He makes them.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’

  ‘Oh good. Anyway, there I was helping him clean out the polymer vats — that’s the tanks where he mixes up the chemicals — and I slipped on a damp patch, and next thing I knew—’

  ‘You fell in the vat.’

  She nodded. ‘You know all this already,’ she said. ‘I mean, obviously you know all this, if you’re an old friend of Uncle John’s.’

  He frowned. ‘I’m an old friend of your Uncle John’s?’

  ‘Well, that’s what he told me. Aren’t you?’

  David shrugged. ‘Anything’s possible. Look, sorry to wander off the subject, but have you got an Uncle Bill?’

  She smiled. ‘Of course I have. Why else would I be here?’

  He thought about taking her up on that, but decided to let it ride for a moment or so. ‘How about an Uncle Oliver? Have you got one of those?’

  She shook her head. ‘Of course not, silly,’ she said. ‘Oliver’s my dad’s name.’

  David shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘When I met him, he said his name was Oliver Dean.

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you Philippa Dean?’

  Not anger in her eyes, not yet; just irritability, the sparkle of the fuse rather than the flare of the blasting charge itself. ‘You know perfectly well why.’ She sighed.

  ‘Because when my mum and dad split up, my mum made me take her maiden name. All right? Really, all these questions. If I pass, do I get a badge or some­thing?’

  David took a long, deep breath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Can we just wind back a bit? You said something about me being a good friend of your Uncle John? I’d never even seen him before yesterday.’

  Just for a split second, the time it takes for a cell to divide or a lawyer to earn sixpence, she looked non­plussed, as if she’d been caught out in a careless mistake. ‘Mutual friend’s what I meant, of course. I know you don’t know Uncle John, or Uncle Bill; but your best friend is their best friend. But that’s a real mouthful to say, so—’

  ‘My best friend? I haven’t got a—’ He stopped short, like a swallow flying into a plate-glass window. ‘You mean Alex,’ he said. ‘Alex Snaithe.’

  ‘Of course I do.’ She smiled as she said the name. ‘Oh, come on, you’re not trying to tell me he’s never mentioned me.’

  The feeling that swept through David’s body, invading every part of it simultaneously, was pure horror. ‘No, he hasn’t. Why would he mention you?’

  ‘But he was going to-’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I suppose I’d better tell you. Alex and I are getting married.’

  The fact that he’d intuitively anticipated it by a couple of seconds didn’t make the blow any less painful. Those few seconds had been the time between seeing the other car pull out of the side turning in front of you without looking, and the actual moment of impact. ‘You’re going to marry Alex Snaithe,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. He was supposed to ask you if you’d be his best man, but obviously he didn’t get round to it. Honestly, there are times when — anyway, that’s between him and me.’ She paused and frowned slightly. ‘You’re supposed to say “Congratulations”.’

  ‘What? Oh, right. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  David took a step back and a deep breath. ‘That still doesn’t explain—’

  ‘Doesn’t it? Oh dear. Look, can we talk about what­ever it is you want to talk about on the way to the shops? I really don’t want to be a nuisance, but I’m rather hungry and I’d quite like to get some clothes. Not that your things aren’t really nice, in their own way, but these were the only ones I could find that were even remotely clean, and they aren’t even my colour.’

  At another time he’d have disputed that. Dressed in his shapeless old clothes she looked like a fairy-tale princess wearing someone else’s shapeless old clothes. Even now, with all the confusion and strange connec­tions ringing bells in his synapses and running away, he found it very difficult indeed to get past the fact that she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in his life. But he managed it, just about.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to promise—’

  ‘I promise, I promise. Come on.’

  He followed her down the stairs and into the street, where she stopped and looked round.

  ‘Which one of these is your car?’ she asked.

  ‘None of them. I haven’t got a car.’

  ‘You haven’t— Oh. Right.’ She broke off eye contact, as if he’d replied to some tactless remark of hers by con­fessing he had leprosy. What the hell was it about not owning a motor vehicle that made people look at you like that? ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she went on, just a little too briskly. ‘We can walk. Or we could get a bus,’ she added, making it sound like some kind of mythical or fabulous beast that no grown-up could seriously be expected to believe in.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ he replied. ‘And while we’re wait­ing, you can explain a few things. For a start—’

  ‘Where’s the bus place? You know, where you get on them.’

  That was a good question; David hadn’t been on a bus for nearly ten years. But he seemed to remember seeing a bus-stop sign in Freemantle Avenue

  . ‘This way,’ he said, turning left. ‘Now, then—’

  ‘Are you sure it’s this way?’

  ‘Yes. Now, I hear what you say about your Uncle John and falling in the vat, but in that case, what are you doing here?’

  She looked away for a moment. ‘I explained all that,’ she said. ‘You’re Alex's cousin and best friend, and he’s Uncle John’s lawyer, and Uncle Bill’s too, and Uncle Bill’s just moved into the flat above yours—’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ David persisted. ‘But it still doesn’t really explain anything, does it? I mean, if I had a niece and she fell in a tank full of chemicals, I don’t think my first reaction would be My God, I’d better get her over to my lawyer's best friend, quick. I’d be thinking more along the lines of pulling her out, and towels.’

  He could feel her uncertainty; it was like standing next to a fire that had suddenly turned icy cold. ‘You’re missing the point, silly,’ she said. ‘I fell in the tank—’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘And you happened to be there, and I needed somewhere to have a shower, get all those horrid chem­icals off me. There aren’t any showers at Uncle John’s workshop.’

  David nodded. ‘I can see that there wouldn’t be. But why didn’t you just go home?’

  She frowned. ‘I live in Ipswich,’ she said. ‘Your flat was just a little bit closer.’

  ‘All right,’ David said, ‘why didn’t your Uncle John take you back to his house? He has got one, hasn’t he?’

  Her uncertainty was growing. ‘No, as a matter of fact he hasn’t, he sleeps in the workshop. He had to sell his house to set up the business.’

  David shook his head. He could see a tiny crack open­ing, just wide enough to get the tip of a wedge in. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘That still doesn’t explain why your Uncle John brought you here,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t he take you to Alex’s flat, for instance? He’s nearer to Ravenscourt Park than me, and I expect he’s got an absolutely fantastic state—of—the—art shower.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s broken.’ She started walking a little fast
er. He had no trouble keeping up. ‘There was a leak, water was going everywhere. And the plumber’s busy, can t come and look at it till Friday. Honestly, some­times I think it’d be easier getting a private audience with the Pope.’

  ‘All right,’ David said. ‘Let’s suppose for a moment that it’s all true, what you’ve been telling me. So why don’t I remember it that way?’

  She looked at him. ‘I was trying to be polite,’ she said. ‘But, if you insist. You’re the one who’s acting really strange, if you must know. But Uncle John said that’s only to be expected. Because of the fumes.’

  ‘Fumes?’

  ‘The fumes from the polymer tank. You breathed in rather a lot of them, and it’s a well-known fact that they can have a funny effect on people who aren’t used to them. Temporary amnesia. Delusions, even. It’s all right, the effects go away within forty-eight hours.’

  ‘So why aren’t you—?’

  ‘I’m used to them,’ she said quickly. ‘Chemistry student, remember? And besides, I’ve been hanging round Uncle’s workshop since I was little. You build up a tolerance.’

  They’d reached the bus stop. She made a show of reading the timetables.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ David persisted. ‘But it still doesn’t explain—’

  ‘Wrong bus,’ she interrupted. ‘We need a number seven. Or a number thirty-three.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain two things,’ David ground on, feeling as though he was wading through hip-deep snow. ‘One, why you need a whole new wardrobe—’

  She laughed. ‘You obviously don’t know what that stuff does to clothes. Fzzzz. all gone.’

  ‘And you haven’t got a change of clothes where you’re staying?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact I haven’t. I only came down to visit, I didn’t bring a bag or anything.’

  He could feel the snow getting thicker and stiffer; but it was still all false, it had no right being there. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Number two. If all this is true, what you’ve been telling me, how come you look exactly like the por­trait of a seventeenth-century witch in the National Gallery?’

  She stared at him, then giggled. ‘Say that again,’ she said.