by Rebecca Ward
SATURDAY
She tiptoes out of Reed’s room knowing that she has a small window of time to get her things and leave without disturbing him or Sam. She gets her backpack from under her bed and creeps down the stairs. Sam is asleep in the library chair snoring loudly, a half-drunk bottle of whiskey by his feet. She puts the letters on the kitchen table and leaves, closing the door to Populus behind her. She knows she has to leave them. She is no good for them, no good for anyone.
There has been a night of civil unrest in reaction to the shooting. The remains of fires burn on corners where hoardings have been ripped down and set alight. The smell of charred wood and burned plastic hangs in the air. Graffiti is scrawled across official buildings. Shops have been looted for the little they have and street lamps have been smashed. It smacks of a job not yet finished. The anger has yet to be satiated by these acts of destruction. The shooting has sent everyone into free fall.
Curtains are drawn, blinds down. Bodi has the empty streets to herself. Her boots crunch down on broken glass. It is barely a week since she walked through Green Park and Bodi, and her city, are unrecognisable from their earlier selves.
She keeps to side roads and out of sight of the police, processing the previous day’s events. Her sadness overwhelms her but a new emotion is taking over. Anger. She knows it is her decision to leave. If she had stayed then she, Sam and Reed would have muddled through somehow as long as she learned to live without her mum. But Balt telling her they would no longer help to find Ruby is all the incentive she needs to leave Populus. She is not giving up on her mum yet especially now she knows she is alive. Someone has to fight for her and Bodi is the only one on the planet with the will to do it.
She heads to the one place she has left to go. The sun is nearly up when she reaches the house. She can hear movement in the kitchen and she knocks on the door of the service entrance. It is opened a crack and Jasmeet’s face peers out. She slides the chain across and hurries Bodi through to the kitchen and then into her room. She sits her on the immaculate bed, everything in exactly the same place as the last time she had been there. Jasmeet locks the door behind her as she leaves.
The next thing Bodi knows, a shocked looking Rose is shaking her awake. Rose pushes the sleeves on up Bodi’s top and looks at her bloodied forearms. Jasmeet stands by her holding a first aid kit.
‘I’m fine, honestly.’ Bodi sits up, pushing her sleeves down again.
‘What are you doing here Boudicca? What happened to you?’ Rose says.
‘I got into a fight with some trees.’ She rubs the sleep from her dark eyes.
‘You know you can’t be here.’
‘I know and I’m sorry. But really, I have absolutely nowhere else to go in the whole world. This is it. This is my last resort.’
‘Populus?’
‘I don’t know if you heard a little shooting yesterday, up at Hampstead? I was there. In fact, I think it was my fault.’
Rose looks aghast.
‘I’m not 100% on that last point by the way. I’ve got my theories.’ Bodi taps the side of her head.
Rose is obviously not in the mood for her dry humour and Bodi isn’t quite sure why it is coming out like that. She intended to be polite and gracious and charm her way into her aunt’s good graces.
‘So you thought you’d come here? To the home of the head of the S.I.C.? I thought you were a bright girl.’
‘Well, when you put it like that! Probably not the greatest plan known to man…’ Bodi laughs. The absurdity of it all has caught up with her and she is feeling slightly manic. ‘Is he here, your husband?’ she asks.
‘No, he’s been at work all night and won’t be home soon. There’s been some major trouble on the streets. Well, it would seem you know all about that. Jasmeet, clean clothes please for my niece.’ Jasmeet goes out of the room and returns with some white underwear and a grey cashmere tracksuit. It is the luxury version of what Ruby had been wearing the day before. ‘Jasmeet will wash your things. Leave everything else here when you’ve changed and join me upstairs. Jasmeet will show you the way.’ Jasmeet picks up Bodi’s bag and takes it out of the room.
Bodi strips down and gets in the tiny shower. It has been so long since she has stood under a steady stream of hot water, it feels like a delicious indulgence. She lets the water flow over her for a few minutes and then begins scrubbing the grime away. She examines the grazes on her arms, a smarting reminder of yesterday. Rose’s clothes feel extremely soft and smell clean and fresh. Bodi realises that she must smell really bad, a major assault to the senses in a house like this, whereas at Sam’s she has just contributed to the general male funk.
Fresh faced and with her damp hair trailing down her back she goes into the kitchen where Jasmeet hands her a bowl of cereal and a glass of fresh orange juice. She devours it in seconds. She has been brought up with better manners than this but she hasn’t eaten for hours. ‘Scrummy,’ she garbles, with a mouth full of food.
‘Miss.’ Jasmeet walks out of the room and Bodi follows her. At the top of the stairs they arrive at the hallway where Bodi first met Rose, a few days before. Jasmeet smiles and points towards a set of doors. ‘Please.’
Bodi thanks her, ‘Shukria Jasmeet.’
Bodi walks into the large drawing room. This is not a lounge or a sitting room, it is definitely a drawing room. Pale pink blinds barely keep the sun off huge chesterfield sofas drowning in cushions. A large, upholstered ottoman holds vintage copies of Vogue and Country Life laid out in neat lines and a small fire burns in a huge grate. The heady smell of hyacinths fills the space. Bodi feels immeasurably out of place. Rose gestures for her to sit at the end of her long sofa. A silver tray holds a coffee pot and Rose pours some for Bodi in a white china cup with a gold trim. It shakes in its saucer when Bodi takes it from her. She places it on her knee to steady it. She can’t relax and sits upright and awkward on the edge of the sofa. For a room that is meant for lounging it is impossible to do anything but perch nervously like a debutante about to be presented to royalty. Bodi stares round the room taking in the paintings and photographs, the objets d’art and ephemera of another world.
‘You have a very nice home,’ Bodi says.
‘Thank you Boudicca. That’s kind of you to say,’ Rose smiles.
‘Is it okay for me to be here?’
‘For now, yes. But do keep away from the windows, the guards are on red alert so are overly tetchy. And you will need to keep to downstairs. Thomas never goes below stairs and you already know Arthur so that shouldn’t be a problem.’
‘Arthur?’
‘My driver. He carried you here when you were ill.’
‘Oh right.’ Bodi looks round again. ‘You wouldn’t think two sisters could live such different lives.’
‘Not so different.’
‘Really?’ Bodi doesn’t understand. Her aunt seems to have all the trappings of a happy life.
‘Both trapped in circumstances beyond our control.’
‘Though one looks like this!’
‘Yes, one looks like this.’ Rose said, resigned.
Bodi gets up and walks round the room. She picks up some silver-framed photographs. Most are posed, stiff portraits. Her uncle looks heavy set, bald with the requisite TrueSec moustache. They look far from a couple in love. More like actors playing the role of husband and wife.
‘Got any kids? Any cousins I didn’t know about?’ Bodi asks, searching for photos of children.
‘No we don’t have any children.’ Rose’s voice catches. ‘But such is life, it’s not meant to be.’ It sounds to Bodi like a well-worn line.
Bodi picks up a small frame, hidden at the back of a group of picture frames. It shows a woman in a neat twin set and trousers with huge brimmed hat and sunglasses on, a large drink in her hand, she is forcing a smile. At her feet two small red headed toddlers sit on a blanket. Bodi picks it up and stares at it, turning it to Rose. ‘You and Mum?’ Rose nods.
‘And our mother.’
>
‘She looks familiar.’ Bodi squints at it. She can’t place her. ‘Maybe it’s just the family resemblance. Was she nice?’
‘Is. And no, not especially. We were mostly an inconvenience for her.’
‘Guess I won’t be running to her for help then?’
‘No I wouldn’t advise that.’ Rose gets up and takes the photograph from Bodi. ‘I haven’t looked at this for years. Well properly anyway. Daddy took that photograph. He’s not with us anymore unfortunately. He was a sweet man. We were inseparable when we were little, your mum and I.’
‘And when you were older.’
Rose looks confused.
Bodi continues. ‘The photograph, of mum climbing the Boudicca statue on Westminster Bridge, I saw you in it too.’
Rose laughs. ‘Oh my, that! Well needless to say my rebellious phase didn’t last long. One look at that photo and I was put back in my place by mother. But Ruby, well she wasn’t going to be told what to do. She was never going to tow the party line. That day was nearly the last time that I saw her. It was like half of me was taken away when she left for good.’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘We met just after you were born. I didn’t even know that she was pregnant. She got word to me that she wanted to meet so we met in a café and there you were. She had you attached to her in an old Indian sling and I couldn’t see you at first hidden away in all that fabric but when you woke up she gave you to me to hold and you were the most beautiful baby I had ever seen.’ Rose smiles, wistful for that day. ‘Mother got wind of me seeing her and that was it, the last time I saw my sister.’
‘How did she find out?’ Bodi asks.
‘Oh, she has her ways, believe me. The less you know about that the better.’ Rose puts the photograph back behind the other frames. ‘So did you get to see Ruby?’
‘She was there. I saw her very briefly, but they were moving her on to somewhere else. And I couldn’t follow her because she was taken away in an S.I.C. van and well, then the shooting.’ Bodi stops and takes a breath. ‘So I don’t know, is there anything else you can do? Can you go back to whoever gave you the information before?’
Rose shakes her head. ‘Those bridges are burned I’m afraid.’
‘It’s so frustrating. Selfishly, I want mum back so badly. But from what I’ve learnt over this past week, there’s a part of me that wonders does it make any difference if she is in prison? Is it right that she’s there now for things that happened so long ago? I don’t know. I’ve come to grasp the reality of what she was caught up in. We wouldn’t have been in hiding all these years otherwise. Populus did some terrible things.’
‘We were very young Boudicca, not much older than you are now. Ruby was so idealistic and she had a good heart. But she was also naïve and got too deep into something that was very…seductive. Everything moved at such great pace around Populus. By the time she understood the consequences of her actions it was too late, she had no choice but to stay with them. They were the only ones around to protect her. Even when I saw her with you as a baby she knew she had to get you away from them but she was worried how you were going to live. I couldn’t help her at the time. I only wish I could have, but I didn’t have any of my own money and my life went from being controlled by my mother to my husband.’
‘But you managed to get out without consequences.’
‘I was never really ‘in’ to begin with. I went along for the ride a few times, but I didn’t have the passion for change that your mum had. I didn’t like to rock the boat and Ruby was so busy rallying against our upbringing that I pretty much went entirely the other way to compensate.’
‘And now this?’ Bodi gestures round the room.
Rose shrugs. ‘There are two sides to every coin.’ She looks at her watch. ‘I think we need to get you back downstairs. Thomas could be home at any minute.’
‘But I can’t just sit there hiding. I need to do something. Something about Mum or Evan. The boy who got shot.’
‘Look what happens when you go off without thinking things through. And it’s not safe out there on the streets. Things are really starting to get dangerous. It’s like history repeating itself.’
‘Balt started it again. I think he’s determined to see it through this time.’
‘The problem with leaders, of any kind, is that they rarely do anything for the good of anyone but themselves.’ Rose said conclusively.
Rose ushers Bodi downstairs to Jasmeet’s room. Next to her empty backpack Jasmeet has laid out the Map of Inspiration. Rose leans over it, smiling.
‘Still worshipping her ‘Gods of Inspiration’ I see! She used to have tonnes of notebooks like this when we were teenagers that she had to hide from mother. When we went to bed she used to tell me the stories behind each of her heroes. I always wanted to be as passionate about something as she was but it just wasn’t in me. She absorbed everything around her and searched for the light and the righteous in the world, and as a consequence she glowed. I was a dim candle to her beacon. Only so much light to go around I suppose.’ Rose runs her fingers over some of the images, enjoying the nostalgia. ‘I’d forgotten about this. I think I have one of her old books somewhere. I’ll see if I can find it for you.’
A car door slams making Rose and Bodi jump and Rose leaves the room hurriedly. The lock clicks behind her. While the city rages around them Bodi is locked in a basement with nothing but time to think about what to do next.
Bodi takes a step back from the Map of Inspiration and stares hard trying to see a pattern or a bigger image. She always thought that it held secrets beyond the heroes and poems and drawings. That it could give her the answers she is looking for. She tries to mentally impose some different orders on there – the old London Underground map, her vague knowledge of astronomy, capital cities of the world, picking out the initials of all the famous faces to try to make words, picking out the names of places within the song lyrics or poems, looking for hidden objects in the paintings. She had done this a million times before when she was growing up. With only old records to listen to and a few books she knew backwards, she had to find some way to amuse herself during long evenings. Every so often her mum would add an image or poem by another idol and Bodi would see it as a new clue to open up this hidden world. Deep down she never really wanted to solve the mystery, if there had ever been one, because once the secret was revealed the map would return to what it was – a tattered, old poster covered in a collage of magazine clippings and the whims of a woman in hiding. Without the mystery solved, it always had another level to it.
There is no piano music this time. Raised voices carry through the ceiling above her, the thud of heavy footsteps. Bodi sits in silence, making notes, moving letters round, drawing shapes created by the placing of the images, trying to connect the dots. Poems she knows by heart she dissects to a point where they make no sense and become words swilling round her head like an overflowing bathtub. Images of Ruby and their life together blend with words on top of snippets of music on top of paintings on top of photographs. This jigsaw has so many layers and ill-fitting pieces it is impossible to make it work.
Bodi stops. What question is she trying to answer? Does she really think that there is something hidden in this that can bring her mum back to her? Is she looking for justification for the things Ruby has done when she was in Populus? Is she trying to understand her own actions of the past week? Or is she clutching at straws at a time when she has nothing and no one? She grabs the Map and throws it across the room. There is no great moral tale waiting to be revealed, it is simply her mother’s fancy, which should be taken for what it is: memories of another, simpler time.
Doors slam overhead and the car starts again. At least the coast is clear for a little longer. Jasmeet opens her door and Bodi sits with her in the kitchen. A tray with a small salad, a green juice and bowl of pills sits ready to go to Rose upstairs. Jasmeet ushers Bodi to sit down at the counter while she takes Rose what seems a very
measly meal for someone with means. Bodi tucks in to the hearty vegetable soup and crusty bread and butter that is in front of her. While she is here she intends to build up her strength. It is only a matter of time before she is homeless again. She won’t be able to stay here and the reality is she doesn’t want to. She feels more confined here than when she was in hiding with her mum.
Jasmeet returns and smiles at her empty bowl and clean plate. She pats her on the back. Jasmeet holds up the saucepan of soup offering Bodi more but she shakes her head. She indicates that Rose is resting, acting swallowing some pills and putting her head to one side on her closed hands. While Jasmeet clears the kitchen, despite Bodi’s protestations, she tiptoes up the stairs to explore. With Rose out for the count, her husband gone and Jasmeet busy with chores this is her opportunity to see if she can find out anything from Thomas’s study. She reckons he is the kind of man to have a study at home despite having a whole floor to himself at work.
There are only a couple of doors left to try on the ground floor. One leads to a smaller room decorated with feminine florals and blousy prints. This must be Rose’s retreat. It is somewhere Bodi wants to explore, she is keen to understand her aunt more and more as her barriers fall, but there isn’t enough time to go down that particular rabbit hole today. She goes across the hall and finds what she is looking for. The stark cold masculinity of her uncle’s office. A huge glass desk rests on polished chrome legs. A black leather chair sits next to that on top of a single huge grey rug trimmed at the edge with grey leather. Nothing hangs on the flat, white walls except a brutal oil painting of speared bull, red paint drips nearly the full length of the canvas. ‘Cheery,’ Bodi remarks. Metal blinds let in slithers of afternoon light which splay across the room. A bank of cupboards run across one entire wall but with no discernible way to open them.