“She knew what was important. We were going to do amazing fucking things. Amazing fucking things. And now she can’t.” The last bit he said to everyone. “They’re saving the wrong ones.”
Rosa’s body was taken for its parts, just like everyone else’s.
I didn’t see Aubrey anywhere. I couldn’t imagine her in black, only lying on a beach somewhere or climbing a snowy peak. A stock photo of health. But Aubrey was Rosa’s best friend, so she’ll have been there, maybe up at the front with Eleanor. I scanned the back of the congregation’s heads, wondering if any of them were members of Easton Grove. Would an ovum organi have saved Rosa? I’ve heard incredible feats of medicine, where even the most broken body has been almost two thirds replaced with ovum organi organs. Some premium members have four or five ova organi ready for use all at once, allowing them to drink, overdose, whatever. Live how they like. Maybe Rosa could have still been here, with Mike, if she’d had enough to invest.
After Luke, I did find love again.
I’ve loved and cried with each ovum organi, each new Nut I’ve met. I’ve watched so many grow and saw my husband’s face blossom beneath the fur in all of them even before he needed them. On the hardest days, locked in the bathroom, curled in the pit of the shower, I told myself that they weren’t dying. Not really. They were going to be with Art, who they loved, and that there would be another one on the way soon to help the good.
With each fresh Nut, Art became more and more affectionate, to all appearances forgetting that at some point he would consume them. Perhaps this brought him closer to them, as he knew that one day each would be just as much a part of him as all the Nuts before. As for me, I held them close from the beginning, bestowing on them all the kisses and embraces I’d give to any pure, innocent being. The loft, no longer an ovum organi quarantine, became a space for all the excess stuff that life affords. One day someone will come and take it away. It’s been so long since I went up there that I don’t even know what’s inside the boxes anymore. I don’t know who will be left to do that for me, when I’m gone. Who will divide up my life into “Keep”, “Donate”, and “Bin”? Who will decide what ends up disposed of with the rotting food and dust?
I spend more and more time now thinking about what comes after. I live in silence, and this silence will last longer than I will. I don’t know what else I could have done differently. I’m nearing the finish line but there’s no one else in the race.
Only me.
Mum’s binoculars are at home in my hands. I scan the horizon for a point of focus. My wrists ache from the weight of the leather and glass, so I push the viewfinders deep into my sockets, scanning the flurry of white for something dark, moving, feathered, but the sky is too bright. Too stark. The world is turning grey.
There are no birds left anyway. I know that now.
Beyond, the scatterers are still at work, parting the snow to sow the good numbers. Administering their long-term prescription. Is it hope, or is it duty? Their feet drag, their carts rattle and shake. They’re never old, they never make it that far. They’re probably no more than thirty. They look so tired.
There, there it is – a white van approaching with the ankh on its side. It slowly skirts the corners to avoid sliding on the ice and pulls up outside the house. The van leaves black tyre tracks tracing where it’s been, and the young men unloading the cardboard crate from the side doors leave slushy, wet footprints. Looking at the marks, you might think they’ve been dancing, turning and waltzing together in the snow.
They bring the box in for me, setting it down on the sofa in the living room. I sign my acceptance with a prick of my finger and they leave, locking the front door behind them. They won’t be back. That was their final visit, that’s what the letter said. This is my last daughter. I’m yesterday, and tomorrow there’s another way.
I secure the digital bolt and the ancient chain before returning to the living room, the old tattered blanket spread across the floor. The welcome patchwork that smells like all of her sisters, like family trees, like genetics, like love, like nurture, like the blood of all those who have been born and lost – and of me, still left, still remembering.
I lower myself slowly onto the chair opposite the crate, massaging my hands calmly with alcohol. They air dry on my lap, palms to the ceiling. I’m ready.
Nathan and Fia lied to me, you know. They’re never the same.
The day my second arrived I swore the face in the box didn’t belong to us. It was a mistake, they’d sent the wrong one. Where was the face I’d been dying to see? This one didn’t look like Nut. It didn’t move like her. She didn’t know me.
I called Easton Grove, I told them that it’d gone wrong and they needed to come and collect her or bring the other Nut back. But they didn’t. They sent around a member of staff to speak like Nathan and mix me up. Give me more tea.
I prayed for it to be a mistake. I prayed to whoever was listening to fix it all and bring back my daughter. I lay in bed and couldn’t move. But the days passed and nothing changed, and then this Nut picked up Art’s love of beef jerky, his fiddling with his ear when he was nervous. When she was five weeks old, she swallowed one of his pen lids and had to go back to the clinic, and after that we let her sleep in our room again. She was short-sighted, and would inspect her food up close for a few seconds before tasting it.
But beneath the face, her soul was the same. Nut was in there somewhere, expressing herself via a different flower. And when her time came to go and the next ovum organi arrived, I didn’t know whose face I wanted to see most, which of my babies. But this one was different again, her fur almost white, flecked with black like a snowy owl. From the very first day, I picked her up in my arms and fed her milk from a bottle, stroking her cheek as she sucked on the rubber teat.
Perhaps the best thing I ever did in my life was produce innocents with the capacity for so much selflessness. I’ve always been so excited to meet the next one. To see who she looked like, and get to know who she’d be. Waiting for one with wild red hair.
My babies took up more and more of my care as the years went by, and I wanted to go out less and less. Luckily the Grove arranged it so that I could work from home, and still the promotions came, regular as clockwork. Maybe Easton Grove’s development division put in a good word for me but I’m sure if it hadn’t been for my own good qualities I wouldn’t have got the new positions.
The problem was, by then I didn’t want any of it. My eyes had turned inward, and eventually Easton Grove gave up on me. I stopped hearing from them, and they stopped pushing. I was a disgrace, and if I couldn’t be the face that proved the programme was working then it was for the best that I stayed hidden. The press team could tell the world whatever they wanted about me and I wouldn’t disagree. I calculated my own little victories by telling the truth. By counting our ova organi, by reminding Art of how many we’ve consumed. In rituals. By touching myself in secret places every day to feel the parts which weren’t me and now are. By appreciating my ingredients. By reminding Art that we aren’t good or pure anymore, that we’re composite creatures.
A few weeks ago, I found an old magazine under the bed. It was nearly forty years old, from around the time when Easton Grove was in and out of the news for darker reasons. The magazine’s headline article accused staff of selecting members for shadier criteria than they made public. For vulnerability, impressionability, pliability. It made me laugh. Not Fia, Nathan, or any of them could’ve made me do something I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to scale the world. It took me longer than it should’ve to work it out, but really what I wanted all along was to bury myself deep where it’s warm and never come out. I won, they didn’t.
You never hear about the other members of the programme on the news anymore. After the Grove started to fragment, always apologising without actually apologising, they stopped taking on new members. They stopped inviting us back to the clinic, kept us all at a distance. Phone calls, and then letters. No one lives f
orever, but where have they all gone?
I take a pair of scissors and snip expertly at four safety tabs at the front of the box, unfolding the cardboard sleeves like the petals of a flower. Slowly, slowly, no hurry. Waiting is fine, I have all the time in the world to wait. Has she been listening to me telling her how she came to be? Why her whole world is here? I’ll tell her again when she’s in my arms.
It’s night now, and the room is as dark as an underground warren. If I lower my head, in the back of the cave I can just about see a huddled ball of grey fuzz, curling in on itself like an ammonite. And looking over her shoulder, a little face with my brown eyes, my turned-up nose, and a nervous smile. This is my last ovum organi, and she looks like me.
There have been so many faces, and I outlive all my children.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly (and this is a bit disturbing) I have to thank my cat, Juno, for being the most humanesque cat I could know, and for inspiring Nut’s movements and characteristics in everything she does. If it hadn’t been for Juno, Nut wouldn’t have been born, and this book would never have existed. I owe you a lot of tuna. A lot.
And then secondly, onto some deserving humanesque humans. A huge thank you to my agent, Ed Wilson, for bei`ng an endless ball of energy and taking on this weird story in his whirlwind of a world. Ed, thank you for not only guiding me to be a better storyteller, but for embracing the style and words that make me, me. I appreciate it more than you could know.
A thank you to the Angry Robot crew for helping me transform Composite Creatures into something that works. To Eleanor Teasdale, for believing in this story from the very beginning, for the expert advice, and for the kitten pictures. To Rohan Eason, for lending your pen to such a gorgeous and atmospheric cover illustration. And to Sam McQueen, Gemma Creffield, Rose Green, and Paul Simpson for all playing such an important part in bringing this book to life and keeping me on the straight and narrow. A huge warm hug and thank you to the whole Angry Robot author community too, for welcoming me into the fold.
A thank you to my readers and constant critics; Alistair Leadbetter for being the world’s speediest beta reader, to Anya Kiel for being a constant cheerleader and keeping my morale up when I questioned – oh – just about everything, and to Russell Jones for being the best writing and editing pal an author could have. Your endless feedback to my many projects has taught me so much over the years and I’ll always be so, so thankful for that.
And then a few of my favourite humans. Thank you to my friends and family for listening to me waffle on with my strange and twisted ideas.
And finally, to Ben. Without you, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to write anything like this. Every day, you’ve listened to me spin ideas or worry about tangled plot knots, and you’ve always listened and nodded sagely, even when I didn’t make sense. Your patience and love has helped me learn and grow, and with you by my side I know I’ll keep sprouting new buds and dark blooms. The biggest thanks go to you.
THE BATTLE OF THE TEACUP
It was a tiny place. A high street, a dozen or so houses on each side, a pub and a corner shop, a few other streets and lanes leading off the first but all in one direction only, and that was about it. A church at one end, a school at the other. Two street lamps. Nyquist stood at the head of the road, under one of the lamps, and he took an envelope from his suitcase. He drew out a set of photographs, and found one depicting the street. The edges of the image were faded and details were lost here and there, blurred over, but yes, it was the same location. In fact, the photograph had been taken from somewhere near this exact spot. And he was sure then, for the first time, that he had come to the right place: Hoxley-on-the-Hale.
He was nervous. What would he find here?
The rain had come and gone: a short but violent downpour, enough to soak him through and to drive people indoors. The street was deserted. He walked along, passing the shop and the pub, both closed, and the expanse of a village green with a circular pond and an oak tree that looked as old as the village itself. A maypole stood at the center of the green, its revelries long passed. The clock on the church tower crept towards six The cold set in deep and his breath silvered the air.
He crossed over a stone bridge. The waters of the river Hale passed beneath, and the church and its graveyard waited for him on the other side. He walked around the building, left to right. It was a small church. The tombstones were laid out without pattern, many of them cracked or fallen over, pushed up by the roots of trees. The newest addition seemed to be Gladys Coombes. She’d died in the spring of this year, aged 38. A fresh bunch of flowers lay at her graveside. The doors to the church were locked. Beyond the church the woods took up again; no more houses. He walked back over the bridge onto the high street. The pub was called The Swan With Two Necks. It would probably open up soon and he could see if they had a room available. And a drink. He sat down on a bench. He was tired and dirty, having traveled all day to get here. What could he do next? Perhaps one of the customers in the pub would help him? Yes, that was it, he’d ask everyone about the person he had to find. But then he thought again: would such a move be wise? Maybe it was best to play it tight.
Across the way a light came on in the downstairs room of a house.
Nyquist examined the photographs by the glow of the street lamp. Each was dark in places, or spotted with white dots, or blurred.
A village street.
A church.
A corner shop.
A field with a tower visible in the distance.
Two people standing outside a house. Male, female. Talking to each other, their faces turned from the camera.
Another man, older, mid-fifties. The face as subject matter: a portrait of sorts. But his features were slightly distorted in parts, smeared across the surface.
Six images, each one taken through the same damaged lens.
The church was the same church he had walked round, and the shop across the street was identical to the one in the photo. Featherstonehaugh’s Store. The letters were squashed and tiny, in order to fit on the board.
A pair of winter moths fluttered above his head: his thoughts taking flight.
Nyquist slid the photographs back into their envelope, all except for one, the image of the couple standing outside a house. Perhaps if he found this residence, it would give him a way forward. He stood up and walked from end of the high street to the other, checking each house in turn against the one in the image, but none of them matched.
He took the first of the side streets, nearest the school. It was called Hodgepodge Lane: just six houses and then open country, the meagre light of the village waning quickly into a gray landscape. None of the houses corresponded to the one in the photograph. He moved on, exploring each side street in turn. One of them, Pyke Road, was much longer than the others, allowing the village to continue up the gentle slopes of the valley. He walked up, looking into one tiny side street after another. He was about to give up and head back down to the village center, when at last he found the cottage he was looking for. He’d already passed it once. He held the photograph up to his eye line, to match each feature and decoration in turn. The house was called Yew Tree Cottage. Nyquist rapped the crow’s head knocker against the door.
It took a while. It took a long while. Until at last he heard someone moving around inside and a voice calling out, “Go away. No visitors today.”
Nyquist rapped again, louder this time. “Hello. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
Minutes passed. He was tempted to knock a third time, but then the door opened and a man peered out at him through a gap. One eye was visible.
“Yes, what do you want?”
“I’m trying to find someone.”
“There’s no one here to find.”
“You might be able to help. I was given this address.” It wasn’t quite true, but Nyquist needed to act.
The visible eye blinked a few times. “Who are you?”
“Can I come in, p
lease? It’s freezing out here, and I got caught in the rain.”
“Quickly then, before someone sees you!”
The door opened wider and the man grabbed Nyquist by the arm and pulled him inside, dragging him roughly into the hallway. The door closed immediately. The man’s face loomed close. “What were you doing out there? You shouldn’t be outside, not today.” He gestured to an inner doorway. “Well then, make yourself at home. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
The householder walked off towards the kitchen at the back of the house, where the kettle was already whistling. Nyquist entered the living room. It was softly lit by a standard lamp, and it took him a few moments to realize he wasn’t alone. A woman was sitting in an armchair, facing the radio. He nodded to her. She remained as she was, perfectly still, staring at the radio’s grille with eyes that never seemed to move. But the apparatus was silent: no voices, no music.
Nyquist coughed and looked around the room, taking in the sideboard complete with a set of decorative plates, a birdcage on a tall stand, a painting showing a dismal seascape. He went over to the fireplace and warmed his hands.
The woman sat in silence.
The clock on the mantel ticked gently.
He turned to the birdcage, peering through the bars at a blue and yellow budgerigar. He made a chirruping noise, but the bird was too busy examining itself in a small oval mirror.
He looked again at the woman: she was as still as before, staring, staring, staring.
The man who had let him in came into the room, carrying a teapot and cups on a tray. He put these down on a side table and poured Nyquist a cup of tea. Biscuits were offered. The woman in the chair was ignored. The two men sat adjacent to each other at a table and drank their tea and ate their custard creams.
Introductions were made: “We are the Bainbridges. Ian, and Hilda.” He nodded to the woman in the armchair, but she didn’t turn to look his way. “My wife.” He said it with a heavy heart.
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