… therefore, I urge you to take great care handling and administering the liquid. To spill even a drop would be wasteful, not to say dangerous. Be assured we are constantly monitoring the situation. You will be informed of any and all new developments regarding this issue.
A reminder that to hinder, delay or subvert Benedikt – in any way – is not permissible. Any such behaviour will instigate a review of your circumstances. This again is for your safety as well as necessary for Benedikt to perform his tasks to the best of his ability.
‘And then the usual reminder to keep the letterbox empty so that there’s no problem receiving the next delivery.’ Clovis Fowler carefully folds the letter, holding her small audience rapt.
The three people seated around her fall into their own private musings. Booming silence thickens the room. A wave of fear passes over Willa’s face and tears well up, despite her efforts to control them. The young man sitting opposite her, his leg draped over one of the cushioned arms of his chair, instinctively moves to comfort Willa, but Clovis, who leans against the mantelpiece, adjusts her position slightly, implying her disapproval. He settles back in the chair and turns away from Clovis.
‘Rafe,’ Clovis says to the young man. ‘Everything your father and I do is for your safety. I don’t perceive or accept any real danger in this message. So there’s no need to worry.’
Finn Fowler stands by an arched window with his arms folded. It’s barely noticeable that his jaw tightens while his face remains passive. His wife’s chatelaine mocks him, and the keys hanging from its chains sing a terrible chorus whenever she moves.
‘But that’s not true, is it Clovis?’ Rafe picks at a thread in the leather cushion.
‘It is true.’
He stands and faces her. They have the same auburn hair, the same high cheekbones and full lips, but all similarities end there. Rafe’s glare pierces the reproachful, examining regard of the woman he refuses to call ‘Mother’.
‘It’s a caution to be more careful. Nothing more,’ Clovis says.
‘And what if it’s not?’ A hint of panic cracks Rafe’s voice.
‘Are we going to die?’ Willa asks.
‘No one’s going to die.’ Clovis remains steady.
Rafe observes how small and delicate Willa looks. He notices she seeks solace from the white jade token that she fingers in her pocket and he winces at the memory.
‘How many phials do we have left?’ Finn finds his voice.
Clovis considers her response; normally she wouldn’t bother to answer him, but she needs to quash the rising panic that threatens to fill the room.
‘We have enough for now. And there’s Mockett to consider. Perhaps now you’ll be more appreciative of the efforts I’ve insisted he makes on our behalf.’ The hint of an accent floats softly through her speech, her voice remains steady.
How remarkable it is that Clovis appears unmoved. Her earlier private annoyance with the letter has evaporated. No – what Clovis feels is quite the opposite of fear. A satisfaction flows through her like the warmed whisky and honey her husband once prepared for her when she first arrived in this country, its burning sensation, trickling down her throat in sweet heat. Tonight she smells their fear and senses their unease. They each revealed their hand this evening. How badly they want to live! After all their bravado, all their efforts to convince her otherwise, they still crave life.
Remarkably, the Fowler household seems a typical one, and, in a way, they have fashioned their own quotidian lives. The house, though not a grand property, affords privacy and even a small measure of clout.
The street itself is quite dull considering its central London location. Magdalen Street supports no businesses, no convenience stores, not even a cafe or pub. As a key holder street, the people who walk its pavement do so only if they live in it. Each morning the residents disperse into the neighbouring streets anonymously, rushing to purchase their coffee on busier thoroughfares. Pasty-faced bankers and young, trendy professionals, a scattering of the semiretired who live out their last few years in east London before they retire to Kent – all these share the buildings of Magdalen.
It was an accident of fate that the Fowlers discovered this property, one that affords them a semblance of seclusion. When they first arrived in Bermondsey it was a god forsaken place, but Magdalen is a safe street now – as safe as any can be. Its transient nature is a boon to them, but that too was down to luck and not careful planning. No one asks questions of a familial nature in this corner of Bermondsey. No one asks questions at all, unless they’re lost tourists searching for what remains of the antique market.
This evening, behind the doors of Number 9 Magdalen Street, they speak aloud of phials and death. Each of them wants nothing more than to disperse, to retreat to their own private space, where they can discard their masks and allow this latest news to sink in properly.
They wait until Clovis leaves the room before they stir, then they watch her climb the stairs and hear her steps clipping down the hall to her office. Finn motions to Rafe and Willa to remain quiet, pointing upstairs, until he hears her office door close.
Clovis locks the door then pauses a moment with her back against its wide wooden frame. No, this can’t wait until tomorrow, she thinks. She removes the chatelaine and returns it to the safe. Standing at the window that offers a view of the back of the property, where the rooftop of Finn’s workroom hides beneath the snarled empty limbs of a tree, she searches on her phone for a name in her speeddial listing.
‘Hello, Clovis.’ Owen Mockett makes an effort to disguise his irritation.
‘I’m coming by.’
‘Now?’
‘It’s urgent.’
Mockett closes his eyes, summoning patience.
‘Of course. The letter. I’ll see you shortly.’
Downstairs, before she leaves, Clovis turns to the three people whose lives are entwined with hers, who, when they look at her, cannot conceal their impatience for her to go. The way the blood rushes to Finn’s face when he spots the car keys in her hand seals the coldness she feels.
Seated in her car, she’s certain they will search the house as they always do whenever she’s out. They will not find the phials. A splinter of a smile crosses her face. Clovis drives away secure and undaunted by the letter’s news.
She steers slowly through the portal of the Rotherhithe Tunnel. It’s like a claustrophobic carnival ride, this narrow road under the Thames, demanding the constant negotiation of oncoming vehicles that pass only inches away. She takes the sharp bend where it goes under the riverbed and presses the horn in frustration.
She checks the time with a conceited smile, knowing that Finn has already begun to search his workroom. Five minutes later, when she pulls up to a single-storey warehouse on Copenhagen Place, she is just as confident that Willa and Rafe will be riffling through every inch of her office. Their predictability bores her.
When Owen Mockett sees Clovis’s car on the security monitor he takes a deep breath and releases the gate. He stands by while she parks, and waits for her request for entry into the building. Once inside, she strides through the corridor with such supreme confidence that Mockett withers a bit inside. He dreads the sight of her, and yet he cannot look away. She doesn’t bother to press the second intercom, but instead waits until she hears the lock turn over – she knows he’s watching. She and Finn had argued bitterly about placing a security camera outside their house. She was for it but he insisted that it would attract attention and would look sorely out of place when no other house on their short street had one. She had allowed him this little victory.
The lab is spotless. The lighting is low tonight, relegated to one corner of the room where Mockett’s most powerful microscope is set. A row of small, glass sample-jars topped with black thermoset caps sit on the work counter, pristinely labelled. Clovis chooses one, holds it up to the light and turns to Mockett, who stands near, worrying a coin in his trouser pocket.
‘Rafe’s?’
‘Yes.’ He nods.
‘Sometimes …’ Clovis slides into the chair at Mockett’s desk and places her elbows on top of his papers, steepling her hands.
‘Sometimes, Mockett, I think your passion to reach our goal is not as great as mine – as once it was.’
‘Oh it is, I assure you, it is. But, as you know, I need to stay on top of the cosmetics or we lose funding.’
‘Yes, so you remind me whenever you’ve made no progress. But I haven’t driven to Limehouse on a freezing night to talk about that. I’m here about the letter. I’m taking your extra phials. You can keep two for your own use and one for experimentation.’
‘One? But, what about the project? I won’t be able to continue much longer with only one phial.’
‘Yes,’ she snaps. ‘You will. Until production is back to normal. Prepare them, please.’
Mockett stares at her. The first time Mockett saw Clovis Fowler he had been stunned by the image of her, the way her beauty commanded attention. It had been a blustery night; a strange tint of pink was cast against the grey, overcast sky, as though the heavens intended to complement her flaming hair. Mockett remembered the moment she turned her deep amber eyes on him, and how astonished he was by the way they perfectly matched the colour of her hair. She unsettled him then, as she does now.
‘Mockett.’
The sheer threat she enforces with a single word from her sensuous mouth discomfits him. As much as he hates these encounters, he simply enjoys looking at her. Though she is as polished as any, there’s still a quality to her that looks as if she belongs in the wild, and he often thinks of her as she was then, when it all began. The way she drank everything in. How hungry she was for the city, how she never shrank from the people, whose customs were so foreign to her. She took quickly to the utterly unique life on the Thames and wholly inhabited this country and its ways. How proud she was to sweep into his place of business with a command of the language. How she held sway over his wife. She turned heads, customers nodded when she entered. He remembers too when she first began to change and sometimes wondered what he’d missed, how he didn’t see it coming. Then the baby arrived, and it was clear to him that its presence seemed to repulse her, until … How very long ago that was.
‘Owen, for God’s sake. Stop leering at me.’
He flinches when she uses his given name.
He carefully wraps nine phials with Styrofoam sheets and places them into bubble pouches, then into a velvet pocket.
‘Can I offer you something? A drink of some kind?’ He feels he has to ask.
‘No. I’ll be on my way.’ She flashes a smile lacking any genuineness and waits for him to open the door.
‘Less cosmetics, more science, Mockett.’
‘It’s only a matter of time, Clovis.’
She stops abruptly at the door, and with her back to him says, ‘How ridiculous you sound.’
He returns to the security screens to make certain that she’s seated in her car. Her legs swing into the front seat and then she pauses to look up at the camera. He recoils from it, forgetting for a moment that she can’t see him. He grabs his phone and waits for Finn to answer.
‘She’s on her way.’
‘Got it. Thanks, Owen.’
Mockett leans back on his work counter for a moment. He thinks about what will happen the day Clovis discovers that he’s no longer keeping his agreement with her. Would it be so bad? She still needs me, he reasons.
He sets the alarms and walks through the dark laboratory, then enters another section of the building in which he’d built a large flat. It makes him feel more secure to sleep on the premises. He opens the fridge, places his hands on a cold beer and mutters to himself that he’ll be sorry tomorrow. Her visit has left him anxious, so tonight, at this moment, he doesn’t care about tomorrow.