HOW TO HELP

THINGS ARE BETTER BY evening. For one thing Donovan has arrived, making the Palace seem less shuttered, more open. The arrival of a newcomer is the oldest trick in the film-maker’s book. His shadow splits rooms in half; saloon doors flap behind him. Usually he proceeds to test loyalties, divide couples, perhaps even kill someone.

But Donovan’s presence is authorised, and he brings not foreboding but a holiday air. Dark-haired with gleaming olive skin, he’s sighted several times that day breezing through the Old Building and into the New. In his wake are fresh aftershave, flirtatiousness and fragments of energetic chat.

‘It was starting to feel rather hothouse-ish here.’ Gibby — never one to renege on a promise, even on days of high stress — is hammering at the boiler with a spanner. ‘Does it often get like this?’

Admin steps away from the flying rust. ‘I can’t recall. Every time we move premises, I seem to leave my memories of the previous place behind.’

‘Self-administered brainwashing to ensure patient confidentiality? Is “annual amnesia” in your job description?’

But Admin, like so many people, has no sense of humour when it comes to her vocation. ‘No, dear, the main requirement is a desire to help others.’ She looks a little prim. ‘Helpfulness is the most rewarding human instinct.’

More like a curse. Gibby straightens up and hears his back crack. Thrust on one at birth like bad circulation or a clubfoot. He hears the building start to roar into tepid life above him. ‘Now I really must get on,’ he says, sounding like a harried professional plumber.

‘Yes, of course, we’ve kept you too long.’ Admin follows him up the cellar steps at a respectful distance.

In the foyer Dr Mallory is reclining against a sputtering radiator, watching Donovan rummage in a large trunk. ‘The hero of the hour!’ she says brightly.

‘What’s he done?’ Gibby stares. Even Donovan’s white-linen buttocks seem to radiate a positive attitude.

‘Not him, you!’ Dr Mallory pats the radiator beside her curved hip in an almost inviting manner. ‘Things are warming up already.’

‘Nothing a tradesperson couldn’t do,’ mutters Gibby. Being praised for manly accomplishments in front of Dr Mallory’s fiancé makes him feel uneasy.

‘Found it!’ Donovan rears back from the trunk, his teeth flashing, brandishing a knife.

‘Arrgghh!’ Gibby leaps backwards (it’s been a fraught day) and ricochets off Dr Mallory’s chest.

‘Donovan, that should be in a protective cover,’ snaps Dr Mallory, effecting one of her swift changes from woman to gorgon. ‘Take it to the kitchen at once.’

Donovan appears admirably uncowed. Running his thumb professionally across the blade, he smiles beatifically at both his fiancée and Gibby. ‘The cooking demonstration will start at seven!’

‘Cooking?’ Gibby’s heart is still thumping in his chest. ‘I’ll be there,’ he says a little faintly. And at last he can take off up the stairs.

First landing, second landing — he’s nearly there. But everybody seems to want a little piece of Lux today: now Bright is standing in front of him, blocking the way to his room.

‘You’re here at last!’ Bright sounds almost aggrieved. ‘I’ve been waiting almost half an hour.’

‘Your choice,’ mutters Gibby. At least, he’s about to say this, but considering what he saw on the railway path this morning he’s less inclined to be anti-Bright. In fact, remembering the shock in Bright’s eyes and his white face as he moved quickly towards Lace — well, perhaps he’ll have to learn to be friendlier. ‘What is it?’ he sighs, skirting around Bright to get at least a little closer to his own bedroom door.

Bright spreads his hands. ‘It’s her.’ As he says this he becomes grey. Grey as the linoleum, grey as the thin steel bars covering the window behind him. ‘She told me what happened this morning. Every time she started to write on the bank, she began looking at the words in her head and they —’

‘Disappeared? Yes, she told me that.’ There’s a hint of competitiveness in Gibby’s voice, a touch of impatience. Don’t act as if you know more than I do; I knew her first.

‘Not just that.’ Bright looks helpless, almost frightened. ‘She said the words flared.’

‘Flared?’ Gibby flattens his hands against the door behind him.

‘Went up in flames.’ There’s a visible lump in Bright’s throat. ‘I told her it was probably nothing more than a migraine. When your vision sort of burns away in the middle.’

Gibby swallows. ‘It’s — possible.’ Is it good to reassure someone, if the reassurance verges on falsehood? Before fixing the boiler he’d spent half an hour with Lace, assuring her how difficult the Truth Bank task had been. ‘A nearly impossible exercise,’ he’d said, watching Lace scrub the mud from under her fingernails. ‘Especially on an empty stomach. And in those freezing temperatures. Everyone knows that hunger and cold slow down the brain.’

‘Cold? Hunger? That might have been it.’ Lace had looked at him the way Bright’s looking at him now. The way Gibby’s father looks, on the odd occasion that Mrs Lux makes a joke as she used to before her life shrank to a velour sofa and an empty glass. The way a dog stares at its bowl after the food has gone, for minutes on end. The hope-against-hope look, an ‘Everything’s-going-to-be-all-right’ look — with an unspoken question mark that makes Gibby’s heart fail.

‘Where is she now?’ he asks abruptly.

‘Sleeping.’ Bright bends double, as if in pain. ‘I love her,’ he says in a choked voice. ‘I love her.’

‘I know.’ Gibby manages to reach out, almost touching the ends of the fibres of Bright’s mohair jumper. He stands and stares at the tips of Bright’s hair, at the way they spike the air. He wants to say So do I but this isn’t fair. Instead he forces himself to tell another truth. ‘She loves you too.’

The mohair crackles at his fingertips, like a tiny bunch of electric shocks.

Bright straightens up. Instead of looking happy that Lace, the unattainable, has fallen in love with him, he looks worse than ever. The whites of his eyes are marked all over with tiny scarlet lines. ‘She doesn’t suffer from migraines, does she.’ He speaks almost in a groan. ‘She never has.’

Gibby watches the redness spill out of his eyes and over his lower lids, blotching his cheeks. So Geoffrey was right, and so was I. Telling the truth can be the most difficult thing in the world.

‘No.’ He almost whispers it. ‘No migraines.’

‘What the hell do we do? Bright looks wildly around. ‘Should we ring her uncle?’

For a brief moment Gibby glimpses Chummie at the end of the corridor, round-shouldered, chewing on a frayed plastic pen, dandruff on his lapels. ‘No,’ he says heavily. ‘He’ll be no help at all.’

‘And there’s no one else?’

‘Just us. Maybe she’d be better off in England again, in familiar surroundings? Let’s get her home and take it from there.’ One step at a time, his father nods. That’s the ticket. No doubt he’s talking about expanding markets, merging companies and moving up the career ladder; nonetheless, his approval makes Gibby feel more certain.

Bright squares his shoulders. ‘We’ll talk to Geoffrey, then. First thing tomorrow.’

Suddenly Gibby’s eyes are smarting with relief that at last it’s no longer just him. It’s us, it’s we, it’s Bright and Gibby together. ‘Tomorrow morning, yes. Geoffrey will help.’

‘Well, I should go. My writing —’ Bright begins drifting away down the corridor, still half-turning towards Gibby as if drawn by a magnet too strong to resist. ‘See you later!’ Already his voice is faint, barriered off, like something living shut in a jar with the lid screwed on tightly.

Back in Gibby’s room, which is almost as bare as the day he arrived, his work is also waiting. Here are the diagrams you started for this — and the equations that might solve the acoustic problems for that —

‘Later,’ he promises, shutting the notebooks, patting them, then leaving them. He lies on the bed and stares at the familiar ceiling: the flyspecks shaped like the Ace of Spades, the splayed pink light shade, and the exposed bulb with its central brown bruise.

THE PEOPLE RESTORER.

He draws it up out of the ground of his mind. It’s not made of glass, or plastic, or any type of resin. It’s soft and pliable, able to accommodate the quiet breathing of the person sheltering inside. And it’s opaque, so an onlooker will see only the dusky-beige walls pulsing like lungs. No one knows what the interior is like, except Gibby, its inventor, and the person inside: the fragile person, the skeletal and weak person, the oppressed or the splintered, someone who has been through a war or seen something so terrible they’re afraid to close their eyes at night for fear it will replay in their heads.

What about the entrance? The door can be pushed aside like a curtain: no hinges, handle, or anything metallic that might be a reminder of weapons or traffic accidents. When the door is open, the light that briefly slants across the floor is more intense than sunlight but gentler than candlelight. It won’t strain the eyeballs or irritate the memory. When you’re in the Restorer, opening your eyes and closing them feels like the same thing. It’s suspension without suspense, it’s falling without the moment of impact. Best of all, when the door is closed no one can get to you. Take your time! Here, in the People Restorer, you’re safe. You can stay as long as you want to, and when you’re ready to step out you can look without wincing, touch without flinching. You’re whole again.

The People Restorer. Gibby breathes quietly, in and out, imagining. It would be the finest achievement of a famous man, Dr Gibby Lux, inventor, scholar, philanthropist. But right now he’s only twenty years old, staring at the ceiling, wanting to keep someone safe.