16

It was still January in Oxford. Still dark and damp and about as welcoming as an unswept corner of a fishmonger’s van. At a quarter to five in the afternoon, the day’s wintery light had all but leached away, and the General was lit up like a Christmas tree. Matt parked his bike and let himself in through the staff entrance. He had barely exchanged pleasantries with the charge nurse in A&E when he heard a familiar, drawling, carping voice,

“Well, well, if it isn’t Mattanova.” Roberro emerged from the suture room with the buxom med student in tow (was she looking just a little bored with it all?), an insufferable, gloating grin twisting his arrogant mouth. He made a show of looking to the left and right of Matt before pouring on the astonishment. “What, no accompanying slag today?”

The buxom med student winced. It was astonishing how much Matt wanted to slap Roberro’s facetious face and turn it into moussaka. He could almost taste the satisfaction the pain in his hand would give him. But he didn’t. In the great scheme of things, restraint was what was called for here. Matt shrugged and said nothing. Roberro took his cue.

“So, popped in to collect your cards, have you, Desperate Danmor? AWOL without a doctor’s note.” Roberro tutted. “Not good, Danny boy. Sackable offence, I’ve heard.”

“Just as well that I’m about to leave for good, then, isn’t it?”

“Tragic,” Roberro beamed. “If I’d known, I would have organized a whip-round. Second thoughts, we are in a recession, and there’s not much you can buy for fifty pence these days, is there?”

“Comedy platinum as always, Giles,” Matt said, and enjoyed Roberro’s irritation at being called by his proper name. “Anyway, I’m glad I bumped into you, because I’ve got a little something for you. A small thank-you for all your help.”

Roberro’s smile slipped into quizzical doubt. Matt was betting on the man’s ego winning hands down in a fight with implausibility. Indeed, it took only three seconds of internal musing for Roberro to accept the laughably flimsy possibility that Matt was grateful for all the name-calling and general bad blood. After all, he’d been doing Matt a great psychological service by treating him like a dishcloth, hadn’t he?

Matt watched Roberro’s face as the little cogs of self-justification all meshed together. Informing proles of their place in life’s pecking order through derision and sarcasm was considered a genuine communication skill on planet Roberro; he’d said as much on more than one occasion. As such, Matt guessed that if it did cross his mind that this might be a wind-up, it would cross with the velocity of a speeding bullet to embed itself, well out of sight, in his egocentric, insight-free, pachyderm skin.

“Really?” Roberro asked, his face transforming into an expression of almost childlike expectation.

The image of a fisherman reeling in a big one popped satisfyingly into Matt’s head.

“It’s in my locker,” he said. “Look. I have to go and see Linda. Why don’t you meet me there in, say, five minutes? That’s if you’ve got the time.”

“Always got time for a colleague, Matt. You know that.” Roberro’s voice was syrup and treacle.

Matt ducked out before the nausea got too much to bear and headed for Hotel Services. On the way, he passed a porter transporting a wheelchair-bound patient along the corridor. The guy was fussing, tucking in a blanket around the patient’s knees. But as he passed, the porter looked up and put a hand out to grab Matt’s arm.

“Mike?” said the porter. “Wait a minute, will you?”

Matt stopped and stared. It was Flynn. He hadn’t recognised him, largely because Matt’s brain wasn’t geared towards putting two such improbable things as pushing a wheelchair and talking to a patient together under the label “WMD Flynn—job description.” Matt stared in speechless wonder as Flynn knelt and smiled at his patient, patting his arm. “Hang on a minute while I have a word with this chap, Mr. Spackman.”

Flynn pulled Matt to one side. When he spoke, it was in a sort of desperate whisper. “Mike, how’s it going?”

“Good,” Matt said. “It’s going good.” He couldn’t help noticing that the muscle in Flynn’s eyelid flickered constantly. “You?”

“Funny you should ask, because since that visit to the mortuary we did the other day, things haven’t been right.” Flynn glanced behind him nervously.

“What do you mean, things?” Matt asked.

“Weirdness is what I mean,” Flynn whispered. “I keep havin’ this horrible dream. Every night the same. There’s this thing… Ah, Christ, Mike, it’s all wrinkly and red with tufts of orange hair, and these big yellow eyes like lamps. Keeps bringing me food. Horrible food, with snails and bits of grub and roots and… Jesus.” Flynn shuddered. He looked on the verge of vomiting. “Says it’ll make me eat it if I don’t…” He rubbed the back and side of his neck. “Says he’ll do all sorts of thing to me if I don’t…”

“If you don’t what?” Matt demanded.

Flynn’s eyes showed an awful lot of white.

“This is where it goes off the dial. It says I must win porter of the month. Oh, it’s horrible, Mike, horrible.”

“I can imagine. Red skin with tufts of orange, you say?”

“What? No, not that. It’s this that’s horrible. This working, you know, properly.” He seemed on the verge of tears.

“You can do it, Flynn. I know it’s in you.”

Hope, desperate and pitiful, flared in Flynn’s expression. “You reckon I can, Mike? Do you?”

“I do, Flynn. I really do.”

“What do you think it is, Mike? In my dreams, I mean? Have you ever seen or heard of anything like that before?”

Matt was saved from lying through his teeth by Mr. Spackman’s wracking cough. Flynn flinched. “I’m coming, Mr. Spackman,” he said and rushed over. “Don’t want you to be late for the bladder nurse, do we?”

Flynn pushed the wheelchair down the corridor. Every now and then, he’d throw his head around to make sure that no one, or no thing, was following.

Matt allowed himself the slightest of satisfied smiles and sent a mental note. Thank you, George Hoblip.

The Uruk-hai cheerleader was in her office when Matt knocked.

A disembodied voice said, “Come in.” Matt pushed open the door. Linda Marsh ignored him and continued doing some late-afternoon curls with a heavy barbell. She finished her set and wiped the sweat off her neck with a hand towel before looking up with eyebrows arched. Even they looked muscular.

“Stone me, it’s the soddin’ invisible man.” Marsh let the barbell clunk heavily to the floor. “Nice of you to call in. We thought you’d been run over by a bloody bus. I’ve been hopin’ for an obituary so’s I could rearrange the rota. Where the soddin’ hell have you been?”

“Long story,” Matt said.

Linda Marsh snorted. “You know what? I’m not even interested. You had your chance, sonny Jim. Not my problem that you’ve done a Paris Hilton.”

“Paris Hilton?”

“Blown it, Danmor. D’ye need a soddin’ diagram?”

Matt smiled sweetly. “So, you won’t want my written resignation, then?”

“No, I will not. Collect your wages from general office and piss off.” Linda Marsh turned away.

“I wanted to thank you for giving me a chance,” Matt persisted, pouring on the soft soap. “Not many people would have done that.” It had worked with Roberro already; why not with a psychopath like Marsh?

“Don’t thank me.” Linda Marsh turned back around and glared down her nose at him. On her forearm, a huge vein the size of a child’s bicycle tyre became swollen with blood as she flexed her bicep. “Thank that lily-livered soddin’ Equal Opportunities Commission. You filled my quota of educationally challenged employees for this year, Danmor. The fact that I was proved one hundred bollockin’ percent right to have doubts gives me no satisfaction. Well, not much, anyway. From the look of things, leaving doesn’t seem to be bothering you that much.”

“Like I said, I am grateful. Though, you must admit, you did take advantage.” Matt lifted his own eyebrows, and sprinkled a pinch of chiding into his tone. “I was on all the worst shifts, and got all the crap jobs no one else wanted to do. That’s the way it is, I suppose.”

Linda Marsh drew herself up. It was like talking to an inverted Cornetto. “Too bloody true. And don’t you forget it. Someone has to do them jobs, Danmor. So why not the soddin’ imbeciles?”

“Why not, indeed,” Matt murmured with a fixed smile. “And while you’re at it, why not give them a nice yellow star to wear as well, just to make it easier for people to recognise them in the street?” He was surprised at how even his voice sounded.

“Yeah, well, there may be some mileage in that, too. I’ll speak with my managers.” Linda Marsh’s nostrils flared. “So, what’s next for you, Danmor? Burger bar? Mobile phone sales? Bin man?”

“Oh, I expect something will turn up,” Matt said, deflecting her vitriol. “I’m feeling lucky.”

“Better watch out in case Dopey and Happy get jealous.” Linda Marsh let out a croaky laugh that reminded Matt of tipping gravel onto corrugated iron. Announcing his impending exit had made her day, if not her year.

“Yeah,” Matt said and let it hang in the air while Linda Marsh stopped laughing at her own joke. It took a while. “So, anyway, I got you a leaving present. Mate of mine works in France for an exclusive designer. They’ve got this new scent coming out. Hasn’t hit the shops yet, but he sent me a sample and, well…I thought of you.”

Matt handed over a small and highly ornate glass bottle, decorated with a pink ribbon around the neck. Linda Marsh pulled out the stopper and inhaled. Her eyes lit up.

“Not bad. Not bad, at all. But I’m still not giving you a soddin’ reference.”

“Wouldn’t expect it,” Matt said and watched as she tipped the bottle up on her fingers, lifting her chin to apply some of the perfume to her throat. Matt, anticipating the move, had already taken a deep breath in and was holding it. He managed a strained “See you” before turning and hurrying out.

He’d taken two steps along the corridor when he bumped into Roberro.

“So? Where is it, then?” Roberro asked like a spoiled child at a birthday party.

Matt forced himself not to smile too much. “I left it with Linda. Enjoy.”

Roberro gave Matt a huge smile. The sort of smug predatory smile a pool-table hustler wore after he’d taken the local wannabe champ to the cleaners for two hundred quid. As he pushed his way past in the narrow corridor, Roberro coughed. Inside that cough, Matt heard him enunciate, “Loser.”

Matt didn’t take any more steps. In fact, he waited until Roberro pushed open the door to Linda Marsh’s office, then backtracked and craned his neck to listen.

“Danmor says he’s left me something. Bloody idiot is giving out leaving presents.”

Throaty laugh. “I know. He left me something too.”

“What a pathetic moron, I mean…ooh, what is that smell?”

“That’s his prezzy to me. Not bad, actually—.”

“Linda, I’ve never noticed until now how much your muscles gleamed under this artificial light—”

“It’s called Inflagrante.”

“The way your hair stays so stiff, even when you move your head—”

“Roberro, what the soddin’ hell’s the matter with you?”

“I’ve always liked really tight skirts—”

“Roberro, I’m soddin’ warning you.”

“Linda, has anyone ever told you that you’ve got hidden depths and that I’m just the deep-sea diver to explore them for you?”

“Come one step nearer, and I swear I’ll break your bloody legs.”

“Oh, Linda. You smell sooo good.”

“Do I? Well, here’s another aroma for you to try. It’s called essence of soddin’ PEPPER SPRAY.”

Matt walked away with a zipped-up smile of satisfaction curving his lips. Such was the matchmaker’s gift of bringing joy and happiness to people’s lives. As the noise of snapping furniture and Roberro’s screams of pain echoed along the corridor, he even started to whistle.

He went back to the porters’ locker room, removed all his stuff, and wandered back through to A&E. The buxom med student watched him with suspicion.

“There’s something different about you,” she said, looking him up and down.

He didn’t bother answering her. She knew it. He knew it. Oh, what the hell. Abruptly, he turned and leaned in close so that only she would hear what he had to say.

“Little bit of advice. That stinging sensation when you pee? It’s not due to overuse. I’d pay a little visit to the GUM clinic, if I were you. Oh, and stay away from the source. He’s pure, unadulterated filth, and you know what they say about mud sticking. Ring your tutor and tell him you want to change mentors. After this evening,” he looked up as two security men ran in the dirction of Hotel Services, “I’’m pretty sure he’ll understand.”

She stared at him in horror, a crimson blush spreading up from her throat as she mouthed wordless protestations. But she didn’t slap him. Instead, she turned away. He thought about putting his hand on her arm and asking if she was okay. Despite the well-packaged body, she was just a kid. But the touch never materialised. She had colluded with Roberro, after all. Even if, as Matt suspected, coercion had played some part in that, too.

She’d taken four steps before she stopped and pivoted. Her mascara had turned into dark wet clumps on her lower lids, and she looked embarrassed and miserable. She held things together enough to proffer a fluttering smile.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Don’t mention it,” Matt nodded. “I promise I won’t.”

Her smile widened. It was a great smile. Under different circumstances he might have returned that smile with interest. But there was unfinished business to see to, and so, instead, he waved to her and turned away.

There was no doubting the sense of satisfaction he’d derived from being able to return the compliments, with interest, to Roberro and Linda Marsh. However, one remaining dangling string needed tying off, and it was the one he was least looking forward to. Rimsplitter had been right. Despite all Matt’s procrastinations, it still all came down to a stark choice of the “Should I stay or should I go” variety.

Much as he’d have liked to believe that he could continue to play the hero, that wasn’t what he wanted. What he craved was that which he could never have, and it was time to confront that bald fact. Matt sighed. If only Kylah were here now, he could get it all over and done with.

“You rang?” Kylah said as she pushed open the main doors. She was wearing one of her better smiles, this one warm enough to toast marshmallows on.

Matt grinned and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Intuition,” she answered.

“Can you buy that at Harpy Nix, too?”

This time her smile was full of knowing, and warm enough to send his pulse up two notches. “I came to buy you that drink,” she said. “If you still want to?”

“I do,” Matt said, “but we need to talk first.”

“Here?”

Matt shook his head. “I know a place.”

It was morning on the alpine slopes beneath Arthur’s Pass, the morning warm and noisy with buzzing insects. Matt found himself desperately resisting the urge to burst into song about the hills being alive.

“This is an amazing spot,” Kylah said, sucking in the unsullied air.

It was, too. Just the place to stroll along, distracted by the jaw-dropping beauty of the scenery and the robin’s-egg sky, so that the real reason for them being there could simmer away on Matt’s back burner for a few moments longer. After all, there was no point rushing at disappointment. That was like hurrying to school on the day of the exam results knowing full well that, instead of revising King Lear, you’d actually watched all the second-series reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Everybody Loves Raymond on TV Gold.

“This is, without doubt, my favourite place in the world,” Matt mused. “It’s where I go to in my mind when I want to think.” He shook his head and let out a wry laugh. “Now I can actually come here any time I like, with the Aperio.”

“And have you thought?” Kylah asked.

“I’ve been doing nothing else.”

She turned and pierced him with one of her furnace gazes. “So?”

Matt looked at her. His face must have shown his confusion.

“What?” Kylah asked, and Matt thought she looked a little pink in the cheeks.

His pulse was drumming in his ears. She did have the most fantastic eyes.

He started walking again. It seemed to help. As did not looking at her for a minute. “Okay, I might as well come out with it. I’ve decided not to be a part of the DOF—”

He stopped and turned back. She hadn’t moved, but her features had crumpled. The distress and disappointment in her voice when she spoke took him utterly by surprise.

“But why?”

Matt shook his head and let it fall. “It’s tempting. Birrik and Kemoch are great guys, and I like your eccentric uncle too, it’s just…it’s just that I couldn’t stand being in New Thameswick or Hipposync or anywhere you were—”

“Oh.” Kylah looked at him with a face that was the definition of glum. Matt wanted to retrace his steps to get close to her, but somehow his legs had taken root. Amazing how a little word like “oh” could stop two grown people in their tracks.

This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. Why does she look so unhappy?

He didn’t have any answers. The script he’d rehearsed had Kylah feigning sympathetic understanding while mentally dancing a jig at the thought of being rid of him.

Still, Matt made himself finish what he wanted to say. “I couldn’t stand being in New Thameswick or Hipposync or anywhere you were, harbouring the futile hope that you and me…that we…” His mouth clamped shut. It was no good. He was bloody useless at this. He squeezed his eyes closed and looked away. “I have no right to even say this. We hardly know each other, and I’m an idiot and… Look, I’d rather forget the whole thing. Just stick that damned pentrievant back on my head and—”

Kylah took two steps forward to bridge the gap between them. Leaning in close, she put her finger on his lips to cut off his words. The gold flecks in her eyes sparkled. “Did you say ‘futile hope’?”

“Ysss,” Matt mumbled before pulling her finger away. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

She put her finger against his lips again. “Can you shut up for one minute? I like you, Matt,” she said in a low and tremulous voice. “I liked you the very first time I laid you out on the floor of the office.”

“Thnnks,” Matt said, frowning from behind her finger.

“You’re smart and funny and maddeningly humble, and okay, you think about things far too much, but I quite like that because it makes you vulnerable. And what’s more, you’re obviously one of us, which saves an awful lot of time in the travelling-between-the-two-existences scenario. But when a girl meets someone like you, she doesn’t raise her hopes too high. I mean, I’m very ordinary, and we both know that someone like you could have your pick of—”

“Will you stop saying stuff like that?” Matt said, pulling her hand away, but not letting it go. Surprising how strident his voice sounded through gritted teeth, too. He hadn’t meant to sound quite so vehement, but she’d said a couple of things that had pressed the spin cycle in his brain again. “Someone like you.” What the hell did that mean? He knew what it implied—either that she knew a lot more about him than she was letting on, or that somehow…somehow he was special to her.

No. No way.

That he could be special to anyone was a joke (unless you took into account a semi-insectoid priestess who needed to get inside his pants to distract him while she plotted to get him to top himself with a poisoned pendant). And then there was her continuous, coy insistence that she was “very ordinary.” That one definitely took the chocolate-coated Hobnob.

Ordinary?

He suddenly wanted to scream at her, but good manners prevailed and instead, he said, “I can’t have my pick of girls, okay? They scare me. Especially the really good-looking ones like you.” He paused before adding in a resigned, pleading tone, “So, please stop taking the mick; it’s not funny anymore.”

For a single moment, they looked at one another with identical frowns of bemused confusion. Had Cupid been up there—and who was to say he wasn’t, given how weirdly the rest of the week had gone—he’d have been tearing his curls out at their stupidity, while waiting, fingers drumming, for the first points on his archery scorecard.

But gradually, confusion gave way to dawning realisation. Perception, sputtering like a newly-lit candle in the draughty breeze of destiny, flickered into life and lit, at long last, a Catherine wheel of blazing understanding in both their heads.

But Kylah couldn’t resist the tiniest of teases.

“Is that why you came back to Uzturnsitstan?” she asked. Her hair was blowing in the soft breeze, excitement bloomed on her cheeks, her pupils jet-black pinpoints in the blue-gold of her amazing eyes.

“I’ve already told you, I just wanted to help,” Matt said. This close, she smelled wonderful.

“Tell me again.”

He sighed. “I came back because I couldn’t stand the thought of not being with you at the end, all right?”

It sounded crass and clumsy. Worse, it sounded completely mad. He’d never even been out with her. In fact, if you pared it down to the bare minimum, his desperately flimsy emotional premise was based on an unrequited infatuation stemming from nothing more than a couple of hurried conversations about attempted murder and a couple of perfunctory kisses—well, one perfunctory, the other literally mind-blowing. Still, they were not the ideal ingredients for a full-on meaningful relationship. Yet the honesty of the admission was like lifting a hundred-ton weight off his shoulders. “I had no plan. No idea of what I was going to do. Call me an idiot, but there it is.”

“You’re an idiot,” Kylah said, but her eyes glistened as she said it.

“I wanted to be there with you when the shit hit the fan, and sod the rest of it,” Matt added.

“You could have been killed.” Her voice had a new, husky edge to it.

“Umm, excuse me. I was killed,” Matt pointed out.

“But you still came back.”

“Some things are worth dying for.”

She smiled. He smiled. And then they were kissing to the sound of an obligatory choir of angels and fanfare of trumpets. At least, that’s what Matt heard in his head. When they quietened down, he was left with the strangest of feelings that for the first time ever, he knew his place in the world. Here, with Kylah.

Quite a bit later, after a very energetic forty minutes and much adjustment of clothing into a semblance of propriety, Matt said, “Right. I could do with that drink now.”

“It is thirsty work,” Kylah said.

That made Matt laugh out loud. He really liked this girl.

“Well, it is,” she said and pulled him to her again. “But we can come back here whenever you want. Give us a chance to get to know each other. Catch up on all those little secrets it takes years to learn.”

“What, like when I won the egg and spoon race at primary school?” Matt’s eyebrows came together in a sceptical scowl.

“Exactly. The stuff that makes you tick. I want to know all the gory details.”

“Even the one about the nurse and the hosepipe?”

“Mine involves a centaur and a… Never mind. Let’s stick to egg and spoon races, to start with.”

They held hands as they walked back across the meadow.

“What about you? You ever win anything?” It didn’t matter if she had or hadn’t. He simply wanted to hear her voice again.

Kylah shrugged. “I did represent my city-state in gymnastics.”

Matt’s eyebrows shot up.

“I was a champion, too, I’ll have you know. At one point, I could put my legs right over my shoulders.”

Matt half-stumbled as his knees gave out from under him. There was no denying it; sometimes, his vivid imagination was a curse.

“You okay?” Kylah asked.

“Never better,” he said, trying to swallow.

High above them a huge bird swooped, its shadow passing over their heads and racing across the meadow in front of them. Matt looked up to see the silhouette of a huge crowned eagle soaring majestically in the cloudless sky. Instead of an eagle’s piercing call, a gruff voice shouted something down to them. Matt looked up and waved. The eagle looped the loop.

“Is he musical in any way?” Kylah asked.

Matt almost swallowed his tongue. After he’d recovered and wiped his eyes, he said. “Rimsplitter? I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“Because every time he’s appeared since we’ve been here, he seems to be saying, ‘You lucky F in C.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

“Vaguely,” Matt said in a strangled voice, and turned his face away to suppress the squeal of hysterical laughter that threatened to emerge. “And one day, when we know each other a lot better, I’ll sing it to you.”

“Really,” Kylah said, pulling his head back around to search his eyes, and narrowing her own in a way that told him she knew damned well he was tugging at her lower appendage.

“Yes, one day. Soon…ish.” As if on cue, Matt’s stomach rumbled. “So, where shall we go for that drink? I quite fancy somewhere that does food, too.”

“I know this bar on the beach in Goa,” Kylah suggested.

“Goa? Sounds amazing.” Matt grinned. He could get used to this.

Kylah reached for the Aperio, fitted it to the tent flap and opened it onto a warm and balmy Konkan night.

“Do they take Visa, you think?” Matt asked as he crawled onto another continent.

“I don’t think they do. But knowing you, I expect you’ll find some money under the table,” she grinned.

“Yeah. You’re probably right,” he nodded.

On the other hand, they might not even ask a four-hundred-pound gorilla to pay at all.

You never know your luck.