The gatehouse was always cold and she hadn’t had any time to adjust, autumn having suddenly arrived over the weekend. She didn’t usually have to spend too long there. She had all of her identification checked and, after the first six visits, had remembered to leave her mobile outside. Today it was in the glove compartment of Mariana’s car which didn’t have gloves in it, or anything else. The entire car was so clean and bare that Shona felt she had dirtied it just by being in there and had decided she would take it through the car wash before returning it. It was a nice change from trains and taxis.
Now, with her presence checked and noted, she sat on a cold chair in a colder room to wait for an escort. Her canvas bag warmed her lap a little. Officers pressed the buzzer on one door and, if the other was closed, it would open. If it was open, they would hesitate self-consciously in front of the camera.
At the glass-enclosed office they would slip coloured discs into the hole and get a set of keys, or return the keys and clip the discs back on a key ring hanging off their belt. The men tended to be older than the women but there wasn’t a uniform look to the build or faces of the stream of people. That had always surprised Shona, expecting to be able to recognise a physical sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’. It was only the clothes which signalled who belonged where, and the guilty verdict.
‘When the gods intervene, it is love that wins, not justice.’ Shona had sent the essay on Apollo to Rob the day before, but she hadn’t stopped thinking about it. The more she discovered the more she recognised him: the bearer of prophecy, healing, truth and light, the classic beardless athletic youth, lover of men and women. It felt as if she was reading about Kallu. It was stupid, but she couldn’t shake the ways they linked. The bringer of life, and death too. Murderer of Achilles, the god who cursed Cassandra, who, together with his hunter twin, Artemis, had slaughtered Niobe’s children.
Shona shivered, rubbed her gloved hands together and stood up again. She had to wait until one of the three women and two men decided to talk to her, even though they saw her straight away. The older woman, long grey hair strung back, lifted her eyebrows.
‘I was wondering when my escort will be here,’ said Shona.
‘I’ll check.’
Shona sat down again. This was the third time of checking but this was part of being in prison, for visitors as well as inmates.
She’d worried about leaving the house empty. She’d kept the front door bolted and taken the back door key, hoping Maynard didn’t have a copy. Every time she left the house to take Jude to and from school she wondered whether she would get back in or would Maynard have changed the locks. She would rather not have come today but it wasn’t an appointment that was easy to change.
The far door opened: ‘Marks!’
She responded to her name and followed the officer through the door. He didn’t look at her. There were a lot of officers here that seemed to believe that a prisoner should be isolated from the world for the duration of their punishment. His hair was clipped short, greying around the ears. His jacket stretched slightly across the back as he unlocked and locked each gate and door they passed through. Shona thought about the stress on his wrists of such repetitive movement, rubbing her own wrists in sympathy.
The high fences were topped with old-fashioned and unnecessary-looking tumbling razor wire, each building with enough space around it for the wind to carve circles in the dust; so much air out there and so little in the overheated buildings.
He opened the large outer door, locked it, opened the smaller inner door, locked it. Shona was left in her usual room. She knew where the panic button was, the nearest prison officer, the procedures for all types of crisis. What scared her was not what might happen to her but the possibility that she wouldn’t ever leave. With relief that she was finally in, she emptied her bag onto the table.
Jimmy strutted past the officer, scrapbook and notebook under his arm. A recent haircut revealed his heavily lined forehead as well as the pattern of hairless scars, but he looked relaxed and happy. The blue jogging suit was clean, which was always a good sign. The officer closed the door.
He looked at his watch. ‘Morning.’
‘It’s not my fault I’m late.’ Shona smiled. ‘You’re looking better.’
‘New mattress.’ Jimmy stretched his arms in a cartoon fashion above his head. ‘I’ve been moved to the new block they built. My own TV, toilet, it’s brilliant.’ He leaned over the table and lowered his voice. ‘Built like a piece of shit for that kind of money, though. If they asked us, we could give them a list of hundreds of faults. It won’t even be standing in ten years. I could be out and away in less than an hour.’ He sat up again. ‘But why would I want to?’
Shona fiddled with her pen. ‘You sound quite settled for someone who’s nearly out.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m just enjoying the last few weeks of being fed and clothed. Parole is never certain until you’re running out the gate.’ He pulled at the jogging top. ‘Can’t wait to wear something without zips. Anyway, you’re nearly sacked as my solicitor, my girl, so what is your parting gift?’ He opened his notebook and took one of the spare pens she had put on the table.
‘They’re all for you.’ She pushed the books towards him. ‘Two on della Francesca, one on Van der Goes.’
‘No Reni?’ he said.
‘Those weighed a ton, and they’re expensive too,’ she said. ‘I think you mean thanks.’
He grinned. ‘Thanks, Shona. You’re my favourite niece. Only, but favourite all the same.’
‘How are you going to carry them all out? You’ll need a trunk.’
‘Ah, ask and you shall receive.’
He lifted his hand to the scars on his head as he flicked through the plates. Shona sat back, watching him. Considering he’d been sentenced for ripping off little old ladies by undervaluing their family art works, she had never been surprised that he only asked for books on painters. If she’d known what weights she’d shift over the years, she might not have agreed so readily. She hadn’t been involved in his defence, hadn’t even attended his trial, it being when it was. But it hadn’t been the first. The last time she had been in a room with her mother, her uncle and Maynard was at her own wedding reception. Jimmy had kept a low profile after that and since this last sentence her mother had disowned him, for good this time apparently. Maynard refused to hear his name spoken. Shona had missed him, her funny, complicated uncle.
At seventy-two he looked at least fifteen years younger, his eyes bright and hair still thick and dark. His mouth drooped a little at the sides when he was concentrating, but in conversation he always looked a little amused.
Shona checked her watch. ‘Really, are you all sorted for when you leave? Do you need somewhere to live, or need a lift?’
He waved his hand. ‘All sorted.’
‘I can pick you up.’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll get my address to you when I’m settled.’ He kept his head down but she was sure he was grinning. The smile faded. ‘Your mum never visited.’
Shona adjusted her bag on the table. ‘No. She still doesn’t go out much.’ She opened a book and flicked through it.
‘No.’ He looked up. ‘Do you think she’d like to hear from me?’
Shona looked up from the open book. ‘Yes. Write to her. It can’t hurt.’
He looked down again but Shona guessed he wasn’t concentrating any more.
‘Do you have a favourite?’
‘So many. There is so much art in the world that I would kill to hold in my hands and just breathe it in. And then, I’ve seen so many paintings of things that the painter didn’t believe in. You can tell in every stroke.’ He narrowed his hand as if it was holding a paintbrush. ‘Art is fantasy, life is fantasy and politics is the biggest fantastical invention of all. I’ll stick with art, I think, where I can see the lies.’
‘Is this research?’ she asked quietly. ‘Are you going back into the same kind of business?’
‘Business?’ He laughed. ‘Shona, such euphemisms.’
‘My mother—’
His eyes flickered. ‘Don’t. Some things can wait.’
Shona picked up her papers and pens and slowly started to put them back in her bag. ‘So you definitely have somewhere to go? They’re not going to find an excuse to keep you in here?’
‘Six weeks and I’m out, don’t you worry about that.’ He smiled. It nearly reached his eyes. ‘How’s Maynard?’
Shona shrugged. ‘Same as ever.’
‘He’s got a lot going for him, but you’re right not to trust him.’
‘You know why I don’t.’
‘But that’s not what I mean. It’s not about the baby. You need to get a divorce and move as far away as you can.’
‘Why? It’s my house. I’m staying, whatever he thinks, and he can leave me whenever he likes.’
‘And he won’t. You’re the one who has to take control of this, Shona. He’ll still have to see Cerys and all of that stuff but you need to put some distance between him and you for your own good.’
‘Emotionally?’
‘Don’t be stupid. He’ll drag you down when he falls, and he’s got a long way to plummet.’
‘I’m not going, and he’s not dragging me anywhere.’
‘There’s something he’s still after from you, Shona. I know more than you think.’ Jimmy frowned. ‘Sometimes being stubborn is the most fucking stupid thing you can be. You should know that, you’ve had enough practice.’
Shona snapped, ‘You’re the one who’s locked up!’
Jimmy gathered his books together. ‘I’m ready to go back to my cell now.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. It’s true, but not for long.’ He winked at her. ‘See you on the outside.’
Shona checked her phone when she got home; three missed calls from Rob. She still had thirteen days to complete the Tower for him but he liked to keep an eye on her progress. She reminded him that he wasn’t her teacher but it was his name on the contract and he did it anyway. She texted him a reassuring, and made-up, word count.
There was also text message from Kallu: ‘Are you free?’ Since Maynard had called him a Greek god it had got stuck in her head. ‘My little Apollo,’ she murmured, and laughed, embarrassed by herself. She’d check on him later.
The phone started to beep and she left it to charge on top of the bread bin.
It was time that she got started on the Tower essay, she supposed. Forty pages was over three pages a day, quite achievable unless she found that she actually wasn’t interested in the subject after all. That had happened before and she had forced out an essay on Icelandic sagas in two solid nights of writing. Freud too proved to be a great disappointment, but luckily that had only been ten pages.
She pushed the books on Apollo to one side to take back to the library. Shona had used her three usual places for research. The Internet had enough to give her an initial overview of her title: ‘Entertainment at the Tower of London: The Oldest Pleasure Park’. The library had the usual books, the standard texts and all for free. Greyfriars Bookshop on East Hill had second-hand oddities, the kind of books that would be impressive and indicative of a first. It also had the pungent smell of age and ideas and time and little chairs in which to absorb all of this tactile knowledge. She had bought three books on London and one on torture. She had only managed to read half of the tortures so far, although she knew she shouldn’t be reading about anywhere other than London but she felt attracted, in a perverse way, to the suffering of others. Even those long dead. It angered her and she thrived on this energy. All her achievements, she felt, came from this dark space.
Mariana rang to let Shona know she was coming in the back door, and came upstairs to the office off the bedroom.
‘Hey. I left your keys on the kitchen table.’
‘I got them. Thought I’d just ask how it went.’
‘He’ll be out in six weeks. All set, apparently.’
Mariana nodded. ‘Good. It will be tough, but it’s good.’
She migrated to the table and began reading the Tower web page, open on the computer.
Shona thought about telling her she was busy and changed her mind. ‘I’ll get some coffee.’
‘Even better.’
When she returned, Mariana had scrolled through the page on torture. Shona put the biscuits down and handed Mariana her mug.
‘I’d like to squeeze the Kray twins in, but I don’t think it’s going to work.’
‘Are they important?’
‘No, just interesting in a tabloid kind of way.’
Mariana looked through the A4 pad in which Shona had been making notes and began to read aloud.
‘“The Scavenger’s daughter, A-frame metal device, forced the head down and the knees up to compress the body making blood spurt from the nose and ears.”’
Shona shrugged and dipped a ginger nut in her tea.
Mariana kept reading. ‘“The rack was also known as the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter. The body was stretched until the joints dislocated and muscles were often rendered useless.” Were they named after someone’s actual daughter?’
‘I haven’t got that far, but I don’t think so.’
‘Why daughters then?’
‘No real reason. The dukes created them or used them so they were named their offspring. I suppose daughter sounds spookier than son.’
‘It’s disgusting. But isn’t your title about pleasure?’
‘I got a bit distracted. Do you want to help me get back on track?’
Mariana shook her head. ‘No. I don’t do torture. I will have nightmares and you’ve given me enough of those.’
Mariana did look tired, her eyes darkly sunken. She should have given her the option to stay away, dropped the car back at Mariana’s house. As it was, she had forgotten to wash it like she promised herself.
‘Here, let’s finish the coffee and you can drop me in town on the way home.’
‘Haven’t you got to pick up Jude?’ Mariana picked up her mug and folded her fingers around it.
‘He’s having tea with a friend. I have a couple of hours to myself.’
Mariana shook her head. ‘That’s when the devil makes work for you. You have to make your own work.’
Mariana dropped her off as it started raining. Town wasn’t busy, just a few school children making their way home with little enthusiasm but no money to extend their meandering. Cerys would be home soon too with her new key. Shona had always been there to make sure she arrived safely, but since her conversation with Maynard she was trying to give her a little more space, a little more responsibility, without changing the time that Cerys was expected home. It hadn’t been discussed again but Cerys was always there, always sullen, always with a slight sneer when Shona spoke to her. Maynard kept out of it in front of Shona, but sometimes she could hear Cerys complaining to him at length on the mobile before asking for more credit. She wondered why Maynard hadn’t given her a key.
She sent Cerys a text message, letting her know what time she’d be back.
Shona pushed open the door to the Natural History Museum. Kallu was sitting cross legged on the floor with a selection of necklaces in front of him. She sat down next to him.
He smiled. ‘If you’re here, then you must need to solve a problem too.’
‘Do I?’
‘Look. There are forty-eight necklaces here, each one linked to the others. It’s an exercise in patience and simplicity, removing the knots and seeing the situation clearly. It called you.’
Shona smiled. She didn’t understand his thought processes, how everything could link together in life, how situations and objects could call to her. Kallu could see the threads between everything and, while she was with him, it did seem possible. She watched his long fingers teasing and unravelling. His eyebrows were lowered over his eyes, his lips slightly pouting. His hair was curling across his cheek. Shona ran her fingers through it, pinning it more firmly behind his ear.
A clump of necklaces fell loose to the floor and he passed it to Shona. ‘However many there are is your answer.’
She felt responsible for him, what he ate and where he lived. He felt responsible for her soul.
‘You only have one shadow,’ he had said early on. ‘You’ve lost one. You can get it back but you need to spot it when it’s around. Maynard has lost one too, but it’s gone for ever.’
And so Kallu cared for her, protected her because of this lost shadow she never expected to have. She would take him out to woods and the seaside. He would create circles around her with sticks and flowers or sit silently. He didn’t mind that she sat with a book, that she didn’t believe any of it. She had enjoyed the space, the silence and being celebrated for being there.
Shona nodded to Kallu and began to undo the problem she didn’t know she had. The answer turned out to be seven.
‘Goddess of the seven stars,’ said Kallu.
Shona carefully lined up the separated necklaces. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Questions, questions.’ He was still hunched over his tangle.
‘Well, what does it mean?’
He smiled at her. ‘I don’t know. It’s your answer.’
Sometimes Shona wanted to shake him. Her voice rose, ‘Answer to what?’
‘Your question.’
Shona tried to jump to her feet for a dramatic exit but her right foot had gone to sleep and she stood, holding onto a display cabinet, waiting for the pins and needles to pass.
‘It would be quicker if you walked on it,’ he said.
‘I know.’ She placed her foot down but knew there was too little sensation to shift any weight onto it.
Kallu watched her, raised his eyebrows and nodded. ‘Ah.’
She refused to ask this time, absolutely refused.
She checked her phone on the way to collect Jude. There was no reply from Cerys. She rang her while she waited for the bus, and then she rang the house. Nothing. She comforted herself that Cerys was just continuing her silence. Dumb insolence, Shona wanted to call it. She hadn’t said a word to Shona since Maynard had last been at the house. Shona accused her of being childish, being selfish, being ignorant but all she got in return was a haughty toss of the head or a yawn. She was strong-willed, Shona had to concede that. But every day it was getting harder not to say something, however dreadful, to get a word of reaction from her. She started to imagine it was a plan she’d concocted with Maynard to punish Shona or to force Shona into inviting Maynard back into the family home and marital bed. But Shona didn’t believe that was really what Maynard wanted, however downcast he could look about it in front of Cerys.
No, it was just Cerys showing Shona how much she hated her and how little she needed anything to do with her.
She left a message anyway.
When she got home with Jude at half past five, Cerys was sitting at the kitchen table in her slippery dressing gown, talking into her mobile. Shona waved at her.
‘Speak to you later,’ Cerys said into the phone. She hung up and moved around to face Shona. Her gown fell open to show an ornate bra Shona hadn’t bought for her.
‘Hello,’ said Jude.
Cerys didn’t look at him. ‘Is Kallu coming round?’
‘You know Kallu. He comes, he goes. He’ll probably be around. Why?’
‘Didn’t you see him today?’
Shona frowned. ‘Yes, but I never mentioned that. I wasn’t expecting him to come over for tea or anything.’
Cerys shrugged and left the room.
‘Cerys didn’t say hello,’ said Jude.
‘I know. What a dope,’ said Shona. ‘I’ll make my dinner, you watch TV, OK?’
She thought about whether she’d been wrong, and maybe had mentioned something that Cerys may have overheard. She certainly hadn’t told her directly as Cerys was still having her silent protest. She must have read Shona’s phone messages. Shona checked them, wondering whether she had invited Kallu round and forgotten, but there was nothing like that, just him asking if she was free. Cerys must have assumed that he would be coming. So why had she been wearing a loosely gathered dressing gown? Shona groaned and left the pasta to boil. Her first conversation with Cerys in weeks and she couldn’t just try to be normal and be nice. She’d promised herself she would. She would let Cerys know that she loved her.
Shona knocked on Cerys’ door and walked in. Cerys glared at her and the planned reconciliation disappeared again.
‘Were you planning to throw yourself at him again? You have to have more respect for yourself, Cerys.’
Cerys turned away and Shona noticed the sports bag open on the floor. There were some T-shirts on top and a bundle of underwear.
‘Are you going to Dad’s this weekend?’
Cerys stared at the window and settled down against her pillows.
Shona sat on the end of the bed. ‘Cerys, Kallu is nineteen. He’s too old for you.’
Cerys turned away to the wardrobe and snorted. ‘But you’re not too old for him.’
‘I’m not chasing him in my pants!’
Cerys turned. ‘I’m not talking to you, you bitch! I hate you more than anyone in the world. You don’t trust me because you know what you’re thinking and what you’re doing. You have destroyed Dad and made him leave and you’re making me leave too.’
Shona stood. ‘Oh, grow up. Not everything your dad says is true.’
‘But he loves me and knows exactly what you’re like. You’re such a slag that you’re rotten inside.’
Shona closed the door behind her and pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.