Quickman loaded his plate with rice and karnıyarık and continued along the serving pass. He reached into the bread basket and collected four thick sections, stacking them on his tray like casino chips. He offered me a fifth but I shook my head. ‘And what makes the lad think I’m such an expert on it?’ he said, adding the slice to his own pile. ‘If languages were my speciality, I’d be translating Balzac, not piddling about with my own rubbish. Want some ayran?’ Again, I shook my head. Quickman was the only one of us who could stand to drink the stuff—a yoghurt gloop with all the flavour and viscidity of a saline drip. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing out on. It’s a little brackish, at first, but you get used to it. Great for the digestion.’

‘I’ll live with the heartburn,’ I said. ‘Pass the juice.’ He handed me the jug and waited as I filled a glass, peering towards our usual table.

The problem was, I understood the boy’s reasons for thinking Quickman could help, but the explanation was not easy to broach with the man himself. An age had passed since I had closed the covers on In Advent of Rain. I could still remember the story and its characters in some detail because it was that rare type of novel—disquieting, note-perfect—that settles in your unconscious and becomes hard to disentangle. I knew that a solemn, friendless boy like Fullerton could not have survived his adolescence without reading it, too. But how could I raise the subject of the book with Quickman? For me to have even hinted at its existence would have been to acknowledge his life before Portmantle, to subject him to a reality he had chosen to renounce.

In Advent of Rain tells the story of an unnamed girl whose summer is disturbed by the arrival of a visitor from Japan: an old acquaintance of her father’s called Junichiro. It is 1933 and Junichiro, an esteemed mathematician from Nagoya, has come to England to embark on a lecture tour, arranged by the girl’s father, in order to propagate an extraordinary claim. The old man believes he has discovered a formula that can predict when rain will fall on any given day, in any given place—knowledge that he believes will be vital to agriculture and the growth of a global economy in the future. He is keen to share the formula with governments across the world, under certain conditions. Junichiro cannot speak much English, so the girl’s father—a linguist and a don at an Oxford college—acts as an interpreter. The girl spends her summer holiday following them on the lecture tour, going from one university hall to another, by road, by rail, by sea. At each venue, Junichiro pins up a sheet of predictions for rainfall times and locations that later reveal themselves to be accurate. His claims gather weight and interest from the media. Lecture halls are no longer big enough to hold the audiences, so the tour is extended to theatres in Ireland, France, Germany, and America. But, despite offers of employment and financial reward from private companies, Junichiro refuses to divulge the formula. The press speculates that he is planning to auction off the information to the highest bidder. Junichiro tells the girl’s father, however, that he will only reveal the formula if the US government agrees to end its development of atomic weapons. They meet with American officials, who deny that such technology exists. The night before Junichiro is to give a lecture in Munich, he is abducted from his hotel and is never seen again. Just a few months later, the girl’s father poisons himself in rather suspicious circumstances, and she is sent to live with her aunt in Devon. She spends the rest of her life—through wartime and peacetime—trying to find out what happened to Junichiro and her father, without success, until one day a photograph of the old man’s formula is discovered on an undeveloped roll of negatives, found in the archives of her father’s college. Now a teacher of mathematics in her own right, she reads through the old man’s workings and finds them irrefutable. But the world has become a different place, bleak and bruised by war. So, instead of publishing the formula or spreading word of Junichiro’s accomplishment, she bleaches the negatives and burns the photographs, and—in a final touch of poetry—goes out in the rain to bring in her husband’s washing.

Quickman rarely discussed any aspect of his writing with us, and for me to have gone blundering into a conversation about it, unprompted, would have been to risk our friendship. As we carried our dinner trays to the table, I tried to think of some way to introduce the topic of Japan again without expressly mentioning his book. But my thoughts came jabbering out too fast: ‘So, let’s just imagine, hypothetically, if somebody were to give you a letter from a friend of hers in Japanese, you wouldn’t, let’s say, be able to determine if it was really Japanese, or Korean, or something similar?’

Quickman walked ahead of me. ‘What?’

‘I’m saying, I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference between any of those Oriental languages. Never been that far east in my life. All the characters look so complicated, and there must be so many to remember, and I’d probably have to—’

‘Stop it, Knell,’ he said. ‘I can see what you’re doing, and I would very much like you to stop it. Immediately’ He placed his tray down beside Pettifer, who was keenly scooping up the dregs of his karnıyarık with a crust of bread. The light was faltering outside and the mess hall was moody with candle flames.

I went quiet.

‘What’s she trying to talk you into?’ asked Pettifer, grabbing the tail of our conversation. He looked at me. ‘Let me guess: that boy’s got in your head again.’

‘Keep out of it,’ I said.

Quickman tore the cap from his ayran and took a gulp. When he lowered the pot, there was a milk-white film on his moustache. ‘What I don’t quite understand,’ he said, padding off the liquid with a napkin, ‘is why you feel so obliged to help the lad. He doesn’t even have the good grace to show up for dinner. Not to mention the fact that he hustled me out of my father’s lighter. I’d quite like that thing back, by the way. But that’s not the point. I’m not going to get dragged into someone else’s creative problems. I’ve got enough of my own.’

‘He’s just a boy,’ I said. ‘You should have seen him, earlier, scribbling away on his notecards. If you could just let him know if it’s actually Japanese, that would be a start.’

Quickman carved up his food. ‘Why can’t you leave him alone? That seems to be what he wants.’

‘Because there’s alone and there’s alone.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Explain to me the difference again.’

Pettifer shifted forwards. ‘I know a bit of Japanese myself,’ he said.

‘The difference, Q, is he’s only seventeen, and when you’re that age all you really need is someone to—’ I was so used to ignoring Tif’s interjections that it took a moment for my brain to engage. ‘Sorry, did you just say that you speak Japanese?’

Pettifer shrugged his eyebrows. ‘Well, sort of. I can read hiragana, anyway. I’m not brilliant with kanji, but I could probably give him the gist.’

I was so overcome with gladness that I almost leaned over and hugged him. ‘Tif, you gorgeous, brilliant thing—I should have known.’

‘It’s these ravishing good looks, you see. They obscure my intellect.’

‘Of course they do.’ I blew him a kiss.

At once, Quickman became interested in the conversation. He put his fork down and gave Tif a querying look. ‘Doko de nihongo wo narattandai?’ he said.

Pettifer nodded thoughtfully. ‘Nihon de shibaraku hataraki-mashita.’

‘Dākuhōsu dana.’

‘Chigauyo. Futotta buta dayo.’

‘Sōdana!’

It was quite disconcerting to hear another language emerging from the lips of two people I knew so well. ‘OK, that settles it,’ I said. ‘You’re both going to help him.’

Quickman stabbed at his dinner. ‘He’ll have to give my lighter back first.’

‘I’m sure he’d be happy to trade.’

‘My father died with that thing in his hand, you know. I should never have bet with it.’

‘You could always try and win it back.’

‘I plan to. Just as soon as I’ve reviewed my strategy.’

‘Oi, you two. Get a load of this,’ Pettifer said, gesturing to the kitchen pass. ‘Mac’s talking to those transients again. We should rescue her.’ MacKinney did appear to be standing in close counsel with Gluck, which would not have been such a grave misfortune in itself, had the irritating Spaniard not also been with him. ‘Is it me, or does she seem to be enjoying their company?’

It was true: she was laughing, and not in the hollow fashion we had come to recognise, but in that wonderful, resounding way that we had not heard for some time. I was glad that she was smiling again, even if I felt resentful of her sudden bonhomie with the short-termers.

‘Crikey,’ said Quickman. ‘This place is going to ruin.’

Mac’s face was still flushed by the time she came over to join us at the table a while later. As she sat down, a residue of laughter came out of her nose, like steam releasing. ‘Oh Lord, that was seriously funny,’ she said. ‘Did you know that Lindo did impressions? I haven’t laughed so much in ages.’

‘Yes, we could hear you cackling from here,’ Quickman said.

Pettifer gave his little snort. ‘Who’s Lindo?’

‘The Spanish fellow. He’s actually quite lovely. It’s a shame we wrote him off so early.’

‘You know, she’s right,’ Quickman said. ‘We’ve been lacking a decent impressionist for a while now.’

‘Fine. Be that way.’ She nudged up the bridge of her glasses. ‘You should hear the one he does of you.’

‘I’m sure it’s wonderfully subversive,’ Q said.

Mac huffed. She was sideways on the chair, as though not quite committed to sitting with us. ‘Knell, you have to hear the way he takes off Quickman. He does this clever trick with his mouth, as though he’s speaking through a pipe. It’s hysterical.’ Another spit-ball of laughter came up from her throat.

‘Sounds terrific,’ I said, the dullness of my voice betraying me.

‘Oh, come on, what’s wrong with everybody? Can’t you stop being so serious about everything for once? A break from all the cynicism might do you some good.’ She stood up, reaching for a slice of Quickman’s bread, but he moved his plate away from her.

‘Get your own,’ he said.

Mac lingered at the end of the table, ruminating. ‘You know, Lindo says he’s getting out of here. He’s close to finishing his collection.’

‘Bully for him,’ Q said. ‘That didn’t take long.’

‘He’s having a reading soon. We should all go along and listen. It’ll make a nice change to hear something that’s actually complete.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Quickman pushed his plate aside. ‘Bad poetry is one thing, but bad Spanish poetry? That could push me over the edge.’

‘Well,’ Mac said, ‘it’s easy to be critical when your best work is behind you.’

Quickman looked suitably wounded, but he knew better than to rise to provocation. He just drew the pipe from his blazer pocket, tapped it on the tabletop, and bit on the mouthpiece.

At this point, Pettifer leaned into my ear and whispered: ‘What is she doing?’

‘I don’t know,’ I whispered back, but I knew exactly: MacKinney was letting us go.

After all, it would be so much easier to say goodbye if we resented her. If she attached herself to short-termers like Gluck and Lindo in the time she had left, she could forget them as soon as her feet touched the mainland; but we—the stalwarts who had been together, season after season—we would be harder to miss. She was going to amputate us from her side, one by one, starting with Quickman, because he was the newest and the thinnest joint to hack away. Next, she would come for Pettifer, and then it would be my turn. I decided to intervene before that happened. ‘Well, you definitely know how to make a scene, Mac, I’ll give you that,’ I said.

She glared at me. ‘Huh?’

‘I suppose when all that drama’s in your blood, you never lose it.’ I took out the folded pages from my skirt and waved them.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You mean . . .’

‘What else?’

‘Let’s go outside a sec. It’s too loud in here.’

‘Yes, I think that’s probably best for everyone.’

We stepped out onto the landing. The noise of the mess hall softened to a drone. There was a thumbnail of a moon that night, framed in the picture window, and the darkness was thickening above the trees. MacKinney turned on a lamp and leaned against the banister. ‘Sorry for getting irked in there,’ she said. ‘It’s just that Q can really sound so high and mighty sometimes.’

‘I’m amazed you’ve finally noticed.’

She groaned, sweeping underneath her lenses with her fingers. ‘So, tell me: how bad is it?’

I gave her the pages. ‘Well, first of all, the Willa character, the painter, she reminds me of someone. Can’t think who.’

Mac shrugged. ‘That’s not exactly a coincidence.’

‘Good. I’m glad I wasn’t imagining it. People used to see themselves in my paintings all the time and I never had the heart to disappoint them.’ I put my hand upon her shoulder. ‘The most important thing, as far as you’re concerned, is that the characters felt very real to me—in fact, I understood their situation better than you know. I assume that’s why you asked me to read it.’

Mac’s face bloomed. ‘They did?’

‘I had the most sympathy for Christopher, of course, though I could understand Willa’s dilemma, and I thought she was nicely conflicted. It’s strange, I almost never feel for the man in that kind of scenario—usually, it’s the woman who has to make all the compromises and do all the forgiving. I found that quite refreshing. It’s another kind of infidelity that’s breaking them up, isn’t it? That’s how I read it, anyway. The affair is between Willa and her art . . . I liked that idea. If you’d given me more than a few pages, I could’ve found out what happens next. Now I’ll have to wait and catch it in the West End.’

For a moment, Mac said nothing. I could not tell if she was glad or dispirited. She tightened her fist around the pages, closing her eyes, and when she blinked them open again, they were glassy and mapped with tiny lines. ‘You have no idea how much it means to hear that, Knell. Just to know it made you feel something. Thank you. That was all I needed.’

‘Wait until you hear my notes on the punctuation.’

She smiled. ‘Don’t ruin it.’

‘Does this mean we can finish our dinner in peace?’

‘OK, but Quickman has to tone down the sanctimony. It’s getting out of hand.’

‘I’ll speak to him about that.’

‘Good.’

We headed back to the mess hall. ‘What kind of name is Lindo, anyway?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. Ask the provost.’

‘Hard to take a man seriously with a name like that.’

But Mac had already tuned out. She was hesitating at the threshold, studying her pages. ‘You really think there’s something worth developing here?’

With my hand on my heart, I said, ‘I’d stake my sponsor’s life on it.’

‘God, it’s such a relief. I can’t tell you how much better I feel.’ She edged away. ‘I might just go to my room and dig out the rest of the draft. Carpe diem and all that.’

‘You’re not going to stay and eat with us?’

She started to backpedal. ‘No, I’ve lost my appetite. Give my pudding to Tif.’

‘That’ll go down well.’

And it was then, as Mac was heading back across the landing, that a surge of footsteps came up the stairway behind us. There was such a frantic energy to the noise, it seemed as though some forest animal had been loosed inside the mansion. But a familiar shape revealed itself—a head of brown hair, a bulky set of shoulders. It was Fullerton. He went dashing up the stairs so fast he could not control his feet. A toecap caught on the very last step, tripping him. His body hurtled forwards, skidding. Knees and elbows slapped the parquet, but he rose quickly to his haunches, stilling his breaths.

‘Are you OK?’ Mac asked from the corridor.

He seemed to be startled by the sound of her voice, shifting his head in her direction. ‘Hello? Who’s there?’

‘It’s MacKinney,’ she said. ‘I’m right here.’

‘Hello? Is someone out there?’

I stepped closer. ‘Fullerton, it’s us. It’s Knell and MacKinney. Are you all right?’ But when he heard my voice coming from the other side of the room, a greater panic wracked him. He stood gawping at the stained-glass lampshade above his head, as though fearing it would drop. He wiped the spittle from his chin, checking his fingers. ‘I think I’m bleeding,’ he said. ‘I don’t have much time. How do I get out?’

‘You’re fine,’ Mac told him.

‘Please. How do I get out?’

‘Calm down there, sunshine. You’re not making any sense.’ She turned to me, her face bent with concern. ‘He must’ve hit his head or something.’

‘Just tell me which stairs to take,’ the boy went on. ‘Are you there?’

‘Fullerton, we’re standing right in front of you,’ I said. ‘Stay still. I’m coming to help you.’ Slowly, I moved into his path, not wanting to alarm him.

‘You’re so faint. Please—how do I get out?’ He began to peer at the ceiling, turning in circles.

I was near enough to touch him now, and I held my hand out, hoping he would take it. But, although his eyes were locked wide open, he did not acknowledge me. I waved my arms and, still, he could not see me. ‘He’s sleepwalking,’ I said to Mac. ‘Has to be.’

‘Tripping, more like,’ she said. ‘Look at those pupils—he’s on something.’

‘Hello? Are you there?’ the boy called now. ‘Tell me where to go. Please.’

Mac turned. ‘I’m going to get Ender.’

‘No, wait.’ I spoke very loudly and clearly to the boy. ‘Go back to where you started. We’ll come and fetch you.’

But the boy just shouted to the ceiling: ‘Hello? Please—anyone there?’ Then, under his breath, he said, ‘Fuck.’ He checked his mouth for blood again, and hurried forwards. I had to step aside to let him past.

The conversations in the mess hall did not quieten and he staggered up to the serving pass. He browsed the leftovers, lifting every dish to check what lay beneath, getting the run-off on his hands. Whatever he was seeing, it was not food. He began to rummage the drinks table behind him, pushing teacups aside and knocking cola cans, until he caught sight of the ayran pots and gathered them all in his clutches.

A few of the short-termers noticed him then. One of them said, ‘Hey, save some for the rest of us!’ Another said, ‘Your shoelace is untied!’ They were smirking at each other. But Fullerton took no notice, or did not receive them. He marched back through the mess hall, brushing past Mac and me in the doorway. He was muttering to himself, counting his steps: ‘. . . fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six . . .’ We followed him onto the landing. He scurried off through the ruddy light, down the first staircase. ‘. . . seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty.’ He stopped at the window and stacked the cardboard ayran pots on the ledge in a single column. ‘What is he up to?’ Mac said. We watched him rip the lid off the topmost carton and course down the steps with another one still in his grip.

For a long moment, we could only hear his presence on the floor below, the ricochets of him bounding through the house. Then the last ayran pot came spearing up towards the window in a blur. It clattered straight into the stack and burst against the glass. Great shocks of liquid sprayed up and sideways, over the curtains, the wallpaper, pooling on the sill. The radius of the splash was so wide that it dotted my shoes. There came a whoop of exaltation from the hallway beneath us.

By the time we reached the lobby, the boy was gone. The front door was hanging open and there was a sloppy glob of cinnamon gum pushed into its keyhole. Outside, the night appeared so empty and permanent. ‘Well, I suppose the provost was wrong,’ Mac said, coming up behind me. ‘That lad needs more than just our supervision.’

I fretted a great deal about Fullerton that night and it took all my resolve to not pay a visit to his lodging on the way back to my studio. In the end, I reasoned he was better left alone. I was still convinced that he had been sleeping on his feet throughout the episode, but I could tell that Mac believed otherwise. She did not accuse the boy outright, nor did she raise any suspicions with Ender. Instead, she kept reminding me of how fixed the boy’s pupils had been. ‘I’ve seen that spaced-out look before,’ she said, as we helped to clean the boy’s mess from the windowsill. ‘That’s all the explanation I need.’ But this made very little sense to me.

There was no place drier than Portmantle: we took soluble aspirin for headaches or nothing at all, and even Gülcan’s rubbing alcohol was kept in a locked box in the provost’s office with all the emergency medicines. It was well understood that artists who relied on substances to pique their creativity were not accepted at the refuge; sponsors were made to vouch for the sobriety and moral character of all the newcomers before they arrived; and every guest was told the same cautionary tale about Whitlock, a fabled resident from the past, who had been caught drinking lawnmower diesel in the outhouse and was immediately ejected from the grounds—no documentation to secure his passage at the border, no help from the provost, not even a farewell handshake. (True or not, the implications of this story echoed long and loud.) Besides, I was sure the boy’s possessions had been searched on his very first day, because he had made a point of complaining to me about it, and even his cigarette packet had been empty when he had offered it to Quickman that afternoon in the library. To me, the boy’s strangeness was innate, not chemically induced. And I did not believe he would be impetuous enough to jeopardise his place at Portmantle for the sake of a fleeting high.

All of this was on my mind as I went about my nightly preparations in the studio. There was plenty to arrange—blinds to draw and fix, windowpanes to cover, doorways to seal—and, while I waited for the fullness of the dark, I could not stop thinking of the boy and his behaviour. As I got changed into my painting clothes, I felt the jeton hanging in my skirt pocket like a curtain weight. It was my duty to keep it safe until someone came to retrieve it—losing your ferry token for the homeward leg was as good as a curse—so I took it to the bathroom and stowed it, for the meantime, with my own keepsakes.

There was a groove in the wall behind the mirrored cabinet, a cavity in the plaster I had fashioned with a palette knife, just big enough to hide two things: (i) a tobacco tin that held all my reserves of special pigment, and (ii) a red jeweller’s box. I removed these objects delicately, as though cradling bird’s eggs, and placed them on the lip of the sink. The jeweller’s box still bore the faded insignia of the shop in Paris where it was acquired, and contained a rather ugly opal ring belonging to my sponsor. Underneath the lining was my own tarnished jeton from the Kabataş ferry port—I could still remember the bottle-cap tinkle of it dropping on the vendor’s counter, the slow quiver as it settled, the sheer excitement of holding it in my fingers. How drab and ordinary it seemed now. How purposeless. I tipped the other jeton into the box with it and snapped the lid shut.

By the time I had replaced the bathroom cabinet on its hinges, the lights had all gone out in the mansion and the condition of the night was such that I could make a start on sampling. The only thing left to do was secure my front door and tape over the surround. There was a mildness to the air, brought on by the thaw, which made my fingers more compliant. I switched off the studio lights and watched my pigment samples surfacing in the darkness, a medley of colour swelling on the wall, part muted, part luminous. It quickened my heart to see it.

When all my apparatus was in place, I went to the closet. By my reckoning, there were three garlands of mushrooms drying by the boiler, and at least one of those was ready to be powdered. A blue haze eked from the under-edge of the closet door and spread about my ankles.

The glow was unusually strong. My first thought was that the recent batch of mushrooms I had gathered was brighter than average, and this put me in a hopeful mood—perhaps my harvesting techniques were improving, or perhaps the warm afternoon had enhanced the drying process. But when I slid the door back, I found the garlands trodden to a pulp on the dusty concrete. A pair of blue-tinged feet protruded from the space beneath my coats. And there, between the boiler and my rucksack, was Fullerton. He was leaning in the closet like a broom, bare-naked and unconscious.

Instinctively, I turned my eyes away and closed the door on him—a silly, defensive reflex. For a while, my temples pounded with the fright and I could not organise my thoughts. The garlands were ruined and several days of sampling had been lost—I should have been shaking with anger, but I found it very hard to summon anything besides concern for the boy. I hurried off to get a blanket from my bed to cover him.

Sliding the door open again, I parted the clothes on the rail, exposing his pale young body. He did not move. His face was as reposed as I had ever seen it: the eyelids softly clinched, the mouth agape. His stout-ribbed chest was smeared with bluish finger-tracks, a kind of luminescent war paint that also streaked his thighs and shins and forearms. I tried to respect his modesty as best as I could, but his awkward position in the closet made it impossible, and I caught a full glimpse of what he had. He was not as puny as the withered models I had drawn at art school, and differently built from the men I had gone to bed with, all of whom were circumcised.

I wrapped him in the blanket, bringing it around one shoulder like a toga, clamping it with a bulldog clip. This buffeted him a fair amount against the wall, but he did not even stir. I switched on all the studio lights and called his name; it made no difference. The only thing to do, it seemed, was douse him a little.

He did not wake up in a jolt, as I thought he might. Instead, he winced and blinked and spat, regaining his awareness gradually. He saw me standing there with the empty jug. ‘Oh shit—again?’ he said, and huffed the water from his face, pulling the blanket tight around his frame. There was a weariness to his eyes then, a sinking realisation. I had soaked him too well to be certain of it, but I thought he was about to cry. ‘How long?’ he asked.

‘Excuse me?’

‘How long’ve I been here?’

I got the impression he was used to waking up like this, in strange places, in other people’s homes. ‘At least since dinnertime,’ I said. ‘You’ve had a busy night, by all accounts.’

He nodded dolefully.

‘Why don’t you come out of there? I’ll make you some tea.’

‘I’m really sorry about this.’ He checked the coverage of the blanket. The hem of it just about reached his knees. ‘I don’t know how I got in, but if I broke anything, I’ll fix it, I swear.’

‘My fault. The door was unlocked.’

‘No, I mean it, Knell. I’m sorry you’ve got to deal with me like this.’ His voice was meek and hoarse. ‘Could you get me a towel?’

‘There’s a stack of clean ones above your head. On the shelf, there.’

He edged forwards, stretching.

I went to light my stove and put on the electric kettle. ‘I’m not sure how much you remember,’ I called to him from the sink, ‘but you left the mansion in a bit of a state. Ender’s having to replace the curtains. Hard to get ayran out of velvet.’

The boy stepped out of the closet, hair all spiked and tousled. ‘Damage tends to follow me around these days.’ He stood under the harsh fluorescent lights, sniffing his arms. ‘You have mushrooms growing in your cupboard, by the way. Looks like I got most of them.’

‘Is that so?’ The kindling in the stove began to smoulder. ‘It might be getting damp in there. I’ll get Ardak to check.’

‘Doesn’t smell too bad, actually. I’ve covered myself in worse.’ He looked back at the sludge he had left in the closet. ‘Still, I feel bad about the mess. And for—you know.’ He cleared his throat drily. ‘Thanks for the blanket.’

‘Should I expect to find your clothes somewhere?’

‘Probably.’

‘I’ll keep an eye out.’

The boy did not respond. He came closer to the stove. His arms were crossed now, his shoulders goose-fleshed.

‘We saw you on the landing, Mac and I. You seemed to hear us to begin with, but then you ran off. You kept asking us how to get out.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘I know you are. It’s fine, but—out of where?’

Very slowly, the boy lowered himself to kneel beside the stove. ‘I sort of get trapped in my own head.’ These words came out in such a freighted tone that his jaw hung slack for a moment after. He warmed his hands by the vents, staring up at me. ‘I’m no good at explaining it,’ he went on, ‘but have you ever been to one of those really giant hotels they have in America? The New York Hilton or somewhere like that. Thousands of locked rooms that all look the same, all those corridors and stairways and lifts going up and down and up and—ugh! Just the scale of it, right? My dad used to take me to places like that. How the hell do they even build them?’ His eyes went fat with the thought. ‘Now picture that same hotel, but empty. With the lifts all broken and nobody around to fix them and no way of knowing which staircase takes you where. That’s what my head is like most of the time.’

‘Well, Mac’s convinced you’re on drugs,’ I said. ‘Can’t say I blame her.’

He seemed amused by this, but did not answer.

‘Please tell me you aren’t involved in all that.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, raking a centre parting in his hair. ‘Did it look like I was having any fun to you?’

‘No.’

‘There’s your answer, then. Who wants to take a drug that makes them miserable?’ His legs were folded now and he was rubbing at his feet. ‘Honestly, I’ve been wandering in my sleep since I was a little kid. Our next-door neighbours would find me in their basement when I was eight or nine. Sometimes, I’d make it all the way to Hampstead on my bike. Even crawled into a skip once—nearly got crushed by a load of skirting-boards. I see the insides of a lot of cupboards, that’s for sure.’

‘And are you always in the nude?’ I said.

The boy gave his customary snicker. ‘That’s kind of a recent development. At least I don’t wet myself any more, eh?’ As he surveyed the room, he must have noticed my workbench, the muller and slab, the canvas swatches that lay in wait for me. ‘I interrupted your work, didn’t I? I’m sorry. I should go.’

‘Stop apologising.’

He moved to get up.

‘Sit down. We’re having tea. I’ll paint later.’ There was no use in telling him that the mushrooms he had trampled in the closet were my work, or that his roving feet had set my progress back several days.

‘Thanks for this, Knell. For not being—’ He trailed off. ‘You know what I mean. People get angry. They start looking at you funny. They think you can control it, so they end up resenting you. Don’t mean to, I suppose, but that’s what always happens . . . I had a doctor who said I should tie myself to the bedpost at night. I asked him if he’d chain his own kids up while they were sleeping. He looked at me like I was mad. Anyway, I gave it a try, just to see what happened. Made everything ten times worse. It’s not like I went anywhere, obviously, but the dreams got more and more intense and I nearly broke my ankles. So that just shows you what doctors know about anything.’

The kettle clicked off. ‘What sort of thing do you get up to, then, inside that head of yours?’

‘I’m always trying to find my way out, to wake myself up. But it’s impossible. Sometimes I’ll imagine a new room I’ve never been in before. Sometimes I’ll hear a voice or music in the distance and try to follow that. I’ll find some old film playing on mute, or dream up a whole library and sit there, flicking through the books, hoping there might be an instruction to help me escape, a map or something. It’s like, every time I go to sleep, I get moved back to the first square on the board—does that make sense? And a few moves in, I realise I’ve played this game before, you know? I recognise those ladders, and all those snakes look familiar. But the game never finishes.’

It sounded like absolute hell, and I told him so.

‘Yeah, but it has its good points, too.’ He mused on this for a moment. ‘You’re going to think it’s weird how much I talk about my granddad, but, for some reason, he’s been on my mind a lot since I’ve been here. I used to stay with him on weekends when my parents were away. He had a gammy foot, so he couldn’t walk far, and he hardly left the flat. So we used to just stay in and listen to records. Always the same ones. Old ragtime bands, comedy programmes, silly songs, “The Laughing Policeman”, stuff like that. His taste was quite narrow. We’d sit there listening to the same records over and over again. I got so bored of them, but there was nothing else to do. He hated modern radio, and he didn’t have a garden, and I wasn’t allowed to go out on my own. He loved the comfort of it, hearing the same old stuff every day. So I had to sit there with him, listening to it all, pretending to enjoy it. I couldn’t wait for my mum to get back and take me home. But then, once it got to the middle of the week, and I was stuck on my own at school again, I’d start wishing I was with my granddad. All those hours I must have spent with him—sitting there, hearing those same records all day—I wouldn’t swap them for anything. They made me who I am today. And I suppose I feel the same way now, about my dreams.’

‘It must be hard to go to sleep, though,’ I said. ‘Knowing what might happen.’

He shrugged. ‘Feels harder to wake up, believe me.’

The old tea leaves still had some life in them. I swirled the hot water around in the pot. He watched me with slatted eyes. ‘It’ll be weak, but that’s how I like it. I can let it steep, if you prefer.’

‘No, weak is fine.’

I rinsed two cups and poured the tea. It was almost colourless. The boy examined it, took a sip and cringed. ‘Woah, you weren’t joking.’

‘My mother’s fault. We had to reuse all the tea leaves in our house. Wartime mentality—or maybe just a Scottish one. Now I can’t drink it any other way.’

‘You don’t have much of an accent.’

‘Everything gets softer as you get older. Trust me.’

He almost laughed.

‘I’m not sure they’d take me back in Clydebank now. It’s still in my blood, but I just don’t feel part of it any more. And I’ve never really been drawn to painting it—not like London. It doesn’t fascinate me in that way.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen your work. I know.’

It was uttered so bluntly that it caught me unawares, and all I could do was waft my hand, as though to cleave the very suggestion from the air. ‘Come on now, I thought we were having a nice conversation.’

The boy dipped his head. ‘I only said that because—’ He thought better of it, gulping. Then he got another burst of courage. ‘I can’t help it if I know who you are. Your stuff was up in the Tate—’

‘Please. Let’s not do this.’

‘I had to copy it once, on a school trip. The teacher made us buy the postcard.’

‘Shush, shush, enough now. You’re making things worse. Please, let’s change the subject.’ I frowned into my cup, disregarding him. I was not sure what I was most afraid of: being recognised for who I was, or pitied for who I was not. ‘I think I made this too strong. Does it taste a little bitter? I must have swilled it about too much.’ I went and dumped the tea in the sink. I stayed there, facing away from him. ‘In fact, it’s probably time I got some work done. Would you mind going back to your own place now, if you’re feeling better?’

I heard him put his cup down and climb to his feet. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to upset you, OK?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ When I turned, he was already going for the exit. ‘I feel really bad—you’ve been so nice to me and everything.’ He had shifted the blanket and tucked it tight around his waist.

‘It’s all right.’

‘Don’t be upset with me. I’m not good with people—I tried to tell you.’

‘I just need to work, that’s all.’

‘OK. I get it. OK.’ The door was still sealed up and would not open when he pulled it. He questioned it with his eyes, following the line of it around the frame. ‘Where’d you get this stuff—supplies? It’s pretty strong. I could use something like that.’ There was a full roll left on my workbench. I had plenty stashed away, so I told him he could take it, as much to ease my conscience as to please him. ‘You’re a lifesaver,’ he said, spinning it round on his fingers. ‘This’ll be perfect.’ He moved for the door. ‘Now, how do I—?’

‘Just pull.’

He turned the handle and yanked hard at the door until the tape ripped back and the studio lights spilled onto the path. As he stood halfway into the night, the streaks upon his torso became gently luminescent. ‘I don’t see my clothes out there. Bad sign.’ He shuffled into the darkness, each stride hindered by the blanket. I wanted him to stop, and turn, and tell me he was mistaken, that he did not recognise me at all. But my will could no more influence a boy and his behaviour than it could stop him dreaming.