KARL WAS LOOKING for the Mentor’s Edition, but it seemed that Janna or Stu had moved it. It wasn’t by the hob or in the little lacquer cupboard in the dining room, and it wasn’t in Janna or Stu’s bedroom or in the medicine cabinet. When he stepped into the living room, he noticed that the light between the black floorboards was on again. He got down on his knees and tried to look through, but only dazzled his right eye. He stood up and stamped his foot. The light between the floorboards flickered and went off. Then it pulsed three times. Then, before he could stamp again, the light between the floorboards intensified, peaked, and slowly faded out, like a very short avant-garde play.
‘Hello there?’ said Karl.
He went to the back door and opened it in time to see a man in a hi-vis jacket ascending a small concrete staircase, which Karl had never noticed before, to the side of the garden wall.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Oh, morning,’ said the man. ‘Mr Carson?’
‘I’m his tenant,’ said Karl.
‘Oh, okay. Well, tell him it’s all sorted.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Fixed-wire testing,’ said the man, flashing a grubby laminated card. ‘And the new sockets. Quite a job, actually. But it’s all centrally connected now, so he can control it from the hub.’
‘I’ll let him know.’
‘Cheers, then.’
‘Wait,’ said Karl. ‘Can I ask you what’s down there?’
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘Is it some kind of … chapel or something?’ said Karl.
The electrician regarded Karl with such amusement that he imagined him relating the unremarkable story to a friend later.
‘A chapel?’ he said.
‘Just out of interest,’ said Karl.
‘Not sure, mate. You’d have to ask your landlord.’
* * *
In the en suite he ran the tap until it went hot and then turned it the other way to splash cold water in his eyes. He opened the medicine cabinet. It contained razor heads, ibuprofen, three tubes of ointment curled up like metal leaves. There was no sign of Genevieve’s pills, which came in gold and silver blister packs which looked like buttons on a movie spaceship’s console. He found the look of them comforting. He looked in her bedside cabinet, under some photos of her lying in a field with her girlfriends, which he looked at and sighed, a compact copy of Vogue, and some hair slides. He looked in her shoulder bag, which was decorated with a pixelated flower design, as if photographed too closely. In the side compartment he found a squashed cardboard box containing four sheets of metallic blister packs, all completely intact.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Karl sat up on the bed with his tablet propped on his knees, worrying about Genevieve. He hadn’t managed to talk to her about finding her pills; it was one of the better-marked minefields in their marriage. He should have been writing his journal, but instead he was playing a short film which had arrived as an attachment from Keston.
– More former protégé stuff.
There was a photograph of Sebastian Francis outside an antiquarian bookshop and a video clip which resolved into a three-piece band playing in a cramped basement venue. Over the chatty audience they were playing a slow, rhythmic instrumental on three notes, the bass guitar so loud it rattled and buzzed. He recognised the bassist as Alice Jonke, who had told him there was no band.
– Shit, isn’t it?
Keston added.
He could hear a tap running hard in the bathroom. He had already shouted ‘Genevieve? Is that you?’ and felt relieved by her cheerful ‘Yes.’
‘Post,’ called Janna, slapping The Guardian, The Telegraph, and an envelope addressed to Karl on their floor. The envelope was square, blue, the address handwritten in an elegant cursive. A large first-class stamp depicted a steam train.
‘It’s not your birthday, is it?’
Karl took it back to the bed to tear it open. Inside, the birthday card depicted a stripy number 1 and a friendly elephant balancing on a ball. Karl opened it up and found a black credit card, thin but unbendable, plain but for a white H in the centre. When he looked closer, he saw at the top right of the H a tiny white T in a circle, like a mysterious chemical symbol. The same hand had written in the card ‘52 Pritchatts Road – New Tour Dates Added Tonight Only! 8pm! Side door. Alice x’
‘Karl?’
Something ominous in how Genevieve said his name, like she’d been building up to it. Her hair was wet and she was wearing blue eyeshadow.
‘Hi, babe.’
She sat on the corner of the bed and started rubbing the palm of her left hand with the thumb of her right.
‘I want to talk to you about something.’
Karl’s breathing shortened.
‘What’s up?’
She opened her bedside cabinet and took out a book, which she handed to him. Slim, matte finish, like a volume of poetry. It had a green glowing outline of a brain on the cover surrounded by a circular chart divided into degrees and a second circle with notches in it. The title Calibration: A New Perspective on Mental Difference was embossed over the top.
Karl breathed air through his nose.
‘I know you don’t like talking about this, Karl,’ said Genevieve. ‘It’s a holistic approach – dietary, lifestyle, circadian. It’s about negative oscillations of thought.’
‘It sounds like The Transition,’ said Karl.
‘It’s even about what you read and what you watch. It’s about what you let in. To your body and your mind. It’s about identifying and eliminating stressors. And it’s about accepting a certain level of up and down. But being in a safe enough space to allow that. That’s why it’s called Calibration. It’s about recalibrating.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And it involves coming off all medication. No interference.’
‘Oh God,’ said Karl. ‘Why are you listening to them? Why trust them? We don’t know them.’
‘You immediately assume it’s them.’
‘Who else?’
‘Why do you go straight to thinking someone must have put the idea in my head? It was my idea, Karl! Silly, ditzy Genevieve, manipulated into rash decisions because she doesn’t know any better. I talked to them. I told them I want to explore an alternative to medication and they told me about Calibration. You’re scowling.’
‘It’s called non-verbal communication.’
‘You think I’m the only person who doesn’t get a say in what’s best for me. And no one’s ever made you take anything stronger than a paracetamol, Karl. Can you imagine what it feels like? Having to take a pill that messes with your thoughts, with your senses? With your whole sense of self?’
‘I can imagine. I do imagine.’
‘Oh, you sound so bored. The trouble, Karl, is that you believe anyone over me. The CPN who’s never met either of us before, the GP who’s being paid by a drug company to trial a new antipsychotic. Someone who’d sell your soul for a free fountain pen. Why?’
‘I just thought this was something we’d been through before. You need the medication. We need the medication. Things go badly wrong without it.’
‘You don’t love me.’ Genevieve was close to tears.
‘See, you already sound emotional.’
‘Of course I’m fucking emotional! I’m sick of being drugged. I’m sick of feeling like my head’s wrapped in a duvet. Of not really being interested in anything. I desperately want to try something new, and if it doesn’t work, well, fine, I’ll go back on. Look, I didn’t want to … I’m really sorry about this … The thing is, I’m fine so far, Karl. I haven’t been taking anything for over a week now and I’m fine.’
‘Right,’ he said, trying to sound surprised. ‘That’s good, I guess.’
‘I wanted to tell you.’
‘No, I … Hey.’
She was crying now.
‘I was worried you wouldn’t agree to it, so I just started coming off. And the thing is I’m fine.’
Karl didn’t want to look at Genevieve, and he didn’t want her to see his face. What did he know? Maybe the medication Genevieve took did nothing other than make him feel better. He embraced her and they fell back on the bed.
‘Whoa,’ she said.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. I’m sorry.’
* * *
HE STOLE ONE of her cigarettes while she was downstairs talking to Janna and leaned halfway out of the skylight watching the flicked ash bounce between balls of moss. In his head he was standing by the side of the blue Fiat on a long housing estate, staring at the body of the child he’d hit at, say, 36 mph. He had already called 999. The father was running across the road. Please. Oh, please no. She came from nowhere. Is that the first thing you do? Claim it wasn’t your fault? Maybe the only adequate response to having just killed someone’s child was to drop to your knees and wail. No, that wasn’t your place. To sit down. To take your head in your hands and rock back and forth silently. Better. But that might look as if you were trying to avoid making eye contact with the father or, worse, trying to pretend nothing was real and the accident hadn’t even happened. But then was this really the time for eye contact? You’d have to time it so that the father was cradling the child in his arms, howling at a volume you’d never heard the human voice reach before, and then gently, respectfully, lower yourself to the ground, take your head in your hands and rock back and forth. Let the police cars and ambulances find you like that.
Karl was so satisfied with this conclusion he all but stopped thinking about an unmedicated Genevieve taking a job with The Transition and losing herself altogether. He thought about the notary’s worst-case scenario, a military term rather than legal, he remembered: Genevieve might become very unstable and damage her relationship with new work colleagues and with Janna and Stu. This wasn’t pleasant, but it was hardly catastrophic. If in a position to do so, Genevieve could take decisions which damaged the business or the reputation of The Transition. This wasn’t of great concern to Karl. In fact, all he really had to deal with was the fallout as it affected Genevieve, if she broke with reality, with her very character, if she was never the same again. Therefore, if it wasn’t possible to influence her, and Karl felt fairly confident it wasn’t, he had to let her take the job and monitor the situation very closely. Like some kind of Victorian patriarch.
Later, after finishing a three-thousand-word undergraduate essay on terrorism and anarchism in Conrad’s The Secret Agent for a student named Harry, Karl lay on the white sofa with the television on, picturing himself getting up. He had spent an hour on the rowing machine and half an hour doing weights. He worked out alone now, three times a week. He had become self-regulating, as Stu put it. Karl pictured himself getting up, walking over to the plug sockets, and turning off the television. Instead he stared, his brain flatlining, while a woman called Saskia turned a charm bracelet around and around on her wrist and tried to say something interesting about each of its charms; bit like the Monopoly dog, this one, she said. Slight Essex glow to her accent, although she was using her telephone voice. He lifted up his shirt and scratched his belly button. He didn’t realise Stu was in the room until he cleared his throat, which startled him.
‘Fuck,’ said Karl. ‘Sorry.’
‘You’re watching an infomercial.’
‘It’s a shopping channel,’ said Karl, half anticipating some act of violence and trying not to show it. ‘I’m in love with the host,’ he added.
‘I need to talk to you,’ said Stu.
Karl sat up and straightened his clothes. Stu obliged Karl’s expectation by switching off the TV.
‘I need to issue you a formal warning,’ said Stu.
Karl felt the palms of his hands go sweaty. His stomach knotted. This had to be about the massage. Stu had read Janna’s back the night he had written on it. Stu was going to kick the shit out of him.
‘What? Why?’ said Karl.
Stu sighed. ‘This is very early in the process, I understand that,’ he said. ‘Which is why we need to nip it in the bud.’
‘What have I done?’ said Karl.
‘Good. Good that you’re taking this seriously. Karl, this may feel like micro-management, but you haven’t been writing your five-hundred-word journal entries,’ said Stu.
‘Oh, that,’ said Karl. ‘I’ll catch up. I can do it tonight.’
‘You’re coasting. You’re not taking your situation seriously. It’s affecting Genevieve, and it’s affecting me and Janna. Let me ask you something: if you were in the prison you narrowly avoided, what would you do when they called for lights out?’
‘I’d turn out my light.’
‘So show us the same courtesy,’ said Stu. ‘Follow the instructions you’re set. Even if it seems stupid. You have to work the programme.’
‘Like the twelve steps. It doesn’t seem stupid, Stu. I get the principle.’
‘I’ve seen people, very rarely, but I’ve seen it, go through the whole Transition thinking they were the exception, thinking the rules applied to everyone else.’
‘What happened to them?’ said Karl.
‘They were given an opportunity to turn things around, a scheme which asks so little and gives so much in return. We’re a charity, Karl. We pay our staff, but we’re a non-profit organisation. We have patrons and benefactors, and our former candidates make a donation in the form of a percentage of profits from the businesses we help them set up.’
‘So you’re like a massive conglomerate?’
‘All of the money goes back into The Transition. The point is they were given, these people, they were given this golden opportunity to turn their lives around and they couldn’t do it. Why? Because part of them wanted to sabotage their own shot at happiness and success – I can see you flinching at those words, Karl, and I don’t care – I won’t let it happen to one of my protégés. Even if I have to be a dick about it. I say this because I care about you, Karl. You’re a good guy and I want to help you. You see that, don’t you?’
‘I’ll write the journal entries.’
‘I still have to issue you the warning – it’s your first of three.’
‘What happens after three?’
‘You’re not going to find out.’
* * *
‘ARE YOU OKAY?’ said Genevieve. She was lying with her head on his chest and they were watching a repeat of a topical panel show in bed, drinking lager from the can.
‘Am I okay?’ said Karl. ‘That’s not how it works. You never ask me if I’m okay. I ask you over and over again until it pisses you off.’
‘But now I’m asking you.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Karl. ‘Is there something wrong with how I’m watching TV?’
‘Things feel different.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Can we watch something else?’ said Genevieve. ‘I find people trying to be spontaneously funny about things that happened five years ago unbearably sad.’
* * *
At seven Karl said he needed to meet Keston for a pint. ‘Need to, eh?,’ said Genevieve. It was Keston’s request, Karl told her. Instead he followed his tablet map to 52 Pritchatts Road, a tall, grubby tower block made of egg-box-shaped units. Karl walked around the building to the service alley. He found a green metal door with an electric card reader and a sign reading HERMITAGE. Karl put the black card in and the door slid open.
‘Yes!’ said Alice Jonke. ‘Woo! You made it.’
‘Hi,’ said Karl.
The room was small but clean. It had no window, but was lit softly by standard lamps. It contained an armchair, a desk, and an exercise mat. Alice Jonke was sitting in the lotus position on the exercise mat. There was a strong citrus smell and a silent waterfall flowing over the far wall.
‘I didn’t know if you’d bother,’ she said.
‘I wanted to know why you lied about the band.’
‘Oh, so you know I lied,’ said Alice. ‘Well, that saves me having to tell you I lied. I couldn’t talk about it at Stu and Janna’s house.’
‘What is this place? Is it your flat?’
‘I wish!’ said Alice. ‘Hermitage have a series of one-room sanctuaries throughout the city and people can rent them for fifty pounds per thirty minutes. It’s not for sex. It’s a place to catch a break, do some work, meditate – a little niche in the middle of the busiest, most stressful parts of town. It’s a Transition business, so I get free use when they’re not booked – one of the perks.’
‘It’s nice. Why did you call me here?’
‘I felt bad,’ said Alice. ‘I told you there was no band. There was a band. And we were serious about turning against The Transition. We got into a lot of trouble. My ex-husband was kicked off.’
‘Okay,’ said Karl. ‘But you finished the programme, set up your own business, and now you volunteer for The Transition in your spare time. What happened to Jonathan?’
‘Oh, we’d practically broken up before we started The Transition. He was kind of an idiot. Honestly, I look back and I can see how oppressive he was – he was against everything. He hated my parents because – I don’t even know why – he saw them as materialistic or something. Just because they have a hot tub. I mean, Jesus, Karl. He was holding me back – Janna was right about that. One night he came home late, drunk, and he’d kissed someone in a bar, and he was tearful and apologetic, and I just thought, I don’t even care. But this isn’t about me.’
‘Did Janna and Stu help you with the divorce?’
‘Help? I suppose they would have done if I’d asked. I mean, they helped sort out the legal stuff, so you could see it that way. And at the time Stu was very good at talking me through what I saw as a compromise.’ She took out a smartphone and read from the screen. ‘“Is it a puzzle that systems contain their own rebellion? What are pistons doing if not struggling like lobsters on their way to the pot? A good system not only contains its own rebellion; a good system harnesses that rebellion and uses it to produce over eighty percent of its energy.”’
‘What’s that from?’
‘Me,’ said Alice. ‘I wrote it. Pretty good, right? I think I should be a cultural critic.’
‘I don’t know whether you’re warning me or encouraging me or what,’ said Karl.
‘Well, there’s a way out, if you want it,’ said Alice. ‘But my suggestion is you just play the system for all it’s worth, then come and find me once you get a job, and we can work on changing the organisation from within.’
‘Right,’ said Karl.
‘Meantime, if there’s anything I can do, you let me know.’ She gave him a card with her number and Alice Jonke, The Transition, Admissions. ‘Or if you, you know, have anything for me.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Karl.
‘Probably best,’ said Alice. ‘Well, aloha, Karl.’