he was sweating and gurning, his face pallid in the moonlight, thrashing across the bed like a fish in a net. I tried to hold his arms still but it was impossible, his desperation making him strong as Samson. As he flailed he caught me hard across the face – but it was only the next day I realised he’d cut my cheek.
In the morning he said he didn’t remember the dream, but he looked unkempt and exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all, huge circles beneath his Labrador-brown eyes.
‘You’re up early,’ I said, plonking some toast in front of him that he pushed away. ‘Are you all right?’
He didn’t speak. He just sat at the breakfast table drinking black coffee and reading the Financial Times in sullen silence whilst the children ate cereal and bickered, and the Today programme murmured in the background. Liam and Star were still in bed; I didn’t expect to see them before noon.
I was plaiting Alicia’s hair when James ordered me to turn the radio up.
‘News just in this morning: as feared, the Nomad Banking Conglomerate has gone down with the most devastating effect,’ John Humphrys announced. ‘A huge shock to all involved. What exactly is it going to mean for the investors?’
‘Turn it off, for fuck’s sake.’ James stood up, his face horribly taut, a muscle jumping in his cheek. ‘Christ, all this fucking doom and gloom. I thought this was meant to be boom-time.’
I realised it wasn’t the time to reprimand the swearing.
‘Mummy,’ said Effie, ‘can I have a cross hot bun, please?’
‘I’m not sure how much more I can take actually.’ James rammed his chair into the table. ‘We’ll be lucky if we’re not out on the street soon.’
He was prone to exaggeration, but I wondered now if the warning signs of his former depression were rearing their head again. I thought rather nervously of the troubles he’d mentioned the other day.
‘James, please,’ I beseeched as Alicia looked at him curiously. ‘Let’s talk about it in a minute, OK?’
‘Cross hot buns, cross hot buns,’ the twins began to chant, oblivious.
James threw the paper on the table and slammed out of the room. It was obviously not the time to tell him I wanted to go back to work, although if the money worries were real, he might welcome it. I slathered my toast with marmalade and glanced at the front page.
‘Art Dealer’s socialite daughter protests for Islamic Fundamentalism,’ the headline read. There beneath the print was a photo of a girl struggling with a policeman in Parliament Square, dark hair falling across her beautiful but angrily contorted face, a black boy with short dreds behind her, partially obscured. Licking marmalade from my fingers, I pulled the paper closer and looked again. It was the girl from the petrol station.
UNIVERSITY, NOVEMBER 1991
The River of Oblivion rolls … whereof who drinks, Forthwith his former state and being forgets.
Paradise Lost, Milton
I didn’t see or hear from any of them again until the middle of November. There were vague murmurings on campus about the incident in the cathedral, and one mention in the Oxford Gazette; and sometimes I wanted to shout, ‘That was me’ – but I never did. Life went on as normal. I immersed myself in my work, but I found myself searching streets, bars and crowds longingly to see if Dalziel was there. He never was, and there was a part of me that was relieved. Once I saw Lena and the beautiful dark girl in the King’s Arms but they looked through me in a way that made me shrivel. I wanted to do well at Oxford and I had a feeling deep in my bones that these boys and girls, this group, were never going to be good for me. I asked a few people about Society X but no one seemed to want to talk about it. Some just smiled and looked away; lots had never heard of it – and a few looked faintly appalled when I mentioned it, so eventually I stopped; I started to forget about them all.
But one evening there was a folded note sealed with scarlet wax in my pigeonhole, my name in flowing black italics. For some reason, my fingers fumbled with the seal as I tried to open it.
‘X MARKS THE SPOT’ the note proclaimed, giving a time and an address, which later turned out to be one of the best streets in town, instructing me to ‘dress dangerously and bring something intoxicating’. I wasn’t exactly sure what the latter two meant – but I did as I was told, spending the last of my grant on a black velvet catsuit and the highest black heels I could find.
On the night in question I bought a bottle of Lambrusco for Dutch courage, and opened it in my room. I slicked my hair back, painted my eyes with kohl and my mouth with scarlet lipstick, splashing myself with Chanel No. 5 that I’d nicked from my mother. I was excited. Overexcited at the thought that I had an invitation into the elite.
And then I sat on my narrow bed and decided I couldn’t possibly go. I was terrified. I didn’t know anyone. They’d think I was an idiot; a country bumpkin. They’d laugh at me. I heard the other students on my floor come and go, the laughter of a Saturday night, music fading and increasing as doors opened and closed. Only I was alone, apparently. I reapplied my lipstick for the fifteenth time. I drank a bit more wine. I changed my mind, then changed it back again.
In the end I was there just before midnight, as instructed, clutching the Jack Daniel’s I’d bought because I’d read that Janis Joplin had drunk it, at the door of the tall town-house on Lawn Street. My belly squirmed with nerves. The lights were all out as I rang the doorbell and I thought for a horrid second they’d forgotten me – or perhaps it was all a nasty joke to get me stumbling around town in killer heels like a drunken fool.
The door opened a crack.
‘Password?’
‘Pardon?’ I said.
‘Password,’ the voice drawled impatiently.
‘I don’t know the—’ I began, and the door started to close.
‘No, wait.’ I had a flash of inspiration. ‘X?’
The door hovered – and then opened just wide enough to let me in.
‘That’ll do.’ Black-tipped fingernails grasped my arm, and pulled me through. The door slammed behind me. I was in.
I followed the tall girl called Lena, whose hair was now pink and who wore nothing but a bra and bondage trousers, down a white hallway into a very minimal room. The floorboards were painted black, the walls red, and there was no furniture at all apart from a red velvet divan, a black granite coffee table and long white curtains. It all looked like a stage-set, particularly as a hundred candles flickered and guttered in the breeze from the French windows. The room was terribly hot and music swelled from the expensive stereo in the corner, some kind of opera I didn’t recognise. A few people I didn’t know stood round the corners of the room, drinking, smoking, mostly silent. Everyone seemed to be wearing black and it was clear everyone was nervous, although there was a certain loucheness to most of them. They eyed me with feigned disinterest and chose to ignore me. Lena lit a chillum and handed it around.
James appeared, and I headed towards him gladly. He was wearing a dinner suit that rather drowned him, despite his stocky frame, and he too seemed on edge. His nervousness surprised me, and made my own heart thump more.
‘This
