have known what would happen to him.’
He made circles with the straw, then placed the glass on the small table beside him in order to take a glucosamine supplement for his arthritis.
‘Then I would have to have you killed.’ He laughed that croak of his, to imply it was a joke. But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. ‘I’ll make a deal, a compromise. I will give you the exact life you want – any life at all – but every eight years, as usual, you’ll get a call and, before you choose your next identity, I’ll ask you to do something.’
I had heard all this before, of course. Although ‘any life you want’ never really meant that. He would give me a handful of suggestions and I’d pick one of them. And my response, too, was more than familiar to his ears.
‘Is there any news of her?’ It was a question I had asked a hundred times before, but it had never sounded as pathetic, as hopeless, as it did now.
He looked at his drink. ‘No.’
I noticed he said it a little quicker than he normally would. ‘Hendrich?’
‘No. No, I haven’t. But, listen, we are finding new people at an incredible rate. Over seventy last year. Can you remember when we started? A good year was five. If you still want to find her you’d be mad to want out now.’
I heard a small splashing sound from the swimming pool. I stood up, went to the edge of the pool, and saw a small mouse, hopelessly swimming along past a water filter. I knelt down and scooped the creature out. It scuttled away towards the perfectly manicured grass.
He had me, and he knew it. There was no way out alive. And even if there was, it was easier to stay. There was a comfort to it – like insurance.
‘Any life I want?’
‘Any life you want.’
I am pretty sure, Hendrich being Hendrich, he was assuming that I was going to demand something extravagant and expensive. That I would want to live in a yacht off the Amalfi Coast, or in a penthouse in Dubai. But I had been thinking about this, and I knew what to say. ‘I want to go back to London.’
‘London? She probably isn’t there, you know.’
‘I know. I just want to be back there. To feel like I’m home again. And I want to be a teacher. A history teacher.’
He laughed. ‘A history teacher. What, like in a high school?’
‘They say “secondary school” in England. But, yes, a history teacher in a high school. I think that would be a good thing to do.’
And Hendrich smiled and looked at me with mild confusion, as if I had ordered the chicken instead of the lobster. ‘That’s perfect. Yes. Well, we’ll just need to get a few things in place and . . .’
And as Hendrich kept talking I watched the mouse disappear under the hedge, and into dark shadows, into freedom.
London, now
London. The first week of my new life.
The headteacher’s office at Oakfield School.
I am trying to seem normal. It is an increasing challenge. The past is trying to burst through.
No.
It is already through. The past is always here. The room smells of instant coffee, disinfectant and acrylic carpet, but there is a poster of Shakespeare.
It is the portrait you always see of him. Receding hairline, pale skin, the blank eyes of a stoner. A picture that doesn’t really look like Shakespeare.
I return my focus to the headteacher, Daphne Bello. She is wearing orange hoop earrings. She has a few white hairs amid the black. She is smiling at me. It is a wistful smile. The kind of smile no one is capable of before the age of forty. The kind that contains sadness and defiance and amusement all at once.
‘I’ve been here a long while.’
‘Really?’ I say.
Outside a distant police siren fades into nothing.
‘Time,’ she says, ‘is a strange thing, isn’t it?’
She delicately holds the brim of her paper cup of coffee as she places it down next to her computer.
‘The strangest,’ I agree.
I like Daphne. I like this whole interview. I like being back here, in London, back in Tower Hamlets. And to be in an interview for an ordinary job. It is so wonderful to feel, well, ordinary for once.
‘I have been a teacher now for three decades. And here for two. What a depressing thought. All those years. I am so old.’ She sighs through her smile.
I have always found it funny when people say that.
‘You don’t look it,’ is the done thing to say, so I say it.
‘Charmer! Bonus points!’ She laughs a laugh that rises through an entire two octaves.
I imagine the laugh as an invisible bird, something exotic, from Saint Lucia (where her father was from), flying off into the grey sky beyond the window.
‘Oh, to be young, like you,’ she chuckles.
‘Forty-one isn’t young,’ I say, emphasising the ludicrous number. Forty-one. Forty-one. That is what I am.
‘You look very well.’
‘I’ve just come back from holiday. That might be it.’
‘Anywhere nice?’
‘Sri Lanka. Yes. It was nice. I fed turtles in the sea . . .’
‘Turtles?’
‘Yes.’
I look out of the window and see a woman with a gaggle of schoolkids in uniform head onto the playing field. She stops, turns to them, and I see her face as she speaks unheard words. She is wearing glasses and jeans and a long cardigan that flaps gently in the wind, and she pulls her hair behind her ear. She is laughing now, at something a pupil is saying. The laugh lights up her face, and I am momentarily mesmerised.
‘Ah,’ Daphne says, to my embarrassment when she sees where I am looking. ‘That’s Camille, our French teacher. There’s no one like her. The kids love her. She always gets them out and about . . . Al fresco French lessons. It’s that kind of school.’
‘I understand you’ve done a lot of great things here,’ I say, trying to get the conversation back on track.
‘I try. We all try. It’s sometimes a losing battle, though. That’s my only concern about your application. Your references are amazing. And I’ve had them all checked . . .’
I feel relieved. Not that she has checked the references, but that there had been someone who had picked up the phone, or emailed back.
‘.
