One memory at a time, Henry placed his past back in his case. His preparations complete, he made his way back to the living room and lowered himself into his wing-back chair with a cup of Ceylon Orange Pekoe and three custard creams.
‘Amended Mantra of the Day,’ he said, turning to Banjo’s upturned face. ‘No matter what age we reach, or however much our lives may settle beneath the inevitable cloak of familiarity, it is never, ever too late to be amazed.’
Henry wondered what the people from Wyedean would say if they knew the context behind his words. That he was a fool, probably. That after a lifetime of so-called academic excellence, how banal, how unoriginal of him to admit that what mattered to him most now was love.
He shifted his gaze to the antiquated furniture and mountains of yellowing books as though viewing everything for the first, or last, time. He would not return. The world could mock him all it liked, he wouldn’t give up until he’d said the words he needed to say to the only person alive who mattered to him now.
Henry’s hand drifted to an envelope peeking out from his cardigan pocket. Inside it: pre-purchased train tickets for Edinburgh. First Class. Two.
‘Perhaps it’ll be fine after all,’ he said, his spirits revived by a resurgent ray of optimism. He leaned over and rubbed the back of Banjo’s head. ‘And if it’s not fine, then stone me, at least it’ll be illuminating…’
Wide Awake
FINSBURY PARK, LONDON, DECEMBER 5: JOURNEY EVE
Ariel
Somewhere along a dusky stretch of track, Ariel felt her nerve waver. She drew her face back from the window as the train decelerated, leaving the grainy, urban blackness behind and easing its way beneath the vast, multi-arched roof of Paddington Station.
A stranger standing in the aisle purred into her phone: ‘We’re pulling in now… I’ll meet you in the usual place… Yes… Yes, me too.’
Ariel lowered her eyes and picked at a hangnail embedded in her thumb. If anything should happen to her over the next few days – some random accident, some freakish act of nature, or God, or destiny, or whatever – Linus would be the one to get a phone call. It could come from London, Edinburgh, or just about anywhere in between; the point was that a police officer would call with the news, and none of it would make any sense because she hadn’t told him the truth about where she was going. It would be a disaster. The worst possible way for him to find out she’d lied.
Actually, that she’d been lying to him for days.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tugged. A quick, sharp flare of pain and the hangnail came away in her fingers, a tiny droplet of blood mushrooming upwards and outwards over the rosy surface of her skin. Don’t be a wuss, she told herself. It’s two days! Forty-eight hours from now it’ll all be over.
At 20:37, Ariel stepped down onto a freezing cold platform, her wheelie bag in her hand. She pulled her multicoloured scarf tighter around her neck and joined a fast-moving line of passengers heading towards the ticket barriers. On instinct, she tilted her face upwards and breathed in the thick, metallic air. A faint murmur of danger (unspecified, intangible, largely cinematic in origin) caught at her chest. The pull of the city, she thought, her spirits lifting. A promise of adventure. Thank you, God! Now I remember.
The descent to the Underground led her into a frenzied warren of escalators and tunnels. Ariel negotiated her route to Finsbury Park with relative ease, surfaced at ground level and walked down a long, starkly lit passageway until she reached a busy sleeve of London high street. She emerged onto Seven Sisters Road and faltered. A dense knot of pedestrians scurried past her, snatching her breath away, their faces armed with hard-edged confidence – the kind of attitude, she decided, that only a city as awesome as London could produce.
She stepped to one side, flipped open the canvas bag slung over her shoulder and searched for Tumbleweed’s email on her phone. Mags is cool with you staying the night, he’d written. You’ll like her. Just don’t call her Magdalena. Crazy girl thinks it makes her sound like a disciple.
She memorised his directions, crossed over the road and set off to her right. A zigzag of turns, and she arrived at last at a steep run of concrete steps leading to a side-street basement.
Ariel lingered for a moment on the pavement and peered into the milky darkness. ‘Mag-da-le-na,’ she intoned, airing the word out, freeing it so it wouldn’t sneak up on her later and catch her unawares.
She dragged her wheelie bag to the bottom of the stairs and pressed her finger to a bronze buzzer. A light snapped on beyond the window, and a wiry cat, perched territorially on the windowsill, glowered at her with bilious green eyes.
‘Hi there,’ she said, backing carefully away from it.
Behind her, the door swung open. ‘You must be Ariel,’ said a girl with violet, asymmetric hair. ‘I’m Mags. Come in!’
The first thing Ariel felt was the music, slipping inside her, squeezing the air from her lungs like a vice. ‘Aladdin Sane,’ she said, dropping her shoulder bag to the floor. ‘Ziggy goes to America. 1973.’
Mags raised her eyebrows. ‘Yeah, it is! You a Bowie-head?’
Ariel tilted her hand from side to side. ‘Kind of, I suppose. I used to think I was the only person on the planet who thought it was called A Lad Insane until I found out the pun was intentional. Estelle – my mother – was a massive Bowie fan. It’s weird to hear it here. Reminds me of home.’
‘Shit. Sorry.’ Mags took an aborted step towards an old-school iPod and seemed to be weighing up whether or not to turn it off. ‘Tumbleweed told me what happened, I’m –’
‘It’s okay. It’s fine, don’t worry.’
Ariel smiled awkwardly and looked away, her throat thickening, an icy, sinking sensation billowing through her insides. She tried to distract herself by focusing on her surroundings: low ceiling; a lumpy sofa; floorboards bare apart from a shabby, oversized Persian rug; cheap lamps and mirrored cushions and a half-eaten pizza scattered at random intervals around the room.
The back wall was covered with what she assumed must be Mags’s artwork. Sketch after sketch of semi-naked, contorted torsos which somehow managed to look both fragile and disarmingly self-possessed.
‘Are those yours?’ she asked, moving closer. The hand-drawn charcoal figures were softer close up; less physically arresting. ‘They’re amazing! Seriously, I wish I could do that.’
Mags threw her an appreciative smile. ‘Gracias. They’re part of my coursework. I’m still working on my technique, but honestly, I’d rather look at those than at that hideous woodchip wallpaper underneath.’
Ariel pulled off her gloves and ran a finger over the pockmarked surface
