the boat while he heaved his guts out into the North Sea.
‘Didn’t know you got seasick, Andy,’ Tommy said.
‘Must be something I ate.’
And Vince! ‘What the fuck, Tommy?’ Andy had said when Tommy recounted what had happened at Silver Birches in his absence. One girl dead, one girl absconded, and Vince Ives suddenly being brought into the fold by Steve. The police suspected him of murdering his wife, for God’s sake. He was going to bring all kinds of unwanted attention their way.
‘Oh, come on, Foxy, Vince didn’t kill Wendy. He hasn’t got it in him.’
‘But he’s got this in him?’ Andy asked as they’d heaved Maria over the side of the boat.
‘Well, I’m not particularly chuffed about three becoming four either, but if it keeps him quiet … And Steve vouches for him.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ Andy said sarcastically, ‘if Steve vouches for him.’
As soon as they were off the boat, Steve was on the phone.
‘Steve. How’s it going?’
‘Andy, how are you?’ (He never waited for an answer.) ‘I think it’s best, given the circumstances, that we move all the girls out first thing, transport them to the place in Middlesbrough. Close down the op at Silver Birches.’ You would think he’d been in the military, the way he spoke. And he was the captain and they were the lowly foot soldiers.
Andy imagined freeing the girls, opening the door, throwing off their chains of slavery and watching them run across a wildflower meadow like wild horses.
‘Andy, are you listening to me?’
‘Yeah, sorry, Steve. We’ll start getting them loaded up first thing.’
Cranford World
‘Are you all right?’ Bunny said. ‘You missed last night’s performance.’
‘Was Barclay cross with me?’ Harry asked.
‘No, not cross, pet. He can’t be cross, he can’t be anything, he’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘As a dodo.’
‘Right,’ Harry said, trying to absorb this unexpected news.
‘Sorry to be blunt. It was a massive heart attack. He was dead before he got to the hospital.’
Harry was shocked by the news of Barclay’s death, but he wasn’t entirely surprised by it. After all, Barclay hadn’t exactly been the picture of health, but still … ‘Shall I tidy up his dressing room a bit?’ he said, at a loss as to how to proceed. That’s what people did after a death, didn’t they? Tidied up a bit. After his mother died he remembered her sister, who was someone they hardly ever saw, arriving to go through her things. Harry had tried to help his aunt, but it had been too overwhelming to see his mother’s clothes being piled up on the bed and her jewellery box being sorted through in a rather callous manner. (‘Look at these bracelets. She never had great taste, did she?’)
It was presumed that Harry would want none of his mother’s things. Perhaps that was why he had so few memories of her. It was objects, wasn’t it, that bound you to someone’s history? A hair-clip or a shoe. Kind of like a talisman. (A post-Dangerfield word he had learned recently.) When he thought about it now, he realized that was the last time he had seen his mother’s sister. ‘They weren’t close,’ his father said. Perhaps they would say that about him and Candace when they grew up. He hoped not. There were so few people in Harry’s world that he intended to keep them all as close as possible. Harry’s World, he thought. What kind of an attraction would that be? No vampires, for sure, or pirates for that matter, just lots of books, pizza, TV. What else? Crystal and Candace. And what about his mother? He felt duty-bound to bring her back to life in his World. What if that meant she was a zombie though? And would she get on with Crystal? He realized he had forgotten to include his father. How would he manage with two wives? And then there was Tipsy, of course, he would probably have to choose between her and Brutus. Et tu, Brute, he thought. Harry had played Portia, Brutus’s wife, in Miss Dangerfield’s ‘gender-blind’ production of Julius Caesar. Emily had relished being Caesar. She had the soul of a dictator. She would push her way into his fantasy World too, if he wasn’t careful. Harry was not unaware that his mind was quietly unravelling.