she started losing things and finding them again in inappropriate places: her car keys in the freezer, a pint of milk in the bathroom cabinet, a teaspoon in the till among the five-pound notes. Still, Scarlet didn’t say anything to her grandmother. She didn’t want her fears confirmed, she hoped that the symptoms would disappear—like a spider in the bath that, if left long enough, will eventually fall foul of the plughole.
Finally, neither Scarlet nor Esme could ignore it any longer. So Esme went to the doctor and the worst was confirmed. And Scarlet surrendered to the fact that baking cakes was as exciting as her science experiments were ever going to get.
10:58 p.m.—Bea
In addition to her unnervingly empowering experience in the library—slipping seamlessly into her ink-veined skin in a perfect alignment of body and soul—Bea has started noticing things. Things that make her wonder, with all evidence to the contrary, if her mamá’s tales might be true. Or, at the very least, born of a tiny kernel of truth. Rationally, it’s impossible. Yet Bea is now being forced to expand the boundaries of what she believes possible.
Lately, Bea has found that she knows what people are going to say before they say it. Not word for word, but the general gist. She thinks of people just before seeing them. And, last week, she predicted almost every question on her moral philosophy paper, a phenomenon that might have been put down to studious diligence except that she’d dreamed of them the night before. Such experiences are still a far cry from the dark premonitions her mamá claims, but they’re nonetheless inexplicable.
As a result, Bea, much to her dismay, has found herself seeking out certain gates, studying them for anomalies, signs that they might not be exactly as they appear. She’s stopped short of trying to walk through one at 3:33 a.m., though she isn’t sure whether this is because she draws the line at endorsing her mamá’s fantastical notions about fantastical worlds, or because the moon won’t be in the right phase again until 1st November. Still, if she happens to find herself with nothing better to do that night, she might give it a try.
“When you were a child you could do all that in your sleep,” her mamá says, when she calls, which she does more often than Bea would like.
“So you keep saying,” Bea says. “I wish you’d stop, you’re making me feel inadequate.”
“¿Por qué? It should be the opposite. Just wait and see.”
“I’ve no memory of these things and no evidence of them now, so . . .” Bea shrugs. “I’m only left with the gap between who you say I am and who I feel myself to be.”
“Stop shrugging,” her mamá says. “It’s bad for your posture.”
“Stop nagging,” Bea says. “And I’m not.”
“Lie to anyone you like but not to me,” Cleo says. “You only demean yourself. Besides, it’s fucking annoying. ¡Por amor al . . . demonio!”
“You’re fucking annoying,” Bea says, wanting to hang up. “And I don’t know why you persist in telling me these ridiculous stories—anyone would think you’re raring to return to Saint Dymphna’s. I’d have thought you’d had enough of that place.”
Her mamá is silent.
“You’ll be back there if someone overhears you,” Bea says, unable to resist twisting the knife. “They’ll think you’ve flipped.”
“That’s because most people have zero imagination and even less intelligence,” her mamá says. “If you walked them through a gate, if you held their hand till dawn, they’d still claim it’d all been a dream. ¿Entiendes? If they saw a spike of blue light in their black-and-white worlds, it’d blow their tiny mortal minds. If they saw anything extraordinary, they’d rationalize it into dust.”
Bea rolls her eyes.
“¡Deja!” Cleo snaps. “Stop disrespecting me.”
“I’m not,” Bea says, annoyed at her mamá’s uncanny ability to know exactly how she’s reacting, even when they’re talking on the phone.
“You know, I much preferred you when you were younger.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“Well, I did. And I’ll say it again. I can’t wait till you turn eighteen and I finally get my daughter back.”
Bea starts to roll her eyes again, then stops.
11:11 p.m.—Leo
Leo likes to walk the streets of Cambridge at night, especially when the colleges are bursting at the seams with students, their thoughts seeping through the ancient stones, tumbling from every open window and door, drifting through the air like bonfire smoke. He breathes in their desires, their disappointments, their despair.
Unlike London, here the streets are usually empty late at