according to Bea. I asked Ma if that was true, but she didn’t confirm or deny. Instead, an odd look passed across her face, as if she was struggling to recall anything about my conception at all, before she asked me what I wanted for tea.
As Ma’s pregnancy advanced, she began retreating into herself, giving me a little breathing space, which was a relief. But then my stepfather stepped into that space, which wasn’t. At dinner he started asking about my day (something Ma now forgot to do), leaning across our tiny table so I could smell the beer on his breath. I started locking the bathroom door when I showered, wrapping myself tight in my duvet when I went to bed. I started wishing I had my own room. I agreed with Ma that we should move. The flat was too small for three, let alone four. But my stepfather insisted that we couldn’t afford the rent increase, not with the baby coming. Strangely, Ma didn’t seem to care anymore, so didn’t press him. Probably to minimize his moaning about all the new things she was buying for the baby. So she got fatter and further away, and he got thinner and closer, while the walls of our tiny flat felt like they were closing in on us all.
Leo
Lately Leo was seized by sudden, inexplicable rages. He’d recently smashed six windows in the refectory with a cricket bat, only escaping expulsion when his father bestowed a substantial donation on the headmaster’s discretionary fund. Then Leo ripped the pocket off Robin Walker’s blazer and earned five days’ lunchtime detention. While Leo sat at his desk, facing the wall, writing I will control my temper over and over again, he wondered why he’d done it and couldn’t explain it even to himself. Despite the detentions, he then repeatedly thumped a random boy in the playground, only escaping punishment because the boy had been too scared to report him.
Then, one afternoon, Leo came across a book in the school library by Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Apparently, it was a first edition, and the librarian refused to let Leo remove it from its glass case. But Leo needed to read it. And not any edition, that very one. He couldn’t explain the why of that either. So, reasoning that the ditzy old duffer librarian wouldn’t notice, Leo stole the book and replaced it with another. It took three nights under his bedclothes with a torch (also stolen, to add insult to injury, from Robin Walker) to read the book cover to cover.
When he’d finished, Leo had his answer. He was dangerous. A madman with two sides—one (relatively) good and one (increasingly) bad. He wondered if that bastard Walker had poisoned him with something concocted in the chemistry lab. He wondered if there was an antidote. Then Leo realized, somewhat to his surprise, that even if there was he wouldn’t take it. He didn’t want to suppress his rages because, although the external consequences could be unfortunate, the internal effects were rather glorious. When he was overcome with rage, when pure fury was pumping in his veins, Leo felt more exalted, more invincible, more himself than he ever had before.
8th October
Twenty-four days . . .
9:59 a.m.—Goldie
I need a job fast, one that doesn’t require references and pays in cash. Frustratingly, my search must be geographically confined, meaning a mile exclusion radius around the Fitzwilliam Hotel. Although Garrick rarely strays more than a few hundred metres from his office, preferring to send his minions on external errands, I’ve known him to go to the corner shop for cigarettes when he’s sick of the place and wants out. Personally, I’d like to go back and trim his other fingers. But I need to stay safe, if only for Teddy’s sake.
I dropped Ted at school, then went straight into town to start searching. When I reach King’s Parade, I’ve already been summarily rejected from two cafés and three restaurants. I’m beginning to feel so desperate by this point I even include shops in my search, but I’m told no by four before I’ve barely opened my mouth. I see the sign for the No. 33 Café, something of a Cambridge institution, I believe, though I’ve never been inside. Still, it looks nice enough from the outside, with one big bay window overlooking King’s College. Sitting at a table, staring out onto the street, is an old lady, perhaps in