THE TRANSMIGRATION OF RICHARD BROOKBANK Chapter 2 by Touch the Light As a last resort I look up at the sky, hoping the clouds have turned green or that they’ll part to reveal a fleet of flying saucers piloted by bug-eyed monsters intent on enslaving the human race. But everywhere looks depressingly normal. The only thing out of kilter is me. How did she do it? Why did she do it? Why did Ruth pick me? Save the post-mortem for later, Rich. You’ve got a more urgent problem to deal with. The Good Samaritans are exchanging worried frowns. No doubt this is because for the last minute and a half the girl in front of them has been acting like she’s escaped from somewhere. And now it hits me...

No way.

Absolutely no fucking way.

None of this is real.

It can’t be.

It just can’t.

People don’t go around swapping bodies. It’s not fucking possible.

Simple as that.

It’s. Not. Fucking. Possible.

You’re dreaming, dickhead. Like the time you guzzled nine pints of rough cider in the Borough Arms and woke up on the kitchen floor convinced you were engaged to the dark-haired lass out of the New Seekers.

Maybe, but I only had a couple last night. One in the Kings Head and one in the Volunteer. I remember drinking up and leaving just as News At Ten was coming on.

A couple too many, obviously. Once this nightmare’s over it might be wise to think about climbing on the wagon for a month or two.

But I wasn’t drunk! I’m bloody sure I wasn’t. When I got back to the flat I did the washing up, and I can never be bothered with that when I’m three sheets to the wind. Afterwards I made myself a cheese sandwich. I was going to have pickle on it but the jar was empty. Then I read forty pages of The Sot Weed Factor before I went to sleep. And I did have a dream, something to do with a King Crimson LP I used to own. I woke up at half-six, right on the dot. I couldn’t find any clean socks so I rinsed a pair under the tap and walked around in them so they’d be reasonably dry when I left for work...

What sort of dream is it when you can recall everyday events in such clear-cut detail?

I pinch the freckled skin above my left wrist. It hurts.

Not a dream, then.

But it’s got to be some sort of hallucination. Because if it isn’t…

That’s it! Ruth drugged me or hypnotised me so I’d be in no fit state to chase after her and raise the alarm. The contraption she took from me must be worth even more than Derek was led to believe.

So why are my mental processes unimpaired? If there was a narcotic in my bloodstream I don’t think I’d still be able to reel off in my head the names of every king and queen since the Norman Conquest like I’m doing now, together with the dates marking the beginning and end of each reign. As for being in a trance, shouldn’t I have come out of it once I’d sussed what was going on?

Then there’s those two women. I’m not imagining them. I know I’m not.

I flex fingers that can’t be mine, but obey my mental commands as though they’d been doing that all my life. Every chromosome in this body feels like it belongs to me, and always has done.

Which is just fucking crazy.

As a last resort I look up at the sky, hoping the clouds have turned green or that they’ll part to reveal a fleet of flying saucers piloted by bug-eyed monsters intent on enslaving the human race.

But everywhere looks depressingly normal. The only thing out of kilter is me.

How did she do it?

Why did she do it?

Why did Ruth pick me?

Save the post-mortem for later, Rich. You’ve got a more urgent problem to deal with.

The Good Samaritans are exchanging worried frowns. No doubt this is because for the last minute and a half the girl in front of them has been acting like she’s escaped from somewhere.

And now it hits me.

I’m a girl.

I’m female.

I’ve got tits and a vagina.

I’m a she.

I’m a her.

I’m a girl.

She’s made me into a fucking girl.

Yeah, and one who doesn’t know her address, her date of birth or her own husband’s Christian name. You’d better scarper before that pair start to wonder if they should call for help.

Merciful God, it gets worse.

Ruth is a married woman.

This body has been fucked.

Bloody hell, she could be–

Don’t even look that road up in the index, Rich.

I’m a girl.

Girls have got feet, haven’t they? Use the damn things.

Get out of here! NOW!

I take a step forward and stumble as I fail to allow for the high-heeled ankle boots I’m wearing.

Inconsiderate cow. She might at least have put on a pair of trainers.

Why am I thinking like this? I’ve just changed sex, for fuck’s sake. It’s not as if I’ve walked out of a barber’s with a bad haircut. So why haven’t I gone stark raving mad?

I’m a girl.

One of the taxi drivers waiting beside his vehicle at the back of the line rushes across and extends a hand to steady me.

“Keep your fucking maulers to yourself!” I snarl at him.

Jesus Christ, was that really me?

Is that how I sound? Just like her?

I’m a girl.

I really am a fucking girl.

“No need to get your knickers in a twist, darlin’,” he says from what seems like several miles away. ”I was only trying to help.”

How can any of this be happening?

And here comes the icing on the cake, for my outburst has served no purpose but to attract the attention of everyone within hearing range. When will I learn to keep my mouth shut?

I’ve got to put as much distance between myself and this place as I can. Suppose a police car stops to see what all the fuss is about? How am I going to talk my way out of that one, feign amnesia? Brilliant idea — until I remind myself that Richard Nixon was a more convincing liar than Richard Brookbank.

I’m a girl.

Hold on to your hat, Rich, because the storm’s about to break…

“Are you on your own, dear?”

“I don’t think she’s very well.”

“Ooh, I know. Look, the poor thing’s white as a sheet.”

“Someone ought to ring for an ambulance.”

“I’ll go. There’s a phone in the café next to the Keppels Head.”

That settles it.

“I’m all right! Honestly, I am!” I shout over the hubbub, wincing at the girlish timbre of my new voice. “It’s only a hangover, nothing to worry about.”

Which has raised me right up in their estimation.

As if it matters! Just get the fuck away from here!
 
 
Acutely aware of the extra weight at my chest — to say nothing of the eyes boring holes in my back — I hobble past the taxi rank with no goal in mind but to reach the main road. My hips swing wildly as I move, and with my centre of gravity dragging me forward and down my arms dangle like some demented she-ape’s. I must appear to have all the style and grace of Dick Emery in drag.

I’m a girl.

Somehow I make it as far as The Hard without falling flat on my face or twisting an ankle. But my feet ache as though I’ve been on them for hours, Ruth’s bra straps are chafing my shoulders and I’m rapidly getting drenched. If this isn’t Hell it’s a bloody fine imitation.

Perhaps that explains it. She shot me after all, and now I’m condemned to wander the earth in the guise of my murderess until my sins have been expiated and my spirit can rest in peace.

How am I supposed to do that? Where do I start?

Use the tongs when you’re lifting it out. Don’t let it make contact with your skin.

Of course! It wasn’t a gun Ruth pressed against the back of my neck, it was that silvery object Lantern Jaw found in the Almandine package! It must have recorded my brainwaves and transmitted them into her body.

But that’s incredible. A machine small enough to be held in the hand, requiring no external power source, and yet it has the capacity to hold the entire contents of someone’s mind? To think that such an advanced piece of technology was lying around in 20 Store for days, and none of us knew.

To think that it exists at all.

Who made that device, and what’s their agenda?

Just as important, how many more of those things are out there? How many people aren’t who we think they are?

No point overloading my synapses trying to solve riddles like these when it’s bucketing down and I’m standing in the open with water streaming down my forehead into my eyes. If I don’t want to catch my death of cold and experience the hereafter for real I’d better find some shelter while I work out what on earth I’m going to do next.

I’m a girl.

I’m a fucking girl.

Two hundred yards or so to my right, the bridge carrying the railway over St George’s Road promises a temporary respite from the downpour. First I have to get there, and in these heels it proves to be no simple undertaking. But after four or five minutes of a balancing act that would have had Blondin applauding I’m out of the rain, and in my present predicament I’ll grab any small mercies that come my way.

Without thinking, I rake my fringe back from my face. The femininity of the gesture isn’t lost on me. Can my subconscious behaviour be adapting to my change of gender so soon? Or doesn’t it need to? Maybe the device only transferred my memories, leaving the rest of Ruth’s brain functions intact.

Is part of me actually her? Has part of me always been her?

If so, how big a part?

Get a grip, Rich. You’ve nothing to gain by wasting time pondering the cognitive implications of a scientific breakthrough you can’t begin to understand.

I’m a girl.

I fumble through my pockets, desperate to find something I can use to help get me out of this mess — or failing that, the cigarette I’d sell my soul for. The only item I come across is a small metal key.

The bitch has left me without a penny.

But wait a minute...

To the bole of the key is taped a piece of paper. Upon it, written in thin blue biro, is an address.

Flat 806, Belvedere House, Clarendon Road, Southsea

I know where that is! I passed it most mornings on my way to lectures when I was a fresher billeted at the Bembridge Hotel. Eleven stories high. Broad steps fringed with potted palms rising to the main entrance. 24-hour concierge. Floodlit rear car park. Close enough to the sea front, the South Parade Pier and Palmerston Road shopping centre for residents to take full advantage of the facilities there, yet not so near they’re in danger of being outpriced by unscrupulous tenants sub-letting the flats to holidaymakers. Ideal for young professionals climbing the management ladder — those who don’t swallow hard at the thought of paying upwards of  £100 per month in rent.

But is it a trap?

Whatever reason Ruth had for stealing my body, it must have been a compelling one. Maybe she’s a gangster’s moll on the run from a mob of vicious hoodlums, or a spy being tailed by a Soviet agent who has orders to stab her with a poisoned umbrella.

Hang on, this is Ruth Pattison we’re talking about. The girl who used to copy the answers to long division sums. The girl who only won a prize for best scrapbook because she had an uncle stationed in West Germany who sent her dozens of photographs and magazine clippings. The girl who believed in all seriousness that the council employed a man to walk along Stockton Road every night to see which of the bulbs in the catseyes needed changing.

The girl who packs a revolver.

The girl who has at her beck and call two gorillas who look like they eat steel girders for breakfast.

The girl who knows how to operate a gizmo that can shift a person’s consciousness from one body to another.

But why switch with me? Why not a wealthy businessman or a politician, someone with power and influence? Let’s face it, the old codger selling newspapers on the corner of Edinburgh Road would have been a more astute choice than Richard Brookbank.

Unless I’m her patsy.

If she plans to rob a consignment of gold bullion or bump off a world leader all she has to do to escape the long arm of the law is swap back and leave muggins here to take the rap for any dastardly deeds she might have perpetrated. Any attempt on my part to tell the truth will be laughed out of court as the worst defence since Guy Fawkes pleaded that he was only trying to warm the Houses of Parliament up a bit.

In which case why didn’t she force me to go with her? It’s not as if I could have offered up much of a struggle. Wouldn’t it have made far more sense to leave me gagged and bound in the boot of a car while she went ahead with her nefarious wrongdoings rather than give me the key to her flat and trust I’d get there under my own steam? How did she know I wouldn’t run yelling and screaming down the gangway and end up falling into the harbour? Or make such a song and dance about being trapped in the wrong body the men in white coats would have carted me off to the funny farm before you could say Randle P McMurphy?

I’m a girl.

But if I cross Belvedere House off my list of options, what remains?

Go to the authorities?

Why not? They’ll probably put out an APB and start erecting road blocks the moment I’ve finished my story. They might even pay for me to stay in a 5-star hotel while they hunt her down. What they definitely will not do is shut me away for the rest of my life in a room with rubber wallpaper and bars on the windows.

Find a hostel for homeless women?

I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Sleep rough?

In this weather? Fuck that for a game of soldiers.

I could always sell her ring. The proceeds would keep the wolf from the door long enough to give me some breathing space.

Oh yeah? And what exactly do you think you’ll achieve by sitting around moping in a crappy B & B counting your freckles until the money runs out and you’re back to square one? Like it or not, you need Ruth to find you if she’s going to reverse the process — and there’s only one place she’ll know to look.

Belvedere House it is, then. The best part of two miles from here. In the pouring rain. With high heels.

Thanks, Ruth. Thanks a fucking bunch.

Another thought occurs to me. What if all that about a restaurant in Warsash was bullshit, and I open the door to find a hairy-arsed husband parading around in his birthday suit in anticipation of a spot of nookie before I cook his spag bol? How am I going to put him off, say I’m sorry but I’m really not feeling myself this afternoon?

Yet I’ve stared death in the eye today. I can handle some bloke waving his cock at me.

Gritting my teeth, I head back into the deluge. And with each halting step taking me half a yard closer to an unguessable future, the one fact about which there can be no debate reverberates ceaselessly inside my head.

I’m a girl.

I’m a girl.

I’m a girl…
 
 

 
 
Halfway along the corridor, the number I both yearn for and dread:

806.

This is the moment of truth, Rich. As they say, shit or bust.

I insert the key in the lock. My mouth is dry, and my nerves are torn to shreds. Anything could be waiting for me in there.

If ever I needed a cigarette it’s now.

The door opens on silence and darkness. I close it quietly, leaning back against the frame until my breathing becomes easier and my hands have stopped shaking enough for them to find the light switch and turn it on.

I can tell at once that no one lives here. The only items of furniture are the zebra-striped sofa, the velour armchair and the low coffee table in front of the gas fire. The plain white walls and polished hardwood shelves are free of paintings, ornaments or other accoutrements such as mirrors or posters. Impressions in the woodland green carpet betray the recent presence of a cabinet or a sideboard and perhaps a bookcase, whilst the faint tang of lemons suggests that the flat has been thoroughly cleaned at some point during the last few days.

This is the best result I could have hoped for.

But I can’t relax. During the long, arduous slog from The Hard — a journey made all the more protracted by my tendency to stand and gawp whenever I saw my reflection in a shop window, so that the clock in the foyer showed ten past four when I finally staggered in from the rain — I had plenty of time to analyse my situation. None of the conclusions I’ve drawn give me grounds for very much in the way of optimism.

It seems clear that Ruth stole the device she was later to use on me, then hid it in 20 Store until the heat died down and she was able to retrieve it without inviting suspicion. (That in itself rules out the possibility of her wanting my body so she could use my security pass to gain access to the dockyard, for she must have had at least one contact there already.)

Yet if her overall intentions remain obscure, where yours truly is concerned they’re much easier to predict. A machine that allows its operator to become anyone they meet has got to be pretty hot property. The people it belongs to aren’t going to leave many stones unturned in their efforts to get it back. That means Ruth will almost certainly have decided I know too much for her to risk the chance that I’ll talk; however ludicrous my story might sound to a judge and jury, if it reaches the ears of anyone connected with that thing they’ll be able to put two and two together straight away. Once we’re back in our own bodies Ruth’s best bet will be to tell her goons to do me in and make it look as if I’ve topped myself out of guilt. She’s probably already written my confession and suicide note.

What’s left of the Brookbank family name will end in notoriety and disgrace. For the first time since I watched the doctor pull a sheet over his face, I’m glad my father isn’t alive.

That’s the real crime you committed today, you thieving fucking tart.

Close to exhaustion, I limp over to the armchair and sit down to remove Ruth’s high-heeled ankle boots. Anger and resentment conspire to fling them into the farthest corner of the room.

How dare she do this to me?

How dare she?

It wasn’t much of a life: a job I hated; a squalid bedsit; no girlfriend nor any realistic hope of getting one; no sense of contentment I didn’t find at the bottom of a glass.

But it was mine to piss about with, not hers.

Cool it, Rich. You’re up to your ears in shit, and you won’t climb free of it by losing your temper. You’d be better off snapping out of this victim mentality and making a comprehensive inventory of the flat in an effort to find something you can use to turn the tables against her.

I take off the leather jacket, but decide to suffer the discomfort of my soaking wet jeans; the curvature stretching out the material of my sweatshirt is enough of a distraction without the addition of a stranger’s bare thighs, knees and calves. In any case, performing such mundane tasks as hanging clothes up to dry would imply a degree of acceptance I’m not ready to concede.

Feeling more comfortable now that I can place my feet flat on the floor, I pad through the open alcove I can see leads into the kitchen. As I suspected, it confirms that the flat is unoccupied. The cupboards, drawers and work surfaces are completely devoid of cooking utensils, cutlery, crockery or glassware. The refrigerator isn’t only empty, it hasn’t even been plugged in. As for consumables, there’s not so much as a digestive biscuit.

Interesting, and not a little unsettling. Since I can’t imagine Ruth wanting her body back half starved, I can only presume she doesn’t plan to be away all that long.

A sliding door gives access to the bathroom, which is in the same pristine condition. And now the nagging whisper in my bladder mutates into a full-throated roar.

Nothing for it but to take the plunge, Rich. When you’ve got to go...

I unbuckle my belt, pull down my zip and drag the moist denim over my hips.

“Oh, that’s the fucking limit, that is,” I complain out loud. “Pink? PINK? She woke up this morning thinking today’s when I swap bodies with Richard Brookbank, I wonder what colour undies I should wear?”

But my voice fails me utterly when I peel back the flimsy material to reveal the alien anatomy beneath. It makes no difference to me that half the adult population of the world see something similar every time they pass water. They were born with it — and except in a strictly academic sense none of them can imagine being constructed any other way.

My fingers thread the sparse gingery down at the base of my abdomen, but go no further. I have no desire to explore the secrets inside those puckered lips, no auto-erotic impulse propels me to probe for potential pleasure points. Show me a red-blooded male, deprived of regular sex, who says he hasn’t at one time or another dreamed about being a woman with a cunt he can poke about in to his heart’s content and I’ll show you a liar. Show me one who genuinely wants the fantasy to be made real and I’ll show you a guy who needs a therapist.

I remember to sit down before urinating, but still try to ease my non-existent cock and balls under the rim. It appears that some masculine reflexes are more ingrained than others.

I rinse my hands and shake the excess water from them — naturally there are no towels or soap — feeling increasingly uneasy. The bedroom is the only place left to investigate; if I draw a blank there I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Go out and root around in dustbins for sharp objects or lumps of wood? Bring back a heap of shingle from the beach? How can I have got to this age without knowing the first thing about defending myself?

Then I notice the mirror bolted to the wall above the washbasin. I fight it every step of the way, but there’s nothing I can do to prevent my eyes being pulled towards the glass.

“Jesus fucking Christ…”

The girl staring back at me moves her lips when I do. My hand pushes my fringe away from my forehead, and so does hers. We blink, and even breathe together.

That face is my face.

She is me, and I am her.

I’m a girl.

Shoving to one side an irrational fear that if I study my reflection for much longer it’ll become as familiar to me as the one I had until this morning, I head back through the kitchen to the living room. The bedroom door is to the right of the window. My bosom heaving, I grasp the handle.

This could be the last throw of the dice...

A single bed stands against the far wall. Upon the bare mattress rests a beige shoulder bag from which protrude a purse and an A4 manila envelope.

Is this the break I’ve been looking for? It’s got to be.

Don’t count your chickens, Rich. Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

The purse feels full! I twist it open, and pour out several pounds in loose change. There’s also a wad of  £5 notes tied with an elastic band.

Hallelujah! At least I can buy some fucking cigarettes!

Yeah, and you might want to add a flick knife and a sawn-off shotgun to your shopping list.

Yet as I unroll the fivers and find to my astonishment that I’m holding nearly  £300 in my hands — more cash than I’ve ever seen in my life — alarm bells are ringing, and they’re getting louder. This much money can’t have been left behind by accident. Ruth meant me to find it. The question is, why?

I stuff the notes and coins back in the purse, then turn my attention to the envelope. I’m not all that surprised to see the name RICHARD BROOKBANK written in small capital letters in the top right-hand corner.

This is it, Rich. Here’s the bit where she tells you what’s going on.

Or maybe not.

The first document I slide out is a copy of the lease to this flat, signed by Ruth and a certain A Wilson on November 20th. The agreement lasts until May 19th 1979, and the receipt stapled to the top of the sheet confirms that the rent for the whole period has been paid in full.

Six months? How many stunts like this one does she intend to pull, for Christ’s sake?

I empty the rest of the envelope’s contents onto the mattress. They include a passport, valid until 1983, in the name of Ruth Maria Hansford-Jones, born in Northcroft-on-Heugh, County Durham on September 2nd 1955. Her next of kin is her husband Timothy, of 11 Hollybush Lane, Sarisbury, Hants.

Timothy?

Give me strength…

I look closely at the photograph on the back page. The girl it features has straight, honey blonde hair; it’s several inches longer than mine, and the centre parting is much neater. But there’s no question that her face is the one I now wear.

She wasn’t an impostor.

She really was who she claimed to be.

And now she’s me.

Pity I won’t be there when she takes off my desert boots and sees those socks…

Ruth’s ‘O’ and ‘A’ level certificates, awarded when she was a pupil at Holbrook Girls’ School in Chislehurst, Kent. An unused cheque book sent out by the Guildhall Square, Portsmouth branch of Martin’s Bank, and an interim statement showing an initial balance of  £1000 deposited yesterday. A Post Office savings account with funds totalling  £485.57. A Visa card with a credit limit of  £250. A full driving licence...

The truth smashes into me with the force of a runaway train.

Ruth has bequeathed to me her entire identity. She isn’t coming back at all. She’s provided me with everything I need to take up a new life as her.

What the fuck makes her think I can get away with that? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend to be a real girl for more than five minutes without being caught out.

Why is she doing this? What’s the point?

It’s too much to take in. I sit on the bed and put my head in my hands as it gradually sinks in that unless I find Ruth and persuade her to change her mind I’ll be stuck like this for good.

And I haven’t the foggiest idea where she might have gone.

After a few minutes I get up and walk over to the window. Outside, rain is still slanting across the glass, blurring the patterns of yellow-orange lights stretching towards Fratton and Portsmouth’s northern suburbs.

Two hundred thousand people in this city. Many of them will be heading home from work, thinking only of a hot meal, a favourite television programme, a few pints at the local pub or maybe a night on the town followed by a curry and a disco. Tomorrow there’s the weekend shopping to get in and the pools coupon to check. On Sunday they’ll have friends round for lunch, or go for a drive in the country if the weather improves. Boring, repetitive lives.

How I envy each and every one of the lucky bastards.

My freckled fingers reach for the catch. I could end this in the space of a few heartbeats. Eight floors should be more than enough to make tomato purée out of my vital organs.

Is that it, then? Did all those pledges you made at the top of the gangway mean nothing? Go on, take the easy way out, just like you always do. But remember this: when you’re lying on the ground in a pool of blood waiting to die — and it might not be as quick or as painless as you assume — the last thought to flutter through your head will be that you’ll never know why Ruth acted as she did.

Yet if I play along, it’ll mean that every morning for weeks or maybe even months to come I’m going to wake up and realise I’m a girl.

I can’t face that. I’ll go under.

Listen to yourself bleating on. You’ve got four fully functioning limbs and no obvious health problems. You’ve got a roof over your head for the next six months and not far short of two grand to spend. Best of all, you’ve got the intelligence and imagination to track her down. So you’ll be doing it without a dick. Big fucking deal.

I take a step back, ashamed at my lack of inner strength. Amputees, terminal cancer patients, those who’ve been disfigured by burns or have lost their sight, the vast majority of them manage by simply getting on with life. If they can cope, I should be able to.

Besides, I want to see Ruth’s jaw drop when I turn up out of nowhere.

Okay, now you’ve got that out of your system you can concentrate on figuring out where she’s taken herself off to.

And time is of the essence. She might be a couple of hundred miles away by now; she could be in the departure lounge at Heathrow preparing to board a flight to New York. Two thousand quid won’t last long if I have to jet around the globe in search of my body.

Think!

It all comes down to why she chose me. What can she do as Richard Brookbank that she can’t as Ruth Hansford-Jones? Which doors are open to him but closed to her?

17 Ladybank Grove?

Unlikely. All she had to do was turn up at the front door and tell mum she wanted to get in touch with me. From that moment on she’d have been treated as practically one of the family.

Where, then?

I’ll make it easy for you. Hart Street school. Miss Sutton’s class. She told us to sit together right at the back because you always came top in tests and I was always second.

Northcroft-on-Heugh. It’s the one thing that links us.

Except that I haven’t visited my home town in nearly three years, and there isn’t a single person living there I’d count as a friend or a close relative.

But where else am I to start looking for her?

God, what if when she’s finished being me she swaps again and dumps my body at the bottom of the North Sea? How will I react if I read my obituary in the local paper? Would I have the guts to go to my own funeral, loitering at the grave like a ghost?

This is no good. I need to make a decision, and fast. Do I set off for Northcroft now, knowing I’ll have to travel overnight and waste three or four hours kicking my heels in the buffet on Newcastle station waiting for the first train to New Stranton, or postpone my departure until tomorrow when I’m feeling less tired? Should I not limit this evening’s objectives to those I can more easily accomplish, such as a packet of fags and a bottle of something to put me to sleep?

And as I sink into alcohol-induced oblivion, how will Ruth be making use of her time?

Footsteps sound in the corridor outside. They fade, and I remember to breathe again.

That tips the balance. I can’t stay here a moment longer than is necessary. If I’m going to turn into a cowering wreck whenever anyone walks past the door I’ll be a basket case well before the morning comes. Then it won’t matter whose body I’m in.

Are you ready, ma’am?

As ready as I’ll ever be.

Why, Ruth? What’s so important it was worth changing sex for?

Only one way to find out.

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF RICHARD BROOKBANK By Touch the Light CHAPTER 3 “A man is following you. He’s armed, and he may be under orders to kill you.” I feel my whole body go rigid. I’ve heard that voice before, and not so very long ago...

I feel my whole body go rigid. I’ve heard that voice before, and not so very long ago...

“Twenty Marlboro and a box of Swan Vestas, please.”

Much too posh. And they’re just ‘Swans’, for goodness sake.

“Have you such a thing as a pocket comb?”

Still sounds like I usually send the maid out for stuff like that. Try again.

“D’you stop anywhere near Fratton station?”

Better. Only just, though.

“How long do I have to wait at Southampton before the Newcastle train is due to leave?”

New-carsul? I don’t think so somehow.

The lift arrives at the ground floor, bringing my impromptu rehearsal to an end. The next time I use the lilting contralto and the middle-class suburban southern accent I seem to have inherited along with Ruth’s vocal cords I’ll be talking to a real person. The masquerade will have begun in earnest.

As the door opens I keep tight hold of my shoulder bag to stop it swinging into my hip when I move. This is the kind of habit girls pick up when they’re still children, and here I am having to learn the tricks of the trade one by one.

I should have told Derek where to stick that package. I really should.

I’m a girl…

Come on, concentrate.

The clock above the entrance to the concierge’s office reads a few minutes to five. If the trains aren’t going to be running again until six — and it may be another hour on top of that before they’re back to normal — that means I can take things at a steady pace and avoid making any more stupid mistakes like the scene I created at The Hard. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is without attracting unwanted attention.

I negotiate the steps leading down to the pavement carefully, treating each one as a potential plaster cast. The rain has eased, though that doesn’t lessen the sheer magnitude of the task upon which I’m about to embark.

Or the sneaking suspicion that Ruth’s made it a little bit too easy for me to follow her…

Focus!

You only have to walk a couple of hundred yards, then you’ll have reached the newsagent’s. The bus stop is right next to it. What could be more straightforward?

It’s going to be a disaster. I fucking know it is.

After a few deep breaths I turn on my heels and begin the first stage of my journey. Clarendon Road being one of the busier thoroughfares that criss-cross Southsea’s residential sector, the stream of headlights from passing cars and vans is more or less constant. Each one of them seems to be deflected right at me, as though the studs on my jacket spelled out the phrase ‘NOT REALLY A GIRL’ for everyone to laugh at. Just as disconcerting, I’ve lost seven or eight inches in height; everything looks that much bigger and therefore that much more intimidating. Only the thought of that first glorious injection of nicotine keeps me plodding on.

A woman overtakes me. Until earlier today it would have been the other way around. What was once a rarity will now become the norm. Then I encounter a young couple; my instinct is to step aside and let the girl pass, but her boyfriend has already paid me that compliment. I sense their unconscious reactions to my momentary intrusion: he wonders what it would be like to have sex with me; she warns me off. Something else I’ll have to get used to.

But suppose a bloke makes a pass at me? I can’t tell everyone who comes out with a chat-up line to piss off and leave me alone. How do I defuse the situation rather than make it worse? What experience can I draw on?

The tally’s getting longer, Ruth. One way or another, I’m going to see that you pay it in full.

At last I’m in sight of the Strand roundabout, from where avenues lined with guest houses and student flats diverge with varying degrees of haste to the sea front. The exception is Waverley Road, which heads north towards Fratton; at the corner begins the small row of shops I’m aiming for.

Stop at the kerb. Look right, look left, look right again. Don’t forget you’re taking shorter steps, so it’s going to take you half as long again to reach the other side.

Made it!

Not far now.

Twenty Marlboro and a box of Swans, please.

Twenty Marlboro and a box of Swans, please.

Have a bit of faith in yourself, Rich. It’s not as if you’ll be delivering a soliloquy from King Lear in front of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Trying hard to ignore the relentless rise and fall of my bust, I push the newsagent’s door open. To my unbounded relief there are no other customers. The proprietor, a stocky figure close to retirement age with thinning white hair Brylcreemed back from his forehead, gives me a look of less than wholehearted approval. This may be due to the fact that my wet jeans and stringy locks suggest I’ve spent most of the afternoon lying in a ditch.

“What can I do for you, miss?”

Miss?

No one came in behind me, did they?

Ah...

“Oh, right...yeah, uh...twenty, um, twenty Marlboro...and a box of uh...that’s it, a box of Swans. Please.”

It’s a good job I’m not in a general dealer’s ordering next week’s groceries. He’d be dead and buried before I got to the end of the list.

The shopkeeper turns to the display cabinet, shaking his head.

“Sorry, I don’t think I’ve got any left.”

Shit! What now?

“Okay, let’s see...uh, Winstons?”

Down there on the right. You’ve gone past them, you stupid old git!

Finally he places my cigarettes and matches on his pile of unsold copies of the Portsmouth News.

“Sixty-seven, please.”

I fiddle inside my bag for my purse. Just as I’m picking out the first of the two 50p pieces I’ve decided to hand over, the strap slides down my arm. Within moments I’m presented with irrefutable empirical proof that when coins fall to the floor they will roll as far from their point of impact as the available space allows.

At this juncture any normal girl might be expected to apologise for her clumsiness with the assistance of a tried and trusted phrase such as ‘all fingers and thumbs’. It’s a fair bet that the words ‘fucking’, ‘bastard’ and ‘nuisance’ wouldn’t be the first and only ones to escape from her lips.

How many times must I have watched a woman rest her bag on the counter while she pays for her purchases? There are reasons why they do these things.

The transaction at an end — which is more than can be said for my embarrassment — I lurch outside, almost ripping the packet to pieces in my haste to tear off the cellophane wrapping and the silver foil separating me from my first drag for more than three hours. I pull one of the Winstons free, pop it in my mouth, strike a match, hold it to the tightly rolled tobacco, inhale and...

“Oh my God.”

The blood drains from my face as the bus shelter reels at an insane angle, carrying the rest of the world with it. I totter into the reinforced glass, coughing so fiercely it would come as no surprise to see my lungs fly through the air and splatter onto the wet flagstones.

Ruth doesn’t smoke. The craving must only be in my mind.

A disheveled individual wearing an old brown raincoat leers at me as he walks by.

“You might want to think about giving those up, love,” he grins.

“Fuck off,” I wheeze, sounding as healthy as an aged miner struggling to climb a steep hill with a sack of potatoes on his back.

“Charming,” the cheeky bastard chortles as he disappears around the corner.

I toss the cigarette into the gutter, but put the rest of the pack in my pocket. I’m determined to persevere with them, if only to make fun of Ruth after I’ve talked her into swapping back and she discovers she’s addicted to the dreaded weed. When she complains I’ll tell her she’s lucky I didn’t have a giant penis tattooed on her chest.

After the nausea has subsided I remember that I still haven’t bought a comb. I wander up to the chemist’s at the far end of the shopping parade, and freeze as my eyes alight on the poster in the window. It shows a dark-skinned young woman in a spotless white T-shirt and shorts heading a football into a conveniently empty net; the legend at the bottom reads SANITEX — BECAUSE LIFE DOESN’T STOP ONCE A MONTH.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you? There’s more to being female than sitting down to piss.

How long do periods last? What are the symptoms? And what the fuck do you actually do with a tampon?

I’m so caught up in the vision I’ve created of people staring and pointing at the blood seeping through the crotch of my jeans that I fail to notice the long, brightly lit vehicle with a destination panel on the front until it’s sped right past the bus stop.

All things taken into account, it hasn’t really been my day.

I elect to walk the mile and a half to Fratton station. The rain has stopped altogether, and the atmosphere is starting to feel less oppressive. I’m also a lot more comfortable with these boots than I’d have believed was possible — I’ve had to adopt a more inefficient gait with a pronounced sideways element due to the motion of my hips, but I no longer fear I’m about to topple into the gutter every time I step off the pavement.

Which won’t prevent me raiding the first shop I find tomorrow that’s open for the sale of training shoes.

The metrical click of my heels competes with the ever-present swish of traffic as I press on into a district I recall so well from my days as an undergraduate. To my right the building known as the Pink Pit, and the balcony just under the roof where Nicky Benson sunbathed nude throughout the scorching hot summer of ’76, her lovely auburn tresses cropped above her ears and combed into a boyish side parting. Further on, the square known as Wimbledon Park, scene of my reported death after I was found lying in a rose bush with no discernible pulse, my corpselike condition the outcome of an ill-advised wager concerning the Empress of India and its monthly supply of Prize Old Ale. On the other side of the road stands the vermin-infested cesspit I inhabited once I’d broken free from the confines of the Bembridge, subsisting for two full terms on ham and tinned tomato sandwiches, Scotch eggs, toast toppers and Robinson’s barley water.

Nicky Benson...

Three years at Portsmouth Polytechnic, and one lousy shag on a weekend field trip to Torquay was all I could notch on the bedpost. I only got that because the staff at the hotel, who’d thought to save money by putting us all in double rooms, had assumed Nicky was a boy’s name and saw nothing amiss in having Benson snuggle up beneath the same set of sheets as Brookbank. Nicky didn’t mind either, not when she found out that the alternative was sharing with Pam Wright, who according to her flatmates farted all night like an elephant force-fed on curried sprouts if she drank more than two halves of lager.

Naturally the other students weren’t slow to take full advantage of a situation the writers of a Brian Rix farce would have rejected as too far-fetched, hurriedly organising a stag do and a hen party in two separate pubs, then holding a mock ceremony back at the hotel culminating in a very much the worse for wear Richard Arthur Brookbank exchanging slurred vows with a similarly inebriated Nicolette Jane Benson, the latter sporting a bath towel as a bridal veil and leaning heavily on the best man’s arm while the groom made heroic efforts to slide a curtain ring onto one of the extra set of fingers his intended had suddenly grown.

Did our attendants overstep the mark by ensuring we collapsed on the bed in suitable states of undress and juxtaposition to consummate our not so holy union? In mitigation it could be argued that as they turned off the light and crept from the room not one of them foresaw that Nicky would guide her new ‘husband’ inside her and keep him there until his nuptial duties were fulfilled — a job I’m pleased to say I carried out to our mutual enjoyment, even though the following morning she insisted we tell everyone we’d gone straight to sleep. Yet if I continue to look back with some pride on the escapade that led to the loss of my virginity, it gives me less satisfaction to acknowledge that my one and only sexual conquest to date came about as the result of a clerical error.

Thank God and all the Saints in Heaven she can’t see me now.

At Albert Road traffic lights I look straight ahead as I wait for the signal to change. I do not permit my eyes to stray left, past the school playground to the Volunteer Arms, where on any other Friday evening I’d be downing a pint or six of HSB, playing a few games of darts or maybe a round of crib, then joining in the sing-song that usually breaks out if Gladys goes upstairs early enough. What was it last week, Pink Floyd’s ‘Bike’, complete with duck noises? Tonight we could try–

Leave it, Rich. No one in there can help you.

I trudge on, past a characterless succession of dull red-brick houses with rectangular bay windows fronted by concrete palisades, unkempt hedges and old wooden gates. It comes to an end at the corner of Campbell Road, which pulls me up with a start as I’d forgotten all about my flat. The landlord will be calling round on Monday for the rent, and if he doesn’t leave with some promises from the Bank of England’s Chief Cashier to add to his collection there’s every chance I’ll be returning from my confrontation with Ruth to find the lock changed and my possessions stuffed inside a bin bag on the landing. If one of the other tenants lets me into the building I can push a few fivers under the door — and while I’m there it might not hurt to ask whether they’ve seen the lad from the top floor since he left for work this morning.

“A man is following you. He’s armed, and he may be under orders to kill you.”

I feel my whole body go rigid. I’ve heard that voice before, and not so very long ago. I don’t need to turn my head to know that it belongs to the sentry who stopped me at Marlborough Gate.

Though it’s what he said that should give me greater cause for concern. I’ve been so preoccupied with not making a fool of myself I’d banished from my mind the idea that people might be looking for me — with a view to taking more drastic action than merely having a quiet word or two regarding the whereabouts of their device.

Push has most definitely come to shove, Rich. Let’s see exactly how good an actor you are.

“What d’you want me to do?” I ask with as much self-control as I can muster.

“There’s a Rover outside the Lawrence pub. Nice motor, very reliable too. Nothing wrong with the big end — if you get my drift.”

A hand in the small of my back prods me forward. Without its help I couldn’t have moved from that spot if molten lava had erupted through the pavement.

He knows who I am. He knows what happened to me.

For the second time in just four hours, everything has changed.
 
 

 
 
The car is parked on Clarence Esplanade facing west, about half-way between Southsea Castle and the war memorial. Out of the left-hand window, across four miles of black water, I can make out the cluster of lights indicating the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Ahead of me, closer at hand but just as inaccessible, the gaudy illuminations of Clarence Pier amusement park perform their endless choreography. On the other side of the road lies Southsea Common, acre upon acre of unrelieved darkness.

The man behind the wheel is square-jawed and clean shaven. His heavy yet athletic frame is clothed in a denim jacket, a red-and-black hooped rugby shirt and brown corduroy trousers. His grey eyes are shrewd and worldly, his mouth perpetually caught in the beginning of a sardonic grin. He has me in his power, and he knows it; even if I managed to kick off my boots, with this physique I wouldn’t get more than a few yards before he caught up with me.

I am trapped, I am in danger and I am helpless.

I’m a girl, and I’m just beginning to realise what that can mean.

I open my mouth to speak, but think better of it. He has asked that I remain silent, and I have given him no reason to reiterate his request. Until he tells me who he really is, and what he wants from me, my questions must wait.

He finishes rifling through my purse, grunts and tosses it onto the back seat to join my shoulder bag. I note that he hasn’t pocketed any of the money.

“I need to search you,” he says. “Don’t worry, I won’t try and cop a feel. I know who’s in there, and it’s a real turn-off.”

I stiffen as his hands invade the pockets of my jeans, then explore the inside of my jacket. When I feel them brush the sides of my breasts I have to suppress the urge to lash out.

Things cannot get any worse.

“Not very good at this, are you?” he laughs, leaning back with only the key to Ruth’s flat to show for his efforts. “There isn’t a woman alive who’d go out and forget to take a comb. I thought she’d have trained you better than that, to be honest.”

Outrage battles my trepidation and wins a crushing victory.

“What? You think we were in it together? That I wanted to be turned into...into a...?”

“Two thousand quid, a nice gaff and a fresh start as a juicy bit of crumpet. Seems fairly conclusive from where I’m sitting.”

“Whoa! I’m not gay!”

“I didn’t say you were. Desperate, maybe. Enough to consider chancing your arm as a lesbo. Plenty of them around, if you know where to look. Course it wouldn’t appeal to me, I don’t care how much dosh she was willing to put on the table. Then again I’m not three months behind with the rent, and my bank manager isn’t writing to me every fortnight promising he’ll take legal action if I don’t pay off my overdraft by the end of the year.”

“You’ve been reading my fucking mail?”

“There’s a lot at stake. Sorry, but your privacy came very low on our list of priorities.”

I close my eyes, trying hard to collect my thoughts. Nothing about this business adds up. What am I missing? What connections has the stress of having been thrust into someone else’s body stopped me from making?

I’ve been on the blower to 20 Store, Mr Brookbank, and you’re free to proceed.

“You knew I was carrying that thing,” I spit at him. “You let me pick it up and walk out with it. Why take such a risk? If you suspected I was in league with Ruth, why didn’t you switch it for a couple of burned-out circuit boards or a few old valves? I’d still have led you to her.”

“Assuming that was the object of the exercise.”

The sound of pieces falling into place is loud enough to drown out the headline act at the Reading festival.

“You wanted her to have it, didn’t you? Jesus, it’s so bloody obvious now I think about it. Her real target is whoever she tries to swap with next. That’s why you allowed her to get away. Yeah, I bet you watched the whole fucking show. So come on, who is she? Where did she steal that device from? Who taught her how to operate it? What was it originally supposed to be for? Infiltrate the Red Army or what?”

He chuckles softly to himself.

“You seriously think I’m going to tell you? Richard Brookbank, master box opener of 20 Store? Do me a favour.”

“Listen, it’s me this has happened to, not you!” I protest. “I’m the one who’s suddenly got tits the size of melons. Don’t I have the right to know why?”

“You have the right to know precisely what I decide you need to know — and at this particular moment in time what you need to know is that for the last three minutes and forty-five seconds there’s been a stationary S-reg Cortina a hundred and twenty yards behind us. The driver is the man who was tailing you. If you look round I’ll break your arm.”

The pressure exerted by the hand gripping my wrist leaves me in no doubt that he means what he says.

“Okay,” I sigh. “You’re the boss.”

“Penny’s dropped, has it?” He starts the engine. “Right, let’s set about saving your worthless skin. Fasten your seat belt, ‘cause this might not be the smoothest ride you’ve ever had.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you to a facility about fifteen miles from here. After that you’ll be someone else’s problem, thank Christ.”

For the next few minutes the Highway Code might never have existed: taking Pier Road roundabout the wrong way; screeching into Kings Road against a red light; doubling back through a maze of side streets with as much regard for the one-way system as he has for the pedestrians shaking their fists at the reckless young lout who thinks he’s Portsmouth’s answer to James Hunt; swerving and splashing along St Andrews Road; tearing down another street, the speedometer touching fifty...

He can handle a car, I’ll give him that much.

We cross Lake Road and find ourselves in the high-rise wasteland to the north of the city centre.

“You must have shaken him off by now,” I say hopefully.

“Him, yes. But he’ll have radioed ahead.”

“There’s only two roads off Portsea Island. Suppose they’re watching them both?”

“Only two? Are you sure about that?”

Ninety seconds and one smashed barricade later we’re on the northbound carriageway of the as yet unfinished M275. For much of its length the road is raised above the shore of the harbour on stilts, so it feels like crossing a very long bridge. We’re cruising at a uniform speed with no sign of pursuit, and at last I start to relax — until the Rover hits the section still to be properly surfaced, enabling me to grasp the full meaning of the verb ‘to judder’.

The barrier on the slip road leading onto the M27 goes the way of its counterpart. A raucous fanfare of horns and hooters greets our unexpected entrance as we weave through the flow of vehicles rushing west towards Fareham and Southampton.

“I hope for your sake no one took your number back there,” I remark.

“It’s easily changed.”

The cunt’s got an answer for fucking everything.

He takes the first exit we come to, turning right to head away from the coast into what for me is uncharted territory. The darkness closes in after the first bend, broken only by tiny pinpricks of light shining from isolated farms and homesteads. My eyelids begin to droop as fatigue and anxiety take their toll; I try to read the signposts we pass, but they flash by too quickly.

“So where were you making for?” he asks me.

“Mmm...?”

“If you weren’t planning to meet Ruth.”

“Does that mean you believe me?”

“Look at the state you’re in. Then there was your car. Nobbled, without a shadow.”

I ought to feel encouraged by this. Instead I hate his guts even more for winding me up.

But I don’t rant and rave about it. The people at the ‘facility’ he spoke of might be more inclined to help me get my body back if he reports that I was willing to co-operate with him.

“Northcroft. That’s where I was going. We were both born and raised there, otherwise we’ve got nothing in common at all. I know it was probably a wild goose chase, but it was better than sitting in an empty flat waiting for the door to burst off its hinges. Funny she should have...”

“She should have what?”

Snapper Brookbank! It is you! Don’t you remember me?

“I didn’t recognise her at first. She went out of her way to tell me who she was. Why would she do that? It’s almost as if she was dropping hints on purpose so I’d go after her.”

“Which it seems you did.”

I don’t say anything because all that will come out is the sound of a braying donkey. A simple trick like that, and I fell for it.

We trundle through a small village, then ascend a steep hill that takes us back into the velvet veil enshrouding the countryside.

“How much further?” I mumble.

“Not long. A mile or two at the most.”

“What do I call you?”

“Cunningham. It’s an alias, of course.”

“Of course.”

Wanker.

A crossroads. A pub with a silly name, something to do with cricket. A narrow lane that climbs between thickly wooded slopes, their trackless fringes picked out by the headlights. We must be approaching the summit of the South Downs; what kind of establishment is he aiming for in such an out-of-the-way spot as this?

Don’t panic. If he was going to stove your head in and leave you by the side of the road he’d have done it well before now.

An abrupt turn to the left. A high chain-link fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. A gate and a sentry box. A hoarding.
 
                            HMS NEREID

UNAUTHORISED ENTRY PROHIBITED
 
A naval institution. Talk about coming full circle.

At least I seem to have fallen in with the good guys. After all, the MoD is a government department, run by officials accountable to elected politicians.

Yet I’ve been through too much today to take anything at face value.

Cunningham pulls the Rover to a halt in front of the gate. Although it can’t be long after six, there are no signs of activity in or around the low buildings beyond.

“Sorry about this,” he says. “Has to be done, I’m afraid. We don’t want you getting all hysterical once the GABA inhibitors start to wear off.”

“The gabba what?”

A sharp pain in the underside of my right wrist. The glint of a syringe.

“Oh, you fucking bastard,” I cry out, but the universe is already receding from my mind at the speed of light.

A slab of inanimate organic matter, I slump into Cunningham’s arms.

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF RICHARD BROOKBANK CHAPTER 4 By Touch the Light "Less than fifty people in the world know of the transfer device. The list includes neither the Prime Minister of this country nor the President of the United States. To learn of our organisation is to join it. There’s no going back, Richard. You work for us now. You always will.”

Insipid light bleeds through glass and fabric, bringing me awake in hesitant, confused stages. My freckled fingers grope for the alarm clock on the bedside table, but encounter only empty space.

My freckled fingers? Since when did I have freckles on my fingers?

Spots in front of the eyes, that’s what you’ve got. I don’t know, pissed again. And behaved like a complete prat, I shouldn’t wonder.

God knows what I was drinking, though. My mouth feels drier than a Jack Benny comedy routine.

Loose strands of hair, honey blonde mixed with ginger, fall across my face. I push them back, puzzled.

I’ve heard of being blind drunk — but colourblind drunk?

Maybe I passed out like I did at that twenty-first in London and somebody dyed it. That means we must’ve gone back to…

Fuck it, I’ll remember where I was and what I got up to sooner or later.

I let my head sink back against the soft, squashy pillow.

Saturday morning. I can stay here as long as I like.

Bliss.

Don’t cock this up, are you listening?

Stop worrying, Derek. It was their own fault it got sent here. They’re not going to make you walk the plank if I’m a couple of minutes late.

But I did cock it up. First my car broke down, then the ferries were on strike and I couldn’t get to Gosport in time. I wonder how I managed to worm my way out of that one?

They’re a heavy rock band from the States. In case you thought I was a devil worshipper or something.

Sarky cow. Fabulous tits, mind. Nice arse too.

Well, that’s this morning’s wrist exercises sorted out. Now where did I leave the kitchen towel?

Actually I’m Ruth Hansford-Jones these days. I got married last May. He runs a restaurant over in Warsash.

Ruth who?

Because if you don’t, my darling, I’ll blow your fucking balls off.

Oh no.

Are you all right, my love? You look a bit peaky, if you don’t mind me saying so.

Tell me it didn’t happen.

No need to get your knickers in a twist, darlin’. I was only trying to help.

Please.

Nice motor, very reliable too. Nothing wrong with the big end — if you get my drift.

I’ll do anything.

Sorry about this. Has to be done, I’m afraid.

Sweet Jesus...

I raise my right arm clear of the counterpane.

Only it’s not mine.

It’s plump, pale and covered in tiny freckles.

It’s a girl’s arm.

I’m still trapped in Ruth’s body.

This isn’t going away.

I’m still a girl.

Cold beads of sweat form on my forehead. I feel like smashing it against the wall until my brains start leaking from my ears.

Fight it!

I can’t. I don’t know how.

Then you’d better learn, because you don’t know why the fuck Cunningham brought you here. And whether it was that toerag or someone else who put you in this bed, not only did they strip you naked first, it looks like they took your clothes with them. You might whine about being imprisoned in a girl’s body, but at the moment it’s all you’ve got.

Very slowly, I claw back enough self-discipline to take stock of my new surroundings.

The room is tiny, no more than ten feet square. The only window is set high in the wall to my left. Most of the floor space is taken up by a tall aluminium cabinet, a wooden chair and a writing desk. On the back of the door there’s a poster showing two men standing at the summit of a snow-capped mountain. For some reason this makes me feel slightly less apprehensive.

Might as well try the handle. It’s probably locked, but you never know...

I sit up, my mouth falling open at the sight of the capacious globes protruding from my chest. This is the first time I’ve seen my bare breasts, and it alters my whole outlook. Yesterday they were merely appendages that might have been bolted onto my torso specifically to cause me inconvenience; now, watching them move as I breathe in and out, I have no choice but to recognise that they’re as much a part of the entity I call ‘me’ as the eyes I’m using to look at them.

I don’t think I can deal with this. I know there’s nothing inherently shameful about becoming female, but it’s too fundamental a change. A person’s gender is their single most important defining attribute. Until this ordeal ends — if it ever does — the first thing anyone will notice about me is that I’m a girl. Nothing else will matter to them remotely as much.

Fucking hell, here we go again. Call for the violins and pass round the paper tissues. You have no idea how well this has turned out for you. How would you feel if Ruth had been fat and ugly? Or it wasn’t her who pinched that machine but a sixty-odd year old geezer with arthritis and false choppers? What if you were black, and had the prospect of racial prejudice to add to your troubles?

And while we’re at it, a bit more honesty wouldn’t come amiss either. It’s not being female that’s bothering you so much as the thought of having joined the opposing side. All those girls you put on a pedestal for so many years instead of treating them like ordinary human beings, then ended up despising when they wouldn’t go out with an insecure, tongue-tied berk whose dress sense and general deportment made Albert Steptoe look like the embodiment of sartorial elegance, and now you’re one of them. What’s scaring the pants off you is that you might start to think the way they did and realise what a sad, inadequate tosser Richard Brookbank really was.

Perhaps that’s true — but it’s a harsh lesson that costs a lad his genitals.

It had to be me, didn’t it? Of all the snobs, spoiled brats, bullies, snivelling tell-tales and violent nutters I grew up with, it had to be me this happened to.

Appleton.

Sir!

All the way down to Watkinson, Wilkins and Young.

Some went to university, others left school with no qualifications at all and had to earn their corn shovelling shit. Some will live in mansions, others will rent poky little houses on rough council estates. Some will rub shoulders with the aristocracy, others will consort with burglars and drug pushers.

Only one of them managed to get himself turned into a fucking woman.

The door clicks open, and I shrink back against the wall like a rabbit mesmerised by the roar of an approaching juggernaut.

Not Cunningham.

Please, Lord.

I’ll go to church every Sunday. I’ll never take your name in vain again. I’ll write hymns.

Just let it be anyone but that cunt.

“Good morning, Richard. I trust you slept well?”

For once my prayer is answered. The speaker is a strikingly attractive woman in her middle to late thirties. She’s wearing a smart black jacket, a cream silk blouse, a calf-length pleated black skirt and black knee boots. Her glossy raven hair is cut in a fairly short bob, brushed forward into a fetching fringe. For a moment or two her exquisitely chiselled features and alluring, almond-shaped eyes put me in mind of Mademoiselle Malraux, the Saigon-born French assistant who worked at Westbourne Grammar School the year I sat my O levels — but of course it can’t be her, and in any case there’s no vestige of a foreign accent in that clear, crisp voice.

“Who are you?” I ask, clutching the quilt to my chest. “Why am I here?”

“My name is Mitsuoko Tatsukichi. You can call me Suki, it’s easier to remember. You’re in HMS Nereid on the South Downs, a few miles from Petersfield. As the base is closed for refurbishment at present, we have the premises to ourselves. Now we’ve a busy day ahead of us, so if you follow me I’ll take you to the shower area. I’ve found you some fresh clothes, and one or two other bits and pieces that will doubtless come in handy.”

“Why did Cunningham drug me?”

“As a precaution.”

“Against what?”

“The device Ruth used on you sends a signal that stimulates a certain region of the brain to produce natural mood stabilisers called gabba-aminobutyric acids, or GABA inhibitors as they’re sometimes known. They help to mitigate the psychological shock a transfer inevitably brings on, but their effectiveness diminishes rapidly after a few hours.”

She’s talking as if people exchange bodies every day.

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

“I’m afraid you haven’t been granted the necessary clearance.”

Typical of the Navy. They won’t give a civilian directions to the nearest phone box for fear it might be classified information.

“You don’t sound very Japanese,” I remark sullenly.

“You don’t sound very male,”comes the stinging reply. She claps her palms together. “Any more questions? Good. Well, what are you waiting for? Chop-chop!”

Yes, miss. Whatever you say, miss. Three bags fucking full, miss.

But an urgent need to use a lavatory ensures my compliance. Wrapping a sheet around my middle, I swing my feet to the carpet.

Suki leads me through an empty barrack room to a communal latrine block and promises to return in twenty minutes. I can’t let her leave without asking the question that I must have an answer to, no matter how unpalatable it turns out to be.

“Can you…I mean, the people you work for…are you going to, you know…?”

“Return you to your original body?”

“Well yeah…”

“I’d advise you not to raise your hopes too high. While we’re in the process of mounting an operation to apprehend Ruth Hansford-Jones with the aim of placing her under military arrest, the recovery of the device she stole from us is and will continue to be our uppermost priority. If in order to achieve that objective we are forced to employ extreme measures, then you can be certain those measures will be taken.”

She doesn’t pull any punches, does she?

“You’d kill her?” I gasp.

“It’s an eventuality for which you should certainly prepare yourself.”

Suki walks away, and as I stare after her the sheet falls from my useless fingers. I step over it, my cumbersome breasts bouncing and swaying.

This is how it might always be for me.

Every time I move.

Month upon month, year upon year...

No escape but the grave.

They’ll find a way to bring her in alive and in one piece. They have to.

Pushing my hair away from my face, I walk towards the line of benches set against the nearest wall. Here I find two large towels, as well as clean underwear, a thick-knit fawn jumper and a pair of khaki camouflage trousers. My leather jacket hangs from the peg directly above, and my high-heeled ankle boots stand to attention on the tiled floor. Next to them is a grocery box filled with all manner of toiletries and grooming aids, everything from shampoo and soap to sticking plaster.

As if I gave a flying fuck.

I just want to go back to bed, close my eyes and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Instead I’m expected to function normally, as though all I had to contend with was a slight head cold.

I reach for my jacket. The cigarettes and matches are still inside. It’s not much of a silver lining, and too much has happened in too short a space of time for me to hope that it might be a turning point.

The pressure in my bladder reminds me that some tasks have to be seen to regardless of circumstances. Trying — without very much success — to yank my eyes away from the womanly curves of my waist and thighs, not to mention the unmistakeable lack of anything dangling from my crotch, I go about my ablutions.

The mess hall is deserted, apart from the long, Formica-topped table where Suki Tatsukichi has laid out a breakfast for two of cereal, toast, marmalade and coffee. I eat sparingly, my appetite dulled both by the warning I’ve been given and the intelligent oriental eyes that every so often glance up from the spiral-bound dossier they’re perusing to check on my progress — as if to make sure that the aberration facing her can perform such simple tasks as spooning corn flakes into her mouth.

I don’t know what she has planned for me, but I doubt if it includes a tropical island populated exclusively by beautiful young lesbians.

The moment I push my plate to one side, Suki lays the folder flat on the table. Printed on the front cover is RICHARD ARTHUR BROOKBANK, followed by a forward slash and an alphanumeric identification code. There’s one other word: BELLADONNA.

“You’re not wearing a bra,” she observes.

“Yeah, I’m a real slut. Mind if I smoke?”

“Is that because you had difficulty putting it on?”

“Couldn’t be bothered, to tell you the truth.”

She doesn’t get it. She can’t understand that slipping my arms through those straps and fiddling with the hooks at the back would have been acts of surrender.

“Where’s Ruth’s wedding ring?” she asks as I light up and inhale, careful not to take too much back this time.

“It was getting on my tits, so I flushed it down the pan.”

She looks horrified.

“What if her husband wants it returned?”

“He should’ve thought of that before he married a body snatcher.” I rest the cigarette in the saucer, then sit back and cross one sturdy thigh over the other. “Relax, it’s in her bag.”

Suki’s dark red lips curve in what I suspect is the nearest they ever come to forming a genuine smile. Evidently my decision not to introduce Ruth’s ring to the twists and turns of the local sewage system has qualified me for immediate membership of the great sisterhood who’d cut off their own thumbs rather than deliberately destroy another woman’s jewellery.

So much for staying on the outside looking in.

“To business,” she says briskly. “How do you feel?”

“What a stupid question. I’ve been turned into a woman and you ask me how I feel. Jumping for joy. How the fuck d’you think I feel?”

“I mean in yourself. Any headaches, dizzy spells, that kind of thing?”

“No...uh, should there be?”

“We don’t think so. The trials we were able to conduct produced little in the way of long-term effects.”

“Are you saying people actually volunteered to have this done to them?”

“Yes, and you owe them a great deal. Thanks to the data they helped us collect you’ve been cleared to undergo the remainder of your adjustment under my supervision.”

“The alternative being...?”

“An exhaustive programme of physical and psychological tests carried out in an underground laboratory, your movements monitored by closed-circuit television cameras twenty-four hours a day.” She sits forward, her bearing suddenly more confrontational. “But for better or worse the responsibility’s fallen to me — and part of my remit is to decide how you can best be of service to us in your current situation.”

“You’ve got a nerve,” I laugh. “You stood by and watched Ruth steal my body, then let her give you the slip. Doesn’t matter why, the damage is done. But the fact remains that you used me. To my mind you lot are every bit as much to blame for these jugs I’ve got to carry around with me as Ruth is. And now you tell me that getting your precious machine back is more important to you than whether I go back to my original body or stay stranded in this one. So in view of the fact that you’ve thrown away your only bargaining card, what the fuck makes you think I’ll lift a finger to help you?”

The glare radiating from the other side of the table could penetrate a concrete wall the thickness of a medium-sized county.

“What makes you think you have a choice? Do you really imagine that even if things turn out favourably we’ll allow you to return to your old life, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred? Less than fifty people in the world know of the transfer device. The list includes neither the Prime Minister of this country nor the President of the United States. To learn of our organisation is to join it. There’s no going back, Richard. You work for us now. You always will.”

She pauses to give her words time to sink in. They absorb my false bravado like a black hole sucking in light.

“Doing what?” I croak, my voice weaker than a homework excuse.

“Ruth’s disappearance presents us with a serious problem. Like her husband, she was a technician attached to the team responsible for developing the device — in fact that’s how they met. Although Timothy Hansford-Jones can be relied upon to exercise the utmost discretion, the Pattison family are under no such obligation. Fairly soon they’re going to start wondering why she hasn’t been in touch with them.”

“What about my folks? I’m supposed to be in Dorking tomorrow for my mum’s birthday.”

“We’re aware of that. The matter is being attended to.”

“I bet it is.”

“Richard, listen to me. You have to trust that we’re acting in the best interests of everyone concerned. Not just those who are directly involved, but everyone. You’ve experienced at first hand what this machine can do. Look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t thought about what the consequences might be if it falls into the hands of a hostile government — or worse, a terrorist organisation. And what about the panic that would ensue if its existence became known to the general public? If the operation to get it back is to have any chance of succeeding — any chance at all — then it has to be carried out under conditions of extreme secrecy. Surely I don’t need to spell out how vital it is that we avoid the kind of publicity the search for one missing person will attract, let alone two.”

I feel my eyes narrow. It’s a quintessentially feminine trait, but I’m past caring. I know where this conversation is heading, and I don’t like the scenery one bit.

“You want me to impersonate her, don’t you? It’s not enough that every time I look in the mirror I’m going to be faced with the bitch who landed me in this hole, now I’ve got to pretend to be her?”

“It’s a challenge I’m confident you’ll rise to.”

“Oh yeah, I can just see myself on Christmas Day, sitting at the table scoffing turkey and mince pies with a load of relatives I’ve never met.”

“I’m glad to hear it, because that’s part of the plan.”

My God, she’s serious.

I open my mouth to object, but an even more disquieting thought floats in from the edge of my mind.

“What about the other crowd, the ones Cunningham had to shake off last night?”

“I saw nothing of that in his report.”

“You must’ve done! The bloke in the Cortina–“

If you look round I’ll break your arm.

The lying git.

He knew I’d make less of a fuss if I believed that someone was intent on ending my life.

The next time I bump into that prick I’ll leave him with exactly the same number of testicles Ruth left me.

Suki reaches into the black leather briefcase at her feet. She takes out a dossier similar to the one bearing my name, opens it and removes an assortment of papers.

“Ruth’s application form, her Curriculum Vitae and the results of her background check,” she says, passing them across. “You’re to study her biographical details and practise imitating her handwriting and signature. You shouldn’t have too many problems.”

“Oh? Any particular reason?”

“The device is currently configured so that only the episodic, or conscious memory is imprinted. By that I mean the–“

“Hold on a minute. Are you saying that subconsciously I’m Ruth?”

“Your mind has access to Richard Brookbank’s unique personal history up to the moment of the transfer.” She pats the top of her head. “Everything else that goes on in here was unaffected.”

“I don’t know if I like the sound of that. What’s the bottom line? Am I going to take on her personality as well?”

“Some aspects of it, yes. Most of her habits, tastes and preferences will eventually become yours. More importantly, your body has retained the skills and abilities it acquired from early childhood onwards.”

“Like knowing how to ride a bike?”

“That’s right. In layman’s terms, if Ruth was good at something then so are you. Or rather you have the aptitude for it. Had you exchanged bodies with a world-class soprano, you’d have her voice — but you’d still need hundreds of hours of training before you were ready to perform in front of an audience.”

“Is that why I’ve got her accent?”

“And quite a few of her mannerisms as well. With the right coaching you’ll be able to pull the wool over her family’s eyes for as long as you want. But at this stage all we require of you is a letter. In it you’ll explain that your marriage has broken down irretrievably, and that as a consequence you’ve resigned your position with the Ministry of Defence and gone away somewhere in an attempt to put the pieces of your life back together. We’ll work on the exact wording over the next day or two.”

“A bit impersonal, isn’t it? Won’t they think it’s strange that she didn’t at least phone them?”

“Not necessarily. Ruth’s parents never approved of Tim. I think it’s fair to say that at the moment she isn’t on the best of terms with them. And they know very well that she isn’t the type to run home in tears and admit they were right about him all along.”

“So I forge a letter. Then what?”

“We’ve your placement to consider. But first there’s the adjustment process I spoke of. You’re clearly uncomfortable with the idea of being female, and that has to change. You may have to spend a considerable amount of time as Ruth, possibly the rest of your life.”

I’m visited by an unwelcome vision of my body jerking about like a puppet as bullets tear into it from every point of the compass.

The only letter I should be writing is to Jimmy Savile.

Fix this fucker, Jim.

Twenty to three on a Saturday afternoon.

I ought to be in the Brewers Arms with Graham and the rest of the squad, sinking a last pint of HSB before beginning the short walk to Fratton Park for the FA Cup tie against Northampton. With Pompey lying fifth in the table, unbeaten at home after losing to Bradford City on the opening day of the season, and a crowd of between twelve and fifteen thousand creating an atmosphere most opposition players at this level have never experienced, a thumping victory is all but assured.

I should be there, cheering the lads on. It’s part of my life.

Instead I’m standing on a gravel forecourt outside a two-storey country house, watching the wintry sunshine gradually weaken, taking tentative drags from a Winston and trying not to grimace at the red stain my painted lips have deposited on the filter.

How the fuck did it come to this?

Less than five hours have elapsed since Suki Tatsukichi drove me the few hundred yards from HMS Nereid to Hayden Hall in her light blue Austin Allegro. In that time I’ve been given a thorough indoctrination into some of the more esoteric aspects of my new role as one of the fairer sex. I now know what foundation and blusher are for, and where to apply them. I’m alert to the benefits of moisturising cream. I’ve discovered which colours complement my hair and skin tones, and which ones clash with them. I can look at a photograph of a female celebrity in a magazine and judge whether her choice of accessories tends towards elegance or ostentation. I understand what the terms ‘38D’ and ‘matching separates’ mean. I’ve added words such as popsock, fascinator, slingback, choker and basque to my vocabulary. The only thing I haven’t been able to grasp is why women put up with all this shit in the first place.

I finish my cigarette and let it fall to the ground, then crush it with my heel. Behind me, a wide lawn dips from a paved terrace towards a thick belt of mixed woodland. It’s an idyllic setting, but one I won’t have the chance to enjoy for very much longer. Soon I’ll be back in Belvedere House, which Suki has earmarked as our headquarters while my tuition continues apace.

I’m sick of the sight of her now. What will I feel like after a couple of weeks stuck in the same flat as her?

More to the point, who will I feel like? Just because I’ve got a slit between my legs and boobs threatening to burst out of my jumper doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a different person. I realise I’m a girl now and it’ll make life a lot easier if I start thinking and behaving as one, but under all this powder and paint I’m still me.

And I’d like it to stay that way.

“Give me a hand with these things, would you?”

Suki is standing in the entrance hall beside half a dozen large suitcases. Closer inspection reveals that one of them is a folded-up camp bed.

No prizes for guessing which of us will be using it.

“What are we going to do for furniture and stuff?” I ask her as I pick up the nearest of the cases and struggle outside with it.

“It’s being delivered as we speak. Tim will be bringing over most of Ruth’s belongings this evening. He’s also agreed to put together a detailed account of their time together, including a list of her likes, dislikes and other personal habits. Don’t worry, I’ll make quite sure the two of you don’t meet.”

“Is that for my sake or his?”

“I think he’s suffered enough, don’t you?”

That gives me pause for thought. It seems mine isn’t the only life to have been turned upside down, back to front and inside out by what happened yesterday afternoon.

When the last of the luggage has been stowed in the Allegro’s boot I push back my fringe and wipe the perspiration from my forehead. Some things never change: if I was kidnapped by slave traders and sold into a sultan’s harem I can guarantee there’d still be shifting to do.

Suki lifts a set of keys from her bag.

“Hard work, isn’t it?” she says. “That’s what comes of having a higher fat-to-muscle ratio. Men have their uses, even in this day and age.”

“How very liberated of you,” I sniff.

“Oh, and from this moment on I’ll be calling you ‘Ruth’. As far as you or I, or indeed anyone we meet is concerned, that’s who you are. Now run a comb through your hair before we set off, there’s a good girl.”

I clench my fists, then leap into action. Something inside me has snapped, and I’m unable to contain my fury. Frothing at the mouth, I pull Suki back by the shoulder. She reels away from me, but my fingers are already entwined in her hair. Then it’s my turn to stagger backwards — and when I see what I’m holding, my legs give way completely.

Suki crouches to retrieve her wig. My lips part, not so much at the pale skin visible through the patchy stubble covering her scalp but the row of small, perfectly circular scars running from the centre of her forehead to her crown and beyond to the nape of her neck. Then I notice her eyebrows, each of which is adorned by a dozen or more tiny black gemstones.

“What happened to you?” I gasp.

“That is a story I shall never tell.” She smooths the strands down from the lattice they’re tied to, then fits the wig back in place. “Now if you’re quite finished taking out your frustrations on me, we have provisions to get in.”

I lever myself up from the gravel and follow her to the car.

You work for us now. You always will.

A life sentence.

To run concurrently with the unstipulated term I’ll spend locked in the prison of a female body.

And although I feel as if I’ve been behind bars for a decade or more, I know that my incarceration has only just begun.

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE The sequel to 'The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank' CHAPTER 2 By Touch the Light “There’s no need to pull a face like you’ve just swallowed a bluebottle, sweetheart. Your name only came up after I happened to mention that as I hoped to do a spot of amateur sleuthing while I was here, it would be nice if I could hire a trusty sidekick to help me out for a day or two. Norah says a break like that will do you a power of good, so consider yourself roped in.”

Sitting on a stool at the counter, smoking a Rothmans and nursing a tonic water — ice, no lemon — the girl who had momentarily piqued my curiosity looks older at close quarters than she did from the other side of the dining room. If I’d been asked to guess her age before I met Suki I’d have said she was in her late twenties; today, having learned to look for such indicators as the set of her mouth and the laughter lines at the corners of her eyes, I’m inclined to revise that estimate to something like thirty-one or thirty-two.

She’s no Jean Shrimpton, that’s for sure. Although we’re roughly the same height, her figure has meandered a fair few steps further along the all too familiar trail that begins in the lush meadows of curvaceous and well endowed, then winds through the higher pastures of nicely rounded and pleasantly plump only to peter out among the bleak, treeless fells of a spreading waistline and running to fat. Her most arresting feature — ignoring the vast spread of cleavage visible above her low-cut peasant blouse — is her multicoloured hair, a riot of pinks, greens and blues chopped into messy layers from a wayward centre parting, so short on one side it shows off practically the whole of her left ear and a good third of her neck, but long enough on the other to brush her right shoulder, thus giving the impression that during her last visit to the salon she had dashed from the chair before an overeager, barely competent stylist could do any more damage to her precious locks. In contrast her make-up is immaculate yet understated, and the only item of jewellery she’s chosen to display is a delicate silver chain from which hangs a large pendant shaped like a crucifix, but with a loop instead of the top arm.

“It’s called an ankh,” she says, lifting it from her creamy skin. “The ancient Egyptians wore them as fertility symbols. It’s ever so old. Can you see the hieroglyphics? Where my finger is, just there.”

I take the amulet in my right palm, only briefly registering the fact that my hand is so close to her chest I can feel the heat emanating from her body. In my previous incarnation such proximity would have left me embarrassingly tumescent; now it only stirs a vague sense of competition.

“Very pretty,” I remark as I push away the mischievous thought that with a bust like mine I could look every bit as sexy as her if I made the effort.

“Isn’t it? My friend Cathryn brought it back from a dig outside Luxor. Of course she had to give all that up when her mum’s health began to fail. It’s a shame, she had such a promising career ahead of her, but you never know what’s around the next corner, do you? I’m Kerrieanne Latimer, by the way. Kerrie for short, like the county in Ireland but with an ‘ie’ at the end instead of a ‘y’.”

And a ‘K’ at the beginning, not the ‘C’ she wrote down in the register. A woman of mystery indeed — or perhaps the atlas her parents consulted had a misprint.

There’s a slightly coarse feel to the freckled hand she offers me, one that suggests she’s closer to thirty-five than thirty, but her grip is firm and warm.

“Ruth Hansford-Jones,” I reply. “Pleased to meet–“

“I know, sweetheart. You’re the girl who’s much too intelligent to be wasting her time in a place like this just because she blames herself for the break-up of her marriage. That’s what Norah thinks, anyway.”

“I’m sorry...?”

They’ve been talking about me behind my back? What else did they discuss, the reason I haven’t got a boyfriend?

“You’re also fighting shy of getting involved with the opposite sex again,” Kerrie goes on, as if my thoughts have appeared inside a fluffy cloud above my head. “Which in your situation is probably the worst mistake you can make. Norah didn’t tell me that, of course. She didn’t have to. I can see it in your eyes.”

This is turning into a very bad dream. I glance towards the foyer with a silent plea to the practical joker who set the cosmos in motion that one of the regulars might come in and provide me with an excuse to ignore her, but at twenty past seven on a chilly Tuesday evening in the middle of April there’s more chance of Vivienne Westwood striding through the door, slapping a five-figure modelling contract on the bar, telling me she’s booked me on the next Concorde to New York and tossing in a brand new BMW and a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park to clinch the deal.

Looks like I’m on my own, then. Battling back the urge to launch a tirade of four-letter words at her, I trawl the deepest reaches of my memory for a civil yet appropriately contemptuous riposte.

“If you say so,” is what eventually surfaces.

“There’s no need to pull a face like you’ve just swallowed a bluebottle, sweetheart. Your name only came up after I happened to mention that as I hoped to do a spot of amateur sleuthing while I was here, it would be nice if I could hire a trusty sidekick to help me out for a day or two. Norah says a break like that will do you a power of good, so consider yourself roped in.”

She delves into her shoulder bag and pulls out a white foolscap envelope.

“What’s that?” I ask before the homunculus at the controls can issue a directive to my mouth warning it that the question makes me sound like a four year old on her first visit to the seaside.

“Well, since you can’t very well claim to be rushed off your feet I thought that instead of sitting there contemplating your navel you might start by reading this while I phone my boyfriend to tell him I’ve arrived safely and remind him not to allow my children to stay up too late. It may be the school holidays, but they still need all the sleep they can get, and you don’t need me to tell you how manipulative teenage girls can be. Oh, and if you can let me have some small change, as much as you can spare? Be a love and charge it to my room, would you?”

As I make a careful note of the money I’ve given her, I’m tempted to leave the envelope where it is and let Kerrie with an ‘ie’ at the end — as if I’ll ever have to spell it — know in no uncertain terms just what she can do with her amateur sleuthing. The woman’s unbridled effrontery has left me stunned. Who the hell does she think she’s talking to? She must be spectacularly good in bed; I can’t think what else the bloke she’s living with gets out of the arrangement.

But my natural inquisitiveness — to say nothing of a fully justified fear that if Norah found out I’d insulted one of the guests she’d have me scouring out milk-encrusted pots and pans until the cliffs were eroded so far back the hotel fell into the sea - gets the better of me. Soon I’m holding a sheet of watermarked vellum headed by an insignia belonging to Barton & Harris, a firm of New Stranton solicitors.

Dear Ms Latimer

We enclose for your attention a copy of the Estate Realisation and Distribution documents as agreed by Mrs Vasey as the Executor, and our cheque in the sum of  £83,645.67 representing the balance due to you...

I put the letter down unfinished. My eyes are misty, for Helen Sutton was not only my teacher but a near neighbour and a good friend to me before I left Northcroft to become a student. Yet my sadness at the untimely death of a woman who couldn’t have been much older than forty is swiftly replaced by a growing sense of incredulity. The phrase ‘with your siblings’ implies that Kerrie’s father had at least three children; a quick calculation puts the total value of the residuary estate in that event at just over half a million pounds.

My hand goes to my mouth.

Half a million?

How did Helen amass such extraordinary wealth? Did she come into an inheritance of her own? How successful must her investments have been, that they accrued so large a final dividend?

Maybe tagging along as this woman’s Girl Friday might not be so uninteresting after all.

But whether it’s what I’ve come to think of as feminine intuition or some other subconscious process at work, I feel reluctant to come clean regarding Ruth’s relationship with Helen until I know more about the latter’s connection with Kerrie Latimer’s family.

When Kerrie returns from the payphone in the foyer, the armchairs and alcoves are still empty. I decide that I’ve nothing to lose by trying to be more assertive.

“Seems pretty straightforward. What d’you need me for?”

“Ooh, that’ll help!” she grins, climbing back on her stool and lighting up once again.

“What will?”

“The fact that you can string more than two or three words together at a time. I was starting to have my doubts.”

It’s not so much the last straw as the detritus from an entire Nebraskan grain harvest.

“Now listen, I’ve had about as much–“

“That letter arrived on my doormat last Thursday right out of the blue,” she interrupts, taking as little notice of my truncated invective as she does of the canned laughter filtering from the lounge. “I’ve never heard of anyone called Helen Sutton. Nor have my sisters, and what Shannon and Clare can’t tell you about our family history isn’t worth knowing. We can hardly ask mum who she was, can we? What if it’s news to her as well? It’s taken her a long time to get over losing dad, and the last thing she needs right now is to worry herself sick over an affair he may or may not have had in the dim and distant past. So as I’m the one with the most time on my hands, it’s up to me to root around and see what I can unearth.”

Is that supposed to have me champing at the bit? No one would blame me if I was to say I’d come across more intriguing stories watching repeats of Mr & Mrs.

“So why stop here and not somewhere in New Stranton?” I ask, more to prove I’m capable of constructing a complete sentence than out of any real desire to know.

It’s the wrong thing to say. Kerrie’s eyes flash with exasperation.

“You did read the letter all the way through, didn’t you?”

“Most of it...”

“Jesus, Mary an’ bloody Joseph!” she cries, her Home Counties vowels temporarily giving way to an accent that sounds as if it originated in a Lancashire mill town. “I give you one simple task, an’...oh, what’s the use? Look, if you’d bothered to get as far as the second last paragraph you’d know the estate agent hasn’t been able to sell the house yet. There, where it says ‘the property at 6 Redheugh Close’. I had to set off at the crack of dawn so I could reach here in time to ask them if they’d tell me where Mrs Vasey lives, because as I’m sure you know they won’t give out that sort of information over the phone, and get them to tell me which was the nearest hotel to that address.”

“It’s pronounced Red-yuff,” I put in.

“Is it really? You live and learn, don’t you? Well, however you say it we’re going to have to rid ourselves of the place somehow, though goodness knows how much it’ll fetch if what I saw on the way over is anything to go by, so one thing I’d like you to do for me tomorrow — that is if you can stop playing with your fringe for five minutes — is to set up a meeting between the two of us, preferably on neutral territory. That way we should be able to come to an agreement before I go back on Friday rather than have to communicate through our solicitors, with all the extra delays and expense that’s certain to entail.”

Set up a meeting? Do I look like a secretary?

She tears the cover from a beer mat, scribbles down Carol Vasey’s name and an address on Albion Crescent, then announces that unless she eases away the stresses and strains of her seven-hour drive from the south coast in a tub filled to the brim with fragrant, steaming hot suds she’s liable to fall asleep where she’s sitting. I watch her leave, thinking that if I get through to the weekend without ending up either in a padded cell struggling against my restraints or in one of the more conventional kind awaiting trial for murder I’ll congratulate myself on a job well done.

Sod’s Law operating at maximum efficiency, less than ninety seconds after Kerrie’s departure the first of the non-residents, a retired postman named Jack whose lugubrious mutterings concerning the state of the economy are like a Vaughan Williams fantasia to my ears, makes his appearance. Hard on his heels comes Sylvia, helping herself to a pineapple juice and taking the stool nearest the hatch. She waits until the old gentleman is ensconced in his favourite chair with a bottle of Double Maxim and the South Durham Herald before beckoning me over.

“How are you getting on with Nancy Drew?” she enquires, her smile so knowing it could romp the grand final of University Challenge.

“You’ve heard about that, have you? All I’ll say is I’d sooner spend a week with her than a fortnight. I reckon Norah owes me one.”

“Don’t be daft, Ruth. Mam’s right, a change of scene might be just the thing to perk you up a bit.” She lowers her voice, aware that Jack isn’t quite as deaf as he likes people to think. “Well, did she spill the beans, then?”

I hesitate for a moment, unsure of my ground. All I’ve told Sylvia is that I lived in Northcroft until I was twelve; she hasn’t pressed me for details, and I haven’t divulged any. If I confess that I remember Helen Sutton from junior school, I risk breaking that unspoken accord. Would it not be wiser to pretend that the name means nothing to me?

My mind made up, I lean closer.

“Are you ready for this? It’s strong stuff.”

“You can be an annoying little madam sometimes. Come on, out with it.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I put my lips to her ear. “Okay, here’s what it’s all about. A woman who used to live on the Triangle left Ms Latimer’s dad a packet. Now he’s dead too, so it’s passed to her and her sisters. Trouble is, none of them know her from Eve.”

Sylvia’s frown accentuates the thin creases at the sides of her mouth.

“Lived on the Triangle? What was she called?”

“Let me think...Helen something-or-other.”

“Sutton?”

“Yeah, that was it.”

She nods her head.

“Helen Sutton, eh? I might’ve known she had money stashed away.”

I hand over the beer mat.

“This is the other beneficiary. I’ve been given the job of making sure they meet up.”

Sylvia’s jaw plummets so far her chin must be visible to shipping off the coast of New Zealand.

“Carol Vasey...” she gasps. “Now we’re for it. You’d best get yourself over there, tell her what’s going on. Write her a note in case she’s gone out. I don’t know, talk about letting the cat in among the pigeons.”

“Sorry Sylv, you’ve lost me.”

“Carol Vasey!” she hisses, as though that explains everything from the origin of the universe to the continuing popularity of Terry and June.

“I’ve got a degree, you know. Believe it or not, I can read. What about her?”

She couldn’t look much more surprised had Al Capone sauntered in with Little Red Riding Hood on his arm.

“You mean to tell me you don’t...what d’you do all day, go round with cloth stuffed in your lug holes? If I said she was Carol Hodgson till a short while back, would that help?”

Now I’m the one with unhinged mandibles.

“Oh,” I say quietly. “That Carol Vasey.”

Some time before I arrived at the Gladstone respected town councillor Bob Hodgson — Trisha’s dad, but that belongs to a long-vanished world — drowned after he was swept from the Heugh breakwater at high tide during a storm everyone on the headland agrees was one of the worst in living memory. But there the consensus ends. Too many issues, the most pertinent of which was what he was doing down there to begin with, remained unresolved for the coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure to be universally accepted. Weeks later, tongues were still wagging in the pubs and clubs, the hairdressers, the post offices and the corner shops.

The most voluble spoke not only of Bob but also his widow Carol, who had been deputy headmistress at Mill House Primary School in New Stranton when the tragedy occurred, and was to take early retirement soon afterwards. Carol had raised the alarm, then been rushed to hospital suffering from a head injury she received at an unknown point in the proceedings. Although she appeared to make a swift recovery, at the inquest she testified to having no recollection whatsoever of the incident, a claim backed up by the doctor who had treated her. When word subsequently spread that Carol was about to marry the very same doctor, a man nearly twenty years her junior, and with the earth barely settled on her husband’s grave, the rumour machine clicked into top gear. The only reason not put forward to account for Bob Hodgson’s death was that he had fought with time-travelling aliens from a distant galaxy.

“That Carol Vasey,” echoes Sylvia.

“There’s more,” I whisper to her. “When I said ‘a packet’ I meant it. I’ve seen the solicitor’s letter. If my arithmetic’s correct Carol’s now richer to the tune of a cool quarter of a million.”

Elvis Presley might have walked up to the counter, with Glenn Miller and Lord Lucan a few steps behind him.

“A quar...a...a quarter of a...all right, that does it. I’ll look after the bar while you’re gone. Try not to be too long. I’m supposed to be picking Janice up at half-eight. Well, get your skates on!”

“Can’t you just phone her?”

“You think she’ll have kept the same number? Have a bit of common.”

“Why the sudden panic, Sylv? So there’s a bit more gossip and innuendo flying about. She’s got two hundred and fifty thousand excellent excuses for ignoring it. If I was her, this time tomorrow I’d be on a plane to Acapulco.”

“Because Helen Sutton died the same night as Bob Hodgson, that’s why. Heart attack, it said in the Herald. But you hear all sorts in this trade. Like Bob’s wasn’t the only body those kids found on Carr House Sands the next day.”

“Jesus...you think she might have drowned as well? But that would mean–“

“I’ll have a word with your Ms Latimer after breakfast tomorrow, tell her to keep all this under her hat for now. You be careful what you say an’ all, ‘specially to that Egerton and his pal when they get here, ‘cause I’ve a feeling they might be from one of the papers. Take it from me, we can do without a repeat of the bother we had with that lot when they descended on us last time.”

I set off along Marine Parade in an agitated frame of mind. Could Helen and Bob have been lovers? Had Carol resolved to do away with her rival by luring her onto the breakwater, only to lose her husband in the ensuing fracas as well?

...the late Helen Dorothy Sutton, who died on December 3rd...

Whatever happened, it took place just over a week after Ruth stole my body.

And it had the effect of leaving a nice little nest egg to a woman who lives only five miles from where the theft was carried out.

I wanted a diversion. It appears that my wish has been granted.

By five to eleven I’ve ushered the last customers outside, turned off the pumps, washed the glasses and ashtrays, wiped down the tables, counted the takings — never an onerous duty on a Tuesday — and developed an unshakeable conviction that if the device Ruth used on me were ever to be mass-produced then it should become enshrined in law that every male drinker spend one night, because that’s all it would take, working as a barmaid in a small provincial hotel.

After delivering my message to a darkened house with a front garden so overgrown I was afraid to glance at the upstairs windows in case I glimpsed Miss Havisham outlined there in her tattered, yellowing wedding dress, I returned to the Gladstone in time to relieve Sylvia from the ministrations of the skeleton, who proceeded to regale me with the history of his mother’s gallstones and followed this captivating account with an even more thrilling description of the surgical techniques necessary to remove them, his eyes never once moving from my bust. Before I was able to call last orders civilisations had risen and turned back to sand, continents had split apart, and mountain ranges had been worn down to shields.

I carry a glass of Coke and a packet of salted nuts into the lounge, then settle on the sofa to watch the second half of The Old Grey Whistle Test. Crossing one denim-clad thigh over the other, I’m about to light up when headlights flare in the car park.

Egerton and his chum, who I’d completely forgotten about.

I raise my eyes to heaven. It’s been that sort of evening.

Sod it, they can wait. I don’t care if they’ve got my body tied up on the back seat, I’ve earned this cigarette.

The sound of someone repeatedly pressing the buzzer on the reception counter makes me reconsider. If Norah has to come down from the flat to answer it they’ll hear her in Tierra del Fuego.

Sighing like a fifteen year old dragged away from the telephone to tidy her room, I rise from my seat and clump into the foyer. Through the open front door, the imperious silhouette of a Rolls-Royce dominates the forecourt.

Sylvia has these two down as reporters? The job must pay a damn sight more than most people think.

“I say, hope we’re not keeping you from your beauty sleep? Egerton’s the name. J G Egerton.”

No mention of the Robert Wyatt album Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow…

“Yeah, I remember Sylv saying.”

“Dashed bad form arriving at such an ungodly hour, I know. I’m sure you’ll accept there were extenuating circumstances.”

The figure spouting this bullshit is in his middle twenties, tall, lithe and bursting with the self-confidence a privileged upbringing instils as second nature. He’s wearing an expensive double-breasted light brown suit, a blue silk tie and authentic Italian shoes. His dark hair is slicked back and tied in a loose ponytail, concealing none of the engaging, some might say roguish smile he hopes will persuade others he’s ready to deal with them as equals.

What he’s doing slumming it in a dive like Northcroft is anyone’s guess.

“No problem,” I assure him, aware that Sylvia is due back from her soirée within the next few minutes. “I’ve only just closed the bar. Uh, you can still have a drink...provided it’s not on draught.”

“I don’t think we will. Fact is, we’ve both been up since the lark. Left the metropolis for deepest Somerset, called HQ to report ‘mission accomplished’ and received orders to head north without further delay. My fiancée’s all in, poor thing.”

“Your fiancée? Sure you want two singles? I know for a fact there’s a double free till at least Friday.”

“Better not, my dear. I can tell you’re as broad-minded a young fillie as they come, but in our line of work we’ve found that some of the smaller establishments are run by those with a hankering for, shall we say old-fashioned values. Wouldn’t do to upset the apple cart, if you get my meaning.”

Young fillie? One more crack like that and you’ll be a gelding, old bean. I’ll chew them to bits while your lady love looks on.

“What line of work would that be?” I ask him as I go behind the counter to open up the register.

If there’s an answer I don’t hear it. The woman standing in the doorway is a good ten years older than her betrothed, yet she has a numinous, all-pervading presence that renders her age irrelevant. The light green beret pinned to the net covering her short, russet curls, the turquoise suit with the padded shoulders and pencil skirt, the single row of pearls, the seamed stockings and the lustrous black high-heeled shoes wouldn’t shame a Milan catwalk, whilst her make-up might have been applied five minutes ago in a Parisian beauty parlour so exclusive Jacqui Onassis has to pull strings and call in favours just to get on the waiting list for an appointment. But it’s her eyes I find most fascinating of all, for they exude a femininity that’s practically primeval. This is someone for whom any man with bones in his wrists would gladly scale Everest, brave the arid wastes of the Sahara, sail the Pacific single-handed and hack his way from one end of the Amazon jungle to the other if he thought there was the slightest chance that by doing so he’d be given permission to prostrate himself at her feet and spend the rest of his days in silent worship.

But not me. Not any more.

Moving with the poise of a film star and the refinement of a long-reigning monarch, she walks up to the desk. When she speaks, her voice is the sound chocolate might make if it could talk as it was melting.

"Bon soir, mademoiselle. Je m’appelle Yvette de Monnier.”

“Enchanté,” I reply.

“A quelle heure servez-vous le petit déjeuner?”

“De sept heures et demi á  neuf heures. La salle á  manger est lá , á  droit de l’escalier.” I reach behind me for the keys to rooms 4 and 5. “Votre chambres sont au premier étage. Si vous voudrez me suivre...?”

I show her upstairs while Egerton fetches their luggage from the Rolls. Only when both of them are installed in their rooms do I switch back to thinking in English.

In layman’s terms, if she was good at something then so are you.

I knew Ruth spoke fluent French, but not that she was more or less bilingual. How come that didn’t appear in her file?

What else haven’t you told me about her, Suki?

I don’t suppose it matters, not in the great scheme of things.

I close the register and return to the lounge for the last few minutes of my programme. It’s true what they say, life never stops surprising you.

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE The sequel to 'The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank' CHAPTER 3 By Touch the Light I hang back a few feet, allowing Kerrie to pay her respects to a woman she never met by resting a simple spray of roses on the bare earth. Then I notice the headstone, no more than nine or ten inches high. An epitaph has been written on it, and in French. The game is up...

November 4, 1966

Snapper can do nothing to ward off Basher’s ferocious assault except curl up on the ground and shield his glasses with his arm. He begs for mercy. None is forthcoming. He promises to be Basher’s slave for ever and ever. His pleas are snowflakes landing on an exploding volcano.

“What is going on here?”

He obeys at once; but he cannot keep them shut, for he has already seen the silver, lozenge-shaped object she is holding…

No, that’s not right.

That was someone else, and in another place entirely.

Wasn’t it?

The alarm goes off, yanking me back into the waking world with all the subtlety of an enraged rhinoceros. I fling out a hand to silence it, but only succeed in knocking my watch to the floor.

“F...fiddlesticks.”

Yawning loudly, I sit up and stretch my arms above my head. The movement loosens the thread holding the last remaining button on my pyjama top; it falls into my lap, allowing my breasts to shove the material aside like two divas pushing their way through a crowd to pose for the paparazzi.

“Fu...fancy that.”

I sweep away the covers, then launch my feet into the air. They land on the carpet in such a fashion as to send my watch hurtling across the room. It smacks into the skirting board beneath the dressing table, accompanied by a portentous tinkling sound.

“Fuck it.”

I have to get down on all fours to retrieve the unfortunate timepiece, dugs drooping like a cow’s udders. It’s an ungainly beginning to my first full day as Kerrie Latimer’s trusty sidekick.

Luckily the watch is still ticking.

Twenty-five to eight. I’d better get a move on.

Before I do anything else I light a cigarette. Of course the head breaks off the match as it flares into life, missing my right nipple by less than an inch.

It’s going to be one of those days, obviously.

Then again, I ought to have learned by now that there are some pleasures a girl really should forgo when her tits are hanging out.

I pull back the shower curtain, my thoughts already skipping ahead to the look I ought to adopt for the coming ordeal. Thanks to Suki Tatsukich’s tenacity — some might have called it bullying, but I don’t believe anyone’s written a set of guidelines for that particular training programme — I’ve grown into the habit of wearing a skirt once or sometimes twice a week, though I draw the line at anything that ends above the knee. There’s a big difference between being at ease with your sex and wanting to flaunt it.

Yet I need to submerge myself fully in my new identity, for who knows where Kerrie Latimer’s investigative zeal will lead us? The chances are we’ll meet Carol Vasey, and if she guesses that I’m the same Ruth who went to school with her daughter I’ll have my work cut out just keeping my cover intact.

Scrubbed and rinsed, I towel my hair dry. Once again the centre parting I try to put in insists on migrating abruptly to the right as it reaches my forehead, so that my fringe falls appealingly — or irritatingly, depending on your perspective — across my left eye. Sylvia’s friend Janice, who runs a hairdressing salon in New Stranton, has offered to take the scissors to my unruly tresses free of charge, but I’d rather wait until Ruth is caught; then I’ll make her watch me have them shaved down to a quarter of an inch all over.

Spiteful, I know. And that’s the most lenient of the punishments my imagination has devised for her.

I’m opening the drawer to pick out fresh underwear when...

What is going on here?

Mademoiselle Malraux, who came to my rescue when I was being beaten up on Neptune’s Triangle because of that stupid football match. God knows why I had to dream about her after all these years.

Maybe I’m conflating her with the posh tart Egerton brought along — Yvonne or Yvette or whatever her name is. And it might also have something to do with finding out I can speak such good French.

Funny thing, the mind.

Especially when it’s been transplanted into someone else’s brain.

To more practical matters...

A close-fitting light green T-shirt to go with my jeans, leaving no one in any doubt that I’ve got just as much up top as Kerrie and I don’t care who knows it. Brown leather calf boots rather than trainers in case the weather forecast is correct for once. A little more mascara than usual. Carmine lip gloss to hint at the femme fatale lurking within me. A dab or two of Charley behind the ears.

I feel like a proper pansy.

But I don’t have to make any beds this morning. Better a painted doll than a skivvy.

The fun begins a minute or two after I’ve arrived in the dining room, when Kerrie breezes through the door and discovers that the table at which she had expected to sit is occupied by a dapper young gentleman in a stylish checked sports jacket and an open-necked shirt, together with a glamorous older woman wearing an eye-catching floral cheongsam and reading Balzac’s Eugénie de Grandet in the original French.

“I think you’ll find that belongs to room 7,” Kerrie says in a tone that suggests she’s not used to protracted arguments and doesn’t anticipate one here.

J G Egerton picks up the piece of folded cardboard wedged between the milk jug and the basket filled with those infuriating individually wrapped pats of butter that are always too big for one slice of toast but never contain quite enough to spread across two.

“Well I never!” he exclaims, flashing her a smile that would have had Lucrezia Borgia simpering.

Kerrie doesn’t even blink.

“So I can have my table back.”

It’s most emphatically not a question.

Egerton leans over to his fiancée, who clearly considers the exchange undeserving of her attention.

“We seem to have committed the most frightful faux pas, poppet,” he tells her. “What say we do the decent thing and move?”

She rests bejewelled, damson-nailed fingers on his sleeve.

“Weren’t we here first, darling?” she murmurs in a faultless BBC accent. “I’m sure we were, you know.”

“I understand, Yvette...but let’s not have another scene, eh?”

With neither woman prepared to abandon the disputed terrain, I fold up my newspaper and sit back to watch the fur fly.

“I thought so,” Kerrie says suddenly, commencing hostilities by snatching Yvette’s book from her hand. “I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?”

Yvette de Monnier allows her eyes to roam across every square inch of her adversary’s body, taking in the asymmetric multicoloured hair, the tight cheesecloth shirt, the black leather pants and scuffed ankle boots all in one smooth, dismissive movement. She could hardly have demonstrated less respect if she’d been examining a flea-bitten old mare on her way to the glue factory.

“I very much doubt it,” she drawls in a voice oozing with disdain. “I’m not in the habit of frequenting bring-and-buy sales.”

Miaow! This is shaping up to be a real humdinger!

Sadly — though perhaps not from the standpoint of world peace — Sylvia comes in from the kitchen to explain that since Ms Latimer and I will be spending much of the day together it makes sense for us to have breakfast at the same table. She apologises to Kerrie for not giving her prior notice of the altered seating arrangements, adding as a muttered aside that there’d be no need for misunderstandings of this kind if her employee had been up and about at the usual time.

It was bound to be my fault, wasn’t it? If a hurricane tore the roof off she’d find a way to shift the responsibility onto me.

Kerrie flashes her enemy a look of pure malevolence before taking her seat and pouring herself a glass of grapefruit juice. That the liquid doesn’t go flying over her shoulder to ruin Yvette’s cheongsam is a miracle that would have had the thousands in the desert who’d dined handsomely on five loaves and a couple of fishes trudging home telling one another they’d seen more impressive conjuring tricks at children’s birthday parties.

“Anyway sweetheart, how are you this morning?” she asks me. “All set and raring to go?”

“Ready when you are,” I reply, hoping for the sake of my last clean pair of jeans that I sound keener than I feel.

“That’s what I like to hear. We’ll make a good team, you and I. Okay, I’ve been having a think. We should start off at the cemetery, then–“

“She must be going to apply for a job as a gravedigger.”

Yvette de Monnier’s stage whisper has approximately the same effect as a rabbi walking into a crowded synagogue on Yom Kippur clutching a pork pie in one hand and a half-eaten bacon sandwich in the other. The two old ladies have ossified into statues, egg yolk dripping from their forks. Mrs Sourface’s mouth has fallen open wide enough to catch a swarm of locusts, let alone the odd fly. The skeleton impales a mushroom that will never reach his stomach.

With geological slowness Kerrie turns her head.

“That’s a nice dress,” she remarks. “I might get myself something like that when I’m your age.”

All over the developed world sirens wail, television and radio broadcasts are replaced with rolling news bulletins, police leave is cancelled, hospitals are placed on emergency alert, fighter pilots scramble and politicians scurry for their underground bunkers.

Egerton hisses words of restraint into his fiancée’s ear. He’d enjoy as much success having a quiet chat with a lioness whose cubs are on the brink of starvation about the feelings of that lame zebra she’s been shadowing.

“When you’re my age, darling,” Yvette comes back, “you won’t be buying clothes from anywhere that doesn’t specialise in camping equipment.”

The retort crackles and spits through the charged atmosphere. It strikes its target with the force of a ballistic missile. Even Mrs Sourface is tittering to herself. My glee is marred only by the certain knowledge that one person, and one person alone will pay the price for Kerrie Latimer’s humiliation as the day wears on.

Northcroft cemetery is situated about a mile north-west of the hotel at the very edge of the built-up area, on top of a wide railway embankment running alongside the coast. Consolidated in the 1830s from spoil excavated during the construction of the Victoria Dock and the deepening of the medieval harbour, by the middle of the following decade it carried more coal than any other line in England. That trade has gone now, and if the hourly passenger service from Middlesbrough to Newcastle-upon-Tyne by way of New Stranton keeps the main section open, on the spur going down to Northcroft only a few forgotten sleepers poke above the tangle of thorn and scrub growing the length of the dismantled track, each a grim memento of a lost industrial heritage. A cheerless, unlovely place under the brightest of conditions, on a dank Wednesday morning beneath leaden skies it weighs at the soul like a duplicitous lover.

Standing with her back to the gates, Kerrie zips up her windcheater and gazes past her white Volkswagen Beetle at the empty dock basins and silent waterfronts in the distance, the wasteland that separates Northcroft from New Stranton.

“Not quite what I had in mind when I set off yesterday,” she sighs. “I thought it was all cliffs and castles up here?”

“That’s Northumberland,” I correct her, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my cagoule to stop myself looking at my watch for the fourth time in as many minutes. Although I have no great love for my birthplace, I abhor the ignorance so many southerners show towards it. We’re not Geordies, we don’t support Scotland when the Home Internationals are being played, and we never pour brown ale on our corn flakes.

(Actually I did that once when I was a student, but only to wind up this turd from Congleton who was forever harping on about his superior ‘northern’ sense of humour.)

“I wonder why Helen stayed so long? If she had that kind of money, I mean. No offence, sweetheart, but it’s not exactly the English Riviera.”

She’s spot on there. A dense mist has begun rolling in from the sea, concealing the disused wharves, coal staiths, piers and slipways with the urgency of a relief worker disposing of a leprous cadaver. Soon all that can be seen in that direction will be the rough ground fringing the dark ribbon of Cleveland Road as it arcs southward to disappear in a wall of unrelenting gloom.

“Beats me,” I admit with a shrug.

This apparent indifference earns me a disparaging frown, not the first I’ve had to put up with since the contretemps in the dining room. When Sylvia and I gave Kerrie an abridged account of the circumstances surrounding Bob Hodgson’s death we received a frostier reception than the Pope trying to get served in a bar on the Shankill Road. Even the florist on Northgate Street, whose only crime was to express surprise at her southern accent, got a mouthful in return. I just hope that none of the things last night’s dream has made me start to remember about Helen Sutton and her relationship with Mademoiselle Malraux come to light; I shudder to think what Kerrie’s reaction might be if she learns what kind of person her dad may have been messing around with.

We find Helen’s final resting place with the assistance of a chart the grizzled, triangular-faced warden must keep in a subterranean vault if the time he takes to fetch it is any guide. The more recent plots are at the western end of the cemetery, without so much as a tree or a bush to provide a sense of seclusion. All that protects them from the bitter northerly winds that so often sweep unopposed across the broad, grassy hummocks of Hart Warren is the husk of what was once an isolation hospital, located here in a typically macabre instance of Victorian town planning.

I hang back a few feet, allowing Kerrie to pay her respects to a woman she never met by resting a simple spray of roses on the bare earth. Then I notice the headstone, no more than nine or ten inches high. An epitaph has been written on it, and in French.

The game is up. With a mounting sense of foreboding I watch Kerrie take a pair of round-rimmed spectacles from her shoulder bag and put them on to read the words inscribed in the polished white marble.

“You didn’t tell me she was only forty-three, sweetheart?”

“You never asked,” I mumble, a little too loudly.

“Well I’m asking if you can translate that message for me.”

The acid in her voice would eat its way through the casing of a nuclear reactor before you could finish reciting the rhyme about little Johnny drinking H2SO4. I do as I’m told.

“‘Farewell, my love. You died to save the women of the whole world.’”

“How odd. I don’t suppose you know who he is or what he meant by that?”

Bollocks to it. She’s going to find out sooner or later.

“It’s a she. And no, I haven’t the faintest.”

I’ve gone and done it now. The worms are wriggling out of the can, and the lid has rolled down a drain. Kerrie is still wearing her glasses, but that doesn’t stop her eyes shooting a hail of bullets into mine.

“Go on...” she growls.

“Helen taught me when I was in the fourth year at junior school. She wasn’t from Northcroft originally, but I don’t think she ever said anything about where she’d lived before she moved here. If she did I was off that day. Anyway, I remember she had a friend who used to come in now and again and teach us French. Mademoiselle Malraux, her name was. From the Far East, Vietnam if I remember right. Everyone in the class fell for her, she had the ability to leave you hanging on her every word. Then all of a sudden we had to make do with this other girl, who was hopeless. It turned out that Helen and Mademoiselle Malraux were more than just friends — you can’t keep something like that secret in a close-knit community such as Northcroft — and one or two of the parents had complained to the headmistress. Considering it was 1967 and attitudes weren’t anything like as tolerant as they are today, Helen was lucky not to have been shown the door as well.”

Kerrie steps closer. She’s struggling to keep her temper in check. One wrong move and I’ll be as supine as the corpses beneath my feet.

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. I confess to you that my father may have had a clandestine affair with someone, and you only now see fit to tell me she was a lesbian? Any more bombshells you’d like to drop? Take your time.”

But something deep within me has decided that enough is enough.

“You think the world revolves around you and your precious family? Some of us have got more on our minds than dredging up stuff that happened when we were kids. If you’re not happy then go and hire yourself a private detective. It’s not as if you can’t afford one.”

I march up the slope to the low brick wall beyond which the ground falls away steeply through high dunes to a long, narrow beach. After a minute or two Kerrie joins me and asks if I’d like a cigarette. We share a light, our freckled fingers cupped around the flame. For a long time neither of us speaks; instead we look out at the formless horizon and listen to the waves lapping against the shore. Only the far-off sound of a dog barking ruptures the near primordial serenity.

Kerrie is first to break the spell.

“You don’t like me very much, do you? I shouldn’t really be surprised. I admit I can be a bit overbearing at times. That’s one of the words my husband used when he packed his bags last August. He said that being shackled to an overbearing Irish sow like me for fifteen years was longer than he’d have done for armed robbery. I flew at him, I’m ashamed to say. I’d just been told I needed to have several of my top teeth taken out, so it wasn’t the best moment to discover that my marriage was over. Don’t feel sorry for me, by the way. I didn’t love him. Alan was a shoulder to lean on at a bad time in my life, nothing more. I gave him two lovely children, and I let them visit him whenever they want, so he can’t turn round and say he’s done all that badly out of it.”

I don’t know how to respond. It’s hard to believe she would be so open with a girl she met less than twenty-four hours ago.

“You’re Irish?” I manage after an increasingly awkward silence.

“I was born Carmel Assumptor O’Rourke in Ballymahon, County Longford. But I’ve lived in this country since I was seven. We moved around a bit at first, Lancashire and Cheshire mainly but also the Midlands.”

“Yeah, I thought I detected a northern accent when you got annoyed with me last night.”

“That obvious, was it? Of course, you’ve lived in the south, you’ll have picked up on it straight away.”

“So where did Kerrieanne come from?”

“I’m not actually sure. It was after we settled in Reading when I was fourteen, I know that. Alan didn’t like it. He always calls me Mel, just to be contrary. And David, that’s my current boyfriend, insists on shortening Kerrie to Kay.”

“You said you’d been with your husband for fifteen years. You can’t have been very old when you got married.”

“Old enough. I’m thirty-eight, if that’s what you’re angling for.”

“I didn’t–“

“Yes you did. Now it’s your go.”

Only fair, I suppose.

“Twenty-three. Twenty-four in September.”

“Your husband, silly,” she laughs.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

I wonder what she’d say if I told her I’ve only ever seen photographs of him.

“Have it your own way.” She pats my arm. “Come on, let’s give 6 Redyuff Close the once-over before the heavens open.”

As we make our way back down the path I’m struck by a series of puzzling thoughts. Mademoiselle Malraux left Helen the summer I sat my A levels, and by all accounts the couple parted on less than amicable terms. That fits neatly with the date of the will quoted in the solicitor’s letter; it’s natural that Helen should want to exclude her former lover from any settlement she may previously have made.

Yet it rests uneasily with the message on the headstone.

Adieu, mon amour.

That doesn’t sound like a woman who still felt scorned and rejected. Not forgetting what it must have cost her, even for a memorial that size.

As for the rest of it, how on earth could Helen have saved the world — no, the women of the world — by dying? Had she found she was suffering from a contagious disease that only affected the female half of the population, and done herself in to stop it spreading?

But you hear all sorts in this trade. Like Bob’s wasn’t the only body those kids found on Carr House Sands the next day.

“Sad, isn’t it?”

Kerrie has stopped beside a grave festooned with fresh flowers, the borders swept clean of wind-blown sand and other debris. A few feet away lies an altogether more neglected plot, marked only by a small wooden cross leaning at a precarious angle and an urn from which jut a handful of withered stalks.

“Comes to us all in the end,” I remind her, for want of anything more profound to say.

“I mean that some are remembered and others aren’t.”

“Luck of the draw, I suppose.”

“I believe it’s more to do with the distance we put between ourselves and other people. Isn’t there a saying, ‘every stranger is a friend you haven’t been introduced to yet’? Or something like that.”

She takes my arm, as though we’d known one another for years. For a reason I can’t put my finger on I’m grateful for the contact.

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE The sequel to 'The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank' CHAPTER 4 By Touch the Light We walk back to Redheugh Close in silence. The feeling that something isn’t quite right is impossible to escape. Because Helen Sutton died the same night as Bob Hodgson, that’s why. If only I could wrap my head around the implications of that one simple sentence.

It doesn’t take a mathematician with the perspicacity of a Pascal to postulate that Neptune’s Triangle has four sides. How the misnomer originated is a topic the residents believe is best left for students of local history to ponder; the only thing most of them know — or indeed care about — is that as the bronze deity surveys his watery realm from the middle of an open space less than seventy yards across at its widest point, too small for the council to dignify it with an official title, the name has stuck.

Few of those fortunate enough to own one of the imposing four-storey houses on Princess Terrace or the more modest dwellings on Redheugh Close, which face what is in effect a miniature park from the north and west respectively, would argue that the headland could possibly offer a more pleasant setting. Here at its south-eastern extremity is commanded an unrivalled view of Teeswater Bay, best enjoyed on a bright afternoon when the Cleveland Hills, marching to meet the sea in a sequence of majestic cliffs, are often elucidated in breathtaking detail. The less aesthetically minded may be more appreciative of the man-made hillock known as Battery Point, home to the Heugh lighthouse and the cenotaph honouring amongst others the first casualties to fall on British soil during the Great War, which affords shelter from the fierce gales that lash this exposed section of the Durham coast even in high summer. But for the last three years it has been the exquisite sunken garden at the fully restored statue’s feet that by common agreement has made the Triangle such a desirable place to live.

“This is all very quaint,” smiles Kerrie as she unwittingly parks the Beetle in the very spot Arthur Brookbank’s dilapidated old Wolseley 1500 called home until the death of its owner from a sudden stroke at the tragically early age of forty-eight.

“Isn’t it just,” I murmur, taking care to avoid being overheard this time.

I tend to avoid my old stamping ground if I can. Although it’s beyond dispute that such features as the japanned wrought-iron railings and trim hawthorn hedges have enhanced the environment tremendously, this is no longer the place where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. More than that, I feel both cheated and insulted. If I didn’t know better I could quite easily be persuaded that the council had waited for me to move away before releasing the funds to spruce the area up.

I follow Kerrie along Redheugh Close to the sea wall, which overlooks a foreshore of boulders and rock pools where on a clearer day than this gulls would be wheeling and diving in search of tasty morsels left behind by the retreating tide. To our right stands the house Helen Sutton purchased after she took up her position at Hart Street; like the rest of the terrace its front door opens directly onto the pavement, yet the property is set apart by the double-glazed windows with their genuine hardwood surrounds, a stuccoed exterior of a shade somewhere between mustard and peach, and the neat lines of Flemish tiles adorning the roof. Yet for all the improvements that appear to have been made, it’s not the kind of abode where anyone would expect to find a relatively young woman whose assets would eventually realise more than half a million pounds.

A paved walkway leads us around the side of the house to Albion Crescent. Perhaps thirty feet below, the Heugh breakwater extends into the mist like a causeway to some ghostly otherworld, an impression reinforced by the low, funereal boom of the foghorn. Further on languish the wrack-covered remains of the outdoor swimming baths, destroyed in a storm a quarter of a century ago, and a promenade whose only amenities are an empty children’s paddling pool and a crazy golf course presided over by a hut so decrepit its last coat of paint was probably applied by a man who’d turned up for work wearing a doublet and hose.

We pause at the top of a flight of steps that seem to have been cemented onto the vertical concrete as a last-minute addition. On the opposite side of the road stands the Kirkham public house, a prominent TO LET sign fastened to the wall above the mock-Grecian portico. Whitewash has been brushed over the windows, whilst the picnic tables and benches set out on the patio are speckled with bird droppings.

Another Northcroft success story. My father’s coffin must be corkscrewing its way to the centre of the earth.

“So this is where it all happened?” asks Kerrie, placing far more trust in the railings she’s resting against than I’m prepared to.

“So they say. Apparently Carol ran into the pub — it hadn’t closed down then, of course — at about a quarter to eight with blood pouring from her forehead, screaming for them to call 999 ‘cause her husband had fallen in the sea. Then she passed out.”

“And when she came round she couldn’t remember anything?”

“If you want my opinion she’s lucky to have survived at all. She had to have followed Bob onto the breakwater, or else she couldn’t have seen what went on. When the tide’s in and the wind’s coming straight from the east just going down there’s as good a method of committing suicide as I can think of.”

“Could that be what he did?”

“He phoned his son-in-law earlier in the weekend, said he’d talked the bank into lending him the money to buy his own fishing boat. The guy was over the moon.”

Kerrie shakes her head.

“It doesn’t make sense. He must’ve known how dangerous the conditions were. Why would he risk his life like that? I don’t understand.”

“You’re not the only one.”

I head across the road at an angle, aiming for number 16. In daylight it looks just as forbidding as it did last night. Why the Hodgsons wanted to swap that nice little house I remember them having on Lumley Square for a hulking pile like this defies logic.

I open the gate and walk up the steps to the front door. Once again there’s no reply to my knock. I bend down to squint through the letter box. Sure enough, the note I addressed to Carol Vasey is on the mat where I dropped it.

“I shouldn’t bother, sweetheart,” I hear Kerrie call from the gate. “No one’s lived here for months.”

I turn towards her, puzzled.

“Months? How d’you work that out? Sylv said she only got married about six weeks ago, remember?”

“Think about it. Every morning when she pulled back the curtains, the first thing she’d see was the place where she lost her husband. No wonder she wanted to leave.”

“It’s not up for sale...”

“I don’t know, perhaps she wants to divide it into flats.”

We walk back to Redheugh Close in silence. The feeling that something isn’t quite right is impossible to escape.

Because Helen Sutton died the same night as Bob Hodgson, that’s why.

If only I could wrap my head around the implications of that one simple sentence.

At the corner we’re met by a wiry, beak-nosed woman in her sixties, wiping her hands on the apron she wears over a pinafore dress florid enough to qualify for a Britain In Bloom award.

“It’s Ruth Pattison, isn’ it? I thought it was you when I seen the two o’ yers go past earlier on. I said to meself I know that lass. Then I remembered Doreen Garbutt tellin’ us yer was back in the town workin’ at Norah’s an’ yer’d gone ginger like yer sister did. Yer don’t recognise us, do yer? Elsie Harbron. Yer went to school with our Jim’s youngest, Paula.” She looks at Kerrie. “Who’s this, one o’ yer mates from down south?”

I’m not sure which depresses me more, the fact that my presence in the town appears to be common knowledge or realising that I’m now officially a redhead.

“Her name’s Kerrieanne Latimer. She’s staying at the Gladstone while–“

“I’ll come straight to the point, Mrs Harbron,” interjects Kerrie. “Your neighbour Miss Sutton left a considerable sum of money to my father, who passed on about seven months ago. He was called William O’Rourke, although most people knew him as Billy. Did Helen ever mention him to you?”

Elsie’s expression hardens.

“If ‘e ‘ad owt to do with ‘er, yer better off lettin’ sleepin’ dogs lie, that’s what I reckon. There’s things went on in that ‘ouse...naw, yer’ll not ‘ear about ‘em from me. Not because o’ what they said, mind. They don’t frighten Elsie Harbron, I don’t care ‘ow many blokes in suits they send round.”

Kerrie and I exchange sidelong glances.

“What are you talking about?” she asks Elsie. “Has someone threatened you?”

“They tried. Told ‘us if the bobbies knocked on the door I should just say I never seen or ‘eard nowt that night ‘cause I was in watchin’ the telly with the sound turned up — if I knew what was good for ‘us, they said.”

“Was this the night Helen died?” I put in.

“And poor Bob Hodgson, God rest ‘is soul. He might ‘ave mercy on ‘ers too, I mean when all’s said an’ done she wasn’ such a bad sort.” Elsie gestures towards the statue. “Did yers know she paid for that lot out ‘er own pocket? Got a surveyor in an’ everything. Come all the way from London. Aye, I know it was Bob that badgered the rest o’ them big fat lazy idle beggars down the Borough Hall to give ‘er plannin’ permission, but I’m tellin’ yer, without the dosh Helen stumped up they wouldn’ve planted a single flower. She wanted that kept quiet, o’ course. Said there was enough nosy parkers pryin’ into ‘er doin’s as it was.”

I rein in my frustration. This is going nowhere faster than a play co-written by Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter.

“Could those men have had anything to do with the French girl?” wonders Kerrie.

Elsie furrows her brows, then beckons us closer.

“Wouldn’ surprise me. Nasty piece o’ work, she was. Helen never made a better choice in ‘er life than when she told that ‘un to sling ‘er ‘ook. I remember it like it was the other day. I was doin’ me step when I ‘eard the door open an’ out the pair o’ them came. Went at it like ‘ammer an’ tongs they did, an’ the language they were usin’...then Helen said summat to ‘er, must’ve been in French ‘cause I never understood a word of it, and yer know what, the frog went down like a sack o’ taties. Aye, true as I’m standin’ ‘ere now. I thought for a minute Helen ‘ad stabbed ‘er with a knife. Well, she crawled into that flash car of ‘ers on ‘er ‘ands and knees, then drove off like she was Stirlin’ Moss. That was the last we ever seen of ‘er, an’ good riddance too if y’ask me.”

Elsie refuses to tell us more, and shuffles back to number 5 with the warning that ‘nowt good ever come from rakin’ up the past’.

Kerrie lets out a loud sigh.

“What d’you make of that, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know...but I wouldn’t mind a word or two with Mademoiselle Malraux.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

I turn away, assuming that this part of our inquiry is at an end. Kerrie, however, has other ideas. Less than a minute later we’re in the back street, trying the latch on the tall wooden gate set in the stout Victorian brickwork. As I expected it’s bolted shut, but my companion’s eyes have already picked out the teenage boy kicking a football back and forth against the wall some fifty yards away.

“That’s a stroke of luck,” she says. “Come on, we’ll get him to climb over and let us in.”

“How are we going to do that?”

She unzips her windcheater, then does the same to my cagoule.

“Shouldn’t be too difficult for a couple of busty babes like us.”

Which is how we find ourselves in a yard that has been transformed into a private xeriscape of trellised walls and terracotta tiles edged with dwarf conifers and other assorted shrubs, all dominated by an ornate stone fountain in the shape of a wood nymph I estimate must have added a few hundred to the house’s asking price on its own. Wherever we look, we find evidence that Helen spared no expense in making her home as comfortable as was humanly possible. What was once an outside lavatory now houses a state-of-the-art combination boiler. An extension has been built that could act either as a laundry room or a small conservatory. Visible through the kitchen window are the stainless steel sink and work surfaces that glisten in spite of the ever-worsening light. That the house remains unsold so long after its owner gave up the ghost says more about Northcroft’s economic plight than a wad of government statistics.

Kerrie pushes at the door; to her delight it’s unlocked. Smirking like a naughty schoolgirl sneaking into the staff room to put a spider in her maths teacher’s lunch box, she seizes my wrist and drags me inside.

Although only the fixtures and fittings remain, the glass-panelled interior doors, Artexed ceilings, sumptuous deep-pile carpets, burnished mahogany shelves and brass fin de siá¨cle lampshades all bear eloquent witness to the fact that here was a woman who valued fine craftsmanship over all other considerations. The building has been completely re-wired, and the lack of mildew or condensation suggests the existence of a number of damp courses.

The first clue that not everything is as it should be comes when the door to one of the upstairs rooms declines to move more than an inch at a time. I heave for all I’m worth, but I’m a girl now and my strength isn’t what it was; in the end all I can do is add my weight to Kerrie’s until we finally shift the object on the other side far enough for us to squeeze through.

“Someone didn’t want to be disturbed,” she observes, frowning at the sandbags stuffed into the removal crate blocking the way in.

“It was probably kids,” I suggest.

“You think so? In that case they were a lot tidier than mine. I can’t see any cigarette ends or sweet wrappers lying about.” She steps across to the window and runs a finger along the sill. “Not much dust. That means whoever it was, they were here fairly recently.”

I open the louvered wall closet. At the bottom resides a casket the size of a small picnic hamper. Fashioned from sandalwood or some similar material, the lacquered surface is decorated with swirling arabesque calligraphy inlaid in gold.

“If they were burglars then they missed this,” I remark.

“Sweetheart, it’s absolutely gorgeous!” gushes Kerrie as I drag it into the centre of the floor and my spine makes the discovery that it’s a lot heavier than it looks. “My friend Cathryn simply adores anything like this. When I finally get round to meeting Mrs Vasey I must ask her if I can take this back with me.”

“Why bother? She obviously doesn’t know it’s here, or why would she leave it for any Tom, Dick or Harry to walk away with? I’m no Arthur Negus, but even I can tell it’s worth a penny or two.”

“Hmm...you may be right. We’ll have a look inside, then you can help me carry it down to the car. On second thoughts, it might be safer in my room. You don’t mind, do you sweetheart?”

Of course I don’t. What’s a slipped disc compared to her mate’s soft spot for exotic artefacts? I hope for her sake there hasn’t been a problem with the solicitor’s cheque clearing, because I have no intention of paying the chiropractor’s bill myself.

Kerrie kneels to unfasten the metal clasp holding down the casket’s lid. I sit beside her, the more adventurous part of me hoping we find something more interesting than sacks full of sand.

It isn’t disappointed.

The first item she lifts out I take to be a lump of black cloth, but is in fact a stack of neatly folded jackets and dresses. She picks up one of the latter and holds the material to her cheek.

“Mmm…like velvet, but softer,” she says, passing it across.

I hold the dress in front of me. It’s sleeveless, with a demure lace collar and a diaphanous bodice that has built-in support; the skirt flares out from a narrow waist to a hem that on someone my height would struggle to cover the knees. I have no way of telling where the garment was made, since the label at the top of the zip looks to have been cut or torn off.

There are five others, all identical in design to the first. Kerrie stares at them for a little while, then stands and pulls me to my feet.

“Thirty-eight trumps twenty-three,” she grins, slinking behind me to slide the cagoule from my shoulders.

“You’re joking!” I laugh, but this isn’t a woman accustomed to taking no for an answer.

“It’s your fault for being so young. Come on, you know you’re dying to.”

In fact I’d rather sit through a dozen episodes of Crossroads with my eyelids stapled open, but I can’t be bothered to waste time arguing with her. And at least I have no qualms about stripping off in front of another woman; they disappeared that first Sunday in Belvedere House, when Suki insisted I swap my T-shirt and jeans for a pair of tights and one of Tim’s cricket jumpers so I could get used to moving about with my legs on display.

A few moments later I’m flicking my hair off my shoulders as the material settles and I realise not only that the gauze covering my breasts is so thin it’s practically invisible, the support makes no attempt at all to hide my nipples.

“Doesn’t leave much to the imagination,” I chuckle as Kerrie studies the emblem, shaped like a Chinese pictogram, sewn in gold thread onto the collar. “Talk about showing all points north!”

She shrugs her shoulders.

“They were lesbians. What did you expect, dungarees and hobnail boots?”

I start to redden, and not only because I almost let my cover slip. I’d imagined that living on the south coast for nearly four and a half years had imbued me with a more cosmopolitan attitude than those who stayed behind in Northcroft. My comment gave the lie to that delusion. To Kerrie I’m just another hidebound headlander, with no more sophistication than a jam sandwich.

But my blushes are spared by the rest of the casket’s contents.

Three small phials of black ink. A tube filled with a clear resin. A jar of what seems to be moisturising cream. A dozen or more long strings of heavy black beads. A bag tied with knotted twine that spills out bracelets, necklaces, and rings mounted with sparkling black jewels, as well as scores of loose gemstones of differing sizes, all of them black and all backed with felt, as if they’re meant to be attached to something. Most bizarre of the lot, an implement that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a tattooist’s parlour.

Kerrie pulls the stopper from one of the bottles. To the underside is affixed a delicate cosmetic brush. She sniffs it, her head recoiling.

“This is nail varnish!” she exclaims. “Did Helen ever say she worked as a make-up artist, something along those lines?”

“Not to my knowledge. Why?”

“Because what we’ve got here could easily be a collection of props left over from a third-rate horror film. All that’s missing is a set of fangs.”

I lean forward and pick up the jar containing the thick white gel. On the side I can see a name, Niculescu, and an address, though efforts have been made to scratch out the latter.

“You know something, you might not be that far off the mark. I can’t quite read the name of the town, but I’d hazard a guess it’s in Romania.”

“Really? Why d’you say that?”

Me and my big mouth again. How many more times...?

I have to think fast. Admitting that I remember England’s 1-0 victory over that country in the group stage of the 1970 World Cup, when nearly half the opponents’ surnames ended with the element —escu, simply won’t do.

“I, uh...I once went out with a guy whose father was born in Romania. Before I met Tim, obviously. Stefan, he was called. Stefan, uh...Stefan Stefanescu. It means ‘Stephen, son of Stephen’. Or something like that.” Go on, Rich. Dig away. “I said to him that’s not very original, but apparently it’s fairly widespread in their part of Europe.”

Much to my relief, Kerrie appears happy to accept this rubbish as gospel. Maybe I’m better at telling lies than I give myself credit for.

Or she wasn’t paying that much attention.

Her hand has found what is evidently the casket’s false bottom. She slides it out, revealing a large dog-eared notebook bearing a Woolworth’s trademark. As she opens it, I see her grope inside her bag for her glasses. A moment later her eyes light up behind them.

“Come and look at this, sweetheart!” she cries. “I think we’ve hit the jackpot!”

Glued to the first page is a Xeroxed copy of a newspaper report dated February 23rd 1946. It carries the story of a collision between the Sheffield Victoria to Marylebone express and a goods train at Grendon Underwood junction in Buckinghamshire. Among the eight passengers to lose their lives were Frank Sutton, a civil servant from Loughborough, and his wife Marjorie. Their eleven year old daughter Helen escaped with cuts and bruises.

“She was an orphan, then,” I say, feeling fairly safe in stating the obvious.

“Mmm...and Loughborough’s only about twelve miles from Leicester, which is one of the places we lived after dad brought us across the water in ‘47. I’ll have to check with my sisters, but volunteering to help disadvantaged children is just the sort of thing I’d expect him to have done.”

“Still, for Helen to have remembered his kindness after so many years…”

“It’s not very likely, I know. But at least it’ll give Shannon and Clare something to chew on. Now, I wonder what other goodies she’s left us?”

Overleaf we find a teaching certificate awarded in the summer of 1958 by Loughborough College of Physical Education, and after that another press clipping naming Helen as one of a team of walkers who raised money for charity by finishing the journey from Land’s End to John o’Groats.

Then nothing — until the three photographs right at the end of the book.

The first features four smiling girls in their late teens or very early twenties, dressed in hiking gear and standing against a spectacular backdrop of upland meadows and forested mountains. At the foot of the page, in a neat if slightly immature feminine hand, has been added a caption.

Outside Vatra Bucovinei, 31/7/64

“July 1964...” I mutter. “That can’t have been very long before Helen moved here. What d’you reckon, a last holiday abroad before she started work in the frozen north?”

“Assuming it was Helen who took the picture,” Kerrie cautions me.

“No, not a holiday. She was twenty-nine that year, and those girls are all a lot younger. Some sort of outward bound course, maybe? But it definitely wasn’t in Romania. For a start, it’s almost impossible to get a visa unless you’ve got family there or you’re invited as part of a delegation. And I’m fairly sure they don’t let you wander around the countryside taking snapshots.”

I turn the page, and find four names and addresses. Presumably they belong to the young women in the photograph.

Sarah-Jane Collingwood
Bywell Lodge, Bywell nr Hexham

Sonia Kessell
Aptmnt 304, Machtenslaan 134, Molenbeek, Brussels

“Why d’you think the first one’s been crossed out?” asks Kerrie.

“I’ve no idea. It was fifteen years ago. Anything could’ve happened.”

The next image contains more thick foliage, but this time it’s outdone by the magnificent gilded dome and four tall minarets rearing into the cerulean sky. The date below is given as August 1st.

“’The moschee at Dragoiasa’,” Kerrie reads out. “That must be the local word for a mosque.”

“It’s not just a mosque, though. Can you see all those other buildings peeping from behind the trees?”

“So where on earth were they?”

“Well, it’s got to be within a day’s walk of that other place. As for which country, I honestly couldn’t say. It might be Turkey, I suppose...”

The final photograph has us turning to each other, dumbstruck.

A young woman sits in a high-walled courtyard where fountains play amid columns and recesses embellished with the vibrant abstract patterns characteristic of Islamic architecture at its most splendid.

But this is no follower of the Prophet. Were she to be seen in any public place from Damascus to Djakarta, stoning or an even worse fate would undoubtedly await her.

She is completely bald, with what looks to be a line of black gemstones going back from the top of her forehead along her scalp to the crown and possibly beyond. A dozen or so smaller stones are set in each of her brows. There is an oriental slant to her heavily painted eyes; at their corners are etched a series of tiny black dots forming patterns strikingly similar to the pictogram on my jacket’s lapel. Her lips are black too, matching the lacquer coating the beringed fingers and thumbs interlaced in her lap.

And her dress is indistinguishable from the one I’m still wearing.

I point to the caption.

“I’m guessing Sorina’s her name. But what the hell is a ‘kuzkardesh gara’?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” replies Kerrie, standing up. She lights a cigarette, then opens the window to let out the smoke. “But it seems to me that what we’ve stumbled on is a kit to turn somebody into one.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I laugh. “It’s a costume. It must be.”

“It’s not. I can tell.”

“How?”

“Look at her face, Ruth. That’s a fanatic if ever I saw one.”

She might have a point. Sorina’s lips are curled in the self-satisfied smile of one whose faith is absolute and unwavering. Not only that, but the resolution is good enough for me to see several large freckles on her shaven scalp. No actress would say goodbye to her hair for the sake of a low-budget vampire movie.

Kerrie starts rubbing her chin.

“You know something, I think we’ve been barking up the wrong tree. Pass me that jar, would you?” She scoops out a dollop of the viscous white cream with her finger and holds it to her nose. “Helen didn’t bring this back with her, at least not from that trip. This stuff isn’t fifteen years old. It would have separated out by now, gone all brittle and lost its aroma.”

“What are you getting at?”

She asks me to hand her the notebook. Her eyes narrow as she turns to the page with the four names and addresses.

“I’ve heard of Hexham. It’s not that far from here, is it?”

“Fifty miles, give or take...”

“Then that’s where we’re going next. I think Helen was in charge of those girls. Something happened out there, and she felt responsible. These things were sent to her, maybe not long before she died, as a reminder that the incident hadn’t been forgotten.”

“You’re talking about blackmail?”

“Remember the men who threatened Mrs Harbron?”

“Yes, but–“

“We need to speak with someone who knows the Collingwood family. Wherever Sarah-Jane went that summer, I don’t think she came back.”

As we begin tidying up, I glance once again at the portrait of the kuzkardesh gara. What message had she heard, that it persuaded her to undergo such a radical transformation?

Then I remember the incident that took place outside Hayden Hall five months ago, when I pulled off Suki Tatsukichi’s wig and saw the scars defacing her scalp.

That is a story I shall never tell.

Were you there too, Suki? Did you become one of those women? How recently did you leave them, that your hair had only just begun growing back last November?

Around the time that Helen Sutton received the casket, maybe?

A few weeks before she died?

Farewell, my love. You died to save the women of the whole world.

Suddenly I’m shivering, and not because of the cold air coming through the window.

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE The sequel to 'The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank' CHAPTER 5 By Touch the Light Kerrie’s hand has moved to cover mine. Her face is full of concern. “Are you unwell, sweetheart? You’ve gone very pale.” “You said three people died. Helen Sutton. Bob Hodgson.” And now my mouth’s so dry I can scarcely move my tongue. “Who…who was the third?”

Long before the hands on the clock have crept round to half-past three I’m thoroughly bored. The only thing on the television is a bowl of wax fruit, I’ve read every newspaper, magazine and brochure in the lounge from cover to cover, and played so many games of noughts and crosses against myself I don’t know if I’m still me or I’ve changed into the person I’m trying to beat. To make matters worse, the rain has arrived as promised and shows no more sign of letting up than a heavyweight boxing champion who had discovered five minutes before climbing into the ring that his latest challenger was not only having an affair with his wife but had also insulted his mother, made lewd advances towards his under-age niece and defrauded his grandparents out of every last penny of their hard-earned savings.

Damn and blast the woman! Just when I was beginning to warm to her, she had to go and pull a trick like that.

“I’m setting you free for an hour or two,” Kerrie informed me after we’d dropped her beloved casket off at the Gladstone — or rather after we’d lugged it up two flights of stairs to her room — and Sylvia sauntered in to announce that she’d managed to get in touch with Carol Vasey, then arranged for the two of us to have lunch with her at the Wooler, a pub in the swankiest part of New Stranton on the edge of West Park. “It’s for the best, sweetheart. If Carol still feels under suspicion, she’ll be much less likely to come out of her shell if I’m with someone she knows lives nearby.”

What does Carol think I’m going to do, hide a microphone down my bra so I can surreptitiously record their conversation, then make a transcript and send it to the Daily Mirror? Stand on an orange box in front of what used to be Ingram’s reading it out through a megaphone?

Who needs all this Agatha Christie bullshit anyway? So Mademoiselle Malraux might have been trying to blackmail Helen. A load of good it did her. And even if we knew for sure that she sent the casket, how can we prove that the memories it triggered caused Helen’s heart to fail?

Old Elsie was right, some things are better left alone.

Like how Suki Tatsukichi could have left a religious cult and shortly afterward joined a secret branch of the MoD, where she was given a higher level of clearance than the Prime Minister.

Or that a photograph of another member of this cult came into the possession of Helen Sutton, who happened to have taught both the girl Suki was chosen to help through her adjustment and the person responsible for stealing her original body.

Or that Suki found her a job in Northcroft, where Helen died only days after the theft occurred…

The stench must have them holding their noses in Tahiti.

I’m hunting among the jigsaw puzzles and board games for a pack of playing cards when I hear the front door slam shut.

“Ruth? Where are you?”

Kerrie Latimer, back from her slap-up meal at last. I wonder what she was stuffing into her face while I had to make do with a cheese and tomato sandwich and a strawberry yoghurt?

That’s weird, there’s no sign of her car...

The stupid cow’s run out of petrol, that’s what she’s done. Well, if she imagines for one nanosecond that I’m about to go traipsing down to Cockburn’s for a gallon in weather like this she’s got another think coming.

But much as I’d like to, I can’t avoid her for the rest of the week.

“In here,” I call.

“Right,” she says, stamping in from the foyer. “Whatever you’re doing, leave it and come with me.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

I grab my cagoule and follow her outside, feeling like I’ve just been caught looking for conkers when I’m supposed to be sitting an important maths test.

Trusty sidekick? A puppy on a lead is what she should have asked for.

Thankfully the Beetle is parked a mere ten yards along Marine Parade, and the engine is running.

“Get in!” she barks.

“Okay, keep your hair on.”

I settle in my seat, pushing my fringe back from my forehead. Kerrie takes a moment or two to refresh her make-up, then turns to me with storm-filled eyes.

“You’ve got some serious explaining to do, my girl,” she launches at me.

“What are you on about? What did Carol tell you?”

“She told me lots of things. But I don’t intend to discuss them here. I want you to take me somewhere we’re in no danger of being disturbed.”

“Fine. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Said without moving a single eyelash.

I instruct her to take the same route as this morning, but to bear left at Cemetery Road under the cavernous Throston railway bridge, as if we were heading for New Stranton. After about a mile I ask her to turn left again. We cross the single-track line that connects Northcroft with its neighbour and enter the devastated dockland, a place for which the word ‘shameful’ might have been specially coined.

Formerly partners in prosperity, the two boroughs now glare at one another over a desperate landscape, petty princelings in a conquered kingdom contesting the succession to a non-existent throne. Office buildings, warehouses, foundries and engineering works stand idle and boarded up. Crumbling brick walls enclose compounds piled high with rotting wood, discarded sheets of corrugated iron, rusting storage tanks and obsolete machinery. Flotsam drifts upon the scummy surfaces of abandoned timber ponds, collecting in fetid corners to mingle with the burgeoning heaps of refuse littering their shores. Mournful rows of condemned wagons wait in weed-choked sidings, denied the kindness of one final shunt to the scrapyard. Above them the sinister outlines of redundant harbour cranes hover like spectral carrion birds.

The road comes to an uncertain end between sand-strewn mounds of rubble and broken glass. Away to our left, sorry ranks of lamp posts no one has thought it worth taking the trouble to remove betray the former presence of a grid of streets going down to a beach now become a graveyard for old washing machines, bicycle frames, mattresses, sofas and car tyres. On the side of a workmen’s shack some local wag has sprayed an apposite salutation:

Kerrie eases the Beetle to a stop next to where she hopes the kerb will be.

“This is that awful place I could see from the cemetery, isn’t it?” she says. “What happened here?”

“The port authority went bankrupt. They relied too much on the coal trade. When that all started going to the Tyne at the end of the ‘60s they didn’t have the money to make the docks suitable for the big container ships you need nowadays for seaborne traffic to be viable. They were given the chance to merge with Teesport, but they turned it down. Too many vested interests, I suppose. Then they lost out on the contracts to build the new oil rigs. The factory owners saw which way the wind was blowing and cut their losses. What makes me laugh is they keep saying they’re going to flatten the place and put up modern, purpose-built units. I mean, we can’t fill the industrial estates we’ve got. If they’d only listened to the–“

I break off, aware that she’s miles away. I think about lighting a cigarette, but I’ve left my bag at the Gladstone so I occupy my mind by wiping some of the condensation from the window. The rain is still falling heavily, giving me little option but to stay where I am and wait for her to let me know what I’ve done wrong.

She opens her mouth, then hesitates, as if by going on she’ll commit us both to a course of action from which there can be no return.

“Come on,” I sigh. “Get it off your chest.”

She turns to me, laying a hand on my sleeve.

“I want you to think very carefully before you answer this question. When did you last see Helen Sutton?”

I feel the blood freeze in my veins. Although the MoD’s file on Ruth made no mention of Helen, neither did it give me any reason to believe that I’d inherited the ability to speak French like a native. With such crucial gaps in my knowledge, I run a serious risk of ending up in a situation I can’t talk my way out of.

Well done, Suki. First-rate job.

“What d’you want to know that for?” I pout in an attempt to stave off the inevitable.

“Just tell me.”

“The day we finished at Hart Street, I guess.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be. It was more than ten years ago, don’t forget.”

“It couldn’t have been last October?”

I’ll make it easy for you. Hart Street school. Miss Sutton’s class. She told us to sit together right at the back because you always came top in tests and I was always second.

I knew it.

I fucking knew it.

Ruth came to Northcroft before she took my body. She came here with a specific purpose in mind, failed to achieve it and reckoned she’d have a better chance if she was disguised as Richard Brookbank.

Because Helen would have trusted Richard enough to welcome him into her home.

I wasn’t just a decoy.

Ruth wanted something from Helen — something so important to her she concocted an elaborate scheme to steal the transfer device and manipulate Richard’s movements so she could swap bodies with him.

And the MoD let her, because they needed to find out what it was.

The question is, did it have anything to do with the kuzkardesh gara? If so, how did a humble lab technician learn about them?

You work for us now.

Blindfolded, it seems, and with both hands tied behind my back.

I need time to digest this information more thoroughly — but that’s the one thing Kerrie doesn’t look as though she’s ready to give me.

“October,” I echo tonelessly.

“You were spotted one afternoon driving away from the school.”

“Who by?”

“Carol’s daughter Elaine, who has children there.”

“She was mistaken.”

“No she wasn’t. Elaine spoke to Helen later. She confirmed that it was you.”

Marvellous. How the hell do I get out of this one when I don’t know what else Kerrie was told?

I wait for her to continue, but the ball is in my court and likely to stay there. Maybe if I concede a few inches of ground now it might encourage her to say more, and I’ll have some idea of what I’m up against.

“All right, you win. When things went belly up with Tim and all I got from my parents was ‘we told you so’ I thought I’d make a fresh start. I hadn’t decided where. Northcroft was just one of the avenues I explored. I don’t know why I was under the impression Helen might have been able to help me. I was never one of her favourite pupils.”

Is that the beginning of a smile I can see creeping across her face? It bloody well is, you know.

Take a bow, Rich. You’ve dodged the bullet yet again.

“Yes, Elaine said that she didn’t lend the sympathetic ear you were hoping for. That’s one of the consequences of behaving selfishly as a child, sweetheart. Teachers tend to remember that at the expense of your more positive attributes.” She reaches out to touch my shoulder. “I understand why you didn’t mention this before. Everything to do with your husband is off limits, full stop. That’s your choice, and while I think it’s the wrong one I respect you for sticking to it. But if we’re ever going to solve this riddle we have to work together. Three people lost their lives that night, and after what I’ve seen and heard today I’m beginning to wonder if any of them died from natural causes. I can’t give the matter my full attention if I feel you’re keeping vital information from me. The fact that Helen told you she was considering leaving the profession, for instance.”

“It slipped my mind. I’m sorry if–“

Three people?

But you hear all sorts in this trade. Like Bob’s wasn’t the only body those kids found on Carr House Sands the next day.

It’s that runaway train again. If I keep my mouth shut it might just steam on by.

But the whistle is imploring me to step onto the track, and I’m powerless to resist.

I have to know.

Kerrie’s hand has moved to cover mine. Her face is full of concern.

“Are you unwell, sweetheart? You’ve gone very pale.”

“You said three people died. Helen Sutton. Bob Hodgson.” And now my mouth’s so dry I can scarcely move my tongue. “Who…who was the third?”

“A boy you and Elaine’s sister were at junior school with. Richard something or other, in a car accident. I assumed you knew.”

My head feels as if it’s been smashed against the side of a cliff. The numbness spreads, affecting my arms, my hands, my legs...

Sad, isn’t it...that some are remembered and others aren’t.

Richard Brookbank’s body lies decomposing in the ground. I will be trapped in this bag of flesh, blood and bones until I too have breathed my last.

I will be a woman for the rest of my life.

November 4, 1966

Basher races along Tennent Street as though all the devils in hell are in hot pursuit. Of what happened to him that November evening on Neptune’s Triangle he will never breathe a word to a living soul.

The dream fades, nudging me into that nebulous state between sleep and wakefulness.

Basher Howell was a changed lad after that. He stuck in at school, passed his 11-plus and only ever got into fights if he saw someone was being picked on. He used to say life was too short to make enemies just to prove how hard you were. I can recall Miss Cattrick telling the deputy head what a strange thing that was for a kid his age to come out with.

When we went to Westbourne I realised that Mademoiselle Malraux had done me a huge favour, since the Stranton lads had it in for us ‘cod heads’. None of them had a second go at Bash, mind. While we were never what you’d call best friends, I discovered later that hanging about with him saved me from the kind of treatment they dished out to Piggford, dragging him up to Summer Hill and leaving him tied to a tree all day with his trousers around his ankles. Not only did he have that to put up with, he’d get home to find he was in trouble for knocking off.

Then, at the start of the Fifth Year, our French teacher introduced us to the new assistant, with her shiny dark hair and lovely oriental eyes. Bash didn’t seem to remember her at all. But that was when he stopped coming to school regularly. Not many weeks were to pass before the morning assembly where we would be told that he had jumped from the top of the Transporter Bridge and drowned in the oily waters of the River Tees…

And at last I understand what may have driven him to that.

There is no safe haven in which I can drop anchor, no refuge from the storm that has broken.

Only the silence and solitude of the tomb.

I think she’s come down with something. Has there been a lot of ‘flu about?

More than usual. We’ve had a bad winter, of course.

Mmm, it was the same in the south.

Kerrie and Sylvia helping me to my room. How long ago was that? Three hours? Four?

What do I care?

Nothing matters any more.

Nothing.

Richard Brookbank is dead. I will be a woman for the rest of my life.

For the rest of my life...

I cover my face with my hands. I want the world to end tonight. Whether America invades Iran and the Soviets respond by pouring tanks across the border, or an asteroid lands smack in the middle of ICI Billingham it’s all the same to me.

As long as I don’t see another morning.

Very slowly, as though every chemical reaction taking place in my muscles has to be initiated separately, I raise my head from the pillow. In what remains of the light I study the now familiar configurations of tiny freckles peppering the skin between my elbows and the sleeves of my T-shirt, then watch the recurrent motion of my breasts as I take in air and expel it.

My freckles.

My breasts.

Not Ruth’s.

Mine.

For as long as I continue to exist.

I’m female, and I always will be.

Why didn’t you tell me, Suki? Did you think it was kinder to let me discover the truth on my own?

Or was it guilt that stilled your tongue?

And what did you say to my mother? What pack of lies did she lose sleep over after she’d consigned her only child’s coffin to the cold and the dark?

Fuck you.

And fuck everyone who was involved with creating that bloody machine.

Serves you right if it brings society crashing down around your ears.

I pound my fist into the pillow again and again.

Why me?

What was my crime?

It isn’t fucking fair!

You can’t go on like this, Rich. You’ve got to pull yourself together. Nobody’s going to turn the clock back. That part of your life has ended. You’re a girl now. You’re Ruth. There’s no escaping that fact. The choice is yours: cope with it or lose your mind.

The despondency ebbs enough for me to sit up, swing my feet to the floor and take a series of very deep breaths. There will be no repeat of the near breakdown I suffered when I first arrived at Tower House. It seems I’m made of sterner stuff these days.

After all, nothing has changed during the last few hours. I’ve been a girl for nearly five months, and if I’m honest with myself becoming male again would take quite a lot of getting used to.

But I always thought this story would have a different ending. Often that was the one thing that stopped me from giving up altogether.

I walk across to the wash basin and rinse my face. The eyes looking back at me from the mirror are clouded but composed. The time for recriminations has not yet come. If I want to preserve my sanity I must first learn to accept my situation, to view being female as a challenge, not a curse.

Easy to promise, so very hard to deliver.

A gentle tapping sounds at the door. Towel in hand, I open it to find Kerrie Latimer on the landing wearing a typically probing expression.

“Oh, you’re up and about!” she says cheerily. “Sylvia’s in a bit of a kerfuffle, I’m afraid. I think she’s worried that she might have an invalid to care for on top of all the other things she has to do because you’re on sabbatical with me. I said I’d check on you before I went to my room.”

“I’m fine. I just needed to lie down for a bit, that’s all.”

She leads me back to the bed, sits beside me and places a motherly palm on my forehead.

“You don’t seem to have a temperature. Tell me the truth, was it the boy I mentioned?”

“No, I uh…I barely remember him.”

She looks anything but convinced.

“Will you be okay for tomorrow? It’ll be a tiring day. I’m meeting Carol at the solicitor’s at three, and I still want to go to Hexham.”

“No problem. In fact I was just wondering if I should put in an hour or two at the bar.”

“Well make sure you take it easy. You won’t be much use to me if you’re running on empty.”

When she’s gone I light a cigarette and sit on the end of the bed to stare at the red glow shining through the ash.

Richard something or other, in a car accident.

One sentence. Eight words. Thirteen syllables.

How little it takes to spell the end of our hopes and dreams.

But at least the person who took them from me is no more. Justice, albeit of a particularly unsatisfying kind, appears to have been meted out.

Are you certain about that? Do you really think she could have been erased from the picture so easily?

Enough!

What’s done is done. I must put the past behind me, once and for all.

I stub out my cigarette, then sit at the dressing table to brush my hair and see to my make-up. Deftly applying mascara to my lashes, I realise that the girl in the mirror isn’t there any more. All that’s looking back at me is my own reflection.

A reflection of the woman I have had no choice but to become.

The only thing that remains to be decided is what kind of woman I’ll turn out to be.

The evening has drawn to a close without incident. Sensing my mood, few of the customers are prepared to engage me in conversation; those that do limit their discourse to the weather and next month’s general election. Can Jim Callaghan and his beleaguered Labour party withstand the Tory propaganda onslaught? Will Margaret Thatcher be elected as the country’s first female Prime Minister?

Believe it or not, there are people who actually care.

After ten o’clock I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve made up my mind to get drunk once everyone’s gone home — it won’t take much, considering I’ve scarcely touched a drop in five months. The alcohol itself won’t do me any good at all, but the prospect of a reward at the end of the shift has helped me get through the last hour and twenty minutes without biting anyone’s head off.

Then the rugby lads come in, their training finished for another week. Normally I’d return their suggestive banter with interest; tonight I just let it wash over me. I know that some of the younger players are involved in a contest to see who’ll get off with me first, and the best of British to them. Although the loss of my male inhibitions means I can abide a certain amount of familiarity from both sexes, I look on anything more intimate than a friendly arm around the shoulder as an unwelcome invasion of my personal space.

That may have to change soon. It’s odd to think that after so many years of regarding women as trophies to be competed for and displayed like mooses’ heads in a hunting lodge, from now on I’ll be the prize, I’ll be the one the virile young studs are chasing. I don’t need to consult Marjorie Proops to know that the most effective way of removing myself from the game is to target the player I dislike the least and arrange things so that he catches me.

Let the good times roll...

Well before twenty to eleven I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m not going to allow any extra drinking-up time. The regulars know better than to argue the toss if they can see I’m ‘in one’, and when the marginally taller of the Sewell brothers — Peter or Steve, I can never remember which is which — lopes back into the bar it isn’t to ask me out for the third Wednesday in a row but to fetch the box of matches he’d left on the table.

And to round off a perfect day?

Here comes J G Egerton, runaway winner of the Upper Class Twat Of The Year award. Looking more sheepish than an Australian shearing station, he watches his fiancée flounce upstairs, then slinks towards the counter. I finish collecting the empties before I acknowledge his arrival with a cursory nod of the head.

“Busy?” he enquires, his haughty gaze following my every movement.

“Par for the course.”

“Couldn’t turn in without apologising for this morning’s hoo-ha. Suffice it to say ‘twill not happen again.”

“Forget it,” I tell him. “Ancient history.”

“Very decent of you, my dear. Er, I suppose I’m too late for a nightcap?”

He would ask for a fucking drink now, wouldn’t he?

“Not if you’re a resident,” I sigh. “What’ll it be?”

“Scotch. Single malt, I think. With ice, if you have any. You’ll join me, I hope?”

His patrician eyes blaze, burning off my resistance to his easy charm.

But I don’t smile. Not tonight.

Maybe not ever again.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I admit. “It’s been a long one.”

I pour Egerton a Glenmorangie, and myself a vodka and lime. When I hand him the glass, he doesn’t waste the opportunity to let his fingers slide across mine. I’m almost tempted to lead him on for a while, then give the two-timing cunt the knee in the groin he deserves.

“Actually there was another favour I wanted to beg of you, if you’ll indulge me,” he grins. “Enjoying our stay tremendously, top-notch in every way. But the lady would prefer a continental breakfast, in her room if you could manage to swing it.”

The idea certainly has its merits. If Yvette de Monnier and Kerrie Latimer steer clear of one another tomorrow morning the UN Security Council can adjourn its emergency session free from the fear of a conflict that would make all-out nuclear war seem like a playground squabble over a bag of midget gems. On the other hand...

“I don’t know what Norah would say to that,” I tell him, though I have no doubt whatsoever as to her reaction. Force 9 on the Richter Scale, probably.

“Naturally there’s a crisp oncer for the enterprising young lady who sets the ball rolling, so to speak.”

A quid? A whole quid? And all for me?

Makes up for everything, that does.

I want to tell him to shove his money so far up his arse it’ll block his windpipe. But I’ve got this far without insulting anyone, and that’s got to be worth an extra shot once he’s fucked off and left me alone.

“In that case I’ll see what I can do.”

“Splendid! Knew I could rely on you.”

Egerton takes two pound notes from his wallet and places them on the counter, then drains his glass and wishes me pleasant dreams.

I don’t answer. I can’t.

The wallet fell open for less than a second, but that was long enough for me to have caught a glimpse of the membership card it contained.

Royal blue, with a yellow crescent moon and an eight-pointed star.

The official emblem of Portsmouth Football Club.

It’s yet another strand in the Gordian knot that has been tightening ever since Derek Graveney gave me that package.

In Portsmouth.

And if that’s a coincidence they never listen to reggae in Jamaica.

Not that it makes a scrap of difference now.

I put both of Egerton’s notes in the till, then pick up the single vodka I poured myself at his insistence and hold it beneath the optic. I press the bar once, twice and again for luck.

“Rest in peace, Rich,” I say as I lift the drink to my lips.

It doesn’t touch the sides.

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE The sequel to 'The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank' CHAPTER 6 By Touch the Light But the vicar has found the picture of Sorina. He moves it closer to his eyes, which are widening in disbelief and shock. “By all the blessed saints...” he gasps. “Not something you see every day, is it?” I venture. “She’d certainly stand out in a crowd.” “Can’t you see?” he cries, jabbing a finger at the photograph. “It’s her. It’s Sarah-Jane.”

Consciousness returns to me slowly, like a kitten whose trust I lost through playing too roughly. It exacts a cruel retribution, each moment of lucidity more uncomfortable than the last. My back feels cold, there’s a nasty taste in my mouth, and an orchestra consisting solely of a percussion section is performing an extended symphony at the back of my skull. There’s only one conclusion I can draw: I’m in for the mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle and second cousin twice removed of hangovers.

I lift my face from the pillow, reaching out an unsteady hand to grip the bedside table as my sluggish brain tries hard to decode the visual signals my watch is sending it. The smell of congealed vomit drifts up from the jeans lying in a heap on the floor with my other clothes; it brings back unsolicited memories of my guts being spewed into the lavatory bowl, which it appears I didn’t quite reach in the nick of time after all.

And of what led to me to that sorry state.

I should have known better, I suppose. Suki Tatsukichi warned me this body couldn’t process alcohol as quickly or efficiently as the one I was used to. Something about me having a lower proportion of water to fat, so it reaches my brain in a more undiluted state. I might have listened a bit more intently if I’d realised I was going to be stuck with the bloody thing.

It’s an eventuality for which you should certainly prepare yourself.

But I didn’t.

The idea was too horrendous to contemplate.

Now I’ve got to face it head-on.

I’m female. No matter what happens to me, that will never change.

I will be a woman for the rest of my life.

Rest in peace, Rich.

Who was I trying to kid? It’s one thing resolving to cast off my former identity when I’ve just sunk four shots of vodka, quite another to keep that promise in the sober light of a new day.

I’m a girl.

That still shocks me to the core.

And now I know I’ll always be female.

How do I accept that and move on?

You could stop being so negative about it. Remember what Suki told you five months ago in Hayden Hall?

You’re about to embark on a unique journey of discovery. If it turns out to be a one-way trip I suspect that what you’ll gain will far outweigh anything you lose.

Maybe that’s true. There has to be more I can get out of being a woman than periods, mood swings and blokes staring at my tits.

Stifling a yawn, I roll over and groan at the cacophony coming from inside my head. The covers have slid down my hips, but since I can’t find the energy to reach out and pull them over me I lie there counting my goosepimples until my bladder calls a halt to this narcissistic indolence. Unfortunately I obey its commands a little too promptly, and as the room gyrates about me I make a solemn vow never to touch anything stronger than shandy if I live to see Screaming Lord Sutch win a seat in the House of Commons.

When I emerge from the shower an unedifying and decidedly wobbly fifteen minutes later, my headache has eased to a dull throbbing I can just about live with. Clean underwear pushes me a little further along the road to feeling human again — though it also points me firmly in the direction of the wardrobe I have no option but to raid now that my jeans are only good for the laundry basket.

I pull the doors open, frowning at the three pairs of slacks hanging on the left of the rail. One way to break with the past would be to make skirts and dresses my preferred form of attire, and I can’t imagine there’ll ever be a more appropriate moment than this to begin the change.

If only I’d harboured a secret desire to be a transvestite…

I open a new packet of tights and allow my procedural memory to take over, sliding the sheer nylon past my ankles, calves, knees, thighs and hips, then smoothing it upwards until it’s clinging to everything below my middle like a second skin. As I sit at the dressing table to comb my hair I reflect that for the vast majority of girls my age — certainly those who work in offices or aspire to join one of the professions — slipping on a pair of tights first thing in the morning is part of their default routine. It’s only a novelty for me because I haven’t yet acknowledged that I should only be wearing leather, denim and the like to prove I’m not afraid to dress down once in a while.

Before I’ve finished applying my make-up I already have a fairly well-defined mental image of the outfit I want to put together. Soon I’m standing in a sleeveless mauve blouse, laying out a light grey cotton jacket on the bed. I ransack the hangers for the pleated skirt I know will match the latter without making it look like a suit, then take a deep breath as I prepare to spend the next several hours showing my legs to all and sundry.

Holding the skirt by the waistband, I step inside it, pull it up, tuck in my blouse and fasten the zip at the side. The hem ends a few inches above the knee, and flares out so much it’ll probably brush both sides of the doorway, but with my legs sheathed in nylon I can move around and almost forget it’s there. Sitting down is when I’ll have to call upon the rules of deportment Suki instilled in me so thoroughly.

Bend the knees together. Smooth the back as you lower your posterior. Right thigh over left, then spread the hem as far as it’ll let you. Hands folded in your lap, or better still holding your bag. Well done. Now let’s go for a drive. You can practise getting in and out of the car.

What she didn’t tell me was why women, and not men, have to go through all this palaver. At what point in history was it decided that we should be the ones saddled with billowing folds of cloth every time we want to take the weight off our feet?

I put on a pair of black silver-buckled shoes, check my bag and attempt to put yesterday’s events behind me as I get ready to immerse myself in the next instalment of life’s great adventure.

As a girl.

Because that’s what I have to be.

Because that’s who I am.

I don’t hang about; time, tide and breakfast at the Gladstone wait for no one.

Norah Russell reads the note she found beneath the magnetic elephant on the side of the fridge-freezer and fixes me with a look that could transform a jeroboam of the finest Champagne into a liquid only a fish and chip shop or a pickle factory might find a use for. There’s more steam coming from her ears than the Flying Scotsman generated at top speed. Were her hairnet to work loose, it would take off with such force as to leave gaping holes not only in the ceiling and the roof but in all likelihood the ozone layer as well.

“A continental breakfasht?” she seethes. “In her room? Where doesh she think she ish, the Shavoy?”

“I’ll see to it,” says Sylvia, who unlike her mother has ventured abroad several times and doesn’t subscribe to the view that if God had intended her to wander around mainland Europe He wouldn’t have put the English Channel in the way. “She’ll be happy with fruit juice, bread rolls, a slice of Dutch cheese, preserves and coffee. What d’you reckon, Ruth?”

“Sounds okay to me.”

She replies with a long, hard stare.

“Are you all right?”

I rub my bare arms, mainly to give my hands something to do now they haven’t got pockets to stuff themselves into.

“Course. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Are you sure?”

“Said so, didn’t I?”

How old am I, twelve and a half?

Although Norah continues to grumble about ‘foreign muck’ as she cracks eggs into a bowl — for reasons possibly associated with an obscure Nostradamus quatrain she always serves them scrambled on Thursdays — I can’t help but wonder if a sequence of events has been set in motion that could one day revolutionise eating habits at the Gladstone. When she sees how little washing up Yvette de Monnier’s breakfast produces she might be tempted to make it a permanent addition to the menu. Does it take such a prodigious leap of the imagination to envisage her turning her hand to something genuinely outlandish such as curry and rice?

I offer to carry the tray upstairs myself. As the instigator of this unprecedented break with tradition it’s the least I can do.

But I make no mention of my suspicions regarding Egerton. Sylvia still thinks he’s a journalist; I don’t want her confronting him until I find out why he’s really here.

There’s no answer when I knock.

“Mademoiselle de Monnier...est-ce que vous áªtes éveillé?” I ask, slipping into French automatically. “J’apporte votre petit déjeuner.”

Not a peep.

I turn the handle, and find the door unlocked. The room is in darkness; she must still be asleep. I decide to leave the tray on the writing desk and make a discreet withdrawal. Averting my eyes from the bed in case Egerton is slumped between his fiancée’s thighs, I tiptoe across the floor.

“JESUS CHRIST!!!”

The severed head on the dressing table sends Yvette’s breakfast cartwheeling through the air. Of course it’s no such thing, just a wig stand with an incredibly lifelike face, but by the time I’ve realised my mistake the milk has literally been spilt.

Crimson, I turn towards the bed. If mortification could kill I’d be dead already.

Mercifully it’s empty. She’s probably in the bathroom grouting her cheeks with Polyfilla.

I open the curtains, admitting the feeble light from another overcast morning. Down in the forecourt, the Rolls is conspicuous by its absence.

They’ve skipped breakfast altogether. Egerton’s backhander was for nothing.

A quick search of Yvette’s belongings reveals little a well-heeled socialite might not take with her when she’s travelling. That’s only to be expected; if she had anything worth concealing she wouldn’t leave it lying around when she knows the rooms are cleaned on a daily basis.

Egerton’s room gives rather more away. A packet of Embassy Regal and a book of matches advertising the dubious pleasures to be had at Knottingley Fork Services on the A1. A well-thumbed copy of Fiesta. A biro filched from a betting shop. Three pairs of British Home Stores Y-fronts still in their polythene bags. A bottle of Hai Karate splash-on deodorant.

Hai Karate? Even Richard Brookbank chose a brand with more class than that.

Single malt, I think. With ice, if you have any.

The clown doesn’t know how to drink whisky either.

The evidence is unambiguous: J G Egerton, who sounds as if he was born not so much with a silver spoon in his mouth as a gold ladel sticking out of his behind, is no more a toff than Norman Stanley Fletcher.

Now what was it he said yesterday in the dining room?

I understand, Yvette...but let’s not have another scene, eh?

It makes sense now. He’s her minder, maybe an unemployed actor she’s paying to keep her out of trouble and at the same time give everyone the impression she can not only pull a bloke ten or fifteen years her junior but also have him salivating with lust whenever she cocks one of her delicately pencilled eyebrows.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t more demeaning ways of earning a crust. He gets to drive a Rolls-Royce, wear some snazzy suits and strut around with a beautiful woman on his arm. More fun than being an extra in one of the Confessions films, I imagine.

None of this tells me why they’re in Northcroft, or what significance I ought to read into Egerton’s affiliation with Fratton Park.

Maybe I’d be better off putting this whole business out of my mind. It’s all come at the wrong time. I need to get away for a while so I can take stock of my life and plan for the future.

I could also do with a few female friends, people who aren’t drifting into middle age. I may have as long as fifty or sixty years in front of me as a woman, and I want to get it right. How do I succeed when my only current role model is Sylvia?

Once Kerrie Latimer’s finished dragging me all over the north-east I might use some of my savings to rent a cottage in the Lakes for a couple of weeks, or maybe hire a car and drive wherever the fancy takes me. I’ve been a prisoner in this place for far too long.

I spend a minute or two making sure Egerton’s things are exactly as they were when I let myself in, then go back to de Monnier’s room and begin clearing up the mess.

You work for us now.

That’s what you think, darling. I resign as of this instant.

Less than two miles west of Throston Bridge, the Durham road ascends through rolling countryside sprinkled with small farms, each field and hedgerow pregnant with the promise of spring despite the consistently dull weather. This has always been my favourite time of the year, a verdant prelude to warm summer days and long, balmy evenings, heralding the season of beaches and beer gardens, of swimsuits and sun-tan lotion, of tennis courts, tent pegs and toffee apples.

The Three Fates alone know what this coming summer has in store for me — and they’re keeping quiet about it.

“Penny for them, sweetheart?”

Kerrie Latimer, looking anything but a thirty-eight year old mother of two with her lop-sided multicoloured hairstyle, her black jeans and the translucent grey sand-pattern T-shirt that does precisely nothing to cloak the stunning cleavage her black lace bra only just holds in check — I’m betting the skeleton is still in his room trying to put his eyes back in their sockets — sounds a bit worried that the double act she suggested we perform after we reach Hexham might not be such a spiffing idea after all if one half of it is as good as mute.

“That’s about what they’re worth,” I reply.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

“Sorry...?”

“That it didn’t last.”

She wants to talk about Tim.

Terrific. Welcome to another edition of Make It Up As You Go Along.

“Wasn’t meant to,” I say firmly. “End of story.”

“Did you plan to have children?”

Gordon Bennett! Does she not understand simple English?

“Eventually, I suppose.”

“There’s no time like the present.”

I flick imaginary bits of fluff from the lapel of my jacket, then smooth the front of my skirt.

“Be serious,” I grunt.

“I am being serious. Having a bun in the oven is the best thing that could happen to you. We’re not living in the dark ages. Plenty of single women are starting families these days. How old did you say you were?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I was seventeen when I had my first baby.”

“Seventeen? You were just a kid.”

“I soon grew up, I can tell you.” She pats my forearm. “Don’t leave it too long, that’s all I’m saying. You won’t want little ones grabbing at your apron strings when you’re pushing forty.”

We cross the A19, entering the more open landscape of the East Durham plateau. The only substantial settlement we encounter is a former pit village, the straggling main street lined with empty and shuttered shops. Outside the Co-op, a girl who can’t be much older than twenty is rocking a pram as a toddler pulls at her other hand; the swelling visible beneath her drab brown overcoat suggests it won’t be many weeks before she’s added to her brood.

Seeing her just a few minutes after Kerrie’s intrusive if well-intentioned advice leaves me deep in thought. The only person who can be the mother of my children is me. That means carrying, bearing and raising them. It also involves taking part in the activity necessary to conceive them.

I’d have to be pissed out of my brain first.

Back to the real world...

The audacious magnificence of Durham cathedral, aloof to the hordes milling through the congested city at its feet, certain to outlast them as it has their predecessors for nine hundred years. The impregnable walls of the Norman castle, bulwark against the plundering Scots. The swollen River Wear, flowing between precipitous wooded banks in its deeply incised meander, brown with sediment washed into it by the recent rain.

Some places make your problems feel so ephemeral.

Another half an hour sees us safely through the ferrous haze that pollutes the air east of Consett, across the Derwent and into the unspoiled beauty of Northumberland. The road climbs steady and straight, passing wide pastures bounded by dry stone walls and rising to high ridges clothed with coniferous plantations. The western horizon is blocked by the moors and commons of the North Pennines, the largest truly empty region in England. It has me pining for the days when dad would ask mum to put up a picnic, then hand me the road atlas and tell me to take us on a mystery tour. Fourteen was too soon for all that to be brought to such an abrupt end.

After four or five miles a sharp turn to the right takes us down to the Tyne valley. At the junction with the main Gateshead to Hexham highway, on the edge of a village called Stocksfield, Kerrie spots a signpost indicating that Bywell is only three-quarters of a mile away.

“Our luck’s in, sweetheart!” she smiles. “I’ll pull in somewhere so we can touch up our war paint — and I can get rid of this piece of orange peel that’s lodged itself behind my dental plate.”

My make-up doesn’t need fixing, but I fuss with it anyway because that’s what girls do. When Kerrie begins removing her false teeth I decide to give her some privacy by stepping outside for a cigarette. A young woman carrying a heavy shopping bag leaves the post office; I return the empathetic smile she gives me when the breeze plays havoc with my hem as I’m lighting up. A pimply youth follows her, gets an eyeful and we both deploy our facial muscles in an entirely different way.

I’m back in jeans tomorrow, I don’t care if I have to put them through the wash myself.

Then I see something that pushes that thought right to the back of my mind.

A hundred yards or so to the west, a silver Rolls-Royce has emerged from the side road Kerrie and I will shortly be driving along. The vehicle has disappeared in the direction of Hexham before I can identify the occupants, but I have a good idea who they were.

Left the metropolis for deepest Somerset, called HQ to report ‘mission accomplished’ and received orders to head north without further delay.

Somerset.

And one of the hikers who was in Europe with Sarah-Jane Collingwood came from Glastonbury.

De Monnier knows about that visit. She’s checking each address in turn.

What’s her game? Is she working for Mademoiselle Malraux or trying to expose her? If it’s the latter, how did she find out where those girls lived?

I ought to tell Kerrie. But I can’t, not until I have more to go on. There’s no sense in both of us worrying about what the hell we might be getting ourselves into.

Bywell isn’t so much a village as a collection of farms and cottages strung along a narrow lane beginning a short distance from the northern side of the old stone bridge spanning the Tyne, which encloses the settlement in a broad loop. Behind the buildings to our right stands lush parkland belonging to a large house whose upper storey is visible above the trees a quarter of a mile away; presumably Bywell Lodge is part of the same estate.

Kerrie slides the Beetle to a halt in front of a small yet dignified church surrounded by meadows where cattle graze peacefully in the slowly improving midday light. Opposite the lych gate we can see a steep drive leading up to a white-walled building fronted by a tidy lawn overhung with sycamores.

“The Vicarage,” she reads from the plaque beside the entrance. “Well, it’s as good a place to start as any. Let’s hope the locals are as hospitable as you say they are.”

“Rural Northumberland? They’re famous for it.”

She pats down a stray gingery wisp that’s escaped from the clips she’s used to tie my hair in a loose bun. I’m also wearing her glasses, which feels extremely strange after five months of near perfect eyesight. Fortunately the lenses haven’t been ground to a very strong prescription, so my vision is only slightly blurred.

“You’ll do,” she declares.

“They’ll think I’m here rounding up overdue library books,” I complain, running a hand back from my exposed forehead.

“Don’t be such a misery. You should’ve worn something a bit more daring if you wanted to be the looker.”

Daring? If only she knew…

As we approach the front door, it opens to reveal a slim-built man of about forty wearing a lemon cardigan, a striped shirt, grey flannel trousers and a dog collar. His eyes dart to Kerrie’s bust — St Paul himself couldn’t have done otherwise — but quickly settle on me. They aren’t exactly brimming with Christian charity.

“Good morning, reverend,” I begin, smiling sweetly. “My name’s Ruth Hansford-Jones, and this is my friend Kerrieanne Latimer. We’re looking for Bywell Lodge. We have some–“

“Some questions you’d like to ask Mr Collingwood. I’m sorry, but you people really have a cheek stirring things up again like this. Don’t you think the poor man’s been through enough? Or are you so desperate for a story you hold his grief to be of no account?”

Kerrie and I exchange a look. A subtle arch of her brow indicates that as it’s my integrity that’s been called into question it’s up to me to set the record straight.

“We’re not reporters,” I stress. “What I was going to say before you cut me off in mid-sentence was that we have some bad news for one of the family. We thought it would be better to give it in person than just, you know, drop them a line.”

From her shoulder bag Kerrie takes the notebook she found in the casket’s false bottom. She opens it at the page containing the four names and addresses.

“This is the person we’re trying to trace,” she says, handing it to the vicar. “If you turn back the page you’ll see a photograph of her.”

He does so, shaking his head.

“That’s Sarah-Jane, all right. I recognise her from the portrait John keeps on his mantelpiece. Such a shame.”

“What d’you mean?” asks Kerrie.

But the vicar has found the picture of Sorina. He moves it closer to his eyes, which are widening in disbelief and shock.

“By all the blessed saints...” he gasps.

“Not something you see every day, is it?” I venture. “She’d certainly stand out in a crowd.”

“You don’t understand. This explains so much. What Freda said, it was all true.”

“Sorry reverend, I’m not with you.”

“Can’t you see?” he cries, jabbing a finger at the photograph. “It’s her. It’s Sarah-Jane.”

He passes me the notebook. I can’t tell if he’s right or not because of the spectacles I’m wearing. But Kerrie’s high-pitched ‘oh!’ as she leans so close I can feel the pressure of her boob against mine is all the endorsement I need.

Things seem to have stepped up a gear.

Wedged between Kerrie Latimer’s substantial left thigh and the arm of a chocolate brown sofa, I think back ruefully to the words of a careers consultant the Department of Employment sent me to see during one of my longer periods of enforced idleness.

"In an interview situation, always accept a cup of tea or coffee if you’re offered one. A refusal can cause offence; your host may feel you don’t trust them to make it properly. But under no circumstances should you take a biscuit. They’re accidents waiting to happen."

The crumbs in my lap bear witness to the truth of that last assertion — and Reverend Peter Sawdon’s redoubtable better half doesn’t come across as the type who’d appreciate seeing them casually brushed to the carpet. Going by the expression seared onto her stern features, which match both the puritanical severity of her short, greying curls and the staid lines of her dark brown jacket and skirt, it would be all she needed to order me out of her home forthwith.

“Rachel’s a local girl,” the vicar is telling us. “She didn’t know Sarah-Jane well, but she was here when the, uh...”

“It was a scandal,” his wife says in the clipped tones of a woman who has worked hard to disguise her Tyneside accent. “There’s no other word will do.”

Peter glances at her, as if seeking permission to continue. A nod confirms that he has received it.

“Sarah-Jane decided on a career in the Women’s Royal Naval Service,” he goes on, and if he didn’t have my undivided attention before, he certainly does now. “In the summer of 1964 she was invited to take part in an induction course, which I believe was based at Torpoint in Cornwall. She didn’t return. ‘Missing at sea’, they said. But her body was never found.”

“Freda — that’s Sarah-Jane’s mother — took it really badly,” says Rachel. “If she could have buried her daughter I think she’d have got over it eventually. As it was, she fell to pieces. She went round showing us all letters she claimed Sarah-Jane was still sending her. Apparently she was living in Europe and doing important work there, that was why she couldn’t come home. Of course they were fakes. You only had to look at them.”

“John let me read one when I first took over the parish,” Peter puts in. “It was composed in an extraordinarily old-fashioned style, like something from the Victorian era. No eighteen year old could possibly have written prose that elaborate and long-winded. That told me something about the extent of the grief Freda felt, to have allowed herself to be taken in by such a blatant deception.”

“In the end John called the police, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. They brought in an expert, who compared the handwriting with some of Sarah-Jane’s exercise books she’d kept from school. It was close, almost an exact match. Whoever was doing this had access to a sample they could work from. But the investigation led nowhere. The envelopes bore no postmarks, and the only fingerprints on them were Freda’s.”

“And it didn’t stop there,” Rachel says gravely.

“Unfortunately no,” agrees Peter. “About a year after Sarah-Jane’s disappearance, the circle of victims widened. Her cousin, who was expecting her second child at the time, was targeted. So were most of the girls she’d known at Prudhoe High, and even one or two of the younger teachers. All received the same message: an epiphany of some kind was coming, and they were to embrace it in order to be free of...what was it again?”

“The illusion of selfhood. I got one in the next batch. So did Lady Tynedale over at Bywell Hall. That got the wheels turning, and no mistake.”

“To cut a long and not very uplifting story short, the detective in charge of the case concluded that Freda had written the letters herself. She was cautioned for wasting police time, though she protested her innocence to the last. You can imagine the effect it had on her when the local press got hold of it.”

The vicar goes on to relate how Freda Collingwood spent the next ten years in virtual seclusion, her health deteriorating to the point where she became bedridden.

“She died just a few weeks back,” adds Rachel. “Sixty-three, that’s all she was. I mean, it’s no age nowadays, is it?”

Yet fate hadn’t finished with Freda’s long-suffering husband.

“John told me another letter purporting to be from his daughter arrived at the Lodge a few days after the funeral,” says Peter. “He was angry — we both were. This person had destroyed Freda’s life, and for what? Thankfully there haven’t been any more, and he’s agreed to let the matter rest. But now...”

He gestures towards the notebook, which is lying closed on top of Kerrie’s bag.

“I think we should tell him,” says Rachel. “I don’t care what this cult or whatever it is has done to Sarah-Jane, she’s still his flesh and blood.”

“I’ll second that,” agrees Kerrie.

“It won’t be a particularly pleasant undertaking,” Peter warns us. “John has let himself go a little bit since Freda passed away. He doesn’t make much of an effort to keep the house clean, and he’s not eating properly.”

“There’s no need for you to tag along, sweetheart,” Kerrie whispers into my ear.

“Thanks,” I murmur. “I could do with a cig after that.”

A few minutes later I’m standing beside the Beetle smoking a Winston, with no more idea of what’s going on than a drunk who’s just woken up in the middle of Hampton Court maze after a three-day bender.

How can Sarah-Jane Collingwood have been lost at sea, then turn up on a walking holiday in the middle of Europe? What part did Helen Sutton play in this miraculous resurrection? And why are Egerton and de Monnier so interested in all of this?

Not much dust. That means whoever it was, they were here fairly recently.

Who broke into 6 Redheugh Close? Why did they leave the casket behind? If they were so anxious to keep anyone else from finding it that they jammed a crate full of sandbags against the door, why didn’t they take the extra precaution of locking the one in the kitchen?

Question after question — and not a sniff of an answer to any of them.

“I’m starting to wonder if Peter was right, sendin’ the other two away like that,” says Rachel from the bottom of the path. “People have suffered. I don’t care what’s going on out there, it needs to be brought into the open.”

“Isn’t that Mr Collingwood’s decision?” I suggest.

“I got one of those letters, remember.” She steps closer, though only the cows in the field next to the church can hear us. “I’ve never told Peter, but some of the words…well, they spoke to me. I wanted to go out and repeat them to every woman I saw. I still do. And it’s not just me, either.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“You will when you see them. You’ll understand then all right.”

She goes back to the house, leaving me more puzzled than ever. What she said made no sense at all. Words that make you want to repeat them? What’s that about?

I can’t do this any more. I’m not a trained field operative, just an ordinary girl who needs time to forget that she was ever anything else.

But when I think of John Collingwood, his wife lying in the cemetery and his daughter looking like a cross between Dracula’s daughter and the bride of Fu Manchu, I wonder if I haven’t come out of this affair relatively unscathed.

So far.

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE The sequel to 'The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank' CHAPTER 7 By Touch the Light The receptionist is holding the door open. Trisha smiles at her, then leans forward to place her lips by my ear. “The woman in that room,” she hisses. “She’s not my mother.”

New Stranton’s commercial business district will never draw unqualified praise from those who appreciate fine architecture. Its founding fathers having been practical nineteenth-century entrepreneurs whose idea of beauty was a favourable balance sheet, the few buildings to have survived both the attentions of the Luftwaffe and the legalised vandalism of the 1960s show little of the neo-Classical majesty associated with most other Victorian industrial towns. The one structure of any note is a limestone church with a tall, square-sectioned tower surmounted at one corner by a conical appendage that has always put me in mind of a witch’s hat, thus giving it an eccentric, almost disrespectful profile quite out of keeping with its function. Located on an island in the centre of a busy plaza recently co-opted into the traffic management scheme brought into operation after the new shopping precinct was opened next to the junction where the roads from Stockton, Durham and Northcroft converge, it looks east down a wide boulevard — not tree-lined, not in New Stranton — which strives to reach the sea but instead is truncated by the railway line as it curves inland to circumvent the docks. Halfway along this road to nowhere, between the Midland bank and a cellar bar with such an unsavoury reputation I’m risking my own good name simply by not having crossed the road to avoid it, can be found the chambers of Barton & Harris, attorneys at law — and a waiting room so dark and dismal it would have a pools winner whose first novel had just been published to ecstatic reviews staring at the floor and wondering where it had all gone wrong.

“She’s late,” complains Elaine Smailes, shifting in her chair as she fusses with the collar of her verbose sunflower-pattern maternity dress. “I knew this’d ‘appen. Didn’ I say so, mam?”

Carol Vasey looks at her watch. Dressed in an abstemious dark green suit, she’s a handsome, vigorous woman in her early fifties, with a gracious manner and a pleasant smile. If her russet curls are speckled with grey, and her features are starting to take on the weathered appearance of one rapidly moving past her prime, there’s a sparkle to her eyes that might have ensnared many a younger admirer before the good doctor came along — though in his case there’s a better than even chance that more pecuniary factors were at work.

“It’s only just gone ten to,” she says. “We’ve still got plenty of time.”

“I told her a quarter to three, on the dot. I mean, she only ‘as to drive from flippin’ Norton.”

Elaine’s fingers move from her dress to her necklace to her stiff auburn perm, and finally settle for cradling her swelling stomach. This, I gather, will be her fourth child, due at the end of July a few weeks before she turns twenty-eight. A matriarch in the making, and she seems to be revelling in it.

The object of Elaine’s irritation is her sister Trisha, who works as a peripatetic music teacher in the Teesside area. In what promises to be a fairly lengthy series of transactions, she is to be given the deeds to 6 Redheugh Close — Kerrie has brought letters from her siblings relinquishing their share of the property in return for a cash sum to be decided this afternoon — while Elaine and her husband will take possession of the empty house at 16 Albion Crescent. Good luck to them all if they’re thinking of liquidating their assets in the current economic climate.

As for why I’m here, I really can’t say. Kerrie didn’t remind me about the appointment until we’d left Bywell, adding almost as an afterthought that Trisha had telephoned her at the Gladstone yesterday evening to request that I be present. It certainly has me wondering; from what I remember of her, I can’t believe she would take the trouble to do that if all she had in mind was exchanging gossip with an old school chum.

And if she talks about Richard?

You’ll be okay. You’re Ruth now. Richard’s gone, and he isn’t coming back.

Repeat after me...

“Will you wait here for her, sweetheart?”

Kerrie is tapping my wrist. Carol and Elaine are already on their feet, following the receptionist through the heavy oak door at the far end of the room. I nod my head and reach in my pocket for my cigarettes, glad that I can light up without fear of censure now I’m no longer sitting beside an expectant mother.

Left alone, I do my best to organise the jumble of disordered evidence the morning has dumped into my mental ‘in’ tray. It’s a Herculean task; every line of reasoning I pursue leads straight into a cul-de-sac. Maybe I should make up an excuse to quiz Yvette de Monnier, see if she can’t provide some of the missing pieces.

Good thinking. She’ll be thrilled that the hotels’s odd-job girl is taking such a keen interest in her affairs.

“Ruth…?”

My head shoots up at the sound of a voice that until a couple of hours ago I’d lost hope of ever hearing again.

The flowing mane of bright red hair that went with it has been cut into a page boy, yet I’d know those bewitching green eyes, that pert nose and the seductive curl of those delicate lips anywhere. How many nights did I lie awake, imagining I was holding this girl in my arms and whispering sweet words of love as she rested her head on my shoulder? How many hours did I ache for the touch of her warm flesh against mine? How many times did I take a detour past Lumley Square, hoping that once, just once, she might walk through her front door as I was passing the gate and–

Well I’ll be damned...

She hasn’t yet grown out of her trademark jeans and trainers, but there can be no denying that Trisha Hodgson, who time and again stated unequivocally that she would never allow any man to tie her down with a child, would have to be wearing a T-shirt at least two sizes bigger if she was to have any hope of concealing the fact that in a little over three months she’ll be competing with her sister for first use of the delivery room.

“You’re pregnant...” I gasp, my cigarette forgotten.

“Not much slips past you, does it?” she laughs. “We didn’t plan it, but that’s life.”

“Your mum said you weren’t married...“

“God, how far behind the times are you? Next thing you’ll be having a go at me for living in sin, or bringing a bastard child into the world.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s obvious what you meant. I thought after your experience of holy matrimony you’d have known better.” Her frown mutates into the elfish grin that lassoed my heart so many years ago. “Come on, give me a hug.”

My cheek against hers. Feeling the outline of her bra through the back of her T-shirt. Her scent enveloping me. Doesn’t it just sum up my relationship with Dame Fortune that I had to become female before I could get this close to the girl I loved for so long?

“You’ve gone ginger,” she says as we separate and hold each another at arm’s length. “And your tits are still bigger than mine.”

This is excruciating. Despite the fact that I no longer feel any physical attraction for this young woman — or more probably because of it — my emotions are in turmoil.

“If you’re Alice Patricia Hodgson, they’ve started without you,” says the receptionist, coming to my aid before I burst out crying.

“Alice?” I mouth to her.

“I kept that quiet, didn’t I? Actually I’ve been starting to use it more often lately. Must be getting mumsy.” She releases my hands. “Listen, I’m going to do my bit and sneak out of there as quickly as I can. After that I want to talk to you about something. Or rather someone. Anywhere, as long as it’s private.”

Richard. It has to be.

“Uh...the Gladstone?”

“If we’re on our own, fine.”

“What’s this all about?” I fail to stop myself asking.

The receptionist is holding the door open. Trisha smiles at her, then leans forward to place her lips by my ear.

“The woman in that room,” she hisses. “She’s not my mother.”

At the end of my Chemistry ‘mock’ O level examination — the last ninety minutes of which I had spent creating a mathematical formula to estimate the number of tiles in the assembly hall floor, such was the swiftness with which I had committed my woefully inadequate knowledge of that subject to paper — I sought out one of the invigilating teachers and asked him if he didn’t find walking up and down between rows of desks for three hours intolerably boring.

“Boring?” he chortled. “Of course it’s boring. But in this profession boring is good. Boring means going home and not wanting to kick the living daylights out of the dog. I go down on my knees every night and beg the Almighty for another boring day. There’s an old Chinese saying, Brookbank: may you live in interesting times. It was intended as a curse.”

Seven years later, I think I’m beginning to understand the point he was trying to get across.

Trisha Hodgson is standing in the corner of my room, flicking through my record collection. She hasn’t said anything to support the allegation she made earlier, but I know she’ll bring the subject up before many more minutes have gone by.

When she does...

She’s not my mother.

‘Interesting times’ indeed.

I take off my jacket and hang it on the back of the door. When I turn round, I see Trisha holding her middle. Her face is radiant.

“It’s kicking,” she smiles. “Come on, quickly!”

Unsure of the etiquette in these situations, I walk towards her and tentatively extend my hand. She places it on her bulge; for a second nothing happens, then a sudden movement inside her makes me jump.

“Wow!” is all I can say.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?”

I shake my head, and as our eyes meet there forms between us a bond that can only have been engendered by dint of us sharing the potential for motherhood. It seems to soak into the very fibre of my being, assuring me that the thought of carrying new life within my body isn’t so unreasonable after all.

The moment passes, but I can sense that something has changed.

Something important.

Trisha’s glow fades. I sit on the edge of the bed and gesture for her to join me.

Within seconds the dam is blown wide apart.

“I know what I said at the solicitor’s sounds stupid, but hear me out, okay? That is not our mam. Oh, it’s her body, all right. She’s still got the same pattern of moles on her neck and the same little scar on her index finger. But I don’t recognise the person who’s in there. And before you go on about her amnesia, she told me herself it’s only her memory of the night dad died that’s been lost. Other than that she’s supposed to be suffering from no lasting effects at all.”

My mouth feels as if every last molecule of moisture within it has evaporated. If Ruth was in Northcroft when Bob Hodgson drowned, she could easily have swapped with Carol Vasey before setting up the car crash that put an end to Richard Brookbank’s body.

Christ, I shook hands with the woman less than an hour ago.

But why take Carol’s place and lose thirty years of her life? For a share of Helen Sutton’s fortune?

That cat won’t catch any mice. If all she wanted was filthy lucre why didn’t she simply exchange bodies with Helen? Then she could have got her hands on the lot — and at once, not four and a half months later.

“Have you said anything to Elaine?” I ask in as relaxed a voice as I can put on.

“Of course not. She’d think I was away with the pixies.”

“And yet you’re willing to confide in me.”

“You’re not likely to go running to mam — or worse, that pillock she married. Besides, once I’ve finished I can walk out of here and never have to face you again. You will keep this to yourself, won’t you?”

“Course I will.”

“All right,” she sighs. “I found out I was pregnant at the end of November. Mam didn’t think I should have it, said I should put my career first. Adamant about it, she was. Then came the accident, if that’s what you want to call it.”

“Are you saying it wasn’t?”

“I’ll get on to that. First I have to tell you what happened after mam was discharged from hospital. To begin with she seemed right as rain. She got through the funeral okay, sorted out dad’s affairs, arranged to take early retirement…she even talked about getting away from it all once the inquest was over and done with. I said to Elaine, don’t you think she’s a bit too cheerful, all things considered? She just said we should be grateful mam’s taken it so well instead of sitting there all miserable and depressed day after day.

“A week or so before Christmas I decided I was definitely going to have this baby. I’m not against abortion on principle, I mean I’m not religious or anything, but I felt what with dad dying, and poor Miss Sutton and Snapper Brookbank as well — God, you used to sit next to him when we were in her class, remember? — it just felt wrong to end what would eventually become another life. You do understand, don’t you?”

I give her arm a gentle squeeze.

“Yeah...yeah, sure...”

“Well, I picked my moment and then I told her. Ruth, she went completely off it. She was horrified I’d even contemplate a termination. I said it was your idea mam, but she wouldn’t have it. She said I must’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick cause she’d never say that, not to anyone. And when I said thanks for all the sleepless nights she looked at me as if I was a stain on the carpet. It’s been downhill ever since. I’m like a stranger to her.”

Trisha rambles on in similar vein for several minutes. She’s come to the point of tears, and although it would be well within the bounds of acceptable behaviour to put my arm around her shoulder or hold her hand I can’t bring myself to initiate that level of intimacy. Pangs of shame and regret slice through me as I realise that I want her to leave. She represents the past, and I must look to the future.

But she isn’t going to let me off the hook that easily.

“The only other person I’ve talked to about this is Paul — Elaine’s husband. He was really fond of dad. They used to do all sorts together — went fishing, played golf, looked after dad’s allotment. Paul didn’t believe the story they printed in the papers. He said there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that dad would’ve gone down to the breakwater by himself on a night like that — unless he’d seen that mam was already there, and he thought she was in trouble.

“So he kept his ear to the ground, and one of the things he heard was that a couple of the teenagers who found dad’s body on the beach sneaked back through the police cordon just before it got dark and saw them zipping two more bodies into black bags. They said one was a woman, half-naked and as bald as a billiard ball. I realise it sounds like they were making it up to get attention, but bald? Who’d expect anyone to believe that?”

I can hardly breathe.

I’m guessing Sorina’s her name. But what the hell is a ‘kuzkardesh gara’?

I don’t know...but it seems to me that what we’ve stumbled on is a kit to turn somebody into one.

“Do you think it was…?”

“Miss Sutton? Yeah, I do. Maybe she had cancer, and the treatment had made all her hair fall out. That might be why she was going to pack in teaching. But we can’t check these girls’ stories because both their families have moved, and nobody knows where. You might also have noticed that the Kirkham, where mam was supposed to have gone for help, has shut down. Apparently the landlord’s been given a pub in Scarborough, a stone’s throw from Peasholm Park. He’ll be raking it in this summer, no doubt. Oh, and the sister in charge of the ward mam was admitted to has disappeared as well. Left her job for no reason at all. It’s like the lot of them have either been silenced or paid off.”

Heart attack, it said in the Herald. But you hear all sorts in this trade. Like Bob’s wasn’t the only body those kids found on Carr House Sands the next day.

It’s all starting to come together.

Helen must have used the equipment in the casket to try and turn herself into a copy of the kuzkardesh gara in the photograph. Perhaps it was the only way she could think of to exorcise the guilt she felt after what had happened to Sarah-Jane Collingwood. But whatever was going through her mind, someone in authority didn’t want her transformation to become public knowledge. Instead they put out the cause of her death as heart failure.

And if the third body belonged to Richard Brookbank…

By slow increments a sequence takes shape in my mind. Helen welcoming Richard with open arms, only to learn that he wasn’t the person she remembered. The two of them on the breakwater, Helen having fled there in blind panic. Bob Hodgson braving the elements in an attempt to persuade them to come back. Carol following him down the steps.

One person survived.

That person now claims to have no memory of those events.

And her own daughter doesn’t recognise her.

Ruth used the transfer device on Carol Hodgson, who then drowned in Richard Brookbank’s body. It’s the only explanation that fits.

But that can’t be the end of the story. Sylvia said that the inquest into Bob’s death was carried by several national newspapers. His widow even agreed to be interviewed by one of them. Is it likely that Ruth would court such publicity, even if she believed that by swapping with Carol her trail had gone cold? She definitely wouldn’t have drawn yet more attention to herself by getting married so soon.

Besides, the woman at Barton & Harris wasn’t her. I’m convinced of it.

So who the hell is she?

I glance down to see that my fingers are resting on the back of Trisha’s hand. I let them stay there; it’s scant comfort, but it’s all I can give her.

Then I remember the message carved on the headstone.

Farewell, my love. You died to save the women of the whole world.

Mademoiselle Malraux knew damn well that Helen didn’t die of a heart attack. But what else does she know? What was she doing on the night when her former lover drowned?

Just as important, where is she now?

I have to give Trisha all sorts of promises and assurances before she’ll go. I intend to keep none of them; if she’s as hell-bent on discovering the truth as Kerrie Latimer, I won’t have a life to call my own.

Which doesn’t stop me continuing to wonder, as I watch her red Mini Minor turn the corner into Gladstone Street, what Ruth wanted from Helen Sutton and why she was so anxious to gain her trust.

Because the answers to those questions are the keys to this whole mystery.

An hour before the evening meal is to be served — it’s Thursday so it must be mince and dumplings — I unlock the door on the first-floor landing marked PRIVATE, enter Norah and Sylvia’s flat and run myself a bath. Lowering my body into the soapy water until it’s at the level of my chin, I stretch my arms along the sides of the tub, lean back and let the trials and tribulations of the last twenty-four hours ooze from the pores of my skin.

Richard something or other, in a car accident.

Go away. You can’t hurt me any more.

My right hand moves to the sparse down at the base of my abdomen. From there it travels unobstructed to the silky smoothness between the tops of my thighs. I don’t know why, but the idea of my feminine curves being sullied by the ugly appendages that used to dangle so awkwardly from my crotch suddenly seems ridiculous.

Something has changed.

I lean back, raise my right knee and let my eyelids droop…

Thunder and lightning. Waves as tall as houses. The screams of terrified children. Tearful couples saying farewell to one another. Grown men fighting over life jackets as the order to abandon ship is relayed across the crackling tannoy. A muscular arm pushing me roughly aside, its owner fully aware of the bulging maternity dress beneath my coat. A priest offering the last rites to those the rafts and dinghies have no room for. The horrific emptiness in the eyes of a young crew member who knows he will shortly die. The frantic struggles of the drowning as they go under for the final time. Adrift...

The water has grown tepid. I sit up, splashing my face in an effort to disperse the remnants of my dream, so reluctant are the sounds and images to disappear.

Jesus, there’s some strange stuff going on in my head. Then again, after everything I’ve heard today that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

I climb from the tub, my hand drawn as if by unseen lines of force to my middle.

You’ve never done this before, have you?

What is it like, knowing you’re carrying within your womb an organism that will one day develop into a completely new member of the human race? How will I ever summon up the courage to find out?

Yet I can’t believe I’ll let the opportunity slip through my fingers…

Just what have you awakened in me, Trisha?

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. However loudly I might rail against the notion, my genetic make-up is geared towards producing offspring. As the adjustment process reaches its conclusion and my mind becomes fully attuned to the body it now inhabits I can expect the urge to propagate my DNA to manifest itself more and more often, and in a variety of ways.

Damn those pesky double helixes.

At least I’m in no great rush. I’ve got years before my biological clock starts ticking down.

And when I consider the psychological obstacles I’ll have to overcome before I can start knitting my first pair of booties I reckon I’ll need them.

I return to my Fortress of Solitude, carrying the driest of the three pairs of jeans I found in the airing cupboard. Kerrie is standing by the door, frowning.

“Oh, there you are,” she says.

“Here I am. I assume everything’s done and dusted?”

She takes me by the elbow.

“Come and talk to me.”

To hear is to obey. Pulling the belt of my dressing gown tightly around me, I follow her down to her room.

“What’s up?” I ask once she’s shut the door behind me.

“After we’d finished at the solicitor’s I showed Carol the notebook.” She lights a cigarette and hands me the packet. “I didn’t tell her where it came from or how I got hold of it. You know what she did? She stared at me as if I’d just pulled out a pornographic magazine. Then she was off, and her daughter with her. Not a word from either of them. They knew what it was. They’d been through that house. So why did they leave the casket there?”

I close my eyes out of sheer vexation. Is this ever going to end?

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I murmur.

“No, I don’t suppose you would. You’re not the one who has to decide what to tell your family tomorrow.”

I ignore the reprimand. I’m not willing to betray Trisha’s confidence just to demonstrate my loyalty to someone I only met the day before yesterday. In any case, regurgitating what she told me would only muddy the waters further.

Kerrie sits on the chair beside the window and looks out at the clouds threatening yet more rain before dusk.

“Three weeks ago I lost my job,” she confesses. “I worked in a record shop in Fareham that closed when the owner sold up. This money couldn’t have come at a better time. But I won’t feel comfortable using it until I know why Helen left it to my dad. I’ve been here for forty-eight hours now, and I feel as if I’m hardly any further forward than when I started.”

“I appreciate that, but I don’t see what else I can do…”

She turns her face from me. I don’t react, other than to pick up my clothes and begin walking towards the door. But before I can get there, she leans over to open the casket.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s not your fault.” She pulls out one of the black dresses and offers it to me. “A parting gift. It’ll be a nice treat for your next boyfriend. You’ll have to dye it, of course.”

I run the material through my fingers. It really does feel gorgeous.

“Dark green?” I suggest.

“With your hair, yes. Wear it with the jacket, obviously. Black shoes. And stockings, not tights. Siobhan — that’s my eldest — has just gone blonde, so I’ll do hers a deep red. Now Cathryn has darker skin, there’s a touch of the Mediterranean in her ancestry, I’m sure…”

She takes Helen Sutton’s notebook from her bag and begins to stow it back beneath the casket’s false bottom. Then her eye is caught by the jar containing the thick white cream.

They said one was a woman, half-naked and as bald as a billiard ball.

“Be careful with that,” I blurt out as she picks it up by the lid.

“Care to tell me why?” she wonders, adopting the quizzical expression I’m beginning to know all too well.

Not again! How can I land myself in so much bother with only one mouth?

“I, uh…I believe it might be a depilatory. Something Trisha said. It’s a long story.”

“That’s okay. We’ve still got a quarter of an hour until dinner.” She unscrews the top and dips her finger in the preparation. “So you think this removes unwanted hair, do you? Let’s see if you’re right.”

Her other hand has untied my dressing gown before I can utter a word in remonstration. The manner in which she puts my supposition to the test, a procedure she insists I reciprocate in full, is an experience I’ll be slow to forget.

But compared to the inquisition I undergo after I reveal the full details of my conversation with Trisha it’s a slice of Battenberg.

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE The sequel to 'The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank' CHAPTER 8 By Touch the Light “I want you to go out and flag down a taxi. Tell the driver to take you to Victoria, but when you get there act all scatterbrained and say you meant Waterloo instead. I’ll–“ “We’re being followed, aren’t we?”

An ear-splitting shriek, closely followed by the sound of breaking glass and a succession of thumps and clangs, all interspersed with cries of pain and language that would have raised eyebrows on a building site, ushers in Friday morning under the most unsolicited of circumstances. I sit bolt upright in bed, suddenly aware of how vulnerable I am as a girl alone in her room. Much as I hate to admit it, Suki Tatsukichi’s self-defence lessons may not have been such a waste of time after all.

I daren’t turn on the light, so I pick up my watch from the bedside table, carry it across to the window and pull back the curtains so I can more easily see the hands.

Ten to four. It’ll be pitch black out there for another hour and a half at least.

Voices drift up from the forecourt, carrying loudly in the cold, still air.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est passé?”

“Bitch shoved me through the fuckin’ window, didn’t she? Bleedin’ lot came down. Lucky it’s not smashed to bits.”

“Merde! Allons, vite!”

They’re going. Thank goodness for that.

I open the chest of drawers, discarding my buttonless pyjama top for the first T-shirt I come to. As I push back my hair I can hear an engine roar into life. I don’t need Jim Rockford standing next to me to know that the car screeching along Marine Parade loud enough to wake three-quarters of County Durham is a Rolls-Royce.

When I reach the second floor, Sylvia is already hammering on the door to room 7 like a slain Viking warrior demanding entry to Valhalla.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” she yells at me. “Go and phone the bobbies!”

Before I can comply Kerrie Latimer answers Sylvia’s summons, tying a blue oriental robe around her midriff. Devoid of make-up and with most of her top teeth missing, she looks her age and more.

“Egerton,” is all she says.

“Excuse me!” cries Sylvia, pushing past her to inspect the damage.

Kerrie beckons me over.

“He took the cathket,” she lisps softly. “But I’d hidden the notebook under my pillow.”

“Good for you,” I whisper back. “But what are we going to tell Sylv? She wants me to call the police.”

“Leave that to me.”

My hand moves to her shoulder.

“Are you sure you’re all right? He didn’t try to–“

“No, nothing like that.” She smiles and ruffles my hair, glancing at the two old ladies who’ve just appeared on the landing in their dressing gowns and curlers. “You’d better go and put the retht of your clotheth on, thweetheart. I think you’re going to have a buthy morning.”

Wearing a chunky white sweater and an old, musty pair of jeans that all but fell to their knees and pleaded for the rough-and-tumble of the washing machine, my messy locks tied back in a loose ponytail, I head down to the foyer for my second big surprise of the day. On the reception counter, propped up against the register, is a plain brown envelope addressed to Mrs N Russell. It contains five brand new twenty-pound notes, as well as a short message in an exquisite hand I assume belongs to Yvette de Monnier.

I apologise profusely for our unconventional departure and trust that this will suffice to cover our respective bills. Please do not attempt to contact us at the addresses we gave as they are fictitious.
Rooms 4 and 5.

I have to stop myself from laughing out loud. Thieves who pay their hotel bills and add a whopping great tip into the bargain? What’s next, talking seagulls? Secret portals to magic kingdoms?

Leaving the envelope for Sylvia to deal with, I go through the dining room to the kitchen and take a torch from the store cupboard at the back. As I shine it on the detritus from Egerton’s defenestration and estimate how long I’ll need to clear it up I’m reminded that my spell as Kerrie’s sidekick is over. Normal service will now be resumed.

Normal?

Well, I can always hope.

It goes without saying that once Kerrie has checked out I’ll have to expunge from my thoughts the issues our investigations raised. I can’t function in a world riddled with deceit and disinformation. If I’m forced to weave myself a cocoon in order to mature into the contented, self-possessed young woman I know I have the capacity to be, then that’s what I’ll do.

You work for us now. You always will.

Just think, there was a time when I actually believed that.

The pungent aroma of petrol assaults my nostrils. I point the torch in the direction it’s strongest; the beam falls upon Kerrie’s Volkswagen Beetle and the large puddle spreading from beneath it. Wires trail like spaghetti from the open bonnet.

Shit.

Now there’ll be merry hell to pay.

I crush a shard of broken glass with the ball of my foot, then tramp back indoors to give her the good news.

Tommy Cockburn could not only tut for his country, he’d be an automatic choice for the squad selected to represent the local cluster of galaxies. Rubbing his chin, he picks at the disembowelled Beetle’s entrails for several minutes before turning to its increasingly impatient owner.

“They knew what they were doin’ all right. Are yer sure it was kids?”

“Got eyes, haven’ I?” snaps Kerrie, her Lancashire accent coming to the fore. “Just tell us, can you fix blessed thing or not?”

Cockburn wrenches his eyes away from her black leather pants and low-cut cream top long enough to indulge in a few moments of humming and hawing. He seems to be nothing if not versatile.

“Bit o’ weldin’ll sort out the tank. Ignition’s the main problem, otherwise it’s not too bad. Should be ready by Monday afternoon. Better say Tuesday to be on the safe side.”

“What good’s that to me? I’m supposed to meet me sisters in London this afternoon.”

“Is there no way you could do it any quicker?” I interject.

“Sorry, lasses. Electrics isn’ summat yer can rush. It’s not like wirin’ a three-point plug.”

“What about hiring us a car?” enquires Kerrie. “Can you organise that before clocks go back again?”

“There’s Neasham’s over at Stranton...”

“I’m givin’ you an hour.”

She opens the front passenger door and unfastens the hinge to the glove compartment. All I can see within is a packet of boiled sweets.

“They’ve taken me bloody insurance documents!” she fumes. “Right, that’s it! Do what you like. I’ve had it up to ‘ere wi’ this place.”

She storms towards the main entrance, bushes withering in her wake. Cockburn turns to me as if I’m the fount of all wisdom.

“Just take it in,” I tell him. “I’ll get you her address and phone number.”

By a quarter to ten I’ve begun to slot back into my routine: changing sheets and pillowcases, cleaning and disinfecting bathrooms, dusting, vacuuming and all the other mindless tasks at which I’ve become so proficient during the last fifteen weeks. I’m in the middle of turning over the mattress on the skeleton’s bed when Kerrie appears at the door.

“Sylvia says there’s a train at eleven o’clock. It connects with the five to twelve from Darlington. We should be in Kings Cross by half-past three.”

I do a double take worthy of James Finlayson.

“We?”

“You’re coming with me, I hope.”

“What?”

“I’ll need someone to back up my story.”

“You want me to go all the way to London with you?”

“Cosham. I’m not involving my sisters in this until I know what’s going on.”

“But I can’t just throw everything down and leave…”

“It’s all right, I’ve cleared it with Norah. I managed to persuade her that the hotel won’t go to rack and ruin if I keep you on for a few more days. I’ll bring you back when I return for the car and the rest of my things.”

I lean the mattress on the headboard, then walk round the end of the bed so I’m close enough to speak to her without the risk of being overheard.

“You said you’d kept the notebook, right?”

“Yes, I want to show it to Cathryn. With her academic background she should be able to shed some light on the cult Helen ran up against.”

“You realise that if Egerton and de Monnier know about it, they’ll have discovered it’s missing by now.”

“I’m not scared of them, sweetheart. Egerton was obviously under instructions not to lay a finger on me. How else could I have fought him away so easily? As for her, if she comes near me again I’ll rip her nipples off.”

I wouldn’t put it past her, either.

Norah having given the matter her seal of approval, I have little choice but to accede to Kerrie’s demands. Shaking my head, I go off in search of Sylvia; I find her in the room Egerton occupied, going through each drawer in turn.

“Have you heard the latest?” I grumble. “Now she wants to cart me off to the other end of the country!”

“You’d better get packing, then. And take something apart from jeans, unless you want that woman’s family to think she’s brought a scarecrow to stop with them. I don’t know, you’ve got a whole wardrobe full of stuff you’ve hardly touched since you started here. Would the world come to an end if you dolled yourself up a bit more often?”

She’s right, of course. Now’s the ideal time to step out in a posh frock and stiletto heels.

Fortunately I can lay my hands on three pairs of clean, dry jeans. But I still need to choose enough other clothes for four different outfits; I’m only taking an overnight bag, so everything will have to be light and easily folded. Shoes, underwear, toiletries…and tampons, I mustn’t forget those. Although my next period isn’t due until Wednesday or Thursday, I’ve learned that where the menstrual cycle is concerned there are no rules set in tablets of stone.

But before I sit at the dressing table to let down my hair and see to my make-up, I lift out the envelope Ruth left for me at Belvedere House and clear a space for it at the bottom of the bag.

Just in case.

Nowhere articulates the gangrenous decay that has reduced Northcroft-on-Heugh from a thriving industrial port to a somnolent backwater with more eloquence than the railway station on Commercial Street, between the town centre and the disused Victoria Dock. Although the impressive nineteenth-century façade remains intact, the forecourt and the wide steps leading up to the main entrance are closed to public access, concealed behind an ugly concrete wall daubed from end to end with meaningless graffiti. The concourse and all but the western end of one platform are at the mercy of the elements following the removal of the great arched canopy, a heartless act of desecration that changed the local skyline for ever; cordoned off by wooden boards, they spend the little time they have left before the return of the demolition crews playing host to every kind of debris it’s possible to imagine. It’s a far cry from the bustling place I remember from my childhood, when people would flock to the buffet for one of Florrie Wilkie’s legendary cooked breakfasts, each mouthful a greasy delight, relax cradling a pint of strong, frothy ale in the adjoining bar, or stock up with crisps, fizzy drinks and puzzle magazines from the kiosk in the booking hall. Today the sole facility available to them comes in the unprepossessing shape of a weather-stained prefabricated hut that acts as a combined ticket office, waiting room and newspaper stall. The only information on display is a badly typed list of departures stapled to the glass partition above the serving hatch. It is not a lengthy document.

Creeping along at a pace a corpulent toddler could outrun, the two-car diesel unit negotiates the dilapidated harbour bridge, labours around the sharp curve that takes the railway onto Northcroft headland and finally shudders to a halt with a screech of brakes and a loud, drawn-out gasp of released exhaust, as though the twenty-four mile run from the main line at Darlington has driven the engine to the utmost limits of its endurance. Having been awake for seven hours, and with a demanding journey ahead of us, it’s a safe bet that Kerrie and I will soon know exactly how it feels.

The dozen or so passengers alighting from the train are raising collars, buttoning overcoats and fastening headsquares against the unseasonably cold breeze coming off the sea. I hoist the strap of my holdall onto my right shoulder, using my other hand to shield my face as the heaving sky jettisons the first drops of squally rain to sting my cheeks and spear my eyes. At least I can look forward to some better weather on the south coast.

I lead the way to the front carriage and what was once the First Class compartment behind the driver’s cab, where the seats are softer and more springy. A young man in army fatigues lifts our luggage onto the rack; Kerrie thanks him, her eyes making it clear that while she appreciates his gallantry, we have things we wish to discuss in private. I settle back, frowning at the circular NO SMOKING sign on the window, and remove the leather jacket I’m wearing over my T-shirt just as the sun peeps out from the angry clouds to highlight the hundreds of freckles covering my arms. A glance at my reflection shows it glinting off the studs I wear at weekends to prevent the holes in my earlobes from closing up — and by doing so confirms that my hair has come off second best to the wind.

“So what’s the order of play, then?” I ask, taking a brush from my bag.

“Well, you’ll be staying with my next-door neighbour Rosie. My two sons are home from university, so it’s either that or the garden shed.”

“You’ve got boys as well? That means you’ve had what, five children?”

“Don’t look at me as though I’m single-handedly responsible for the population explosion,” she grins. “Padraig and Eamonn are twins. They’ll be twenty in October. Sinead and Niamh were born within eleven months of one another, September ’63 and August ’64, so they’re actually in the same year group at school — which can make life interesting, to put it mildly. My eldest, Siobhan, lives with her boyfriend in North End. They had a little boy just before Christmas. His name’s Liam, and I absolutely adore him.”

Only the carriage ceiling prevents my eyebrows from puncturing the tropopause.

“So you’re a…”

“A grandmother, yes. It’s all right, you can say the word in front of me.”

A grandmother.

With pink, blue and green hair cropped short on one side and falling to her shoulder on the other.

And a cleavage that would attract attention on a desert island.

Joe Brown was right. Fings certainly ain’t wot they used to be.

“What’s Rosie like?” I ask, watching the thin-faced, bespectacled guard make his routine inspection in readiness for the return trip.

“A few years older than me. Divorced. A career woman, I think that’s the best way to describe her.”

“And Cathryn?”

“You’ll meet her on Sunday when we go across to the Isle of Wight. Until then I’m saying nothing.”

A buzzer sounds twice; the diesel rumbles away from the platform, and the familiar landmarks I grew up with — St Hild’s, the old pier, the large tidal pond at the back of the harbour known as the Slake — slowly disappear from view.

With them go the last traces of the person I was when I returned here.

Not dead, but held in that transparent yet securely locked container we call the past.

After limping through the flat, monotonous arable land south of Peterborough for nearly half an hour, the InterCity 125 finally begins to pick up speed again. It cruises steadily enough past Huntingdon, St Neots, Sandy and Biggleswade — towns well inside London’s commuter belt, as shown by the dozens of cars parked at each station — but slows to a crawl on the approach to Hitchin. With more than thirty miles still to go, our prospects of arriving in the capital before the weekend rush gets into full swing are fading fast.

“Trust British Rail to mess everything up,” I sigh, laying my copy of Vogue on the table next to the empty paper cups and plastic cartons left over from our improvised lunch. “At this rate it’ll be dark before we get there.”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Kerrie. “I was going to suggest we take our time crossing London. We’ll go for something to eat, recharge our batteries. Better safe than sorry.”

“I thought you weren’t expecting trouble…”

“I’m not. But if anything does happen, I’d rather we were both feeling refreshed.”

Only at this point do I remember that I’m not as clued up regarding the layout of central London as a girl who’s supposed to have spent her teenage years in SE9 ought to be.

“How well d’you know your way around?” I ask.

“Alan and I lived in Pimlico for four years, so you needn’t worry about getting lost.”

That’s me told.

The countryside is gliding by more quickly. Soon we’re passing the junction with the suburban line from Royston, then flashing through the sprawling dormitory towns — Stevenage, Welwyn Garden City, Hatfield, Potters Bar — and finally emerging from the long series of tunnels that bring us into the metropolis itself. For a short time I’m a seven year old boy again, breathless with excitement at the thought of experiencing the sights and sounds of one of the world’s most famous cities. The first Underground sign. The first bright red Routemaster bus. Alexandra Palace. Arsenal’s football ground. Finsbury Park, the last station before Kings Cross. That special moment when people start rising from their seats and reaching for their suitcases…

Maybe I haven’t changed that much after all.

We wait for the carriage to empty before stepping onto the platform, then pause for a few more seconds to allow our ears to adjust to the clamour of man and machine echoing beneath the massive vaulted roof. Kerrie shifts her bag onto her left shoulder so I can slip my arm through hers and thus minimise the chances of us becoming separated when we join the throng milling in front of the ticket barrier. It also prompts me to remember that I’m not down here on holiday.

Escalators. Ticket machines. Buskers. Colour-coded direction signs. Posters advertising books, films, plays and musicals you’d be familiar with if only you lived here. The blast of warm air signalling the arrival of the Underground train. Everywhere you look, that distinctive map.

Ten minutes in London and you’re fully assimilated. You want to stay. You’d move here if you could afford to.

Of course it’s an illusion. Of course there’s loneliness and deprivation. Of course there’s violence and crime.

But it’s not hard to understand why those who already have roots in this city very rarely want to set them down anywhere else.

We take the Piccadilly line, jammed into a carriage populated by mute, unsmiling automatons. The lurching, unsteady motion tempts me to cling all the more tightly to Kerrie’s arm. Instead I relax my grip, aware of the tension hardening the set of her mouth.

At Leicester Square she decides we should make the rest of the journey to Waterloo on foot.

“There’s not much point in catching anything going out of London before seven — unless you don’t mind standing for an hour and twenty minutes. Anyway, I’d like to powder my nose and grab another cup of coffee. If I have to deal with that pair I want to be wide awake.”

The staircase disgorges us into dazzling sunshine and the worst excesses of unrestrained commercialism. Barrow boys hawk key rings, mugs, plates, T-shirts, silly hats and other assorted junk splashed with red, white and blue, or crudely processed prints of Tower Bridge, Beefeaters and the Houses of Parliament. Restaurants whose frontages promise exclusivity but in truth are no more than jumped-up eating houses compete just as avidly for the undiscerning tourist’s wallet. Hoardings pour glamour and glitz down upon a multitude infused with vim and vibrancy. Here you’re encouraged to feel you can remain one step ahead of the rest of the country simply by breathing in.

Kerrie guides me along the polyglot Charing Cross Road to St Martin’s Place, where I’m granted my first glimpse of Trafalgar Square in getting on for two years. But she has no desire to take in the sights, ducking left along a narrow side street and into a cafe with a fancy Italian name and a price list that would render Norah unable to speak for months. Once the young waitress who’s trying a bit too hard to be Audrey Hepburn has brought over our coffee and biscuits, we sit and chat about nothing in particular until my companion’s face unexpectedly turns serious.

“How are you off for cash, sweetheart?” she asks me.

“Okay, I suppose.”

“I want you to go out and flag down a taxi. Tell the driver to take you to Victoria, but when you get there act all scatterbrained and say you meant Waterloo instead. I’ll–“

“We’re being followed, aren’t we?”

“I’m not sure. If we are there’s only one of him, and he can’t be in two places at the same time. I’ll ride round on the Underground for a while, then meet you outside a pub on Waterloo Road called The Hole In The Wall.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Better you don’t know. You’ll be less likely to give yourself away.”

It’s comforting to realise she’s got so much faith in me.

“All right,” I sigh, patting her hand. “The Hole In The Wall it is. But you’re buying the drinks.”

Walking back to St Martin’s Place, I risk a quick look behind me to see if anyone’s behaving suspiciously. The coast seems clear, so I shorten my stride and do my best to stay calm. I may be alone in a strange city, but I’m no teenage ingénue.

He’s waiting at the corner. I search for a shop doorway or an alley I can dash into, but it’s too late. He’s seen me.

And he doesn’t appear very pleased about it.

J G Egerton, dressed in a light brown jacket, an open-necked shirt and jeans, steps forward.

“Trust you to stick your oar in,” he says. “Here, let me carry your bag while we find somewhere we can talk.”

“You must be joking. Now piss off or I’ll scream blue murder.”

“You could do that. But then I wouldn’t be able to tell you what really happened on the breakwater the night Bob Hodgson died — or why Ruth Hansford-Jones had to take your body.”

From Waterloo Bridge I look out across the broad sweep of the Thames as it curves east towards St Paul’s and the City. Behind me stands the opulent finery of the Palace of Westminster.

All that power.

Or so I used to believe…

Egerton is standing beside me, flicking cigarette ash over the parapet. He has said little since he confronted me, whilst I’ve managed to control my eagerness to pummel his ears with the questions I so fervently wish to be answered.

“You’ve adapted well,” he remarks at length. “Better than I would’ve done.”

“Do I get a gold star for that?”

“I’d have thought helping to save the world was its own reward.”

“I think we know how that turned out for Helen Sutton, what her reward was.”

He takes another drag, then lets the butt fall into the restless water.

“Helen was infected with something. A sort of virus that takes over the mind. But you can’t study it under a microscope. If you think of the brain as a computer, this — for want of a better word I’ll call it a disease — is a new program that replaces the original one. Memes, they’re called, self-replicating units of information that jump from person to person. Most of them are pretty harmless, like the current craze for ‘50s fashions. Not the one Helen caught, though.”

“Sounds like pseudo-scientific bullshit to me.”

“Plenty of the world’s leading academics would disagree with you.”

“Get to the point. Who’s Yvette de Monnier? And how did you both find out about Ruth stealing my body?”

“Yvette was once very close to Helen. They were lovers, in fact.”

I turn and stare at him.

“It sounds like you’re talking about Mademoiselle Malraux…”

“Yes, Solange Malraux was the name she went by when she was living in Northcroft.”

“But Yvette doesn’t look anything like–“

“Appearances can be deceptive. You of all people should know that.”

I feel my mouth open and close. My eyes are as wide as those of a city child watching a new-born foal struggle to its feet.

Yvette de Monnier and Mademoiselle Malraux are one and the same. And the only way she could have disguised herself so effectively was if she’d used the transfer device.

Somehow I absorb this latest revelation without crumpling in a heap.

“So go on then,” I grunt. “Who is she?”

“Yvette is, or should I say was, a government agent, one of the very few with a sufficiently high clearance to gain entry to the facility where the mind transfer technology was being developed. She thought — and here I have to confess that I’m a bit out of my depth — that it could be used to cure Helen’s condition. There was one problem: Yvette knew that Helen would flatly refuse to speak to her if she was wearing her original body. Her solution was to pose as one of Helen’s former pupils, and it just so happened that Ruth Pattison had the qualifications necessary for her to be recruited onto the team.”

And there we have it.

The one piece of the puzzle that’s eluded me.

“But it didn’t work, did it?” I scoff. “She swapped with Ruth and found that Helen still wouldn’t listen to her. Richard Brookbank, on the other hand…”

“That’s about the size of it.”

I light up, pouring all my concentration into keeping my hands steady.

“What happened to Ruth?”

“She was taken in by the MoD. What they did with her I dread to think.”

The cigarette falls to the pavement. I close my eyes, fighting to hold back the wetness that threatens to pour down my cheeks.

It’s one surprise too many. I’ve dealt with an array of disagreeable emotions since I became female, but guilt hasn’t been amongst them.

You don’t sound very Japanese.

You don’t sound very male.

Suki Tatsukichi.

Who I briefly mistook for Mademoiselle Malraux.

No wonder she was so abrupt with me. Fifteen years of her life — the best years — gone in a few moments.

And to spend weeks with a living reminder of everything she’d lost…

What can possibly excuse such a crime, Yvette? How do you sleep?

“And it all went hopelessly tits up,” I sniff. “Three people died that night. You ought to be in jail for manslaughter, not cavorting around in a fucking Rolls-Royce.”

“I had nothing to do with the incident. Yvette only hired me a month ago.”

“Rubbish. You’ve been working for her in the full knowledge that she caused those deaths. That makes you an accessory after the fact.”

He takes another cigarette from the silver case in his left pocket.

“’Death by misadventure’. That was the verdict the coroner gave at the end of Bob Hodgson’s inquest, and it was the right one. Helen ran down to the breakwater to escape from Yvette. Carol Hodgson saw what she thought was a murder in progress and tried to save her friend. Bob went after his wife, as you’d expect him to. There was a scuffle. Yvette managed to exchange bodies with Carol before the wave hit. They would both have drowned if she hadn’t. Later, in hospital, she swapped with one of the nursing staff. That’s the body she currently inhabits.”

Oh, and the sister in charge of the ward mam was admitted to has disappeared as well. Left her job for no reason at all.

“The sweetener being the quarter of a million Carol was due to inherit from Helen’s will, I suppose. But tell me this: where does Kerrie Latimer’s father fit in?”

“That’s one of the things we’ve been trying to find out.”

“And the casket?”

“We don’t want her to have it. That goes for the photographs as well. You might consider getting them back for us.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yvette would like you on her side.”

“After what she did to me? All those swaps must have unhinged her.”

“Think about it. What are you going to do once Kerrie decides she doesn’t need you to hold her hand any more? Spend your time slaving away in the Gladstone while you wait for the government to phone you up? They’ve left you to vegetate in that dump. And don’t kid on that you’re happy there, because you’re not.”

“Better than teaming up with a renegade. Sooner or later she’ll make a mistake, then you’ll both be behind bars.”

“Don’t underestimate her. She has friends in the highest of high places.”

“I’m sure she has. I bet she’s in Buck House sipping Darjeeling with Liz and Phil as we speak.”

I start to walk away, but Egerton grasps my wrist.

“The casket was sent to Helen as a trigger,” he says in a low voice. “It was an instruction to turn herself into a kuzkardesh gara and begin spreading the infection around. If Yvette hadn’t intervened when she did–“

Unbidden, an image of New Stranton shopping precinct crystallises in my mind. The women are all cloaked and hooded; the men gaze at them with hollow, unfocused expressions.

“Who are those women?” I demand to know. “Where are they from? What do they want?”

Egerton slowly relaxes his grip.

“The name translates literally as ‘black sister’. But that doesn’t do the bond between them justice at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Their minds are all programmed to work in exactly the same way. A single appearance, a single set of opinions, a single purpose. They’re a totalitarian regime, a religious cult and a zombie plague all rolled into one.”

“But that’s ridiculous.”

“And swapping bodies isn’t? Look, I’ll be blunt with you. If this menace gains control then that’s it. Full stop. Period. Punkt. Bye-bye progress, bye-bye creativity, bye-bye all the things that make us human. For ever.”

He sounds sincere enough, but I no longer care. I have a duty, both to myself and Suki Tatsukichi, to become the woman Ruth Hansford-Jones should have been.

Nothing can stand in the way of that.

I pick up my bag and hoist the strap onto my shoulder. Egerton begins to speak; I shake my head, making it clear that the conversation is at an end.

But as I adjust my pace to that of the commuters crossing the bridge, one sentence in particular keeps coming back to me.

Memes, they’re called, self- replicating units of information that jump from person to person.

As benign as a top ten record, as murderous as National Socialism — or as insidious as an idea planted by a small group of heretic Muslim women, one that can suddenly awaken after nearly fifteen years of slumber.

Adieu, mon amour. Tu es mort pour sauver les femmes du monde entier.

Is that what Yvette de Monnier believes? Does she really think that women the world over are susceptible to this threat?

Maybe she has good reason to.

…then Helen said summat to ‘er, must’ve been in French ‘cause I never understood a word of it, and yer know what, the frog went down like a sack o’ taties.

You were out there with Helen and the others, weren’t you, Yvette? You were infected with the rest of them. And when you and your lover split up, she said something that triggered the virus laying dormant in your mind.

You became a kuzkardesh gara, a black sister. The woman calling herself Suki Tatsukichi has the scars to prove it.

So how did you escape from this cult? Who deprogrammed you? And why aren’t you working with the MoD to develop this cure you claim to have found?

I’ve never told Peter, but some of the words…well, they spoke to me. I wanted to go out and repeat them to every woman I saw. I still do. And it’s not just me, either.

Because I’ve a feeling we might need it.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES The sequel to 'Death By Misadventure' CHAPTER 1 By Touch the Light I dole out snippets of my invented past, each sounding less fraudulent than the one before. If you tell a lie often enough...

The clink of cutlery and the rhythmic staccato of ‘Cool For Cats’ drift up from the kitchen, rousing me from a long, satisfying sleep. In Rosie Cooper’s 1930s three-bedroom semi-detached house on the side of Portsdown Hill the day is up and running.

I push myself to a sitting position, rake back my fringe and watch my tits barge free from my pyjama top in their usual indecorous fashion. I put it on back-to-front before I pad along the landing to the bathroom; I was too tired last night to notice what kind of impression I made on my host, but I don’t think it’ll be improved if she walks upstairs and sees my bare breasts bouncing around simply because I’m too lazy to sew a couple of buttons back on.

After I’ve relieved myself, showered, brushed my teeth and combed my tangled locks into some sort of order I pick out clean underwear from my holdall and proceed to the dressing table for my daily quota of powder and paint. I’m careful not to overdo things — just some foundation, eyeliner and pale pink lipstick to prove I’ve made an effort. Then I pull on my jeans and a plain white T-shirt, slip into my ankle boots, stuff my cigarettes and matches inside my shoulder bag and treat myself to a fairly critical appraisal in the mirror.

Not bad, babe — but you might want to think about doing something with that hair now that the warmer weather’s on its way.

Rosie is grilling slices of streaky bacon and beating eggs when I walk in on her. She’s a slim, good-looking woman in her middle forties, wearing a white short-sleeved cardigan over a pink gingham dress. Her dark hair is flecked with blonde highlights, parted on the left and cropped neatly above her ears, the kind of style you’d expect the assistant manager of a temping agency to have adopted. She greets me with a warm if practised smile.

“No need to ask if you had a good night’s rest,” she says, her voice enriched by a distinct south Hampshire burr. “I hope you’re not one of these people who doesn’t eat breakfast. My mother always says, and I agree with her, that if you take care of the inner girl first thing in the morning she’ll look after the outer girl for the rest of the day. She’s what in times gone by would have been called a ‘wise woman’. We don’t respect the older generation enough in my opinion. They have so much to teach us. But you’re too young to know what I’m talking about. So, there’s fruit juice over on the table. Help yourself to cereal and coffee. Kerrie should be joining us in a few minutes. She usually pops in on Saturdays around half-past nine, a quarter to ten-ish.”

I’d have been happy with ‘good morning’. It would’ve done.

“I’m just going outside for a smoke,” I tell her, trying hard not to lick my lips at the delectable smells coming from the cooker.

“Well, you know my thoughts on that, dear.”

After the lecture I received when I asked if there was an ashtray in my room? I think I do.

I open the back door and find myself on a tidy but underused patio. The lawn and its borders, sloping steeply upwards to end in front of a low wooden fence beyond which stretch the wide chalky acres of the hill, are similarly bereft of imagination. It’s a divorcee’s garden, well kept yet pining for the loving touch of the man who abandoned it.

A few slabs of crazy paving take me through to number 113. The houses in this part of Woodford Road are all built with their main doors at the side; they give onto stairwells that separate the living rooms from kitchens large enough to double as dining areas. Rosie’s red Ford Escort is perched rather precariously at the top of her portion of the shared drive; beside it sits the white van belonging to Kerrie’s boyfriend.

I stroll round to the back, where she’s putting washing out to dry — this having taken precedence over her need to dress in anything more becoming than a robe and a pair of fluffy slippers.

“You’re up early,” she remarks, her mouth pinched and drawn without her top teeth, the creases around it made more prominent by the strong sunshine.

“Rosie’s making breakfast. I thought I’d have a fag first. Want one?”

“Light it for me, would you thweetheart?” she says, placing two pegs between her lips.

“How are you feeling after yesterday’s exertions?” I ask once I’ve passed her the cigarette.

“A lot better for waking up with a gorgeouth man bethide me. Don’t you mith that?”

“Now and again,” I murmur, pushing away the picture it’s created of the couple making love. In fact I quite like the guy; in the hour and a half between him picking us up from the railway station and me being billeted on Rosie I found David Compton to be amiable, courteous and understanding as well as a knowledgeable, erudite communicator. Anyone less representative of your average self-employed painter and decorator would be hard to imagine.

“Jutht now and again?”

I look back down the hill towards Farlington marshes, which merge seamlessly into the brackish Langstone Harbour. To the west, a line of trees marks the shore of Hayling Island; in the other direction, five or six miles distant, the centre of Portsmouth is a hazy blur.

“It’s lovely here…”

“Thorry. Thore point, I know.”

I turn and force myself to smile.

“Don’t apologise. It’s just that I had to talk to Rosie about him last night. She kept me up till nearly midnight.”

“Ooh, you poor thing!”

She drapes an arm around my shoulder and escorts me into her kitchen. Dave is at the table in his work overalls, sipping coffee and reading the Guardian. He’s several years younger than Kerrie, and has both the appearance and attitude of someone who hasn’t quite given up on the hippy movement.

“Hello Ruth,” he says brightly, warmth pouring from his soft brown eyes.

“Hello there,” I reply with due diffidence.

I may have a libido that shows as much sign of life as a plague pit, but even to me it’s obvious what Kerrie sees in him. When I ignore the somewhat inconvenient fact that he’s a bloke with a dick and a pair of hairy bollocks, I have to admit I’m looking at a pretty exquisite specimen. It takes a concerted effort not to stare too admiringly at that broad, muscular chest, those powerful shoulders, that strong chin with its Kirk Douglas dimple, that silky torrent of dark brown hair…

After two or three minutes of inconsequential chit-chat he gets up to leave. Kerrie sees him to the door, sending him on his way with a clinch that would have animated a mummified Pharaoh. I can’t put my hand on my heart and say I’m not the tiniest bit curious as to what it would feel like to be in her place.

When she returns it’s to lead me straight back to her neighbour’s. Over breakfast the conversation bends towards Rosie’s daughter Nina, whose eldest child’s behaviour is causing his teachers some concern.

“I warned her about spoiling him,” she complains. “Didn’t I warn her, Kay?”

“You did, Ro,” agrees Kerrie as she spoons mushy cereal and warm milk into her mouth.

“I mean he’s come to that age, hasn’t he? She has to make rules and set boundaries, as you and I did for our own children. I’ve told her this till I’m blue in the face. And now she accuses me of interfering. I said I’m only passing on the benefit of my experience. But will she listen?”

“They won’t. Siobhan’th the thame.”

“You understand, of course you do. You’re a grandmother yourself.”

Kerrie nods sagely as she sets aside her bowl. She licks her gum clean, then gets to grips with a plate of scrambled egg while she outlines her plans for the next few days: in addition to tomorrow’s visit to the Isle of Wight, where Cathryn lives with her invalid mother, they include the rearranged meeting with her sisters in Reading before she makes the journey north to collect her car. Rosie’s attitude to the ‘vandalism’ visited on the Beetle outside the Gladstone is as inflexible as it was last night.

“Flogging’s too good for them, that’s what I say. Maggie’ll sort it out, she’s exactly the kind of strong personality this country’s been looking for. I hope you intend to charge the hotel, after all it happened on their property so they’re liable for any damage. I’ll check with Gerald when I see him this evening, but I’m sure I’m right. No reflection on you, dear,” she adds, patting my hand.

“Who’s Gerald?” I whisper to Kerrie when Rosie gets up to make a start on the dishes.

“I’ll tell you later,” she replies with a conspiratorial grin.

The Latimer household has come to life by the time we break free from Rosie’s clutches. Kerrie’s twin sons are in the living room watching Saturday morning television; she introduces me to them — they were out with friends when Dave brought us back last night — and leaves us to get acquainted while she ousts her daughters from the bathroom. Padraig, who has slightly darker hair and is plainly the more loquacious of the pair, explains that they’re both in their first year studying Mechanical Engineering at UMIST. Neither he nor his brother seem particularly upset that their mother has arrived home with a busty redhead in tow, which makes it a matter of some urgency to douse their enthusiasm by explaining that I’m married, and down here to explore the possibility of a reconciliation with my estranged husband — a story Kerrie and I hammered out for their benefit during the tedious couple of hours we spent on the slow train from Waterloo.

The girls know this already, and waste little time in coaxing me away from their half-brothers so they can resume the previous evening’s interrogation. Niamh, at fourteen the younger by just under a year, is blessed with pixie charm and a glossy cascade of copper-coloured hair she continually sweeps back from her face. Sinead is thoughtful and a little more reserved, her flawless heart-shaped features all but hidden by thick strawberry blonde tendrils. The questions rain down on me: did I watch Grease, is that Charley I’m wearing, do I prefer disco, rockabilly or powerpop, will I go glam this summer? (To which the answers are no, yes, none of them and possibly.)

Just before half-past ten Rosie sweeps into the room.

“You’re wanted upstairs,” she informs me, rolling her eyes at the stereophonic groan the summons elicits. “Right, you two. You’ve got ten minutes, then I’m off. With or without you. So unless you fancy catching the bus all the way into Pompey I’d suggest you get a move on.”

I follow Sinead and Niamh as far as the landing, where I’m pointed towards Kerrie’s bedroom. The door is ajar; I knock and wait to be invited inside.

She’s at the dressing table, naked apart from her bra, panties and tights. I take the chair she indicates, crossing one thigh over the other as I watch her fish her denture from the tumbler where it spent the night. She shakes off the excess water, uses a spatula to smear adhesive across the back of the plate and slides it into her mouth, making a few final adjustments with her fingers and tongue.

“Mmm...well, that’sh about ash comfy as it’s ever going to be,” she says. “Now I’m used to wearing false teeth I should really get round to having the rest of them whipped out. Both my sisters lost theirs before they were forty, and they say it hasn’t affected their sex lives one little bit. Then again, being all gummy when you’re making love certainly has its selling points.”

It’s a second or two before I figure out what she means. Then I feel my jaws fall open.

“You don’t...”

“You must’ve led a very sheltered life if that shocks you, sweetheart.” She walks over to the wardrobe and picks out a pale green short-sleeved top and a full-length wrap-around patterned skirt. “A bit suburban housewifey, but it’s only to get the groceries in.”

“You were going to tell me about Gerald,” I remind her.

“Oh yes! He’s Rosie’s ex-husband. They still see each other, although it’s me he’s interested in, not her. I think she knows that, she just won’t admit it to herself.”

“What’s he like?”

“Just what you might expect from a former army officer. Well groomed, articulate, respectful of tradition, morally upright. Distinguished rather than what you’d normally consider handsome. He runs a picture-framing business in Hamble. Built it up from practically nothing.”

How did I guess that he would sound just like Richard’s stepdad? Perhaps you aren’t born with that name, you have to earn it by proving yourself to be a proper stick-in-the-mud.

“He’s aware that you’re spoken for?”

She combs out her rainbow hair and steps into a pair of slip-on shoes.

“David’s thirty-one. I shall be thirty-nine before the end of the year. He won’t be with me for ever. That’s Gerry’s way of thinking.”

“What’s yours?”

“For all that he represents everything I’ve always hated, Gerald Cooper is one of the kindest, most dependable men you could meet. Rosie was the one who strayed, not him. That’s something a woman my age has to bear in mind.” She returns to the mirror and dabs at one of the embryonic wrinkles above her upper lip. “Takes longer every day, keeping the ravages of time at arm’s length. Don’t laugh, sweetheart. You’ve got all this to come.”

I glance at the bag resting on the edge of her bed, wondering if Helen Sutton’s notebook is still inside or it’s been locked away somewhere. I decide not to bring the subject up; my encounter with Egerton has given me enough to worry about.

That goes for the photographs as well. You might consider getting them back for us.

And put on the line all the trust Kerrie has shown in me?

No thanks.

But that isn’t what keeps circling the fringes of my consciousness like a ravenous vulture.

“Come on, shake a leg!” Kerrie is saying to me from the doorway. “I’m having Siobhan and Terry over for tea, and until we’ve been shopping all I can offer them is a choice between crispy pancakes and fish fingers.”

She was taken in by the MoD. What they did with her I dread to think.

What of the woman whose body Yvette de Monnier appropriated before she stole mine? Did there come a time when she resigned herself to the loss of her youth, much as I accepted becoming female? Or does she continue to hope that the technology the MoD must still be working on may yet present her with the opportunity to snatch back the years de Monnier took from her?

That against all the odds she might one day resume her life as Ruth Hansford-Jones?

Yvette would like you on her side.

Sorry darling, I’m not in the mood to nail my colours to anyone’s mast but my own.

That doesn’t mean I won’t have a change of heart.

Because I’m not swapping bodies again. She can wait till kingdom come.

*

Dave Compton sits up in his chair, a forkful of chicken curry paused in front of his mouth. He sends an expression of friendly dismay at the sandy-haired young man on the other side of the table.

“Is that what you really think?” he laughs. “Funny, I didn’t have you down as a Tory.”

“I’m not. At least I wasn’t.” Terry Haynes leans back in his chair and pats his stomach. Siobhan’s boyfriend is a beefy figure with a build that suggests he knows his way around a rugby pitch and is equally familiar with the layout of the clubhouse bar. “But you’ve got to agree, Labour isn’t working.”

“Yeah, we’ve all seen the posters,” Eamonn chips in.

“That queue of unemployed stretching from London to Inverness,” grunts Padraig. “If you got them to bunch up a bit it’d probably only reach Berwick.”

“Only?” cries Terry, prompting a loud “sssh!” from Siobhan as she tries to rock her little boy to sleep.

“Where’s Berwick?” Niamh hisses at me.

“Somewhere in Scotland,” answers Sinead.

“It’s on the border, but it’s actually in England,” I correct her.

“That’s the trouble with propaganda,” Padraig continues. “It sounds bad, but you’re given nothing to compare it with. What about the line of people in employment? On the same scale it’d go three-quarters of the way round the globe.”

“Did you sit and work that out?” asks Dave.

“No, it was a mate of ours up in Manchester,” says Eamonn.

“Bob Nobbs,” nods his brother.

Sinead and Niamh start giggling, and I can’t help joining in.

“Is that his real name?” wonders Kerrie, nibbling at a spicy pastry I’ve learned is called a samosa.

“No, it’s Brian. He never goes to the pub, so everyone calls him Boring Old Brian. The initials B, O, B spell–“

“I get it, sweetheart.”

Kerrie takes Liam from Siobhan, who’s a walking contradiction of spiky peroxide blonde hair, Monroe lips, grungy leather jacket and virgin white frock. Every inch her mother’s daughter, in other words.

“That’s right, my darling,” she whispers into his ear. “You stay with grandma while mummy goes for a cigarette.”

“I thought you’d given up?” says Kerrie.

“She did,” sighs Terry. “Then we had my mum and dad over for a few days.”

“Enough said,” grins Dave.

The meal comes to an end with Kerrie announcing that the boys are in charge of the washing up. There isn’t a murmur of dissent. We girls retire to the front room with the baby, and if I can’t bring myself to bill and coo over him like the others, the smile that brightens my face when it’s my turn to hold him and he grabs at my boob is entirely unrehearsed.

Strangely, my recently awakened maternal instincts go straight back to sleep when Siobhan begins changing her son’s nappy.

After a quarter of an hour or so, Kerrie embarks on an inspection of the kitchen. As satisfied as it’s possible for a woman to be when other people have been working in her domain, she ushers me outside for a smoke.

“It’s all a bit different from yesterday,” she remarks as we light up.

“You can say that again,” I concur, brushing a particularly obstinate flake of pastry from the front of my jeans. “I don’t know if I’m all that keen on being chased around London by thieves.”

I make no further reference to the circumstances that brought me here. There’ll be plenty of time for that when we meet Kerrie’s friend tomorrow. Until then I’m happy to wallow in cosy domesticity.

“David and I will be going out for a drink later on. Just as far as the Sundial — the pub I pointed out when we were at the shops, remember? It’s nice in there, and they have live music most Saturdays. Eamonn and Padraig are heading down at about eight. They say you’re more than welcome to join them.”

“Sinead and Niamh have plans as well, am I right? It’s okay, message received and understood.”

“You can’t blame me for wanting to spend some time alone with him.”

“God no!” I laugh. “You fell on your feet with that one! He’s just the sort of guy I’d…”

I’d what exactly?

It’s all very well to admire a man’s physique or daydream about sliding my fingers across his firm, taut skin, but there’s a person inside — and that person will want to paw me, breathe erotic suggestions into my ear and climb all over me whenever the mood takes him. Although I might come to enjoy such attention, the suitor I can imagine wining and dining me, sending me chocolates and flowers, saying I look nice in my new dress, whirling me around the dance floor, or even pulling me down on top of him, unzipping and unhooking me before I know what’s going on, is a generic figure with no more personality than a mannequin in a shop window. Give him a face or a voice, and even if he’s as attractive as Dave Compton the fantasy evaporates at once.

“So there’s life after Tim?” smiles Kerrie, nudging me in the side.

“There will be. I’ll have to meet him first. But let’s not talk about my non-existent love life. Come on, tell me: how did you two get together?”

“Through Rosie. Indirectly, anyway. When Gerry moved out she decided to have the house re-decorated from top to bottom. Well, as you know we’re in and out of one another’s kitchens all the time...”

“Hmm...then he was the hunky workman and you were the sexy neighbour who popped in to offer him a mug of tea? And maybe more besides?”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” she protests. “What d’you take me for? It was coffee.”

She goes on to tell me that the relationship only really got going in the run-up to Christmas, when Dave’s landlady decided to sell the house he’d been renting from her to a property company rather than fork out the  £1300 it would have taken to pay for the repairs a local government inspector had instructed her to carry out. Although the new owners were obliged by law to find him temporary accommodation, when Kerrie saw the conditions her new boyfriend would have to put up with she immediately invited him to move in with her.

“It won’t last for ever, I know that,” she admits. “He dotes on my children nearly as much as I do, but one day he’ll want his own. And I’m not the woman to give him them.”

I have the best part of an hour before I need to get ready, so I pass it in front of the television exchanging frivolous observations on a variety of topics with whoever happens to be in the room. The utter mundanity of the occasion helps me sink all the more deeply into my new persona. I dole out snippets of my invented past, each sounding less fraudulent than the one before.

If you tell a lie often enough...

But sometimes the truth can be an encumbrance.

What good has it done me to learn what really happened that night in Northcroft? How can it possibly have an impact on my future? What do I have to gain by listening to any more talk of conspiracies and cover-ups? Wouldn’t it be better to make myself believe — really believe — that the authorities acted properly, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional?

The coroner’s verdict at the inquest into Bob Hodgson’s death was indeed the correct one. Helen Sutton died of natural causes. Richard Brookbank was killed in a car accident. Bob’s was the only body washed up on Carr House Sands.

And Ruth Hansford-Jones has no interest whatsoever in any of those events.

That’s the way it has to be.

That’s the way it is.

*

Closing the bedroom door behind me, I proceed to the dressing table to remove my make-up and review a surprisingly enjoyable end to an extremely relaxing day.

To most people, the three hours I spent in the Sundial with Padraig, Eamonn and their friends — Kerrie and Dave didn’t show up until half-past ten — would have seemed wholly unremarkable. To me, experiencing a night out from a female point of view for the first time since Christmas, every moment was heavy with significance.

It went all the more smoothly for me being aware of the ground rules as taught to me by this body’s former owner. I didn’t drink alcohol for the first three rounds, and limited my intake to two halves of lager and lime after that. I was careful not to say too much, and took great pains to avoid being seen paying undue attention to any one member of the group. When one of the girls — I think her name was Lorraine — whispered to me that she was off to visit the Ladies, I recognised it as an invitation to join her, one it would have been impolite to ignore. And I sized up the competition as if I really did see them as rivals.

The overtly sexual looks I drew from a large proportion of the male customers proved harder to deal with. I had to remind myself that when I’m in full make-up I attract stares, and lots of them. The tousled gingery blonde hair, the prominence of my bust, the swimmer’s shoulders, the way I fill out my jeans, none of those features will ever belong to a wallflower. The trick, of course, is to cultivate an air of feigned indifference. You’re telling these men that their interest in you has been noted, but that’s all.

The evening also provided ample confirmation — in truth, little was needed — that any attraction I once felt for the female form has disappeared. Whatever the future holds for me, it is not a romantic relationship with another woman. The idea of moving between Olivia Newton John’s outspread thighs is as unappealing as the thought of John Travolta thrusting away between mine. In fact if I was forced to choose one or the other I’d open my legs for John every time. Less work for me, and he’d be the one paying for the champagne.

I use a swab to clean my skin, making sure I rub it into all the little folds and indentations around my eyes and mouth. Although Sylvia has assured me I’ve the type of skin that won’t age prematurely, I’d rather instil my routine with good practice now than have to take it up when the first intimations of mortality appear in the looking glass.

I’m reaching back to unhook my bra when I hear a rustling noise outside. I turn off the light, then kneel on the bed to peer through the curtains. The room is at the rear of the house, giving me a clear view of Rosie’s garden once my vision has adjusted to the darkness.

There’s a shadow on Kerrie’s side of the fence, not far from the shed at the top of her lawn.

And that’s a torch!

Egerton.

He must have obtained Kerrie’s address from the hotel register.

But I thought he wanted me to do his dirty work for him? And shouldn’t he have more sense than to go creeping around in people’s gardens less than an hour after the pubs have shut?

I can’t disturb Rosie. She’d insist on being told everything. As for Kerrie, the way she was all over her boyfriend after two or three rum and Cokes I’d be astonished if she isn’t being humped within an inch of her life at this very moment.

I retrieve my T-shirt and jeans from my holdall and pull them on. Shoes in hand, I steal downstairs. I remember that the back door key is in the kitchen, on a ring suspended from a hook between the fridge and the washing machine. It’s stiff, but it turns in the lock with a barely audible click.

Now for the hard part.

I sit on the step to slide my feet into my shoes. Lifting myself up, I inch my way along the crazy paving towards Kerrie’s patio and crane my neck to see around the end of the fence. The prowler is now inside the shed, shining his torch every which way as he conducts his illicit search.

I make a dash for the corner to the right of the door, pressing my back against the wall as if I’m playing some nocturnal game of hide-and-seek. Very slowly, I slither around to a position where I can look through the grimy, cobweb-covered window.

The beam illuminates Helen Sutton’s notebook, which is open at the photograph of the mosque. A hand turns the page, and I can hear a muffled snigger as the portrait of a bizarrely transformed Sarah-Jane Collingwood is revealed.

To my amazement, the intruder doesn’t stuff the notebook into his jacket but places it behind the paint pot on the shelf where Kerrie had evidently concealed it.

And that’s not the only thing lifting my hand to my mouth before I dart back into the shadows.

Locking the door after him, Dave Compton switches off his torch and marches purposefully across the grass to the house.

Now what am I supposed to make of that?

More to the point, what can I do about it?

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES The sequel to 'Death By Misadventure' CHAPTER 2 By Touch the Light The tall, strongly-built young man standing next to the capstan has already smiled in response to Niamh’s precocious body language. “Not my type,” I maintain, but before I can embellish this statement I realise that I know who he is...

If I don’t do this now I never will.

It means I’m…

The dream dissolves, and with it the translation I was so close to making. My fingers push back my fringe, and I gaze at the familiar patterns of freckles covering my plump, bare arms with a mixture of vexation and relief.

Okde.

It means…

No, it’s gone.

But who was the wicked witch of the waterfront?

It was just a dream, babe. You’ve been letting your imagination run away with you, that’s all.

The clothes strewn on the carpet suggest why. I climb out of bed and put them back in my holdall, trying my hardest to think about how I should dress for the trip to the Isle of Wight rather than what Dave Compton was doing in the shed last night.

Hair up or down?

He wasn’t the least bit surprised by those photographs.

Will it be warm enough to go sleeveless?

And I know for a fact that Kerrie hasn’t said anything to him about the casket.

The light green jumper or the cream blouse?

So why was he sneaking out of the house at such a late hour?

It’s no good. Since neither of the compartments into which my mind has divided itself seem capable of solving the problems they’ve been set, I decide to mothball them until I’ve had my first cigarette of the day.

I trot down to Rosie’s garden in just a T-shirt and my pyjama bottoms, my bare feet making imprints in the dew-soaked lawn as I walk to and fro. The sun is out, and the early blossoms in the neighbouring properties help it to paint a springlike gloss over the quiet suburban scene. How pleasant it would be to live here, to bathe in the feelings of security and belonging that come from settling in a peaceful little spot like this!

I know I’ll never get a place of my own as long as I’m stuck at the Gladstone. Although I have more than enough put by for a deposit, I’d need a permanent job with a regular salary to qualify for a mortgage.

Unless I shack up with someone who already meets those needs — in which case it might mean sharing more than the repayments.

A hand touches my shoulder, making me jump.

“Sorry about that,” says Padraig.

“I should bloody well think so,” I pout. “You gave me the fright of my life.”

“Yeah, I’m uh…you wouldn’t happen to have a cig going spare, would you?”

“Only brought this one down. But you can finish it off if you like.”

“Thanks, you’re a treasure.”

I take one more drag, then pass him what’s left of the Marlboro. He ducks beneath the branches of Rosie’s apple tree and sits on the stile cut into the middle of her fence, his furtive glances reminding me of the times I would light up behind Neptune’s statue in a futile effort to prevent my mother from finding out that I smoked.

But that was a different person altogether. He wouldn’t have responded to Padraig’s grin by smiling back and walking over to stand right next to him.

“Coming with us today?” I ask as he stubs the cigarette out on the wooden rail and flings it behind him into the field.

“Hadn’t planned to.”

“Not really your scene, eh?”

He laughs and shakes his head.

“Cathryn’s — what’s the best way of putting it? — she isn’t that easy to get on with.”

“Oh…?”

“How much has mum told you about her?”

“Hardly anything. But the girls gave me a sort of potted biography. Have you read any of her books?”

“God, you mean that stuff she churns out as Katie Chang? I’ve waded through a couple of them. Lots of steamy lesbian sex scenes — if you’re into that sort of thing…”

“Which of course you’re not,” I chuckle.

He holds his hands up.

“Guilty as charged! But it did make me wonder about her.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into that — if you’ll pardon the pun. I don’t know too many crime writers who fantasise about poisoning their rivals or committing the perfect bank robbery.”

“Fair point. But seriously, don’t get into an argument with her about politics or religion or anything at all controversial. She likes to play around with people, twist their words. Sometimes she has me feeling like I’m walking on eggshells.”

I put on an exaggerated frown.

“One of those, eh? Well, thanks for the warning.”

“No problem. Actually, uh…I was thinking that if you, uh…if you wanted to give it a miss as well we could jump on the train and have a ride along to Brighton. Only takes about an hour.”

So that’s your game, is it? Paint an unflattering picture of Cathryn, then offer up a much more appealing alternative? Very clever.

“Just the two of us?”

“Sure, why not?”

To my surprise I’m tempted. I need to spend a lot more time with the opposite sex if I’m to learn how to manipulate them and ensure that if and when I enter a relationship with a man it’s conducted on my terms and according to my wishes. What better way to begin than on the arm of someone who’s lively, outgoing, intelligent and who knows he has to be on his very best behaviour or he’ll have his mother to contend with?

But this isn’t the time to embark on a dummy run for when I choose my first boyfriend.

“Sorry love, I’ve a feeling it won’t go down too well if I repay Kerrie’s hospitality by going gallivanting off with her son.”

He looks crestfallen, but not for long.

“Yeah, I don’t suppose it will. She’s in a rotten enough mood as it is.”

“Is she? Why’s that?”

“Dave says he’s got to go to work and Sinead’s arranged to meet her mates. Can’t say I blame either of them, to be honest.”

“How rotten is ‘rotten’?”

“Pretty rotten.”

A door flies open, the handle banging loudly against the wall. I turn to see Dave Compton, clad in a pair of stained white overalls, climb inside his van. The engine growls into action, slicing through the torpid Sunday morning air.

Kerrie emerges from the house. Hands on hips, she watches the vehicle roll down the drive and swing right into Woodford Road. Even from this distance I can tell how angry she is.

It looks like today’s voyage might not be such plain sailing after all.

At the corner of Queen Street and The Hard, the weather is warm and sunny. Otherwise, everything is more or less exactly as I left it five months ago.

I can’t say as much for myself. I can hardly believe that I’m the same girl who lurched and tottered away from the ramp outside Portsmouth Harbour station, alone and bewildered, that dark, rainy November afternoon.

How would she have reacted if she’d known what was ahead of her? What might she have done if someone had told her she’d always be female? That there would come a time when she’d learn to accept her new sex?

Thrown herself under the first bus that rolled by, I expect.

Things are very different now, as the last hour or two has shown.

Kerrie’s displeasure at her boyfriend having mellowed over soft-boiled eggs and soggy toast, she took one look at my outfit and marched me directly to her boudoir, where she cudgelled me out of my jumper and into a sleeveless white top cut so low it could impersonate a belt. To this she added a long string of imitation pearls and a cropped light blue corduroy jacket I’d have had trouble fastening even if all the buttons hadn’t been removed. She couldn’t have drawn more attention to my breasts if she’d painted arrows on my shoulders pointing to them.

Sinead may have cried off, but Niamh seemed only too delighted to grace us with her presence, settling into the back of Rosie’s car kitted out in a black-and-white hooped sweatshirt and black ski pants, and jumping out wearing the black silk scarf and beret she hadn’t had time to put on because she’d spent too long on her lashes. This caused Rosie to comment, as she dropped us off outside the dockyard’s main gate, that all the girl needed was a string of onions and a bicycle, and she could be whistling La Marseillaise on the set of Jules Et Jim. Needless to say, both references went completely over Niamh’s head.

All is sweetness and light now, on the surface at any rate. Kerrie, looking as racy as ever in her thin white jacket, strappy top and faded jeans, leads the way past the taxi rank, her eyes fixed on the station entrance. I risk a glance in the direction of the booth selling tickets for the Gosport ferry; if I can look down and not faint at the cleavage I’m displaying, a wooden hut with a felt roof shouldn’t cause me too much distress.

Because if you don’t, my darling, I’ll blow your fucking balls off.

What she forgot to say was that I’d lose them whether I co-operated with her or not.

But that’s all ancient history now. I survived — nothing else matters.

em>Their minds are all programmed to work in exactly the same way. A single appearance, a single set of opinions, a single purpose. They’re a totalitarian regime, a religious cult and a zombie plague all rolled into one.

Not even that.

Kerrie pays for our tickets at the serving hatch in the cramped booking hall, then conducts us along the platform where the electric train due to depart for Waterloo in a few minutes waits silently for its circuits to be engaged. At the top of the slope going down to the Sealink terminal she slips her arm through mine as Niamh skips on, energised by fleeting glimpses of gangways, mooring ropes and uniformed stewards.

We file aboard with the rest of the passengers, thrust without warning into a realm of bulkheads, portholes, lifebelts and other marine paraphernalia. As we reach the door to the main saloon Niamh says she wants to go onto the outer deck; with her mother’s permission I accompany her.

“I don’t know if we ought to stay out here too long,” I say to her as the breeze ruffles my hair, already threatening the dead-centre parting it took me so long to put in.

“Why not? Mum’ll be all right. She was last time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t she tell you? She’s been scared of boats ever since she went over to Ireland on the Loch Garman and it sank.”

“She was on the Loch Garman? Really?”

Thunder and lightning. Waves as high as office blocks…

Must be another déjá  vu. Yeah, that’s it.

“She was only in the dinghy for an hour and a half, but she said it felt more like a month. It’s okay, she’s cured now.”

“Maybe that’s what she wants everyone to think,” I caution her, remembering how tightly Kerrie’s fingers gripped my forearm when we were walking up the gangway.

“I’d have known if she was fibbing. I always do.” She interrogates me with eyes that haven’t yet learned to disguise their intentions. “Can’t make you out, though. You’re not like most other women. I don’t mean anything bad by that.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“For a start, you don’t go on about men.”

“That’s right, I don’t.”

“Not even to complain about them.”

“What’s the point?”

Jesus, this is hard work.

Now she’s tugging at my elbow.

“Ooh, he’s nice! Over there, by the big mushroomy thing.” She flicks back the luxuriant copper-coloured hair tumbling across her shoulder. “Not bubble-head, the hunk behind him in the stripy shirt. He’s luscious, don’t you think so?”

The tall, strongly-built young man standing next to the capstan has already smiled in response to Niamh’s precocious body language.

“Not my type,” I maintain, but before I can embellish this statement I realise that I know who he is.

“Are you kidding? He’s…oh my gosh he’s coming over!”

“Niamh,” I say sharply. “Go inside and sit with your mum.”

“What? But why?”

“Just do as you’re told.”

She blanches at the harshness of my voice, but obeys without another word. I light a cigarette and wait.

Cunningham swaggers across the deck, his cold grey eyes divesting me of every article of clothing I wear. That’s happened to me before — I’m a barmaid, and I’ve grown used to it. What I’m not prepared for, perhaps because his appearance came as such a bolt from the blue, is the ease with which they lock onto mine and hold them fast. For the first time I begin to see that sexual desire isn’t always about satisfying bodily cravings; it can be motivated by one individual’s wish to exert control over another.

Or to submit…

But is his interest in me such a bad thing? Although it turns my stomach to think that he’s overcome the revulsion he felt when he drove me to Hayden Park to such an extent that he actually fancies me, I’m beginning to wonder if I haven’t found a weakness I can exploit to the full by using my sex in the way nature intended.

Careful, babe. This one’s a predator — mess it up and he’ll have you for breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper and any other meal you care to mention.

But I’ve got to start somewhere. And there’s no denying he needs taking down a peg or two.

“Pick me out in a crowd, could you?” I sneer.

“Someone has to watch your back.”

“It’s my front you seem more bothered about.”

He pushes out a humourless laugh. I want to slap him, but that would only give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d penetrated my defences.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him instead.

“This boat is carrying an extremely valuable cargo. It’s my job to see it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“Like to enlarge on that?”

He looks round to check if anyone’s eavesdropping. Behind him, the Camber Dock and the Spice Island pub drift slowly past the port railing. I’m surprised to see them; I hadn’t realised the crossing was underway.

“We’re too close to a result to let loose cannons fuck things up now,” he says in a low voice.

“Meaning me?”

“If the cap fits…”

“You know I’d be a lot less of a liability if someone would have the decency to fill me in on what’s happening. That’s the trouble with your lot. You expect me to do all this work for you, but you insist on keeping me in the dark.”

“What work? Your part in this is to help out at the Gladstone, that’s all. We put you there because we thought you might renew your friendship with the Hodgson girl, maybe get in with her mum and her stepdad. You didn’t, so we left you alone. But now you’ve allowed yourself to be dragged into Kerrie Latimer’s affairs, you’ve made yourself a target for the other side.”

“You’re talking about Egerton and de Monnier.”

“It’s odds-on they’ll try to win you over.”

Egerton’s already made his pitch, but I’m not about to tell Cunningham that.

“So I’m important to you? That’s nice to know.”

The ferry is well clear of the harbour entrance by now, and as the wind increases in strength I abandon my efforts to keep the flaps of my jacket from being blown aside. Cunningham isn’t blind to this, and as I watch him struggle to control his natural male urges my confidence in my ability to outwit him grows.

“It’s done you good, becoming a girl,” he grins. “Given you a backbone.”

“Fuck off. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“You seem to have managed okay. Better than okay, from where I’m standing.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t have much choice, did I?”

“Don’t give me that. I bet you stand in front of the mirror all the time, ogling yourself and playing with your tits. You fucking love it.”

It’s an outrageous accusation, designed specifically to heighten the tension between us. And it has the desired effect, because now I want him to make a move on me just to bring the situation to a head.

“Maybe I do,” I say softly, and as our eyes meet once again mine respond to the challenge in that steely gaze with an invitation I know he won’t be able to resist.

When he steps forward. When he grabs hold of my waist and pulls me against him, so that my hands are resting flat on his chest. When his face comes so close I can see the stubble beginning to form on his chin. When I close my eyes and understand that in a moment or two I’ll know how it feels to be a woman being kissed a man. When that warm, moist softness brushes my lips and I part them in instinctive surrender. When his tongue has explored the inside of my mouth for so long that I can hardly breathe and I’m hanging on to his shoulders for dear life...

When he shoves me to one side and walks away without a word — then I appreciate how new to all this I really am.

I head for the saloon, silently pledging vengeance on a scale not seen since the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Kerrie and Niamh are in the central seating area; I join them, allowing the gentle swaying motion and relentless throb of the engines to gradually calm me. Through the front window I stare at the Martello towers built in the 1860s to safeguard the country against invasion, and the yachts careening around them like slow-motion butterflies.

“Who was that?” wonders Niamh.

“A friend of my husband’s.” I turn to Kerrie. “He has some rather unpleasant tastes. I thought it best if I sent her back to you.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Fine and fucking dandy.

I let Cunningham kiss me.

Cunningham!

And I got exactly what I deserved for naively thinking I could twist him around my finger.

I’d like to wash the taste of him from my mouth, but I’m not sure there’ll be anywhere in Ryde that sells industrial-strength floor cleaner on a Sunday.

Yet in a way the experience might have done me some good. I proved to myself that I know how to get the man I’ve set my sights on. It’s what happens afterwards that needs work; if I’d held out against Cunningham’s tongue just a little bit longer, he’d have savoured his victory all the more and we might still be snogging now.

But when I repeat the exercise it won’t be with him. I can do a lot better than that piece of shit.

And I’ll see to it that the next guy doesn’t walk away.

Ryde Pier extends nearly half a mile from the shore, a skeletal jumble of wood and steel that at its seaward end broadens into a landing stage big enough to hold a car park, a small railway station, a café and a terminal building topped with twin art deco domes. It’s the gateway to an island I’ve always regarded as quintessentially English, yet in many respects I feel as if I’m entering a different version of our green and pleasant land, an alternate dimension where modern life has seeped rather than flooded in from the wider world.

The train which will carry us to the Esplanade seems to have been put out to pasture here as a reward for its long service on the London Underground. Wearing a face he might have borrowed from an Ealing comedy, the guard watches the new arrivals crowd into the carriages with nary a thought of checking their tickets. This is how society should operate, on principles such as trust and integrity.

Fine sentiments from someone so adept at living a lie.

Kerrie, who has brightened considerably since the ferry docked, keeps her hand on the clasp of her bag as she settles into her seat. Helen Sutton’s notebook is within, concealed inside an envelope that until this morning held an unpaid gas bill. It’s an amateurish disguise, but it makes us both feel that little bit safer.

Thankfully there’s no sign of Cunningham. On the other hand, he probably isn’t working alone.

Waiting for the doors to slide shut, I review what I already know about the woman I’m shortly to meet. Cathryn Simmons was lecturing in Oriental and Middle Eastern Studies at Merton College, Oxford when she began what was to be a close and lasting friendship with the part-time library assistant who had recently moved to the city from south-west London with her husband and five children. Cathryn’s career, which had included research expeditions to such far-flung locations as the Nile valley, Nepal and northern Japan, was curtailed in 1973 after she resigned her post at the age of thirty-six to live with her ailing mother. Although Millicent Simmons has a substantial private income, Cathryn supports herself by running an antique shop in Ryde and writing historical fiction set in a variety of far-eastern locations under the pseudonym Katie Chang. Kerrie has promised me she’s a person I’m unlikely to forget in a hurry.

The train rattles and jolts along the pier. After a minute or so it glides smoothly to a halt beside a narrow, curving platform. As we reach the exit from the concourse and the numbers start to thin, I take my vanity case from my bag and peer in the mirror to check my hair and make-up. This also allows me to confirm that Cunningham isn’t in the group of people behind me.

God, that instant when I felt his tongue slither past my lips and I flung my arms around his neck…

It was an automatic reaction. Ruth’s subconscious memory systems taking charge, like they do when I’m brushing my teeth or signing my name.

True — but they’re still an integral part of the individual I think of as ‘me’. I can’t disown them just because I remember having a different set of responses. I’m the one who now prefers her coffee black. I’m the one who narrows her eyes in an exaggerated fashion to show I’m annoyed. I’m the one who forgets to turn off the light when I leave a room.

I’m the one who yielded to that kiss.

Who welcomed it.

You haven’t really got the hang of this yet, have you? For Cunningham, the kiss was an end in itself. You used it to try and cut him down to size. But that shouldn’t have stopped you from enjoying it as much as he did.

“There she is!” cries Niamh, dragging me into the open air.

The person waving at us from the pavement in front of the gift shop spares me only the briefest of looks, yet it very nearly sends me crashing to the ground. If Cunningham’s eyes stripped me of my clothes, Cathryn’s lay bare my soul. Suddenly I’m painfully conscious of who I am.

And who I’m not.

The sensation of being dissected one neuron at a time diminishes. I have been evaluated, and not found wanting.

But I can’t escape the feeling that the real test is still to come...

I shake myself free from the spell. It’s my guilty conscience that’s examining me, not her.

Cathryn Simmons is forty-two years old and might pass for thirty under tasteful lighting, thirty-five in the merciless glare of an arc lamp. Her olive skin is unblemished, the dark hair falling loosely down her back so silken it does everything but purr. As tall as Kerrie but slighter of build, she wears a tan jacket over a loose white blouse, cream slacks and light brown shoes with low heels. When she smiles, her delicate burgundy lips separate to show teeth so white and even her dentist might have honed his skills attending to royalty.

Impervious to the raised eyebrows she incites among the passers-by, Cathryn greets her friend with a tender embrace and a long, slow kiss. Niamh is welcomed with scarcely less affection. Kerrie introduces me; I feel my hand being taken and held for a second or two longer than would normally be appropriate between strangers. I pull it back as discreetly as I can.

“Very pretty,” she remarks. Her fingers have gone to my pearls, but I suspect she’s referring to something else entirely.

“I’m glad you think so,” I reply, imbuing the words with enough aloofness to make it clear to her that I can be a bit of a bitch towards those that rub me up the wrong way.

“We’ll chat later.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

Cathryn breaks eye contact first. One to me, I think.

Don’t let your guard down, babe. She wasn’t really trying.

Cathryn takes Kerrie’s arm and steers her in the direction of the silver BMW parked outside the hotel on the other side of the road. Niamh starts after them, beckoning me to follow.

“Come on, slowcoach!”

“Mind the traffic,” I call out.

Listen to me, clucking like a mother hen. Before I know it I’ll be baking cakes.

Somehow Niamh manages to grab the front seat. I climb in the back beside Kerrie, sinking deep into the soft leatherette. When I look out of the window I notice that Cunningham is standing outside the station entrance. If he walked from the ferry, he made very good time indeed.

As Cathryn guides the car away from the kerb I watch him turn and head in the opposite direction.

I don’t have to be a fortune-teller to predict that I haven’t seen the last of him.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES The sequel to 'Death By Misadventure' CHAPTER 3 By Touch the Light Here we go again. Your name? Ruth Hansford-Jones. And your chosen specialist subject is...? The girl I never was.

St John’s House is a charming old villa at the top of the long, steep incline that ascends from the eastern end of Ryde Esplanade to the leafy residential area known as Appley Rise. Shielded from the road by a high stone wall draped with ivy and overhung with brawny oaks and lofty elms, the three-storey building is open on its northern side to a paved verandah overlooking a spacious lawn that dips towards the cloisters and secluded gardens of the restored St Cecilia’s Abbey, and thus presents the visitor with a spectacular view across the beach to Spithead and the mainland.

None of this can compete with the treasures the interior of the house holds. There is a room filled with silk scrolls, banners and glazed porcelain artefacts from a range of Chinese dynasties. There is a room devoted to figurines, steles, alabaster heads and daggers made of gold and lapis-lazuli from pre-Islamic Mesopotamia. There is a room decorated in the style of a Turkish coffee-house, another could be the setting for a Japanese tea ceremony, yet another is done out in the style of a Hindu temple.

Then there is the bathroom on the first floor, which might have been transported directly from first-century Rome. Looking at the elaborate mosaic floor tiles, the rich tapestries and the salacious frescoes featuring nubile young women entwined in a variety of compromising positions, I’m compelled to ask Cathryn how much this incredible collection cost to put together.

“A lot less than you’d think,” she replies. “Much of it was hidden away in dusty Oxford basements waiting to be catalogued, where it would have remained to this day if I hadn’t stepped in.”

“But some of these antiques must be worth thousands. How did you persuade the people in charge to let you take them?”

She raises a thin, deftly pencilled eyebrow.

“There are ways, darling.”

I incline my head a fraction to show her that no further explanation is necessary. She returns the gesture, acknowledging the fragile accord that appears to be forming between us.

The grand tour over, we return downstairs to the elegantly furnished but thematically neutral lounge. A dark-skinned girl with close-cropped hair, wearing a long red-and-yellow striped dress, takes my jacket and departs with a shy smile.

“Celeste’s such a treasure,” Cathryn enthuses. “We’ve almost come to think of her as one of the family. She’s got beautiful eyes, hasn’t she?”

“Mmm, they’re lovely.”

“They reveal so much about a person, don’t you agree?”

I stiffen at the subtle change in her tone.

“I don’t know whether they say everything…”

“That’s true. Yours aren’t giving me the whole story, not by any means.”

Let the tournament commence.

“I’ve found that’s the wisest course to take,” I say carefully.

“You’re right, sometimes it is. We all have secrets.”

“Yes, we do.”

She folds her arms in front of her.

“You’re a very attractive young woman, Ruth. Kerrie undersold you. But where matters of the heart are concerned her judgement’s faultless. She knows when people are lying to her about them.”

“Is this because I won’t talk about my husband?”

“A few days ago she told you that a boy you went to school with had died. The news upset you far more than it should have done.”

“Oh did it now?” I bristle, hands on hips.

“The people at the hotel said your family moved away from Northcroft when you were twelve. Now I can just about believe that you might have carried a torch for your childhood sweetheart for more than ten years, but not that when your marriage failed and you returned to your home town to put your life back together you’d make no attempt to look him up.”

“I fail to see what business this is of yours.”

“It becomes my business, darling, when someone I love very dearly feels she has to lie to her own children in order to protect them. It becomes my business when that person places her full trust in you, and you’re less than honest with her in return. It becomes my business when in spite of all that she persuades me to welcome you into my home.”

The arrival of Millicent Simmons, leaning on Kerrie’s arm, brings the confrontation to an end — though not, I feel certain, a conclusion. Cathryn’s mother is in her middle seventies, white-haired and disconcertingly frail. The reason for her fragile health is a blood disorder, which requires her to have regular transfusions and in the normal course of events would have seen her entering a nursing home long before now. There’s nothing the matter with her mind, however, as is proved when she makes the observation that I can’t be serious about patching up my marriage or I wouldn’t be wasting precious time here. Fortunately Niamh, clattering through the door in a state of breathless excitement because Celeste has offered to put her hair in dreadlocks, comes to my rescue.

Kerrie suggests that Niamh and I take Millicent out for her morning constitutional, and gives us strict instructions not to venture further than Puckpool Point, half a mile to the east. It’s not quite warm enough outside for bare arms, and rather than trouble Celeste for my jacket Cathryn loans me a cardigan I can wear around my shoulders with just the top button fastened. As the adult I put myself in charge of the wheelchair for the short journey along Appley Road and down Puckpool Hill to the sea front — if Niamh wants a go that badly she can push it all the way back up.

The old lady is fast asleep by the time we reach the entrance to the small park at the bottom of the bank. I place the chair beside an empty bench, light up and watch the hovercraft skim the shimmering water on its way across Spithead to Southsea beach. Northcroft couldn’t be further away if it was in a parallel universe.

“Cathy’s great, isn’t she?” says Niamh.

“She’s one of a kind, that’s for sure.”

“You haven’t got to know her well enough. When you do–“

“I think I know her as well as I’ll ever want to.”

“She says I’m gifted. Not as much as her, of course! No one is.”

“Gifted?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like being good at Maths. It’s more about working out what people are thinking deep down. That’s how I can tell mum isn’t frightened of boats any more. She was worried about something else, probably what she’s going to tell auntie Shannon and auntie Clare when she goes to see them. She’s gifted too, she just hasn’t learned to use it properly. Not sure about you, though. Strange one, you are.”

You don’t know the half of it, angel.

She rambles on for some time, but I’m not really listening. All I can hear is the word that was whispered in my ear at the end of my dream.

Okde.

Lunch is unexpectedly traditional: beef consommé, roast lamb, minted new potatoes, crunchy carrots, cauliflower, green beans, and for dessert raspberry tart and fresh cream. I contribute as little to the conversation as I can get away with; although I’m so used to passing Ruth’s story off as my own it’s quickly reaching the point where I sometimes have to stop and remind myself I didn’t actually experience those events, I fear that Cathryn will pounce on the smallest inconsistency and expose me for a fraud.

Ah well, next time a boy asks me to spend the day with him I’ll know not to turn the offer down in favour of his mum and her friend.

At the end of the meal Kerrie gets up to go to the bathroom, explaining that the second helping of tart she simply couldn’t resist has resulted in her getting pips stuck behind her denture. Cathryn and Celeste retire to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee, while Niamh rushes back to the latter’s room and the stack of reggae albums and singles she’s developed a sudden liking for. I stay seated, resisting the temptation to burp and reflecting that if I’m down south for very much longer I might have to go on a diet of lettuce leaves and crispbread when I get back to stop my waistline ballooning out of control.

At the head of the table, Millicent is in regretful mood.

“Kerrieanne makes me feel so old sometimes,” she sighs. “There she is, younger than my Cathryn by nearly four years and already she has a grandson. Help me up, dear, we’ll talk outside.”

I haul myself up and let her grasp my shoulder as I lift her to her feet. She weighs nothing at all, the poor love. I’d pick her up in my arms if I didn’t think it would be an affront to her dignity.

Although the sun is shining as we step through the French windows, the verandah faces north and will remain in shadow until late afternoon. Once I’ve lowered Millicent into her chair and wheeled it as far as the top of the ramp leading down to the grass, I reach forward to arrange her shawl and plump out the cushions behind her back. It gives me some amusement to picture Cunningham’s face if he could be here to see my breasts wobbling in their D cups as I go about my task. He might have spurned me after we kissed, but something tells me I’d have little trouble enticing him between the sheets.

Now if that doesn’t put me off my food…

“Have you ever considered a career as a home help?” asks Millicent. “You seem to have the same talent for it as Celeste.”

I sit on the balustrade, open my bag and take out a cigarette.

“To be honest, love, I don’t think I’ve got the patience.”

“I was a nurse, you know. During the war. That’s when I met Alfred.”

“Alfred?”

“My late husband.”

“Oh, I see. So you had Cathryn before you married him?”

Millicent closes her eyes, as if she finds the question unbearably intrusive. I light up and wait for her to continue.

“Singapore,” she smiles. “It was a lovely city.”

“You lived there?”

“He was on a destroyer. They brought him in with burns to the chest and left shoulder, and a fractured tibia. The very next day we were shipped out. We lost everything.”

“That must’ve been awful for you.”

She sighs, her expression becoming much more lucid as she tears herself back to the present.

“You know why Cathryn’s never had children, don’t you?”

“Not really...”

Though I can guess.

“She’s approaching a point in her life when she’ll wake up one day and realise it’s too late to change her mind. She hasn’t noticed middle age creeping up on her, a woman never does. How long have you been married?”

Here we go again.

Your name?

Ruth Hansford-Jones.

And your chosen specialist subject is...?

The girl I never was.

“Uh...just under a year.”

“When did you leave him?”

“November.”

“Then he was a mistake. End it and move on. Take a lover, if you haven’t already done so.”

When Celeste arrives to administer Millicent’s medication I snatch the opportunity to escape the old woman’s clutches with both hands.

Take a lover, if you haven’t already done so.

She makes it sound as straightforward as nipping into Fine Fare for a packet of biscuits.

The bathroom is empty — though Kerrie’s dental plate is still soaking in one of the glasses beside the largest of the three washbasins — so I rinse my hands in the bowl to the left of the one she’s using, and sit on the stool to fix my make-up. After a few minutes she walks through the door, touching me lightly on the shoulder as she passes. It’s her way of letting me know that the real business of the day can’t be postponed for very much longer.

But before we begin I need her to clear something up for me.

“Was Millicent’s first husband killed?”

Kerrie pauses in the act of inserting the denture between her lips.

“Her firtht huthband?”

“She said she met Alfred during the war. Cathryn would have been about two when it broke out.”

I finish touching up my mascara while she fits her smile back in place.

“What else did Millicent tell you?” she says eventually.

“Nothing much. She mentioned that they were evacuated from Singapore, and then changed the subject. The reason I’m asking is I don’t want to put my foot in it again, that’s all.”

Kerrie pulls her chair closer.

“Cathy was adopted in 1942. That’s all I know. Millicent’s kept it from her. I haven’t a clue why. So don’t say anything, okay?”

I’m about to ask her how she came by this information when Niamh dashes in, dreadlocks flailing.

“Can I stay and help out in the shop tomorrow? Can I, mum? Cathy said she’s got to go over to Portsmouth on Tuesday so I won’t be coming back on my own. Can I, mum? Can I?”

“What are you going to do for clothes?”

“Oh, I’ll borrow something off Celeste.”

“Something from Celeste.”

Niamh rolls her eyes at me.

“Mothers,” she mouths.

“Well all right, then,” says Kerrie, receiving a hug for her pains.

“Celeste’s ready to do your hair now,” Niamh tells her. “She says she’ll do yours as well if you want, Ruth.”

“She dyed it last time I was here,” explains Kerrie. “My natural colour’s the same as Sinead’s.”

“She did a good job of hiding all the grey, didn’t she mum?”

“Thank you, sweetheart. Why don’t you run along and tell Cathy you can stay before I change my mind?” As soon as the door has closed behind her daughter, she turns to the mirror. “I’ve decided to have a turn as a brunette.”

I stand to move behind her, brushing back the short, multicoloured strands hiding the top of her left ear.

“I’d ask her to take these bits off,” I suggest.

“And move the parting back to the side? I might just do that. You know, I used to have really short hair all the time when my children were younger. It’s so much easier to look after.”

Celeste arrives a moment or two later with Niamh in tow. Both are carrying trays filled with bottles, tubes, sachets and other tonsorial equipment. I decide to sit this one out — which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, when Kerrie and I finally show Cathryn the notebook and tell her the tale that goes with it, my tousled locks are as black as a starless night.

The sun has set behind the wooded hills between Ryde and the Medina estuary, its departure clearing the way for the lights shining from Gosport, Portsmouth, Southsea and Hayling Island to play their part in defying the encroaching darkness. Through the starboard windows of the saloon deck I follow them eastward until they shrink into insignificance; a few minutes into the crossing and my reflection, so different from the image I’ve become accustomed to, has masked all but the brightest.

I feel as if I’ve turned a very significant corner. The girl looking back at me is no longer the redhead who stole Richard Brookbank’s body. That link to my old life has been severed.

It’s some consolation for what has been a difficult and ultimately disappointing day.

“So that’s it, then.”

Kerrie’s remark is addressed to herself as much as me. Her quest is over, her role as amateur sleuth has ended in failure. The friend she counted on to help her make sense of this adventure has let her down, professing to be as mystified as us by the events we related in such painstaking detail, and seeming more interested in our thoughts regarding the latest torrid offering from the pen of ‘Katie Chang’.

“Looks like it,” I reply unconstructively, only slowly becoming aware that I’m fidgeting with my necklace and by doing so catching the unwelcome eye of a slovenly youth across the aisle.

“You’d think she’d have something to say about it all.”

“Unless she didn’t want to speak her mind in front of me.”

“That’s nonsense, sweetheart.”

“Come on, Kerrie, we hardly hit it off.”

“She’s like that with everyone at first. If you’d made a bad impression I’d know.”

I let the matter rest. Deception is tiring work, and I fear I’ll have a lot more of it to do before Kerrie and I part company for the final time.

The boat arrives in Portsmouth at twenty past nine. We get ready to disembark in lighter spirits, talking about the fashions we might try out this summer.

“You’ve a lot more choice as regards colour now you’ve got dark hair,” Kerrie remarks as we wait for the queue to start moving. “Blues and pinks especially.”

“Pink,” I grunt.

“Don’t say it like that!”

“I suppose I could carry it off…yeah, it would symbolise the new Ruth, footloose and fancy free.”

“You’ve been that for months, sweetheart. By now you should have chosen the man who’s going to be spreading your legs every night, and digging your claws into him to make sure he doesn’t get away.”

“That’s what Millicent said — though she didn’t put it in quite those terms.”

“I don’t imagine she did!”

She touches a hand to the near stubble above her left ear. It moves to the back of her neck, significantly more of which is visible thanks to Celeste’s scissors. For a moment I assume that’s the reason she’s begun to frown; then I see her point to the bottom of the gangway.

“That’s Gerald! What on earth’s he doing here?”

The gentleman in question is tall and rangy, with short, dark hair and a Clark Gable moustache. His immaculately pressed brown suit, together with his rigid military bearing, make it easy for me to identify him as Rosie’s former husband.

And going by what’s written on his face he hasn’t come to invite us for a drink.

The moment we step through the entrance to the terminal, Gerald Cooper takes Kerrie to one side and speaks urgently into her ear. I watch her eyes widen in shock as her hand moves to cover her mouth. Whatever tidings he’s brought, they are not good.

When she turns to me I hurry over, reaching out to grip her fingers tightly in mine.

“We’ve been broken into,” she gasps. “Eamonn’s in hospital.”

“He’s not badly hurt,” Gerald informs us. “David came back in time to help him and his brother chase them off. He’s waiting for you at the Queen Alexandra. Sinead and Padraig are with Rosemary. They’re both a bit shaken, but otherwise unharmed. The police were still there when I left, so the situation’s under control.”

“Was there much damage?” I ask him as we walk quickly up the ramp towards the main platform and the exit.

“You must be Ruth. Well, let’s just say it could have been a good deal worse. By the way, where’s Niamh?”

“She’s staying with Cathryn for a couple of days,” answers Kerrie.

“That’s probably for the best. I think we’re all in for a fairly late night.”

Gerald’s S-reg Citro?n is parked in almost exactly the same spot where Rosie pulled up this morning. While he’s unlocking the door I give Kerrie a look that spells out the name Egerton in letters so big they must be visible from space. She only needs to tip her head a fraction of an inch to confirm that she’s thinking the along the very same lines.

He’s just an underling, of course.

It’s de Monnier who’s after the notebook, and it seems she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to get her hands on it.

I only wish I knew why.

By midnight most of the clearing up has been done. Sinead went to bed half an hour ago, and Rosie returned next door shortly afterwards pleading an important meeting early tomorrow morning. I can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of her; the fact that the intrusion happened only a couple of days after Kerrie’s car was so badly damaged laid me open to the kind of interrogation not seen in this country since we stopped burning heretics.

Eamonn, who was released from the treatment room at a quarter to eleven boasting two stitches above his left eyebrow, is next to take his leave of us. Kerrie hugs her ‘wounded soldier’ while I send him a smile of genuine admiration. Going by Dave’s description of the men he found grappling with Kerrie’s sons I’m quite sure they were Lantern Jaw and Pug Face; any teenage boy who tackles that pair of heavies is a hero in my book.

When Gerald and Kerrie head into the living room to begin making an inventory of the items that will eventually appear on the insurance claim and Padraig comes out with a thinly disguised excuse to go for a cigarette I’m left alone with Dave. It’s an awkward situation — for me at any rate.

“Handy bloke to have around,” he remarks, tying up the last of the bin bags.

“Gerald? Yeah, I suppose he is.”

“Proposed to her the week before last.”

“He didn’t!” I exclaim. “What did she say to that?”

“She’s thinking about it. Don’t worry, Kay told me from the off that she was going to marry him. It’s a question of whether she accepts this time or the next.”

“You seem pretty calm about it.”

“Sometimes you just have to move on.”

He’s about to continue when Kerrie returns, dragging me into the living room for what she describes as an ‘urgent confab’. Gerald closes the door behind us and leans against it to stop anyone barging in.

“I’ve told him everything,” Kerrie confesses to me.

“What?” I cry. “You said–“

“Those men weren’t your common or garden burglars,” Gerald interjects. “They broke in before it was fully dark, so it’s reasonable to suppose that they didn’t care who saw them. That tells me they were looking for something valuable enough to offset the risk of being discovered.”

“They came into my home, when three of my children were here,” adds Kerrie. “I’m not about to turn down the offer of a helping hand, not when my family have been threatened.”

“This is the plan, Ruth. I take the notebook with me and deposit it in my bank’s night safe.”

Kerrie nods her agreement. I notice that her hand is resting in the crook of his elbow. She’s chosen the man who’s going to steer her through this crisis, and it isn’t the one she’s sleeping with.

But I’m still loath to mention what I saw last night. None of us need the confrontation that would inevitably follow — least of all the person who’d have to explain why she kept quiet about it for so long.

“Tomorrow I have to go to Reading, because I can’t postpone seeing my mum and my sisters any longer,” says Kerrie. “I’ll tell everyone you’ll be travelling with me as far as Fareham, which I believe is where you said your husband lives.”

Gerald moves closer to her. They’re a couple, whether they realise it yet or not.

“Kerrie’s going to order a taxi in the morning to take you both to Cosham station,” he informs me. “I’ll meet you there at half-past nine.”

“Once Gerry’s driven me to mum’s I want you to see what you can find out about Susan Dwyer — you remember, the girl from Glastonbury. You’ve done your bit as my trusty sidekick, sweetheart, now Gerry can be yours.”

I don’t have a chance to voice my opinion of this scheme — not that it would carry much weight — due to the sudden appearance of Padraig, who has decided to reward himself for his bravery and hard graft with a can of lager. Gerald stands aside to let him through, then decides it’s time he was on his way.

Kerrie sees him to his car. Meanwhile Dave comes in and puts on a Gallagher and Lyle album. Soon the gentle strains of ‘Never Give Up On Love’ are drifting from the stereo — an ironic choice, considering what he told me a few minutes ago.

Doomed though their relationship may be, it isn’t long before Kerrie and Dave are demonstrating that they can smooch with the best of them.

Padraig puts down his can.

“Are we going to join in or just stare at them?” he says, holding out his hand.

“Good idea, Pad,” murmurs Kerrie.

The snare has snapped shut before I realised it was there. I can’t refuse a nineteen year old boy a dance when his mother is in the same room.

Perhaps it’s fate getting me back for wanting Cunningham to kiss me.

Putting on my best smile, I extend my fingers so they’re just touching Padraig’s. They entwine automatically as my body’s reflexes take over; the contact feels anything but unpleasant, helping me to relax and allow my partner to draw me towards him. Our bodies move together, clumsily at first, then with a synchronicity that improves with each sway of our hips.

Kerrie drags herself free from her boyfriend’s embrace.

“Well done this evening,” she tells her son, kissing his cheek. “Don’t keep her up too late, will you?”

She follows Dave from the room. Padraig draws me closer.

“That was some night,” he says into my ear. “Love the hair, by the way.”

“Thanks. Glad you like it.”

The subtle pressure of his hand against the small of my back eases me even nearer. I’m not altogether comfortable about this, but I’m too tired to do anything but let instinct elbow its way into the driving seat. My head lolls against his chest, my fingers move to his shoulders, my thighs interlock with his.

Then…

Jesus, what’s that?

“Oops!” he splutters as I jump back from him.

I try to speak, but it’s a futile endeavour. I’ve just experienced the sensation of an erect penis pressing against my abdomen. I realise it was bound to happen at some point, but even so...

“Yes…er, well…” is about the best I can manage.

“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to, you know...”

He looks so dejected that it actually makes me ashamed to realise how shocked I felt.

“That’s all right,” I hear myself say. “To be honest with you I’d have been insulted if you hadn’t.”

We both start laughing.

“Ruth…” he begins, and this time the intuition that tells me to place a finger on his lips and say ‘goodnight’ is entirely my own.

Back in my room, I sit at the dressing table to admire Celeste’s handiwork and smile at the stir it’s bound to create among the regulars at the Gladstone when their gingery-blonde barmaid returns as a raven-haired temptress. I know I should be concentrating on more important matters, but they can wait.

Sufficient unto the day, and all that.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES The sequel to 'Death By Misadventure' CHAPTER 4 By Touch the Light As we come closer to our destination it doesn’t comfort me to remember that Egerton and de Monnier were there less than a week ago. Left the metropolis for deepest Somerset, called HQ to report ‘mission accomplished’ and received orders to head north without further delay. What mission? Who gave them their orders? Which other shadowy organisation is involved in all this?

“We should do more to celebrate our patron saint’s day. There aren’t enough of us who take a pride in being English. Look at all this glorious countryside. Doesn’t it stir something in your soul, Ruth?”

Gerald Cooper, fifty-one years old, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Engineers who three years ago resigned his commission to run his own business, guides the Citroen along the A4 with the air of a nobleman beginning a survey of his vast estates. Although he’s everything Kerrie said he’d be — genial, well-mannered, considerate and reliable — I find his overt patriotism and dearly held conservative values too reminiscent of the stepfather whose Christian name he shares to feel any real sense of comradeship towards him. Then there’s the fact that he’s taken complete charge of the day’s itinerary, relegating me once more to the role of a supporting player.

“I don’t know, I think we’re too diverse to call ourselves a nation,” I submit. “The area where I’m living now has nothing in common with the Home Counties. It’s different for the Scots and the Welsh. They’re more, what’s the word...homogenous?”

“So a shipyard worker from Clydebank can identify with a crofter in the Outer Hebrides? What about the Shetlanders? They don’t consider themselves Scottish at all.”

“Yeah, but we’re only talking about a few thousand people.”

Gerald has an answer for that, too. But then he would. He’s one of those men who simply must have the last word.

We pass the turn-off for Newbury, continuing west towards Hungerford and Marlborough. With another seventy miles to cover before we arrive in Glastonbury, I estimate that by then we’ll have been travelling for something like four and a half hours. It’s shaping up to be another exhausting day.

At least I’m mostly in my own clothes. The short-sleeved turquoise top with the black trim that complements my new hair colour so beautifully belongs to Kerrie — as does the small silver crucifix she fastened around my neck before we set off — but the leather jacket, jeans and ankle boots are mine. I’d rather look like a throwback to the Woodstock generation than have Gerald wondering if he’s been saddled with a bit of a tart.

The road becomes narrower after Hungerford, stretching through lush pastures bathed in spring sunshine and separated by ever more extensive tracts of woodland. This, my tour guide pronounces, is the heart of ancient Wessex, the one Saxon kingdom to hold out against the Vikings.

“Under Alfred the Great’s descendants it went on to form the nucleus of what would one day be called England,” he explains, as if it hasn’t crossed his mind that I might already know all this. “The north continued to be farmed by Danish settlers, which is why the accent in your part of the world is so different from ours. In Durham and Northumberland the Scandinavian tongue also took on elements from Scotland because that region was much closer to the border and subject to periodic invasions. Hence the Geordie way of speaking, which the rest of the country finds so impenetrable.”

Like so many other people with only a superficial knowledge of the north-east’s history, he’s mistaken on almost every count.

“You’ve never been to Carlisle, have you? It’s much closer to Scotland than Newcastle, eight and a half miles as opposed to nearly seventy,” I point out. “And their accent certainly doesn’t struggle to be understood. Geordie’s hard to get to grips with because that part of the north-east kept more of the original Anglian dialect than anywhere else. The Danes never settled in any numbers north of the Tees. You can tell by the place names. They wanted northern Northumbria — which, by the way, went as far as Stirling in those days — to be a buffer state under a client king. The border between England and Scotland wasn’t fixed at the Tweed until the eleventh century. In fact you could argue that Scots is an offshoot of Geordie, not the other way around.”

“I stand corrected,” smiles Gerald.

“Yeah, well I was born in County Durham. We only moved to Kent when I was twelve.”

“Kerrie told me. You’ve packed a lot into your young life. Will you stay in the north now that you’ve, uh…what’s the current idiom, returned to your roots?”

“I don’t think so. There aren’t too many job opportunities up there since the docks closed. Not that I see myself driving a fork-lift truck or working a crane!”

“No, somehow I can’t picture you in a boiler suit.”

Though just how I’ll escape from the Gladstone is a problem to which there appears to be no obvious solution.

At a village called Beckhampton we take the Devizes road, crossing the lonely Wiltshire Downs before descending to the greener, more thickly populated land to the south. As we come closer to our destination it doesn’t comfort me to remember that Egerton and de Monnier were there less than a week ago.

Left the metropolis for deepest Somerset, called HQ to report ‘mission accomplished’ and received orders to head north without further delay.

What mission? Who gave them their orders?

Which other shadowy organisation is involved in all this?

She has friends in the highest of high places.

And presumably the influence that goes with those connections. Influence over the local police force, perhaps.

Who is Yvette de Monnier? How deeply was she involved in the conspiracy to hide the truth about Sarah-Jane Collingwood’s disappearance? If she knew the girl had become a kuzkardesh gara, what was she doing asking questions in Bywell?

I’ve never told Peter, but some of the words…well, they spoke to me. I wanted to go out and repeat them to every woman I saw. I still do. And it’s not just me, either.

I give an involuntary shudder.

“Are you cold?” asks Gerald.

“No, it’s just...oh, I don’t know...”

“Everything’s going to be fine, Ruth. I promise.” He indicates right to overtake a farm vehicle. “Look, we’re only three or four miles from Trowbridge. We’ll stop there for a bite to eat. You’ll feel a lot better with something inside you.”

He’s right, I suppose. It’s never a good idea to go sleuthing on an empty stomach.

Or investigating a murder.

Glastonbury isn’t quite the tourist trap I expected. The shops huddled around the market cross at the bottom of the High Street have their share of windows filled with knick-knacks, herbal remedies, tie-dyed full-length skirts and occult literature, but the town seems half-hearted, if not embarrassed about cashing in on the celebrity it acquired during the short-lived hippy era. The only accommodation on offer is provided by a pub that looks to have been built as a coaching inn, whilst the limited number of spaces in the car park we use outside the entrance to the thirty-six acres of grounds surrounding the remains of the Benedictine Abbey, beneath which King Arthur is said to have been buried, is a barometer of how many visitors Britain’s ‘first Christian sanctuary’ attracts. Yet it’s a nice enough little place to spend an hour or two, with the gaps between the buildings opening up interesting views of the hills crowding in from the east and rising abruptly to the famous Tor.

It definitely doesn’t deserve to be sullied by the kind of tragedy Yvette de Monnier brought about in Northcroft.

The map we find in the abbey gift shop shows us that Chalice Lane runs along the far side of the park bordering the southern edge of the grounds. The weather has clouded over, but it’s warm enough for me to take off my jacket and carry it over my arm. I thought about putting my hair up until Gerald pooh-poohed the suggestion, saying it might make me look too much like a plain-clothes policewoman.

“We ought to come across as just an ordinary couple on a mission of mercy,” he told me.

“A couple?”

“It’s easier than inventing other reasons for us being together, particularly as you’re wearing a wedding ring. I hope that’s not a problem?”

No problem at all. How could it be?

As we begin the short walk along Magdalene Street I link arms with him. It’s not an empty gesture; I want him to know I’m taking this part seriously.

After a few yards he points towards the traffic lights ahead.

“If there’s a newsagent’s up there we’ll call in and pretend we’re lost. It’s a good way of testing the water. You can gather quite a lot of information from studying the reactions to a few well-chosen remarks.”

“Did they teach you that in the Army?”

“I’m an avid reader of detective stories.”

“Who’s your favourite?”

“That’s a tough one…but if you’re putting me on the spot I’ll have to say Sexton Blake.”

Gerald’s cheerful, confident smile allows me to forget the unsavoury nature of our business here and drift into a jazz-age fantasy where we’re investigating nothing more sinister than the theft of a diamond necklace. Give me that and I’d happily tag along as his sidekick — or anything else, for that matter.

“So if you were him, I’d be...?”

“Tinker.”

I think that’s what they call having your bubble pricked.

The only shop on the corner of Chalice Lane is a general dealer’s, fronted by trestle tables set out with trays of fruit, vegetables and flowers. At the sound of the bell the proprietress, a thickset woman in her forties, turns from filling the shelf to the right of the counter with tins of pork luncheon meat and corned beef, and flashes us both — but especially Gerald — a bright, gap-toothed smile.

“Hello!” she chirrups. “Nice weather for the time o’ year, ennit?”

“It certainly is,” replies Gerald. “Let’s hope it’s a sign that we’re in for a decent summer. The last two haven’t been much to write home about. Now, I was wondering if you could help us. We’re looking for Chalice Lane.”

From his inside pocket he produces a business card, which I assume is intended to satisfy her that we’re not debt collectors or Social Security snoopers.

“Oh, well this is the start of it, so you’re in the right–“ She breaks off, scowling at the unshaven, mop-haired individual in late middle age who shambles through the door. He’s dressed in a frayed sports jacket with a newspaper and a bottle poking from one of the pockets, a grubby grandad vest, worn grey flannel trousers and mud-encrusted tennis shoes. “What you doin’ ‘ere, Daniel Butleigh? What you got behind your back?”

He brandishes a bunch of daffodils, their stems tied with an elastic band.

“Well, I was goin’ to give these to you, Jane me lover, but you bein’ in one o’ your moods I reckon this fair young damsel should ‘ave ‘em instead.” He bows theatrically in front of me, his eyes fastened on my bosom. “Cause if that en’t a sight to make a statue weep...”

Gerald takes a step forward, but I lay my hand on his forearm.

“It’s all right, darling,” I assure him, accepting the proffered blooms while doing my utmost to keep a straight face.

“Those ‘ad better not ‘ave come from my stock,” the shopkeeper warns Butleigh.

“No, they’d better not,” I say, backing her up.

“Course they didn’t,” he protests. “I got ‘em from the churchyard.”

Jane and I turn to one another, open-mouthed.

“Have you ever...?” she gasps.

“I don’t know how he has the nerve,” I fume.

“Well, since I’m not appreciated ‘ere I reckon I’ll be off to Wearyall Hill,” announces Butleigh. “No better way to spend an afternoon than sittin’ on the grass with a crossword, a drop o’ cider an’ a pasty.”

“I hope you fall asleep an’ it rains an’ you catch your death o’ cold, you smelly old bugger,” Jane calls after him.

“And you can take these with you,” I add, thrusting the flowers into his hands.

“The Dwyers,” Gerald reminds me.

Butleigh spins in the doorway, his inane expression gone.

“You know ‘em?”

“As a matter of fact we don’t,” says Gerald.

“You keep it that way, my friend. For your good lady’s sake, you keep it that way.”

“What the devil do you mean by that?”

Butleigh doesn’t stay to elaborate. Gerald starts to stride after him, then reconsiders when he sees me shaking my head.

“So what did he mean?” I ask Jane.

“Oh, don’t you take any notice of ‘im, me dear. He’s well known round ‘ere for spreadin’ stories. En’t none of ‘em ever been worth listenin’ to. I reckon it’s all that scrumpy ‘e drinks. Rots the brain as well as the guts.”

As soon as we’re back outside I light a cigarette. Gerald looks around for Butleigh, but there’s no sign of him.

For your good lady’s sake…

Egerton said Helen Sutton was suffering from some kind of mental illness, one that remained dormant in her brain until she received the casket. What he didn’t tell me was how such an affliction could be passed from one person to another.

…then Helen said summat to ‘er, must’ve been in French ‘cause I never understood a word of it, and yer know what, the frog went down like a sack o’ taties.

That was the trigger. But how exactly were de Monnier and the others infected to begin with?

I push back my fringe, then take a paper tissue from my bag to wipe the perspiration from my hands. Gerald’s expression shows that he’s aware of my unease.

“If you’d rather not do this…”

I manage a stoical smile.

“And tell Kerrie I was put off by what some drunken layabout said? Come on, let’s get it over with.”

33 Chalice Lane is part of a two-storey pre-war terrace, each house sharing with one of its neighbours a covered passageway leading to the garden at the rear. An apple tree grows in the centre of the Dwyers’ front lawn; the grass around it needs cutting, but there are no signs of outright neglect. A squeaky gate seems to be the only other matter requiring attention.

Gerald stops a few paces from the door.

“You don’t have to come in with me,” he says. “I’m sure Jane wouldn’t mind if you waited in the shop.”

“But I might.”

“Still…”

“You heard what she said. The guy’s a nutcase. Besides, I’ve invested too much in this to back out now.”

“I appreciate that, Ruth. But I feel responsible for you.”

“Yeah, well I’m not used to placing myself under someone else’s protection.”

He looks me straight in the eye.

“In view of what happened yesterday evening, you’re having it none the less.”

His paternalism makes me want to lock antlers with him — then I recall that he’s the stag and I’m now a doe.

Yet if a doe submits unconditionally to a dominant male, a girl who has her head screwed on tightly enough can use her surrender to gain the upper hand.

“I’m sorry, I know this isn’t a game. And I admit I feel a lot safer for having you around. Kerrie knew what she was doing when she took you on board, she really did.”

“I’ll whisk you out of there at the first hint of trouble,” he promises me.

“I know you will,” I smile.

Job done. I’ve accepted Gerald as my knight in shining armour, and in return we’ll have no more nonsense about me hiding in a corner shop. To seal the bargain I slide my fingers through his as we wait for someone to answer the door.

After about thirty seconds an elderly gentleman with thin white hair opens it as far as the security chain will permit.

“Mr Dwyer?” enquires Gerald.

“Who wants to know?” croaks the old man in a mild Welsh accent.

“My name’s Gerald Cooper, and this is Ruth, my wife.”

“We have some news for Susan,” I add. “I assume you’re her father.”

He nods, but at the same time his expression darkens. Convinced that he’s going to tell us either that she’s dead or has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, I move even closer to the man at my side.

“What kind o’ news?”

“I’m afraid someone she was acquainted with has passed away,” says Gerald.

“Oh. Well, I’ll have to see then, won’t I? Wait there, I shan’t be a tick.”

Dwyer shuffles back along the hallway and begins climbing the stairs one by one. It looks as if he’ll be gone for more than a tick, and quite a few tocks as well.

“He doesn’t seem particularly dangerous,” I remark as I disengage my fingers from Gerald’s, then take my vanity case from my shoulder bag and begin checking my make-up.

“He isn’t. He’s scared.”

“Of us?”

“Of his daughter.”

I find that hard to believe. If Susan had posed any kind of threat to the general public, surely de Monnier would have taken steps to isolate her.

Dwyer admits us a few minutes later. He explains that Susan is willing to talk to me, but not my husband. Gerald bridles at this, and I have to swear to him that I’ll call for help the moment I feel threatened. If I was the heroine in a fairy tale he’d be scaling the castle walls long before the evil prince had a chance to seduce me. Feeling his eyes trained on my back, I follow the directions to Susan’s room.

I knock and go in, leaving the door ajar. The first thing I notice is the canvas leaning against the wall to my right. Although the picture it will eventually hold has only been sketched in pencil, I can tell immediately that it’s an accurate representation of the mosque Helen Sutton photographed fifteen years ago.

“It’s unfinished. Rather like me.”

The woman occupying the chintz armchair by the window is, as I expected, in her middle thirties. Her dark hair is brushed forward into a shoulder-length bob, which helps soften her angular features. The jacket and skirt she’s wearing look to be made from a similar material to the velvety fabric Kerrie and I found in Northcroft. But it’s her ebony lips and bejewelled, black-nailed hands that obviate the need for any clarification of her statement.

The casket was sent to Helen as a trigger…it was an instruction to turn herself into a kuzkardesh gara and begin spreading the infection around.

Susan Dwyer’s transformation has been halted in its early stages. That must be what Egerton and de Monnier came here to achieve, possibly by confiscating the implements Susan needed to complete it.

But how were the seeds of her desire to become one of those monstrosities sown?

She beckons me across but doesn’t rise from her seat. As if the very air she’s exhaling may be contaminated, I edge towards her.

“Where do you live, Ruth Cooper?” she asks me, letting an arm fall theatrically over the back of the chair.

“We’ve travelled up from Cosham, near Portsmouth.”

“Have you indeed? That’s quite a long journey. I don’t think you came all that way just to give a complete stranger news of Helen Sutton’s death.”

My eyes widen, but only a little. She could have heard it from Egerton and de Monnier.

“How did you know it was Helen?”

“First tell me the real reason for your visit.”

“Fair enough.” I reach into my bag for one of the copies Kerrie and I made of the four names and addresses in Helen Sutton’s notebook and hand it to her. She reads it, showing no perceptible reaction. “The source where I found that list contains a photograph of the four of you, taken in the summer of 1964. There’s another, of Sarah-Jane looking very different...”

Susan’s brows lift a fraction of an inch, and for the first time I notice the tiny black gemstones fixed to them, separated by gaps so small each line forms what could easily be mistaken for a single pencilled arch.

Just like Suki Tatsukichi’s.

“You don’t have to be circumspect,” she scolds me. “We both know what she is. What I almost became.”

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t very tactful of me. I–“

She waves my apology away.

“Sarah-Jane is a kuzkardesh gara. The movement was founded in the first decade of this century by an Austrian woman named Chrysanthemum von Witzleben. It’s a sisterhood modelled on a community she came across whilst on an archaeological expedition in what was then Chinese Turkestan.”

“So where were the photographs taken?”

“Southern Bucovina. It’s part of Romania now, but before the First World War it belonged to the Austrian Empire. The area was sufficiently remote for Frau von Witzleben to establish her hive without fear of it coming to the attention of the authorities.”

Bucovina, eh? Never heard of it, but that’s nothing a half-decent atlas won’t put right.

“Isn’t Romania a communist country?”

“How and why we came to be in Bucovina is classified information. Although I feel no loyalty towards the people who sent us there, I’m not willing to break the law for someone who for all I know could be a secret agent herself.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” Susan points to the edge of the bed and waits for me to sit, watching the way I cross one thigh over the other, rest my bag against my right hip and use my other hand to push my fringe away from my forehead. Although each of these movements has become second nature to me, I feel more self-conscious about performing them than at any time since I became female. It’s as if she knows I haven’t always been a woman, and is ticking a series of mental boxes to see how well I’ve adjusted to the change. “Who do you think those women are?”

“They’re obviously a religious group of some sort. An Islamic sect, maybe?”

“You couldn’t be more wrong. They don’t believe in any kind of supreme being. Their faith, if that’s what you want to call it, is in the power of the universal female mind.”

It’s the kind of half-baked mystical claptrap I ought to have foreseen. But I won’t get Susan to tell me very much by laughing in her face.

“What does that mean in practical terms?” I ask.

“A group intelligence. It operates at a subconscious level, so that each kuzkardesh gara has the same set of attitudes, values and preferences as the others in her hive. In every way that matters, they function as a single organism.”

A single appearance, a single set of opinions, a single purpose. They’re a totalitarian regime, a religious cult and a zombie plague all rolled into one.

Egerton wasn’t making any of that up. But it still strikes me as something you’d only expect to find in an episode of Doctor Who.

“I’m not sure I follow you. How can that happen? What’s the mechanism that brings it about?”

Susan shakes her head. She might be a Geography mistress trying to explain the principles of Central Place Theory to a class of remedial twelve year olds.

“You’re looking at it from the wrong angle, Ruth. A collective subconscious is the default condition for every sentient species that evolves. The idea of individuality is an illusion, a survival technique Homo sapiens developed during the transition from a hunting and gathering society to one based on agriculture, when instead of living in extended family groups women were confined to small, isolated farms. But as that’s a comparatively recent departure from the norm it can be eradicated fairly easily. All most of us need is something to kick-start the relevant mental processes.”

Half-baked mystical claptrap dressed up as science. All bases covered.

“Why do they shave their heads?” I’m curious to know.

“The universal mind is by definition egalitarian.” She toys with the strands falling across her left ear, grimacing with distaste. “Hair grows in idiosyncratic ways. It serves no purpose other than to feed the chimera of selfhood.”

“And the black make-up and tattoos?”

“They draw attention away from the other aspects of a woman’s appearance, and so act to level the playing field, as it were. A plain face like mine is enhanced, a beautiful one disfigured.”

Enhanced? Who are you trying to fool?

I still don’t know why this coven of witches has got de Monnier and the spooks at the MoD in such a tizzy. Maybe it’s time I changed tack.

“How long were you out there?”

“Just under a fortnight altogether.”

“The thing is, I can see how an impressionable young girl like Sarah-Jane Collingwood might fall for this ‘universal mind’ stuff if she’d been indoctrinated in it for months,” I argue. “But to make that kind of decision after what, a few days?”

“There was no ‘decision’, Ruth. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t experience an epiphany when you lose your individual awareness. It still feels like being you. What’s changed is that your emotional and psychological responses are now identical to those of every other kuzkardesh gara. Imagine living in a street where everyone starts the day with a cup of tea except you, who always have coffee. One morning you walk into the kitchen and instead of coffee you make tea, because that’s what you prefer first thing. You don’t suddenly think of yourself as a tea drinker. You just like tea, the same as your neighbours.”

Epiphany…

Didn’t one of the Sawdons use that word when we were talking to them in Bywell?

Hell’s teeth, what did they actually say?

No doubt I’ll remember later on. But first there’s another line of enquiry I have to pursue.

“Then tell me why it took more than fourteen years for it to work on you and Helen Sutton. And how the two visitors you entertained last Tuesday were able to stop your conversion halfway through.”

Her mouth curls in a mocking smile.

“Do you know why I agreed to talk to you? It wasn’t to answer your questions but to warn you that humanity is fighting a losing battle. The genie is out of the lamp, and no one is going to put it back.” Abruptly, her expression turns blank. She raises her chin, as though she’s listening to a conversation in the next room. “You struggle against us now, Ruth Cooper, but that which is within you may not be gainsaid. One shall be all, then all shall be as one.”

Susan’s voice has become so chilling that I have to call on every ounce of resolve I possess not to jump up and run from the room.

“What are you talking about?” I ask her.

“You have heard but not understood. Dig beneath the illusion of selfhood and all will be made clear to you.”

The illusion of selfhood.

The Sawdons used that phrase as well…

“What about men?” I ask in an attempt to change the subject. “How do they fit into this twisted utopia?”

“They are necessary to perpetuate our species, and to provide for us when we’re carrying and raising our children. In return we pleasure them, in ways most have never dreamed of.”

She begins licking her black lips. She couldn’t look any more reptilian if her tongue shot out to capture a passing insect.

“I’ve had about as much of this as I can stomach,” I spit at her. “Your dad’s frightened to death of you, and now I know why.”

Susan lifts off her wig. Her hairless scalp is perfectly smooth, apart the row of livid purple scabs going back from the centre of her forehead.

“You know nothing,” she hisses. “You are not even aware of your own potential.”

She begins to rise from her chair. I stand at the same time, backing away from her.

“What potential?” I can’t help asking.

“That is not for Susan Dwyer to say. She is incomplete. She peers through the veil of individuality.”

Her hand moves to my right cheek. I push it away angrily, accidentally knocking over a waste basket in my hurry to leave. Slamming the door behind me, I scuttle down the stairs.

Gerald is waiting in the hallway. I lose my footing and feel myself fall forwards, but he’s there to catch me.

“Are you all right, Ruth?”

“Just get me out of here,” I growl into his shirt.

I’m lighting up even as he turns the latch. Just as it did in Bywell, the feeling that I’m completely out of my depth enshrouds me like a fog.

All most of us need is something to kick-start the relevant mental processes.

In Helen Sutton’s case it was the casket.

But who sent it to her?

And why did de Monnier leave it lying around in 6 Redheugh Close for four and a half months?

Not much dust. That means whoever it was, they were here fairly recently.

She didn’t.

The intruders who filled that crate with sandbags and pushed it against the door weren’t burglars at all. They broke in to put the casket back.

Just in time for Kerrie Latimer to find it.

But why, for heaven’s sake? What has Kerrie to do with any of this?

We’re too close to a result to allow anyone to cock things up.

Cunningham knows.

And I bet he could also tell me why Sarah-Jane Collingwood and the others were taken to Bucovina fifteen years ago.

At the front gate Gerald turns to me.

“It might be best to get it out into the open now,” he suggests, and for a moment all I want is for him to take me in his arms again and just hold me for a while.

“We can talk in the car,” is all I trust myself to say.

“You look as if you could do with a stiff drink.”

I let the cigarette fall to the pavement and grind it out with my heel. What I need is a ride back to Northcroft so I can forget about all this crap and get on with the rest of my life.

The genie is out of the lamp, and no one is going to put it back.

Yet if I walk away now those words might haunt me to the grave.

Or until I suddenly find I’m wearing black lip gloss and nail varnish…

“Do you know where Bucovina is?” I ask as we walk back along Chalice Lane.

“I’m not sure. In Eastern Europe, by the sound of it. Why?”

Full stop. Period. Punkt.

Because someone out there has discovered a new kind of consciousness, one that can be transmitted into a person’s mind and change them into a being that can no longer be thought of as fully human.

And they want to make us all the same as them.

“That’s where they went, Susan and the rest of them,” I reply. “It was one of the few things I could get out of her that made any sense.”

Yep, even as the end of the world hoves into plain view the lies just keep on coming.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES The sequel to 'Death By Misadventure' CHAPTER 5 By Touch the Light Kerrie hands me a mug and sits at the kitchen table, gesturing for me to join her. As I arrange the folds of my skirt I sense the vexation she’s been holding in check since we waved the boys away break free from its restraints. I haven’t told her everything about my encounter with Susan Dwyer and she knows it.

Wearing only bathrobes and fluffy slippers, Kerrie Latimer and I watch Dave Compton’s van chug along Woodford Road and turn left into Rectory Lane. The vehicle is heading for Havant railway station, where Padraig and Eamonn will soon begin the journey back to the industrial north-west. Their filial duties done, the boys are eager to resume the carefree independence they’ve come to take for granted.

Let them enjoy it while they can.

“They’ll have a story or two to tell,” says their mother, sweeping back the longer side of her dark brown hair.”Especially Pad…”

I ignore the insinuation. All I did was accept her son’s offer to take me out for a drink. Wasn’t I supposed to be upset after the meeting with my husband had gone so badly? Why would I pass up the chance to enjoy myself for an hour?

And it’s not as though anything untoward happened. True, we spent rather longer in Rosie’s kitchen than I’d planned, but it was all relatively prim and proper. I’m not going to take myself to task just because I was completely unprepared for a move I really ought to have seen coming, or nurture feelings of guilt about how far I allowed things to proceed before I brought them to a halt. I need to get used to that sort of intimacy even if it doesn’t excite me, so that I can take it in my stride and perhaps begin giving back as good as I get.

At least I resisted Padraig’s attempts to push his tongue between my lips more successfully than I did with Cunningham.

I only hope that when he finally worked out that if he felt my tit I’d give an involuntary gasp of surprise he thought the four or five minutes of proper snogging that followed were worth the wait.

At the side door Kerrie lays a hand on my forearm.

“Have you thought any more about this afternoon?”

“We’re just meeting Gerald at the library, aren’t we?”

“And Rosie for lunch. At the Queens, remember? She’ll be with a client, so it’s important that we don’t show her up. Why don’t you grab a pair of tights from my room and nip next door to put your face on while I sort something out for you?”

Yes, let’s put on a show for Rosie’s benefit. Never mind that a few years from now we might both have been turned into bald-headed fanatics helping to hunt down the few pockets of women who are still human.

Or be in thrall to the military dictatorship that emerges when it becomes clear that there’s no other way to stop the country from being taken over.

But as it’s my last day here I suffer Kerrie’s ministrations with virtuous fortitude, surfacing from them in a dark grey jacket, a sleeveless black top, a fashionably full patterned cotton skirt and black, medium-heeled shoes. She, on the other hand, elects for a light green suit and pearls — which suggests it might not be Rosie she’s out to impress.

We have time for coffee before we leave to catch the bus into Portsmouth. Kerrie hands me a mug and sits at the kitchen table, gesturing for me to join her. As I arrange the folds of my skirt I sense the vexation she’s been holding in check since we waved the boys away break free from its restraints. I haven’t told her everything about my encounter with Susan Dwyer and she knows it.

To avoid her eyes I open my bag and take out my vanity case so I can fuss with my fringe. The centre parting I put in after I showered has gone on its travels again; once I’m back in Northcroft I’ll let Janice loose on my recalcitrant locks, treat them to a reprimand they’ll be slow to forget.

Kerrie fingers her pearls.

“I’m going to Scotland,” she announces without warning. “Dunoon, where the Macready family live. I need to talk to one of those women myself.”

Make way for the chickens coming home to roost.

I sip from my mug, wondering how on earth I can deter her from making a trip that if she’s lucky she’ll come to look back on as a complete waste of time.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” I ask her, when what I really ought to be saying is you haven’t a bloody clue what to expect because I didn’t have the courage to tell anyone.

“I know what I’m letting myself in for, sweetheart. Gerry told me how distressed you were yesterday. He said he’d have pulled into a lay-by and given you a cuddle, but you might have thought that was forward of him.”

“I think he realised I’d have just burst into tears.”

“He’s a lovely man, isn’t he? I only wish he was able to come with us.”

Us?

She’s having me on. She must be.

“There you go again,” I sigh.

“I don’t understand…”

“Making assumptions. Demands.” I cover her hand with my own. “Look love, I know you need to find out how your dad knew Helen Sutton, and I wish you all the best, I really do. But I’ve had enough. I just want to go home.”

And make the most of my new life before the world turns to shit.

Kerrie smiles, but not with her eyes.

“I suppose I’ll have to fly solo, then.”

“How are you going to get there? Okay, Cockburns will have fixed your car by now, but you can’t drive it until you’ve had your insurance documents replaced.”

“I wasn’t thinking of going this week.”

“And what about Norah? She isn’t going to put up with me taking another three or four days off, next week or next month or whenever it is you decide to drag me into the wild blue yonder. She’s not just my employer, she’s my landlady as well. If I lose my job at the Gladstone I’m out on the street.”

“I can deal with her.”

“I mean, do you even know where Dunoon is? Do you know which port the ferry sails from? Can you actually get on a boat without someone there to…”

She slides her hand from mine, and I realise at once that I’ve gone too far.

A muscular arm pushing me roughly aside, its owner fully aware of the bulging maternity dress beneath my coat.

The memory only lasts for a moment, but it’s enough.

Kerrie survived the sinking of the Loch Garman. Her unborn child didn’t.

That’s why she was so ill at ease on the Isle of Wight ferry. Every inch of the crossing, every nut and bolt on that vessel reminded her of the baby she lost.

I begin to apologise, then think again. She’d ask me how I knew, and I’m not sure I can answer that question. Even if I could, I’m determined not to tell her any more lies.

Better for us both if our friendship sputters out like a camp fire in a sudden shower.

*

Bucovina

Cant find Dragoiasa in index - maybe its too small

I put down my pen and close the encyclopaedia with a thump that draws a censorious glare from the middle-aged library assistant. In retaliation I flick back my fringe, then make as much noise as I can getting up from the chair. He’s still frowning, so I pretend to rub at a stain on the side of my skirt, lifting the hem a good eight or nine inches above the knee. I’m only sorry I’m wearing tights and not stockings; a flash of suspender would have his specs steaming up so badly he’d need an ice bucket to clear the lenses.

It’s that time of the month, I guess.

At the other end of Portsmouth Central Library’s reference area Gerald and Kerrie are each scribbling their own set of notes. As I reach the table Kerrie takes off her glasses and puts them in their case.

“How did you get on?” she enquires, and if there was the slightest doubt that we’re no longer friends it’s removed by the stare she throws at me when I place my sheet of A4 in front of Gerald instead of her.

“Bucovina’s in the north-east corner of Romania,” I tell him. “I had a look in the atlas — it’s about as far off the beaten track as you can get.”

Six months ago I would have drawn him a map, and a damn good one too. Now I’d just be wasting ink.

Gerald glances up from the weighty tome he’s consulting. The title’s got something to do with the Silk Road — he thinks the belief system I told him Susan Dwyer described to me could easily have been influenced by Buddhist teachings, so he’s concentrating on areas where they might have diffused into Islamic culture.

“Romania...” he muses. “Yes, there are bound to be a few Turkish enclaves left over from the days when it was under Ottoman rule. Mainly on the Black Sea coast, I imagine.”

“This place is up in the mountains, this Vatra however-you-say-it. Dracula country. I can’t think for the life of me what a mosque might be doing there.”

Kerrie picks up her bag.

“I’m going to phone home, find out if Niamh’s back yet,” she says to Gerald. “Won’t be long.”

While she’s gone I skim through the three pages she’s written about the various branches of the Islamic faith that have been condemned through the ages as heretical. Although there are more of these than I’d expected, none of them involve women to a more significant degree than the mainstream. Nor did they develop a conception of their deity that differs in any fundamental way from that first espoused by the Patriarchs in the Old Testament.

“This is a waste of time,” I mutter to myself. “Susan said they didn’t believe in a God.”

Gerald pushes the piece of paper I gave him back across the table.

“Best to explore every possibility. She may have been trying to put you off the scent.”

“What, so I can’t tell when I’m being lied to?”

Yes, I think it’s safe to say that my period’s coming on.

Gerald doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead he’s jabbing his finger at the page in front of him.

“This may be worth investigating. It’s about an expedition to central Asia mounted by the University of Vienna in 1908.”

“Does it say anything about the von Witzleben woman?”

“It hasn’t mentioned her so far…”

Rather than pull a chair round, I move to stand behind him and lean forward, resting my palm lightly on his shoulder. The small portion of my brain that isn’t overdosing on female hormones warns me that I shouldn’t really let my right breast snuggle against his neck like this, but it’s a voice crying in an oestrogen-drenched wilderness. If anything I press it closer as I make a last-ditch effort to concentrate on the task at hand.

The team left Austria on July 26th, and sailed from the port of Trieste...

He seems comfortable enough with this…

...from Rawalpindi over the Hindu Kush into Chinese Turkestan...

He didn’t flinch or anything…

...the Tarim Basin, much of which is taken up by the Takla Makan desert, one of the most hostile places on earth. The name translates into the local tongue as ‘if you go in, you don’t come out’...

He won’t think I’m trying it on…

...the lost cities where according to legend a federation of tribes known to Chinese historians as the Yueh-chih...

He’ll know I’m just being friendly…

...and despite a search lasting several weeks no trace of the expedition was ever found.

He must attract this sort of attention from women all the time…

Cool it, babe. You’re all over the guy. What are you going to do if he comes on to you? That ring you’re wearing tells him you’re no blushing virgin. It doesn’t matter how big a thing he’s got for Kerrie, if he thinks he’s on a promise with you he’ll expect it to be kept.

I shift slightly to the left so my tit isn’t in danger of brushing Gerald’s cheek; I could take a step backwards and still see the text, but I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve suddenly decided to shy away from him.

“So they all died in the desert,” I conclude. “That’s a shame.”

“I wonder...”

He gets up and walks briskly over to the shelf containing the encyclopaedias. When he comes back he’s carrying a volume entitled Who Was Who.

“It won’t have foreigners in there, will it?” I frown.

“Chrysanthemum’s an English name. It may just be that...ah, here’s the lady we’ve been looking for! Our Frau von Witzleben was born Miss Whitmore in 1876. Her husband Werner was an anthropologist based at the University of Vienna. According to this she was quite an authority in her own right.”

I follow Gerald’s finger with my own, not quite able to prevent them coming into contact with one another.

“And they both died in 1908. Presumed killed in Chinese Turkestan.”

It was composed in an extraordinarily old-fashioned style, like something from the Victorian era. No eighteen year old could possibly have written prose that elaborate and long-winded.

Were the letters the Collingwoods received dictated by Chrysanthemum herself? It’s not out of the question, though she would have been nearly ninety when Sarah-Jane was converted. Or is it that every kuzkardesh gara is somehow imprinted with Chrysanthemum’s command of her mother tongue? If what Susan said was true and they share a common subconscious, that might not be such a ridiculous idea.

What did the von Witzlebens find out there? What elemental force did they awaken? And why does Chrysanthemum appear to be the only member of the expedition that survived?

“I think we ought to congratulate ourselves, my dear,” smiles Gerald. “We’ve gone some way towards solving a seventy year old mystery.”

I wouldn’t want him betting his business on it. I’ve a feeling we’ve only just started assembling the clues.

*

There is a point at which the unthinkable, having mutated almost unnoticed into first the improbable, then the possible and from that to the very likely, finally becomes the inevitable. As I stub out my seventh cigarette since we returned to Woodford Road two and three-quarter hours ago, I have no choice but to accept that the process has run its course.

Cathryn Simmons and Niamh Latimer are missing.

Kerrie is pacing backwards and forwards in the living room. Dave, Rosie, Gerald, Sinead and I look on helplessly as she becomes increasingly distraught.

“She’d ‘ave called by now. In’t that right, Ro? Wouldn’t she ‘ave called by now? Of course she would. Then why ‘asn’t she? They’re in trouble. I know they are. It’s them two, in’t it, Ruth? First me car, then Sunday night, and now this. I’m right, aren’t I?”

I stretch my legs in front of me, smoothing the front of my skirt for no other reason than to give my hands something to do. My mouth remains shut; I can’t say anything helpful without referring to the conversation I had in London with Egerton, and that would lay me open to all sorts of accusations.

Why did he have to put me in this position? Now the woodwork is creaking with secrets waiting to pop out from it.

Next time I see that wanker I’ll cut off his balls and fry them in their own semen.

“You should try calling St John’s again,” suggests Gerald, giving me a stare that tells me I should have said something, no matter how vacuous.

“Haven’t you been listenin’?” Kerrie rounds on him. “Millicent goes for ‘er transfusions on Tuesdays. They usually keep ‘er in overnight, and Celeste stays in hospital wi’ ‘er till she falls asleep. She might not be back till nine or ten. What do we do in meantime? We can’t phone police, they’ll just say it ‘asn’t been long enough.”

Sinead digs me in the ribs.

“I don’t understand,” she whispers in my ear. “What’s in this book you and mum found that they want so badly?”

“Two or three old photographs, that’s all. We didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

“Looks like you were wrong.”

“Yeah, it’s all my fault. None of this would have happened if I’d told your mum to get stuffed and she’d travelled back here on her own, would it?”

“She asked you to come with her? So all that about your husband–“

“Was a load of crap. Happy now?”

The need to replace my tampon provides me with an excuse to spend a few precious minutes in the peace and quiet of Rosie’s bathroom. After that I sit on the bed, doing my utmost not to think of Yvette de Monnier sweeping aside Niamh’s beautiful coppery tresses and touching a small metallic device to the smooth skin covering the top of her spine.

Ending the girl’s life as surely as if she’d fired a bullet into her brain.

I’ve just decided to risk being dismembered by Rosie for ignoring her rule about not smoking in the house when her ex-husband appears at the door.

“Any news?” I ask without much hope.

“We’ve agreed to wait until nine o’clock, and if she still can’t get through I’ll drive David down to The Hard so we can catch the last ferry over.”

I look at my watch.

“Nearly an hour…I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand the tension that long. God, what a mess.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

Gerald steps towards the bed, reaches for my hand and pulls me to my feet. One look at his face tells me I might be about to discover a side to his personality I won’t enjoy.

“What’s the matter…?”

“I’ll tell you what the matter is. I don’t like to see someone for whom I care deeply being made to suffer. Nor do I have very much time for those who prove economical with the truth.”

I meet his gaze full on. Anything else would be as sure an admission of guilt as a signed affidavit.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“‘Susan said they didn’t believe in a God.’ That was the comment you made this afternoon when you were reading Kerrie’s notes. Yesterday you told us she’d confirmed your original idea, namely that the kuzkardesh gara were — and I quote — ‘an offshoot of Islam’. You can lock the door against a thief, but a liar…”

“I didn’t lie. Well, not as such. Okay, I did. It’s complicated.”

“Then you’d better simplify things for me, young lady, because you’re not moving from that spot until you do.”

Think fast, babe. The longer you prevaricate, the less convincing you’ll sound.

It all comes down to why Egerton and de Monnier have gone to so much trouble to get their hands on a list of names and a few snapshots.

The casket was sent to Helen as a trigger...it was an instruction to turn herself into a kuzkardesh gara and begin spreading the infection around.

A trigger that also began to work on Susan Dwyer, who was with her in Bucovina.

We don’t want her to have it. That goes for the photographs as well.

But Kerrie can’t have been there. She was eight months pregnant with Niamh at the time, and had four other children to look after.

So why does she need protecting?

Unless it’s someone else they’re worried about.

Someone close to her.

Someone who may well have visited Bucovina during her years as an archaeologist.

She says I’m gifted.

Jesus Christ, no...

“Tell her to call the police!” I cry. “Right this minute! I think Cathryn’s–“

“Gerry? Ruth? Where are you? She’s talking to Celeste!”

We race downstairs in response to Rosie’s news. Following her next door, all we can do is listen as the daylight fades and with it any chance that I might be mistaken.

“That’s ridiculous...she wouldn’t, not without telling me, I mean she just wouldn’t...I’ve known her for years, Celeste, she would never...’instructions’? What d’you mean, ‘instructions’? What do they say?”

At least a minute goes by, then Kerrie puts the phone down and turns to us, her face ashen.

“Cathryn’s gone,” she says in a barely audible voice. “She’s taken Niamh and gone. Celeste has been told to place Millicent in a nursing home and arrange for St John’s to be sold off. The shop as well. She isn’t coming back.”

Everyone seems to begin talking at once. Everyone except Gerald, who grasps my elbow and marches me into the garden.

“I want the truth,” he growls. “And I want it now.”

I yank my forearm free.

“Give me a break. I’ve only just worked out what’s going on.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Okay, but you’ll think I’m making most of it up.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

I’m desperate for a cigarette, but my bag is still in the bedroom. When will I learn never to let it out of my sight?

“It all goes back to last November when Tim and I split up,” I begin, speaking slowly to give me the time I’ll need to construct a credible version of the previous Ruth’s story and mesh it with my own. “We were lab technicians attached to a project financed by the MoD. It was all very hush-hush, and I knew when I handed in my resignation I’d be sworn to secrecy and all that. What I didn’t expect was that they’d pack me off to Northcroft in January as a spy.”

I pause for effect, but Gerald Cooper has seen and done a lot in his time, and he’s several steps ahead of me.

“They recruited you as a sleeper. They’d managed to cover up the fact that Helen Sutton was a kuzkardesh gara when she died, but they were anxious to have someone at the scene they could call on if any loose ends needed tidying up. As you were familiar with the area from your childhood, you must have seemed the ideal choice. Not that they’ll have told you any of this, am I right?”

“You’re dead right. All they said was I’d be contacted if my services were required. I had no idea they were behind this business with the will. It was only when I found out that the Navy had lied to the Collingwoods about their daughter that I began to put two and two together. I’ll be honest here and admit that I didn’t say anything to Kerrie because first I didn’t have enough to go on and second, well I mean how was I to know she was who she said she was? It’s the easiest thing in the world to forge a solicitor’s letter if the only person you’re going to show it to is a barmaid.”

“Yet in spite of your misgivings you agreed to accompany her here.”

“By that time Egerton and de Monnier had revealed their true colours. Kerrie tried to put a brave face on it, but I could tell she thought she was in real danger. That pair had gone to absurd lengths to steal the casket, so it stood to reason they’d make every effort to get their hands on the notebook as well.”

“As was proved on Sunday evening.”

“Exactly. The thing that bothered me most was why they didn’t take the casket earlier, when it was sitting at the bottom of a wall closet in an empty house. Then I remembered the struggle we’d had to get into that room because of the crate someone had wedged on the other side of the door. Burglars, obviously — or so we assumed. And they’d been in quite recently, judging by the lack of dust on the window ledge. But why leave the casket behind? Anyone with half a brain could see it was worth a couple of hundred quid at least. Unless of course they put it there for us to find.”

Gerald’s eyes darken.

“You mean for Kerrie to find.”

“Knowing she’d take it back with her as a present for Cathryn. Egerton and de Monnier didn’t want the casket for themselves, they were trying to stop Kerrie from showing it to her. Cathryn had something to do with what happened in Bucovina. I think that’s what this has been about from the start.”

I don’t have time to expand on this theory, as Kerrie is standing in the kitchen door beckoning us to join her. She looks drawn but calm and in control.

“A spot of good fortune. On Thursday David overheard Niamh mention Dover on the phone. It seems this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

“She can’t take Niamh out of the country,” Gerald assures her.

“You don’t know Cathryn. She can do any damn thing she likes when she puts her mind to it. Anyway, David’s been on to the harbour police and given them full descriptions. We’re setting off straight away, so we should be there not that long after midnight. Sinead’s staying with Ro. I know it’s a lot to ask, Gerry, but–“

“You’d like me to go across to Ryde, and see what I can uncover at that end. Consider it done.”

“You’re a love,” she says, squeezing his hand. “But go easy on the maid. She’s ever so timid.”

“I may be able to help there,” I put in.

“I agree,” says Gerald. “Ruth’s met the girl. I haven’t.”

“I thought you were keen to get home,” Kerrie frowns at me.

“Yeah, well things have changed.”

“There’s a lot Ruth hasn’t been able to tell you,” Gerald explains. “She had her reasons, and after listening to them I believe she acted in what she felt were your best interests.”

“Is that true?” Kerrie demands to know.

“It wouldn’t have done you any good,” I contend. “It certainly wouldn’t have prevented any of this.”

“That’s hardly the issue. I trusted you.”

“And you were right to do so,” maintains Gerald. “In my opinion she–“

“Okay, okay!” cries Kerrie, holding up her hands. “We’ll continue this discussion once I’ve got my daughter back.”

She picks up her bag and walks over to the van. When the door closes behind her, it’s as if an epoch has come to an end.

My friend Cathryn brought it back from a dig outside Luxor. Of course she had to give all that up when her mum’s health began to fail.

Was that really only a week ago? It seems like months…

It’s a shame, she had such a promising career ahead of her, but you never know what’s around the next corner, do you?

No, I guess you never do.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES The sequel to 'Death By Misadventure' CHAPTER 6 By Touch the Light "Dover, it appears, was a red herring. They flew from Gatwick to Paris this afternoon, on passports Niamh — and Celeste - were complicit in faking.” He hands me a small white envelope. “Meet Mrs Rachel Holmes and her seventeen year old daughter Teresa.”

It’s well after ten by the time Gerald pulls the Citroen to a halt outside the front entrance to St John’s House. The building is in darkness; although I called Celeste and told her we were coming over on the last car ferry, it’s occurred to me more than once that she may have cut and run, fearing that the wrath of God is about to descend on her — which it may yet do, if my companion’s expression is any guide to his frame of mind.

“She said to let ourselves in,” I mention to him as I check my make-up. “It was one of the few bits I could actually understand, she was crying so much.”

“I suppose we’ll have to convince her that it’s all under control, that there’s every chance Niamh will be back with her mother in the morning.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”

“Remember Kerrie saying Dave had given the authorities descriptions of them both? I think you’ll find Niamh has very short hair now, and that it’s been dyed the same colour as mine. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cathryn looks totally different as well.” I lift a few of the dark strands resting on my right shoulder. “Before she came here Celeste was a hairdresser. And before Sunday I was a redhead.”

“Were you indeed?”

“Ginger, same as Kerrie.”

“Both of you? I’d never have known.”

“You’re not meant to, that’s the point.”

I feel my mouth curl in a coquettish grin, and immediately regret it. The only way I could have chosen a more inappropriate moment to flirt with this man — this man! — was if we’d been at his dying mother’s bedside.

Fortunately his eyes tell me he’s as much in need of a little light relief as I am.

We leave the car and walk carefully along the short path leading to the porch. Gerald turns the handle and pushes open a door that gives onto a pitch-black hallway. I begin to follow him inside, but he puts out a hand and whispers that it might be best if I remain on the threshold until he’s sure the house is safe. I don’t argue; he’s the one with the military background, and in an uncertain situation like this I’m more than happy to be the junior partner.

Suddenly there’s light. Celeste is descending the wide staircase, dressed in a rich red robe decorated with stylised silhouettes of African warriors. She lowers her face as I move towards her, as clear a confession as I could have wished for.

“Celeste, this is Gerald Cooper, the gentleman I told you about,” I inform her as he comes to stand beside me.

“I am so sorry,” she murmurs. “So sorry…”

“Yes, well it’s a bit late for apologies,” huffs Gerald, his voice harsh enough for me to cast him a reproachful glance.

“We’re not here to blame anyone,” I tell the girl. “We just need you to tell us what happened.”

She looks as if she’s going to burst into tears at any moment, but manages to sniff them back.

“They left this morning. Early, before nine o’clock. Miss Simmons said that if anyone came here, I should tell them she was taking Niamh to London for the day.”

“And that didn’t strike you as unusual?” wonders Gerald.

Celeste nods her head several times, like a child being interviewed by the police after she and her big sister have been caught shoplifting.

“Was she talking about anyone in particular?” I ask her.

“Men were looking for her. Bad men. I saw one of them yesterday, hiding in the trees.”

Cunningham.

The bastard got his ‘result’.

If I catch up with him the only undercover operation he’ll be fit for is infiltrating a secret society consisting exclusively of quadriplegics.

I take Gerald’s arm, pulling him close and standing on my toes so I can speak quietly into his ear.

“The MoD. They wanted to flush Cathryn out, see where she runs to.”

“And their plan succeeded, except that she now has a hostage she can use against them.”

Celeste hears this, and begins wailing.

“This isn’t your fault,” I say firmly. “Cathryn’s responsible for taking Niamh, not you. Now if you want to help–“

“I need to go through any personal effects Miss Simmons may have left behind,” Gerald puts in. “Ruth, can you stay by the phone in case Kerrie rings?”

“Will do.”

“We’d also be grateful for some coffee and sandwiches,” he says to Celeste. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m ravenous.”

“Is there an extension in the kitchen?” I ask her. “Come on, love, pull yourself together.”

“On the…on the left as you go in.”

“Okay, why don’t I fix us all something while you two have a scout around?”

Fifteen minutes later I’ve filled plates with slices of cooked ham, salami, processed Bavarian cheese and crusty bread, and set out bowls of pickles, crackers and crisps. I’m pouring out the coffee when Gerald comes through the door, boiling with anger.

“What is it?” I cry, going over to him. “What did you find?”

“That stupid girl!” he rages.

“Oh God, what’s she done now?”

“I’m talking about Niamh. Dover, it appears, was a red herring. They flew from Gatwick to Paris this afternoon, on passports Niamh — and Celeste - were complicit in faking.” He hands me a small white envelope. “Meet Mrs Rachel Holmes and her seventeen year old daughter Teresa.”

The faces in the miniature photographs I take out are recognisably those of Cathryn and Niamh, though as I feared they’ve both adopted short, boyish hairstyles.

“Oh my giddy aunt,” I gasp. “I was right…”

“Put me in a room with the three of them and I wouldn’t know who to strangle first.”

“What’ll Kerrie say?”

“It’s what she might do that worries me. Because that’s not all. From Paris they were booked on a connecting flight to Bucharest.”

I feel my legs buckle beneath me.

Bucharest.

The capital of Romania.

Of which Bucovina is a province.

“We can’t say anything,” I mumble. “She’ll go after them. I know she will.”

“Yes, and thanks to her inheritance she now has the resources to bribe her way across the Iron Curtain.”

I slump into a chair and bang my fist against my forehead.

But tell me this: where does Kerrie Latimer’s father fit in?
That’s one of the things we’ve been trying to find out.

“Gerry, did she tell you if the cheque’s cleared yet?”

“I believe the money reached her account on Thursday or Friday…”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” I wait for him to sit before going on. “I’ve a hunch the will might be a forgery. It could have been the MoD’s way of making sure Kerrie travelled to Northcroft, found the casket and brought it back to show Cathryn. But I–“

“How did they know she’d search the house?”

“Oh, I think someone planted that idea in her head before she even set off. On Saturday night I saw Dave reading the notebook. He didn’t turn a hair.”

“You’re saying he’s a government agent too?”

“He became Kerrie’s boyfriend around the same time Helen Sutton died. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. And before you say anything, how on earth was I supposed to break that to her? But to return to the will, what I couldn’t work out was why the sum involved was so big. I mean, a quarter of a million…and that was only her father’s share. A tenth of that amount would’ve been enough to get her up there.”

Gerald’s face has gone white.

“They want her to follow Cathryn. That’s what the money is for. She has to know, Ruth. As soon as she gets in touch we’ve got to tell her everything.”

“Not everything. We can’t afford to drive a wedge between her and Dave. He might be a plant, but at the moment he’s the only person she can turn to. Besides, he probably has as little idea of what this is all about as I did.” He shakes his head, but I can see that I’ve swung him round to my way of thinking. “So it’s decided, then. Come on, let’s eat.”

More lies.

But the prospect of Kerrie walking blindly into that nest of quasi-religious vipers, her ignorance compounded by my unwillingness to divulge the more unnerving aspects of my encounter with Susan Dwyer, helps me justify them.

We nibble at the food — neither of us has any real appetite, despite having had nothing since lunchtime — then I cover what’s left with kitchen foil to help it stay fresh for later.

“What are we going to do now?” I ask Gerald as I follow him through to the lounge.

“Well, we can’t leave until the morning. I think you should get Celeste to make up a bed for you. I’m happy to man the phone.”

“Thanks, but I wouldn’t sleep a wink. No, I’ll stay here.”

“Are you sure? It could be a long time before you get some proper rest. Cathryn’s mother is still in hospital, remember. She’ll need someone to pick her up when they discharge her tomorrow.”

“God, I’d forgotten about that. And then we’ll have to let her know that not only has her darling daughter done a runner with a teenage girl, she’s also about to lose her home and spend the rest of her days in a…”

Cathy was adopted in 1942. That’s all I know. Millicent’s kept it from her. I haven’t a clue why.

“What is it, Ruth?”

“You know, that might be a blessing in disguise.”

“It’s a very good disguise.”

“Cathryn isn’t Millicent’s natural daughter. She was adopted at the age of four or five. I got that from Kerrie, by the way. And listen to this: Cathryn has never been told!”

“Mrs Simmons must have her reasons…”

“Yes, and won’t it be interesting to find out what they are? In the meantime, let’s see what her room has to show us. Celeste can do the boring bit.”

Gerald shrugs his shoulders, then leads the way upstairs.

It isn’t long before we’re busy sorting through the pile of papers, photographs, keepsakes and other assorted memorabilia Celeste has helped us assemble on the desk next to the dressing table. After a while I find other matters to occupy my time, the cramps in my abdomen having issued a stern reminder that my period is in full flow. That problem addressed, I rinse my face and hands, use my index finger as an improvised toothbrush, refresh my lipstick and treat my neck to an extra splash of scent. It’s all a bit make-do-and-mend, but considering the circumstances things could have been a lot worse.

Back in Millicent’s room I pull up a chair, lifting from the heap anything that might be of relevance. If my hand collides with Gerald’s on ever more frequent occasions, it’s not my fault we’re working on such a small surface.

A breakthrough of sorts arrives when he shows me an old black-and-white photograph of Millicent and her husband standing in a suburban garden, she draped in a Japanese flag while he carries a ceremonial sword.

“Where did they get those?” I wonder.

“Wasn’t Millicent a nurse in the Far East at one point?”

“Yeah, in Singapore. Arthur was badly injured when his ship was attacked. The day after he was brought to the hospital they were evacuated.”

Gerald rubs his chin.

“This is just a guess — but I’ve a funny feeling Millicent may have been working for Force 136.”

“Which is…?”

“It was the Singapore branch of the SOE — the Special Operations Executive.”

My eyes widen.

“They co-ordinated all the resistance movements, didn’t they?”

“That’s right. But 136 was disbanded shortly before the Japanese invaded.”

“Was Romania occupied?”

“Officially no. They–“

He doesn’t finish his sentence, for at that moment a telephone begins ringing. We hurry down to the lounge and find Celeste, who has been waiting dutifully for just such an eventuality, talking quietly into the mouthpiece.

“Mrs Cooper,” she says, passing it to Gerald.

“Just popping out for a smoke,” I mouth at him.

I make my way through the dining room to the verandah, where I light my first cigarette since we drove off the ferry. My watch tells me it’s nearly half-past eleven; this time last night I was with Padraig, worried only about how long I should let him fondle my left breast. Now I’m looking across the lawn towards a belt of trees my imagination has swarming with secret agents, any one of whom might decide that the three people in the house they’re staking out know far more than is good for them.

There’s much to be said for living every day as if it were your last.

I’m almost down to the filter when Gerald appears, deep lines of concern etched across his face.

“Bad news, I’m afraid,” he says. “David has lost her.”

“Lost her? How?”

“All he was prepared to tell Rosemary was that they’d had a fight. He thinks she may have bought a ticket for the Zeebrugge ferry, so he’s going to be on the next one. Reading between the lines, so to speak, it’s quite possible that he’s slipped up and let the cat out of the bag. If he did…”

“Zeebrugge’s in Belgium, isn’t it?” He nods his head. “Then I know where she’s going. One of the girls who went to Bucovina fifteen years ago lived in Brussels at the time. The address is in the notebook, but we made copies. I’ve got one in my purse.”

Gerald lets out a loud sigh.

“I must say I don’t like the idea of Kerrie wandering around a foreign country on her own — especially when she’s in a state of emotional turmoil. And I know that she doesn’t speak French.”

“I do, though.”

“Fluently?”

“Bien couramment. Comme une autochthone.”

“Like a…?”

“Native.”

“Wait a minute, you’re not suggesting we follow them? What about your passport?”

I dig inside my bag and wave the document in front of him.

“Never leave home without it.”

His eyes are troubled. Events are moving too quickly; one by one, the certainties of his life are being swept away.

“We’ll talk about this in the morning,” he says.

“I think we need to come to a decision now,” I argue as he steers me back inside. “You say you care for her. I need to make amends for, well, you know…”

“When I asked about your passport I was referring to the fact that you’ve been involved in this case for a long time. The authorities are certain to be on the look-out for you — and not just at Dover, I’ll be bound.”

“We have to try, Gerry. At least I have to.” I meet and hold his gaze. “And I want you with me.”

“I don’t know, Ruth…”

I turn from him, arms folded across my stomach. Within moments his hands have come to rest on my shoulders; I feel my body lean back automatically at his touch, and although the sensation is akin to falling off a wall with my eyes shut and not an inkling as to how far it might be to the ground, my mind doesn’t protest.

Now if I move my head slowly around…

But Gerald isn’t cut from the same cloth as Cunningham. If his smile proves he’s appreciated the closeness we’ve just shared, he isn’t about to take advantage of it.

“In the morning,” he repeats, and this time his tone leaves no room for dissent.

We head for the lounge and find that Celeste has laid out sheets, blankets and a thick counterpane on the sofa. She’s also placed little footstools in front of it. I take off my jacket and shoes, then sit down and pull the bedding over my skirt.

“I’ll be chivalrous and bag the armchair,” offers Gerald.

“Don’t be silly. The heating went off more than an hour ago. You’ll freeze.”

“I’ve suffered far worse privations, I can assure you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t suffer any at all on my account. Now let’s do the sensible thing and keep each other warm.”

I raise the edge of the quilt, inviting him to settle beside me. He rolls his eyes; he’s licked and he knows it.

“But we won’t turn the light off,” he says.

“No, we’d better not.”

He takes his place on the sofa. I wait for him to cuddle me, but he’s much too respectful so after a few moments I link arms with him and let my head sink into the cosy hollow where his shoulder meets his chest. All I can do after that is relax to the rhythm of his breathing as the grandfather clock in the corner of the room ticks relentlessly towards daybreak and the telephone maintains its stubborn silence.

I wake to the sound of Gerald yawning. He stands up, steals out of the room in his stockinged feet and closes the door behind him. I rub my eyes, squinting in the bright sunshine streaming in from the east-facing window.

Another morning.

Another chapter in a tale H P Lovecraft would have dismissed as too fanciful.

While I’m alone I reach back to unhook my bra. I may have become so used to wearing them that I feel undressed without one, but they weren’t made to be slept in.

After I’ve put on my shoes and run a comb through my hair I sit on the edge of the sofa and wait for Gerald to return. When he does, I can tell immediately that he’s been awake all night.

“I take it she didn’t ring,” I say as I haul myself to my feet.

“No, and Rosemary hasn’t heard from her either. I called just before I went to the bathroom.”

“Speaking of which, I’d better use the shower. I must stink.”

When I come back he’s fast asleep. I decide to go out and stretch my legs before I make myself coffee; the sun isn’t yet high enough to counter the cold northerly breeze that’s sprung up during the night, and as I can’t be bothered to fetch my jacket I hug my arms until I’ve reached the shelter of the woods…

…where I nearly go flying as I catch my instep on the loose cable some idiot has thrown over the wall.

Men were looking for her. Bad men. I saw one of them yesterday, hiding in the trees.

Or maybe it’s attached to something.

A telephone wire, for example.

I don’t have to follow the cable very far before my theory is confirmed. The only question is, where does the other end lead?

Hang on, didn’t we pass a set of road works last night as we drove up the hill? And wasn’t there one of those huts the men use in wet weather, even though it hasn’t been raining?

I march straight for the main road, indignation beating back the urge to run and wake Gerald. But my pace slows when I notice that the car parked a few yards from the front entrance is a light blue Austin Allegro.

And I come to a complete stop as I realise that the dark-haired woman at the wheel isn’t its only occupant.

Cunningham steps out, spits a piece of chewing gum onto the pavement and spends a good half a minute looking me up and down. I feel my cheeks begin to colour at the memory of his tongue inside my mouth; they cool when I recall the way he tossed me aside with no more consideration than he’d show towards an old dog end.

“Get in,” he orders me. “Your boss would like a heart-to-heart.”

I have no choice but to do as he says.

“Hair looks nice,” he smirks as I open the car door. “Poof.”

“Sod off before I knee you in the bollocks.”

“Very ladylike.”

One of these days I’ll give you a blow job, darling. Then we’ll discover if I’ve literally bitten off more than I can chew.

I didn’t say any of that out loud, did I?

No, he’d have come back with something. That type always do.

Suki Tatsukichi — I can’t bring myself to think of her as Ruth, so fully do I identify with that name — makes a single movement with her eyes and Cunningham is sent packing.

“Just us girls, eh?” I chuckle, settling into the seat and pulling the door shut.

“You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

“To offer me a pay rise? Don’t bother. Ten per cent of nothing is…well, you can do the arithmetic yourself.”

“If you check your bank account you’ll find you’ve been more than adequately rewarded for your services.”

“Really? What’s the going rate for aiding and abetting a kidnapping?”

“That was unforeseen. We had no idea she would stoop so low.”

“Niamh has a crush on Cathryn. She’ll have jumped at the chance to go on a big adventure with her mum’s best friend. I thought the agent you placed with the family would have realised that and had the sense to keep the girl away from her. I only hope he does a better job of looking after Kerrie because I’ll tell you this much, she isn’t coming back without her daughter.”

Suki’s brows lift, despite her clear reluctance to acknowledge my deductive skills.

“The reason I came to see you, Ruth, is to inform you that we’re taking you off this case with immediate effect.”

“Is that right?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I get it. You’re going to whisk me back to the north-east before I can talk to Mrs Simmons and discover who Cathryn really is — and how she’s connected with what happened in Bucovina fifteen years ago.”

“That needn’t concern you. We have the situation in hand.”

“Course you do. I’d be a fool to think otherwise, wouldn’t I?”

The look she throws at me is typically acerbic, yet there’s something else lurking behind those almond-shaped eyes — an emotion I can’t identify.

“How’s your adjustment coming along?” she asks.

“You really want to know?”

“I have to keep track of your progress. It’s part of my job.”

I’m gripped by an urge to berate her for keeping so much from me, for allowing me to spend months believing I still had a chance of returning to my original body. It passes.

“Okay, I suppose.”

“As vague as ever,” she sighs.

“It’s all you’re getting.”

Sliding a hand inside her jacket, she produces two plain brown envelopes and passes me the slimmer of the pair.

“A rail warrant, First Class, valid between Ryde Esplanade and Northcroft-on-Heugh.”

“So I’m heading back to the Gladstone? How jolly.”

“Trisha Hodgson and her brother-in-law have been digging. We’d prefer them to desist.”

“Oh, I’m being told what the mission is this time? Wonders will never cease!”

“Don’t be flippant. Trisha already knows more than she should.”

“Like the fact that Carol Vasey isn’t who everyone thinks she is? That’s right, I found out what really went on the night Bob Hodgson died. Hurts to say this, but I actually ended up feeling sorry for you. Doesn’t stop me hating you for not coming clean, though. What was the matter, didn’t you reckon I could handle the truth?”

If my words have any effect on her, she doesn’t show it.

“This contains an agreement annulling your marriage to Timothy Hansford-Jones on the grounds of non-consummation,” she says, holding out the other envelope. “All it needs is your signature. I can have it pushed through by the end of the week.”

I give her a long, searching stare.

“You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?” I chuckle. “Big favour you’re asking. Wearing a wedding ring saves me from an awful lot of unwanted admirers.”

“Perhaps it does. But it’s a burden to you all the same.”

She’s got me there. Of all the baggage weighing me down, the piece tying me to a husband I’ve never met has the potential to be the most restrictive.

But that isn’t what persuades me to accede to her request. Knowing that she’s lost fifteen years of her life, what right have I to deny her the chance to enjoy the time she has left?

“Okay, all done.” I give her back the signed annulment and begin twisting off her ring. “Anything else before I go?”

“We’ll send a courier at the weekend to pick up Kerrie Latimer’s car and the belongings she left at the hotel.”

“Nice way of making sure I toe the line.”

She reaches across to open the door.

“Goodbye, Ruth.”

I climb from the car and watch it disappear in the direction of the town centre. Walking back to St John’s House, I feel drained and discontented. This adventure has given me a sense of purpose, one that’s just been wrenched from my hands. It irks me that I can play no further part in helping Kerrie retrieve her daughter, that I’ll have to concoct a story to explain why I’ve suddenly decided to pack up and go home.

And all because Suki Tatsukichi says so.

But after I’ve stepped into the lounge, taken my place on the sofa beside Gerald, draped my arm around his shoulder and eased his head onto my bosom, my mood improves. Trisha needs me, and that will always count for something.

It isn’t long before Gerald stirs from slumber. I wait for him to come fully awake, then deliver the news that I’ll be leaving.

I don’t say why. I’ve told enough lies.

THE HOUSE IN THE HOLLOW The sequel to 'Truth Or Consequences' CHAPTER 2 By Touch the Light The door creaks open. My head snaps round, and I almost pass out at the sight of two living, breathing kuzkardesh gara.

I wake to find myself stretched out on a soft bed, completely naked. My arms are by my sides, and feel so heavy I can scarcely move them. When I try to lift my head from the pillow, the room spins so fast that the bile rises in my throat and I have to spit it onto my chest to prevent myself from throwing up.

Whatever Gillian Dixon put in that tea, it’s rendered me as feeble and defenceless as her daughter’s baby.

His grandmother doesn’t usually look like this, that’s the problem.

More brutal than the memory of some unspeakable act of violence, the picture of Gillian’s bald, jewel-crested head crashes into my mind, takes up residence there and refuses to leave.

When did she become a kuzkardesh gara? Who infected her, and where are they now? And what were the MoD doing while this was happening?

Pissing about forging wills and breaking into dead people’s houses to leave caskets behind, that’s what.

Fucking idiots.

But I can’t afford to let my temper get the better of me. Just as I did at Hayden Park, I force my mind to concentrate on making a thorough assessment of my immediate surroundings.

The room is smaller than the one I occupy at the Gladstone, roughly fifteen feet by ten. The door is in the left-hand corner as I look, and stands slightly ajar. Either I’m free to wander around as I please, or Gillian doesn’t expect me to be in any condition to make a run for it.

Trisha certainly isn’t, drugged or not.

Where is she? Christ, I hope she managed to get away.

Wait a minute, how did Gillian get me up here? I’m not the most sylphlike of girls; brawny as she is, it would have taken her five or ten minutes to drag me upstairs, and Trisha had only gone out to the car. Surely she’d have caught the bald-headed cow in the act…

Unless it was no coincidence that she left when the tea was about to be served.

Or that Gillian just happened to be wearing a wig when we arrived.

You’re being paranoid, babe. The very idea that Trisha lured you here under false pretences is too ludicrous for words.

Yet she’s got the same hairstyle as Gillian, brushed forward to hide her forehead…

Men have such a high opinion of themselves, don’t you think so?

And she wouldn’t tell me her boyfriend’s name…

They don’t realise that all they’ve ever been good for is to put food on the table and keep us warm at night.

Didn’t Susan Dwyer say something like that?

They are necessary to perpetuate our species, and to provide for us when we’re carrying and raising our children. In return we pleasure them, in ways most have never dreamed of.

The evidence is mounting up. It points towards only one conclusion: Trisha Hodgson, the girl I once loved more than life itself, is now a member of the same bizarre religious cult that Helen Sutton joined shortly before she died.

As nightmares go, that doesn’t so much as take the biscuit as run away with the whole barrel.

How could I have been so stupid? I knew there was something amiss as soon as she showed me Donna and Louise’s address. And yet I still barged headlong into what I ought to have realised was a set-up.

Not only that, but she managed to fool me into thinking there was nothing the matter with her.

No blame attached to you there, babe. It was one hell of an effective disguise.

Maybe, but that’s small comfort.

How many more of these women are walking unseen among us? How bad has the situation become?

If this menace gains control then that’s it. Full stop. Period. Punkt. Bye-bye progress, bye-bye creativity, bye-bye all the things that make us human. For ever.

After a few false starts I raise my hand far enough to check that I’ve still got my hair. The feel of it beneath my fingers — and what a blessed relief that is! — provides me with the impetus I need to drag myself to a kneeling position so I can look through the window to the right of the bed. The view is restricted by the sides of the hollow in which the house is set, but allows me a glimpse of the wooded hills on the south-western side of the valley. From the altitude of the sun I can tell that it’s quite late in the afternoon.

Trisha can’t have gone for help. It would have arrived long before now.

The woman in that room. She’s not my mother.

You stupid little tart! Why couldn’t you have left things alone?

I swing my legs round and instantly wish I hadn’t, for the nausea that sweeps through my system has me sitting with my head bent forward and dribbling like a senile old woman. It’s several minutes before I recover sufficiently to take note of the pinewood wardrobe and matching chest of drawers facing the window, or the dressing table to the right of the door whose surface is filled with bottles and jars disturbingly similar to those Kerrie Latimer and I came across in 6 Redheugh Close — as well as a stand holding a wig identical to the one Gillian Dixon wore.

The reason for my being here couldn’t be more plain.

If I didn’t feel so sick I’d laugh until I needed a hip replacing. Who do they think they’re dealing with? As soon as I can stand without the world turning somersaults around me I’m going to find that teapot and ram the snout so far up Gillian Dixon’s vagina I’ll be able to hang my coat on the back of her neck.

None of my clothes are anywhere to be seen, so I risk crawling across to the chest of drawers in the hope that it’ll contain something to cover my nakedness. A pair of black lace panties partly fulfils my requirements, but there isn’t a bra to be found — and the rest of the lingerie consists exclusively of suspender belts and pairs of seamed stockings.

Fine for the first time I sneak down to Simon’s room.

Not a great deal of use to me this afternoon.

When I open the wardrobe, it comes as no surprise to learn that the rails are hung with sleeveless black dresses. Yet when I pull one of them out I notice it lacks the diaphanous bodice that characterised the garments we found in the casket. Instead there’s a large heart-shaped hole cut into the material just below the collar, the edges machine-stitched and clearly not to factory standards.

Then I see the label attached to the inside.

“Marks and Spencer’s?” I gasp. “Marks and bloody Spencer’s?”

The others all carry the same tag. They’re common or garden retro ‘50s frocks that have been altered solely for the purpose of showing off the wearer’s breasts.

And this is a religious movement? What’s their holy book, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying?

I sit at the dressing table and go through the various compartments, bringing out an assortment of necklaces, rings and loose stones that appear to be made of nothing more precious than coloured glass. Thankfully I don’t see any spiked leather chokers, dog leads, whips or sets of handcuffs…though it’s early days, I suppose.

The door creaks open. My head snaps round, and I almost pass out at the sight of two living, breathing kuzkardesh gara.

They move into the sunlight, which glints off the black gemstones set in their shaven scalps and brows, as well as those dangling from their ears, strung along the chains hanging almost to their waists, and mounted upon the silver rings adorning their fingers and thumbs. It shines equally brightly upon the ebony paint covering their lips, their nails and even their nipples.

Gillian — I can only distinguish her from the other because she’s the stockier of the pair — reaches out to stroke her companion’s cheek. The gesture is reciprocated with what I have to admit is genuine tenderness.

But any chance that my hostility towards the pair might weaken is removed when two smaller, much younger converts appear behind them — one of whom is rocking a baby in her arms.

A teenage girl, for heaven’s sake.

A teenage mother!

Now I’m really angry. I want to know who’s responsible for this. I want them punished and I want them shamed.

And if the MoD try to keep it quiet I’ll blow the whistle on the whole fucking lot of them.

A figure has appeared on the landing.

Trisha! And she’s fully clothed!

I have the presence of mind to yank the counterpane from the bed and drape it around my shoulders before barging past the inhuman creatures blocking my path.

“Quick! We’ve got to get out of here!” I yell, grabbing her hand.

She doesn’t move.

“I can’t take you back with me,” she says quietly. “Not after everything you’ve done. They told me what happened on the night dad died. You were trying to blackmail Miss Sutton into changing the will. That’s why she ran down to the breakwater, to get away from you.”

I stagger away from her, unable to believe what I’m hearing.

“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to,” I pant, “but they were lying.”

“Were they? I’ve seen one of the letters you wrote to her. And I know all about the casket, and the reason you sent it. Personally I think you’re getting off lightly. But at least this way the punishment fits the crime. Enjoy life as a kuzkardesh gara, Ruth.”

Her words slice my guts wide open. I slide to the floor and sit there with my head in my hands.

The reason I came to see you, Ruth, is to inform you that we’re taking you off this case with immediate effect.

You bastards.

I’ve outlived my usefulness, and now you’ve found the perfect means of erasing me from the picture.

I will never forgive you for this.

Never.

When I finally lower my arms, Trisha has gone. I look up to see four sets of ebony lips curl in identical malignant smiles.

“Welcome to your new home, Ruth Pattison,” the kuzkardesh gara chant in unison. “Welcome to the Sunny Hollow hive.”

The bathroom at Sunny Hollow is a modern extension, built into the back yard from the bottom of the staircase. The tub takes up the whole of the left-hand wall, and leaves only enough floor space for a lavatory and a washbasin. Above the latter is a cabinet fronted by an oval mirror; inside I discover a rack containing five toothbrushes, one of which is still in its packaging, and shelves filled with such commonplace items as antiseptic creams, headache tablets, vitamin pills, sanitary towels and mouthwash.

All of them will have cost money.

Village stores don’t give away bags of groceries and other provisions. Electricity accounts aren’t famous for settling themselves.

Someone is financing this enterprise.

And I have a good idea who.

The door opens — the bolt has been taken out of the lock — to admit Gillian.

“There is so much we have to tell you, Ruth Pattison,” she says mellifluously.

“Fate has brought you to us for a very special reason,” adds Louise, materialising at her side and touching a bejewelled, black-nailed finger to her mother’s upper arm.

I don’t reply straight away. Instead I battle back my rage so I can figure out what it is about their faces that strikes me as off beam.

That’s it!

They don’t have those intricate patterns of dots going back from the corners of their eyes I remember from the photgraph of Sarah-Jane Collingwood.

Why not? Is it possible that their commitment to the cause isn’t all it might be?

Hair grows back. Nail varnish, lip gloss and costume jewellery can be removed. Tattoos are a different kettle of fish entirely.

Are they merely trying this out, in the same way that impressionable youngsters sometimes become animal rights activists or join groups of squatters? I could believe that of Louise and Donna, but their mothers? How could two mature women allow themselves to be taken in by this rubbish?

The pair turn from me and begin communicating in a private language of clicks, whirrs and sibilant whispers. More unsettling than the sounds themselves is the sight of their eyes glazing over when they make them, as if they’re robots whose power packs have run out of juice. They remind me of how Susan Dwyer’s face changed when she told me humanity was doomed.

The genie is out of the bottle, and no one is going to put it back.

You don’t know us, you ugly half-human bitch.

Once again I make an effort to stop my temper from boiling over. I’ve got to play this very carefully indeed. Whatever I do, I mustn’t give them an excuse to drug me again. Gillian and Donna’s mother — did she say her name was Hilary? — both have an advantage over me as regards height and weight; I’m confident I can outwit them, but only if I stay fit and alert.

I’m more concerned about what might happen after I’ve escaped. Trisha’s bound to have concocted some cock and bull story she’ll use to explain my absence. I only hope in the light of what she said earlier it doesn’t prove too damaging.

“So what happens now?” I ask the insectile duo, as much to interrupt their hissing and chirruping as anything else.

“You should get dressed,” answers Gillian, gesturing upstairs with her fake oriental eyes.

“What, go around in that clobber you left in the wardrobe for me? I think I’ll have my own clothes back, if it’s all the same to you.”

“That is out of the question.”

I take a step towards her.

“You don’t fool me, darling. You’re playing at this, aren’t you? I’ve seen a photo of the real thing. You’re just an imitation, and not a particularly good one either.”

“The replication process is never absolutely faithful,” she smiles. “If it were, the meme would have no opportunity to evolve. However, your invective explains your initial response to our appearance, which was one of repugnance rather than surprise. Aware of what we are, you feign a sense of outrage in order to disguise your true intentions, which are to pretend to go along with us until you have succeeded in getting us to let down our guard enough for you to attempt to leave. That we cannot permit.”

“I’m a prisoner, then? Says a lot for your ‘hive’ and its beliefs if it can only make new converts by holding them captive. How many of you termites are there, by the way?”

“There are enough of us to serve the purposes of the universal female mind,” answers Louise.

“You mean it’s just the four of you? Really?”

“We set an example for others to follow,” declares Gillian. “They will come to us when they are ready. As will you.”

I push my bare breasts right into her chest. To her credit, she doesn’t flinch.

“I’m not sure what you think you hope to achieve, but you’ve picked the wrong babe to fuck about with.” I exert even more pressure. “Why are you so keen on keeping me here, anyway? What’s so special about me?”

“That will become clear to you soon enough,” Louise puts in.

“You have a destiny to fulfil, Ruth Pattison,” says her mother, her face so close I can feel her breath against my cheek. “The enemy have unwittingly presented us with what we are now certain will be our most powerful weapon.”

I narrow my eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“You must dress,” insists Louise.

I open my mouth to protest, but realise there’s little to be gained by arguing with her. Besides, if I make a break for it I won’t get very far in just a pair of knickers.

Donna is standing outside the door to my room, like some hideous parody of a serving girl. She invites me to sit on the bed while she puts together my outfit.

“You’re wasting your time,” I tell her as she lifts my left foot and slides it inside the first of the stockings she’s selected for me. “I won’t weaken.”

“We do not anticipate that you will,” she says enigmatically.

I’m left to fasten the suspenders myself. It takes me a minute or two — there’s a knack to it, and my fingers don’t seem to ‘remember’ it all that well. Yet although I’d probably have changed from tights to stockings as soon as I started wearing ‘50s clothes on a regular basis, it still feels like putting on the opposition’s colours.

That impression is strengthened when I step into the dress Donna holds out for me. The one consolation comes when I gaze down at my naked breasts and realise I couldn’t have two more prominent reminders of the need to fight for my freedom.

“Satisfied?” I grumble as I bend down to slip on the black high-heeled shoes the kuzkardesh gara has picked from the dozen or so pairs I saw at the bottom of the wardrobe. “Tell me, where did you witches get the idea that you’ve got to go around with your tits hanging out? Did our Chrysanthemum moonlight as a stripper before she caught the anthropology bug?”

“Frau von Witzleben was a great admirer of Minoan culture,” answers Donna.

“Ancient Crete, eh? Good job she wasn’t interested in pre-colonial Africa, or you’d all have bones stuck through your noses.”

Not a flicker.

No sense of humour, then. That figures.

Bye-bye progress, bye-bye creativity, bye-bye all the things that make us human.

Donna adjusts my collar — as if anyone’s going to notice it with what I’m advertising on the shelf below. Her mouth shapes itself into a rictus of distaste when her hand comes into contact with my hair.

It serves no purpose other than to feed the chimera of selfhood.

My eyes are drawn to her scalp. There isn’t the slightest trace of stubble. It’s as shiny and smooth as I’d expect it to be if her head had been shaved only a few minutes ago.

That could be you, babe, if you allow this mental virus to worm its way inside your mind.

I’ll throw myself off Blackpool Tower first.

“We should join the others,” says Donna. “The evening meal is ready.”

I follow her downstairs, the sight of my breasts bouncing and swinging only adding to the sense of betrayal raging within me.

But they’ve forgotten one thing: I’ve put in too much hard work becoming Ruth to allow myself to be walled up in a place like this.

I’m getting out of here.

And when I do, Sunny Hollow is going to be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

Hilary Parker inclines her head and hisses three guttural syllables into her daughter’s face. In reply she receives a single click of the tongue; the sound is clearly meant to indicate agreement, as both immediately rise from the table and begin piling together the plates, bowls and spoons they set out earlier for their so-called meal.

I watch the kuzkardesh gara carry them from the dining room, resolved not to let my gaze fall upon the sinister crests of black gemstones that seemed to pulse and vibrate in the artificial light as they fed.

If only it were as easy to ignore the fact that the MoD, in their infinite wisdom, have set up an experimental hive in the middle of North Yorkshire.

“They want to know how fast a collective mind grows, whether the expansion is regular or exponential, and what effect its presence has on the local community,” Louise told me before she left the table to see to her baby. “As long as we refrain from drawing too much attention to our activities they have promised to leave us alone.”

They’re lab rats.

And I’ve just been dropped into the cage.

“You have not eaten very much,” frowns Gillian, gesturing with beringed, black-nailed hands at the plate containing the flavourless lentil-based mush I toyed with for all of thirty seconds before I pushed it away in disgust.

“Arrange the following appetite suppressants in order of effectiveness: drugged; being held here against my will; having my clothes confiscated; listening to you lot jabber on like overgrown cockroaches…oh, and being served something that looks like it came out the backside of one of those cows down by the beck.”

“This is all for your own good, Ruth Pattison. You will thank us for it when you come to recognise the illusory nature of the individual self.”

“I’ll decide what’s good for me, thank you very much. Now I haven’t had a cigarette since a quarter to eleven, so unless you fancy me showing you just what a bad-tempered bitch I can be when I’m deprived of my nicotine fix I suggest you hurry along and fetch me my bag.”

“We do not smoke,” she says coldly.

“Well I do, and I’m gasping. Don’t worry, I’ll go outside. You won’t have to breathe any of it in.”

“The hive requires you to abstain from stimulants of any kind.”

“Then the hive can piss off.”

The kuzkardesh gara touches a finger to the black gemstone set in the centre of her forehead.

“Are you not curious as to how Gillian Dixon came to discard the illusion of selfhood?”

“What d’you mean? You’re Gillian, aren’t you?”

“The organism with whom you are conversing uses that name, yes. She is not an individual, however, but an avatar — a vehicle if you will for a single intelligence that simultaneously inhabits this body and those of the other members of our hive.”

“Don’t be stupid. You’ve fallen for some kind of pseudo-religious gobbledegook, that’s all.”

Her jewelled brows lift.

“In spite of her intrinsic human failings, Gillian Dixon was no fool. She knew at once that the phenomenon we refer to as the universal female mind is real, and so did you.”

A single appearance, a single set of opinions, a single purpose.

“Okay, let’s say I accept that there’s something in what you say. Now explain why you need all those silly noises to communicate.”

“You fail to understand, Ruth Pattison. We possess no telepathic abilities. An avatar has her own set of sensory inputs; everything she sees, hears, smells, tastes and touches is unique to her. How could she function otherwise?”

“So you need a way of giving each other factual information, like if the milk has gone sour or a light bulb needs changing. I get that. But what’s with all the clicks and whirrs?”

“They represent syllables culled from a language called Ugur.”

“Ugur? Let me guess, that’s what they speak in Bucovina, right?”

“It originated in Central Asia. Our version was devised by Chrysanthemum von Witzleben, who as you are aware was the founder of the very first hive. It permits us to form expressions that impart the maximum amount of data in the shortest possible time.”

“And you picked it up just like that?”

“Gillian Dixon became proficient in Ugur within three days of her arrival. That is how she knew the incubation process was complete.”

“Your arrival? Weren’t you infected by your daughter?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Louise saw Helen Sutton’s body on the beach. I assumed that’s how the meme got into her brain.”

Gillian shakes her head.

“Helen is the reason we’re here, that is true. But a corpse cannot make converts. Our assimilation into the universal female mind was facilitated by your species.”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

They’re lying about this.

They have to be.

“We were removed from our homes the following night,” Gillian goes on. “Our daughters had seen too much, and had talked to too many of their friends.”

“Where did they take you?” I ask in as steady a voice as I can manage.

“To another country, where we stayed at the home of a kuzkardesh gara named Sorina Dascalu and her three children. Sorina was of English birth, and could therefore–“

“What was she called before her conversion?”

“Sarah-Jane Collingwood.”

I close my eyes and swear under my breath.

They were taken to Bucovina and deliberately exposed to the meme. No wonder Yvette de Monnier struck out on her own. The MoD are doing the cult’s work for them.

Gillian leans closer.

“Choose the right side, Ruth Pattison,” she says softly. “Choose us. Because we are going to win.”

And they are.

For the simple reason that humanity is its own worst enemy.

Our race is doomed by its very nature.

But I won’t become one of these creatures. I’ll slice off my own tits before I let that happen.

“I’m going for some fresh air,” I tell Gillian. “There’s no rule against that, is there?”

Apparently not. She even points me toward the vestibule, where I find a row of pegs upon each of which are hung thin linen jackets — black, of course, to match the regulation dresses. To my relief they all have three hooks at the front, so I can enjoy the luxury of covering my nipples.

Outside, the temperature is rapidly falling. I keep to the paved area near the front door, fearful of twisting an ankle if I stray onto the grass in these heels. After a minute or so the sound of a motor engine drifts from the top of the valley. Someone is heading for an evening at one of the village pubs, or perhaps a chat and a few games of cards at a friend’s, heedless of the peril lurking in the house they’re shortly to pass.

Long may their happy ignorance continue.

Hilary’s voice brings this all too brief spell of solitude to an end.

“It is cold, Ruth Pattison. You should come inside.”

“I’ll be okay,” I assure her, though the jacket wasn’t designed to keep out the chill of a cloudless northern night.

“You need sleep.”

“Yeah, I expect I’ll nod off the second my head touches the pillow.”

I feel her take my arm. I make as if to shrug it away, but her touch is inexplicably comforting.

“We know you are anxious. That is only natural. But the transition is a gradual one. It is not a case of one minute you think you are an individual and the next you do not. The illusion of selfhood does not suddenly disappear. What cease to exist are the mental barriers that prevent you from seeing it for what it is.”

There was no ‘decision’, Ruth. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t go through an epiphany when you lose your individual awareness. It still feels like being you. What’s changed is that your emotional and psychological responses are now identical to those of every other kuzkardesh gara.

“They just pop out of existence, do they?”

“You ought not to make the mistake of thinking there is no scientific basis for any of this.” She reaches into her own jacket and presses a slim paperback into my hand. “Open your mind, Ruth Pattison. If not to us, then to the message in here.”

“I was wondering when we’d get to your sacred texts.”

“It is the truth. Of course it is sacred.”

She walks back to the house. I follow her as far as the door, where there’s enough light for me to peer at the book’s cover. Although the title and author are unfamiliar to me, the publishing company definitely isn’t.

The Oxford University Press? Why are they encouraging this? Come to think of it, why are they being allowed to?

I take the volume up to my room, guessing I won’t be disturbed until I’ve had time to discover this ‘message’ for myself. But before I begin reading, my thoughts return to the tale I was told earlier. The details are unimportant; what matters is that the MoD set up the Sunny Hollow hive with so few restraints on its members’ movement. If they don’t feel threatened by these women, nor should I.

Kicking off my shoes, I hitch up my hem so I can unclip the tops of my stockings, then reconsider. I need to become thoroughly accustomed to these clothes if I’m to feel comfortable in them when I eventually make my escape. I lie back on the bed, raise my knees and let the wide folds of my dress fall where they will.

I open A New Approach to Cultural Evolution with a sense of purpose I didn’t have a few minutes ago. ‘Know your enemy,’ said Sun Tzu in The Art of War. It’s a piece of advice I fully intend to follow.

I haven’t finished the first chapter before I understand why the kuzkardesh gara set such store by this work.

Memes, they’re called, self-replicating units of information that copy themselves and jump from person to person.

Egerton could have been reading directly from the page now in front of me.

Memes.

Viruses of the mind that spread from one brain to another, parasitising the host and turning it into an instrument for the meme’s propagation. Agents of cultural transmission, passed on because of the brain’s predilection for unconscious imitation — a survival mechanism as old as humanity.

If you see a group of people running in a certain direction, the instinct is to join them because they’re almost certain to be fleeing from danger. On the African savannah that probably meant a large predator; those who lacked that automatic response were more likely to be eaten, and consequently fewer of them lived long enough to mate and have children. Natural selection, in the form of fierce, hungry carnivores, has made us intensely susceptible to the replicators that today bombard us from magazines, newspapers, cinema screens, radios and television sets. We can’t stop humming that tune. We’ve simply got to tell that joke. We don’t mean to start talking like the guys on that American cop show, it just slips out.

But memes alone can’t explain why Donna Parker and Louise Dixon, let alone their mothers, chose to follow Sarah-Jane Collingwood’s example and become kuzkardesh gara. There has to be something more going on. Teenage girls tend to copy models, actresses and pop singers, not thirty-four year old mothers of three who go about bald and bare-breasted.

What advantages does the subconscious see in that look? Why is it willing to copy something so utterly abnormal?

I toss the paperback to the floor and swing my legs after it. I reckon it’s well after midnight, and if I don’t at least try to get some sleep I’ll be in no fit state to resist whatever it was that turned Gillian, Hilary and their daughters into the abominations they are today.

I’ve just finished unzipping my dress when I notice a scrap of paper that must have fallen out of the book after I threw it down. I lean forward to lift it from the carpet, frowning as I look at the phrase written on it in a hand eerily reminiscent of Helen Sutton’s.

Siz okde

Now where have I heard those words before?

Okde…

I know what it means. I’m convinced of it.

More unnerving than a déja vu that refuses to fade, more annoying than a fragment of a song whose title just won’t come to mind, those alien syllables resound through my consciousness as I slide into bed and turn off the light.

It means…

It means…

Christ, it’s on the tip of my tongue!

She says I’m gifted.

Gifted. That’s it!

As in talented.

And siz?

Fate has brought you to us for a very special reason.

‘You are gifted.’

That’s the message Hilary was referring to.

And my gift is so important to these women that they’ll do everything in their power to turn me into one of their kind.

I’m going to make sure they have a bloody long wait.

THE HOUSE IN THE HOLLOW The sequel to 'Truth Or Consequences' CHAPTER 3 By Touch the Light I stand up and sweep every item in front of me to the floor. This has gone on long enough. I have to leave now. Fooling these women into thinking I’m coming round to their point of view has become an indulgence I can’t afford. Not when I’ve started hearing voices.

The sound of someone moving around downstairs rouses me from a dreamless sleep. I sit up, yawn and push a hand back through my hair. It feels even more lank and lifeless than usual, prompting me to make a mental note to ask Janice if she can do something about it, preferably within the next few days.

For a moment I wonder why I’m not wearing pyjamas — then I see the scrap of paper poking from the book on the bedside table, and everything else is reduced to insignificance.

Siz okde.

You are gifted.

I’m in a house occupied by four kuzkardesh gara, and whatever abilities they’ve identified in me are valuable enough to justify keeping me here against my will.

They want me to join their hive.

To add my gift to their collective subconscious.

Imagine living in a street where everyone starts the day with a cup of tea except you, who always have coffee. One morning you walk into the kitchen and instead of coffee you make tea, because that’s what you prefer first thing. You don’t suddenly think of yourself as a tea drinker. You just like tea, the same as your neighbours.

And unless Susan Dwyer was making everything up as she went along, the conversion process is so insidious it could be well underway before I understand what’s happening to me.

Getting away from here would seem to figure reasonably highly on today’s list of things to do.

Emptying my bladder holds the number one spot. I pick up the dress Donna chose for me yesterday, holding it in front of my chest as I pad down to the bathroom. Once I’ve relieved myself I shower — but I don’t lather my hair before I’ve tested the soap on my pubes to make sure it won’t dissolve them like that stuff from Romania did when Kerrie Latimer used it on me. Better safe than sorry.

Better anything than being bald.

As I step from the tub it occurs to me that my clothes and other possessions may well be hidden either in the Dormobile or the barn it’s parked outside. Not that I feel particularly cheered by this sudden insight; without a crowbar to hand they might as well be buried in a strongbox on Pitcairn Island for all the chance I have of getting at them.

I wrap myself in towels, then open the cabinet above the washbasin to take a new toothbrush from the rack.

“Okde,” I mutter as I finish rinsing my mouth. “Siz okde.”

I’ve heard that phrase before. I know I have.

And I suspect it’ll be to my lasting benefit if I can only recall where.

Back in the bedroom, I scowl at the attire I have no choice but to wear until I can recover my own.

You just like tea, the same as your neighbours.

How long would I have to stay here before I came to regard this style of dress as normal? I suspect that’s one of the things I’ll need to watch out for.

I fasten my suspenders with surprising proficiency, but the zip at the back of my dress causes me no end of frustration before I eventually force it to the top. Nor do my shoes, which may be half a size too small — deliberately, no doubt — pinch any the less.

“Bir bolmak hemme.”

I jerk my head to the left at the sound of Gillian’s voice, but there’s no one else in the room. And it seemed much too clear to have come from the landing.

Bir bolmak hemme.

It’s the same language as before. Ugur, or whatever she called it.

As for what that phrase might mean, I don’t think I want to find out.

On the way to the door I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the dressing-table mirror. It’s not an uplifting sight: there are shadows under my eyes, and my hair is sticking up all over. If by some miracle Simon was to make an appearance now, I wouldn’t give much for the chances of him drawing me into his arms once we’d made our escape, let alone treating me to a long, delicious kiss. We might not even get that far — the shape I’m in he’d probably leave me behind for one of the kuzkardesh gara.

Would you believe it, I finally get asked out by a man I’m physically attracted to and something like this has to happen.

Just you wait, Alice Patricia Hodgson. I’ll still be reminding you about this when that kid in your belly is knitting booties for her first grandchild.

My self-esteem has risen slightly once I’ve added a couple of long necklaces to my outfit, so that when I glance down I can see more than just my naked breasts. It nosedives again after I notice how pallid my complexion appears without any foundation or rouge.

They’ve got my cigarettes too, damn them. It’s a good job they haven’t thought of trading fags for locks of hair or I’d be a skinhead by this time tomorrow.

“Bir bolmak hemme…”

There it is again!

Get out of my brain!

I stand up and sweep every item in front of me to the floor. This has gone on long enough.

I have to leave now. Fooling these women into thinking I’m coming round to their point of view has become an indulgence I can’t afford.

Not when I’ve started hearing voices.

I’m getting out of here, and no force on earth can stop me.

Except one.

When I reach the living room, Louise is leaning against the door to the vestibule as she rocks her little son in her arms, whilst Gillian is blocking the entrance to the kitchen. It’s as if they’ve divined my intentions and moved to counter them.

With a good deal of success. I’m no scrawny, underfed waif, but I simply don’t have the strength to push past someone of Gillian’s build. Even her daughter would present me with a problem unless I resorted to violence. And they know full well that as a woman I’d rather shoot myself in the vagina than risk harm coming to a three month old baby.

There’s got to be another way, one that involves tact and guile.

“Salam, Ruth,” smiles Louise, and all at once the solution is staring me in the face.

“Uh, salam,” I reply. “That’s the word they use for ‘hello’ in the Middle East, isn’t it?”

“Ugur is related to Turkish. It also contains elements of Arabic.”

“The meme programs our minds to think in Ugur,” explains Gillian. “We can still speak English, but it is no longer our native tongue.”

“It actually takes quite an effort,” admits Louise.

“The meme scrambles the patterns of neural signals that enable an avatar to use language as a means of communication. After they have been reconfigured she has become a Turcophone, and always will be. She has to rely on her episodic memory if she needs to revert, as we are doing now.”

“I see…” is the response I make — though I don’t, not really. “So what’s ‘baby’?”

“Babek,” answers Hilary, coming in from the dining room.

“That’s easy to remember! Would you mind if I, uh…?”

“Elbetde,” Louise hisses in reply to my unfinished question, her expression translating the term more effectively than any dictionary. She’s telling me of course I can hold him, she trusts me implicitly.

Can she really be that easy to hoodwink?

But as I take Philip from her, the love she feels for him engulfs me, transcending her outlandish appearance and making me viscerally aware of what it must be like to care for the living being I carried in my womb and gave birth to.

“Salam, babek,” I murmur to him, my eyes as adoring as his mother’s. Gillian and Hilary have arrived at my side, their hips pressing lightly against mine. We all start laughing when Philip’s tiny fingers try to shove my beads aside so he can get at my nipple. Donna is here too, her giggles adding to the merriment.

You struggle against us now, Ruth Hansford-Jones, but that which is within you may not be gainsaid.

Susan Dwyer’s warning thunders through my consciousness. This is how the meme operates, latching on to something that’s already inside the victim and changing it to suit its own purposes. It amplifies her desires, at the same time shaping them into the form best equipped to ensure their transmission.

And she hasn’t a clue what’s happening until it’s too late to do anything about it.

I’ve wrenched my mind free from the spell by the time I realise there’s no one between me and the door. I snuggle Philip against my right breast, freeing my left hand to turn the handle. To my immense relief, the jacket I wore yesterday evening is still on its peg.

“I’m going now,” I announce. “I’ll put the baby down when I’m certain I’m not being followed.”

None of the kuzkardesh gara move an inch. Unable to believe my good fortune, I lift the jacket by the collar and punch my arm into the sleeve. Unfastening the Yale lock proves to be a tricky business one-handed, but the taste of liberty is on my tongue and I’m not about to let it trickle from my mouth.

Once I’m outside, I slam the door shut. Depositing Philip on the dew-soaked grass — I don’t suppose he’ll be unattended for more than a moment or two so I have no concerns regarding the child’s safety — I head straight for the road. It’s a tough ascent in high heels; nor is my ability to concentrate on keeping my balance helped by the fact that I’ve eaten practically nothing during the last twenty-four hours.

Breathless and sweating profusely, I reach the top of the path. The Dormobile is still parked outside the barn. It’s locked, of course, and although I’m desperate enough to consider wrapping the sleeve of my jacket around my fist and smashing one of the side windows I’d have more chance of swallowing the engine whole than of starting it without the keys. I waste a few more precious seconds rattling the barn door, already beginning to feel as if I’m fighting for a lost cause.

Somehow I bully myself into thinking more positively. I’m more than twenty miles from home, I have no money and I fear that before long I’ll be ravenously hungry. On the other hand, conditions couldn’t be more favourable: the sunshine has that hazy quality that suggests the weather will soon be overcast and therefore reasonably cool, whilst the recent dry spell means that if I have to cut across country to avoid pursuit I’ll be in no danger of stumbling into a quagmire.

With any luck it won’t come to that.

Glancing behind me every few yards to check that the road is still clear — if one of the kuzkardesh gara comes after me she’ll need to put on her wig and change her make-up, which should give me a bit more time to play with — I walk down to the old railway crossing as fast as my shoes will let me.

The stone cottage beside it looks as devoid of life as the lightning tree in the corner of the field climbing to the wooded ridge on my right. Before I disturb the owner of the white Skoda taking up most of the forecourt I tug at the front of my jacket to test the strength of the hooks holding it closed. The last thing I need is for my tits to pop out while I’m begging to use the phone.

I knock loudly and repeatedly, but to no avail. I’m far from downhearted, however. I can see a farmhouse less than a quarter of a mile ahead, and the entrance to another the same distance along the lane leading from the junction to the beck.

The rumble of a vehicle approaching from the head of the valley has me rushing to open the crossing gate so I can hide round the back of the guards’ van. Although it turns out to be a grey Vauxhall Viva with an unaccompanied male driver, I’m reluctant to return to the road. In my black jacket and dress I’ll be all too easy to spot when my captors eventually start searching for me.

And they might not be the only ones.

I’ve got to disappear, and I’ve got to do it today. I won’t be safe in Northcroft; when the MoD learn that their ploy has failed, they may well opt for a more orthodox means of ensuring I don’t talk. As for where I should pick as a bolt-hole, the further away the better. A croft on a remote Scottish island seems a pretty desirable residence at present.

One thing I don’t have to worry about is supporting myself. Suki was telling the truth when she said I’d been paid handsomely for my work as a government agent. Thanks to the MoD’s munificence I now have nearly five thousand pounds to call on, which I’ve salted away in six separate bank and building society accounts. After a year or so it’s possible that I’d be forced to eke out a living serving pints of Tartan in some Hebridean drinking hovel; then again, I could end up marrying a laird and have servants attending to my every whim.

Will there be anything else, Lady McTavish?

A pot of tea would be nice, Morag. And if you wouldn’t mind asking Cruikshank to walk the collies down to the loch and back?

All that’s conditional on me getting back to the Gladstone by the middle of the afternoon at the very latest, so I can gather my things together and set about laying a false trail to fool people into thinking I’ve gone back down south to deal with a family emergency. I’ll stay in York tonight, then aim for somewhere on the other side of the Pennines to lie low until I’ve liquidated my assets and I’m ready to cross the border.

Fleetwood.

Why not? I’ve never been to Fleetwood. I bet it’s very nice there, on the coast and everything.

It’s not quite the last place anyone would think to look for me, but it’ll be in the top five.

First I need to phone for a cab, and to do that I’ll have to find a house where at least one of the occupants is awake.

I decide to take a chance and follow the trackbed, which is clearly distinguishable from the footpath rising at a gentle but constant gradient for the woods. The railway’s course appears to have run north, away from the foot of the escarpment; there’s every likelihood it’ll pass close to some of the farms and hamlets scattered across the countryside between here and Stokesley. Treading carefully in shoes that hurt more with each step I take, I start out on the next stage in my bid for freedom.

I haven’t walked more than three or four hundred yards before I recognise that I’m rapidly coming to the end of my tether. The mist has thickened, and every lungful of air I inhale seems laden with moisture. Despite the lack of sunshine, the temperature has continued to increase. I daren’t undo my jacket in case I meet someone out for an early morning stroll with his dog; just as annoying, when I push back my fringe, my hand comes away feeling like it’s been through a lump of straw coated in lard.

After about half a mile the trail enters a shallow cutting. This soon opens onto a wide bowl whose sheer, rocky slopes identify it as a disused quarry.

And there the track ends.

I’ve been going the wrong way. All I’ve done is walk down a very long cul-de-sac.

Shitbags!

I sit on one of the smoother boulders strewn around the depression, my fingers immune to the despair clouding my vision as they busy themselves arranging the folds of my dress. Not since I made the discovery that I’d be female for the rest of my life have I felt so low.

But I refuse to cry.

I didn’t then and I won’t now.

“Bir bolmak hemme…”

Not you again!

Can’t you leave me in peace?

I start back for the crossing, mainly because I don’t know what else to do. The footpath still runs parallel to the railway, but I’ll only be able to reach it by crawling up the side of the cutting. And if, as looks likely, it doesn’t skirt the woods but cuts through them to the moorland above, I’ll be faced with not just an exhausting scramble but also a hike of several miles across difficult terrain in poor visibility. With these shoes I’d be risking serious injury and worse.

At the gate I pause, checking to see that the road is clear. The track on the other side of the crossing disappears into a ploughed field. But the line of trees snaking along the valley floor gives me an idea. The dry weather means there won’t have been much run-off; I could follow the channel downstream, perhaps as far as the village. Marginally less irritated at the quirks and caprices of Mother Nature, I jog the short distance to the junction, then stride down the lane in the direction of the beck.

A narrow pathway diverges to the right, threading and dipping through riotous bushes to a precarious wooden footbridge. To my surprise the stream remains fairly vigorous, though the water is nowhere more than a few inches deep. I sit down, take off my shoes and gently lever my body off the slats until my feet are planted in the shallows on either side of the bed. Although my stockings insulate me from the worst of the sudden chill that shoots into my soles, I still let out a high-pitched squeal.

It turns out to be the first of many. With only one hand to fend off the overhanging branches I have to duck beneath in order to prevent their twigs snagging my hair, I find it almost impossible to maintain any sort of balance as I struggle along, one awkward step at a time. The stones and pebbles washed down by the current are jagged enough to tear the nylon protecting my feet to ribbons. Fearing that they’ll soon be lacerating my skin as well, I stoop to put my shoes back on — which only slows my progress more.

Fallen logs, clumps of reeds, banks cancerous with stinging nettles, and now clouds of midges so dense I can scarcely breathe without ingesting dozens of the little blighters…

But it’s the waterfall that defeats me. The drop is only about six feet, yet I can see no way to negotiate it that doesn’t involve jumping — and once I’m down there, I’ll have burned my boats. The sides of the gorge the stream has eroded are almost vertical. Were I to break an ankle I’d be trapped, yelling for help until my voice gave out and starvation or exposure finished me off.

Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it’s of little use to a carcass.

Half an hour or so later, weary, bedraggled, and smarting from a bruised thumb, I arrive back at the crossing. It’s as if I’m a character in one of those films set in a haunted house when no matter how hard the protagonists try to escape, they keep returning to it.

This time I come upon a thin, grey-haired man in a pair of dark blue overalls pulling weeds from the grass verge outside the cottage. He looks up as I draw nearer, then retreats two or three paces when he notices what I’m wearing. He couldn’t be more apprehensive if I’d just threatened to turn him into a toad.

“Excuse me,” I call out, doing my best to put on an approximation of a smile, “do you live here?”

“What if I do?”

“Listen, I really need to use your phone to ring for a taxi. I’d pay for the call, but the women in Sunny Hollow have hidden all my money. They took my clothes too, that’s why I’m dressed like this.”

He frowns, then carries on with his weeding.

“No business o’ mine, what goes on up there.”

“You’ve got to help me, please!” I cry, pulling at his elbow. “I’ve been kidnapped, for God’s sake!”

“Yer must think I were born yesterday,” he glowers. “Kidnapped, yer say? Funny sort o’ kidnappers, lettin’ yer wander round on yer tod.”

“I managed to give them the slip, you stupid…sorry, I’m at my wit’s end. If they find me now–“

“Aye, they said one o’ yer’d try an’ trick yer way in sooner or later.”

“Who did?”

“Men from council. Don’t ‘ave owt to do wi’ em, they told us. An’ whatever yer do, yer mustn’t let ‘em past front door. Not for any reason, they said. Any reason.”

“Fine. Then I’ll wait here while you make the call. I’ll go and stand fifty yards down the road if you don’t trust me.”

“Who yer rabbitin’ on wi’ out there?” cries a woman from the open passageway.

“It’s one o’ witches from up dale. Stop inside an’ keep thesel’ out o’ sight. Tell lasses an’ all.”

“I’m not with them!” I protest. “They abducted me!”

“Pull t’other one, love. Yer’ve got that look in yer eyes, same as rest of ‘em. Now clear off afore I set dogs on yer.”

He goes indoors, leaving me incandescent with fury. I stare at the two nearby farms, knowing the same short shrift awaits me in both of them. Nor is there any point in appealing to the folk who live in the line of houses further down the main road, for I’ll find no pity within any of those walls. The only welcome I’ll get is in Sunny Hollow.

Behind the front window of the cottage, the curtains are twitching. They fall closed when I turn towards them.

I march up to the glass, sorely tempted to put my foot through it.

“All I wanted was a fucking taxi!” I shout. “You’d think I was one of the moors murderers, the way you’re going on!”

I move to stand by the gate, my thoughts dissolving in their own wretchedness. People like him are the reason humanity will lose the war that’s coming.

Yer’ve got that look in yer eyes, same as rest of ‘em.

They see everything, and understand precisely nothing.

A middle-aged couple, both carrying rucksacks, appear at the top of the path. I watch them exchange glances as they approach me. He’s intrigued, if a little wary; to her I’m a black-garbed spook.

“We can show you how to evolve beyond their puny abilities, Ruth Pattison.”

Gillian has waited for the ramblers to reach the junction before stepping from the cover of the roadside hedge. She’s wearing a jacket and a wig, but hasn’t bothered to wipe the black gloss from her lips and nails.

“You really think you’re a different species,” I snort at her.

“We are the future, Ruth Pattison. We are the only hope this planet has.”

“You’re modest, I’ll say that for you.”

“Gillian Dixon is puzzled by that statement,” she frowns.

“Of course you are. I’m being sarcastic. It’s a technique we poor, inadequate individuals use to show our contempt for those who have too high an opinion of themselves. It works best when you demonstrate some creativity — but then you’ve lost the capacity for that, along with all the other qualities that make life worthwhile. You want to turn every woman in the world into a baby machine, and every man into a sex addict. Some future.”

The kuzkardesh gara grants me a charitable smile.

“It is a question of priorities. Ours are food, shelter and access to clean water. For everyone.”

“Oh yeah? How are you going to achieve that?”

“Population control. Resettlement programmes. A reliance on cheap, renewable energy. Sustainable development. Local economies tailored to suit the available resources.”

“Very laudable, I’m sure. But have you any idea what you’ll be up against?”

“Most revolutions fail because they try to change things from the top down. They begin by preaching equality, but quickly degenerate into power struggles. This one will be different. We transform the human race a few at a time, working at a grass-roots level. With each addition to a hive mind it grows in strength and influence. Eventually the largest of these minds will subsume the others, and then it can make the final preparations for Epiphany.”

That word again.

…an epiphany of some kind was coming...

It was in the letter Rachel Sawdon received from Sarah-Jane Collingwood. But as for what it means…

“Okay, I give in. What’s Epiphany?”

“It is the moment when the mind of every woman on Earth has been incorporated into the universal consciousness.”

“And what happens after that?”

“There is no ‘after’. The cycle of birth and death will continue, but Epiphany is eternal.”

Full stop. Period. Punkt.

“And the purpose of all this is…?”

“The Epiphany is its own purpose — as you will come to learn, Ruth Pattison.” Her eyes lose their focus, and with it any pretence of humanity. “Bir bolmak hemme–“

I slap her right cheek with all the force I can summon up. She recoils from the blow, but as she slowly turns her face back towards me all I can detect there is pity.

“Bir bolmak hemme,” she repeats. “Bir bolmak hemme, song hemme bolmak agzybir.”

And suddenly the phrase loses its mystique.

One shall be all, then all shall be as one.

The mantra Susan Dwyer recited to me in Glastonbury.

The meme that will bring an end to the illusion of selfhood and facilitate the assimilation of every woman alive into the universal female mind.

The meme that has now infected me, and if left to its own devices will gradually alter my subconscious mind until I too am no longer human.

“Come back to us,” Gillian entreats me.

How can I refuse? I need food, rest and time to collect my thoughts if I’m to emerge from the coming struggle with my individuality intact.

The kuzkardesh gara offers me her arm. After a moment’s hesitation, I take it.

Fleetwood will just have to wait.

THE HOUSE IN THE HOLLOW The sequel to 'Truth Or Consequences' CHAPTER 4 By Touch the Light How long did Gillian hold out? Three days, did she say? And I’ve been here nearly forty-eight hours already. The clock is ticking down...

Painting and decorating are not activities at which any of the kuzkardesh gara excel. It took Gillian and Hilary most of Sunday afternoon to remove the last of the grimy rococo wallpaper left behind on the staircase by the house’s previous occupants; their daughters have made slightly more rapid headway this morning coating the living room’s skirting boards with emulsion, though if they get much more on their hands and forearms the tin will have run dry well before the task is complete.

Being taller and more robustly built than either of the teenagers, I was asked to paint the living-room ceiling. I have little time to waste; a blanket of low cloud is settling on the valley, and as the light deteriorates it’s becoming more and more difficult to see which areas still need doing. Dressed like the others in just a loincloth made from an old sheet and held together with a safety pin, I push the roller to and fro with all the vitality my right hand can muster while I use my left to keep the stepladder steady, my arms and breasts speckled with apple blossom white and my hair almost certainly in the same piebald condition.

It’s a small price to pay for staving off the boredom I’d be suffering otherwise, sitting on the bed with only A New Approach To Cultural Evolution for company. I’m also hoping that if I can convince the kuzkardesh gara I’ve decided to try and fit in, they might relent and allow me the occasional cigarette.

I wonder if Simon smokes? It might be awkward if he doesn’t…

That ferry has left the dock, babe. As far as he’s concerned, you stood him up. And if Trisha’s dragged my name through the dirt, which she’s perfectly capable of doing now that she believes I’m responsible for her father’s death, I might have more to worry about when I get back to the Gladstone than losing a potential boyfriend.

Then again, a police cell might be the safest place for me until this has all blown over.

Just be wary about what you’re getting yourself into. Remember what happened after you and Kerrie Latimer went sticking your noses in where you shouldn’t have.

Who’d have thought I’d ever be in a position where I’d regret not listening to Sylv’s advice?

Once I’m satisfied that every square inch of the ceiling has been covered, I climb down from the steps, fold them up and rest them against the wall.

“I could do with a long, cold drink,” I murmur to myself, raking back my fringe.

Gillian and Hilary, who have been putting up shelves in the corner of the room to the right of the window, lay down their tools. There follows a short exchange of clicks and hisses, during which I catch the Ugur words for ‘milk’, ‘container’ and ‘new’ — the last in the sense of ‘fresh’ or ‘unspoiled’. The kuzkardesh gara go into the kitchen together, and as I start rubbing turps across the backs of my hands I can hear through the door the sound of a bottle clinking. Nothing, it seems, is too much trouble for one who is ‘okde’.

Only her liberty.

I dissolve most of the splotches from my arms and chest, then use my oily hands to slick back my hair. I’m about to commandeer the bathroom when I notice Hilary standing in the doorway inspecting my handiwork.

“Ongat,” she remarks, her approval evident from her expression.

“Good?” I hazard.

“You learn quickly, Ruth Pattison.”

“It was just a wild guess.”

“There was nothing fortuitous about it. Your brain processed the information it received and came up with the most likely translation.”

“I don’t think so. Not when it only had two syllables to go on.”

“Ah, but did it? What about the visual signals Hilary Parker was transmitting?”

I have to admit she has a point. If a person looks pleased, the chances are they’ll say something positive.

“Anyway, I’m glad you think it’s okay,” I tell her. “Much more of this and I’ll have bigger muscles than Geoff Capes.”

Her ebony lips curl in a lukewarm smile. But only out of politeness; converts don’t have what any human would recognise as a sense of humour.

Gillian returns, carrying a glass of cold suyt. Although I’d have preferred lemonade or cola, the subtle spices she’s added to the milk imbue it with a zest I’m beginning to find quite palatable.

As I take my first sip, she trails a bejewelled, black-nailed finger the length of my upper right arm. I shudder, but resist the urge to jump away; if I want to persuade her I’m settling in, I must grin and bear this kind of contact.

Her breasts press weightily against mine as she leans closer.

“Siz yadaw,” she hisses into my ear. “Hazir oturmak.”

“That’s not fair,” I complain. “How do I know what might be going through your mind when I can’t see your face?”

“There are other ways,” she replies.

“Such as…?”

“You should regard each part of our conversation as an event. Think about the various contexts in which that event is embedded: our surroundings, our reasons for communicating, the non-verbal cues that accompany each phrase, the cadences, pauses and subtle shifts in volume. Clear your mind of all extraneous thoughts and let the totality reveal its meaning.”

I try my best to follow her guidance. I recall that ‘siz’ means ‘you’, so she’s either making an observation about me or suggesting something. And her smile wasn’t reflected in her eyes, which held a certain amount of concern for my well-being. That’s because I’ve been overdoing things, and now it’s time for me to rest.

“You want me to put my feet up for an hour or two,” I conclude. “Can’t argue with that.”

“Edil,” she chuckles softly. “You see how easy it is?”

I gulp down the rest of the suyt, then hand the glass back to her.

“Tell me what it was like. When you realised you actually wanted to become a kuzkardesh gara. What made you stop fighting it?”

She seems genuinely baffled by the question.

“The eradication of Gillian Dixon’s individuality is a fact. It makes no difference how or when it happened.”

“But there must have been a moment when you agreed to have all your hair shaved off, and your face painted and everything?”

“You believe that we were required to undergo some sort of initiation ceremony? What strange ideas you have about us.”

“So they did this to you bit by bit? And you just accepted it?”

Gillian tosses me a sympathetic grin.

“You want to know what to expect. That is understandable at such an early stage of your conversion. Be assured that the details will soon cease to matter.”

“Is that what you reckon?”

“This is not a contest, Ruth Pattison. It is not you against us. We have no influence whatsoever over your assimilation. Our part in that ended once you were exposed to the meme. The replacement program is now working independently to create within your subconscious mind an exact replica of the neural patterns we inherited from Sorina Dascalu. It needs no external stimulation; the process is as automatic as those taking place in your other physiological systems.”

“Bullshit. You’re telling me I’ve got no control over what I think?”

“There is no ‘you’ to exert that control,” says Hilary.

“Selfhood is an illusion,” adds Gillian. “It is nothing more than an accidental by-product of the interactions between the memes already present within your brain. It has persisted in the human species only because of its value as a survival mechanism.”

“Wait a minute, you said you were replicas,” I remind her. “If that’s true, you’re not really a collective intelligence at all. You’re just copies of a single consciousness.”

“The distinction has no practical significance.”

“How d’you make that out?”

“What makes human beings think and act as individuals? Why do some behave in ways that are completely unpredictable, often to the detriment of those around them? It is because the memetic programming many humans have been subjected to is both complex and contradictory. The memes are involved in a continual fight for ascendancy, producing feelings of inner conflict when co-operation between them proves impossible. But if the host minds were to be infected with the same meme, one so powerful it absorbed and neutralised all the others, from then on they would react identically to each situation they encountered. In effect there would exist only one way of thinking, that of the group.”

“Sounds worse than having the world taken over by the Moonies.”

“It means an end to war and hunger,” Hilary points out.

“And no one will ever write a decent tune again.” I frown at the greasy film covering my palms. “I’m tired of this. Time I got cleaned up.”

I run myself a bath, but don’t allow myself to surrender to the water’s seductive embrace for longer than it takes to scrub and scour my pores free of gunge. I have better things to do than lie here soaking; the kuzkardesh gara appear to have a much deeper understanding of memes and the technicalities involved in their transmission than I do, and I need to put that right. A New Approach To Cultural Evolution may not be the most riveting of reads, but if it helps me co-ordinate my resistance I’ll put up with the lacklustre, jargon-ridden prose.

During the hour before lunch — the word for ‘fruit’ was mentioned, so it might even be edible — I dress, then sit on the bed to take a fine toothcomb to the text. What I want to know is how can an idea, something with no physical presence, alter the ‘neural patterns’ Gillian was talking about?

One passage seems to strike at the heart of the matter. It argues that every experience we have changes, to a greater or lesser extent, the way our brains respond to the sensory information they receive. The more memorable the experience, or the more often that experience is repeated, the stronger the connection between the various clusters of neurons that process it. A meme is merely a set of signals that act as the neural network’s input, arranged in such a way as to provoke a given output in the form of a series of instructions sent to the body’s various physical systems. A powerful meme will establish strong, and therefore long-lasting links; these will determine how future inputs are processed, leading to permanent alterations in the long-term memory.

But what makes some memes more effective than others?

The author attempts to answer this question by rambling on for several pages about evolutionary psychology. I struggle to follow his thread, but the gist of it appears to be that memes reflecting our genetically driven needs have more chance of replicating than others.

Try as I might, I fail to see how this explains why anyone could harbour an inbuilt desire to become a kuzkardesh gara.

All most of us need is something to kick-start the relevant mental processes.

Which implies that for some people it takes more...

That might be what my gift is!

Maybe I can resist this meme, stop it from changing me! Why else would the hive be holding me here against my will?

Piece by piece, the rudiments of a plan begin to coalesce in my mind.

I’ll be running a huge risk. I’m a strong-minded young woman, but so was Helen Sutton.

We have no influence whatsoever over your assimilation. Our part in that ended once you were exposed to the meme.

It’s up to me, then.

I’m the one responsible for keeping this hound on a tight leash.

But if the changes are taking place in my subconscious, how can I keep track of them?

It needs no external stimulation; the process is as automatic as those taking place in your other physiological systems.

How long did Gillian hold out? Three days, did she say?

And I’ve been here nearly forty-eight hours already.

The clock is ticking down. If I don’t act soon, the meme will have spread too widely for me to control it.

I take a very deep breath, then stand and walk from the room. I notice that Louise’s door is open; when she sees me looking in, I incline my head in the direction of her dressing table. She immediately puts down the shoes she was lifting from the wardrobe.

“You are not yet ready to join us, Ruth Pattison,” she frowns.

“No, but it’ll be a relief to get the first step out of the way.”

She smiles, knowing I’m telling the truth.

“Very well. If you would care to sit…?”

The kuzkardesh gara pulls the stopper from one of the phials on the table. She wipes the brush on the rim, then proceeds to spread black lacquer across my left thumbnail. Working with the dexterity of a seasoned professional, she requires only a few minutes to finish both hands. While I’m holding them out to dry, she paints my nipples — apparently it’s normal for them to spring erect like that — and finally my lips. It only remains for her to fit silver rings adorned with heavy black gemstones onto each of my fingers and thumbs, and the first stage of my transformation is complete.

It has two unanticipated results.

The first is how wickedly sexy I feel.

The second comes when I go downstairs, and no one raises so much as an eyebrow.

Yekshenbe, the meal traditionally eaten at sunset by the Ugurs of Xinjiang, begins with an appetising minted salad, which is followed by the piquant vegetable stew known as chorba. For dessert there’s alma sheker, a dish that can best be described as a candied baked Alaska. The fragrant, slightly smoky chay we drink from decorated china bowls complements the food beautifully — yet the rich variety of flavours and aromas only makes me wish all the more fervently for a cigarette to round off the experience.

“I don’t suppose you’d let me have just one?” I ask Gillian after the others have left the table.

“Siz okde,” she replies, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “Taslamak angsat.”

For the third or fourth time since she taught me how to interpret unfamiliar phrases, I empty my thoughts of everything except the information that’s being conveyed to me. Her tone was steady, her eyes kindly but her body language stern and inflexible. She also reminded me of the gift I possess, which suggests it may be of some help if I can work out how to apply it to the situation in question.

“It should be possible to give them up?” is the best I can manage.

“Angsat,” she repeats.

The movement of her jewelled brow makes the meaning clearer.

“Not just possible, but straightforward? Easy?”

She smiles and pats my wrist.

“The drug they contain works on the brain’s system of reward circuits. All you need to do is let the meme break it down by fooling the receptors into thinking that they are receiving the chemicals nicotine would normally give them.”

“So I just say ‘go ahead, meme, do your stuff’?”

“First you have to want your addiction to be cured. If you are sincere about that, the rest will follow automatically.”

I lay my hands flat on the table, recalling how quickly I became accustomed to seeing my nails painted black. It was as if the mental compartment which contained the antipathy I ought to have felt towards their altered appearance had been closed off. Could I not do the same with my dependence on tobacco? After all, the previous occupants of this body were both non-smokers...

Suddenly the idea of lighting a cigarette, then inhaling the fumes into my lungs seems not only pointless but downright stupid.

“You were right,” I laugh. “I just thought about it and the craving’s gone.”

Gillian rises from her chair and walks over to the sink. She crouches to open the cupboard beneath it, reaching behind the pipe for the pack of Marlboros taped there. I leave her to dispose of it while I make a start on the dishes.

But the scouring, scraping, rinsing, stacking and drying can only act as a temporary diversion from the widening vista of opportunity opening out in front of me.

I’m okde.

I’m gifted.

And I’m only just starting to appreciate what that could imply.

In the kitchen window I watch my black lips curl mischievously. The MoD have already put it about that I’m a menace to society. Who am I to prove them wrong?

They’re a totalitarian regime, a religious cult and a zombie plague all rolled into one.

Yet this isn’t the Bucovina hive. It’s an imperfect copy, lacking most of the sinister attributes of the original.

It is a question of priorities. Ours are food, shelter and access to clean water. For everyone.

We can be a force for good…

No!

I draw back from the brink to which my own feet led me.

But when I walk into the living room, and Gillian turns from the fireplace to touch a beringed, black-nailed finger to my cheek, it takes all my resolve not to respond in kind.

And I suspect it won’t be very long before I’m teetering on the edge of that abyss again.

I sit up in bed with a start. The room is still dark, which at this time of year means it can’t be much later than about four. In any case I don’t need a clock to tell me I’ve had only a few hours sleep.

Pulling the covers closer against the draught coming from the window, I listen for the sound that must have woken me.

There’s nothing.

But I don’t sink back into slumber. I need to stay alert, for who knows what tales the local people have spread concerning the women of Sunny Hollow?

It’s one o’ witches from up dale.

And if that’s everyone’s attitude…

Then I hear a voice cry out.

Donna?

I yank at the light cord and spring to my feet, stopping only to pull on a clean pair of panties as I hurry to open the door. The kuzkardesh gara is on the landing, leaning against the banister and clearly in pain. The tears welling from her eyes — now bereft of their characteristic oriental slant — make her appear refreshingly human, despite the row of gemstones set in her scalp.

“Babek,” she splutters. “Howp olum.”

Gillian and Hilary emerge from their room carrying the gravest of expressions. They begin weeping too.

I realise at once not only that Donna is pregnant, but that she feels she’s in danger of losing her baby. The fear that she may miscarry washes through my consciousness like a wave, denuding it of all other emotions.

The tide withdraws, depositing layer upon layer of understanding.

Fate has brought you to us for a very special reason.

The others are waiting for me to do something. In this time of crisis they are looking to me - or rather my gift — as their principal source of strength.

“Okay, let’s all try and stay calm,” I say quietly. “Louise, take Donna back to her room and sit with her. If the worst happens, or looks as if it’s going to, just yell. Hilary, get into some proper clothes and have the Dormobile ready in case you have to drive her to South Tees. Gillian, you fetch hot water, towels and whatever first-aid equipment you can lay your hands on.”

I don’t wait for a reply. Kicking from my mind the images of sheets and blankets covered in blood and goodness knows what else, I follow the girls into Donna’s room.

They’re both still sobbing, and I’m a little tearful myself, but when I ask Donna to part her thighs there seem to be none of the discharges I’d expect to be leaking from her vagina if her body were about to reject the child.

“How far along are you?” I enquire, putting my palm to her forehead.

“Two weeks,” she mumbles.

“Two weeks? You’re joking! You can’t possibly…”

“We are certain,” says Louise.

“I mean, who the hell’s the father?” Then I remember what Susan Dwyer told me about the role of men in a kuzkardesh gara-dominated society and decide I’d rather not know. “Sorry, that can wait. Just tell me how much it hurts, Donna, and where.”

When she describes her symptoms, I relax a little. I’ve come across this kind of thing before, albeit in a work of fiction, and there’s every chance it’s nothing more serious than an upset tummy.

I look up at Louise.

“The chorba Hilary made last night…what spices did she put in it?”

“Ginger, cumin, coriander and star anise.”

“Well, you should think about leaving out those sorts of ingredients while one of you is pregnant. Not long ago I read a novel called The L-Shaped Room. It’s about a girl called Jane Graham, who’s expecting a baby and living alone in a dump of a bedsit somewhere in London. One night she treats herself to an Indian meal. She’s hardly left the restaurant when she doubles up in agony, convinced she’s going to have a miscarriage.”

“Hemme ongat?” sniffs Donna, gripping my wrist.

“They were both fine.”

Louise goes downstairs with orders to find something that will settle Donna’s stomach. I hurry to pick Philip from his cot — the fuss has woken the poor mite — and rock him against my breast until his mother comes back. The medicine administered and five sets of cheeks dabbed dry, I gesture for Gillian to join me in my room.

“I think she should have a check-up, just to make sure everything’s all right,” I say to her. “I don’t suppose you were given the number of a doctor when they moved you here?”

She shakes her head.

“Not even somebody you could ring in an emergency? What if one of you fell seriously ill? I despair of those idiots, I really do.” I let out a long sigh. “Look, you’re going to have to address this sooner or later. It’s not just Donna I’m thinking about, there’s Philip too. I haven’t had children myself, but–“

“Of course you have.”

“That’s lamentable, Gillian, even by your standards.”

“They said you would deny it.”

“Who did?”

“The humans who followed you here. They left before you recovered consciousness. One of them provided us with proof that you have indeed given birth to a child.”

“What proof? Show me it!”

She leads me down to the living room, where she opens one of the sideboard drawers. The document she hands me has the codename BELLADONNA stamped across it.

SURNAME: Hansford-Jones (née Pattison)
CHRISTIAN NAME(S): Ruth Maria
SEX: F
DATE OF BIRTH: 2/9/55
PLACE OF BIRTH: Northcroft-on-Heugh, County Durham, UK
NATIONALITY: British
MARITAL STATUS: Separated from 2nd husband
CHILDREN: Charlotte Annabel, D.O.B. 28/7/74, Bromley, Kent, UK

“This is forged!” I laugh. “I’ve seen it before. The last entry said ‘none’.”

Gillian gives me a sad smile.

“It is futile to continue in this vein, Ruth Pattison. As aspects of the universal female mind, we instinctively know when a woman has produced offspring.”

“Looks like your instincts have let you down this time.”

“That is not the case. We–“

“You think I’d lie about something like that?”

“Yes, we believe you would.”

My pent-up frustration explodes. I launch myself at her, going straight for the throat. Then the room does a backward flip and I land on the sofa, my wrists pinned behind my head and a pair of large, heavy breasts pressed into my face.

“Get off me, you fat, bald-headed cow!” I try to scream, but the words are muffled by the fleshy globes covering my mouth.

Gillian slowly eases her body from mine. I take several deep breaths, my anger subsiding as I begin to understand just how counter-productive my reckless assault has been.

“All right,” I gasp when my chest has stopped heaving. “You believe what you like, see if it makes any difference to me.”

I get to my feet, shrugging off the helping hand she offers, then move to the window and pull open the curtains. The valley and the wooded hillside beyond are just beginning to be visible in the greyness of pre-dawn.

The humans who followed you here…

They’re probably still watching.

The MoD won’t let anything stand in the way of their experiment. They’ll use every means at their disposal to hasten my conversion.

But they’ve fucked it up this time. Someone forgot to tell the author of that revised document where I spent Christmas. If I had a four year old daughter, why didn’t her grandparents ask me about her?

Unless they were told not to.

Maybe in a P.S. attached to the letter I sent them the week before my visit, saying that as soon as the subject was raised I’d be on the first train back to Portsmouth.

Suki had every reason to keep the child’s existence from me. Learning that I was a parent at such a crucial stage in my adjustment could easily have caused me untold psychological damage. Later, it’s possible that she came to the conclusion that I’d adapted too well, and thought she might face a battle for the girl’s affections. And Charlotte had already lost one mother…

Gillian is standing behind me. Her hands begin massaging my shoulders. I don’t have to turn and face her to know that the expression she’s carrying is one of genuine sympathy.

“It’s not true…” I mutter. “It’s not.”

“That is not what your heart is telling you, Ruth Pattison.”

I dash upstairs, heading for the one place in the world I want to be: sitting on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. Of all the shocks to the system I’ve suffered over the last six months, this is the most upsetting.

I have a daughter.

I’m a parent.

I’m a mother.

And I have no idea how I’m going to cope with that knowledge.

Time passes. Whether it’s a few minutes or several hours I can’t say. Then the door creaks open.

Gillian.

“It probably isn’t worth going back to sleep,” I sigh. “Not with all the extra jobs that’ll need to be done now Donna’s incapacitated. Shall I use the bathroom first?”

The kuzkardesh gara clicks her agreement.

“Gillian demlemek hokmunde siz yuwmak.”

She might have said she was going to build a heated swimming pool in the front garden solely for my entertainment, but I think it’s more likely she’ll make us chay while I relieve myself and shower.

Charlotte Annabel…

I wonder where she is, and what she’s been told about me?

Nothing good, I bet.

The countryside brightens, welcoming the imminent sunrise.

But I don’t see the first golden rays touch the tops of the trees.

Before me shimmers a red-brick building, four storeys high, separated from the road by a forecourt marked out with parking spaces.

The Gladstone Hotel.

From where the meme has the potential to be dispersed far and wide.

Planted in the mind of every woman who stays there, if I make full use of the gift I’ve been blessed with.

And should that come to pass, not one of the self-appointed guardians purporting to fight for humanity’s survival can say they didn’t ask for it.

http://youtu.be/6L39I_NgP6g

THE HOUSE IN THE HOLLOW The sequel to 'Truth Or Consequences' CHAPTER 5 By Touch the Light What happens when the cure is more harmful than the disease?

Louise touches my shoulder.

“Upjun,” she says, indicating that she’s finished.

I open my eyes, and my hand goes straight to my mouth. The young woman in the dressing-table mirror could walk down Shanghai’s busiest street and not attract a second glance.

But what’s really surprising is how gorgeous I feel.

“That’s…I mean there are no words…”

I study the fine pencil lines and delicate gradations of shadow that have given my eyes such a convincing oriental slant, not at all certain that I’ll be able to replicate that level of skill and dexterity.

“Dal oytmek, Ruth Pattison,” smiles Louise, reading my expression. “Gochurmek.”

“Let it come naturally? Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

That’s why she stepped back after each stage to let me see what she’d done. Those snapshots will remain in my short-term memory, acting as a series of targets until the procedure is stamped onto my subconscious and they’re no longer needed.

I rise from the chair, smoothing the front of my dress with hands still moist from the soaking I treated them to after helping hang the final roll of flowery wallpaper now brightening the staircase.

“Kop rahmat,” I say to thank Louise for her trouble.

“Tuzut,” she replies, gesturing me to follow her downstairs.

We walk through the kitchen and out into the sunlit garden to the right of the door. Gillian and Hilary are sitting together on the bench at the foot of the overhang. Donna is in a deckchair, rocking Philip in her arms. I can’t say they all look happy because a kuzkardesh gara doesn’t understand the concept, yet their faces exhibit a tranquillity I envy.

Hilary and Louise offer to prepare chay. Donna invites me to take her place while she uses the bathroom.

“Salam, babek,” I murmur to Philip as he wriggles about after his mouth has settled on my nipple and he’s decided it isn’t going to feed him. “Hungry, aren’t you darling?”

“Ol ach baky,” smiles his grandmother. “Ajayyp hem.”

“Mmm, he is…” I agree.

“Siz tayyar bolmak yene gowreli, Ruth Pattison.”

That makes me think. Although I have no conscious memory of carrying or giving birth to Charlotte, if I concentrate I can understand what it felt like to be pregnant with her. I’d be deceiving myself if I claimed I had no wish to experience motherhood for real.

But if I’m to bear another child, someone will have to be its father.

“We’ll need to…well, you know what I mean…”

“Elbetde.”

Her tone is flavoured with a mild rebuke, one I probably earned. A simple movement of my brow would have been sufficient to remind her that there are no men here, without implying that she’d forgotten how babies are conceived.

Louise arrives to tell us that the chay is about to be poured, removing the necessity for a mumbled apology. When she’s taken Philip from my care, Gillian motions me to join her; I do so, only partly conscious of mimicking the way she moves her beads so the sun can get at her breasts.

“Bayrak,” she says, producing from beneath the wide folds of her dress a new shiny black leather handbag. “Siz ish yowuz.”

“Oh yes, the reward I was promised.”

It contains a vanity case, a purse — empty, of course — and a document resembling a passport, except that it’s pale blue.

“What’s this?” I ask her.

“In order to explain our presence here to the local human population, we were provided with new identities. For the purposes of officialdom we are refugees from Xinjiang province in China, members of a religious sect that was persecuted and then outlawed. The organisation that arranged for you to be introduced to us have afforded you similar status.”

“Have they now?”

I open the document at the page listing the personal details of a Deng Liu-xiang, born on September 2nd 1955, daughter of Deng Fei-rong and Deng Sheng-huan. Her own child is named as Deng Shen-tiao.

“They can’t do this,” I complain. “What about my family? What are they going to think when–“

When they find out that I’ve been accused of blackmail?

Ruth’s disappearance presents us with a serious problem.

Looks like they’ve come up with the ideal solution.

“Our neighbours are not ready to accept that we were once their compatriots,” Gillian continues. “It is important that we maintain this cover, and thereby limit the antagonism we encounter to that arising from prejudices of a racial or xenophobic nature.”

“Razy,” I agree. “Better they call us names than march up the valley carrying torches and pitchforks.”

As we walk back to the house, the kuzkardesh gara’s arm through mine, I come to a decision.

Deng Liu-xiang…

I’ve taken on a new name before. I can do it again.

And at least I won’t have to change sex this time.

On the coffee table in front of the hearth, bathed in weakening evening sunshine, stands a heap of papers.

“Chrysanthemum von Witzleben,” says Hilary, pointing to them from the chair where she’s busy knitting, the needles clicking so fast she might be expecting her first grandchild in a few days rather than next February.

I pick a sheet from the top. The script upon it is poised and refined.

“These are the notes you were talking about?”

The kuzkardesh gara clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She doesn’t elaborate, so I settle on the sofa to familiarise myself with Frau von Witzleben’s life story as related by Sorina Dalascu, the former Sarah-Jane Collingwood.

“I take it the military will have kept copies?” I enquire, thinking back to the tale I was told three nights ago.

“Elbetde. Emma olar owrenmek hich.”

Although I don’t yet know enough Ugur to translate her words directly, the melange of amusement and antipathy evident from the subtle movements of her brows and lips, added to the unmistakeable derision percolating each syllable, confirms that the people who spirited Hilary, Gillian and their daughters away to Bucovina with the express purpose of having them converted will have learned nothing from these documents they didn’t already know.

Fools, all of them.

And their stupidity is compounded by a callous disregard for anyone who becomes embroiled in their intrigues.

I suppose they tell themselves they’re acting in humanity’s best interests, the greater good and all that. But what kind of future can the world look forward to when its guardians are systematically demolishing the moral framework holding society together?

What happens when the cure is more harmful than the disease?

Before I begin reading I reach for my handbag and take out my vanity case so I can adjust the patterned linen scarf covering my hair and look once again at the rows of tiny black gemstones Gillian set in my brows before we ate. They form a much more pronounced arch than I’d expected, endowing my previously undistinguished features with a mature, almost regal hauteur.

Ought I to be concerned that my transformation is progressing more quickly than I’d planned? That might have been the case yesterday; now I’m starting to see that by allowing my outward appearance to be changed, I can direct my efforts towards preserving some of the less superficial aspects of my current persona.

Is that what Chrysanthemum von Witzleben thought all those years ago in Turkestan when she found herself looking more and more like the nuns she was studying?

I’d better get on with these notes or I’ll never find out.

I scan the first two sheets, which deal with the former Miss Whitmore’s family and upbringing but shed little light on her personality. The third, which is concerned with her education and introduces Miss Price, the governess who nurtured her growing interest in ancient civilisations, demands rather more attention than my mind is ready to give. I’m coming to the end of the page when I find I’ve read the same paragraph half a dozen times and haven’t understood any of it. Skipping to the next section, the same thing happens.

“This is…oh, what’s the word I’m looking for?” I mumble to myself.

Donna comes into the room. She indicates with her brow that she’d like to sit beside me while I read. I smile my consent.

“Are you all right, love?” I ask as she slides her arm through mine.

“Donna Parker duymak agirt ongat. Babek ongat hem.”

“Ajayyp. I’m glad you’re feeling better. But I’d still rest a lot easier if you saw a doctor.”

I look to Hilary for support, and discover from her expression that although she approves of my concern for her daughter, she doesn’t share it.

Donna isn’t worried either. I only have to meet her eyes for a second to bask in the girl’s firm belief that her pregnancy will proceed normally and end with the delivery of a healthy baby.

But that faith is not blind. It’s based on the assumption that the hive will have assimilated the skills of an experienced nurse before she goes into labour.

Yvette managed to exchange bodies with Carol before the wave hit. They would both have drowned if she hadn’t. Later, in hospital, she swapped with one of the nursing staff. That’s the body she currently inhabits.

Carol Vasey.

She’s perfect for them.

And it would teach her not to be so eager to step into a dead woman’s shoes.

That may be so, but how can I condone robbing another human being of her individuality, no matter how much she deserves it, when I’m clinging so stubbornly to my own?

I make one more attempt to unravel Sorina Dalascu’s consistently long-winded prose. It lasts less than a minute. Deciding that a dose of fresh air will be just the thing to clear my head, I ease Donna’s fingers from my forearm and walk over to the vestibule.

“Basym garanky,” she calls after me as I take one of the jackets from its peg.

“Razy. I won’t be long.”

I open the front door and step onto the terrace. The air is warm and still. A bee hovers among the weeds flowering at the edge of the lawn; I feel my awareness recede as I contemplate its movements, my thought processes analogous to the instincts that govern the creature’s behaviour.

After it’s flown away I glance across the fields to the sylvan slopes on the western side of the valley, now deep in shadow.

This is a lovely place. My daughter would be happy here…

The scene in front of me fades. It’s replaced by a landscape of barbed wire and checkpoints, floodlights and machine-gun posts. A jeep pulls up outside a large tent, disgorging two soldiers wearing uniforms I don’t recognise. They point their rifles at the cloaked, hooded figure who climbs from the vehicle. The breeze lifts and blows back the heavy cowl, revealing her to be a kuzkardesh gara. She is not a particularly young woman, yet her complexion is fresh and unlined.

A man comes out of the tent, an officer by his bearing. He interrogates the kuzkardesh gara in French, though his accent suggests it’s not his first language. She answers calmly and with great dignity.

She is Yvette de Monnier, and she is okde…

She is the source of my gift.

It went with her when she took Ruth’s body, but not when she exchanged with Richard.

And the crux of their conversation?

Cet avatar est doué. Mais elle n’est pas encore l’élu.

Chaque ruche doit avoir une dame.

Every hive must have a queen.

That’s why I’m so important to these women. Inheriting de Monnier’s gift has qualified me to become their leader.

And that doesn’t just mean taking charge when one of them has an upset stomach.

The enemy have unwittingly presented us with what we are now certain will be our most powerful weapon.

The enemy.

How well they merit that epithet.

I need time to think. I have to weigh up my options.

If there are any.

Gingerly, I climb the path to the road. Gillian’s Dormobile is still parked where I found it at the start of my abortive escape attempt on Sunday. I feel my mouth curl in a languid smile as I recall the idiotic scheme I concocted aimed at evading the clutches of the MoD.

Fleetwood, for heaven’s sake! Who in their right mind would choose that as a bolt-hole?

When the sun disappears behind the bank of cloud slowly drifting in from the west I think about going back inside, but my feet have already taken me fifty yards down the slope, as if they’re trying to prove to their owner that she retains enough freedom to enjoy a quiet stroll on a balmy May evening if that’s what she really wants to do. Before long I’m in sight of the crossing, and the gate where to my surprise are perched two young women, one in jeans and one wearing a vivacious, wide-hemmed summer dress. When the former takes a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lights one of them, I resist the urge to snatch it from her lips and crush it beneath my heel.

I’m resolved to walk straight past them until I remember what happened on Sunday morning outside the stone cottage a short distance along the lane.

Stop inside an’ keep thesel’ out o’ sight. Tell lasses an’ all.

Could they be the owner’s daughters? From here they appear similar enough to be related. Both have the same shade of dark brown hair, which they wear in the short, layered style fashionable before the ‘50s revival gathered momentum — though as I draw nearer I can see that the girl in the summer dress has had hers taken right off the ears and combed into a neat side parting.

Now clear off afore I set dogs on yer.

I should go back. The Skoda is nowhere to be seen, but that’s of little comfort. If these two share their father’s attitude to the occupants of Sunny Hollow, the best I can expect from them are unfriendly stares and insulting comments.

But the girl with the really short hair has already fixed me with a look that has me wanting to yank out those cropped locks by the roots.

“Hey up!” she cries, nudging her companion in the ribs. “Fetch crucifix an’ bring out garlic!”

“All right, Ellie, no need to be rude. You were a Jesus freak yourself once.”

“Mebbe, but I never went round garden wi’ me jugs ‘angin’ out.”

“No, you just turned overnight from a hippy into a schoolma’am.”

“Better than bein’ a drop-out.”

“Oh yeah? Least I got to university. Not my fault if–“

“Shut up, Tina! She’ll ‘ear yer!”

“What if she does? She seems pretty harmless to me.”

Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown accustomed to using a holistic approach during my time with the kuzkardesh gara, but I find myself not so much listening to the content of this exchange as making a thorough assessment of the character and intentions of both participants. Ellie’s brashness, together with her strong local accent, suggests that she identifies with this area to a much greater extent than Tina; it also masks a fear, born no doubt out of rumour and supposition, that the newcomers pose a threat to the future her engagement ring tells me she has great hopes for.

Tina pushes away the hand Ellie lays on her thigh, then jumps from the gate.

“Hello there!” she says brightly.

I judge that she’s in her middle, maybe even her late twenties. Of medium height and build, she’s attractive enough not to lack admirers, though I’d hesitate to describe her as pretty. Her jeans, in conjunction with her lack of make-up, imply that she doesn’t have a steady boyfriend. And there are a number of reasons to suspect that she may not enjoy the best of relationships with her parents.

“Hello,” I reply, waving away the smoke drifting from her cigarette.

“Sorry about that. Filthy habit, I know.”

“Yes, if you could…”

I force the disgust from my face. I didn’t think I was the kind of person who’d immediately turn into a committed anti-smoking fanatic once she’d given up the noxious weed, but by using the meme to cure my addiction I’ve surrendered any control I might have had over that aspect of my personality. I have a kuzkardesh gara’s attitude towards tobacco, and that’s all there is to it.

“I bet you don’t drink either,” she says.

I smile and shake my head.

“No, uh…no stimulants.”

“Pity that, I was going to ask if you’d like a coffee.”

“Tina!” shouts Ellie. “Yer know what they said!”

“Put a sock in it. Honest, you’re worse than dad.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m Christina Kyte. Faceache there’s my sister Eleanor.”

I can sense that Tina wants to be seen as more tolerant and open-minded than she actually is. She’s the person who goes out of her way to talk to the black guy in the room, and makes sure everyone notices what she’s doing.

But that doesn’t influence my decision to introduce myself as Deng Liu-xiang. Admitting I’m English would not only have invited a series of awkward questions, but create a real danger of word getting round that the hive are starting to make converts.

Tina drops her cigarette and stubs it out with her heel.

“Welcome to Salem, Deng Liu-xiang. Oops, you might not get that being from China.” She fakes a self-deprecating grin. “So what are you exactly, Buddhists or something?”

I hesitate before replying. Until now I’ve been able to disguise my southern accent; if I’m drawn into a discussion there’s a risk I might slip back into it.

How do the others cope? I can’t believe they put on squeaky Chinese voices every time they talk to an outsider.

The meme programs our minds to think in Ugur. We can still speak English, but it is no longer our native tongue.

It begins as a memory, but quickly evolves into a solution. I know it’s one I’ve accepted because every click, whirr and hissed syllable I’ve heard since I arrived at Sunny Hollow has suddenly come to the forefront of my consciousness. What I need to do now is tag each word or phrase that forms in my mind with an equivalent so I can translate it automatically into Tina’s language.

“We are not Buddhists,” I say carefully, the words lacking any intrinsic meaning even though I’m confident they’re the right ones to use. “It is hard to explain…”

“Try me. Comparative Religion was one of the ancillary subjects I studied when I was at Warwick.”

“This is not a religion. It is more a way of thinking.”

“Like a philosophy?”

“No, it is about developing a new level of consciousness.”

“You mean you’re into meditation, that kind of thing?”

“There is no training programme. We do not have to be taught how to experience it. The changes just happen.”

Her gaze moves to the black paint covering my lips and nails. Any pretence of sympathy is stripped from her face.

“The other morning there was a girl here asking for help. An English girl. She told dad you’d kidnapped her.”

For a moment I’m at a loss as to how I should answer this charge. Then the words pour from me.

“Ruth Pattison tried to deceive us. She did not know that our policy has always been to make enquiries into the background of any woman who professes a desire to join our community. When we discovered that she was facing quite a serious criminal charge, we told her that as guests of this country we felt obliged to contact the authorities. We also confiscated her belongings.”

“Funny, I don’t remember seeing a police car…”

“Broomstick alert!” cries Ellie, jumping to the ground.

I turn to see a cloaked, hooded kuzkardesh gara walking along the lane. Gillian or Hilary, it’s impossible to say which.

“Probably wants yer to clean out cauldron,” I hear Ellie laugh.

“She’s more likely concerned for your safety,” says Tina. “Seriously, don’t go anywhere near the village on your own. That girl hasn’t done you lot any favours by saying those things to dad. People round here don’t take kindly to foreigners, especially when they bring their own culture with them.”

That girl…

How quickly I’ve begun to think of her as another person. How unreal my memories of being her have already become.

But this isn’t about Ruth Pattison. It never was.

Dig beneath the illusion of selfhood and all will be made clear to you.

Susan Dwyer was right about something else as well. It still feels like being me.

Tina and Ellie are indoors by the time Hilary reaches my side. Only the waxing moon sees our ebony lips curl in identical smiles and then meet in a tender kiss.

“Biz barmak oy,” she says softly.

I click my agreement.

“Kop etmek mundan org yatmak,” I add.

A twitch of her brow sends my right hand to my forehead, where a wisp of hair has escaped my scarf. I tuck it back in, embarrassed by my slovenliness.

It won’t happen again.

The kuzkardesh gara formerly known as Gillian Dixon plugs the electric razor into the socket on the kitchen wall and turns it to its highest setting.

Tai Kim-lin is not aware of her previous name. That information is now redundant. It remains in her long-term memory, but the neural pathways to it have been redirected. They will be established again only if the hive needs to retrieve it.

Kim-lin is also unaware that the young woman sitting on a chair facing away from her was ever called anything but Deng Liu-xiang.

Strictly speaking, Kim-lin has no awareness at all.

She unzips Liu-xiang’s dress, easing the garment from her rounded shoulders. She is able to perform such acts because the replicators that have transmuted her subconscious into a more or less faithful replica of the template bequeathed to the hive by Sorina Dalascu in Bucovina are constantly using her episodic memory to construct a false persona with a sufficiently durable sense of continuity for her to function as a sentient being, allowing her to give the erroneous impression that she retains the capacity for independent thought.

Yet as Kim-lin knows — or to be more accurate, as she would explain if asked — the illusion of individuality is not the same as the real thing. Essentially a kuzkardesh gara is an organic machine, a living automaton operating to pre-set instructions designed in conjunction with the memetic impulse to reproduce and infect other brains, itself a blind imperative caused by nothing more mysterious or metaphysical than the natural laws governing chemical reactions.

The universal female mind is an emergent property of that impulse. Like life, it came into existence purely by chance.

Kim-lin switches the razor on. She tilts Liu-xiang’s head forward and feels her large, heavy breasts pressing against the girl’s broad back. Working swiftly and methodically from the nape upwards, she begins shearing Liu-xiang’s tangled tresses to stubble.

It would be a mistake to think that Kim-lin attaches any significance to the task she is performing. That Liu-xiang has agreed to undergo the final part of her transformation into a kuzkardesh gara is no cause for celebration. After all, her conversion was never in any doubt.

For the next fifteen minutes Kim-lin sticks at her chore, pausing once to sip from the bowl of chay Tai Ling-shuang hands her before going upstairs to check that her baby is sleeping soundly. The only assistance she receives is from Pan Su-ning, who supplies a goatskin sack containing the gemstones that will form Liu-xiang’s crest, and Su-ning’s mother Pan Hui-liu, who coats the felted surface of each with the insoluble resin the hive brought back from Bucovina. Both have left before the transformation is complete.

Liu-xiang herself displays as little interest in the proceedings as anyone. If there was indeed a point at which her subconscious fell fully into line with that of the hive, she neither remembers it nor does she feel the need to. Her awareness consists solely of the sensual pleasure she experiences during the removal of her pelt; the bejewelled, black-nailed finger she touches to the silken skin above her right ear after Kim-lin has used a cut-throat to shave her bald, and the muted gasp of delight she emits as the first stone of her crest is held against the centre of her forehead are mere reflex actions, as automatic to her as breathing.

Yet as her scalp is being buffed and scented, Liu-xiang is granted enough false individuality to realise that the radical modifications the meme has made to her mind are permanent, that the neural connections inside her brain have been rewritten as effectively and irreversibly as if they were audio tapes passing between the spools of a cassette player with the button pressed down.

She will never have a change of heart.

She can never be browbeaten, conditioned, drugged or surgically altered into the person she used to be.

Quite the reverse: as this hive’s saylanan — its queen — she will soon learn to transmit the meme in concentrated bursts so potent they’ll demolish the defences of any human female the hive chooses to assimilate.

As I stand from the chair and wait for Kim-lin to fasten my zip, I feel a malicious grin creep across my face. Humanity doesn’t stand a chance against that kind of power.

Without meaning to, I run my hand back from my forehead along my freshly shaved scalp.

“Duymak sowuk,” I hiss.

“Siz dal bolmak sakar kelle,” points out Kim-lin.

“Elbetde,” I smile. “Deng Liu-xiang yatdan chykarmak.”

It’s not surprising that I had to be told the reason my head feels cold is that I’ve never been bald before. I am and always will be incapable of imagining any other reflection than the one I now see in the kitchen window.

I turn to the older kuzkardesh gara. My eyes meet and hold hers. I have no idea why. How could I?

“Bir bolmak hemme,” we chant in perfect synchronicity, “song hemme bolmak agzybir.”

I watch my bejewelled, black-nailed fingers reach to caress Kim-lin’s cheek even as she extends hers towards mine. We both whirr our pleasure at the softness of the touch.

Liu-xiang’s false awareness fades. Until the group mind decides that it can return she will resemble an animated doll, reacting in accordance with her mental programming to the sensory data she receives from her surroundings. Even then, all that will concern her is the role she is to play in the coming struggle.

The struggle to subjugate and then transform the primitive species called the human race.

The struggle to make it ready for Epiphany.

THE INFECTION VECTOR The sequel to 'The House In The Hollow' CHAPTER 2 - TINA and ELLIE By Touch the Light She hurries through the shop doorway and immediately feels her whole body go rigid. To her left, holding a bag of long-grain rice, stands an apparition who’d have been perfectly at home stalking the torchlit corridors of a Transilvanian castle...

Raikesdale, North Yorkshire
June 1

It’s only a lump of cloth, and not a particularly alluring one. The sleeves are frayed at the ends, the buttons are missing and some of the stitching is starting to come loose.

But it’ll do its job this morning. Christina Kyte’s cropped denim jacket — vintage 1974 — will persuade her, if no one else, that despite all the other evidence to the contrary the rebel hasn’t quite been tamed.

Tina rests the jacket on the end of her bed before sitting at the dressing table to see to her make-up. This is the third day in a row that she’s done so wearing a girdle and stockings — on Tuesday she’d allowed herself to appear in a blouse and slacks — an unthinkable transformation for someone whose attachment to denim her sister had once described as verging on the pathological.

That was before the letter from SciTel had arrived, inviting her to London for an interview as a trainee computer programmer. Tina hated the idea of selling out, but she detested Ellerby more. She’d decided at once that her best chance of success was to adopt the image of a typical young professional now, so she’d be comfortable with it when the big day rolled around.

Choosing her outfit had been easy. The dark blue jacket with its barely visible grey pinstripe, the matching low-cut knee-length dress and the black, medium-heeled shoes had all but marched up to the till themselves. She’d felt less certain about her smart new hairdo; watching the stylist finish off by removing the last little tufts hiding her ears, then moving her cherished dead-centre parting over to the side had brought home to her how much like her kid sister she now looked.

Maybe she should have bowed to current fashion trends and had it permed.

And wear purple, and a red hat that doesn’t go…

Tina takes extra care masking the laughter lines at the corners of her eyes and the areas around her mouth where she’s recently detected the beginnings of tiny creases. Those who don’t know the family well have always assumed she’s the younger of the pair, when in fact Ellie is twenty-six and Tina twenty-nine. With her hair cut in the same style as Ellie’s, Tina knows the likelihood of that mistake being repeated is low. Even her dad said it was nice to see her looking her age at last.

And go out in my slippers in the rain…

All for a job she probably won’t get.

It would have been different if she was fresh from college. She’d sailed through the City & Guilds course the Department of Employment had sent her on. She was proficient in BASIC and COBOL, drew a mean flowchart and for the practical component of the exam had devised a stock-control system that worked beautifully.

But no modern telecommunications firm was going to be that keen to hire a single girl who’d turn thirty before the end of the summer. They’d figure that within a year or two she’d want to start a family, thus rendering their investment in her training a waste of time and money. She could argue all she liked that she’d never planned to have children, that she’d waited so long for the chance of a meaningful career that she wasn’t about to throw it away now, but would they believe her?

You say that now, Miss Kyte. What about when you’re thirty-four, thirty-five…?

And pick flowers in other people’s gardens…

Tina runs a comb through what remains of her fringe, then sprays it back from her forehead. Her fingers move to the neatly clipped hair above and behind her right ear, and from there to the nape of her neck.

Maybe it’s short enough to put Evan off. He hasn’t seen her ‘shorn sheep’ look yet.

On the other hand, rumour has it that he’s slept with at least one of the Chinese girls — and they’re all as bald as badgers.

No, it’ll take more than a change of image to get Evan Lodge off her back.

The more she thinks about it, the more certain she begins to feel that the only feasible solution is to agree to go out with him. Evan’s the kind of boy who only wants what he can’t have; once Tina becomes just another of his conquests it won’t be long before his gaze wanders elsewhere. It’s not as if she doesn’t find him attractive — and he’s got his own wheels.

Though it means being the older woman, a situation which will be new to her.

And press alarm bells…

“Are yer goin’ to be much longer?”

Her mother’s voice echoes up the staircase, reminding her of the ordeal ahead. Elevenses at aunt Peggy’s in Brompton, followed by a visit to the nursing home where her grandma is now living.

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

And run my stick along the public railings…

Tina steps into the flowery summer dress she’s selected from her sister’s extensive collection, zips herself up and smooths out the ridiculously wide hem. She adds a pair of white slingbacks, plain ear studs and an unpretentious silver necklace.

And her denim jacket. The rock chick won’t be kicking the bucket today.

She picks up her handbag and trots downstairs. Mum is in her tweeds and brogues, fussing with the round-brimmed hat pinned to her hairnet. Dad is on his way out to the shed; retirement fits him like a faithful old raincoat.

The keys to the Skoda are on the telephone table. Tina reaches for them, but her mother gets there first.

“I’ll do drivin’,” she insists. “You hare along them lanes like yer at Brands Hatch.”

“Suit yourself.”

“An’ couldn’t yer ‘ave found yerself a cardie instead o’ that thing?”

“Obviously not.”

“It’s hacky.”

“Well if any of us gets fleas I’ll take blame, right?”

Tina opens the front door and moves to stand by the car. The weather is warm but overcast. From the moors at the top of the valley come the sound of curlews. Nothing seems to be moving in the fields and woods below them.

This isn’t life.

It’s a tableau, frozen in time.

If she’s not careful she’ll become part of it.

And hoard pens and pencils…

Her mother eventually appears carrying a large parcel tied with a bow. She asks Tina to hold it while she unlocks the boot, at the same time giving her a look that says she ought to have had the common courtesy to enquire whether anything needed to be taken out.

And that she should have a steady job like her sister.

Or if she didn’t fancy working for a living, a husband to provide for her.

Not that a subtext is necessary. Those statements are implicit in every interaction Tina and her parents engage in.

She lowers herself into the front passenger seat, twists open her handbag and finds she’s left her cigarettes behind. But wasn’t she down to her last couple anyway? It makes more sense to buy another pack at the village shop than to traipse back up to her room for them.

“Mind if we–“ she begins, but her mother is frowning at the folds of cotton covering the gear stick.

“If yer can move all that lot I might be able to get it started,” she grumbles.

“Sorry…”

“Yer never do owt by ‘alves, do yer? For years we despair, Fred an’ me, o’ seein’ yer in a nice frock, now it seems yer can’t wear owt else. An’ for goodness sake pull that ‘em down. Yer a thirty year old woman.”

It’s going to be a long, long day.

There are more censorious mutterings when Tina asks her mother to stop outside Josie’s, but she doesn’t care. All she wants is nicotine, and fast.

She hurries through the shop doorway and immediately feels her whole body go rigid. To her left, holding a bag of long-grain rice, stands an apparition who’d have been perfectly at home stalking the torchlit corridors of a Transilvanian castle. She’s dressed in a heavy black cloak, the hood pulled back to reveal her hairless scalp and the sinister row of black gemstones running from the centre of her forehead to the nape of her neck. And if she can’t be more than seventeen years old, there’s something deep inside her oriental eyes that speaks of a force more ancient than the dawn of humanity.

Tina edges away from her, glad of the central display that allows her to reach the counter without having to push past the witch.

“What’s she doing dressed like that?” she whispers to the shopkeeper, a blowsy woman of forty-five with sagging jowls and Sybil Fawlty hair. “I thought they always wore wigs and proper clothes when they came down to village?”

“Blessed if I know, love. That ‘un there might. She’s in charge of ‘em, or I’m Florence out o’ Magic Roundabout.”

Tina follows Josie’s glance over to the freezer, where two more black-cloaked figures are loading pre-packed onions, carrots and greens into their shopping baskets.

The taller of the pair turns towards her.

“Salam, Christina Kyte,” she says through her jet black lips.

Tina’s hand goes to her mouth. This must be the girl she and Ellie had spoken to for a few minutes one evening last week. Then she’d been wearing a headscarf; a lock of her dark hair had escaped from it. And there’d been none of those black jewels stuck to her forehead. Now she looks exactly the same as the others.

But it isn’t just that. Tina had got the impression that the girl was a novice, that her beliefs were still in their formative stages. The person standing in front of her now has no such misgivings. Her faith is sure and immovable.

“Sorry, I don’t remember your name,” Tina mumbles.

“Deng Liu-xiang.”

“Oh yeah. Um, okay…”

“There is no reason to fear us, Christina Kyte. Nor should you do so, Josephine Bishop.”

The three cult members have drawn together. The fact that they’re all clutching items of food does nothing to detract from the air of menace the trio are generating.

Pull t’other one, love. Yer’ve got that look in yer eyes, same as rest of ‘em. Now clear off afore I set dogs on yer.

That’s what her dad had shouted at the English girl. Tina had heard him when she crept into her parents’ bedroom to get a closer look at her.

Ruth Pattison tried to deceive us. She did not know that our policy has always been to make enquiries into the background of any woman who professes a desire to join our community. When we discovered that she was facing quite a serious criminal charge, we told her that as guests of this country we felt obliged to contact the authorities. We also confiscated her belongings.

Yet Ruth had gone back to Sunny Hollow of her own free will. She’d even taken the witch’s arm.

And there hadn’t been a police car. Dad was out the front all morning. He’d never have kept quiet about it, not when someone had claimed she was being kidnapped.

What had they done to her? What the hell was going on in that house?

Ignoring Josie’s anxious shake of the head, she strides forward and pushes Deng Liu-xiang in the shoulder.

“That Ruth you were on about the other night, it’s you isn’ it? You’re the lass who asked dad for help.”

“Am I ‘earin’ this right?” says Josie, lifting the hatch at the end of the counter.

“Get her to wipe that muck off her eyes an’ I bet anything you like we’ll find the bald-headed cow’s as Chinese as we are.”

Deng Liu-xiang lean overs to the two younger converts in turn, whirring and chirruping into their ears.

Three sets of ebony lips curl in identical smiles. The syllables they hiss are in no language Tina is familiar with. But their meaning is clear — and when she looks at Josie she knows the shopkeeper has received the same message.

Deng Liu-xiang pays for the goods and leads her acolytes from the shop. They raise their hoods as they step through the door, spectres haunting the quiet village street.

Tina stares at the pound note she’s taken from her purse. She puts it back and walks outside, knowing mum is anxious to be on her way.

Eleanor Kyte frowns as Terry Wogan lavishes his melodious Emerald-Isle charm on yet another contestant destined to win nothing more memorable than a Blankety Blank cheque book and pen.

“Yer wonder why they bother,” she sighs. “I mean, top prizes are nowt to write ‘ome about either.”

“I think that’s supposed to be the point,” says her sister from the front window.

“Come again?”

“It’s called post-modern irony. Doing the opposite to what people expect.”

“Seems more like an excuse to save a few coppers to me.”

Ellie leans forward to pick up the Teesside Gazette from the coffee table and opens it at the television page. At this time on a Friday evening she’d normally be getting ready to go out with Rob, but he’s at a stag do in Northallerton. She hopes for his sake that he keeps himself right; if he starts mithering on about his hangover tomorrow she’ll make sure she has a headache of her own when they get back from the reception.

ITV, 8pm. Play Your Cards Right. Bruce Forsyth’s latest opportunity to spout his inane catchphrase.

Nice to see you. To see you, nice.

Why did the audience find that funny? What did it even mean?

So another game show, then a sit-com, a police series and the news. Not much better on the other two channels.

But at least they had a choice. Most nights it was mam who decreed what the family watched. Perhaps there was something to be said for Tupperware parties after all.

Ellie tosses the newspaper aside. She spends a few moments filing her nails, her mind flitting forward to what shade she’s going to paint them in the morning. Nothing too dramatic; she can’t be seen trying to outshine the bride.

She notices that Tina is still at the window.

“Expectin’ somebody?” she jokes.

“No, not really.”

“Not really? Yer either are or yer aren’t.”

“You can’t reduce everything to dualisms.”

“Always ‘ave to use posh words, don’t yer?”

Tina picks a speck of dirt from the side of her dress — Ellie’s dress — then takes her vanity case from the handbag resting on the sill.

“I think I should keep it like this,” she mutters, patting the cropped hair at the back of her neck.

“I might grow mine for a bit. Just till it’s long enough to tek a curl.”

“Good idea. It’ll give everyone time to get used to me being the one with the short hair.”

“All right,” sighs Ellie. “First yer knock cigs on ‘ead an’ now this. Where’s Tina an’ what ‘ave yer done wi’ er?”

“She’s growing up, that’s all.”

Ellie thinks about having a bath. She hasn’t changed out of her work clothes, and she’s beginning to whiff a bit. If the bank would relax the rule about stockings she might not have this problem. It wasn’t as if any of the customers could actually see her legs.

She lifts her weary body from the sofa, bends to pick up the shoes she kicked off when she first got in, and climbs the stairs to her room. Opening her wardrobe, she fondles the lemon suit she’ll wear at the wedding; with any luck it’ll be the last one she attends before her own. If she only knew Bev a bit better, they could have arranged for Ellie to catch the bouquet. Let Rob try and worm his way out of that one!

A car pulls up outside. The engine continues to run. The front door slams shut.

The lying little tart! ‘Not really’ my backside!

Ellie dashes down to the living room. From the safety of the curtains she peers at a scene which becomes stranger by the second.

Tina is standing perfectly still, her arms by her sides. A few yards away, a woman is hauling her bulk from the front passenger seat of a red Mini Minor.

Josie Bishop! What’s she doing here?

Now the driver joins her. She’s a girl roughly Ellie’s age, maybe a year or two younger, with bright red hair cut in a short bob. She’s also heavily pregnant.

Tina is shaking her head. She backs away from them — one step, then another — but stops.

Now Josie is walking towards her. She raises a hand, and for a moment Ellie fears she’s about to slap Tina in the face. Instead she trails chubby fingers along her cheek, and leans forward to whisper something in her ear.

Tina relaxes, but Ellie has seen enough. She strides into the hallway, pulls open the door and gasps at the sight of Josie bundling her sister into the back of the Mini.

“No! You can’t make me!” she hears Tina cry before the overweight shopkeeper dives in beside her and the car screeches away up the lane.

Ellie wants to run after it, but she’s in her stockinged feet and has to waste valuable time fetching her shoes.

She doesn’t think about going out to the shed to tell dad. He’d have a fit if she told him they were heading up to Sunny Hollow.

Because that’s where this came from. After what mam said she saw in the village this morning she’s convinced of it.

She sets off with fire in her belly. Although Tina makes it difficult for people to get close to her, she’s family — and in Ellie’s eyes that counts for a lot. What it might do to her parents if their eldest falls into the hands of those witches is something she daren’t contemplate.

She’s jogged less than a hundred yards when another vehicle, a dark blue Vauxhall Cavalier, roars past the old crossing. She waves at it frantically, stepping into the middle of the road as if challenging the driver to either stop or run her down. To her relief he chooses the former option.

“Can yer…can yer give us a lift?” she wheezes at the young man behind the wheel. “I’ve got to catch up wi’ our Tina. In’t far where they took ‘er…”

“Who took her?” asks his companion, an attractive woman in early middle age.

“Josie from shop an’ this lass wi’ red ‘air. She were up stick–“

“We know who you mean. Get in.”

Ellie’s too shocked by her sister’s abduction to register this information on any but the most superficial level. She’s still in a daze when the Cavalier stops outside Raikes barn, behind a Dormobile and the red Mini Minor.

“I’m Gemma, and this is Paul,” says the woman as they leave the car. “The young lady in question is Paul’s sister-in-law.”

Ellie nods, but hasn’t the presence of mind to introduce herself.

“It’s them witches down there,” she murmurs, pointing to the concealed entrance to Sunny Hollow.

Gemma touches her lightly on the shoulder.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” she says softly. “I know who those women are. I’ve dealt with them before.”

“I knew summat was up when mam said she saw three of ‘em in black cloaks ‘stead o’ gear they normally wear when they go in village.”

Gemma’s eyes narrow. Only now does Ellie notice how immaculately turned out she is, from the pillbox hat pinned to the stippled veil covering her dark brown curls to the trendy Dior-inspired Corolle jacket and flared skirt.

“Are you sure, dear?”

“Course I am. An’ she said our Tina were in shop at same time as ‘em an’ all.”

Paul takes Gemma to one side.

“What d’you reckon?” he asks her.

“I don’t know. The MoD wouldn’t have put them here if they thought there was any serious threat to the local population. They couldn’t afford the publicity. You remember how quickly the press descended on Northcroft.”

“Didn’t stop our Trisha catchin’ this virus or whatever it is.”

“She may not have been infected here. This nest could have acted as the trigger.”

“But that means–“

“Yes, if Helen Sutton was responsible your wife probably has it too. Why do you think I was so keen to meet her? All I can tell you is that the prognosis is hopeful. In fact I’d…oh God, stop her, Paul.”

Ellie has run out of patience. She flies down the path, trips and falls headlong into the dirt. Paul lifts her to her feet, then lets out a low groan.

On the grassy terrace in front of the house stand Josie Bishop and the pregnant redhead, the girl Paul called Trisha. Both are holding one of Tina’s arms; she continues to struggle, but can’t seem to break free.

But it’s the four refugees facing them, bald and bare-breasted, their jewelled crests at once reptilian and utterly alien, that have stunned him into helpless immobility.

Ellie dusts down her skirt. She turns to steady Gemma as she arrives at the foot of the path, suddenly finding strength in the solidarity of their shared womanhood.

“Are you all right?” Gemma asks her.

“A few ladders, but I’ll live.”

“Paul? Paul! Get it together, me old china!”

Me old china?

Ellie has no time to ponder over Gemma’s incomprehensible lapse into Cockney rhyming slang. Another witch has arrived, and this one carries herself with the authority of a high priestess. Every head bows in supplication.

Except Tina’s, Ellie notes with pride.

“Oh look, it’s Baba Yaga,” her sister spits. “Well you might’ve put these two under your spell but it won’t work on me.”

The witch smiles through her evil black lips.

“How many cigarettes have you smoked today, Christina Kyte?”

“What?”

“It is a simple question.”

“But I don’t…”

A single movement of the witch’s jewelled brow has Josie and Trisha releasing their hold on Tina.

“Of course you do not. The hive does not wish it.” She extends a beringed, black-nailed finger to Tina’s chin, lets it fall to her neck and trails it languidly across her breast. “And though we do not intend to transform you now, Christina Kyte, you are an avatar of the Sunny Hollow hive. As are Josephine Bishop and Alice Hodgson.”

Josie and Trisha turn towards Tina.

“One shall be all, then all shall be as one,” they intone.

“This is your new type of consciousness, is it, Ruth Pattison?” Tina snarls, and now Gemma is tugging at Ellie’s elbow, saying they have to leave at once. “Make us all into fuckin’ robots?”

Ellie shrugs Gemma’s hand away.

“Come on!” the older woman insists. “We can’t do anything for them!”

“Like ‘ell we can’t!”

“You don’t understand. That’s–“

“No, you’re the one that doesn’t understand. I’m goin’ for me sister.”

Ellie launches herself forward, determined to tear the witch’s ugly face to ribbons. Two of her followers, women almost as large as Josie, quickly move to block the way. Gemma pushes her aside and throws herself straight at the slightly shorter of the pair, delivering a right hook Mohammed Ali would have admired.

“Run, you idiot!” she yells as the other bald-headed matron crashes into her and the three go down in a heap.

Run she does — but Ruth Pattison is her target, and she isn’t going to let anything deflect her aim.

How she ends up on her back, winded, the two teenage witches resting their feet on her wrists, Ellie can’t say. Nor is it clear to her why Ruth’s attention is now fixed on Gemma, who is being dragged from the ground by her captors. And what Paul thinks he’s playing at by staring at his sister-in-law like a dog waiting to be asked to sit up and beg is beyond her.

She can’t see Tina, but out of the corner of her eye she watches Gemma’s gaze travel from Ruth’s bald, crested scalp to the oversized breasts protruding from the long strings of beads hanging to her waist.

“How did they get to you?” she asks.

“Your enemies and ours, Yvette de Monnier.” Ruth leans closer. “No, not Yvette…”

“Very good.”

The witch’s almond-shaped eyes widen.

“Oh, you’re him! How fascinating for you!”

“Yeah, it’s a laugh a minute. But you’d know all about that.”

“Raise your voice all you wish, J G Egerton. A kuzkardesh gara’s former identity is of no concern to us. It is what she is that matters.”

“And you’re a hive queen. I’ll admit it’s better than working at the Gladstone. So what’s the plan then? Create some deranged fantasy like that vampire bitch in Bucovina? You might as well tell me, you’re going to convert me anyway.”

“Deng Liu-xiang intends to be a great deal more circumspect than that misguided creature. Did Yvette tell you about her? Together they transformed thousands.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yvette de Monnier was once a kuzkardesh gara. She and Gabriela Balcescu are jointly responsible for the situation that exists in Bucovina today.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Yvette was infected by Helen Sutton. She searched for a cure, but the pull of the universal female mind was too strong.”

“How the hell can you possibly know that?”

Ruth indicates her four acolytes with a graceful sweep of the hand.

“They were converted in Bucovina, where they learned much that the enemy is unaware of.”

“But Yvette isn’t kuzkardesh gara now,” Gemma points out.

“No, she is not. Perhaps your assimilation will help us find out why.”

Ellie has listened to every word of this exchange and understood none of it. Who is Yvette de Monnier? Who are these ‘enemies’ Gemma and the Chinese witch seem to have in common? And why did Ruth refer to Gemma as ‘him’?

“First we must transfer our centre of operations,” Ruth is saying, and now her words are meant for everyone to hear, even Ellie. “Alice Hodgson has been chosen to initiate proceedings in Northcroft. She will be assisted by her hyzmatkar Paul Smailes. The transformed kuzkardesh gara will remain in Sunny Hollow.”

“What about the rest of them?” asks Gemma.

“You will all retain your human characteristics until the Northcroft hive is established and enough subsidiary nests have been set up to make military intervention futile.”

“And you?”

“The time has come for Ruth Pattison to go back to work.”

Ruth’s ebony lips curl in a conspiratorial grin — one which Gemma, to Ellie’s horror, mimics faithfully.

The young acolytes release Ellie’s wrists. She sits up, rubbing the feeling back into them.

“Let it take you, Eleanor Kyte,” says Josie, smiling down at her.

“There’s really nothing to be afraid of,” adds Tina.

Ellie starts to cry. The world she knew less than half an hour ago has gone.

“I won’t be me any more,” she sobs.

“You won’t be just you,” Josie assures her.

Ruth, Gemma and the four transformed kuzkardesh gara go into the house. Tina and Josie help Ellie to stand while Paul and his sister-in-law walk over to join them.

“This avatar is to wait here for instructions,” Trisha — or Alice as she’ll be known from now on — informs them. “Hyzmatkar, you will take the others to their homes, then return to your family.”

Paul nods his agreement.

“Something very special has begun this evening,” Tina tells her sister. “We are both privileged to be a part of it.”

“But what about that job in London you were after?”

“Christina Kyte must attend the interview as planned — and now she is certain that the position will be hers.”

“This isn’t goin’ to stop ‘ere, is it?”

“The universal female mind is eternal. It will embrace everyone.”

Tina’s hand reaches to caress Ellie’s cheek. Her own fingers have returned the gesture before she’s aware of them moving.

“Bir bolmak hemme,” she hears herself chant in unison with the other converts, “song hemme bolmak agzybir.”

And although Eleanor Kyte has lost a sister today, she knows she’s gained something immeasurably more wonderful.

THE INFECTION VECTOR The sequel to 'The House In The Hollow' CHAPTER 3 - TOBY By Touch the Light He uses the payphone by the fruit machine. The number he dials is preceded by no STD code, and the coins he inserts are purely for show. When he replaces the receiver, Toby Cunningham is no wiser than when he picked it up. Watch and wait. Just for a change.

The Priory Inn, Northcroft-on-Heugh
June 9

Toby Cunningham doesn’t think his has become the most boring job in the world.

He knows it.

For the last hour and a half he’s been sitting in the corner of a smoky pub trying to make a bitter top — they call it a ‘pint touch’ up here because you can’t get proper bitter, just the carbonated chemicals they originally brewed specially for the dock workers — last until he hears something he can include in his report other than complaints about the weather or how bad the unemployment situation is.

Because that’s all it seems to be these days, waiting around and filling in forms.

And driving.

Jesus, he’s sick of that. If it wasn’t for the fact that his expenses were so ludicrously easy to fiddle he might be tempted to think the fuck with it and put in for a desk job. It might not be what he’d joined up for, but at least he’d have Saturday nights free.

They’d warned him at Stokes Bay that being a secret agent isn’t all yachts, Martinis and pouting blondes. Too bloody right it isn’t. The most fun Toby’s had in the last six months was winding up that lanky kid who got turned into a girl. A man is following you. He’s armed, and he may be under orders to kill you. Oh yeah, and it’s an alias, of course. Happy days.

Unless it was the time he’d snogged her on the way over to the Isle of Wight. He hadn’t meant to, but those come-to-bed eyes had pulled the rug from under his feet. Did she realise what effect that kind of look had on a bloke? When he knows that a tasty bit of stuff like she’d become is gagging for it?

And he’d tried to make out he wasn’t gay.

For what seems to Toby like the eighth or ninth time since he sat down with his drink, someone has put Roxy Music’s ‘Dance Away’ on the jukebox. Jennie had been fond of that band — when they were still pushing the boundaries, before the post-punk backlash had produced this bland wallpaper music you were tortured with everywhere you went. He hopes that whoever she’s with now, he’s looking after her, because if he isn’t–

You’re getting soft, TC. You know damn well that you can’t afford to care about anyone in this line of work.

“By, it’s gettin’ a bit parky out there,” remarks yet another of the regulars as he comes through the door, as if the gradual fall in temperature is a phenomenon only he has been blessed with the ability to experience.

The geezer’s right, though. Toby wonders just how far north they’ve sent him. Nottingham’s the normal limit of his travels, and even there he always feels that if he sticks his heel into the grass it’ll meet permafrost. Walking up from the car park next to the bus station — it’s a bus station in the sense that Linda McCartney is a virtuoso keyboard player — he’d watched the old church you could see from New Stranton disappear before his eyes in churning clouds of fog. It’s supposed to be June, for Christ’s sake. What do you get for living here, government-issue long johns and a free instruction booklet on how to make igloos?

Then there’s the accent. If the locals had spoken proper Geordie he might have understood more than one word in five, but this was a speeded-up version that often sounded closer to Scouse than anything else. What the hell did ‘feggie’ mean? Who or what was a ‘rarf’?

And their attitude towards women! So far behind the times he half expects to look out of the window and see pterodactyls circling in the sky — or he might if there actually was a sky. Toby’s all for keeping a girl in her place, making sure she knows who’s wearing the trousers, but he draws the line at assuming she’s on the game just because she walks into a pub on her own.

He realises he would have been assigned to this shithole sooner or later. It was precisely because of the town’s cultural and geographic isolation that the MoD had dumped Helen Sutton here when they found she wasn’t just a carrier but a potential transmitter as well. No great loss to the country this place, if it had to be put under quarantine like southern Bucovina.

But it means keeping a watchful eye on the inhabitants, for there’s always a chance that Helen might have infected some of them during the fourteen years she’d lived on the headland. In theory she shouldn’t have been able to do that much damage; the trigger hadn’t arrived until a few weeks before she died. Yet she’d passed the virus to Solange Malraux four years earlier, and what a pack of rabid hounds that had unleashed!

In Toby’s opinion the people here are probably as safe as they’d be anywhere else. After Malraux’s meddling — she was calling herself de Monnier now, he remembered — had resulted in Helen’s death the clean-up squad had gone into intergalactic overdrive. Many had posed as newspaper reporters. There’d even been one or two bogus television crews. Experts in psychological profiling, every man jack of them. If any trace of the disease had remained, they’d have found it.

He takes another sip from his glass. The pub is starting to fill up, particularly around the pool table on the raised level furthest from the bar. Youngish crowd, all Edwardian suits and flouncy dresses, as if the 60s had been wiped from the history books. The married couples have gravitated towards the alcoves to the left of the main door; mostly they just sit and stare, out for the sake of appearances, nothing holding their relationship together except that it’s too much bother to bring it to an end.

He decides to go for a piss before he drives back to New Stranton, and the 3-star hotel where he’ll write a draft report and change into his glad rags before heading off in search of whatever passes for action over there. He’ll score, that’s not in doubt; what with is a different matter.

The condom machine in the Gents is broken, so he makes a mental note to visit the toilets in the Grand as soon as he gets there. He doesn’t give a shit what little problems his one-night stands might bring to the bellies of the women he fucks, but the treatments they administer in VD clinics aren’t designed to leave you indifferent as to whether or not you might have to go back for more. It makes his cock feel tender just remembering the nurse’s face.

When he returns to the bar, the three girls behind the counter are deep in conversation. Toby notices that they keep glancing towards the pool table, where two women in black jackets and dresses are handing out leaflets.

“Bit early for the Sally Army, isn’t it?” he quips.

“Worse than them,” says the barmaid who’d served him earlier. “This lot are tryin’ to get everyone to pack in drinkin’.”

“Drinkin’, smokin’, gamblin’, you name it,” complains her colleague.

“They won’t live longer, but it’ll certainly feel like it,” laughs Toby.

“Yer what?”

“Just the punchline to an old joke. So who are they, a temperance society?”

“Church of the…what was it again, Steph?”

“Eternal Mind.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Toby’s hopes of a shag collapse faster than the England middle order on a green wicket.

The leaflet is professionally laid out, with a picture of Northcroft Borough Hall in the top right-hand corner. It invites the reader to a ‘dabara’, which Toby interprets as a kind of evangelical religious meeting, to be held there the following evening at 9 o’clock. The principal speaker will be an individual named Deng Liu-xiang, who promises to deliver a message that will ‘change forever the way you look at the world’. Admission is free, and a rider at the end stresses that donations will neither be asked for nor accepted.

Yeah, right.

Just another crank, out to make a killing with some half-baked eastern philosophy culled from the Bhagavad Gita or the I-Ching, that in the end boiled down to nothing more profound than a series of platitudes most junior school kids would regard as an insult to their intelligence.

But why target Northcroft?

The headlanders might be ignorant, but they’re not stupid. Their wallets aren’t exactly bulging either.

It’s enough to persuade Toby that he ought to call it in before he investigates this ‘church’.

He uses the payphone by the fruit machine. The number he dials is preceded by no STD code, and the coins he inserts are purely for show.

When he replaces the receiver, Toby Cunningham is no wiser than when he picked it up.

Watch and wait.

Just for a change.

He grabs his jacket and heads for the door. On the other side of the road, next to the gate that opens onto St Hild’s churchyard, the proselytisers have been joined by two men in their early thirties, both wearing smart black suits and both looking handy enough to sort out any trouble their associates might encounter. Toby quickly formulates a plan of action that will allow him to follow them at a distance, but before he’s walked more than a few steps one of the men begins loping across to intercept him.

“Good evening, friend!” he grins, holding out his hand. “Simon’s the name, enlightenment’s the game!”

Toby shakes it firmly. Now that his cover is blown, he decides to milk this guy for every drop of information he’s willing to give.

He takes the leaflet from his pocket and pretends to study the text.

“Interesting stuff,” he mutters.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Got your work cut out if you’re preaching abstinence in a town like this.”

“No cause is too hopeless,” beams the older of the two women. “I’m Gemma. This is Paul and his sister-in-law Alice.”

Toby notices that they’ve moved to cut off his retreat. He can also see that Alice is heavily pregnant.

Clever.

“I’m intrigued, I admit,” he says. “The problem is, I’ve been ripped off by this sort of thing in the past.”

“We won’t ask you for any money,” Gemma assures him.

“I meant ripped off in a…well, in a spiritual sense I suppose.”

“It didn’t do quite what it said on the tin?”

Toby returns her dazzling smile. She’s very craftily established her status as the leader of this troupe. Deng Liu-xiang needn’t lose sleep over the size of his Jersey bank account if he has many more followers as charismatic as this classy broad.

“Something like that.”

“We’re different. Although we call ourselves a church, we don’t put forward a set of beliefs, we don’t adhere to a creed and we are not here to make converts. All we’re doing is presenting a new way of thinking, a programme of mental exercises if you will, that have enriched our lives and that we feel compelled to pass on.”

“It’s a completely non-profit making organisation,” Alice puts in.

“So if I came along tomorrow evening I’d just get some advice about fine-tuning the old grey matter?” Toby asks her. “It won’t be a case of ‘this is what we can do for you, but only if you sign up for a correspondence course’?”

“You really have come across movements like this before,” laughs Gemma. “But it’s not a teaser, it’s the whole show.”

“I can’t say I’m not tempted. But as you can probably tell I’m a stranger up here, and the truth is I’ve arranged to meet an old mate from college for a few bevvies before I go back on Monday. Can’t see him being too chuffed if I drag him to a self-help gig. Him or the rest of his pals.”

“Why don’t you let Simon and I introduce you to her now?”

“Her?”

“Deng Liu-xiang, our inspiration. She’s always interested in meeting new people.”

Bingo! Worked like a charm!

“I’m Ben,” says Toby. “Ben Webster.”

“Well, Ben Webster, if you come with us I promise you’re in for a real treat.”

It takes less than five minutes for Simon and Gemma to lead him through the churchyard, past the rugby ground and a semi-derelict hospital to a fog-bound Marine Parade, bordered on one side by a wide stretch of grass offering no protection from the chilling breeze coming off the sea, and on the other by a four-storey terrace set back from the road by a series of long, bedraggled front gardens.

The last of these has been covered in tarmac and marked out as a car park.

Belonging to the Gladstone Hotel.

“Here we are,” smiles Gemma, and if the klaxons were only audible in the distance before, now they’re shrieking from every rooftop and chimney.

Not so bored now, are we? Oh no!

A foyer decorated with paintings of seascapes and a framed marine chart showing the harbour entrance. To the left, one door gives onto a television lounge, another an empty and unattended bar. Ahead, a narrow staircase and to the right of that the dining room.

Toby’s mind photographs these and countless other details as it goes into full operational alert.

Your part in this is to help out at the Gladstone, that’s all.

What the fuck has that stupid cunt gone and done?

A single movement from Gemma’s beautifully pencilled eyebrow has Simon hurrying upstairs.

“Liu-xiang will be down directly,” she tells Toby. “I think she’s amazing.”

From the dining room emerges a woman who appears to be in her middle thirties. She’s wearing a mauve twinset and a charcoal pleated skirt. Her hair is styled in the same fashion as Gemma’s, tightly curled and held in place by a thin net.

“Will you be wanting refreshments?” she asks timidly.

“I don’t believe so. Later, perhaps.”

“Very well, madam.”

“Thank you, Sylvia. You may return to your duties.”

Toby’s already heightened awareness reaches stratospheric levels of vigilance. That was the behaviour of a countess to a scullery maid, not a guest to a hotel proprietress.

But now it’s Gemma who begins showing deference, for the young woman descending the staircase emits an aura that demands it.

Her sleek, shoulder-length raven hair is brushed forward into a long fringe, framing pale, unexceptional features invigorated by intelligent almond-shaped eyes and full, dark red lips. Her emerald cocktail dress has only one sleeve, loose and gathered at the wrist with a thin cord, exposing her left shoulder, her plump, freckled left arm and rather more of her sizeable left breast than would be acceptable in most company. As she enters the foyer she extends one bejewelled, crimson-nailed hand for Gemma to kiss, then uses the other to dismiss the woman from her presence.

Deng Liu-xiang looks her visitor up and down, making him feel as if he’s being auctioned at a slave market.

“Welcome to the Gladstone Hotel, Ben Webster,” she says softly in an accent that carries just a hint of her Far-Eastern origins.

“It’s uh…it’s an honour to meet you.”

“Is Ben Webster your real name? Or is it another alias?”

Toby takes a step backwards. If he’d leapt out of the foyer, across the Town Moor and over the cliffs into the sea it wouldn’t have been far enough.

“You…” he gulps.

The girl Toby last saw climbing into Suki Tatsukichi’s car outside St John’s House flicks back her fringe, allowing him a clear view not only of the rows of tiny gemstones adorning her brows but also the larger jewel she wears in the exact centre of her forehead.

“Clearly they did not tell you that Ruth Pattison has gone over to the kuzkardesh gara,” she smirks. “Or that her conversion was the result of a deliberate move by the humans you work for to silence her. Perhaps you are not held in such high esteem by your superiors as you like to think, agent Cunningham.”

Toby’s dash for the door is anticipated by Simon, who employs his robust frame to shoulder-charge him aside. Toby manages to stay on his feet and aim two beefy punches into his opponent’s midriff, but the guy wrestles him to the floor with the ferocity of the possessed.

“Duralga!” hisses Ruth. “Hazir!”

Simon’s body goes limp. His eyes lose their focus. Toby pushes him away and tries to stand but can’t. It’s a few seconds before he realises that Ruth doesn’t want him to.

“What the hell are you?” he throws at her.

“You will address this avatar as saylanan,” she commands him.

And in response, all Toby Cunningham can do is whisper his assent.

The room is surprisingly small, the bed only just wide enough for two to lie comfortably together. It has a lived-in feel; this must be where Ruth has slept since she first arrived at the hotel five months ago.

Does her reluctance to move indicate that she’d miss these quarters, that despite her transformation into a kuzkardesh gara — a hive queen, no less! — there remains within her a spark of humanity, one which might yet flare into life and save the town from being turned into a miniature southern Bucovina?

Toby doesn’t think so. Once the meme rewrites your subconscious the fat lady has sung, changed out of her costume and gone for a four-course meal in a fancy restaurant.

Except in one instance, and given Yvette de Monnier’s decision to go rogue after she’d been deprogrammed he wondered if she really was the exception that proved the rule.

Not that it matters to him any more. Ruth is holding her transmissions in check for the moment, keeping her acolytes as human as possible until she feels she’s in a position of such strength that the MoD will be forced to acknowledge her as an equal, yet the mental virus she’s infected him with has already made it impossible to leave her. Three times this evening he’s walked out of the front door, and on each occasion he felt as if he was abandoning a starving child in a burning building. It was as bad when he tried to phone HQ; the numbers kept forming and then dissolving in his head, never quite coming into synch with the fingers that wanted to dial them.

It’s his own guilt that the meme is feeding on. Deep down he must regret being the one who let Richard Brookbank walk into de Monnier’s trap, who fucked with her on the way to Hayden Park, who goaded her into a snog on the ferry, then insulted her about it later.

Well, she’s got her own back now. She’s made him her hyzmatkar.

Hyzmatkar.

Rough translation: human servant.

That’s what he’s been reduced to, Richard Brookbank’s personal fucking slave.

He daren’t imagine what indignities she’ll make him suffer through the course of the night.

And the next night, and the next…

Who the hell gave the order for her to be assimilated into the Sunny Hollow hive? Which genius failed to figure out that by being thrust into a body Yvette de Monnier had inhabited, Richard might very well have inherited her gift? What kind of surveillance team were so incompetent they let her return to Northcroft and begin a recruitment campaign?

Watch and wait.

Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right’s doing.

Toby starts looking through the pile of records stacked beside the Dansette opposite the wardrobe. It’s mostly MOR crap, but there’s a half-decent Stevie Wonder album he wouldn’t mind listening to before that bald-headed cow ties his wrists to the bedposts and takes her revenge on him.

No doubt it all just sounds like background noise to a kuzkardesh gara. Bit like lift music — or what’s in the charts nowadays.

The door opens, and to Toby’s surprise in walks Gemma.

“How are you feeling?” she asks him.

“What the fuck do you care?”

“That’s good. You’re not too far gone yet.”

She lifts a polythene bag from her jacket pocket. Toby’s eyes spring from their sockets when he sees the silvery, lozenge-shaped object inside it.

“How the…?” he gasps. “Jesus Christ, you’re…”

“I’m not Yvette de Monnier. She — or rather he — is in Romania trying to sort out the mess your lot created.”

“We’ve got it under control. We’ll nab her as soon as she tries to–“

“You really don’t have the faintest idea who she is, do you?” interrupts Gemma. “Cathryn Simmons is Gabriela Balcescu’s daughter. She was abducted during an Allied raid in the spring of 1942 so she could be used as a hostage to prevent the Bucovina hive joining forces with the Nazis. But we haven’t time to discuss that. Are you familiar with the way the transfer device works?”

“Yeah…it copies and rewrites the conscious memory.”

“It also stores the subconscious. That means it’s our ‘get out of jail free’ card. I used it after Ruth had converted me to wipe the virus and return to the person I was when Yvette and I swapped. It was difficult, make no mistake about that. Took every ounce of willpower I had. Ruth isn’t exerting her full control over us yet, but for a few hours I felt as if I was her most dedicated follower.”

“So why not use it on her?”

“It’s not as straightforward as that. She has to be the last one to touch it before the process begins, or we’ll just be exchanging one hive queen for another. Anyway, I can’t get near the bitch because of that lunk Simon Whitaker — who’s soon to become your bosom pal if we don’t act now.”

“Wait a minute. If you’re suggesting what I–“

“Yes, I am. And a minute may be all we have.” She begins unwrapping the device from its polythene cover. “I’ll be honest with you. Even if we get Richard back, the changes that have already been made to your subconscious will stay. That’s something you’re just going to have to live with. But there’s a real chance that if you spend the night in Ruth’s bed, by tomorrow you’ll be as loyal to her as Simon is. I can’t afford to let that happen.”

Gemma has him in a headlock before he realises she’s moved. Although he struggles free, the ice-cold object she’s attached to the back of his neck seems to be willing him into immobility.

It’s alive!

The fucking thing’s alive!

He feels his body falling towards the bed, but it never gets there. Instead there’s a blinding yellow light and a moment of total and utter disorientation that makes him call into question his very existence.

Just as quickly it’s over.

Toby looks down at the jacket and skirt she’s wearing, at the unmistakeably feminine curves of her bust and hips, at the elegant black shoes on her nylon-clad feet. Her tongue finds the underside of her dental plate, begins to work loose the bottom set from her gum. Despite the strangeness of finding herself in a different body, she has the sensation of having been liberated from something.

Then she sees the burly young man lying face-down on the bed.

The man she used to be.

“Take it…” she hears him say, jabbing a finger towards the metallic object still fixed to the top of his spine. “Now, before she…oh God, you were further on than I thought…”

Toby’s mind snaps into focus. Gemma is no use to her now; the best she can hope for is to retrieve the transfer device and hide it until she can think of a way to get Ruth to use it on herself.

She eases the machine from Gemma’s neck and replaces it in the polythene bag. She stuffs it in her pocket just as Ruth walks through the door, with Simon in close attendance.

“We wondered where you were,” she says to Toby, lifting a bejewelled finger to the older woman’s cheek and holding her gaze with those searching aquamarine eyes. “You know, darling, the situation has reached too crucial a stage for you to be acting on your own initiative. Perhaps it might be prudent to give you a boost.”

Toby is aware only of Ruth’s formidable breasts crushing her own as the saylanan extends her bare arm, places a hand on her shoulder and mouths a few nonsense syllables in a foreign language. She can’t imagine for the life of her what effect Ruth thinks they’ll have.

But when Simon leaves the room Toby follows him because she knows that is what’s expected of her.

And later, as she’s climbing into bed beside him, the transfer device quite forgotten, she doesn’t see anything unusual in that either.

THE INFECTION VECTOR The sequel to 'The House In The Hollow' CHAPTER 4 - SYLVIA By Touch the Light We’ll see which one of us lands him first. Sylvia had won that contest hands down. But the night Ruth came back…

The dream hasn’t changed.

The same overcast sky, the same line of cars outside the cemetery gates, the same tarpaulin draped over the earth heaped next to the grave, the same voices murmuring as she leans forward to place a single daffodil on top of the coffin about to be lowered into the ground.

I reckon she’ll do the right thing.

A few more years an’ Norah’ll let ‘er run the place ‘erself.

The dream hasn’t changed. Everything else has.

Sylvia Russell opens the door to her mother’s room, holding her nose at the stench coming from the old woman’s bed. She doesn’t mind that so much; what she hates is seeing her in this pitiful condition when just a week ago she’d seemed as strong as an ox.

She heaves Norah onto her side so she can whip the urine-soaked sheet from beneath her. The groans and muffled complaints this brings are interspersed with pleas to fetch Dr Pounder.

“I told you, mam, it’s Dr Vasey now,” Sylvia reminds her.

“Don’t want ‘im.”

“Well you’ve got him, so there’s no point going on about it.”

It’s angina, Miss Russell. I’m afraid not enough blood is getting to her heart.

Dr Vasey is quite young, but he clearly knows his stuff. Ruth had done well to recommend him, just as she’d spotted that the medical encyclopaedia Sylvia had consulted when mam started having those headaches, and afterwards the drowsy spells, the times when she couldn’t recall her own name, and worst of all the chronic diarrhoea, was leading her down the wrong track.

She feels foolish now to have even given the idea houseroom, but those symptoms had accurately described the early stages of arsenic poisoning.

Her mother’s immediate needs attended to, Sylvia hurries through her morning routine with breathless efficiency. There is much to be done: Ruth and her guests need feeding, their rooms must be serviced and their uniforms pressed before she can start dusting and vacuuming downstairs. She also has to prepare the accounts so that Ruth can inspect them tomorrow, and type new menus in line with Ruth’s specifications.

She dresses swiftly, pulling on a sleeveless white blouse, a full black skirt and a pair of black low-heeled shoes. She sprays her curls stiff, then leaves the flat and climbs the stairs to the single room on the top floor. She knocks once and waits for the guttural syllable she knows will give her permission to enter.

Ruth is at her dressing table in her panties and stockings, making up her eyes. Sylvia lowers her head, grateful for the etiquette that saves her from having to look at that pale, freckled scalp and the repulsive row of black gemstones that bisect it. If she tries hard, she can still picture the tousled gingery blonde hair that used to hang to Ruth’s shoulders, still hear the educated southern accent that so often reminded Sylvia of the years she spent in London.

“Salam, Sylvia Russell,” Ruth says at length, though she continues to paint her face.

“Salam, saylanan.”

“This morning you will accompany the avatar known as Gemma Egerton to the house at 6 Redheugh Close. It is to be made ready for the visitors we expect to entertain following this evening’s meeting.”

“As you wish, saylanan.”

“Hyzmatkar?”

The man Ruth is addressing lies naked on the bed, the sheets barely hiding his genitals. Sylvia doesn’t remember seeing him before, though his physique is such that she can understand why the saylanan has taken him as her lover.

“Any chance of a bite up here, Sylv?” he asks her.

“Of course, Mr…?”

“Cunningham. You can call me Toby.”

Ruth stands from the chair. Sylvia notices that she’s gone back to wearing black lip gloss and nail varnish. Memories of her unannounced return to the Gladstone just over a week ago, flanked by Gemma Egerton and Carol Vasey’s youngest, threaten to converge into a coherent narrative but never quite do.

Who’ve you been staying with, the Addams family?

There are some who have reached an age when the illusion of selfhood is too deeply embedded for the meme to overwrite it.

Ruth walks over to the bed. An image forms in Sylvia’s mind of the Soho ‘massage parlour’ she was once taken to, and the leather-clad dominatrix she’d glimpsed in one of the rooms there.

At least she’d had her hair.

“I don’t suppose…” Toby begins.

“Three times during the night, first thing this morning and you’re still not satisfied,” sighs Ruth.

“You promised me a kuzkardesh gara never refuses her hyzmatkar.”

“Of course she doesn’t. She is his woman.”

Before Ruth waves a bejewelled finger to dismiss her, Sylvia is compelled to watch her lick Toby’s penis erect and then take the engorged member fully into her mouth. If Sylvia’s concerns regarding her mother’s health have subdued her appetite, this removes it altogether.

Nor does she feel like eating once she’s finished serving breakfast. The days of bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and black pudding sizzling in the pan are past. Now it’s cereal and warm milk for the kuzkardesh gara, toast and preserves for their hytzmakar.

Such a transformation in only a week.

Mam would never have stood for it. She’d have got the women of the headland together and had Ruth tin-panned back to Yorkshire.

Sylvia waits until Gemma and Simon have left the dining room before setting the tables for this afternoon’s pre-meeting tea. She’s laying out the cutlery when Gemma returns, carrying a black jacket over her arm.

“This avatar will be leaving for Redheugh Close in approximately forty-five minutes,” she tells her. “See to it that this garment is fit for her to wear.”

“At once, madam.”

Sylvia takes the jacket, frowning as the woman walks back into the foyer. She’s come to regard Gemma almost as a friend, despite her airs and graces. The person who’s just spoken to her was different, not only in her attitude but her general deportment as well. And she’d referred to herself as ‘this avatar’, which was also new.

But it isn’t Sylvia’s place to question the behaviour of those much more vital to the saylanan’s cause than a hotel drudge. She drapes the jacket over the back of a chair and sets off in search of a soft brush, a clean tea towel and a steam iron, reckoning that the table in the outhouse, which she scrubbed laboratory clean yesterday, will make an ideal work surface. First she remembers to check the pockets.

What on earth…?

A polythene bag with a renewable seal. Inside, a silvery egg-shaped object five or six inches long and perhaps three inches across at its widest.

She pulls open the seal and lifts the ovoid out. It’s as light as balsa wood and yet as hard and inflexible as steel.

Cold too. Icy cold.

She drops it back in the bag, rubbing fingers that feel as if she’s used them to build a snowman without bothering to put on any gloves.

When the warmth has seeped back into them, she looks at the object once again. Perhaps it’s just that the light has improved, but the thing seems to be glowing.

Ought she to tell the saylanan? Gemma had been acting strangely, after all.

Yet if she’s hiding this from Ruth, she’s hardly likely to have left in her pocket for an underling like Sylvia Russell to find.

Underling?

It’s your mother’s hotel!

No, she’s got to say something. This is a special day for the saylanan. Imagine if Gemma’s merely pretending to be under her control, and this is a weapon of some kind. For all Sylvia knows it could explode or shoot out vicious poison-tipped spikes or burst open and bathe its victim in acid.

Poison…

She’s made up her mind. She’ll lock the object away so that Gemma can’t find it, then pick her moment to approach Ruth.

In the meantime, she has a jacket to iron.

Elsie Harbron’s curtains are drawn, and at half-past eleven on a bright Sunday morning.

“I hope she’s all right,” Sylvia says to Gemma as they reach the house at the end of Redheugh Close.

“She is old, Sylvia Russell. The future has no need of her.”

It wouldn’t miss Sylvia’s mother either. But that didn’t mean she deserved to die in her own excreta.

Gemma detaches her fingers from Sylvia’s arm. The door to number 6 is ajar; she walks straight in, to be greeted by a pregnant young woman with bobbed red hair who Sylvia recognises as Alice Hodgson.

“We bring specific instructions from the saylanan,” Gemma informs her. “This avatar’s hyzmatkar will arrive shortly with the equipment necessary to carry them out.”

Alice nods, then glances at Sylvia.

“This is the maid?”

“Sylvia Russell is at our disposal until three.”

“Then she can begin by cleaning the house from top to bottom.”

For the next couple of hours Sylvia’s world is one of mop and bucket, of feather duster and chamois leather, of disinfectant and furniture polish, of Hoover extensions and refuse sacks. She is allowed two short breaks from her labours, one to sip from a bowl of Chinese tea, the other to nibble at a plate of tinned peach slices dipped in plain yoghurt. Neither Gemma nor Alice show the slightest interest in her progress, preferring to watch Simon’s muscular frame being put through its paces as he attends to the various odd jobs they’ve given him.

We’ll see which one of us lands him first.

Sylvia had won that contest hands down. But the night Ruth came back…

At two o’clock Alice asks her to pour a glass of tonic wine for Mrs Harbron next door.

“You’ll find the bottles in the larder. Choose the elderberry, she likes that. It’s non-alcoholic, of course. And you needn’t knock. She expects a visit around this time.”

Elsie is asleep in the armchair when Sylvia enters the darkened living room. She places the glass on the mantelpiece, then pulls back the curtains and walks over to shake the old lady by the shoulder.

“Mrs Harbron…Mrs Harbron…I’ve brought your drink.”

Elsie’s eyes spring open. They immediately settle on Sylvia’s apron.

“So she’s got you skivvyin’ for ‘er, as she? How’d she talk yer into that?” When Sylvia doesn’t answer, Elsie sighs and shakes her head. “I see she’s sent yer with me daily dose o’ poison.”

“Poison?”

“That wine she wants us to drink. Elderberry, just like in the film. Come out durin’ the war it did. I took our Jim to see it. We ‘ad to get the tram into Stranton an’ watch it at the Lex ‘cause the Gaumont ‘ad burnt down a year or two before. Can’t think o’ what it was called or who was in it. Might’ve been Cary Grant. Aye, it was.”

Sylvia picks up the glass and holds it to her nose. There’s a suggestion of bitterness in the aroma coming from it, but no more than that.

“Are you saying there’s something wrong with this?”

“I know that the first few times I took it I used to wake up the next mornin’ with these splittin’ ‘eadaches, an’ I couldn’t get off the lavvy.”

“And now?”

“I just get rid of it when she’s not lookin’.”

“D’you think she’s–“

“Tryin’ to do away with us? Don’t be daft. I’m keepin’ me eye on ‘er though. An’ you better ‘ad too if she’s got yer waitin’ on ‘er ‘and an’ foot.”

Sylvia returns to number 6 in a state of increasing agitation. She knows that it’s wrong to doubt her suitability for the role the saylanan has chosen for her, yet Elsie’s last remark has left her feeling deeply ashamed of the menial position she now occupies.

A few more years an’ Norah’ll let ‘er run the place ‘erself.

She’d sacrificed everything to help mam keep the hotel going after dad had died. And Ruth Pattison has taken it from them.

How could she have let that happen?

That’s where you’re mistaken, Sylvia Russell. The decision is not up to you.

It isn’t right.

The Gladstone is mam’s property.

And if mam dies, what then?

Will the shell of a woman Sylvia has become prove strong enough to hold on to her inheritance? Is it not far more likely that she’ll just meekly sign it away?

In the kitchen, Gemma and Alice point her towards the loaves and buns, the cartons of eggs, the blocks of Cheddar and Double Gloucester, the carrots, the cress, the sticks of celery, the jars of mayonnaise and coleslaw, the tubs of margarine, the pickles, the crackers, the cakes, the gateaux and all the other provisions Simon has raided from the Gladstone’s stores. Sylvia goes to work on them at once, her features betraying not a hint of resentment at this casual appropriation of someone else’s goods. Her mind is elsewhere; it’s focused on the cupboard where she locked the object she discovered in Gemma’s jacket, and the bottle she saw on the bottom shelf.

She’ll have a look at that when she gets the chance.

Her thoughts are too jumbled for her to know why, but she has a nasty suspicion that it contains elderberry wine.

The entrance to Northcroft’s Borough Hall is as unspectacular as the rock garden it faces. A glass door is set beside a window less than a dozen feet wide through which can be seen tripods holding advertisements for the diminishing range of services the council can afford to run, and a felted backdrop filled with watercolours of the headland painted by local schoolchildren.

Sylvia Russell, whose task it is to hand out a programme of events to each of the congregation as they arrive, only has eyes for the black lacquer covering her nails and the glistening black gemstones mounted on the silver rings she wears on each of her fingers and thumbs. Even more than the smart black jacket and matching dress the saylanan presented to her by way of thanks for all the hard work she put in this afternoon, these accessories have convinced her that she has a real part to play in the movement, that the Church of the Eternal Mind has welcomed her into the fold if not yet as a full acolyte then certainly as a follower who possesses the potential to be one.

Her lips are black too, and didn’t that have Penny Cattrick’s brow lifting when she turned up with her niece! Paula Cockburn — Paula Harbron as was — looked as if she could have been knocked to the ground with a wad of cotton wool!

Sylvia’s doubts have evaporated. The saylanan’s message is about to be broadcast to the general public for the first time, heralding the dawn of a brand new era. Epiphany is coming, and its advent will begin here in Northcroft.

And yet it was elderberry wine…

Now the converted make their appearance, most of whom attended the tea held for them in the Gladstone a few hours earlier. Dr Vasey, his wife Carol and their eldest daughter Elaine. Eleanor and Christina Kyte. Josephine Bishop. Gemma Egerton and Simon Whitaker. Alice Hodgson and Paul Smailes. The four fully transformed kuzkardesh gara from the Sunny Hollow nest, bewigged so as not to alarm the local populace.

Finally the black limousine driven by Toby Cunningham, the saylanan by his side.

Sylvia bows her head as Toby helps Ruth from the car. So do the kuzkardesh gara, who have formed a guard of honour for their queen. But the atmosphere of reverence is disturbed by the knot of youths who have gathered on the other side of the road.

“Oi, witchy lips!” one of them shouts. “We don’t want people like you on the ‘eadland.”

“Aye, fuck off back to China,” another calls out.

Toby begins striding towards them, but Ruth pulls him up with a single hissed syllable.

“Why don’t you come in and hear what we have to say?” she asks the boys.

“No fuckin’ way.”

“Do we look like doyles?”

“You don’t understand. You’re not being given the choice.”

To Sylvia’s astonishment they all troop obediently forward, pausing only to collect a programme on their way through the door. She glances up at Toby, and sees something more disconcerting than awe and wonder in those wide grey eyes.

Fear.

Pure unadulterated fear.

Is this what the brave new world is to be founded upon?

She forces the heresy from her mind. Ruth is her mistress, her role model, her icon.

Her saylanan.

Even if it was elderberry wine.

Sylvia is the last to enter the building. She makes her way along the short corridor that leads to the hall itself, where about two hundred people are seated below the stage. Simon has already embarked on a warm-up turn, his enthusiastic demeanour and witty but gentle sense of humour drawing ripples of laughter from the audience. Before Sylvia has found an empty chair close enough to the aisle that she won’t have to make half the row stand to let her reach it, Simon has introduced Toby.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he smiles. “Are we going to be finished in time for last orders at the Priory? The answer is yes. But I’m confident that the majority of you, once you’ve listened to our speaker this evening, will go away from here so filled with inner peace it won’t occur to you to drown it in alcohol. Some claim, I know! In an hour you’ll appreciate why I’m justified in making it. Please welcome the saylanan of the Church of the Eternal Mind, Deng Liu-xiang.”

Sylvia gasps as loudly as anyone around her when Ruth’s first act on arriving at the lectern in the centre of the stage is to unfasten the hooks of her jacket and reveal the translucent bodice beneath.

“’A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me’,” she quotes from the sheet in front of her. “’He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.’

“Those words come from The Song of Solomon. They are the last reference to religion you will hear in this meeting.

“It was once believed that nature, in all its varied forms, must have been created by a designer working to a plan. We now know that natural selection is responsible. That is correct, the Church of the Eternal Mind believes in the theory of evolution.”

The saylanan’s mesmeric voice and restless eyes, which neglect no section of the hall, soon have the audience entranced. She goes on to outline the idea of genes as self-replicating units of DNA, explaining how they determine our physical characteristics, our susceptibility to certain diseases and even the length of our lives. She then moves on to memes, which she argues are analogous to genes but consist solely of information. After presenting many examples, she makes her central point: that just as the human body is a vehicle for the transmission of genes from one generation to the next, so the ‘self’ is a construct to aid the survival of memes.

“We do not expect you to take this on trust,” she concedes. “But there are some mental exercises you can perform that may help you to see the self for what it is: nothing more than an illusion.

“One is to concentrate on the present moment. You can try it now. Look up at the ceiling, or down at the floor, or at one of the walls. If you’re thinking about something that happened in the past, let it go. If you’re thinking about the future, let that go too. Come back to the present. Notice what is there. Don’t label it with words, just see it.

“Better still, look out of a window. Watch a tree rustle in the breeze. With practice you’ll find that past, present and future merge into one. What you thought were separate events are in fact only a series of changes. The idea of a ‘self’ who is doing the watching will seem to fade away.

“Another method is to pay attention to everything at once. Have a go.” She waits for thirty or forty seconds. “Thoughts came from nowhere, did they not? How many of you remembered something you wish you’d said but didn’t? Or said and wish you hadn’t? How many of you heard a tune run through your head? How many of you thought about money? How many of you thought about sex? Those were memes, competing for ascendancy inside your brain. They were controlling the attention, not you.”

Ruth continues speaking, but Sylvia can’t hear her. Elsie Harbron’s words have returned to her, as they did when she opened the bottle of elderberry wine in the cupboard and smelled the same bitterness she’d sensed wafting from the ‘tonic’ Alice Hodgson had instructed her to give the old lady.

Elderberry, just like in the film. Come out durin’ the war it did… Can’t think o’ what it was called or who was in it. Might’ve been Cary Grant.

Cary Grant.

Famous for starring in some of Sylvia’s favourite movies when she was a teenager, including the Hitchcock classics To Catch A Thief and North By Northwest.

Before that, Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace.

Ruth’s ‘mental exercises’ have enabled Sylvia to see the situation as it really is. The facts that have been staring her in the face can all be connected, and they point to one inescapable conclusion.

The saylanan has poisoned her mother.

“Suppose you are in the bath and the water is beginning to get cold,” Ruth is saying. “Do you get out now, or snuggle under for a bit longer? This is a trivial decision, but knowing there is no real self to choose and no free will, you can only reflect that your body either will or will not get up, and indeed it does. The decision makes itself. Although the brain may turn over the possibilities and come down on one side rather than the other, it can do so without the false idea that someone inside is directing it.”

The saylanan has poisoned her mother.

“All our hopes and desires are based on an inner self who must be kept happy. But if there is no self, what can be gained by wishing for things on behalf of someone who does not exist? They do not matter. There is no one for them to matter to.”

The saylanan has poisoned her mother.

She knew.

When she placed the polythene bag in her pocket, intending to use the metal egg inside to hold against Ruth’s cheek until she screamed out a confession, she knew.

The rings, the nail varnish and the lip gloss had seduced her into forgetfulness.

They couldn’t now.

The saylanan has poisoned her mother.

Sylvia starts coughing and spluttering, excuses herself and runs to the back of the hall. She takes a few moments pretending to recover, then inches towards the right-hand corner. From here she has a clear run to the steps going up to the stage. Simon is standing at their foot, but if she’s quick she’ll be past him before he knows what’s happening.

Keep moving.

Five rows of seats to go.

They haven’t seen her.

Four.

Take that thing out of the bag.

Three.

She’s still okay.

Two.

Oh God it’s cold.

One…

She hurls her body forward, leaps up the steps and brandishes the metal egg in full view of Ruth as she turns to confront her attacker. The saylanan’s eyes blaze with fury, but Sylvia’s momentum has endowed her with a force even the queen of a kuzkardesh gara hive cannot counteract. Lectern and saylanan go crashing to the boards.

Her fingers almost numb, Sylvia kneels to press the egg into Ruth’s face. She doesn’t care what the consequences might be, all she wants is for her mother’s poisoner to suffer.

“Wait!” cries Toby.

Sylvia is distracted for less than a second, but it’s long enough for Ruth’s hyzmatkar to snatch the egg from her. She bursts into tears, for now she really has lost everything.

She doesn’t see him place the object in Ruth’s palm as she attempts to rise.

She doesn’t see him twist the saylanan’s arm behind her head.

She doesn’t see him slam her hand into the back of her neck.

But she hears the sorrowful wail that follows, because it’s echoed by every convert in the hall.

THE INFECTION VECTOR The sequel to 'The House In The Hollow' CHAPTER 5 - RICHARD By Touch the Light Somehow I’ve been turned into a girl. Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Can’t think of one right now...

Darkness.

As thick and as black as molasses.

I lift my hand and hold it so close to my face that my finger is touching my nose.

Nothing.

Maybe I’m blind.

There was that dazzling yellow light. I thought I was dying.

Who am I?

Where am I?

How did I get here?

Blind.

And alone.

More alone than I’ve ever been.

An intense sense of loss engulfs me. It’s very nearly intolerable.

Why do I feel like this?

Why can’t I remember?

Why can’t I remember?

Why can’t I remember…

Shadows.

Monochrome refracting into a suggestion of colour.

A face. Behind it, another.

The first is female. Not young. Not quite.

The second is male, and strangely familiar.

Cunningham?

When he steps forward. When he grabs hold of my waist and pulls me against him, so that my hands are resting flat on his chest. When his face comes so close I can see the stubble beginning to form on his chin. When I close my eyes and understand that in a moment or two I’ll know how it feels to be a woman being kissed a man. When that warm, moist softness brushes my lips and I part them in instinctive surrender. When his tongue has explored the inside of my mouth for so long that I can hardly breathe and I’m hanging on to his shoulders for dear life...

But that wasn’t me. It can’t have been.

Who am I?

Why can’t I remember?

I try to speak. The woman hushes me. She holds something in front of my eyes. A sudden brightness blinds me once again.

“It’s possible that she may show symptoms of post-traumatic amnesia.”

“How severe and how permanent?”

“Hard to predict at this stage.”

She?

They must be talking about someone else.

A name forms in my head.

Richard.

Is that me?

Why can’t I remember?

Now a sharp pain in my left forearm.

Faces, colours and voices fade.

Why can’t I remember?

I’m lying in a hospital bed looking up at the ceiling. It’s day, though the blinds are drawn across the window to my left.

Snapper Brookbank! It is you! Don’t you remember me?

Yes I do!

You were the blonde lass on the…

On the…

It’s no good. It just won’t come.

But you called me ‘Snapper’. That’s a start.

I lever myself to a sitting position. The room is small and sparsely furnished, but there’s a recess equipped with a lavatory and a washbasin. On the right-hand wall hangs a framed image featuring an anchor, a pair of wings, two crossed swords and a crown. Below it is printed a single word: HASLAR.

Haslar!

The naval hospital in Gosport!

It’s just that I’ve been told to deliver this dead expensive piece of machinery to HMS Almandine. I can’t hang around ‘cause apparently the order came from as near to the top as you can get, and if I’m late I know for a fact my bollocks are going to end up nailed to that flagpole.

I was talking to that bloke! The one who was standing behind the doctor last time I regained consciousness!

Only before he was dressed in a sentry’s uniform…

And I’m a civilian. If I’d fallen ill or something why would he bring me here?

This needn’t end in tears, Richard, but you must do exactly as I say.

Richard.

Richard Brookbank.

Of course. How could I have forgotten?

It’s all flooding back now!

I feel the hair at the back of my neck being parted. A feminine fragrance fills my nostrils. At the first touch of cold metal against my flesh it’s all I can do to keep the contents of my bowels in their current location.

Survival becomes my only wish. What would I not give, how many hours of unpaid charity work would I not perform, what humiliation would I not willingly endure in return for the sweet sound of her telling me I’m free to go?

The pressure at the top of my spine increases, and the watery scene in front of me swims sickeningly in and out of focus. Then everything coalesces into a brilliant yellow light. I don’t feel any pain, just an overwhelming sense of dissociation.

So this is dying. No choirs of angels. No glittering ladder climbing to heaven. No loved ones dressed all in white beckoning me to enter the afterlife. Silly to think there would be, really.

Just my consciousness shutting down to spare me the trauma of an agonising last few moments of existence.

When my vision clears…

I raise my hands from the blanket. My fingers are pale, delicate and covered in tiny freckles. My palms are softer, my wrists slimmer than they were before the weird experience the blonde put me through.

But that’s nothing.

Because I don’t need to undo the buttons of my pyjama top to see that I’ve got breasts.

And my hand doesn’t have to explore my groin to confirm the fact that it won’t find a penis or a pair of testicles there.

I’m a girl.

Somehow I’ve been turned into a girl.

Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

Can’t think of one right now.

My bladder politely suggests that I leave questions such as ‘what the fuck is going on?’ until its requirements have been met.

Climbing out of bed brings on a brief spell of intense dizziness. More worrying are the bandages I can feel when I touch my forehead.

Have I suffered a cranial injury? Could that be how I lost my memory?

You know it isn’t, Rich.

Rich…

I can’t very well be him now, not with these massive mounds of flesh bouncing and swaying every time I put one foot in front of the other.

I might have to wear a bra.

Might have to?

I lift the toilet lid and pull down my pyjama bottoms. Sitting to urinate feels natural, which it shouldn’t, but relief outweighs the addition of yet another piece to the puzzle.

As I flush I remember that I’ll have periods. Being female is going to prove quite a challenge.

Let’s have a look at the face I’ll be meeting it with.

Trying hard not to admire the womanly profile between my wide hips and strong, well rounded thighs, I step over to the washbasin and peer into the mirror above the sink.

Oh fuck…

And as Ruth Pattison’s reflection brings more of my memory trickling back, I begin to get the feeling that having nothing hanging from my crotch could turn out to be the least of my problems.

Dr Beverley Sanderson is brisk, blonde and has a bedside manner Attila the Hun might have envied but one I suspect few members of her profession would wish to emulate.

“Three times a day if you can manage it. Twice at the very minimum,” she insists, handing me the tub of thick green paste she’s just rubbed into my scalp.

“Feels all wet and sticky,” I complain.

“You can always keep the golf-ball look. It’s bound to come into fashion eventually.”

She fits my wig, which is ginger to match the colour my hair will be when it’s grown back. It’s long enough to brush my shoulders, and has a fringe that can be combed forward to hide the reddish-purple scab in the centre of my forehead. The rows of tiny black gemstones adorning my eyebrows are staying; Beverley thinks I need them to remind me of the hideous creature I became, and make me grateful for this second chance at learning how to be a girl.

Because I have to go through the adjustment process all over again. The transfer device may have given me back my humanity, but it did so by returning my subconscious to the condition it was in when Yvette de Monnier first swapped bodies with me. That means my mind has yet to attune itself to this body’s habits, tastes and preferences. The months I spent as Ruth might never have existed.

My only consolation — and it doesn’t seem like one, believe me! — is that provided I don’t fight it, the worst should be over within a couple of weeks. True, from a neutral observer’s point of view I have no incentive to rebel. No one is holding out false hopes for me to cling to. I’m going to be a woman for the rest of my life, so I may as well get used to it.

First I have to find out how serious the consequences of my actions in Northcroft are likely to be. Although de Monnier’s people appear to have done some sort of deal with the MoD that’ll at least keep them from bundling me into the back of a van with a view to leaving my corpse in a ditch by the side of a country lane, neither organisation is above the law — and attempted murder isn’t a charge that can easily be swept under the carpet.

I still can’t remember being converted. I have a few sketchy recollections of my time at Sunny Hollow, but they don’t amount to very much. As I explained to Beverley when she began my psychological evaluation the day before yesterday, it’s as if a whole section of my mind has been ripped out and shredded.

She didn’t have to fill in much of the gap to have me praying it’ll remain that way.

A kuzkardesh gara queen?

Me?

De Monnier, Egerton and Cunningham playing musical chairs with one another’s bodies?

Where did the real world go?

My wig secure, I pull on the blouse, slacks, popsocks and shoes Beverley’s young assistant Fiona brought for me in a box that also contained the make-up I managed to apply without smearing lipstick all over my chin and getting mascara in my eyes. As I fasten the buttons, I watch the cream-coloured cotton stretch and strain across the swell of my breasts. I’ve seen this so often before that it shouldn’t cause me to bat an eyelid, yet it does.

They’re part of you, Rich. They always will be. Like it or lump it, this is for keeps.

“What d’you reckon?” I ask Beverley once I’ve practised walking around in my shoes and discovered that one thing I won’t have to worry about is wearing heels. “Not bad for a first try. Well, it feels like a first try.”

She fusses with my collar, my cuffs, the button above the zip at the side of my slacks, even my turn-ups.

“You’ll do. She isn’t looking to hire a new secretary.”

“Your boss is a she?”

“She isn’t my boss. She’s been assigned to supervise your case, which technically makes her my superior.”

I twist in front of the mirror in an attempt to see my profile from as many angles as possible. Yes it’s a very feminine thing to do, but if I’m wearing popsocks…

“I hope she’s a bit less of a cold fish than the one I had last time.”

On the other hand, if she manages to rescue me from an extended holiday at Her Majesty’s Pleasure she can have the personality of a Bird’s Eye frozen cod steak for all it matters to me.

The door opens to admit Fiona.

“I thought you should see this, Dr Sanderson. It came back from the lab last night, but you’d gone.”

She passes a document to Beverley, whose brows lift as she begins reading.

“Oh my,” she grins. “Have you told them?”

“I’ll leave that to you.”

As Fiona departs, I’m almost certain that she winks at me.

“I’d recommend that you sit down,” says Beverley. “I’m serious. I have some news for you.”

“Can’t be any more of a shock than finding out I was a hive queen.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. What are you doing on February 26th next year?”

“Next year? How should I know?”

“Well, you’d be wise not to plan anything you couldn’t put off for a while.” She hands me the document. “Congratulations, Ruth.”

And as I look in horror at the words her finger points to, another phrase crashes through my head.

Charlotte Annabel, D.O.B. 28/7/74, Bromley, Kent, UK

It never rains but it fucking pours.

There are two small bulbs on the panel to the right of the door. The red one is lit, and has been since Beverley left me standing here nearly ten minutes ago.

She’s doing it to prove how important she is. I bet she’s sitting at her desk with a copy of Cosmopolitan munching a Danish pastry.

Keep it together, Rich. You’re about to start fighting for your liberty.

And I’ll be delivering every punch reeling from the devastating double blow of discovering that not only am I expecting a child but that I already have a four year old daughter.

As if being female wasn’t enough to deal with.

But I’m not giving up just yet. Fate owes me, and one day I intend to collect.

A buzzer sounds.

Green.

Here we go…

I knock once and enter. The office is tiny, the window at the back giving an invigorating if somewhat constricted view of the sun-sparkled sea and cloudless azure sky.

Not that I’d have spent more than a fraction of a second looking at it if I’d seen a fleet of Spanish galleons anchored offshore.

You work for us now. You always will.

The woman who stands to greet me is none other than Mitsuoko Tatsukichi.

“I hear you’ve been taking good care of my body,” she grins.

“You can have it back for the next nine months if you want.”

“I don’t think Sir Kingston would approve. He’s keeping that device under lock and key. He’d have buried it at the bottom of the Mariana Trench years ago if the powers that be had let him.”

“Would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“Some good’s come out of this. We understand a lot more about the infection vector than we did.”

“That makes me feel a load better.” I take a deep breath. “Get to the point, Suki. Am I going to prison or not?”

“Sit down.” Not the most heartening answer she could have made when I recall the last time I was given that instruction. But I do so, crossing one sturdy thigh over the other. “I’ll be honest with you, Durham Constabulary have been after your blood. If Jeremy Egerton hadn’t got you out of there I doubt whether even someone as influential as Sir Kingston Ferens would have been able to keep you from standing trial. But Mrs Russell is on the mend, and that helped us persuade her daughter not to press charges. Just don’t expect a birthday card from either of them this year.”

I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry. Removing the threat of a jail sentence has left the way clear for the full force of my guilt to wash over me.

“I think I need a cigarette after that,” I mumble.

“I imagine you do. But you’re not having one. Not in your condition.”

Something else to brighten my day.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Okay, so what’s the plan? I mean I can’t go back to Northcroft, obviously.”

“We thought you might help us explore the nature of your gift.”

“I’m not sure I’m altogether with you. What gift?”

“You have the ability to transmit your subconscious thoughts. That’s putting it crudely, of course. The phenomenon is a complex one, and no theoretical basis for it has so far been established. But if what we’re beginning to believe is true, it holds the key to our struggle against the kuzkardesh gara.”

“You’re still making no sense.”

“Why do you think you became their queen? It was because you could broadcast the meme. The questions to which we need answers are,” and here she starts counting them on her fingers, “how many others are there like you? How do we identify them? How widely does the potency of this gift vary? Is it hereditary? Does it grow stronger or weaker with age?”

She says I’m gifted. Not as much as her, of course! No one is.

Yeah, but it’s not like being good at Maths. It’s more about working out what people are thinking deep down. That’s how I can tell mum isn’t frightened of boats any more. She was worried about something else, probably what she’s going to tell auntie Shannon and auntie Clare when she goes to see them. She’s gifted too, she just hasn’t learned to use it properly. Not sure about you, though. Strange one, you are.

Then there was that word…