And while this still happened—one night out of three he’d be roaming the streets; blowing this way and that, like litter—the rest was change. He no longer had a job at the Park, or a nice flat, and Sara had emailed yesterday to let him know—she wouldn’t want him to find out any other way—that she was seeing someone else. So was Lech, but only in the mirror. The scarred face there was a whole new chapter in a different story; most of the damage self-inflicted, to conceal the original message carved by a bad actor. PAEDO. A lie, but what difference did that make? Had it been true, he’d have obliterated it just the same.
The scars he’d made to hide that lie had hardened to a mask. Something he could hide behind, and others shy away from.
And his days were no longer spent at Regent’s Park but at Slough House, where the Park’s cast-offs laboured. Their tasks were of the boulder-rolling kind: they never came to an end, they just felt like they might, right up to the moment when they began all over again. To be assigned to Slough House meant you’d committed some egregious error; had endangered lives, or caused embarrassment, or invited the wrong sort of attention, all of which were among the seven deadlies on Spook Street. Lech’s own mistake had been to do someone a favour, and the only consolation he’d devised for himself since had been the promise that he’d never do that again; that from here on in, he was his only trusted friend. Being at Slough House actually helped in that regard. It was a place that encouraged you to remain behind your mask, and focus on rolling that boulder. Either you’d get it to the top of the hill despite yourself, or you’d come to your senses and give up.
But the resumption of normal service wasn’t something you could guarantee against, and nor did a mask protect you from yourself. Or perhaps all this meant was, you couldn’t hide from history; it would always roll round again and perform its favourite damage. He should know that by now. His Polish blood should have sung him the song. But that same blood had the tendency to remind him that he was involved in humanity, like it or not, which in turn meant he’d repeated the same stupid error and done somebody a favour. The same somebody, in fact, that he’d done a favour for first time round. Which was why, lying in bed, he had the not-unfamiliar sense of having kick-started something he’d regret.
To cheer himself up, he read the text that had woken him. It was from his landlord: the rent hadn’t been paid. Which meant his bank had screwed up again—the second direct debit to have gone awry this week.
His alarm clock chirruped. Limbs and body bruised and stiff, Lech showered and dressed, drank a cup of black tea, and set off for work.
Normal service, being resumed.
Talk about not learning from your mistakes.
Spend enough time shadow-boxing and your shadow starts to hit back. Shirley should offer that at the morning session as a “learning.” They were big on learnings, here in the San, especially when they came wrapped in metaphor. So, yeah: shadow-boxing. But when you’re off the ground, she could add, your shadow can’t lay a finger on you. Very good reason for getting high.
This was easy. Second day in, and Shirley Dander was on top of their shit already.
But going along with it would mean pretending she was okay with being here, and that might be a stretch for them to accept, given the forthright assessment she’d made of the place, its facilities and its staff within an hour of her arrival, and then again sometime during the second hour, and maybe a couple more times after that, before everyone agreed it might be best to call it a night. They’d think, in fact, that she was faking it to speed up the whole process of recovery and release. So no, best plan would be to stick with the dignified silence she’d mostly maintained since the previous morning. Dignity was definitely looking like being one of her better things, which, come to think of it, probably counted as a learning too. But there was nothing to say she couldn’t leave here wiser than she’d arrived. It didn’t mean she’d be removing this place from her shit-list any time soon.
Of course, putting its name on any kind of list would be easier if it had a fucking name in the first place. Instead, it was just known as the San, an abbreviation redolent of the Chalet School books her mother had forced on her when she was ten; books she had refused to read as a matter of principle, and then had refused to admit to reading as a matter of survival, because to back down from a principle was just baring your throat for the bite. There was no battle as fiercely fought as a girl’s with her mother. Mind you, the battles fought by a grown woman with her mother could get pretty heated too, which was a good reason for making sure her mother never got to find out about Shirley’s current whereabouts. She’d almost certainly blame it on Shirley’s recreational drug use, and Shirley was sick of being hit with that particular stick. If it’s doing me harm, how come I’m fine? A clincher, but it went sailing over her mother’s head like, Shirley didn’t know, an albatross.
Which was exactly the sort of crap they’d want to hear about: battles with her mother. Yawn.
They also wanted to hear about all the dead people, but they could go fuck themselves.
Light was sneaking through the blind, which meant they’d be knocking on the door soon; a soft, polite knock, as if they didn’t want to disturb her. And then there’d be hours of hanging around waiting for something to happen, which, when it did, would consist of Shirley sitting first in a big circle with a bunch of time-ruined losers, and then in a private pair with one of the happy-clappy therapists, in either instance refusing to join in because of the whole maintaining-a-dignified-silence thing. In between these sessions there’d be time to wander round the grounds, or do a jigsaw, or run amok with an axe—there was a workshop near the stables; there might be an axe going begging. She made a mental note to check. Then there’d be lunch, and then another group session . . . Christ. She’d never thought she’d miss Slough House.
Of which there were ghostly reminders here. Catherine Standish, for instance, haunted its corridors, having been one of the San’s success stories. Because as all the slow horses knew—Jackson Lamb made sure they did—Catherine was a drunk; her history a sordid, vomit-flecked montage of emptied bottles and broken glass, which made it almost comic to see her now, like she’d had a broom handle surgically inserted. Ms. Uptight, in her Victorian spinster costume. Like butter wouldn’t melt, when time was she’d melted more butter than Shirley had had hot toast. So yeah, she was currently top of Shirley’s shit-list, above Louisa Guy and Lech Wicinski, who’d lured Shirl to Wimbledon in the first place; above Roderick Ho, because the whole bus thing was his fault; above Ashley Khan, who would turn out as annoying as everyone else; and even above Jackson Lamb, without whose say-so nothing happened round Slough House—ahead of them all was Catherine, because Catherine had made out that this was for Shirley’s own good, as if Shirley should thank her for the opportunity.
People keep getting hurt, she’d said. People keep dying. We have to look out for one another.