Hemlock and Roses

idn't

oked up at her own window, dark on the fourth floor, and she could not make herself climb the stairs. She

who will be standing in th

rted the engine and dro

oor before she

ark and hadn't noticed. The light behind him was low and gold. He looked at her, at her wet hair and her pale face and the rain running off her coat onto his doorstep, and

ng up. I'm aware it's becoming a patte

me

and that a woman with a wine glass and a cat called Rumpole has given me until tomorrow morning to prove him wrong." She took off

n the r

t on h

. He looked at it for a moment. Then he emptied it again, filled a glass

. As if the rule not tea, never tea had been written into hi

d out h

now what

base of a white cup, tilted under a harsh lab lamp, the faint ghost of

e he'd finished looking: a small, involuntary tightening around the eyes, th

id you f

y kit

very

ep in the crazing. Elias, where would a cup like this come

e workbench, behind a row of old tuning manuals with cracked spines. He took something down and brou

im. A spiderweb of fine da

f water. The two cups, his on the table and he

this," he said. "Four

ooked

e touched the rim with one finger, very lightly, the way he'd touch a string to see if it was true. "Mr. Crane asked the foreman if he could have them. He took them home and washe

," Iris said slowly.

ssum

d y

ng. Two sugars. He was the only person in that building who put sugar in Earl Grey. Everyone told him it was a crim

led face in the back row of an empty hall, a white c

ever drunk

N

k why. She di

to my father?"

ce was ve

Elias. "You'd have

her a single word that would make it easier. She looked at him and th

before she could tal

. The cup you left

ute, as if he'd been holding

One of the old green room cups. I thought you might l

ice. She held

saw his right hand, resting on his knee, c

le connected with that night, her father had sat on the board, Crane had known hi

orn that nobody came into the bui

s that didn't fit. And here, a

phone face down

" she said. "About

oked

nk I can do big things tonight. Just one small thing.

arning that he did this, that every word he gave her had been we

you want

ut before she'd planned it. "The

me afterwards. It was as if she had opened a window in a room that had been

n that was at least two sizes too big for you. The sleeves were rolled up three times. You said it was your mother's and you'd stolen it because it smelled of her." He paused. "You had

her chin before she

nd you took the apple out of your mouth, and yo

ut wet and cracked and startled, and she put her

like me," s

was

e anoth

et for a m

was a

nt very

was walking past it. You stopped." He was looking at Daniel's cup now, not at her. "You spent forty minutes trying to catch it. It bit you fo

dn't b

th moved again, more this time. "I built it a pen on the roof of my old building out of a pallet and some chicken wire. You c

th hands ov

mbered t

the chicken wire glinting in the thin spring sun. Sitting cross-legged on warm tarmac with the Phenomenology of Spirit open on her knees, reading aloud t

as nobody i

h while she was bitten four times, and passed her a handkerchief for her bleeding wrist, and said nothing at all. In her memory there was a gap beside her, a shape

e out very small. "Oh,

dboard box, soft at the corners from being handled. He set it on her knees a

open

pressed flower gone the colour of tea. A paperback of Marcus Aurelius with a coffee ring on the cover, and her handwriting all down the margins, every I

e bottom,

deal of hair holding a book, and a tall stick figure standing a little apart with its arms folded. Over the goose, someone had written HE

s things. secretly the b

lau

ther one. She laughed because the drawing was so bad and so exactly like her. She cried because she had no memory of drawing it, none at all. Because somew

best person

hrough it. "I'm so sorry

stopped, and came to rest on the edge of the sofa cushion between them, an inch from her knee

et on purpose,"

o you

the drawing

that," he said, "and t

he tide comes in. He brought her a blanket that smelled of cedar and a second

door again," she said, drow

es

nig

es

lous. You need

p when you

e river. His profile against the tall wind

" she asked. "When I

as a lo

very formally, to make a point." He was quiet for a moment. "You only ever did it when y

t about it, and felt something cold move beneath her ribs, and then she was t

li

M

say it? That

ong that she thought he'

y it in a language I spoke." He looked down at his left hand, at the old scar. "So one Tuesday, when I was packing

eyes

off," he said quietly.

face turned into the cushion and her eyes shut, and she listened to him not movin

he did not l

L

d not

tonight. She slept the way she had always slept: on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek, her mouth a little open, one foot escaped from under the blanket as if it had somew

pped. At five, the ri

didn't let himself think about that day very often; it was one o

er shoes and run straight into the water in her jeans, shrieking at the cold, and then stood there up to her knees with her arms out, turning in a slow circle, laughing at the sky. He

top of it, and held her until her teeth stopped chattering. She'd pressed her cold face into his

d pro

rey dawn, and watched her sleep, and tho

herine Bell let the dead

oth. In return he would give a sworn statement naming the person who had set the fire at Linden Hall. The

ow said, putting the pho

he said it. He'd hardly l

f his office and sat on the edge

op all night," he said. "Shaw drove

e go hot. "Shaw w

suspect on bail." Morrow's voice

sofa. He sat in

u're spending nights at the prime suspect's workshop. If Ashby names Vane tomorrow, every defence brief in the country's going to stand up and say

dn't d

meant it. He took a breath. "You don't know that.

thing. A programme in blue ink. A goose. Three words written on the back of a hand. Fourteen months she

d instead. "Have

t her for a

. "That's wha

her ran

keep you. Are you f

row's

There's something I should have told you a long time ago, about your mother.

he river, and somewhere along it, though she couldn't see it from here, a

about L

e. Very slig

id gently. "It's always been ab

ang

ning, Ashby would name th

her father would tell her

ected. She only knew that they did, the way

e fell below freezing for

ing, sitting on her bed at eleven at night with her laptop on her knees, reading and rereading Ashby's statement unt

y wore, behind a garment bag she hadn't unzipp

because it still smelled faintly of her mother's perfume and because, she'd told herself, it was warm. Then one day she

g for you. The sleeves rolled up three

led of cedar and dust and, very faintly, underneath, of so

her knees. She pushed her col

ed on something sma

w it ou

tag was tied to it with string, the edges singed brown and curled, as if they'd been he

ement. A

ng too. She didn't want to take

ve out in the green room for performers who smoked. Linden Concert

. Nineteen wer

been t

neath her mother's perfume, came back to her all at once, rising out of

ok