Come to Harm

one

Monday, 7 October

Keiko Nishisato was crying in her bathroom, six thousand miles from home. Crying as carefully as ever, with her head tipped back to keep her lenses in and her fingers pressed under her lashes.

It was the bath that had done it. That bath was the last straw. She’d heard about British plumbing but told herself it was a cliché for tourists, like the paper houses in Japan. Told herself she’d be fine. She’d have to be, after all those months spent reassuring.

“What will our friends say?” her mother had asked her. “When they hear that my daughter is…”

“They’ll say, ‘What a fine girl. Who needs a son when you have such a girl?’ ” Keiko had replied.

“Only afterwards,” said her mother. “When you come home again. If all goes well.”

“It will,” said Keiko.

“But if something were to happen to you so far away. With no one watching over you.”

“It won’t,” said Keiko, smiling. “And many people will be watching me.”

This last was true. She had a scholarship from her new university in Edinburgh and would have to report to a committee; an award from her old one in Tokyo and another committee there; her savings from her grandmother, who would expect results; and, of course, the Painchton Traders, the last and most mysterious of her fairy godmothers, the ones who had made it possible for her to be here, in this bathroom, crying.

They had given her the flat, rent-free, for three years; this flat that seemed so empty and echoing above her head, the air shifting as she moved through the rooms, that seemed so quiet and solid under her feet, the floors silent as she padded around. It was very clean; wiped and scrubbed and smelling of pine soap and lemon polish. Which was good, surely. And it was so bright and fresh, everything newly decorated and gleaming. It’s lovely, she told herself. I’m such a lucky girl.

There were four square rooms, tall windows, high ceilings. A living room in brown and orange, brown furniture with lanky wooden arms. Two bedrooms, although Keiko would live here alone. A kitchen, glossy white walls and new blue linoleum on the floor, with old wooden cupboards made by a carpenter, painted over so many times in their long life that their corners were blunted and their drawers snug, opening with a sticky sound as the newest paint, fresh enough to catch her throat, let go.

Also this bathroom, with its long white bath and no shower at all, just two knobbly taps sticking out at one end for the hot and cold water. She would have to sit in her dirt like a dumpling in broth, or crouch like an animal and pour cups of water over herself. She gulped and pressed her fingers in harder, feeling her lenses begin to swim.

Why would anyone live this way? How could they?

“Who are these people?” her mother had said, peering at the letter and running her thumb over the logo. “Read it to me again, Keko-chan.”

“Traders, Mother,” Keiko said. “Good, kind, respectable people.”

“But what do they want with you?” said her mother. “You cannot help their trade.”

“They don’t want anything from me,” Keiko said. “They are benefactors. Philanthropists.”

But even while she reassured, she wondered. Wall Street Traders she knew. Trappers and Traders in Early America had been the subject of a high school dissertation. And when she added what she knew of Edinburgh-a castle, a volcano, a city of dark alleys where body snatchers waited in the shadows and where Dr. Jekyll had, each night, become Mr. Hyde-the picture that emerged was…

And then she would shake herself and imagine instead Painchton. A student neighbourhood near the university, surely, with bookshops and coffee shops and free concerts in the middle of the day. And the Traders were… The Traders were…

The Traders who came to the airport were Mr. and Mrs. Sangster. Mr. Sangster had a sign-Welcome to Scotland, Miss K Nishisato. Mrs. Sangster held onto his blazer sleeve, squeezing his arm, making the sign sway.

Keiko trudged towards them, willing herself not to bow, but when she was still paces away they both bowed deeply, Mr. Sangster showing the raked lines where his hair was combed across his scalp and Mrs. Sangster showing the furrows between each row of her new perm. They straightened up and Mrs. Sangster (unable to stop herself despite all her reading) surged forward and clasped Keiko to her bosom.

They propelled her through the airport and out into a car so quickly that she couldn’t take in the strangeness she had been looking forward to throughout the flight. But she told herself that an airport was an airport anywhere in the world, and probably it was naïve to expect sights worth seeing. Mr. Sangster tucked a blanket of tartan wool over her legs as he settled her into the back seat.

“Catch your death,” he said. “Wee sparrow that you are.”

“Nothing of you,” said his wife. “Not a picking.”

“Thank you, thank you,” said Keiko. “So kind.”

“You’ll need to come round to us for supper as soon as you’re settled,” said Mrs. Sangster. “You want a good feed, if you ask me.”

Keiko had leaned her head against the car window, looking out at distant office blocks. When she opened them again, there were fields and hills going by and then, at a roundabout, they left the other lanes of traffic and were suddenly on a small road with hedges to either side. A clever shortcut that only the locals know, Keiko told herself, and sat up a little. She was waiting for the suburbs, watching for the glow of the city, but Mr. Sangster swung off the road and stopped. Keiko turned in her seat. Behind them was nothing at all, except some railings just visible in the dusk-a suggestion, no more, of distant trees and after the trees, blackness. Keiko opened the car door and stepped out, looking up and down the street at the row of small shop fronts, at the one they had parked beside, its plate-glass windows with their blinds drawn down.

“This…” she said. “Where…”

“Welcome to Painchton!” Mrs. Sangster said.

“This is Painchton?” She hadn’t Googled it a single time, not wanting to spoil the surprise, to fritter away the newness on a screen instead of hearing the buses and taxis, smelling the food stands and coffee stalls, feeling the jostle of the city all around. She looked across the street at the opposite row of shut shops and above them at the single storey of windows, all in darkness.

Then, seeing movement, she brought her gaze down again. People were gathering, hordes of them, coming down the street towards her and crossing the road from the other side.

“I don’t und-”

“Here she is, here she is,” said a loud voice. Keiko swung towards it. A short man in a dark suit was striding up to her with his arms stretched wide. He engulfed her before she could stop him and then, grasping her by her upper arms, he stood back and beamed, looking proud enough to polish her. Keiko smiled at him and bobbed her head, taking in the grey hair, glittering with brilliantine, the dazzling white shirt collar and striped tie, the black shoes as hard and bright as beetles, then she looked up into his face again.

“Jimmy McKendrick,” he said.

“Oh!” said Keiko. “Mr. McKendrick.” It was the head of the Traders, the organiser, who’d sent the forms and signed the letters.

“Away!” he shouted, shaking her a little. “Jimmy, James, Hamish! Take your pick. We’re all friends here. Welcome to Painchton. Here you are! Now,” he went on, taking charge. All the others stood in a ring, silent and watching. “You’ve your own key and your entry”-he gestured to a black-painted door beside the shaded shop windows-“but you’re right above the Pooles if you need anything. They must be away home, now, mind you.” He peered at the edge of the paper blind, as though trying to see around it.

“You think she might have-” said one of the onlookers.

Mr. McKendrick turned sharply and the voice stopped.

He and the Sangsters between them bore Keiko and her luggage through the black door into a passageway. It reached clear through to the back of the building, deeper than she had imagined, but she was ushered up the stairs. Stairs that rose, solid stone with iron railings, turned on a landing and rose again, and at the top just one apartment door. Behind it, once they had left her, she crept around these four rooms, sniffing the fresh paint and the pine and lemon, bleach and wax, until she came to a standstill in the bathroom and gave way to weeping.

Briefly. Soon, she sniffed hard and smiled at herself in the mirror. In some countries, she told herself, they wash themselves with ash and clean their teeth with dried dung. I’m going to be fine.

She ignored the voice, her mother’s voice, saying, This isn’t right, Keko-chan, this isn’t what they said. She didn’t even hear the other voice, whoever it was, saying, This is a bad place, you don’t belong here.

She dabbed out her lenses, went into the big front bedroom, slipped out of her clothes, and inserted herself between the covers, falling asleep before the sheets had even warmed against her skin.