Lies Sleeping

27 An Unlikely Premise for a Sitcom

I’m an only child so I’ve never been that comfortable sharing a room. It took me a while to get used to sharing a bed with Beverley. Mind you, Bev is a very active sleeper and, if she’s not trying to snuggle me off one side of the bed, she talks in her sleep. One night I swear she was reciting the Shipping Forecast – Sole, Fastnet, Lundy, Irish Sea. And giggling after every one. She seemed to find the prospect of Thames: gales imminent particularly funny. When I asked her about it in the morning she insisted that I’d dreamt the whole thing up.

I woke up that first morning in the oubliette feeling sticky in my clothes and decided that I was going to have to ablute and perform bodily functions whether Foxglove was watching or not. Fortunately she seemed just as keen on my cleanliness as I was, or at least that’s how interpreted her pointing emphatically at the shower before leaping up and out of our cosy little home.

And that became the pattern for the days that followed.

After my shower she dropped in with breakfast – pitta breads stuffed with cold falafel and a limp salad. More takeaway, so I was definitely within range of a Chinese and kebab place – which narrowed my location down, I calculated, to somewhere in the UK.

Or possibly the Costa del Sol, although I think I might have noticed a flight.

Foxglove bounced out of the hole with the rubbish and when she didn’t return after half an hour I sat down and picked up The Silmarillion again.

I lasted about an hour before the naming of the Valar drove me to exercise.

One advantage of training in a gym that was last updated in 1939 is that I’ve learnt to do without equipment. You can give yourself a good workout in an hour if you push it, but I broke it up into twenty minute chunks to stretch it through the day.

Once in a while I’d have a go at creating a forma, because you never know. But they all sputtered out without catching. Even lux, which I can normally reliably do while standing on my head.

Foxglove returned at lunch with bread, cheese, some loose tomatoes and a bottle of beer, and again later in the evening with half a roast chicken, chips and salad – probably from the same place the falafel had come from. She watched me eat and then left me alone until it was dark.

This time I wasn’t knackered from a long day of being kidnapped, so it was much harder to sleep. Still, in the quiet darkness I did my breathing and slowly tried to feel out the parameters of the bubble that held me. I think it rained that night because I could hear drops splattering on the skylights far above the entrance and got ‘May It Be’ by Enya stuck on an endless loop in my head. But I also sensed a ripple as Foxglove dropped through the entrance and onto the landing mat. She stared at me for a long moment and then slipped silently over to her own bed.

The next day after breakfast – this time a selection of Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain breakfast bars and a bottle of Lucozade Zero Pink Lemonade – Foxglove reappeared with a basket full of clean bedding, which she dumped in front of me. She stripped her own bed and stood around tapping her foot until I got the message and stripped mine. Then she vaulted away with the basket full of used linen. While she was gone I made both our beds, being particularly careful to do a good job on Foxglove’s. I had a thorough look round while I was doing it, but the thing about futons is that they’re a bit short of hiding places – I suspected that was the point.

Lunch that day was a steak slice, grated carrot and sultana salad in a clear plastic box, an iced bun. Somebody – I suspect Lesley – had taken care to remove any identifying bags or receipts but I know Greggs when I’m eating it. Another point on the triangulation should I ever get out – especially since the steak slice was still oven warm.

After the food delivery Foxglove cautiously approached her bed and examined my handiwork. Finding it acceptable, she turned and gave me a polite little nod and a quizzical tilt of her head.

‘It’s not like I have anything else to do with my time,’ I said, and waved the remains of my iced bun at her. ‘I like this stuff. Can we have this again for dinner?’

Foxglove stared at my iced bun for a moment, then shrugged and departed, leaving me alone with Thingol the terminally lost and the rest of the slightly dim-witted Elves of the years before the First Age.

Dinner was late and while I waited I noticed that the bubble definitely faded a bit when Foxglove wasn’t there. Half of magic is recognising the reality behind all the mental noise of everyday life. And once you’ve noticed something it’s easier to spot it again.

Allowing for confirmation bias, of course.

When it finally arrived, dinner was shish kebab in a pitta and chips and a can of Dr Pepper. So that was all the food groups covered, then. Foxglove made a point of daintily eating her meat one chunk at a time, but she seemed a bit puzzled about what to do with the salad.

That evening I did extra exercise in the hope of wearing myself out, and then I had a shower even though Foxglove was still in the oubliette. She didn’t seem to mind, but I caught her giving me a speculative look while I was drying myself off.

That night I amused myself by seeing if I could recount the whole of The Emperor’s New Groove from memory, and when I laughed out loud for the third time Foxglove slapped the side of her futon to get my attention and hissed.

‘Why do we even have that lever?’ I asked her, but then shut up because I knew from experience with Molly that that particular style of hissing was a bad sign.

So of course then I couldn’t sleep, because I worried she was going sneak over and murder me in my bed.

Another morning in the armpit of paradise, more breakfast bars and a bottle of Perrier.

‘These,’ I told Foxglove when she handed over the food, ‘are not nearly as good for you as the packaging pretends they are. And would it kill you to give me some caffeine?’

To be honest, I was shocked to find that by Day Five I was beginning to run out of Blitz spirit. It’s hard to maintain the requisite levels of Cockney cheer when sleeping on a futon and going without coffee. However, I was cheered immensely when the washing basket made a reappearance, dropping down from the entrance hole like a beacon of hope.

Before Foxglove could reappear I stripped the bedding off both our futons and dumped it in the basket. While I worked I sang a medley of late teens Grime hits with the occasional impromptu percussion accompaniment and finishing with as much of ‘Too Many Man’ as I could remember. It did kind of peter out a bit when I turned round to find Foxglove standing right behind me.

I jumped. She smiled, but the joke was on her.

She accepted the dirty laundry from me and jumped out without checking it was all there. I’ve found that if you voluntarily take on a chore somebody else doesn’t want to do, they don’t check the results too closely – in case they have to do it again themselves. Once I was sure she was safely gone I pulled the sheet I’d nicked from her bed, folded it into a rectangle and hid it inside my nice fresh duvet cover. I didn’t know how I was going to escape, but I was pretty certain that access to ye olde knotted sheet rope would be a good start.

If they had cameras then I was stuffed. But I was willing to bet they didn’t work in fairyland, either.

That afternoon, as I came to terms with the twin burdens of cold falafel for lunch and Fëanor’s staggering denseness re: Morgoth’s intentions, Foxglove dropped down with a large artist’s sketchpad and an empty Heinz beans tin full of sticks of charcoal. She sat cross-legged on her bed and began to draw.

I sat on my bed with my back against the wall and pretended to read The Silmarillion. She kept giving me sly looks over the top of her pad. We were both playing the game of pretend indifference – I had no intention of trying to win, but I had to wait long enough for it to be convincing.

I gave it ten minutes.

‘Are you any good?’ I asked.

She gave me an inquiring look, as if she wasn’t sure what I was talking about.

‘At drawing,’ I said. ‘Are you any good? I’m famously bad at drawing. Life-changingly bad, in fact.’

Her eyes narrowed – perhaps she thought I was taking the piss.

‘Can I have a look?’

Foxglove tilted her pad against her chest to hide it and suddenly I realised that the loose top she was wearing was a linen artist’s smock – in fact, all she needed was a beret and the cliché would have been complete.

I thought of Molly and her Edwardian maid’s outfit and wondered if the costume was significant. Noted fairy botherer Charles Kingsley argued that many of the true fae take particular care to array themselves in the garb that most closely represents their nature.

Not a maid, and not a warrior queen of the Stone Age but what – an artist?

I tried hard not to smile because I know about artists. Well, musicians really. But same difference.

‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘It can’t be as bad as my work.’

She gave me a suspicious look which I returned with as much sincerity as I could muster.

She came to a decision and leapt to her feet. Flipping her pad shut, she took two steps and flew up the shaft and out of sight.

I sighed and went back to my book, in which Morgoth nicked the eponymous jewels and had away with them back to Angbad. Sorry mate, I thought, not my jurisdiction. Did you have them insured? Whereupon Fëanor gets a crime number and a leaflet about being on guard against theft and the wiles of the personification of evil.

Like I said, I think I was wearing a little bit thin at that point.

Supper was pizza, which arrived in a Pizza Express box along with garlic bread and a two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola. Caffeine at last, I thought, and saved half the bottle for breakfast. While I ate Foxglove sketched me from across the room and, to my surprise, showed me her work after I’d cleared up. She was good – having caught me in a few bold charcoal strokes. I must have looked impressed because she gave a little hiss of pleasure and turned pink.

I let her pose me for more work, because in a kidnapping situation you’re supposed to take every opportunity to bond with your captors. The theory being the more they relate to you as a person the harder it is for them to casually off you when the time comes.

The light from above turned rainy grey and we could hear heavy drops bouncing off the glass roof far above. As it grew dark, Foxglove kept going until I was fairly certain that she was drawing from memory.

I used to think that being forced to attend one of my mum’s family’s christenings was most the boring thing I’d ever done – now I know better.

Posing also turned out to be surprisingly tiring and I think I fell asleep almost as soon as I got into bed.

Apart from delivering breakfast and lunch, Foxglove left me alone for most of the day. That at least allowed me to confirm that without her presence the bubble definitely weakened. Not enough that I could actually do a spell, but enough to explain why she had to sleep down in the oubliette with me.

I wondered if Molly could have the same effect. If she did, that would allow us to make truly magic-proof cells in the Folly. Then the main obstacle to locking up practitioners like Martin Chorley would be making the Folly PACE compatible – custody sergeant and everything.

Still, I’d got the impression that Foxglove had already slept in the oubliette before I’d arrived. Perhaps she was more comfortable sleeping in her little bubble. Which begged the question – would Molly be more comfortable sleeping in the same? Which, of course, led to one of those three in the morning thoughts – what if she already was? I knew she had her lair in the front part of the basement where Nightingale pointedly never intruded, and I’d always followed his lead. She could have been spending her nights in Narnia for all we knew.

After supper – kebab again, which at least meant I got to have Foxglove’s leftover pitta and salad – she brought out her sketchpad and charcoals and looked at me expectantly.

I clowned a bit to see if I could make her laugh, trying various heroic poses which backfired when she insisted that I stay fixed in my impression of Anteros, god of requited love, as depicted by Alfred Gilbert’s statue in Piccadilly Circus. Which meant standing on one foot while leaning forward and pulling an imaginary bow and arrow.

I lasted all of five minutes before falling over, which caused Foxglove to make the short hissing sound that I recognised as laughter. She motioned for me to take up the pose again, but I refused and she had to make do with Peter Grant heroically massaging his ankle.

Foxglove kept it up until the light began to dim.

‘Do you like working for Chorley?’ I asked, as she packed away her work.

Her head tilted as if considering the question.

‘I mean, does he pay well?’

There was a short hissing sound again.

‘So why work for him?’

The mouth turned down and she pressed her wrists together and held them out as if they were handcuffed or bound with invisible rope.

‘You’re a prisoner?’ I asked.

The mouth turned mournful.

‘Not prisoner,’ I asked. ‘Slave?’

Foxglove’s head drooped and her hands, still invisibly bound, dropped into her lap.

‘How?’

Without looking up, Foxglove shrugged and slid under her duvet and went to sleep.

I wished I could.

‘Hi, Peter,’ said Lesley. ‘You awake down there?’

It was after lunch the next day and Lesley, sensibly, didn’t come down to join me. Instead she stood at the edge of the hole and called down.

I folded over my page to mark it and sauntered over to look up at her.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I thought I’d pop in see how you’re doing,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Although I’m finding Thingol a bit of a prat to be honest.’

‘Who’s Thingol when he’s at home?’

‘Guy in a book,’ I said. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘This and that,’ she said.

‘Aiding and abetting?’

‘Before, after and during the fact,’ she said. ‘Just like everybody else – if they’re honest.’

‘Slavery’s a new one for you, though, isn’t it?’

‘Slavery?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know you’ve been out of the police business for a while but they passed a whole new anti-slavery law this year. Specifically includes people that sit by and let it happen.’

‘Who the fuck do you think is a slave?’

‘Foxglove thinks she is.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘No, straight up,’ I said, ‘Told me so herself.’

‘She can walk out of here whenever she likes,’ said Lesley.

‘But she doesn’t, does she? Why do you think that is?’

‘How should I know? And in what way is that different from Molly?’

I know a losing argument when I’m having it, so I changed the subject.

‘Are you going to come down?’ I said. ‘I’m getting a crick in my neck here.’

She grinned, the old grin, the one I remembered.

‘That would be stupid of me, wouldn’t it? But don’t worry, you’re not going to be down there much longer. Job’s nearly done.’

‘Lesley,’ I said, ‘there’s no Merlin for you to bring back, no Arthur waiting for England’s greatest need and that sword is not fucking Excalibur. You’re just going to fuck things up for people.’

‘People is already fucked up,’ said Lesley. ‘And maybe instead of moaning, Peter, maybe you should help and make things better. That reminds me—’

She reached out of sight and pulled out a white and blue Tesco bag, which she dangled over the hole.

‘Watch out. It’s heavy,’ she said, and dropped it.

I should have let it hit the floor. But you can take caution too far, plus it was heavy and there was a glass clink as it landed in my arms.

‘Check you later,’ said Lesley, and was gone.

Inside the bag was a mega packet of Doritos, three packets of salt and vinegar crisps, a jar of Tesco’s own brand hot salsa dip and a bottle of Bacardi. Crumpled in the bottom of the bag was the receipt – I smoothed it out. Lesley had been shopping in the Covent Garden branch of Tesco. Unless I’d been the victim of a spectacular bit of misdirection I doubted we could be anywhere near central London – not with all this expensive empty space. Still, I noted the time and date of purchase and tucked it into my shoe for safe keeping.

When Foxglove dropped back in, half an hour later, I asked her for some glasses and she fetched me some plastic tumblers, the flimsy thin-walled kind that are difficult to fashion into a shiv.

I offered her some of the Bacardi but she sniffed the tumbler and handed it back. She did try the Doritos and the dip which, much to my amusement, she found too spicy. I think I must have overdone the Bacardi, though, because I told her some stories about my work – although I steered clear of anything involving Chorley or the fae. I don’t think she understood the haunted BMWs or the sentient mould, but she seemed to find the incident at Kew Gardens hilarious. Everyone seems to find that case funny, except for me – and the custodians at Kew, of course.

I woke up the next morning with that floppy buzz you get when you drink enough to get fuzzy but not enough to get a hangover.

I also had a cold feeling in my stomach.

Job’s nearly done, Lesley had said.

I needed out of the oubliette and fast.