The Ecliptic

One

The boat was nine heaves out of the bay and getting smaller. From the escarpment, we could just make out Ender straining at the oars, his back hunched like a dune against the drizzle, the grey sea swaying all around him. With each stroke, the bow seemed to move only a fraction. If we had been near enough, we might have heard the old man complain about his aching bones to Ardak in the stern. The two of them had spent all afternoon preparing the boy’s body: wrapping it, weighting it, hauling it down the forest slope on their shoulders. But whatever thoughts were shared between them in that boat, whatever they felt about performing this dire duty on our behalf, nobody could tell from so far away. We could only gauge it from the respectful indolence of the old man’s rowing motions, and the straightforwardness with which Ardak went about the job of lowering the boy into the water.

It happened like this:

Twenty more heaves and Ender let the boat drift, pulling the oars in from the rowlocks. Ardak came forwards, his feet straddling the thwarts. He took one end of the body and the old man took the other. The boat teetered and swung. They seemed to give themselves a count of three, and then they hove the body sideways, scraping it along the boards and resting it a moment on the gunwale. The body was wedged against the frame of the boat — a limp shape bundled in black plastic and a cheap Turkish rug, all strung up like a boxing glove. Ardak had to lean his weight backwards to prevent them from capsizing. They had a short consultation, hands on hips, and then they tried again, pushing the body overboard. It was so loaded with cinderblocks that it sunk fast, and the boat wobbled suddenly underneath them, causing the old man to stumble; Ardak grabbed his sleeve to keep him from lurching into the water. They steadied themselves and sat down on the thwarts again. For a moment, they just waited there, drifting on the Marmara for no reason.

Then the provost began to eulogise. ‘I have no words of inspiration for you today,’ he called out over the breeze. ‘I had hoped that I could compose a few lines that might capture the significance of the life that we have lost, but I have failed to do so, and I feel some shame about that. Yesterday, we had a great young talent in our midst, and today we’ve buried him. Nothing I say can match the depth of our sorrow. That such a tragedy should happen on my watch as provost is a regret I will take to my own grave.’ He paused here, rucking the ground with his cane.

Every last guest at Portmantle was standing on the south-eastern bluff with their eyes towards the sea. The provost had angled himself to address the whole crowd, but we knew his speech was meant only for the four of us. There was a reverential distance in his tone, a suggestion of apology. ‘Nothing good can be salvaged from a day as dark as this,’ he went on, ‘but there is — it only strikes me now, in fact — there is a lesson to be taken from it.’

He was sermonising from a mound of shingly soil and wore a long black overcoat that shimmied in the wind. The short-termers were huddled in a crescent alongside him, but we stood further back: MacKinney with her arm around me, Quickman squatting to ruffle the fur on Nazar’s chest, and Pettifer hovering over them with an umbrella like some awkward hand-servant. My toes skimmed the frill of weeds on the escarpment’s edge, and I focused on the sea washing below, until it became so metronomic I could sense each breaking wave without having to listen.

‘Because, at times like these, it is artists like you whom we consult for solace—’ Wash. ‘The poets and writers in our libraries—’ Wash. ‘The paintings on our walls, the music.’ Wash. ‘Death is something only art can qualify. And that is all—’ Wash. ‘—the encouragement I can take from this unhappy mess.’ Wash. ‘Because surely all great art is made for people left behind. For those—’ Wash. ‘—who suffer death and cannot fathom it. And so what else is there to say, except—’ Wash. ‘To Fullerton! May he rest in peace and live on through his work.’

‘To Fullerton!’ everyone called.

‘To the boy,’ I said.

Wash.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to jump, to fall, to be devoured by the sea. It did not give me much relief to think of it, or bring me any deeper sense of understanding.

MacKinney tugged at my shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s move back from the edge, eh? The wind’s picking up.’ I was tucked inside her wing. We were flanked by pines and scrub, but still a fair breeze swirled about our ankles, moving tiny pebbles underfoot. I stepped back. ‘That’s better. That’s it.’

The short-termers were dispersing and heading for the trees. Out on the water, Ender had already turned the boat for home. He rowed with the same tired action as before, yet he seemed to glide much faster. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’ I said.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Gülcan’s made a special supper,’ said Pettifer. ‘Everyone’s going back up to the house.’

‘I don’t see what’s so special about any of this,’ Quickman said.

‘It’s out of the ordinary, that’s all I meant.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘They’re holding a wake,’ Mac cut in. ‘The provost’s idea.’

Quickman scruffed the dog’s head. ‘What the hell’s the point of that?’

‘Well, they’ve got to do something for the lad, haven’t they?’

‘They didn’t do anything for him before. No reason to start now.’ Quickman seemed to say this to the dog. She had not left his heels all afternoon, and, in turn, he had been patting and cajoling her when she made the slightest plea. ‘They didn’t even know him. What are they going to do, stand around making up anecdotes?’

‘Knell knew him better than anyone. And if she wants to go—’

‘I don’t. Q’s right,’ I said. ‘It’s a sham. The provost couldn’t care less.’

I could still feel the boy’s wet body in my arms, a phantom ache. The day had passed with agonising slowness and I just wanted to see it out. I had spent most of the morning by the fire in the day room, watching the fight of the flames, hoping that if I stared for long enough into the blurry heat it might tranquillise me, blank my memory. But I could not stop myself from thinking of the duct tape on the boy’s mouth — the very stuff that I had given him — or the leather belt around his neck, the simple weave of it. He had won it from Tif in their backgammon game. Such small details plagued me. They lured me into a trail of senseless speculations on what might have been: if the four of us had only done x, if I had just said y to the boy, if the provost had done z. I was searching for logic where none existed.

At the provost’s instruction, the boy had been carried out of his lodging on a hammock made of bedsheets, Ender and Ardak providing the muscle. Quickman had stayed with me in the day room, surveying every movement from the window, until they had taken the body too deep into the woods for us to see. Q had gone to the couch, where the dog was lying, and towelled her belly until her hind legs kicked. There was a homely dampness in the air. ‘It’ll be all right, you know,’ he had said. ‘In a few days, we’re going to feel better.’ After a while, Gülcan had brought in cups of hot salep and pastries left over from breakfast; I had drunk two cups and eaten as much as I could stomach, but Quickman had fed his own share to the dog.

I had told him, ‘Someone’s got to let his family know. I don’t care what the provost says.’

‘And how are we supposed to do that exactly?’

‘By getting out of here.’

‘Don’t talk silly.’

‘I’ll write a letter, sneak it in the outgoing post somehow.’

‘You don’t even know if he has a family. You don’t even know his real name.’

‘So what are you saying, Q? Forget about him?’

I had thought, of all people, Quickman would try to reassure me.

‘There’s a bigger picture, you know,’ was his response. ‘Think about what you’re suggesting.’ He had brought the pipe out of his pocket, slotting it into his teeth. ‘You have to remember that he did this to himself. He made his choice. That might sound very cold-hearted, but, I’m sorry, that’s just how I see it. The provost has a point.’

‘So you’re caving in now, too. Terrific.’

‘Think about it, Knell. He’s one boy. One out of God knows how many. You’re really going to let him run this place into the ground? That isn’t what he wanted.’

My mind would not be changed as easily as Quickman’s, but I could not blame him for his second thoughts. He was the one who had found the boy in the bathtub, after all, and he had earned the right to view things however he wished. It was the provost whom I could not forgive. There had been an eerie calmness about his behaviour that morning, in the height of our emergency. Both he and Ardak had followed me out of the mansion, running back to the boy’s lodging; Ardak had sprinted ahead of me, but the provost had lagged behind, barely jogging, his old doctor’s bag gripped under one arm. In the bathroom, he had genuflected at the sight of Fullerton on the tiles. He had removed a stethoscope from the bag and placed the metal cup against the boy’s chest, allowing an empty moment to go by.

‘Anything?’ Q had asked, though he must have known the answer.

The provost had shaken his head. He had checked Fullerton’s distended eyes with a torch and closed the boy’s lids in the thoughtless way you might shut the clasps on a briefcase. ‘I’m afraid he’s gone,’ he had said. ‘We’ll have to bury him right away’ He had turned to give Ardak some instructions in Turkish. ‘Adamı denize atabilir misin?’

‘Karanlık olmadan atmalıyız’ Ardak had replied, shrugging. ‘Ben botu hazırlarım’

‘What are you going to do with him?’ Quickman had said.

‘Well, we can’t keep him on the grounds, that’s for certain. It’s much too risky’ The provost had stuffed the instruments back inside his doctor’s bag. ‘Ardak thinks we ought to put him out to sea. I’ll have to check with the trustees, but I think that’s probably safest.’

‘You can’t just dump him in the Marmara.’

The provost had stood up, towering over me. ‘Knell, we have to be pragmatic about this.’ He had rolled his good eye downwards. ‘It wouldn’t be the first funeral we’ve held here — people get sick, and we can’t always treat them if they refuse to go to hospital. There’s a procedure.’ He had spoken to Ardak again. ‘Yaşlı adamdan yardım al’ Then he had dusted off his hands and said to us, ‘I have to make some calls. Excuse me.’

Are you going to talk to his sponsor?’ My voice had sounded so puny. ‘His family needs to be told.’

The provost had inhaled deeply. ‘I’m not sure that’s in anyone’s best interest.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘You can’t honestly be suggesting that we go on as normal,’ Quickman had said.

The provost had slung his bag over his shoulder. ‘I know you two were friends of his. But what do you think would happen if I told his sponsor? The news is bound to leak — we can’t control what sponsors say or do — and we’d have a thousand people banging on these gates, asking all kinds of questions. We’d be shut down before the season’s out. I’m sorry, I won’t put the refuge in jeopardy like that, for anyone.’

Quickman had looked bewildered, even sickened, and I had thought he would share my anger towards the provost forever. ‘So what do you propose we do, sir?’ he had asked.

‘Follow procedure. That’s all there is to it.’

Ardak had called from the doorway: ‘Bunin için ekstra ödeme gerekir beyefendi.’

The provost had nodded back at him emphatically. Then, shuffling towards us with an air of appeasement, he had said, ‘Nobody wants it to happen this way. But it’s one of the eventualities we all have to prepare for. You understood the risks when you both came here.’

And so, at the end of the miserable afternoon, the boy was tossed into the sea like fish guts, and I was left with a deadness in my belly, a shame that I feared might never subside. The provost’s eulogy had rung hollow. I wished that I could have spoken in his place, but I was not invited to, and what exactly would I have said? Aside from a few personal things the boy had shared with me — about recurring dreams, and Japanese scribblings, and listening to old records at his grandfather’s house — I had no great insight into his life. He was not someone who deserved to be spoken about in half measures.

The dour sky was darkening still. I held on to the crook of Mac’s elbow and she steered us off the escarpment. The mansion surfaced above the treeline: what an ugly grey hulk it was in the drizzle, what a mangy old dump. Nazar scurried by us, bounding through the scrub. ‘I guess it’s feeding time,’ Pettifer said from behind. ‘At least some of us are thinking clearly, eh?’

‘Shut up, Tif,’ Mac said.

‘Just trying to raise a smile.’

We were only yards from the clearing where my mushrooms grew — they were just beyond the coppice to my left, and my chest tightened at the thought of them.

As we came through the pines, I saw the provost waiting in the mulch by the studio huts. I did not want to speak to him, but he was loitering in an official way, as though he had some form awaiting a signature. Nazar ran to him, circled his feet, sniffing. He was without an umbrella. ‘Go around him,’ I told Mac.

‘You sure?’

She tried to veer away, but he moved to intercept us. ‘Can you spare a moment?’ he said. ‘Both of you.’

Tif and Quickman were just a few strides behind.

‘What’s going on over at the house right now?’ Q asked.

‘I’ve asked Gülcan to make her special köfte,’ the provost replied, ‘in honour of the boy. You don’t have to join us if you aren’t feeling up to it. It’s been a very long day.’

‘His appetite’s taken a hit,’ Tif said. ‘But I’m keen.’

‘As you wish.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘Well, if I might borrow the ladies for a moment?’

‘They’re not ours to lend,’ said Quickman.

‘It’s all right,’ I said.

They left us alone, and Nazar hurried after.

The provost waited for them to be out of earshot. He folded his arms. ‘You know, I was beginning to wonder if the trustees really understand how this place functions. But, in your case, MacKinney, they’ve proven me wrong.’

‘I’m not following you, sir.’

‘It seems our appeals have been heard, after all. They’re going to let you stay.’

‘Are you serious? Oh, that’s — oh, my goodness, thank you,’ she said.

‘I’m just glad they came to their senses.’ He scraped the mulch off his shoe. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of cancelling tonight’s reading. Hope you don’t mind.’

‘We would’ve cancelled it anyway,’ Mac said. ‘Given the circumstances. But, really, sir — thank you.’

‘I knew you’d understand.’

‘Can I keep the same room?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ He peered towards the mansion. ‘Unless you’d prefer to change. I wouldn’t want to hold you there against your will.’

‘No, no, I’m happy where I am.’ She managed to quell the jubilation in her voice, but it seeped out onto her face, tugging at the corners of her mouth, mottling her skin. ‘This is going to make all the difference to my work, sir — I can’t tell you. It won’t be long before I’ve finished it.’

‘I have no doubt you’ll use the time productively.’ The provost reached for his pocket watch, shielding it as he flicked it open. ‘You haven’t said anything, Knell. I thought you’d be grateful for a bit of good news today.’

After the pitiless way he had dispatched Fullerton, I could only feel sceptical. It seemed that this sudden backpedalling was intended to placate us — to quiet any impulsions we might have had to scream the boy’s name from the mansion roof, or, in Mac’s case, to confess what she had witnessed to her friends back on the mainland. ‘I’m pleased Mac gets to stay,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you need to hear.’

‘She’s a bit exhausted,’ MacKinney said contritely. ‘I ought to take her back now.’

‘Yes, she does look quite run down.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. She tried to walk me forwards, but I resisted. There was plenty enough strength in me yet. ‘I’m sure their sudden change of heart has nothing to do with dumping the boy out there.’

‘Knell,’ Mac said.

A wen of rain dripped from the provost’s brow. ‘The trustees aren’t infallible. They’ve acknowledged their mistake, and I don’t think we should be asking questions if the outcome is the right one in the end, do you?’

I felt Mac pulling at my elbow again.

The provost turned his back on us, resting his cane upon his shoulder. ‘I suggest you try to get some rest now, both of you,’ he called, treading the path. ‘Provost’s orders.’

There was little sense in sleeping. But, with everyone convening in the mess hall under the pretence of mourning, I did not want to be around the mansion until lights-out. So I took a shower and changed my clothes again (everything I wore seemed to be possessed by memories) and then I cleared my studio, washed up my equipment and organised my materials. Afterwards, I made a cup of tea and sat down on the couch to take the weight off, and I must have leaned my head back a degree too far, because I woke up in lamplight with the teacup full and cold. I was out of kindling for the stove and could not light it. There was plenty in the mansion stores, I knew, and Ender would replenish my stocks come morning. But the rain had left the evening damp and rheumy on the lungs; I needed to stay warm.

Ender had a room on the ground floor — not much more than a storage space with a single bed and bathroom fixtures screened off behind muslin. His door was closed when I got there, and he did not respond when I knocked. Upstairs, there was movement on the landing, and I went up to see if he was in the mess hall or the kitchen. But there was only Lindo, the Spaniard, and a few of his short-term friends. They were playing shove ha’penny on our table and making quite a din. When Lindo spotted me, he gestured for the group to quieten. ‘Is everything OK?’ he asked. The other heads turned. I barely recognised their faces: gormless, spongy, self-amused.

‘Looking for Ender,’ I said. ‘What are you doing on our table?’

The Spaniard shrugged. ‘The game requires it.’ He held my gaze, unflinching. ‘Ender is not here. We have not seen him. Should I tell him you were looking?’

The serving pass was shuttered and the kitchen door was closed. ‘No, that’s all right,’ I said. Lindo nodded and returned to his shove ha’penny. For a short while, I dawdled on the landing, expecting Ender to emerge from a stairwell or a corridor, but he did not. In fact, the mansion was curiously still, as though Gülcan’s special supper had left everyone so sedated they had all retired to bed.

Quickman’s room was at the near end of the hallway, separated from MacKinney’s by the landing and the library. I rarely disturbed him in his own space. Of the four of us, he was the most guarded about his lodging and it was simpler just to wait for his appearance every mealtime than try to lure him out — if he was absent at lunch or dinner, we assumed that he was in a solitary mood. But I was feeling less in thrall to Quickman’s need for privacy than usual. I went to knock for him.

It took no time at all for him to answer. My knuckles were hardly off the wood. He peeked out through the gap, lifting his chin at me. ‘Thought it might be you,’ he said, and let the door hang open. His room had changed since my last visit: generally less cluttered, but something else, too. Quickman must have sensed me trying to work it out, because he thumbed towards his desk and said, ‘Used to be under the window, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

‘Tired of the scenery already?’ I said.

‘It helps to change your view every now and again, I’ve found.’ He went to sit down in his swivel-chair, a high-backed rosewood thing with metal casters and a few turned spindles missing (his hands reached back into the space where they should have been). ‘And I get distracted by the birds. If you stare at them for long enough, they develop personalities. Now I can’t look up in case I see myself in the mirror. One glimpse of this face is like a dose of salts.’

‘Yes, I’ve often thought so.’

He almost smiled. There was subdued light about the place, like some rare-book shop. A lamp was poised over the empty surface of his desk. ‘You’re not working?’ I asked.

‘I never write and entertain at once,’ he said. ‘I’m not Gertrude bloody Stein.’

The last time I had ventured into Quickman’s room, seasons before, I had seen a stack of pages on his bedside cabinet: handwritten, curling, weighed down by some dull brass ornament. The stack had been thick as a breezeblock. The same papers were still there, except the ream was just a quarter of the size, and a pot of ayran rested on it with its cap peeled back. ‘I was trying to find Ender,’ I said. ‘Didn’t want to interrupt you.’

‘Well, I don’t know where the old man is, but I’m glad you stopped by.’ Using his heels, he swung the chair round and shuffled to a set of drawers. From the topmost, he pulled out a bundle of cloth. ‘I’ve not been able to concentrate all day. I tried to sleep but I don’t think I’ve been this restless since the war.’

‘You were in the war?’ It surprised me that Q had volunteered this information, though I had always assumed he would have served in some capacity. There was a forlorn silence that belonged to men his age, in which you could detect reverberations of experiences too bewildering to relay.

He inhaled, nodding. ‘I was indeed. The Sappers. Saw a bit of action out in Nijmegen, and then got shot in the foot. Shot myself in the foot, quite literally. So don’t be staring at me all misty-eyed or anything. I’m no war hero.’ Wheeling himself back to the desk, he set the bundle down and unfolded the fabric. It was a T-shirt, pale blue, with crusted marks about the armpits. And, inside it, were the boy’s index cards. The entire block of them, jointed with tape. Some of the ink was smudged here and there, but the Japanese was still legible.

‘Where’d you get those?’ I said, stepping forward.

Quickman stared down at them. ‘I took them from his table before you brought the provost.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve been wondering that myself. A sense of duty, I suppose. Even though—’ He broke off, drawing his pipe out of his pocket, biting on it. ‘Even though I hardly knew the lad. But, God, I don’t know, Knell. Once you’ve held somebody in your arms like that, someone as young as him, so dead, you just — it does things to you. I had this awful feeling, as if I’d failed him somehow. And then I saw the cards and, that was it. I took them.’

Under Quickman’s desk light, the boy’s scrawled notes seemed like preserved exhibits. I still did not know what they meant. ‘Did you translate them yet?’ I asked.

‘Some of them,’ Q said.

‘And?’

‘They’re extremely odd. Not dissimilar to the boy himself, in all honesty.’ He picked up the cards and turned back through them. ‘These ones, for example. They read like advertising copy. Some sort of public health notice from the United Fruit Company — I’m not joking. I’ve translated to the best of my ability, but still, there’s something awkward about the language. See what you make of it.’ He slid open the drawer of his desk and brought out a yellow notepad with his own writings in pencil. And removing his pipe, he read:

‘How to add life to your years—dot, dot, dot—and years to your life—exclamation mark. You’ve probably noticed it among your own acquaintances. Some people at sixty or even seventy seem to be doing more, and having more fun at it, than others who are fifty, or even forty—exclamation mark. Chances are, if you could look closer into their lives, you’d learn a few things. They chose the right parents. Open bracket: Heredity—possibly lineage, that word, not sure— has something to do with it. Close bracket. They find joy in their work. Open bracket: That has a lot to do with it. Close bracket. You might discover that the people who live longest and enjoy life most are people who eat enough of the right kind of foods. For a properly balanced diet, medical scientists—possibly just doctors there, but medical scientists seems more correct—medical scientists can literally slow up the ageing process. Slow up. Sounds very American, doesn’t it? Hang on. Lost my place now. . That means plenty of proteins — the building blocks that keep your body in a state of good repair. Vitamins and minerals — the protective foods that keep your eyes shining, your hair and skin in good condition—dot, dot, dot— and your whole outlook on life brighter. Energy foods — the fuels your body has to burn to give you vigour and enthusiasm.’ Q widened his eyes. ‘I’m not sure you need to hear the rest.’

‘Is that all of it?’ I said.

‘No, there’s more. Plenty more.’ He leafed through his notepad, clearing his throat. ‘That is not to say you have to eat a lot. In fact, as we grow older, we need less food. The important thing is to eat a wide variety of the right foods. For instance, take a banana. Take it—exclamation mark—peel it, eat it—exclamation mark. It’s satisfying and nourishing. Vitamins and minerals are there in well-balanced supply and wholesome natural sugars to give you energy. Slice a banana into a bowl and pour milk on it—dot, dot, dot—you’re adding proteins to keep your body in good repair, as well as consuming—don’t know what that word is—and bone-building—possibly bone-growing, there—calcium. Easy to fix. Again, that’s quite American. Easy to fix. Easy to eat. Easy to digest. In fact, doctors often recommend bananas in cases of severe digestive disturbances. And you don’t have to feel very hungry—open bracket—or even be very old—close bracket—to enjoy this simple treat—exclamation mark. And then the tagline: United Fruit Company. For health, eat and enjoy a plentiful variety of the right foods.’ Quickman tossed the notepad aside and clamped down on his pipe again. ‘If you can tell me what any of this relates to, I’d be very glad to know. Because I’ve spent the past few hours working on all that and it still baffles me. I mean, who the heck was this lad, anyway, if this was the nonsense filling his head?’

I did not have the answers for him. ‘All I know is that we didn’t do enough for him while he was here.’

Q said nothing.

‘Have you translated any more?’

He sighed. ‘About half of them. There’s an ad for Cadillac and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and one for Zenith hearing aids. I’m officially bemused.’

‘Please keep at it,’ I said. ‘They’re all that’s left.’

‘I will.’ He scratched his beard, leaning back. ‘Any distraction at the moment is a welcome one. Except—’ He straightened up, swivelling to catch my eye. ‘They’re not quite all that’s left. I mean, he came here with a bagful, didn’t he? There must be other things in his lodging we can save.’

Fullerton’s window was boarded with plywood. ‘Just for now,’ Ender said. ‘I can order tomorrow some glass.’ He unlocked the door for me, flipped on the wall-switch. A stark fluorescent haze brightened the studio. I tried not to look towards the threshold of the bathroom, where my last sighting of the boy was still imprinted in the space like some trick of the light. There was a stink of Ajax in the air. The concrete floor had been mopped dry and the boy’s bed had been stripped. His guitar was stored above the wardrobe. ‘What’s wrong with the lamps?’ I asked, seeing they were all unplugged.

‘For safeness,’ Ender said. ‘We have to test.’

The boy had a large drafting table, similar to Pettifer’s, though his was tilted at a sharper angle against the wall. There were no sentimental images from home tacked up on the plaster behind it, no inspiring prints or clippings, as you might have found in other studios. The materials on his workbench were quite meagre: a few coloured pens and pencils; a pot of red ink, a pot of blue; a graphite stick and blotting tissues. ‘I will come back soon, yes?’ Ender said.

I nodded. ‘Thank you.’ But it struck me that I should not let the old man leave without pressing him for answers. ‘Hang on. Ender?’

He was halfway out the door. ‘Evet.’

‘Did you come across a note at all? When you were cleaning up the place?’

‘Excuse me. My English. .’

‘A note—’ I made the action: left hand paper, right hand pen. ‘Did the boy leave a note?’

‘Foolertin?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Fullerton.’

The old man shrugged. ‘There was nothing like this, I don’t think.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes. Very sure.’

‘The provost doesn’t have it?’

He shook his head. ‘No. No. There was nothing like this.’

I had been thinking all day about the circumstances of the boy’s death, and I had concluded that nothing ought to be assumed. Everyone was behaving as though Fullerton had killed himself — even Quickman had swept to judgement on the matter, though he seemed to be wavering on it now — and I still had misgivings. I had seen the odd effects of the boy’s sleepwalking, after all, the full influence of his dreams, and I reasoned that his drowning in the bathtub might well have been its consequence. Accidents like these were possible.

‘I can go now?’ the old man said.

‘Yes. I won’t be long.’

‘I will come back for you soon. To lock it. The wood I leave outside your door, OK?’

I nodded.

The neatness of the room was troubling — it had been forced back into order after cleaning, and the placement of the boy’s possessions was too overtly conscientious. I dragged the desk-chair to the wardrobe and brought down the guitar. Its wooden hips were damp at the edges, watermarked. As I thumbed the strings, it made the most unmusical sound. The thinnest strings were missing, in fact, and so were the little white pegs that secured them. When I laid it on the bed, I heard something clattering inside the body of the instrument. I had to shake it upside down, expecting the pegs would drop out, but a jeton fell onto the mattress instead.

Everything about it was familiar — the groove in the metal, the phoney gold lacquer worn away in all the same places — but, turning it over in my fingers, I saw that it was not a ferry token. Its faces had no markings. This must have been what the boy had flashed at me that day, when I had confronted him about the broken window. I felt strangely disapproving of him, then disappointed in myself for not expecting he would lie to me.

The drafting table seemed out of place, moved in from someone else’s studio. When I connected the desk lamp, it cast a doomy light over the surface: there were handprints on the laminate, pencil marks and skids from an eraser. An array of papers rested on the table’s narrow ledge: finely textured sheets, a heavy gauge, expensive. Apart from the foremost page, which showed a rectangle sketched in freehand, they looked unused. I checked them against the lamplight, hoping I might find the indentations of the boy’s handwriting; but, instead, I saw the fault lines of a picture in the paper, fading through each sheaf.

I took the graphite stick and rubbed it sidelong over the page with the heaviest depressions. Bit by bit, the faint white furrows left in the graphite began to form an illustration. It was made of four thin panels, about an inch across and several high. Each box contained a line drawing of one man’s face in close-up. They showed his dawning expression: (i) gasping anger; (ii) recognition; (iii) a softening of the brow; (iv) tears.

Even as a rough negative like this, it was a spectacular drawing: an assembly of simple lines, some feathered, some solid, that seemed to lift the man’s whole character from the blankness. I had seen this exaggerated style somewhere before, but could not think where. There was a darkness to it, an acuteness of detail. The character’s face was ageless and muscular, the sinews of his neck implied through subtle cross-hatching. He looked hewn from a block of lumber — superhuman — but also jaded, fragile. At the bottom of the page were the makings of a signature I could not read: an L, perhaps an N, and a thatch of jagged squiggle.

I put the drawing to one side and searched the cupboard by the table. There was nothing in it but a pine cone and a pencil sharpener and three red guitar picks. In the boy’s closet, I found his cagoule and a canvas bag half stuffed with clothes: his bee-striped sweatshirt was in there with the rest of his dank laundry. I checked the pockets of all the jeans and discovered only lint. There was a fountain pen and a Roman coin in the boy’s sock drawer, along with a few seashells and Pettifer’s camphor-wood turtle, which I could not resist winding up and letting spin across the floor. It scuttled underneath the chest of drawers; I could not retrieve it. On the bedside table was a paperback of Huckleberry Finn, loaned from the mansion library; it bore the provost’s stamp on the back cover and a strip of dental floss was serving as a bookmark three hundred pages in.

I checked every recess of the place, from the gap under the bed-frame to the shelf above the roller blinds, and even the boy’s stove (I saw the grate was resting slightly off its latch). There was barely a mote of ash inside and the coke-scuttle below it was almost empty. On the blindside of the fluepipe, though, I noticed Quickman’s lighter. I spent a moment trying to make it flame. It would not even spark — perhaps it never had.

The bathroom was the only place left to inspect, but I could not bring myself to search it. Instead, I put the boy’s drawing and the trinkets into my satchel and left. The wooden crate that he had sat upon to make his scribblings was still out on the walkway. I rested there awhile, trying to view things from the boy’s perspective. That marshy, weathered lawn. The bare bones of the pomegranate trees. This little patch of ground was such a wondrous place to be in springtime, when oleanders bloomed between the pines and all the fading purples of the sunset seemed brand new, uncharted. It was the best spot to put down a chair and watch the sky for herons. Now the winter had corrupted it.

I leaned the crate against the wall and headed for my lodging. Even at its borders, the grass was swampy, so I kept to the trail of grit and sawdust Ardak had laid down. It cut a line in the wrong direction — towards the mansion and away from my studio, where it joined the regular footpath. But I could already hear warbles of laughter up ahead, from short-termers on the portico, and the sound of them revolted me.

So I broke off the path and went straight across the grass. The clay soil underneath was thick and tacky, and I remembered how it cleaved to Fullerton’s skin on his first night. He had dug through it with his hands when he could not find his matches. It had rung against the innards of the oil drum like loose change. And then—

I stopped.

I turned so fast I nearly left my shoes behind me in the clay.

The rusty drum was still standing on the open ground ahead, but tilted now, subsiding. It was skirted by a pool of water that I had to hurdle. My heels went skiing on the other side and I grabbed the can to keep from falling on my face. I tried to heave it up, but the dirt inside had been compacted by the rainfall and it would not budge. It did not even wobble. The only thing to do was scoop the soil out by the fistful, until the can was light enough to tip over.

I clawed at the dirt, tossing debris over my shoulder.

When my fingers were too sore to carry on digging, I gave up. I kicked hard at the drum and it shifted in the mud. It was just light enough for me to haul into the trees, ploughing a runnel through the grass behind me.

Under the pines, the ground was not so wet. I pushed the drum on its side, spilling its contents. Amid the clods of soil there was a soggy mass of colour. A saturated pile of magazines the size of Reader’s Digests. I had to gently excavate them.

The first one I pulled out was flecked with mud, congealed, but the cover was still glossy underneath, a little oily to the touch. I brushed off the muck from its middle. It was not a magazine at all.

A shirtless young man with plaited hair snarled back at me, meticulously drawn. His wrists were cuffed with iron shackles and crossed beneath his chin. Thin strings of saliva hung from his blunt teeth like guy-ropes, and, on the crest of his tongue, was a black key small enough to fit a music box.

It was a comic book.

The draughtsmanship was faultless and familiar, bearing the same jagged signature as I had noticed on the drawing in the studio. I had to rub away more dirt to see the title clearly. My heart seized at the sight of it.

It was as though I was staring at my own face in someone else’s family portrait.

The lettering was designed to look held on by rivets, and the author’s name — the boy’s name? — had been sliced out with a blade. It was a sodden mess of paper, but I felt the oddest kind of intimacy with it. Whoever Fullerton had been, he was contained inside those pages. Not just his talent and his labour, but every last peculiar shape that ever lurked in his imagination. I was overwhelmed by a responsibility to preserve it. This and every other comic in the pile.

There were footfalls now in the distance, and a tuneful hum. Ender was tramping down the pathway from the mansion, singing quietly: ‘Hey goo-loo, helleh helleh goo-loo. .’ I could not let him see me.

I lifted out as many comics from the soil as I could and tucked them in my coat. Three of them. Four. Five. Just when I was running out of room, I found another in the mud. That was all of them. I kicked through the rest of the dirt, levelling it off. And in that scattered mess, a square of burgundy showed through. The boy’s passport was there upon the mulch.

‘Kiz goo-loo, helleh helleh goo-loo. .’

It was in a decent state, soggy but not ruined. The photo page fell open in my hand. There he was again: the real Fullerton. British citizen. He did not seem any younger in the photo. His lank hair was the same but his face was studded with acne. Surname: scratched out. Given names: scratched out. Date of birth: deep laceration. I dropped him in my satchel and withdrew into the trees.

Two

Preserving The Ecliptic was a wearying endeavour. Each issue had to be unpicked from its staples, hand-squeezed of moisture with a rubber print-roller on a cotton towel, then hung on a string across my studio. I did not know a simpler way of doing it. Many of the pages were too damaged to rescue. They stuck and tore as I tried to part them, or bled most of their ink into the towel as I dried them. I lost whole sections to careless mistakes with the roller: too much pressure buckled the paper, shards of grit got caught up in the rubber and shredded several panels, front and back. Issues 2, 4, and 6 were too warped to read, their pictures washed out or occluded. Most of Issue 5 ripped in my hands as I unpicked it. By the time I had finished all this conservation work, I felt sapped of energy. At least a hundred pages hung on the lines above my head, stretched from every corner of my studio. I fell onto my bed, into the deepest sleep I ever earned.

Daylight brought no change to the foul weather. I rose cold and stiff, and stood drinking weak tea in my thermals until the shower ran hot enough to bathe. The fragrance of damp ground was all about the studio, and the stove-smoke only seemed to worsen it. I had the urge to put on the boy’s striped sweater — it looked so worn and comfortable — but kept to my normal painting clothes instead. Who knew what time it was? I had not heard the breakfast bell or any distant calls to prayer, but I had woken with a queasy sense of urgency.

Bringing down the boy’s pages from the lines, reassembling the issues, I was overtaken with excitement. The moody covers lured me in. I could not remember the last time I had been so absorbed by someone else’s work.

I had managed to save just two complete issues—#1 and #3—but most of the front covers were still intact. They were logoed with a kind of origami swan at the top right of the page: CYGNUS COMICS. In each of the cover illustrations, the main character grew a fraction older, shown in various states of distress: submerged in a petrol tank, crawling through an air duct, trapped behind a porthole, clutching sticks of dynamite and other weapons.

The cover of #1 showed the character in half-light, dangling from a gantry. He was hanging over a vast metallic chasm by the fingers of one hand and it seemed certain he would drop. I was transfixed by the determination in his face, the glint of vengeance in his eyes. I felt just like him: about to plunge into a world of the boy’s making. And I did — I fell. I devoured the whole issue and the next.

Issue 1 — G Deck

AT COORDINATES UNKNOWN. . (They all seemed to open with these words, top left). Inside the dank and rusted chamber of what appears to be a ship, a young man is slumped, unconscious, shackled by the wrists to a steel pillar. A voice fizzes out from a loudspeaker above his head (in spiky word balloons): Passenger announcement! Children on B Deck must be accompanied by their guardians at all times. His eyes slowly creak open, and he seems woozy and disoriented. Repeat: all children on B Deck must be accompanied—He feels a sudden pain in his mouth. A tiny key is lodged underneath his tongue and he spits it out into his hand, unlocks the cuffs. His wrists are chafed and raw.

The angle widens. He is alone and naked in a room containing two generators, oxidised and derelict. There is a smoky auburn light, a metal locker, and a steel hatchway with a reinforced door. He goes to the locker and removes a leather suitcase containing personal effects: a Bible, a hipflask, a Bowie knife, a wristwatch. Hanging in the locker is a set of blue overalls, streaked with oil. The name-badge on the breast says: IRFAN TOL, 4TH ENGINEER, and stencilled on the back in white is the phrase: DV-ECLIPTIC.

Cut to a dark corridor. The man finds his way into a cargo hold where hundreds of giant wooden crates are stacked. He crowbars the lids from three of them, discovering a hoard of taxidermy, furniture, paintings, boxes of cigarettes (he pockets several packs) and tins of crabmeat (he stabs one open and drains the juice). The announcements continue on the loudspeakers: This is a notice for all passengers in first-class. The totaliser on the ship’s run will be announced at 11.00 hours on the Promenade Deck Square. The totaliser will be announced at 11.00 hours on the Promenade Deck Square. Thank you. But his watch says it is 3.15 already — a.m. or p.m.? He is not sure.

The man believes he is alone (he says so aloud, in a word balloon). There is no daylight, just flickering bulbs (a greenish hue to the panels throughout this section) and he climbs the crates to get a view of what is below him, reaching a gantry. His thoughts are shown to us in slanting words: he thinks the ship is moving, but he cannot hear the engines (his words: the powertrain). There are no doors. The space below is dark. The walls are gently leaking. He slips and, dangling from the railing of the gantry (reprise of the cover image here), notices something: a sway of shadows in the hold below. Dropping down onto a crate and leaping to another, he follows the shadow, but it recoils. He loses it.

Descending to the floor, he side-steps between a maze of crates. At the far end of the hold, there is a line of candelabras, coiled with Christmas lights, that leads into a sort of glade amongst the cargo. He is surprised to find an old woman sitting in an armchair, playing chess with nobody. She holds a finger to her lips and shushes him, moves her queen upon the board. The Christmas lights are wired up to a cable conduit on the wall behind her.

The woman has made quite a life for herself in the cargo hold, living off the salvage. She is adorned in a fur coat with a collar of mink-heads, and wears so much jewellery that she gives the impression of a Pharaoh on a throne. ‘I knew somebody would come for me,’ she says. ‘I knew it would happen eventually.’ And she offers the man a cup of vinegar. He raises his hipflask and she says, ‘Oh, even better.’ But, as he leans down to pour the liquor into her cup, she points a pistol at him. ‘I’m not going to let you take me,’ she says. ‘I have it too good here.’ There is a tussle — the man lunges forwards; she shoots and misses; he overpowers her. And now holding the pistol at the woman, he forces her back against a crate. All he wants to know, he says, is where he is, and how to get out.

And so she explains it all to him (in that way that villains do in films, always wanting to reveal the lengths of their true evil). ‘This,’ she tells him, ‘is what they call a dead vessel. You’re on a ship that’s been retired from navigation, sonny. Listen—’ She points to the air. ‘No engine noise. But what’s funny about that is you can feel it moving, can’t you? And you’d be right, because we are. We’re going somewhere all right. So if you want to know where in the world the two of us are standing at this moment, my answer is: anywhere, everywhere. Who the hell can say? You’re on the Ecliptic and there’s no way off it, not that I’ve ever found. So I’d get used to this place, shipmate, if I were you—’ (squinting) ‘—Irfan.’

‘That’s not my name,’ he says.

‘Your badge says otherwise.’

‘Irfan Tol is not my name.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Because I feel it in here.’ (Tapping his heart.)

He insists that there has to be a way to escape the ship. The woman tells him that the furthest she has ever reached is F Deck, and she has no intention of ever going back there. ‘I’m richer here than I ever was on land,’ she says. ‘Look at this garb. It’s best Russian mink.’ The air between decks, she warns, is poisonous and cannot be breathed. ‘But I can show you a good way to get to F Deck, if you’ll put the gun down.’ In a trunk, she has some breathing apparatus: a deep-sea diving mask attached to an oxygen tank, marked: ST ANA’S HOSPITAL. She leads him to a hatchway, sealed with candlewax. He thanks her, gives her back the pistol. ‘Oh, I think you’re going to need that more than I will,’ she says. ‘Godspeed to you. But don’t ever come back here.’ She lets him go and shuts the door behind him.

The hatchway opens to a narrow metal stairwell. The climb is sheer and he withers after the first flight, slouching, crumpling. There are more steps than he has ever seen (this thought shown in bold for emphasis). He breaks through the F Deck hatch and collapses, hitting his head. The loudspeaker again: Notice for stewards in cabin class: the purser’s office is now closed. Thank you.

Issue 3 — E Deck

AT COORDINATES UNKNOWN. . A leap ahead in the narrative. Irfan Tol, fourth engineer, is still in his overalls. He is straddling the steel-mesh walls of a baggage lift. He cannot put his feet down because there is no floor beneath him — it appears to have eroded and there is nothing but a very deep shaft underneath. The lift is going nowhere. His face is knotted and tense. He scrambles to the other side, falling into a room crammed with suitcases (replicas of the one he found in the first issue). Hurriedly, he empties them, gathering provisions: a first aid kit, a torch, a carpetbag, a tape recorder, a bottle of gin. He encounters a trunk with a military emblem, tries to open it with a little key (from Issue 1?) and it comes loose. Inside: sticks of dynamite, a gas mask, and a thermos flask. He opens it and dry ice steams out. Goddamn. Everything is stowed inside the holdall, and he keeps on going, through the next hatch. Now where is he? Behind a pane of window glass, looking down upon a swimming pool. The water is stagnant and brown. He sniffs, getting an acrid stench, so puts the gas mask on.

Coming down the steps, he treads carefully on the poolside. Flies buzz all around him. The tiles are dabbed with animal excrement. He sees a bootprint in it — not his own — and feels a presence near by. (In slanted letters: Something’s here. . and then a full page of wide panels showing various aspects of the room, but no people.) Crouching by the diving board, he spots a shape quivering at the bottom of the pool. The water is too rotten to see through (shown as though from the gaze of his steamed-up gas mask). Excrement floats on the surface. Getting up from his haunches, he is startled. What the—? Alsatian dogs are running for him in a pack. He cannot move quickly enough, and they send him toppling into the filthy dark pool with a splash! that takes up half a page.

(Dark brown colouring to the panels in this section.) Irfan Tol is underwater, gas mask on, carpetbag strapped to him, almost like a parachute. Bubbles rushing upwards. And the deeper he plunges, the more is revealed of what is resting at the bottom of the pool: a junkheap of motorbikes. He notices a child playing amongst the engine parts. A young girl wearing goggles. But, as his buoyancy lifts him back to the surface, he loses her. (Brighter panels here.) The dogs are baying on the poolside. He is gasping for air. Something pulls him under. He is dragged beneath the water again: a slender hand upon his ankle. And down he goes, clambering, towards the rusty motorbikes. He sees the girl’s pale face is staring up at him. She is breathing through a snorkel. Her hair is in a very long braid that whips up from her back. And she pulls him further and further, down past the wheels and handlebars. There is a kind of submarine hatch on the pool-bed. She turns the lever, opens it, and they squirm through. They drop into a dim metal chamber, filling with grungy water. She asks for his help to shut the hatch and they put their shoulders into it. The water stops gushing. They stand there, drenched. He tears off his gas mask. ‘Where are we?’ he asks her. ‘Sewage tanks,’ she says. H Deck, he thinks. Going backwards.

I could glean some of the rest of Irfan’s story from the scraps of comics that were left. But there were few complete pages to reckon by. In these later issues, the panels were laid out in more inventive ways: oblique shapes that intercut at curious angles, text and word balloons that branched out from the frames of drawings and encroached on those adjacent. The covers hinted at Irfan’s ascent up the decks of the dead vessel, and some of the torn images revealed more serene environments than previously encountered: a gymnasium with stewards lifting dumb-bells, a cocktail bar serving dry ice in champagne flutes, and a cinema playing what looked like Gone With the Wind or a pastiche of it. It was the most dissatisfying feeling: to have only a quarter of a story, and no way to ever find out the ending.

I reassembled as much of #5 as I could. Its cover showed Irfan Tol armed with fizzling dynamite and a harpoon. There was desperation in his eyes and obvious pain. The title was drawn to look burned onto the tarnished innards of the ship where Irfan was leaning. Again, the author’s name was cut away, as it was from every other issue I had found. I studied the inside page, reading through the credits. Story: name redacted. Art: redacted. Lettering: redacted. Colours: redacted. The publisher’s information was scratched right off. Except, there was something in the small print there, at the foot of the page, that was not quite scrubbed clean. It was faded, and difficult to make out with the naked eye. I had no magnifying glass, so I took my glass muller and held it up against the print like a lens. The words bleared and then sharpened, amplified:

Text and illustrations © Jo Nathaniel

In the mess hall, Nazar was sitting patiently beside Quickman’s feet. He had saved her a few strips of sucuk and a small mound of scrambled eggs and was decanting everything into a napkin. We were not supposed to feed the dog — it was one of the unspoken tenets that we knew the provost took seriously — and so, when I came to the table, Quickman flinched at the sound of my footsteps, hiding the bundle of food on his lap. ‘Oh,’ he said, seeing it was me. ‘You frightened me half to death.’ He brought the napkin out and added a few walnuts from Mac’s bowl. ‘I know the rules, but sod them — it makes me feel better.’

‘I’d be more worried about how that spicy meat’s going to come out of her,’ said Pettifer, invigilating from across the table. ‘Someone’s going to smell your crime eventually.’

‘I’d like to see how they’d prove it was me.’

‘She’d buckle under questioning. All they’d have to do is rub her belly.’

I sat down, as always, beside MacKinney. ‘Did you not sleep?’ she asked. ‘You’re much too pale. I’m getting you some fruit.’

‘Mac, we all look pale to you,’ Tif replied on my behalf. ‘Give it a rest. Let the woman eat what she wants.’

I poured myself a glass of milk.

‘That won’t be enough,’ Mac said.

‘I’ll have another then,’ I said.

‘Steady,’ Tif said, wobbling his gut. ‘That’s how it starts, you know.’

Quickman was now leaning down with the napkin held out for Nazar under the tabletop. She guzzled the food right from his hand. ‘I do realise,’ he said, ‘this means she’s never going to leave me alone ever again. But I’ve rather got used to her following me around.’ When the dog was done, he straightened up, looking for a spot to dump the slobber-stained napkin, deciding on Pettifer’s plate. ‘Oi!’ Tif said. ‘That’s revolting.’ And this set Quickman off laughing, then Mac. But the impulse for laughter made me feel so guilty that I had to gulp down some milk just to smother it.

Then Q got up and started gathering his empty dishes. ‘Knell, would you mind helping me take these over?’

I stared back at him.

‘The woman just sat down,’ Tif said. ‘You can manage all that on your own.’

‘I’ll help you,’ Mac said.

But I could tell from Q’s pointed expression that clearing the table was just an excuse to speak to me. ‘It’s fine,’ I told them, standing up to take their dishes. ‘I’m in the mood for some tea, anyway.’

Pettifer bunched up his eyes. ‘You two aren’t—?’ He leaned back, crossing his arms. ‘My God, I knew it — you are.’

Q said, ‘Are what exactly?’

‘You know what I’m getting at.’

‘No, Tif. Enlighten us.’

‘Together, he means,’ Mac said apathetically. ‘He thinks you’re an item. I’ve already told him he’s being ridiculous.’

At this, Quickman sniggered. Then he turned to them and said, ‘I should think Knell could do a fair sight better than me, don’t you?’

‘I’ll say,’ Tif replied. ‘But you don’t have to sneak around, you know. I’m fine with it.’

‘Thrilled that we have your permission,’ Q said. ‘To walk from one side of the room to the other.’

‘I’m just letting you know: I’d be hurt, but it wouldn’t kill me. The two of you getting together would make sense in an odd sort of way.’

‘Well, that’s really touching, Tif, thank you. Completely misguided, as ever, but touching.’

‘It’s straight from the heart.’ He grinned. ‘Knell’s staying quiet on the subject, I notice.’

‘Best not to engage with you in this mood, in my experience,’ I said.

‘Hmm.’ He made a face I could not read: nostrils tightening, tongue rolling across his teeth. ‘Go on then, lovebirds. Off with you.’

I went with Quickman to the ledge by the kitchen, where we left the plates for Gülcan, and then trailed him to the serving pass where Ender handed us both hot glasses of çay on saucers. Nazar was never far behind. At the condiments table, Quickman took three sugar cubes and dropped them in my tea without asking. ‘Keep your strength up,’ he said, then put four into his own. Stirring it, he leaned in and said, ‘Did you find much in his lodging?’

‘All kinds. Your lighter for one thing.’

‘Oh good.’

‘And—’ I whispered it: ‘Comic books. That’s what he was here for. He wrote them.’

Quickman puffed out his cheeks.

‘You’ve got to see them, Q. They’re so well done.’

‘How d’you know for sure that he wr—?’ He pretended to smile at a short-termer passing by us on the way to the serving pass. ‘How’d you know he wrote them?’

‘If you come over, I can show you.’

‘There’s a difference between drawing them and writing them. The stories aren’t always done by the same person.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’re right, but I’m certain he did both.’

He was waving now, affectedly, at Pettifer, who was turned on his chair gawping at us. ‘I need to shake off hawk-eyes over there before we do anything. How long has he been this way? Did I miss something?’ Peering down at Nazar, he said, ‘At least the dog knows when to be quiet.’

‘He’s always been Pettifer, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Well, perhaps I’m just losing my patience for his uglier side, I don’t know.’ Q lifted his çay glass, blew across it. ‘Listen, I finished the translation. Took me all bloody night, and I’m still none the wiser.’

‘What does it say?’

‘More adverts,’ he said. ‘But the last few are the strangest.’

‘In what way?’

‘I can’t explain it all now — Tif’s already making me feel guilty just for standing here. We should get back to the table.’ He paced alongside me, Nazar trundling behind. ‘Let me leave first, OK?’ he muttered. ‘Finish your breakfast, then come to my room when you can. I’ll be waiting.’

I had often wondered what possessed women to have romantic affairs, and now I could understand exactly what it was: operating in the margins brought out the most attractive qualities in men (decisiveness, attentiveness, mystery) and, somehow, all the sly manoeuvrings gave each brief connection more significance. But I had already chosen the man I loved, and Quickman — good friend though he was — would never be a suitable replacement.

‘It took me a while to work out the tone of the language, but my best judgement is, they’re photograph captions. From a travel brochure, perhaps. I’m not one hundred per cent on that yet. Have a listen—’

Quickman was perched on the edge of his desk, one hand in his pocket, the other clutching a legal pad. His pipe was laid on the windowsill. The curtains were open, but the gloom of the afternoon offered scant reading light, so his lamp was turned on, angled upwards. It gave him the backlit quality of the rocks in a fish tank.

‘Goats wait to be milked by the village cheese-maker. And then, in brackets: Norwegian Office of Travel.’ He smirked at me. ‘Any idea what that is?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Me neither.’

‘Keep going.’

Quickman read on: ‘Norway’s horses are experts in farming on sheer slopes. As the markings on this fine animal’s legs show, it is a Norwegian—no idea what the next word is, so I’ve left it blank— an ancient breed, highly prized amongst the locals. It goes on and on like this. Meaningless, really.’ He flipped the page. ‘At fifteen hundred feet, the waterfall of the Seven Sisters cascades into the—I believe it says fjord, not creek or stream; it’s more specific than that—into the fjord at the village of Geiranger—that bit’s just written out in English, well, Norwegian, I suppose—almost four times the height of the Statue of Liberty. There is a permanent worry about landslides in this region. During the ice age, tumbling glaciers from the mountains widened the gorges into giant canyons. The Norwegian coast is a long sawblade of fjords, spanning thousands of miles. Pictured centre, local villagers eat a picnic of bread and curd with—’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Wait.’

Quickman lowered the notepad. ‘I’m fairly certain it says “curd” there, and not “jam”. But I can triple check it if you think it’s necessary.’

I needed a moment to think.

‘Knell, are you all right?’

I needed a moment.

‘What is it?’

The Norwegian fjords, I thought.

Skiers in Alta, Utah.

Oxen in Schneeburg, Austria.

Diamond Rock, Martinique.

‘They’re not from a brochure,’ I said. ‘They’re from a magazine.’

The realisation left me woozy. I had to rest my hand on the bed-frame.

‘How the hell did you get that — from bread and curd?’ Quickman said.

I could hardly explain it. My head was awash. ‘It’s National Geographic.’

‘If you say so.’ He stepped back. ‘You seem very certain about things all of a sudden. What am I missing here?’

‘I knew the boy, Q.’

‘Of course you did, but still I—’

‘No, you’re not hearing me. I knew him.’ I lowered myself to the bed. The linen was fresh and creaseless. ‘Before I got here. I knew him from London.’

‘But he’d have been a kid back then, surely.’

I nodded. ‘He was seven or eight when I saw him last.’

‘I still don’t understand how you can get all that from this.’ Quickman struck the notepad with his knuckles. ‘Unless it’s some sort of code.’

‘It’s not a code. It’s more than that, it’s — something else.’ I had to write it down, to spell it out. ‘Lend me that pad and a pencil, would you?’

Quickman did as I asked. He stood across the bed, head slanted, while I wrote it out in capitals: J O N A T H A N I E L

‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s the name I found on his comics.’

‘Oh.’ He sniffed. ‘Well, I suppose that’s fairly concrete.’

‘It matches the signature on all of the covers,’ I said. ‘So I know that he drew them.’

J O N A T H A N I E L

J O N A T H A N I E L

I turned the paper round. ‘What does that say to you?’

He read it aloud: ‘Jonathan Ee-ell. Jonathan Ay-ell?’

‘Could be,’ I said. ‘Or—’

J O N A T H A N Y A I L

‘Now you’ve lost me,’ Quickman said.

‘I’m telling you I knew the boy.’

‘Yes, but you haven’t said how.’

‘You really want my life story, Q? I’m telling you, that was his name.’

‘I don’t doubt it was,’ he said. And he went pacing to the windowsill to retrieve his pipe — the comforter, the thing that made him think clearly. ‘But you’re going to have to give me something more, Knell. I don’t see what difference it makes if you knew him or not.’

‘Because now I can’t ignore it,’ I said. ‘For his father’s sake, I have to do something.’

‘Don’t do anything rash — give it some time.’

‘No, this changes things, Q. It’s bigger than this place. Bigger than you or Mac or anyone else.’

‘You’re going to have to give me more than that. I’m trying my best to understand you here, but—’ He gestured to his desk. ‘Write it down if it’s easier. Just help me understand what’s going on, before you go and do something you’ll regret.’

I told him as much as I was willing to admit — about sailing to New York but not the caldarium; about therapy but not my anxieties; about the mural and the ecliptic but not about Jim Culvers. And Quickman did not judge me. He just chewed on his pipe while I talked and, at the end of it all, he said, ‘I see. All right. I get it.’

‘Then you’ll help me?’

‘I didn’t say that. This isn’t my fight.’

‘But you aren’t going to stop me.’

‘I don’t think I could. You’ve got that look about you.’ He slumped into his desk chair, swivelling. I could see that something was rolling over in his mind that he wanted to release. ‘Did I ever tell you about my old passphrase?’

‘I thought you couldn’t remember it.’

‘Well, I lied.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I’m superstitious.’ Q pinched at his beard. ‘It’s from a Dickinson poem. One need not be a chamber to be haunted, one need not be a house; the brain has corridors surpassing material place.’

‘That’s beautiful.’

‘It is. But I can never decide what she meant by it.’

‘I suppose she’s saying everyone’s got problems.’

‘But there’s another side to it, don’t you think? She’s saying, no matter where you are, you’re doomed. You can’t close off all those corridors in your brain; there are just too many of them. You’ll be haunted wherever you go.’

‘Maybe.’

He turned to face the window. ‘I’m not going to try to talk you out of anything you need to do, Knell. And I won’t stand in your way. But you have to seriously think about whether it’s all worth it. I mean: consider every angle. If that raging feeling doesn’t go away tomorrow — fine. Do what you think’s best, and don’t worry about the rest of us. We’ll land where we land. All I’m asking is for you to wait awhile.’

The mansion roof was studded with moss and a trench of slimy rainwater ran all along the parapet. I did not venture far. Gripping the tiles, I sidled out until I had a view into the bay, where Fullerton’s body—Jonathan’s body — rested somewhere underneath the roiling waves. The afternoon was no less dismal from this height. A flat discolouration to the sky, like dirty turps, and the air so cut with damp that everything seemed glimpsed through a smeared windowpane. I wanted to follow Quickman’s advice and deliberate on things before I acted. But being on the roof amidst the countless swaying pines, with the nearest family house a mere grey shape in the distance, I could only think how far the boy had come to die. And I could not let the world continue so indifferently.

Because when I thought of Fullerton now, I saw the prom deck of the Queen Elizabeth and a child with a Superman comic, and the sweet ‘Get Well’ card he had drawn for me: Your super friend, Jonathan. Every word that he had spoken in the past few days was loaded with a new significance: those awkward lies about Green Lanes (he could not tell the truth about his upbringing in case it alerted me to his real identity), the talk of his father not taking him camping (Victor was not an outdoorsman), the constant mention of those weekends at his granddad’s flat (Victor being so frequently abroad for conferences, Amanda so routinely at her squash club, that it made sense for the boy to form a bond with the only grandparent he had left). And something about cycling ‘all the way to Hampstead’ one night in his sleep? (The Yails had a home in Primrose Hill, not far from there.)

There were so many inferences that now seemed blatant. Of course, the DV-Ecliptic was an extrapolation of the Queen Elizabeth and other ocean liners the boy had sailed on. Irfan To l likely represented some inherent fear of being alone (given how much time the boy claimed to spend with his granddad, this seemed reasonable to assume). And what were those comics if not just a way to express the terror of his nightmares? The provost had said as much himself: The dreams are part of his creative process. That’s all I can tell you. It was not unfeasible to picture Jonathan reading through his father’s session notes and seeing the ecliptic scribbled down and underlined. Easy to imagine how it might be overheard through the door of the consultation room, or dropped into a no-name-basis conversation at the family dinner table. Perhaps Victor had discussed his patients’ cases brazenly on the telephone with other doctors as the boy listened on the upstairs line — who could say? I had never believed much in coincidence, and it seemed unlikely that the two of us would converge on the same point of fascination without some guiding hand. Now he was gone. And Victor — poor Victor — was out there somewhere, wondering, oblivious. I had to get word to him.

Down on the front lawn, the Frenchman in his yellow poncho was walking in large circles with another guest — I could not see who it was. I had not bothered to study them too closely, but as they started yet another lap, I realised that the other man was not a guest at all. The Frenchman had made a scarecrow out of a broomstick, an old peacoat, and what looked like thatches of dry leaves. He was dancing this strange manikin around the boggy grass as part of some performance. With every circuit, it seemed that he dismantled a piece of the dummy, and, the longer it went on, the more of its guts and fibres lay strewn upon the lawn. He was calling out now in French, but I could not understand what he was saying.

After a moment, guests started to emerge from their lodgings to watch. An audience of short-termers gathered on the portico steps. Ender looked on from the path, his arms stocked with firewood. Even Ardak was tempted from the outhouse to see what was going on, and leaned there, pulling off his work gloves while the Frenchman kept on calling out his nonsense. And when I heard the provost’s voice below — that murmuring tenor with all its affectations — I sensed an opportunity. The fuss about the Frenchman’s piece grew louder, fuller. Everyone was preoccupied with it. And so, as fast as I could manage, I edged along the parapet and climbed back down the ladder, through the roof beams, until I reached the empty hallway.

The provost’s study was in the other wing of the building, across the upper landing, and the parquet floor resounded with my every step. I lifted off my shoes and left them in the corridor, striding past the staircase and the mess hall underneath me. The floor was oddly warm against my feet. I expected the door would be locked — and it was — but I was able to scrutinise the keyhole. It was a warded lock that required a short, fat key, most likely of the same dull brass as all the door fixtures.

I hurried down two flights to the lobby, where Ender’s door was still ajar at the back end of the house. There was a cheery rumble of voices out on the portico, and I tried not to be seen, stepping quietly along the hall. The Frenchman kept on crying out his garbled script. I pushed inside the old man’s room, unsure where to look. A fleet of leather slippers was neatly lined under his bed, his pyjamas folded on the pillow. The muslin curtains were tied back with ribbon, and I could see right into the old man’s bathroom: a clot of foam left on his shaving brush, a rim of whiskers in the sink. There was no time to feel ashamed. I searched his desktop and the bending bookshelves, rifled through his cupboards, finding nothing. My blood began to cool. In the drawers of his writing table, I discovered only envelopes, boxes of baklava (his private stash), and a mound of typewritten pages in Turkish.

I could hear boot soles on the floor outside, amusement in the corridor. The old man was coming back — I felt sure of it — and I stole into his closet, holding my breath. My head grazed a row of hooks behind me on the wall. All manner of things hung from them: bales of twigs, a whistle on a lanyard, large blue beads with painted eyeballs, and keys on metal loops. When Ender did not appear, I snatched two of the stumpiest — one brass key, one silver — and fled back to the hall. Heading for the portico, I was certain I would feel a meaty hand upon my shoulder, hear a chiding tsk from another guest behind me. But it never came. I was able to break out onto the steps and merge with all the short-termers, while the Frenchman carried on his strange performance. He was calling: ‘Adieu! Adieu! Adieu!’

Gluck seemed more bemused by it than interested. His tufty eyebrows were pushed into a point over his nose. I went to him and said, ‘Do you know what all this gibberish is about?’ And he gestured to a sign that hung around the scarecrow’s neck that said: DOUX ET NÉGLIGEABLE. ‘It’s very polemical,’ Gluck said, ‘but I don’t really know the motivation. From an aesthetic standpoint, though, I’d say it’s quite successful.’

Something else you will not learn at art school: real inspiration turns up only when your invitation has expired. There is no preparation you can put in place for it and no provision you can make that will entice it to your door. It will find you either sleeping, occupied with chores, or entertaining the dumb neighbours you allowed in as a compromise. And when it finally shows, you will have to wake up fast, abandon everything, turf out the pretenders just to make it welcome, because it will take less time to disappear than you spent waiting for it. There is no finer company than inspiration, but its very goodness will leave you heartsick when it goes. So do not waste time asking it to wipe its feet. Embrace it at the threshold.

The boy’s comics were exactly where I left them: spread out on the workbench with the muller rested on the inner page of Issue 5. I went to light my stove and filled the kettle. My nerves were still fidgeting and I needed some weak tea to calm myself. Lying on the couch, I gazed at the paint-spattered ceiling and thought of Victor Yail. His face all shapeless with grief. His lenses fogged by tears. Cracks in his voice. I tried to think how I was going to break the news to him, but every sentence I conceived was banal: Your boy is dead — I’m sorry. . He took his own life. . We threw him in the sea. . How else could I say it? The facts would not change.

As the fire burned rosily in the stove, I grew so absorbed in looking at the flames that my head began to haze and drift. I made the tea and took it to the window. No promise of sunshine outside. Clouds like sooty thumbprints on a chimney breast. Turning round, my hip knocked against the workbench and the muller slipped slightly off the page. Something caught my attention: the grain of the image underneath the glass. Blurry discs of colour.

Standing over it, I held my eye up to the muller as if it were a gem loupe. And through the glass I saw the printed substance of the illustrations. Their colours were made up of tiny dots in rows: magenta, cyan, yellow and black. Some overlapped, some were spaced apart, the rest were tightly packed. A galaxy that could not be seen from far away. A thing that was there, and yet not.

When the lunch bell rang, I did not leave my studio. I pulled out the timbers I had been keeping underneath my bed, wiped off the heavy film of dust, cut all the angles with a mitre-saw, and screwed them into place to make a stretcher. I rolled out all the canvas I had on the studio floor and pulled it taut across the frame, hammering in the tacks. Before long, I had a four-by-nine-foot rectangle of blankness staring back at me. It spread across the full width of my studio and there was not one inch of it I feared. The primer coat still had to dry, and I stood near, projecting the image onto it in my mind. There seemed no point in making a cartoon: the mural I had conceived was very simple — pure abstraction — and it was best to let the idea express itself without too many constraints. First of all, I needed darkness.

The boy had ruined all but one of the mushroom garlands in my closet. There was the tobacco tin of pigment stowed behind the bathroom cabinet — not quite enough to get me through the night. I could grind up what was left, but I would have to harvest more.

My muller and the mixing slab were already clean. Still, I gave them another rinse for procedure’s sake and organised my workbench as normal. I drew the shutters, stapled the roller blind against the window frame, and then — with a sadness that twinged the length of my spine — I went to fetch a new roll of tape from the cupboard and left it on the tabletop for later.

When the dinner bell sounded, I ignored it. It struck me that I did not have to wait for dark to harvest what I needed. I knew the route into the woods so well that I could walk it blindfold. And with all the other guests now gone to the mansion for their evening meal, I did not have to worry about being noticed. So I stuffed a roll of tin foil into my satchel, edged lightly down the path, and slipped into the apron of the trees.

In the vapid daylight, the woods became a different place, cloistered but not as menacing. The pines had a crisp, fulsome scent, flushed out by the rain. I looked for the notches I had knifed into the trunks — the four short lines upon the bark that I used to help me navigate at night — and followed them, one notch at a time, until the air turned dank and the ground felt more elastic underfoot. Up ahead, I saw the enclave with the leaning trees, and then the narrow clearing with its nest of rotting logs. And there they were: the mushrooms, so ordinary before sunset. Plain brown clusters of fungus with brims almost translucent. I dropped to my knees and sliced every last fruithead from the bark, until the tinfoil sheet was covered by them. I wrapped and taped them inside, putting the packet in my satchel. Dashing back between the pines, I got the feeling I had left something behind — my knife, perhaps my scarf.

I stopped.

There was nothing on the ground that I could see. But the clearing had a plundered look, the logs all stripped, forsaken. And I sensed that I would not return to these deepest woods again, that there was no more pigment after this. Because I would be gone before another cluster had grown fat enough to harvest.

Three

When at last the old man came to snuff the candles in the portico, I closed my door and sealed its frame with the tape. The tacky lengths of it came off the roll so noisily, and I tried not to think of Fullerton or the sounds he must have heard when he had used it. I was responsible for that, I knew, and I would say as much to Victor on the phone. But there was nothing to be done about the boy till morning. The only time I knew for sure the provost left his study was just after sunrise, when he liked to take his Türk kahvesi on the front steps with Nazar. I would have to plant myself inside the mansion before then, but there was no sense in wasting the darkness.

My samples gleamed upon the wall: a chequerboard of blues. They were my guide in every way: not just because they gave me a small amount of light to paint by, but because they helped me judge my mixes and my tones. All that work I had done in the past few seasons — getting the pigment right, learning all its facets and refining my technique — came to fruition that night. For the first time I could remember, I knew exactly what I had to paint and how to achieve it. I could not tell if this was clarity or just the prelude to it, but I hoped it would never leave me.

I emptied all the mushrooms from my satchel, cutting through the liners. A spume of blue rushed from the punctured plastic, as though I had unearthed some underground lagoon. It did not take me long to garland them — eight strings of fungus in total, densely packed — and I hung them from the crossbar of my closet to dry out. I retrieved the one remaining garland from the depths where I had hidden it; its glow was that bit fainter than the rest, but it yielded plenty in the mortar when I ground it down. Loading all the powder on the slab, I went to consult my samples, checking the dosages of oil and fruithead sizes that were noted in the margins of the squares. Choosing the right tone and gleam, I made the measurements, added the linseed to the powder, slid the muller over it until I had a good consistency: thin enough to coat the bristles of a medium sable, thick enough to rest upon the blade-edge of a palette knife. And, loading up the largest, roundest brush I owned, I made the first commitment of the paint to canvas.

I had considered using a compass to put chalk lines on the nap that I could follow, thinking it would look cleaner if the circles were precise. But I changed my mind. Although I wanted it to be a purely abstract image, I had to do more than simply colour in blank spaces. Better to paint the overlapping circles freehand. If they were imperfect, fine. I needed them to look man-made. So I swept the brush around, using the natural roll of my shoulder — fast, flowing strokes that came from the whole arm, not just the wrist. And when the paint began to scuff out, I loaded up the brush again, and kept on going with the same circling motions, over and over, working from the outside in, using up the whole batch of paint until I had made a complete disc. It rested on the left side of the canvas, neatly within the limits of the frame — the lighter of the three I planned to paint. A hue so radiant it soothed me like a nightlight, so lucent I could see the trails of brush marks and the nap of the primed fabric underneath.

The mortar and the pestle, the muller and the slab, the brushes and the knife, the workbench — all of them had to be washed and dried again before I could start the next phase. I went about the task quite hurriedly, impatient to begin again, and wary of the failing darkness. When everything was clean, I lifted the bathroom cabinet from its brackets, got out the tobacco tin and brought it to the slab. More tape to unpick and peel away — I thought again of Fullerton — and as the lid hinged open, there was a powder-puff of blue that almost made me sneeze. I scooped it all onto the marble, checked my samples for the apt mix ratio, table-spooned the linseed on and worked it with the muller. This paint had to be a little thinner, with a deeper tone, a richer glare. When it was ready, I applied it to the canvas with the same sweeping gestures. This circle was supposed to be exactly the same size, and I needed to judge its scale by instinct. Its left-hand side was meant to overlap the other circle at the halfway mark. So, as the two discs overlaid, both tones merged, forming a segment with a hue all of its own.

I did not stop working until all the paint was spent and the mural showed two beaming discs of blue, one fractionally weaker than the other. I had no pigment left to make the final circle. Birds were chirruping outside and I was running out of darkness. The paint would need to dry but I could not leave it for the world to see, so I covered it with bedsheets, fixing brushes to the top edge of the frame to keep the linen off the surface. I scrubbed my hands with soap. And, checking that the old man’s keys were still in my pocket, I pulled my door until the tape tore off and it swung back. The sun was not quite up yet. There was a rinse of dew upon the lawns that smelled familiar. I slatted my eyes against the light and sprinted for the mansion, still in my painting clothes, with pigment on my boot caps and my hair part-streaked with oil.

The fatigue hit me when I reached the hallway. My muscles burned and pinched. But I kept going, quietly up the stairs, trying to mute my every footstep. The floorboards gave off cawing sounds until I reached the landing, where the mess hall door was fully agape and I could hear the clatterings of Gülcan in the kitchen. She worked ten times as hard as anyone: the last to bed, the first to rise. I could not say what made her do it, but she always did it smiling.

I went bounding up another flight — the highest stairs were carpeted and dampened my footfalls. There were empty lodgings in the east wing, but I did not know which doors would open onto them. I had to guess. I pressed my ear to the wood and heard the sounds of snoring. I chose another door: silence. Twisting the handle steadily, as though a single squeak from it would wake up all of Heybeliada, I pushed at it and stole inside. The mattress was bare and mapped with stains. Day was dawning in the window. I was alone.

It was impossible to stop my heart from jouncing; slow breaths in and out did very little. My bones were lagging. I kept the door ajar a tiny crack and peered along the hall. For a good while, nothing stirred. I wondered what would happen if the provost shunned his Turkish coffee. How long would I wait for him? Until the breakfast bell? Till lunch? I thought about my mural, feeling a pride so copious it warmed my cheeks. It occurred to me that even if the provost caught me I would soon be leaving. I could deliver my message to Victor in person. And this notion made me anxious. I started reasoning myself into a knot: Did I even need to make the call? Was it not safer just to finish off my work and leave with all my documents in order? How important was it, really, for Victor to be told?

Suddenly, there came a scrape of claws in the corridor. Nazar was hurtling for the stairs. I watched the provost edge out from his room, locking the door. Such languidness about his movements. He trailed his bamboo cane along the skirting boards and yawned. Reaching the landing, he leaned upon the balustrade. I thought he might have seen me. But then Nazar whimpered from the flight below and he spun round. ‘Ah, there you are,’ the provost said. ‘I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do that any more?’ And he went downstairs and out of sight, saying, ‘Get on with it, scamp, or you’re going to get trampled.’

I allowed a few moments to pass before stepping out. A sediment of dust teemed in the angling sunshine halfway down the hall, and I passed through it with the sureness of a child rushing at garden sprinklers. I had to tread softly while going at pace, and I felt certain that every time my boot soles clapped the parquet someone underneath was taking note. But I made it to the provost’s door. The brass key did not fit the lock. The other went in snugly, and it turned.

I did not expect to find the curtains drawn inside. The air was bitter with the stench of stubbed-out cigarettes: unmistakable. It was one of the broadest rooms in the mansion and the most ornate. The green velvet settees had been arranged to face each other, as though to host some tournament of conversation, and dangly crystal light fixtures were mounted on each wall. The provost had a hulking antique desk made out of cherry wood. The wallpaper was floral and intense. The rugs were vast and plush with mazy patterns, and cream upholstered chairs were placed in every corner (it was not quite clear what for). On the side-table was a silver tray of çay glasses with silver rims on silver saucers. The leather headrest of the provost’s desk-chair was dinted and worn down. (Seasons back, I had been shown this room during my introduction to the refuge — it had been a matter of some pride for him to explain the strange paperweight on his desk, a cast-iron seagull once owned by his favourite author: ‘I’ve been assured that it once sat on manuscripts of Gürpinar’s. The photographic evidence exists, I promise you.’ It had still been on the desk, several days ago, when the four of us had perched upon those green settees and heard him talk about some boy named Fullerton. How far away that afternoon now seemed. The paperweight was missing, too.) I was wasting time just standing there, gawking at the provost’s things. But the room was so luxurious in comparison to my lodging, and the urge to sleep on the soft cushions of the couch took some resisting. Every joint inside me ached. My brain felt panel-beaten.

I moved to the teak cabinet behind his desk. And there it was: the only telephone on the grounds. Its stand was fancy, golden, engraved with minute fretwork. The jade handset was so heavy that my elbow sank a little as I picked it up.

I heard a pigeon-cooing in the earpiece. The line was working.

I dialled zero for the operator. Nothing happened. After a moment, the crackling line scratched out. I tried again and got the same response. It had to be zero. Zero for the operator. Or had they changed it to 100? I dialled that instead.

‘Hello. Operator. How may I help you?’

I had assumed she would be Turkish.

‘Hello? Did you need me to assist you?’

I must have reached the international operator.

‘I need to place a call to London.’ It came out in a flurry.

‘Can you speak up, please? I can’t hear you very well.’

‘No, I can’t, I’m sorry.’ But I whispered it more plainly: ‘I need — to place — a call — to London.’

‘Do you know the number, madam?’

‘Only the name and the address.’

‘I’ll need to take those down.’

‘It’s Yail.’ I spelled it out, and she spoke it back to me using the phonetic alphabet. ‘His first name’s Victor. He’s a doctor, if that helps you find it.’ And I told her the address. ‘Please hurry.’

‘I have the number for you now. It should only take a moment to connect.’

A trilling noise, a trilling noise, a trilling noise. And then—

‘Hello, you have reached the answering machine of Dr Yail and Dr Fleishmann, Harley Street Practice.’ A man’s voice, but not Victor’s, very strained. ‘Office hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Thursday. If you are calling outside these hours and wish to make an appointment, please leave your name and the number where we might contact you. Listen for the tone and speak as clearly as you can. Thank you.’

‘Yes, this is an urgent message for Dr Yail,’ I said. ‘It’s very important, that I speak to—’

A long beep in my ear.

‘Hello? Is someone there?’

Just a fuzz of static.

I started again: ‘This is an urgent message, please, for Dr Yail. I have some very sad news about his son.’ I paused, tweaking the language in my head. ‘I’m afraid I have to let him know that Jonathan is dead. It happened early yesterday.’ It sounded so cold, so final. ‘I’m sorry I’ve had to leave it in a message like this. I really wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell you — I really am so sorry. . It’s Elspeth Conroy — Dr Yail knows who I am. You know who I am, Victor. It’s terrible, having to say all this to a machine. I suppose it must be early where you are. It’s early here. The sun has only just come up. . Victor, I really am sorry. I just had to let you know. Poor Amanda must be going mad with worry. But there was nothing we could do. He drowned himself — it was the dreams. They made his life such hell, but he. . He didn’t suffer. . It’s difficult to say exactly where I am. How well do you know Istanbul? If you can get a ferry out to Heybeliada, it’s—’ Another long beep. ‘Victor, are you there?’

But the line had cut off. I pressed the hook and pressed the hook, trying to get it back. There was nothing, just the dial tone. I hung up the receiver, thinking I would have to call again, but when? The provost hardly left his room. My only chance was gone.

I needed to get out.

The door seemed very distant now. I could not run. My chest was tight. I turned the handle, checked the hallway. Bright out there. All clear. But, coming out, I struggled with the lock. The brass key — so smooth before — would not go in. I fumbled with it, and I realised: the silver key, the silver. When I finally had it locked, I rushed away. Then someone stepped up to the landing. I grabbed at the dado rail to stop myself. My boots squealed on the floor. I almost knocked a picture off the wall: it swung around and settled.

Gülcan had the provost’s breakfast on a tray: orange juice, a rack of toast, and two boiled eggs. When she saw me, her arms flinched. The juice wobbled in the glass.

We did not speak. Her eyes were like a rabbit’s, darting, blinking. I put my palms together, mouthing ‘Please’. And, after a moment, she exhaled and nodded gravely. I carried on along the hall, straight past her, down the stairs, with the feeling in my gut that I had swallowed turpentine and chased it with a flame.

Breakfast was the third meal in a row that I had missed, and it prompted MacKinney to come knocking at the studio. She woke me from the darkest trenches of my sleep: dreams the like of which you only get from sheer exhaustion, that drag your fears out from the roots and shake their dirt off in your conscience. A butcher’s shop, a bloody floor, a mop and bucket — things that I was very glad to get away from. ‘Knell, it’s almost lunchtime. Are you in there?’ My window was still shuttered and the blinds still stapled back. Tape clung to the door in strips. ‘I’m coming in.’ She pushed inside.

I was on my couch under a pile of blankets. The tiredness had been too much — I had not lit the stove when I got back, just shivered into sleep.

Mac looked at me: ‘You have a bed, you know. I recommend you try it.’ Then at the mess: ‘Crikey. You’ve been painting.’

‘I’m as shocked as you are.’ I sat up, squinting at the room. The mural was propped up on the wall, covered by linens. ‘It’s not finished yet, though.’

She was already filling up a jug with water. ‘We thought you’d been ignoring us, but I suppose you’ve had your head in all of this. It didn’t even occur to me that, well, you know what I mean.’ There were no clean cups for her to pour the water into, so she passed me the whole jug. I glugged from the spout, soaking my chin and the front of my shirt. ‘So, what was it — a lightning bolt?’ she said. ‘Or total accident?’

‘I’m not sure. A bit of both.’

‘Well, if you’ve really got your muse back, don’t keep her to yourself. We’re all in need of her company.’ She searched the ceiling. ‘Where is she? Can I borrow her for just an afternoon. I swear I’ll bring her back.’

‘What happened to Oh, thank you, sir. I’ll have it done in no time, sir!’

She folded her arms, peering down. ‘I don’t remember sounding quite that sycophantic.’ And, nudging my feet aside, she lowered herself onto the couch next to me. ‘Anyway, from the looks of things, I don’t have to worry about being the first one out of here. How long until we see your name up on the bulletin board?’

I shrugged. ‘I need one more night of painting, maybe two.’

‘That soon? Wow. This is serious.’ She lifted her brow. ‘I suppose you’d better make an appointment with the prov, then. Give him a head start on your paperwork.’

‘It might not be that simple.’

‘Course it is. Just go straight up and ask him.’ Patting my calves, she turned to me and smiled. I could see the oily smears of fingers on her glasses. It seemed pointless to tell her about my stolen phone call in the provost’s study. The less she knew of my behaviour, the less she was incriminated by association. ‘I always thought you’d be the first of us to crack it, you know,’ she said. ‘Pettifer’s going to be wrecked, poor sod, and we might even see a tear from Q when you go. I’m sure he won’t cry in front of you, though. Retain a bit of dignity. As for me—’ She gripped my leg. ‘They’ll have to cut me off you with a hacksaw.’ We laughed together. In that moment, I felt glad and desolate at once. Then an idea came to her. I could see it brightening her eyes. ‘Will you do me a favour when you’re back in the motherland?’ she said.

‘Of course,’ I told her. ‘Anything.’

‘If you could get a letter to my kids for me, I’d be so grateful.’

‘Don’t let me leave without it.’

‘You might find that they’ve moved, so best to put your return address on the envelope, just in case, eh?’

‘Done. I’ll walk it to them, if I have to.’

She took my hand and kissed it. ‘You’re a great friend, Knell — you know that? I always knew you’d find a way out of here.’ The crusted white paint on my fingernails drew her attention. ‘Look how bony you’re getting, though. You’d better have a decent lunch today.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Long trip home, you know. Important to stay healthy.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Just promise me you’ll eat. A bowl of rice, a bit of fruit — that’s all I’m asking.’

‘If I’m hungry, Mac, I’ll eat. Don’t worry.’

I went to start the shower running in the bathroom. My painting shirt was curiously ripe. I stripped off and put a gown on while the water heated up. When I came back into the studio, Mac had lit the stove and was standing at my workbench with one of Jonathan’s comics. ‘Are these yours?’ she said. ‘They’re incredibly dark.’

‘Fullerton drew them.’

‘You’re kidding.’ She sat down with the comic, putting her feet up. ‘I thought you said he was a musician.’

‘That’s just what we assumed.’

‘I don’t remember giving it much thought.’

‘All right, I assumed.’

She nodded distractedly. ‘Well, his dialogue needs work,’ she said, ‘but you’ve got to admire the drama of it all — and the drawings are something else. You know for certain that he did them?’

‘I got them from his lodging.’

‘Doesn’t mean they’re his, per se.’

‘I know. But trust me.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she said, so immersed in Issue 1 she did not seem to care that I was dodging her. ‘Go on, have your shower. I’m at the part with the old woman in the mink. It’s just started to get frightening.’

Later, washed and more awake, I explained it all to her. About my connection to the boy and Quickman’s translations, what they signified. She did not seem surprised. Using the muller, I showed her Jo Nathaniel’s name in print, and let her see the rows of dots up close. She gave a little gasp of fascination. I talked vaguely — mentioning no names — about my issues with the mural commission, and how seeing all these tiny circles on the page had helped me find a new approach. ‘No lightning bolts,’ I said, ‘more like a very slow earthquake.’

She listened closely, engaged and sympathetic, as though heeding the advice of a director in her ear. But she responded only in the past tense: ‘That sort of thing used to happen to me all the time,’ she said. ‘The number of dead-ends I used to wriggle out of that way,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how fast I used to work,’ she said. I told her I would wait for her in London, that she would always be welcome in my home, that I would go and watch her plays wherever they were staged — all the platitudes you give to friends when, privately, you fear that what exists between you in that moment will abate in separation.

Not only were the residents confounded by the sight of Ardak doling out great dollops of moussaka at the serving pass, but his slowness left them queuing all the way back to the mess hall door. And, waiting in line, I could hear them gossiping in broken English about what must have happened to Gülcan. Mac got talking with Lindo in Spanish, and I did not know where to put my eyes. Q and Tif were at our table, napkins tucked into their collars; great ugly mounds of food lay in front of them, and they were not quite tucking in with their customary enthusiasm.

When I reached the pass, I held out my plate to Ardak, and he grabbed it from me, huffing. He slopped out such a loaded spoonful of brown sludge that it dripped over the sides. As I took the plate from him, he held on to it, and scowled.

‘What was all that about?’ Mac asked, as we headed away. ‘Did you forget to say please?’

I tried to keep quiet, but Pettifer was already adding up the twos of Gülcan’s absence when we got to the table. He moved aside to let Mac sit, saying, ‘Yes, but it has to be more than that, Q, or they’d have put the old man on the pass instead, wouldn’t they? I think they’ve given her the boot, and Ender’s up there pleading her case.’

‘It amazes me,’ Mac said, ‘the speed at which you construct these fairy tales of yours. The poor girl’s probably got a stomach bug. She probably thought it best not to contaminate our food.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ He ran his spoon through the mush on his plate. ‘I can’t bear much more of this gruel.’

‘Lindo says he heard somebody vomiting earlier,’ Mac said. ‘I hope she’s OK.’

Tif stayed silent for a moment. ‘Morning sickness, maybe.’

‘Christ, Tif, put a sock in it,’ Quickman said.

‘Well, I don’t see why we’re taking Lindo’s word on things ahead of mine.’

‘I can’t help it if he speaks more sense,’ Mac said.

‘You don’t have to quote him, though. As if he’s the Spanish bloody oracle.’

And I lost my patience with them all. ‘Could everyone, for once, just try saying nothing? How about that?’ I had been allowing them to speculate as long as it deflected from the truth of Gülcan’s absence. But I could not stand to hear aspersions being cast on the woman. She had done nothing wrong except for carrying up the provost’s breakfast a fraction too soon, and I could not resent her if she decided to confess. ‘You’re making my head spin, the lot of you.’ I pushed my plate away.

‘You promised me you’d eat,’ Mac said.

‘Sorry. It’s completely inedible.’

‘There’s plenty of bread and yoghurt over there. Even Ardak can’t mess that up.’

‘I’ll have something at dinner.’

‘I knew you’d find an excuse.’

‘Is everything all right?’ Q asked.

‘Perfect,’ I said, and smiled. In truth, the instant I saw Gülcan missing from the serving pass, my pulse had started thrumming. I was expecting the provost to come down at any moment, to command the attention of the mess hall with a clap of his hands. Eat up, everyone, he was going to say. Knell has some important information. .

But all that happened was Mac leaned into Tif’s ear and said, ‘Knell’s getting out.’

‘Huh?’

‘She’s painting again. I just came from her studio. In a few days, she’ll be off.’

‘Mac, don’t,’ I said.

‘Come on, I’m proud of you.’ And, glancing at Q, she said, ‘There’s a canvas at her place the size of a billboard. I haven’t seen what’s on it yet, but if we ask her nicely, we might get a little preview.’

‘Are you serious?’ Q said.

‘It’s true that I’ve been painting again,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about the preview.’

‘That’s wonderful!’

‘We’ll see. I’m not quite done.’

‘You will let us see it when you are, though, right?’ Mac said.

‘Possibly. Probably. I haven’t decided.’

Pettifer stood up from the table, rattling dishes. ‘Excuse me. I’m not having any more of this slop. I’m going to see what else there is.’ He carried off his plate towards the kitchen, walking as fast as I had ever seen him manage. The back of his shirt was striped with sweat. The balding crown of his head was pink and sore-looking.

‘What’s bitten him?’ Mac asked.

‘You could’ve been a little gentler with his ego,’ Quickman said. ‘He’s only just got used to the thought of you leaving. Now you’re staying put — although, I’m still not a hundred per cent certain why that is yet — and suddenly it’s Knell who’s off. Tough on the system, all this being glad for other people.’

Mac laughed softly. ‘I told you: I’m not satisfied with the play yet. A thousand plot holes to work out. You know how it is.’

‘Ah, yes, I remember. Plot holes. The council fixes those, eventually.’

She grinned.

‘Well, spare a thought for Tif and me, when you get home.’ Quickman brought his pipe out of his pocket. ‘Because the only way we’re getting out of here is if somebody comes back to collect our ashes. Which, I can assure you, is not halfway as romantic an ending as it sounds.’

The mushrooms were not dry enough to powder. A full day next to the boiler had left them white and shrunken, but I needed them to desiccate. Still, when darkness came, I unhooked two of the driest garlands and stripped them clean. I had to try, at least, to make one batch of paint. And there was a sample on my wall, still gleaming blue, that I knew had been made in the earliest stage of my experiments with the pigment, when I had used much damper fruitheads. Those first few nights, spent keenly testing out the possibilities of the stuff, toying with mixtures of emulsions and pastes, had yielded one daub of shining paint that I hoped I could now replicate. The hardest part was deciphering my handwriting in the margins of the little canvas square: some of the 7s looked like 1s, some of the 9s looked like 8s. But I was thankful to my father for instilling such a methodical streak in me that I could always bank on the lees of my work to be accounted for. Never bin your scraps, he used to say, if I stood watching him repair a table leg or fit a new U-bend in the kitchen. One day that bit of junk you threw away will be the only thing that does the job.

Ground up in the mortar, the damp mushrooms formed a viscid blue cement. I was light-handed with the oil, following the measurements on the sample, and after some persuasion with the muller, it became more pliable, until I had a paint as thick as clotted cream. I had the instinct to thin it out with turps, but held off, knowing one mistake would spoil the entire batch.

The radiance of the paint was a good start. And the tone seemed rich enough for what I needed. It did not take so naturally to the brush head, falling off in tiny clumps — I had to hold my free hand underneath to catch them — but once I put the first stroke on the canvas, it cooperated. The smooth opacity of the stuff gave off the most resplendent sheen. If anything, the moister pigment helped me realise a better outcome than I ever could have planned.

I worked it in the same way as the other paints, in sweeping, fluid gestures, and, although it sputtered out towards the end of every brush load, there was an easy slide to it across the nap in the first motions — I could sculpt it, add textures and inflections as I dragged and shoved the bristles.

The two circles I had left to dry the night before were still vibrant, slightly shivering on the canvas. The final, thickest circle overlaid them in the middle section, creating an effect that I had never seen before in ordinary paint: an ache that I could see and feel at once, as though it were not solely in the fabric of the thing itself but somehow part of me. I had made a simple thing so resonant with sadness, so pure in its substance, that looking at it made me grieve. Tears rushed from my eyes and I could not wipe them fast enough: they putted on the workbench, oozed along my neck. I felt ready to collapse with tiredness and relief. The picture showed glimmering blue circles in a void, growing in intensity as the eye passed left to right. An abstraction of a complicated truth. A way to comprehend it. The Ecliptic, I would call it. The only painting I refused to sacrifice. The one real thing I ever brought into the world.

Four

Ender was sent to get me. He must have been watching for some sign that I was up and moving, because no sooner had I got the kindling lit and fuming in the stove, he came thumping on the door. I was in my dressing gown and halfway to the shower. He did not even wait for me to let him in. The door ripped open and he stood at the threshold with the bright afternoon behind his back, snatching a hang-down strip of tape from the frame above him, as though it were a party streamer. When he saw that I was barely dressed, he did not apologise, just turned his head away, covered his eyes. ‘The provoss asks for you to speak with him,’ he said. ‘He has told me to make certain you will come. So you will come now, yes?’

‘In a moment,’ I said resolutely. ‘Let me put something on.’ I took a bundle of clean clothing to the bathroom and got dressed, washing at the sink, taking more time about it than I would usually have done. The creases of my eyes were streaked with hard white paint. My fringe was greased and gungy. After I had washed myself, a sediment of dirt clung all around the basin.

Ender was still on the threshold when I emerged. He gave me a dismayed look and tucked his pocket watch inside his waistcoat. ‘You are too late now for lunch,’ he said. ‘But there is salep and ayran and fruit, if you want it.’

I shook my head.

He gestured to the covered canvas leaning on my wall. ‘You are working?’ he said, lifting an eyebrow.

I replied, ‘I was. How cold is it out there?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Do I need a coat or not?’

‘No. There is sunshine, lots of sunshine.’

I put it on anyway. Ender huffed.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ I said.

The old man led me along the curving path instead of cutting straight across the grass as normal. He walked just a stride ahead of me and kept craning his head back, as if to check that I was still in grasping distance. From behind, his silver hair looked impossibly dense. Sprigs of it splayed out from the pleats of his long ears and almost twinkled in the sunlight. He had a lurching gait that seemed to pain him. As we went up the portico steps, he stopped to hold the door for me. And then, all at once, I was leading him instead, through the hall and up the stairs. I passed Crozier and Gluck on the landing. They both said quiet hellos to me, raising their coffee cups. It was the first time I had ever been glad of the sight of them. I smiled and wished them both good afternoon, and Gluck was so surprised that his response got caught up in his throat. ‘Yy — er, ya,’ he said. ‘You too.’ The old man was still in my wake, his nostrils wheezing. We went up another flight, over soft carpet (I wondered how many guests before me had made this same walk of condemnation) and clipped along the corridor together until we reached the provost’s study. ‘You wait,’ he said, rapping the wood three times.

The door drew back abruptly and we were met by Ardak. He flicked a nod at the old man but did not acknowledge me. They exchanged a few words in Turkish, then Ardak brushed past us and went off down the hall. Inside, the provost was preparing a drink for himself at the hostess trolley by the fireplace. ‘Have a seat there, won’t you, Knell,’ he said, motioning to the settees. ‘I’m making what I like to call an Afternoon Refresher. Can I get you one? It’s just lemonade, a dash of grenadine, crushed ice, and pomegranate seeds. If you can get fresh mint, that makes it better, but I don’t have any.’

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

‘You’re missing out.’

The old man shut the door and loomed there like a warden. As I sat down, I noticed Gülcan in an armchair near the provost’s desk — she had been partly obscured by his gaunt frame at the hostess trolley, but I could see her now, reclining deep into the cushions with her head back and her fingers worrying her hair. She did not look at me. Nazar was the only one who did, in fact; lazing in a hot-bright shank of sunshine underneath the window, she rolled her pupils round to meet mine, perked up her snout, and then came stepping over. I petted her head and she settled at my feet.

Drink in hand, the provost lowered himself onto the settee opposite. He stirred the ice with a straw. ‘I am troubled, Knell,’ he said. ‘I never thought that I would need to sit you down for a conversation quite like this, but here we are. It’s hugely disappointing.’ He took a liberal swig of juice and gave a little noise of satisfaction. ‘Do I presume, from your lack of an expression, that you understand where this is headed?’

‘It’s never wise to presume anything,’ I said. ‘I heard you wanted to speak to me, that’s all.’

The provost pursed his lips and nodded, though I was not sure at what. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Then let’s discuss the facts. Onus probandi—’ He leaned to put his drink down on the strange glass table between us. And, just when I expected he would lean straight back, he reached into his breast pocket and removed two keys — one brass, one silver — and snapped them on the tabletop. ‘Ender discovered these amongst your things last night at dinnertime. I apologise for the intrusion on your privacy, but these were special circumstances.’

Nazar put her chin on my toes and whined. My heart was skittering; I could not quell it. I decided it was best to say nothing at all.

‘Obviously, I don’t need to tell you where they were missing from, or whose doors they belong to—’

Staying silent was the best strategy. Until the thing was proven beyond doubt.

‘Add to this the information I received from Gülcan yesterday,’ he went on. ‘You mustn’t blame her — she’s been so twisted up about this whole matter she’s been quite unwell. In the end, it’s her own livelihood at stake, so you can understand why she would come to me. And then—’ The provost paused to slip a coaster underneath his sweating glass. ‘Then there is the matter of my telephone, which I found slightly off the hook last night and could not for the life of me think why — I mean, I have to be very precise about such things, as you know, with my eyes being the way they are, and if the receiver isn’t put back firmly, no calls can get through, which rather puts us all at risk. Anyway, you know about all this—’ He reclined again, crossing his legs.

I tried my best to look dispassionate. ‘I didn’t even know you had a telephone,’ I said.

‘Knell, please. You have been in this room a number of times. You have seen it. You have heard it. I have spoken of it. Let’s not make this conversation any more uncomfortable than it has to be.’ He looked down at Nazar, twitching his brow. She did not stir. ‘I have contacted the telephone company. They’re sending me a log of all my outgoing calls. It takes a bit of time, of course, but I should have them by tomorrow. And if I see that you have made connection with anybody using this phone line, and given any details about your whereabouts to anyone — well, that would be a serious breach, a serious breach.’

‘A serious breach of what?’ I said.

He glowered at me. ‘Of the fundamental purpose of this place. Of the honour code. Of the privacy of every artist under this roof and all the others gone before. It will not be taken lightly by the trustees, I assure you.’

I was feeling the same cold helplessness that had come over me at art school, when I was asked to justify the ‘profane’ content of my Deputation mural by the board of governors. I had not conceded my position then, so why now? ‘I think we’ll just have to wait and see what those phone records show. Because I promise you I haven’t spoken to a soul.’ Technically this was true: I had only talked to a machine.

‘Oh dear, I really hoped you wouldn’t take this line with me,’ the provost said. He spread an arm over the back of the settee. ‘Whether the records show anything or not, you have still broken into my study, which is a clear contravention of the rules. So, as far as I can see, you have two choices. One: that you stay with us, work here, carry on as normal. Try to come to terms with what has happened to your friend and find that sense of purpose you’ve been searching for. Everything as it used to be.’

He lingered here to give me time to understand the gravity of my circumstance. I did not trust a single word that passed his lips.

‘If that isn’t acceptable, then I will have no option but to impose much stricter measures.’

Again, he stopped, as though anticipating a reaction. But I simply folded my arms.

‘That means you’ll be escorted off the grounds without documentation,’ he said, ‘without support to secure your route home, or any acknowledgement from this office whatsoever. Any work you’ve made here will remain in our possession and you will forfeit any protection you might have otherwise received. In short, you’ll be entirely disowned. And, who knows? Perhaps the police will see to it that you’re arrested for trespassing on private property. We have some very useful friends in the local force. I understand they can be quite unforgiving on such matters in these parts. Am I being clear enough for you?’ He pitched forward for his glass and sipped at it.

I managed to still my heart enough to say, ‘And what if I’ve already finished my work. What then?’

‘Last I heard, you weren’t producing much.’ The provost shot a look beyond me — to Ender, I assumed, for clarification.

‘Last you heard.’ I glared at him. ‘As it happens, I finished my mural last night. I’m done. I was actually going to arrange an appointment with you today to see about getting out of here.’

At this, he sniffed. It almost seemed to amuse him. He took another sip of his Afternoon Refresher. ‘Well, I’m very pleased about that, Knell, but the choices stay the same. I cannot let you leave knowing you pose a threat to this establishment.’

‘I’m just supposed to stay here till you throw me in the sea, is that it?’

‘Not exactly.’ He swirled the ice round in his glass. ‘My hope is that you’ll come to see the value of what’s here eventually. You have three good friends in residence whom you’ve disrespected in your haste to use my telephone. What will happen to them and their work if you insist on blabbering to outsiders? You are jeopardising more than just yourself.’ And, dredging the last of his juice until the grenadine bled against the tip of his nose, he said, ‘In any case, people usually find ways to occupy themselves — ask Ender. He writes a letter to his sister in Armenia every day, and not a single one of them has ever been sent without my reading it first. They’re full of fictions of his own. You wouldn’t believe the things Ender gets up to in his imagination, the things that he takes credit for. But ask him if he’s happier with what he has here or with the alternative — he’ll tell you.’

I snapped my head round to look at the old man. He had one hand on the doorframe, one upon his hip, and he was gazing at the patterns on the rug. I could not tell if he was listening impassively or just pretending not to understand. ‘What Ender chooses to accept is up to him,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t allow you to censor me like that.’

‘We all need this place for different reasons, is my point.’ The provost dabbed his nose. ‘Gülcan is distraught: she’s sacrificed a lot for her position here. There are people who rely on her. Ardak, too; myself, everyone. There is an honour code on which this refuge operates, and you have shown us just how dimly you regard it. Which, as I’ve said, is a tremendous disappointment to us all.’ He waved the old man over: two inward jabs of his fingertips. ‘Ender will take you down now. I’m giving you until dinnertime to think it over. But there really isn’t a choice to make here, as you know.’

Ender stayed with me the whole way. I was escorted through the empty corridors and down the stairs, until we found ourselves outside again in the sunshine on a slow walk back towards my lodging. I felt, in that moment, like some old zoo animal, captured on the brink of her escape, being paraded to her cage as an example to the others. The closeness of the old man’s steps behind me was pressuring and measured. I tried to see goodness in the sky and beauty in my surroundings — the neighbouring islands were so verdant with evergreens, the sea chalk-lined by ferry crossings, the apartment blocks of Heybeliada clustered far below, awaiting families to shelter through the coming summer. But where I used to look upon these things with reverence, they now filled me with anxiety.

The old man accompanied me as far as my door. ‘At the din-nerble,’ he said, ‘I will come back for you.’

‘Is this how it’s going to be now?’ I said.

He peered back vacantly.

‘A chaperone to every meal? Because I can tell you, it’s already getting tedious.’

‘Dinnerble. I will come back again.’

‘All right. But if you’re going to make a habit of this, you can knock for me and wait on the doorstep like everyone else.’ I let myself inside and he walked off, heading straight across the grass.

The studio was dark but I did not pull up the blinds or turn the shutters back. The warmth outside was yet to permeate the cinderblocks and the floor was cool against my stockinged feet. I did not light the stove. I went and fell upon my bed, front first, and smelled the stale mattress. Its linens had been stripped to cover up the mural and the bare fabric had a curious musk — the fetid body odour of a hundred sleepless nights, not all of them my own. I felt the need to get up, but I stayed exactly where I was, my cheek pressing against the springs until it tingled and went cold. I thought about lying there forever. And I realised that if I settled there, doing nothing, seeing out my days inside the studio with no purpose left at all, then I might as well go and throw myself onto the rocks. The boy would stay lost and so would my mural. But if I went now — if I cut the painting off the stretcher now—I could carry it with me. I could circumvent the gates before the dinner bell and try to get home. And even if I had no papers, at least I would have my work. At least I would have the truth. This thought lifted me up.

I ran to the bathroom, got out the jewellery box, collected the jetons and my opal ring.

I took as many garlands as I could see in the back of my closet. The mushrooms came off with the slightest push. I scooped them from the table, onto a sheet of tin foil, enfolding it with tape to keep the light out. On the shelf below, I found my suitcase. The parcel of mushrooms fitted in the front pouch. Next thing, I was pulling clothes from their hangers and tipping out my bedside drawers and throwing in the boy’s comics. I was unpicking all the samples from the wall, baling them with string, jamming them inside the case wherever they would fit. I was clearing a space on the floor for the canvas, shoving the workbenches into the doorway, spreading out the linens to protect it, lowering it face-down to the concrete. I was on my haunches with my knife, and cutting along the line of the brass tacks, pressing firmly, surgically, so the fabric separated from the wood. And then I was hauling the stretcher frame away — an empty rectangle, cumbersome but light — and I was standing over the blankness of that canvas once again, right back where I had started.

When I flipped it over, I could just make out three white circles of texture. I had no time to worry if the paint would crack in transit, or if the final layer was dry enough. The canvas was four feet tall and twice as wide, so it took some rolling up — I had no carpet tube or dowelling to guide it with. Planning ahead, I ran a loop of string along the edge, then bunched up the lip of the canvas into my fists, folding inwards, inwards, inwards, until the weave of the cloth found a natural curl. I rolled until I had a bulky cigarette shape with a string running through it, and taped along its join to hold it all together. I waterproofed it with black plastic sheeting and more tape, more tape, more tape, more, then tied the ends of the string to form a strap. I stood up to test it, holding the roll across my back like a quiver of arrows. The string dug into my breast, but it was secure and it was portable. I just hoped that it was strong enough to last.

His windowpane was dappled with the silhouettes of pines and skewed with the reflections of the mansion gables. But I could still see enough of Pettifer’s head above the top edge of his drafting board to read the glumness in his expression. He was gazing out into the trees so absently that he did not even notice me approaching. When I reached the sloping path down to his doorstep, my hurried movements seemed to startle him. He called to me: ‘Knell? What the heck—?’ Then he undid the latch to let me in. ‘Are you leaving already?’

‘Shshhh,’ I said, pushing past him. I threw my suitcase on his bed. ‘Close the door.’

‘What?’

‘Just do it.’

He did. ‘Oh, sure, fine. Don’t worry about the interruption or anything. I mean, it’s not as though I could possibly be—’

‘Shshhh.’

I went to draw the blind. There was just a single sheet of paper on his drafting table: a sketch of a vaulted doorway with a sort of fish-scaled covering. ‘I’ve been trying to invent a new type of awning,’ he said. ‘Collapsible but solid. Pointless, as it transpires. But I don’t suppose there’s any good reason why we’re standing in darkness now, either. . At least put a lamp on.’

‘Don’t.’

‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘I’m starting to sweat.’ He dabbed his forehead with his sleeve.

‘I need your help, Tif. It’s really important.’

‘Of course,’ he said, straightening his face. ‘What is it?’

His stove was hot behind my calves. ‘I can’t go to the mansion myself — don’t ask me why, just trust me.’

‘All right.’ Some hesitation in his voice. ‘All right.’

‘I need you to go and get Mac for me. Tell her if she’s got anything to give me, then she’d better bring it now.’

‘You seem a bit panicked. Is everything OK?’

‘Please, Tif. Please just do what I ask.’

‘All right, but I’m—’ He stopped himself. ‘What about Q? Should I bring him, too?’

‘Yes. If he’s there.’

‘Where else would he be?’

‘Just get him, Tif.’

‘OK, OK, I’ll put my shoes on.’ And he rushed to retrieve them from under his bed and clumsily tied up the laces. With one hand on the door latch, he turned. ‘Do you need me to run? Because, honestly, I might not make it up there in this shape.’

‘I don’t care. Just go as quickly as you can.’

‘Well, anything above third gear might flatten me.’ He smiled. ‘Listen, I don’t need to know what’s going on exactly, or whatever that thing is you’ve got there—’ He gestured at the bagged-up canvas strapped to my back. ‘But please swear this isn’t going to land me in any bother.’

‘You’re going to be fine,’ I said. ‘It’s not you they have a problem with.’

A bouncing nod. ‘You’re like that pretty girl at school who made me steal things from the tuck shop.’

‘I don’t have time for memory lane now, Tif.’

‘Just an observation. Want this closed behind me?’

‘Yes. Go. Bring them.’

There was a rush of sunlight as the door opened and shut. Through the gap in the blind, I watched Pettifer head up the slope and trundle out of sight. He gave a cheery whistle of a tune I did not know. Then I was alone again, inside the partial darkness of his lodging. The place was dogged by small noises: the tick-tack-tick of the water pipes somewhere in the walls, the crackle of the coals in the stove, the restless yattering of the songbirds in the forest, the gulls and the crows on the roof. I could not relax. My fingers twitched. My spine was tensed like a cable. I needed to sit down but I did not want to have to take the canvas off my back, so I paced around in little circuits.

Up on the wall were masonry sketches and designs for quaint fenestrations. Tweed blazers hung on a rack near Tif’s bedside and his plan chest was dotted with trinkets. The model ship he had built was all painted and varnished, and stood now inside a glass dome on his plan chest — I thought that some huge insect had settled on it, but in fact there was a fracture in the glass that Tif had crossed with sticking plasters. I lifted off the cover to get a closer look. The model was so expertly built that it would probably have floated, but the one word was drab and sloppily applied. Wens of varnish cloyed to all its joints, drips had hardened on the stern. It looked like something a man had assembled and a child had been allowed to decorate. As I put it back, the wooden stand collapsed and a piece of it fell down, landing in the partly open drawer by my ankles. Bending to get it, I noticed the drawer was crammed with drafting paper, tattered at the edges, and could not help but pull the top sheet out, expecting to find an elevation or a floor plan, part of some visionary design for a cathedral. But no. It was more like an artist’s rendering. A carpeted room with a sweeping tiled shelf and ornamented pillars, skinny pencilled women lying frontwise on towels, bathing at a font. I recognised the room at once. The label said: CALDARIUM (PRELIMINARY). I rifled through the plan chest, searching all the drawings, but the same image repeated through them: varying drafts with tiny details changed, or inked in slightly different hues. Caldarium after caldarium after caldarium after—

I tore the last of them in half and balled it up inside my fist. And, rattled now, unthinking, I opened the grate of the stove and threw it on the flames. I was not satisfied with that. The drawers were full of them. I scrunched as many of the drawings as I could gather and fed them all into the fire, jamming them in, smoke thickening around me, glutting the room. The stove could not contain it all. My throat was dry and scorched. I had to run outside to get some air, feeling the closure of my lungs. And, stooping into the sunshine with great reefs of smoke draining out from the doorway, I saw Quickman, Mac, and Pettifer coming back along the slope. When they saw the fumes, they came jogging down and nearly skidded off the path. Mac rushed to me, saying, ‘Are you all right? What happened?’ But Pettifer went straight by me, calling: ‘Christ almighty, Knell, what have you done? You fucking lunatic.’ I turned to see the stove grate open and flecks of singed grey paper dancing in the room like dust motes. He was grabbing at his hair. ‘Is that — oh, for Christ’s sake, everything. She’s burned everything. That’s years—years of my life! You mad fucking woman! What did I ever do to you?’ His face was flushed so red I thought that he might choke.

‘Calm down,’ Q said. ‘There’s a few over here. They’re fine, look. All isn’t lost.’ He was lifting sheets of paper from the floor, from the chairs, from wherever they had landed.

‘Don’t tell me to calm down! She gets me to fetch you, I come back to this.’ Tif was pacing between the walls. ‘I will — I’ll bloody kill her.’

MacKinney grabbed my arm. ‘What the hell’s got into you?’

I did not answer. I flung off her arm and went back in.

‘Knell,’ she said. ‘Knell.’

I dragged the suitcase from the bed.

Quickman stared at me, talking very fast: ‘Don’t do it. Don’t leave like this. It’s not going to fix anything.’ He stepped forward with an arm out, trying to take my case. ‘Tif’ll be fine. Won’t you, Tif? We’ll be fine. If we all stick together, we’ll be fine.’ I let him get a little closer. ‘All right, now, come on. Sit down. We’ll clear up this mess now, OK? It’s going to be fine. I promise you.’

But I bolted.

‘Shit,’ Quickman said. ‘She’s not listening.’

Mac tried to block me as I came through the door, but she had no conviction — she backed against the cinderblocks as though afraid of being burned, and reached out for my shoulder, grabbing my canvas. The strap tightened on my throat for an instant, and then she lost her grip. ‘Knell — please! My letter!’ I stopped, turning on the slope, the ground giving under me, sliding. She came quickly to me, lifting up a square of paper in surrender. I held out my hand for it, splinters of sunlight in my eyes. ‘Whatever you do from this point on, keep going,’ she said, pressing it into my palm. No disappointment in her voice. Approval. Good wishes. I pushed it into my pocket. ‘Do not stop again, you hear me?’ she said. ‘If you’ve got to get out of here, then run and don’t look back.’ So I did.

I sprinted up the slope, the canvas roll smacking my legs, the suitcase light but awkward. Leaping over tree roots, I made it to the path, and did not turn, did not even wave goodbye to Mac or anyone, just ran as hard as I could go, the pebbles spitting out from under me. The blur of the boy’s lodging waned to my left, the mansion reared up to my right. I kept going, aiming for the woods beyond my studio, and then to the escarpment. But, coming round the east side of the mansion, I saw Ardak hastening towards me with a fire extinguisher. I looked back over my shoulder and the smoke was dark above the trees. When Ardak noticed me, he paused, nearly tripping. He was caught between two emergencies. I went flailing on, already out of breath. He swivelled like a weathervane as I sped by, and then I heard him shouting after me in Turkish. ‘Dur! Hey! Nereye gidiyorsun!’ And, glancing back, I saw him coming after me, the extinguisher toppling on the grass. I did not stop but I was slowing. ‘Hey! Dur!’ The case was dragging on the draught. Now Ender was hurtling across the lawn to my right and I could not see another way that I would make it. So I let the case go. It went tumbling in my wake, and, suddenly, I had some impetus. ‘Dur! Hey! Dur!’ I went past my studio, past another and another, and through the fringe of the pines, Ender and Ardak still in pursuit. The scrub nicked my hands and ankles. The trees narrowed and spread, and I kept looking for the notches I had made in them, but I was too starved of breath to see straight and my strides were all so jarring. If I held to this course I was sure that I would end up by the mushroom patch, but that would be too far — I needed to bear east before I reached the clearing.

The old man was gaining ground. I could not separate my own noises from his. The woods rustled with footfalls, cracking branches, panting tongues. I could not feel my body. It was just a moving husk. And then somebody stepped in front of me from nowhere, and I clattered hard into his chest, skittling him backwards. I fell onto him, rolling, my knees in his ribs. He grabbed for my boot, but I slipped away.

I was bruised and winded, scratched and muddied. I did not glance back. The trees started thinning. I could smell the sea. It loomed in my view. And I came to the edge of the ridge at some pace, just managing to halt, with dirt and shingle and pine cones spilling forwards and down.

It was not a sheer drop. The steep beginnings levelled out into a beach of rocks, washed by the Marmara. I had nowhere else to go. There was down or there was backwards. ‘Dur!’ Ardak was behind me. Ender, too. Their faces were glossed with so much sweat. Shirts torn and bloodied. The old man had no shoes on. He was holding one in each hand. ‘Where can you go?’ he said, gasping for air. ‘Why? Why run?’ He hacked up some mucus and spat. ‘Is OK. Is OK. You be still.’ And the two of them inched closer: dog-catchers in the park. Ardak clutched his ribs. ‘Where can you go?’ the old man said. Backwards would not help me. Only down.

I darted left.

‘Ugh. Sen delisin.’

They did not rush after me.

Evergreens lined the escarpment ahead: a twist of overhanging trunks that would help me get down. I kneeled, the roll of canvas bending, scuffing on the ground, and groped over the edge, grasping for a branch. The sea buffeted the rocks below. It hissed and it churned. I was not sure the branch would hold me. But Ardak and the old man were now strutting towards me. I let it take my weight, planting my feet on brittle stone and moss. I winched myself down, branch by root by branch, until there was nothing left to grip and I had to just release my hands and pray for a good foothold. Letting go, my boots pinched at the rock and then collapsed.

I skated down the escarpment, turning, twisting, and I felt a quick, hot pain in my shoulder. It was more like a very long scrape than a fall and it happened so fast. Settling at the bottom, shaken, beaten, wounded, I had an overwhelming sense that I had not survived, that my soul had left my body somewhere on the slope. Then came a rush of victory. The deepest relief. The searing, knifing realisation of the pain in my right shoulder. I wanted to pass out, but my heart would not let me. It was shuddering with adrenalin and shock. And somehow I knew that I needed to get up, because the old man and Ardak would be standing on the bluff, searching the rubble for my body. Soon they would be coming down the slope with the rowing boat on their shoulders. They would heave me into it. And what then? I would not let my injuries count for nothing. I forced myself back to my feet.

The canvas had snapped off me. I panicked, scanned the breaking waves, the rocks. I nearly buckled at the thought of losing it. My knees started to give. But then I saw it hanging by a string, a few yards up the shore. It had snagged in the jutting weeds upon the scree. One layer of plastic was shredded, the tape was scruffed at the edges — overall, a decent state. Better than mine.

I peered up: no Ender, no Ardak, no anything. Just the ghost-thin sunshine and trees against the sky. I could hear nothing but the wash of the sea behind me. Every movement of my head drove the pain in deeper. I had shattered my shoulder or dislocated it. My arm was limp and useless. I trudged in the direction I assumed was south, cleaving to the shoreline until the waves quietened, lapped, and I reached the chain-link fence and the warning posters: DIKKAT KÖPEK VAR. There was no other way across the bay. I had to swim for it.

The water took me, a step at a time. It was not as cold as I expected. The salt stung my wounds. I tried to swim with the canvas raised aloft in my good arm, but I did not have the power in my legs. The pain was so bracing, so endless. Coiling the string around my wrist, I let it trail behind me, not quite floating, not quite sinking. I knew I could not hold my head above the water for too long, so I kicked until the strength went out of me. Soon, I felt the current grasp me, flip me, seize me. It was not as sudden as I thought.

Then I blinked and I was face-down on the gravel in the dark. My mouth was parched, agape. There was so much brine inside my throat I had to sick it up. I gulped in air and it jolted me. The barbs of pain returned, but so much worse. I crawled forwards on one arm. The canvas roll was gone from my wrist: burning where the string had been. I could hardly see my own hand before me. The only light came from the moon, a row of houses in the distance, and a clutch of yellow spots across the sea. I was drenched and cold. It seemed that I had washed up in the bay. I was on a sort of beach — mostly rubble underneath me, broken shells and flotsam. It grazed my knees as I crawled through it. I was praying. For my canvas roll to rear up in the dark, to brush against me. But nothing did. I lay upon my side and hoped the pain would snuff me out.

Only the wind was gusting stronger; it bullied at my ears till I sat up. I heaved myself onto my feet again, getting my bearings. The black outline of a jetty to my right. High banks of trees on both sides. The shore a perfect crescent in between. And, behind me — I swivelled to look. Behind me a pale dirt road. Level ground. I staggered to reach it. There were chunks of concrete to step over, driftwood. What I thought was a bare pine tree in the blackness was, in fact, a telephone pole — I followed the bellying wires above my head.

The far side of the road was skirted by a wall. I ran my hand along it, scraping through the dark. I kept on going, like MacKinney told me to. The agony in my shoulder was enough to bear; I could not grieve now for the mural. In the morning, I would search for it. The sea could not take everything.

I hustled on. The road curved right — north-east? It was hard to orient myself. Then, born from the darkness, I saw a low white building and a vacant lot with chain-link fencing. Getting closer, I saw decimated palm trees. I saw another jetty, ladders and stairways leading into solemn water. I saw a hundred or more deckchairs and sun-loungers stacked up into columns, parasols folded and propped in a huddle. I saw a payphone with a hooded cubicle outside the fence, a tiny light glinting above it.

My shoulder stung as I limped over. I leaned myself against the payphone hood. The receiver was intact. The wire was attached. The line was operational. I dialled 100 and waited. Clouds shuffled across the moon.

‘Hello. Operator. How can I assist you?’

‘I need Victor Yail. It’s 46 Harley Street, London.’

‘Do you have the number, madam?’

‘You’ll have to look it up.’

‘There’s no call to be rude.’

‘I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Just connect me, please.’

‘Huh!’

Soon, the trilling noise. My arm was dead. I could not keep from shivering.

‘Hello. Dr Fleishmann’s office.’

‘Victor Yail, please. Hurry.’

‘I’m afraid it’s Dr Fleishmann’s clinic this evening. Can I ask what it’s concerning?’

A frantic bleating sound rose in my ear. I realised it was asking me for money. So I let the phone hang while I rummaged in my pocket for a coin. I found the boy’s jeton. It seemed to slot in perfectly, rattling in the guts of the machine. But it did not stop the bleating.

‘Hello? Miss?’

‘Please, just put me through to Victor. It’s about his son. I called yester—’

‘Hello? Are you still there?’

Three more blips and it cut off. I smashed down the receiver and the mouthpiece broke.

I was too cold, too tired, in too much pain. I had to get some shelter.

There was a faded sign upon the fence: HEYBELIADA PLAJI. The gate had no padlock; I slid out the bolt. The hinges wailed as I went in. But the main building was shut, the doors chained up. Metal shutters at the windows. It was all that I could do to crawl into the stacks of chairs and loungers. I knocked a column of them and they landed in the parasols, which toppled to the ground before me. I thought their canopies looked warm and shielding. Hobbling on my knees, I went to nestle under them. I lay beneath their musty awnings and their ribs and springs and poles. The stars were jewels in the small gaps above me, and I was nothing any more, and nobody.

Daylight tinted blue by parasols. The cosy dampness of a tent. I woke up feeling more exhausted than before I had passed out. Ceaseless pain around my collarbone, zipping through my legs. I rested on the concrete, eyes shut, counting down the seconds. Things almost went to black. I nearly let it happen. But then I heard the clopping of a horse near by and the jangle of its tack. Fear kept me awake. There was a noise of cart wheels on the road and a far-off voice called softly: ‘Woe, woe, ayy.’ And suddenly, another voice, much closer, right beside my head. I winced, holding my breath. His feet scratched the ground — so near to me. He carried on in Turkish: a dead-end conversation. I thought I could smell smoke again, but no. His feet scuttled up close to me and there were movements from above. Rustling and murmurs. The parasols were being lifted from me, one by one. There was nothing I could do. I lay there, waiting like a louse under a rock. The daylight greyed. I was exposed. He spread his shadow over me. His hands stayed on his hips. A cigarette fuming at his mouth. I got to my knees, squinting back at him. And I could see he wore a pale blue shirt with an embroidered crest: POLIS. He said something meaningless. He repeated it louder, flapping his arms. I took too long to react: he stepped to me, grabbing my hand, pulling me up by my elbow. He might as well have shot me. I screamed so loud the crows dashed from the palm trees. Everything went white.

Then I was looking at the glossy backside of a horse. A man in a black cap was at the reins, facing the road. I was propped up in an open fayton with the POLIS man beside me. The horse was hoofing slowly down the track. We were curving back around the bay, the sea to our left, the scrabbly beach made clearer by the light of morning. A sloop was moored out in the shallows, tilting on the waves. ‘Adiniz ne?’ said the POLIS man. I looked at him, afraid. He offered me a cigarette. I shook my head. ‘Anliyor musunuz?’ His arms were sprawled along the back seat of the carriage. The horse clopped on. I did not speak. I gazed towards the sea. I watched the listing of the sloop at anchor. Upturned dinghies by the jetty. A bluff of trees across the bay. And then I caught a glimpse of something in the jumble of the beach: a long black shape upon the gravel. My canvas roll, still in its plastic. The sea had brought it to me.

I stood up in the fayton. The wheels were rolling quickly, but I jumped. ‘Hayir! Hayir!’ called the POLIS man. The pain of the landing tore me in half. I fell upon the road and hit my head. The last thing I heard was the fayton skidding to a stop. All the dismal voices I had pushed back in my mind escaped me then, as I lay bleeding. They said that I should stay down in the dirt where I belonged.

A familiar kind of ceiling, low and speckled. I found myself in a magnolia room with the pain muted out, fluids going into me through a tube. Right arm in a sling and thirsting. In the corner stood a dark-haired man in uniform, pure white and steam-pressed. He had three gold pips on his epaulettes and a face of consternation. ‘Do you know where you are?’ he said, watching me stir. I shook my head.

I was not in a bed but on a padded trolley. They had dressed me up in pale blue fatigues. ‘This is the Naval Academy, the hospital bay,’ he said. ‘You were brought by the police.’ I tried to clear my throat but nothing would come out. ‘Would you like some water?’ He filled a paper cup from a cooler by the wall and handed it to me. ‘Your clavicle is broken. It will get better in a month or maybe two. There are some stitches in your head, but the scar I think will be OK. I can say that you are very lucky.’ The water was so cold I could not taste it. ‘More?’ he said.

I gulped and hummed.

There was a youthful slouch about his step as he went to the cooler. But he was much too old to be a cadet. He must have been an officer. Passing me the cup again, he smiled. ‘What is your name?’

I croaked it out: ‘Elspeth.’

‘Ah. You can speak,’ he said with a grin. He had teeth as bright and straight as his trouser seams. ‘Elspess. That is good. I like this name.’

I blinked at him.

He went to get a cardboard folder from a stand on the wall. Through the wire-glass in the door, I could see into the hallway. Framed photographs of sea cadets in dress regalia were hung from floor to ceiling. ‘The police bring you here and tell me: she does not have any identifications. She has no name. They think you have no business here and so you do not deserve help from anyone, but they do not want your blood to spill on their nice shoes, so they get me to look at you. There are some people in this life who do not have God’s kindness in them. Do you know what I am saying to you?’

I blinked at him.

He flipped through the folder, reviewing his notes. ‘But now you have a name. Elspess. So, you see — you are a person now, like me and them. You are the same as everyone else.’ He removed a clear plastic wallet from the folder. My ferry tokens weighted down the bottom corner. There was sheet of creased-up paper in there, too. He held it out for me to scrutinise. ‘I did not show this to them,’ he said, ‘but maybe I will have to, for my own sake.’

It was MacKinney’s letter. Badly water-damaged. There was none of her usual cursive. Just the remnants of typewritten words, blotted out and paling:

It winded me. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘From your clothes. You are lucky that I found it before the police.’

I went quiet. I could not understand why Mac would give it to me. She must have handed me the wrong letter.

‘You know, I have treated some people like you here before,’ the doctor went on. ‘Coming down from that big house when they get sick. I cannot say that I am happy about this arrangement, and I do not like those people up there very much, or their policeman friends. But I am a doctor — I will not say no to people needing care. And maybe you did not know this yet, but being in the Navy does not make you rich.’ He half smiled, closing the letter back inside his folder. ‘So maybe I have to show it to the police so we can share that cash reward. That is what they would like. Take the money and ask no questions. We can all buy nice big houses of our own. For our retirement.’ Returning the folder to the stand, he lingered by the door with his back to me. His right arm reached down for the handle, not quite turning it. ‘But I think I have always liked ships more than houses. I am a Navy man. So what the police say is not important.’

He spun round.

‘That line will come out, very easy, I can show you. Then I think you can get back to your feet.’ There was compassion in his voice, candour to his expression. ‘Because, you know, strange things happen here when I am on duty. Cadets do not like staying in the hospital. They enjoy to be outside with their friends. And there is no locks on the doors here, so I cannot make them stay.’ He stepped forward and began to disconnect the tube from my forearm. ‘Yes, they go down the steps and out of the gate. Nobody tries to stop them. It is crazy.’

Lifting out the sharp little butterfly from my vein, he padded the bloodspot with cotton wool and tossed everything into the waste bin. ‘Thank you,’ I said, but he did not acknowledge it.

‘I gave you codeine for your clavicle. The rest you must do by yourself. Good luck.’ He shut the door behind him and it did not lock. His feet went silently along the hall.

I got up. The floor seemed to wobble. There was a tightness in my breastbone. If I could make it to the beach again, I thought. If I could find my mural on the shore. If I could make it to the ferry. If I could make it to the mainland. If I could make it home.

I rifled through the doctor’s folder to get my ferry tokens back. I hugged the walls, passing frames of posed cadets out in the hallway. My arm was strapped but I flinched with every stride. There was no exit sign, only a set of steel doors to my left. I ran for them and broke into a stairwell, bounding down the concrete steps and out into the afternoon. Boys in deep-blue uniforms were on the parade ground. Their heads turned as I hurried by. They were mumbling, pointing with their eyes. Five of them. Smokers. Sailor boys with nothing to do but suck on cigarettes and gawp at injured women. A vast white building of too many windows stood beyond them. I could smell the Marmara but could not see it. Gulls were hustling in the sky.

I kept going.

Twenty, thirty yards until I reached the gate. An older cadet in full regalia was standing guard inside a wooden sentry box. The barrier was down, but I could hurdle it if I needed to. I knew that I could. I carried on, blanking the soreness, pushing it back. There was a hopeful feeling in me. The guard would let me through, I knew it. But the other cadets were taunting me now, shouting: ‘Allez! Allez!’ When I glanced back, they were gone. Only cars in the parade ground. Parking spaces. I began to slow.

Ahead of me, the guard had stepped out of his sentry box. He was raising the barrier. He was waving his gloved hand to hurry me through. But behind me, the shouts were getting louder, brighter. They were coming from the sky. ‘Ellie!’ they said. ‘Ellie!’

Whatever you do, Mac had warned me, keep going. So I did.

But then I saw a sign was screwed upon the middle of the barrier, slowly lifting, arcing through the sky. No Parking. No Admittance. No, something else. Its dotted lines grew sharper and more definite.

I stopped.

The whole afternoon appeared to dim around me.

Those shouts were echoing still. ‘Ellie! Ellie!’

I turned back, gazing up at the roof of the building. No one was there. Just a row of blackened flues. A metal winch. But all the bright paintwork had now tarnished grey. There was a foreign mizzle on my face.

‘Ellie, wait right there! Don’t move one inch! I’m coming down!’

I saw him. He was high up in the very top window, flailing his arms.

A studious fellow.

Victor Yail, 46 Harley Street, London.

The operator must have found him.