The Revelations

One

The next day Marcus sat in his office and made telephone calls. It was raining again and he was waiting to receive documents from the shady portfolio manager at Plantagenet Partners. He sat with his feet against the glass of the window, his chair reclined and the phone in his lap. Abby had taken Darwin to the church with her and he could hear the dog barking in the background when he called her. There was still no news of Lee and Marcus continued to dial her mobile, his fingers skipping over the numbers on his phone, tracing the pattern that meant Lee to him. He spoke to Mouse, who was somewhere high in Senate House: the howling wind made conversation almost impossible, but they arranged to meet for a drink that evening.

Finally, Marcus looked through his address book until he found Lee’s parents’ number. He dialled it and waited. An old man answered, his heavily accented voice high and impatient.

‘Yes?’

‘Um, hi. Is that Mr Elek?’

‘Yes. This is Lazlo Elek. Who is this?’

‘It’s Marcus Glass. I’m a friend of your daughter.’

‘Yes?’

‘Listen, she’s not with you by any chance? I mean, I was hoping to get in touch with her and she doesn’t seem to be answering her phone. I wondered if she might be with you.’

‘No, she’s not here. And you’re the second person to call for her. That priest of hers was on the phone earlier. Perhaps she doesn’t want to see you. Did you think of that? Poor girl might want to be left alone.’

‘I’m worried about her, Mr Elek.’

The old man’s voice suddenly softened.

‘Don’t worry about Lee. What did you say your name was? Marcus? Ah yes, you came up to visit, didn’t you? Lee will be just fine. We’re stronger than people think, the Eleks. I’ll let you know when I hear from her. Goodbye.’

Marcus sat staring out of the window at the rain until darkness fell and the City was a smear of office lights seen through the downpour. He lit a cigarette on his way to the Tube and smoked it in four drags before plunging down into Moorgate Station.

Mouse was waiting for him at Euston. He had turned up the collar of his faded velvet jacket and was standing in the centre of the station, entirely still as commuters rushed around him. He had his head turned upwards, surveying the rarely observed heights of the station, taking note of the sooty concrete crevices above him.

‘Hello, sport,’ he said.

Marcus embraced Mouse and dragged him by the arm through the hassled rush of workers. Mouse seemed reluctant to emerge from his reverie; his eyes remained misty as they made their way down Gordon Street to the Union bar where they used to come and drink with Lee.

They sat down in a shadowy corner of the bar. A football game was being shown on a large screen at the other end of the room. Marcus had bought them both a pint and they sat in melancholy silence, half-watching the game. Finally, Mouse turned to Marcus and spoke, twisting his signet ring on his finger as he talked.

‘I’m worried that it was my fault. That I said the wrong words to Lee this weekend.’

Marcus looked up at his friend.

‘Don’t beat yourself up. There probably wasn’t a right thing to say. It’s hard to know how to help someone who’s that far gone.’

‘But if I’d really spoken to her, really broken through. . She trusted me.’

Marcus sighed and shook his head.

‘We’re all to blame in one way or another.’

They left the bar and walked back to the train station. Marcus rode with Mouse to Kensal Green, left him at the bridge over the canal and strode down Ladbroke Grove until he came to the bus stop. When he got home, Abby was watching television with Darwin curled up in her lap. Marcus poured himself a glass of wine and ran a bath. Abby looked up at him as he passed, but since he said nothing she went back to staring at the TV, her hand thoughtlessly playing with the dog’s long, silky hair.

Marcus ran the bath full and hot, lowering himself down gently into the water, which turned his skin bright pink. He lay back and balanced an ashtray on the dry island of one knee. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke upwards. Abby didn’t like him smoking in the bath. He had filled the glass of wine right to the rim and sat with an empty mind until the bath was tepid and the glass empty. He pulled himself regretfully from the water, tipped the ash down the sink as he brushed his teeth, and then half-read a book until he was too tired to turn the pages. He was asleep before Abby and the dog came to bed.

*

The Course session after the Retreat was always a triumphant one. Friendships that had seemed tentative prior to the weekend away became firmly established: there would be more hugging and some tears, plans to meet up for dinner, for prayer sessions over the next weekend, a general sense of optimism and community. Marcus was dreading this particular session, though. He knew that David wouldn’t let Lee’s absence spoil the celebration, and was expecting the priest’s call when it came the next morning. He was going through one of the Plantagenet Partners documents with a tort law specialist when his phone began to vibrate on the desk.

‘Shit, give me a minute, will you?’

The solicitor backed from the office, shutting the door carefully behind him.

‘Hello?’

David’s voice was smooth and melodic when it came.

‘Marcus, David here. Can you talk?’

‘Yes, it’s fine.’

‘I take it you haven’t heard from Lee?’

‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

‘OK. Well, we can’t let what I’m certain is just another Lee slump ruin the Course for this year. There’s too much at stake. I’ll ask Sally to sit alongside Mouse for their discussion, although he has been carrying that group anyway, so he shouldn’t need her. We’ll have to think about which songs the band can play without Lee. I’m relying on you to be my right-hand man tonight, Marcus.’

‘I’ll do my best.’ Marcus paused. ‘Do you think we should call the police, David?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve spoken to her parents, called her priest at home to see if she was there. I thought we’d wait to see if she turns up tonight. If she doesn’t, then I’m afraid we might have to.’

David rung off. Marcus was busy on the case all afternoon, which was growing more complicated and morally dubious by the day. He left work in a hurry and rushed westwards towards St Botolph’s. He arrived to find David standing in the entrance porch, greeting the Course members as they arrived. The priest embraced Marcus, holding on for just long enough to make him feel awkward. Inside the church everything was bathed in soft light. Sally was standing in her usual place above vats of food. Abby and Mouse moved with broad smiles between the groups of old and new Course members. Marcus saw the Earl and Neil talking in one corner. The twins were standing in front of a group of older members and Marcus watched as they struggled to get their words out, talking over each other and supplementing their speech with violent gesticulations. He sat down wearily and waited for David to start.

He thought that the priest looked old. The video screen behind him picked up the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes and accentuated the grey tinge of his skin. His hands quivered a little as he spoke. But the words had the same extraordinary fluidity as before, and David’s eyes sparkled as he spoke of the Retreat, of the beauty of hearing the new members speak in tongues for the first time, the holiness that had suffused the service on Saturday night. No mention was made of Lee, and Marcus noticed that when they got up to play their instruments, Lee’s piano had been pushed back into the shadows of the Lady Chapel.

In the discussion that followed the music, Marcus let Abby guide the group. He sat back and listened as each of the members recounted their experience of the Retreat. Neil was the last to speak, leaning forward in his chair, bald head shining, face flushed and happy, his tie hanging loosely around his neck. He talked very quickly, a huge grin sweeping across his face each time he paused for breath.

‘While it was obviously an amazing experience, it was only when I got to work yesterday that I realised quite how much it had changed things. Because that is the point, isn’t it? We should continue to act in our everyday lives as we act here. And David made it very clear to me that this didn’t mean that I couldn’t be ruthless in business. Because that was something that did worry me to start off with. That it might clip the wings of my career if I had to start turning the other cheek on the trading floor. I mean, the markets are a jungle, you know? But it was more that everything seemed to shine. I don’t know how else to put it, but I saw God everywhere. And I felt Him telling me what to do: which trades to put on, which dealers to call. It was quite extraordinary, quite wonderful. I told everyone about the Course. Really didn’t mind what they thought of me. I’m proud to be a member. Proud and humbled.’

Out of breath, he stopped and beamed round at the group. There was a thin patter of applause. At the end of the session Neil helped Marcus to stack chairs.

‘It also helped that the Earl gave my bank some of his cash to manage. I had realised that he was rich, but not that rich. I think it’s a great idea to give each other a leg-up professionally. Do let me know if there’s anything the bank is doing on the legal side that you want a piece of.’

Marcus smiled thinly. Abby was waiting for him in the porch when he came upstairs.

‘David wants to see us in the rectory. Mouse is already over there.’ Her voice had been emotionless since the previous evening. She walked in front of him down the path to the Nightingales’ house where Mouse and the Earl were in the drawing room, sitting in large, comfortable armchairs. Mouse had one of the gold cushions clutched against his belly. David poured out glasses of wine and called to Sally, who came in from the kitchen. He addressed them in a low voice, his hands clasped in front of him.

‘I’m afraid we have still heard nothing from Lee. I’m worried and I know you all are, too. I think we will have to call the police. I spoke to her father earlier and he still seems to think that she will turn up. I'm inclined to agree, but we need to err on the side of caution. I’m going to go down to the station tomorrow morning and tell them what we know. You should all expect to be questioned, I suppose.’

He paused, reached across to his glass of wine, and took a long swig. He patted his lips with the back of his hand.

‘I probably don’t need to tell you that there is a great deal of interest in what we do here at the Course. Some think that this is a cult, a movement with political designs or something equally ridiculous. Discretion is paramount when speaking with anyone from outside our group, especially given where we are with the expansion. Any kind of scandal could scupper the whole US project. Now, I’m certain that they will find Lee very quickly. But until that point, less is more when you are speaking to the police. I hope that I’ve made myself clear.’

Marcus and Abby stayed a while longer and then walked in silence down to the King’s Road, where they hailed a taxi. Abby carried Darwin in her handbag, his pink tongue the only thing visible in the darkness of the cab. They sat in silence as the taxi moved up through Kensington. Marcus pressed his nose to the cold, shuddering glass of the window when they passed Lee’s flat. There were no lights on. Darwin was panting and Abby absent-mindedly reached out a hand to fondle his ear. They went to bed without having dinner.

Marcus had expected the police to call him the next day, but it wasn’t until Friday that his telephone rang. He was in the office trying to make sense of a legal document that had been translated very badly from Cantonese. He sat bent over the desk, tugging at a fistful of hair as he read. His phone vibrated in the pocket of his suit jacket. He fished it out and answered it.

‘Hello.’

‘Marcus Glass?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Detective Inspector Farley here, from West End Central Police.’

Marcus felt his heart quicken.

‘I was wondering whether we might meet up to have a chat about your friend Lee? Perhaps I could come and see you and your wife this evening. Kill two birds with one stone, as it were.’

‘Yes, that’d be fine. Seven o’clock?’

Marcus and Abby sat at the dining table in silence as the clock crept towards seven. Darwin was sleeping in Abby’s lap. The television flickered in the corner of the room but neither of them was watching it. Marcus had brought the Chinese document home and was using a thesaurus to try and force meaning into the nonsensical sentences; Abby was reading one of the anti-religious texts that so fascinated her. When the doorbell rang they both jumped up from their seats. Darwin yelped as he was deposited onto the floor. Marcus let Farley into the flat.

The policeman was a tall man in his late thirties, with a thick head of black hair. He was wearing a suit with a blue pinstripe. Marcus thought he looked like a lawyer. He carried the same air of fragile amiability.

‘I won’t take up too much of your time,’ he said, sitting down opposite them at the table. ‘I just have a few questions.’

‘Would you like a coffee? Some tea?’ Abby half-rose from her chair, again sending Darwin tumbling to the ground.

‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’

The policeman drew out a leather notebook and a thin silver propelling pencil. He opened the book and Marcus watched him make a careful note of the date.

‘You were both very close to Lee Elek, is that correct?’

They nodded.

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

Abby looked across at Marcus and then spoke. Her voice quivered and Marcus could see her worrying at the hem of her cardigan under the table.

‘I went upstairs with her on Saturday night. It was quite late, perhaps two thirty. We had been for a walk to get some fresh air, we came back, Marcus and Mouse — that’s Alastair Burrows — stayed in the dining room to clear up while Lee and I went to bed. I said goodnight to her at the door of her room and that was the last I saw of her.’

‘And had anything happened that evening that made you think she might disappear like this? An argument, for instance?’

Abby placed her hands flat on the table. Marcus could see that she had been biting her nails during the day. The skin around her cuticles was red and frayed.

‘No. I mean, Lee was always a little bit volatile, a bit up and down, but nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘What about you, Marcus?’

Marcus tried to keep his voice steady. The policeman was staring down at his notebook and so Marcus couldn’t look him in the eyes, but he fixed his gaze where he thought the policeman’s eyes would be were he to look up.

‘No. Nothing. As Abby says, Lee was prone to feeling quite low.’

‘So no arguments between you and Lee.’

‘No.’

The policeman wrote something down, the book now tilted away from Marcus so that he couldn’t read it. There was a long pause, then Farley looked up, fixing Marcus with impassive grey eyes.

‘Right, that’s funny, because we have accessed Lee’s mobile phone records and there’s a message from you on Sunday night apologising to her and begging her to come back. Now, if nothing had happened, doesn’t that strike you as a trifle strange? Hold on, I have it here.’

Farley drew out a digital dictaphone, fiddled for a moment and then placed it down on the table. Marcus heard his own voice, tinny and tired-sounding, fading to a whisper at the end. Abby turned to him, her eyebrows boomeranging questions. He could see her struggling to control her expression as she turned to the policeman. Marcus looked down with horror at the dictaphone.

‘Oh, I know what that’s about,’ Abby said brightly. ‘Lee had asked us to look after Darwin for a few days while she went away. She was always saying she needed to clear her head, get away from London. I said we couldn’t. We both work and — well, these few days with the dog have been a pain. Marcus was just letting her know that she should come back, that we were sorry we hadn’t been more understanding. Lee took offence very easily. We were always apologising for one thing or another.’

The policeman scribbled a few lines and then looked up at them sharply.

‘This whole process is going to be much easier if you answer my questions clearly and truthfully. Otherwise, I fear we’re going to run into some difficulties. Now that’s all for the moment. I’ll let you know when I need to speak to you again.’

Marcus showed Farley to the door. When he came back into the drawing room, Abby was still sitting at the table staring straight ahead.

‘Was that true? Did she ask us to look after the dog?’ he asked, crossing the room to stand in front of her, placing his hands on the table and leaning down to position himself in her line of vision.

‘Why did you call her and apologise?’ Her voice was very flat and she refused to meet his eyes. ‘I think you need to tell me why I just lied for you.’

‘I don’t. . I can’t really. .’ Feeling things spiralling away from him, Marcus pressed down on the table to try to still his spinning mind. He forced himself to take slower breaths, attempted to make his voice measured and rational. ‘It was nothing. We had an argument while you and Mouse were down at the bridge over the motorway. I told her she needed to see a shrink. She thought I was being patronising. You know how she is.’

Abby sat silently for a while, seeming to weigh his words. Then she stood up, lifting Darwin from her lap and placing him in Marcus’s arms.

‘David and Sally asked me over for dinner. I’m supposed to be there at eight. Will you be able to fix something for yourself?’ Her voice softened suddenly. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been tetchy. It’s been difficult, with Lee and everything. .’

When Abby had left, Marcus sat and watched a game of football with the dog sleeping at his feet. When the final whistle blew, he staggered to the kitchen to find something to eat. He was very tired. He looked in the fridge and couldn’t find anything he wanted. Darwin came and sniffed at his feet. He put some slices of ham on a plate and went back to sit on the sofa. He and Darwin shared the food; he amused himself by making the dog jump in the air to catch bites of the tasteless, watery meat. Marcus went to bed before Abby came home, vaguely aware of her sliding in next to him very late, her large, hot body pressing against his in the darkness.

*

After the service on Sunday morning, Marcus and Abby went for lunch at the rectory. It was a bright, crisp day. A smudge of pigeons wheeled high overhead as they walked down the path that led from the church through the graveyard to the tall white house. Marcus was always touched to see fresh flowers on graves here. It comforted him that forty, fifty years after death there were still people who cared enough about those who had gone before to leave these lavish bouquets, tied with lengths of bright ribbon, rarely allowing the flowers to grow withered and yellow like the bones beneath them.

Marcus sat facing the window. A slab of sunlight cut across the table and dazzled him. He shifted his chair first one way, then another, but couldn’t escape the searing light that burned green and purple patterns across his retinas and left his head pounding. Marcus gulped glass after glass of water and half-listened to Abby and Mouse talking at the end of the table.

David seemed distracted during lunch and rose several times to use the telephone in his study upstairs. Marcus heard the low mutter of his voice coming down through the floorboards, but couldn’t make out any words. Only once they were drinking coffee, and the sun had moved round enough that Marcus could at last escape its interrogatory light, did David speak to the table.

‘There have been some developments,’ he said, then cleared his throat. ‘They have found Marcus’s car. It was parked near Banbury railway station. They are looking at CCTV images from last Sunday to try and work out which direction she took. Once she’s on the rail network it simplifies tracing her. I had a long conversation with D.I. Farley last night and he remains confident that she’ll turn up safe and sound.’ The priest smiled.

‘I think we can take this as good news. As soon as the police are finished with your car, Marcus, I’ve arranged for it to be towed back to London. I imagine Lee won’t be far behind it. I hope we will all learn something from this episode, guys. The Course is powerful, but it is also vulnerable. When something rises as swiftly as the Course has, its foundations need some time to set firm. Lee has endangered everything with her behaviour, by allowing herself to be swept up in her emotions. I warned you all about the dangers you would face. I’ve been praying hard for Lee and I know that you have too. Let’s welcome her back to us with love and forgiveness when she comes.’

Marcus took Darwin for a walk in Hyde Park when they got home. He had wanted to go for a run, but after a few hundred yards realised that the dog’s short legs couldn’t match his own stride. Darwin tried gamely to keep up, but kept falling forward, skidding along on his paws and then sliding on his back. Marcus walked down to the Serpentine and looked over at the Diana Memorial where two blond children were paddling in the fast-running water despite the chill air. Marcus heard their squeals travel across the lake to him.

When he got home, Abby was sorting through photographs. She sat at the kitchen table arranging the pictures into piles, a smile flickering across her face every so often. She turned and placed the photographs as if she were playing a game of patience, or reading Tarot cards. Marcus came and stood behind her and saw that she was looking at a picture of the two of them early in their relationship, kissing outside a pub. Daffy and a few of the other guys from college were pointing at them and laughing as they kissed, unaware of the camera aimed at them. One of Abby’s legs was lifted behind her. Marcus’s hands were clasped around her back and she was leaning into the embrace. At the edge of the photograph, Mouse stood, wearing an awful Liberty-print shirt. He was looking straight at the camera, or rather at the photographer behind the lens.

Lee had taken the picture. Even had he not remembered the kiss, Marcus would have known that it was her work. The group was perfectly composed, arranged in the same way that a painter would position them, the scene artfully constructed to reveal clearly the relationship between each of its subjects. Marcus liked to see the photographs that Lee had taken of him. With anyone else behind the camera, he found himself tensing just before the shutter closed. A pout would appear on his lips unbidden, his eyes took on a distant and weary glaze, his eyebrows lowered as if in deep thought. This meant that he never felt that the person presented in photographs was actually him, but rather a brooding impostor who had leapt into the frame at the last minute. With Lee it was different. She seemed to wait for the perfect moment, always captured him at his most natural.

Abby continued to flick through the photographs, pausing every so often to look at a picture, trying to situate it in time and place. She dwelt over a photo that Marcus had taken of her on their honeymoon in Corsica. It was at breakfast and her plate was piled high with bread, cheese, boiled eggs and figs. In the photograph she was looking down guiltily at the amount of food. Marcus remembered her words when they had developed the film: ‘I can tell that you don’t love me by the way you take my picture.’ Those words had initiated a long period of strenuous effort on his part. He had been consistently solicitous to his new wife for months afterwards, stung not by the venom in her voice, but rather by his suspicion that she might be right. He was relieved when she placed the photo on top of the picture of them kissing and began working through a new batch.

Closeness grew between them as the light faded outside and they sat sorting through box after box of pictures. Marcus stood and switched on a standard lamp in the corner when it grew too dim to make out the faces in the photos. Even now that most of his photographs were stored on a computer, Marcus insisted on having his favourite pictures developed. He was forever intending to paste them into albums with press cuttings and railway tickets and other mementos that he hoarded, but there was always some more pressing chore and so they accumulated and were placed out of sight. Abby would complain about the boxes stacking up in the spare room, but he saw that she treasured them. Her fingers picked carefully through the memories arranged on the dining table, tenderness evident in the way she stacked the pictures into neat piles. Marcus realised that one pile was made up entirely of photographs of Lee.

‘Let’s look at those,’ he said.

It was something in the way that Abby handled the photos. He couldn’t place exactly what, but it was subtly different from the way she fingered the pictures of other people, a scrupulous reluctance to touch the glossy face of the photograph, fastidiousness about avoiding fingerprints. There was something almost fearful in the way she addressed the pictures of Lee. Marcus realised that Abby thought Lee was dead. He sat back in his chair and exhaled.

‘You don’t think she’s coming back, do you?’

Abby looked sharply at him, and then back down at the photograph. It was a picture of Lee with her arm around the South African schoolboy she sponsored. The Course invested in a series of charitable projects across Africa, and had paid for the members of a Johannesburg orphanage to fly to England to visit the church whose congregation was financing their education. Lee had grown very close to one young boy. He was smaller than his classmates and Lee had taken him under her wing immediately. He had followed her everywhere during the two weeks that they were in England. When Lee and the other Course members had taken the children and their harried, chain-smoking teachers to Heathrow at the end of the visit, the little boy had refused to let go of Lee’s hand until, tears tumbling down his face, he had been pulled away.

‘She’s gone.’ She laid the photograph back down on the table. ‘I know that David is being terribly upbeat about the whole thing, but he knows as well as I do that she isn’t coming back. He told me some things when I went there for dinner the other night. Things he made me promise not to tell you.’

‘What things? Why didn’t he want me to know?’

‘I think he’s just very paranoid at the moment. He’s worried about the press getting hold of this. There was that awful article a few years ago about the Course. I know it left a real scar.’

‘What did he tell you?’

‘Sally had a key to Lee’s flat. She fed Darwin sometimes when Lee was at weddings. She went over to the flat and found all sorts of things. Diaries and books of photographs and. . It was clear that Lee was terribly unhappy.’

‘So why is David going on as if he’s sure she’ll turn up?’

‘Wishful thinking, I suppose. It’s a kind of prayer. If he keeps repeating it then maybe something will turn up. They gave the books to the police, of course. There was one passage that David let me read. It was heartbreaking. She was talking about how she was weighing up different methods of suicide, trying to work out which one would be the least sinful. Poor Lee. Poor, poor Lee.’

Abby started to cry. Fat tears fell down onto the photographs and Marcus leaned over her and buried his face in her hair. She turned up towards him and he kissed her. At first the kisses were gentle, kisses of consolation, then more passionate. He slipped his tongue into her mouth and swung his leg over her until he was sitting on her lap. He took her face in his hands and kissed her hard. She was still crying, and he realised that she was no longer crying about Lee, or no longer just about Lee. He pulled her jumper up over her head, then her blouse and bra until her breasts pressed against his stomach. He lifted her up, turned her around and laid her back across the photographs. The neat piles toppled over, some fell on the floor. The light was behind him and his shadow fell across her, darkening her pale skin. She slipped her jeans and pants off and watched him, still crying, as he undressed.

Marcus came staring at the picture of Lee and the little South African boy. His lips were pressed into the hollow of Abby’s clavicle, his nose against her throat and there, inescapably, on the table behind her shoulder was the photo, and it seemed that Lee was trying to convey something to him through her frozen blue-green eyes. They lay together on the scattered memories until Abby shivered.

‘David wants me to go away for a while,’ she said.

‘What? Where?’

‘The American expansion is going even better than we’d dared hope. He wants me to go over and make sure that people are keeping to the key messages, that the quality of the teaching is up to scratch. It would only be for a few weeks. Three at the most.’

‘But now? With Lee and everything?’

‘I know. It isn’t ideal. But we had been speaking about it before all of this happened and, I don’t mean to sound callous, but I’m afraid that Lee is gone. I want some time to mourn her, some time alone. And I’m afraid that now more than ever the Course is what is important to me.’

‘But what about our group? There are still two more sessions to go.’

‘I’m sure you can handle it.’

*

Three days later, Marcus was driving Abby to the airport. It was strange to be back in the Audi. He looked for traces of Lee, even though he knew that the police had searched the car thoroughly. When he placed his hands on the steering wheel, he found it somehow comforting that her fingers had been there, not so long ago. The car smelt different, sterile. Abby’s suitcase was in the boot, her passport and ticket sitting in her lap. New York was suffering a cold spell, and so she wore thick gloves and a scarf pulled around her throat.

They headed out of London on the A40, past grim thirties houses with crosses of St George hung in their windows, past furniture villages and self-store warehouses, cinema multiplexes and out-of-town retail parks. They didn’t speak. Ever since looking at the photographs, Abby had been distant, aloof. She disappeared to St Botolph’s early on Monday morning, leaving the flat before Marcus, and didn’t return until after he was in bed. She sent him texts that were cool and civil, suggesting what he might have for dinner. Darwin was with her and Marcus found that he missed the stupid enthusiasm of the small dog in the flat. On Tuesday the day passed in much the same way. Marcus insisted that he take Wednesday morning off work to drop her at the airport.

It was not until they were snaking along the M25 that Abby spoke. Marcus was hunched over the wheel, checking his mirrors repeatedly, pulling out into the fast lane and stamping the accelerator and then slamming on the brakes as he looked for the turn-off to Terminal 5.

‘I know about you and Lee.’

‘What?’ said Marcus as he attempted another manoeuvre, then found himself blocked on the inside by a white Transit van.

‘I said I know about you and Lee. At the Retreat.’

Marcus allowed the Transit to undertake him and pulled into the slow lane. He looked across at Abby.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Marcus. You were seen out on the lake.’

‘Abby. .’

‘Don’t speak. I really don’t want you to say anything.’ She looked out of the window.

‘I’ve known for a while now. It just took me a while to work out how I felt. And it’s sad, but I’m just not that bothered. I sometimes think we got married to avoid breaking up the other parts of our life. We were happy with our jobs, happy to be part of the Course, we just weren’t happy with each other.

‘I think back to our early days together, and the rows we used to have. I know that you weren’t faithful back then. At university and then when we were first in London. I used to try to find other reasons to get angry with you, but really it was because I knew that there were other girls, and I just didn’t want to face it. I thought it would pass. For a while I think it did.’

Marcus indicated and turned down the slip road towards the airport. Abby’s voice rose in pitch as they neared their destination.

‘But to find out that you and Lee. . I mean, Lee, of all people. When we knew what she was like with men. The way she’d sleep with just anyone. Well anyone apart from Mouse, who was the only one who really loved her. It can’t even have been a challenge for you. And at the Retreat, which was supposed to be a wonderful time for us. And the night after we had really connected. I lay in bed with you that night and I was proud that you were my husband.’

Abby was sobbing as they pulled into the set-down area outside the terminal. Her nose was streaming and she blew two foghorn blasts into a tissue before stepping from the car. Marcus lifted her bag from the boot and set it down beside her. She turned up to him, tears pouring from her eyes, her nose red and dripping snot. Marcus thought for a moment that an observer might think she was heartbroken to be leaving him. Then she spoke and her voice was hard and cold.

‘And now, and this is the worst, thinking that you could have been the one who pushed her over the edge, the one who made poor Lee. .’

Marcus tried to embrace her; she pulled away. He spoke very quickly.

‘I’ll park the car. We can talk inside. We should sort this out before you go.’

‘Sort this out? Listen, I’ll call you, OK? Once I’m feeling a little more. . together. Here, you might as well have this.’

For a moment Marcus thought she was going to hand him her wedding ring, but then she reached into her bag and pulled out her key to their flat. She turned to go. Marcus took her by the elbow.

‘Who told you?’

She shook clear of his grasp.

‘It doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter.’

She was already walking away. He watched her stop, check her passport, blow her nose again, and then make her way as gracefully as she could through the sliding doors and out of sight.

Two

When Marcus got home he called his secretary and took the rest of the day off. He was close to using up his holiday allowance, but his secretary was fond of him and he knew she would help fudge the numbers at the end of the year. He took Darwin for a walk around Holland Park, hoping that the dog would be comforted by the familiar setting. He walked up and down the long avenues lost in thought, stepping aside to let Filipina nannies with thousand-pound all-terrain buggies stride past. He stood for a while watching the drab peahens pecking for food at the feet of their resplendent mates, who, like croupiers fanning cards, unfurled their tails to reveal hands of iridescent aces.

Marcus continued down towards the Orangery. He couldn’t believe that anyone had seen them on the boat. The mist had been so thick, they’d been lost in the middle of the lake. He forced his mind back into the boozy haze of that night and searched his peripheral vision. Had there been someone crouched among the reeds, observing their encounter?

The park was closing and Marcus hurried to the northern exit. It was growing dark and there was a whisper of snow in the air. On a whim he crossed straight over Holland Park Avenue and headed up Ladbroke Grove. He always forgot how steep Notting Hill was. The trees that tented the road in summer had lost almost all of their leaves; those at the top of the hill had already been pollarded and held their stump-limbs skywards in protest at the brutality of their treatment. Darwin was tired and limped slightly. Marcus lifted the little dog up and carried him under his arm. In the distance he saw a Hammersmith and City Line train crossing a bridge. The lighted windows of the train looked like lanterns suspended in the air from a string.

Marcus trotted down the hill and was soon passing under the Westway outside the Tube station. He remembered how Abby had dragged him to the market here years ago. They were looking for a birthday present for Lee and had wandered among the tightly packed stalls, pointing at books and T-shirts and all sorts of nostalgic junk. Abby had come back wearing a Tyrolean hat and Marcus an MCC tie. He looked at his watch and realised that Abby would have landed by now. He felt a stab close to where Darwin’s wet nose was tickling his chest.

Marcus turned onto the towpath as the last light of the day left the horizon. He looked into the supermarket as he passed and saw children helping their mothers bag up the shopping, young couples buying inexpensive wine, the jostle and buzz of real life. He made his way carefully along the unlit path, stepping aside to let bicyclists through, almost tripping over a tramp who was sprawled across a bench sleeping off a hangover. Finally, he made out the Jolly Roger that hung from the rear rail of the Gentle Ben and saw with pleasure that the lights were on. He knocked on the door, saw the boat sway as Mouse moved around inside, and then, after a few minutes when Marcus heard nothing but the gentle slap of the water against the boat’s hull, Mouse opened the door, beaming.

‘Hello, sport,’ he said. ‘Do come in. And bring that darling dog with you. He’s a fine sailor, you know.’

Mouse had been reading. Marcus saw a copy of Journey to the End of the Night lying face-down next to a bottle of white wine and a bowl of pistachios. A small lamp stood on the table and cast a warm glow over one corner of the cabin. Marcus edged himself onto the bench opposite as Mouse found him a glass. Before sitting down, Mouse opened a cupboard and pulled out a tin of tuna which he emptied into a bowl for Darwin. The dog scoffed the fish appreciatively.

‘So has Abby gone then?’ Mouse asked, sitting down to face Marcus. Their knees touched under the table and Mouse edged backwards, drawing his legs up underneath him. He was wearing an old Thomas Pink shirt that was frayed at the collar and strained at its buttons around the belly. Marcus recognised it as one of his own. Abby must have given it to Mouse.

‘Yes. She’s gone.’ Marcus had already finished the glass of wine. He watched with embarrassment as Mouse poured the rest of the bottle into his glass.

‘Sorry. It’s been a shitty day. I’ll nip over to Sainsbury’s and buy you another bottle in a bit.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Abby and I argued before she left.’

Mouse looked up at him.

‘I did think it was a strange time for her to go. With Lee and everything.’

‘She said she needed some space to mourn.’

‘To mourn? So she doesn’t think Lee’s coming back?’

‘Do you?’

Marcus offered Mouse a cigarette. Mouse took it and lit it. He opened the window beside them a crack and they flicked their ash out into the night.

‘I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Sally Nightingale found some books at Lee’s flat. Some diaries. Lee was terribly sad, poor thing. I always knew that she was prone to these slumps, but I suppose I just thought she got down like we all do. Or maybe that she was a little more sensitive than us, you know? That she felt things more acutely, but never that she was so low as to do this.’

Darwin had finished his tuna and was struggling to climb up onto the bench. Marcus cupped a hand under his tummy and lifted him into his lap.

‘I wouldn’t give up hope yet. People write things sometimes just to see how they look. Not everything that is written is meant.’

‘I know, I know. But the pictures of men. So many of them. I suppose I had always hoped that she was secretly chaste. That the men who went home with her were made to sleep out on the terrace or something. And some of them so old and ugly — I saw the photos. It makes me wonder quite why it was she never looked at me.’

They sat in silence for a while. A barge chugged past, rocking the boat with its wake, causing Darwin to stir in his sleep. Marcus eased the dog onto the bench beside him and walked out to the supermarket to buy more wine. He picked out a bottle of good Burgundy and made it to the boat just as it began to rain. Mouse was standing in the tiny kitchen stirring a bowl of pasta when Marcus arrived.

‘You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?’ he asked.

They sat and ate and the rain pounded down on the roof above them. Marcus peered out onto the water of the canal and saw it dancing with the torrent that was pouring down from the sky. He realised at once how cosy and how lonely Mouse’s life out here was. He turned back to his friend.

‘Who called you Mouse? Who gave you the nickname?’

Mouse thought for a moment. Marcus settled back down on the bench beside Darwin.

‘I suppose I did. It was when I was at school in Scotland and obsessed with The Wind in the Willows. I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there was some terrible sadness behind the story. Even in the joyous parts, there’s a kind of elegiac quality to it, and finally I read a biography of Kenneth Grahame and it all made sense.

‘Mouse was the name of Kenneth Grahame’s son. Or actually Mouse was the nickname his dad gave him. His real name was Alastair too, you know? I took my nickname as a kind of homage to him. The Wind in the Willows was written for Mouse.’

The sound of the rain on the roof grew louder. The wind blew and the boat rocked. Mouse drew back a corner of curtain, looked out into the night, and then let it drop back. He shivered, then continued.

‘Mouse had been born partially blind, and his dad told him bedtime stories that he’d made up during weekend walks along the riverbank. Because he was sad that his son couldn’t see everything in nature and appreciate the walks with him. Anyway, these bedtime stories turned into The Wind in the Willows. And then when Mouse went away to boarding school, Grahame continued to tell the stories in letters he’d write to him every week. Mr Toad was based upon his son, who used to get taken up in new pursuits and then discard them as soon as something more exciting came along. I suppose all children are a bit like that.

‘Despite Mouse’s eyesight, and because of his dad’s help and encouragement, wee Mouse was accepted into Oxford when he was seventeen. The letters with the stories about Mr Toad and Mole and Ratty continued when Mouse was at university. And then nobody knows what happened. It was maybe a suicide pact with a gay lover, maybe an accident. I like to think it was the pressure of being his dad’s only child, of having his dad smother him, that did it. He lay down on a railway track and killed himself.

‘I like the fact that The Wind in the Willows is so innocent, so completely removed from everyday concerns and troubles, and yet the story behind it is so dark and heartbreaking. A bit like Lee, I suppose. Everyone who met her thought she was this wonderful, lively girl. Those eyes. . I’d see people look into her eyes and be transported. But behind it all she was struggling with terrible demons, unable to face the world.’

When they finished dinner it was still raining and Marcus couldn’t face going into the night. Mouse got out a Scrabble board and they played until the bottle of wine was empty. Mouse searched in the cupboards in the kitchen and found a litre of gin. There was no tonic and so they mixed it with orange juice. Soon they were both quietly drunk. Marcus let Darwin out into the storm for a moment. The dog trotted up the riverbank, sniffing the ground, then came back to the boat, soaking wet. Marcus wrapped him in a dishcloth and towelled him dry. He laid him down on the bench and he fell asleep again.

‘You can top and tail with me if you like,’ Mouse said. ‘You don’t want to go out in this rain.’

‘That’d be great. Thanks.’

Marcus brushed his teeth with his finger in the minute bathroom, then took a long piss, breathing through his mouth to avoid the chemical stench of the toilet. When he got back into the main cabin, Mouse was already lying in bed. Mouse’s head was squashed against the curve of the ship’s hull and he wriggled under the covers, trying to get comfortable. Marcus stripped down to his boxer shorts and lay with his back against Mouse’s legs, his face pressed into the musty cushion that Mouse had given him as a pillow. The boat moved every so often as gusts of wind swept along the water’s surface. The rain continued to drum on the roof and Marcus could hear the trees on the opposite bank whipped by the wind.

‘Do you still believe in the Course, sport? Are you glad you’re a member?’ Mouse asked.

Marcus had thought that his friend was asleep. He turned onto his back and stared up into the darkness.

‘I don’t know. I felt very strongly about it at first. After that first Retreat — what? — five years ago, I was evangelical, totally committed. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘Why not? What has changed?’

‘The Course was about us. About the four of us. I thought it made us better people. I thought it gave us something we desperately needed. But look at us. Abby and I are falling apart. I really think it might be over between us. You’re not happy, I know you aren’t. And as for Lee. .’

Mouse sat up in bed.

‘Lee was a mess. And I’m as happy as I’m ever going to be. And as for you and Abby, you’ll get over it. You’ve gotten over worse in the past.’

‘OK, but how much of Lee was the Course’s fault? And those new members. They look so young. They’re just kids. And they are being told that they can’t have sex, and they can’t be gay, and they have to strive towards perfection. The idea that we’re telling kids who are barely out of their teens that they’ll go to hell if they fuck someone at a party. . I just don’t think it’s right, Mouse. I don’t think I’ve ever thought it was right, but I just avoided thinking about it.’

‘People need the Course. Look at the way they embrace it. It answers a fundamental need.’

‘Just because people need something, doesn’t mean we should give it to them. I’m going to have to do some thinking. Shit, I don’t know. I miss Abby.’

He felt Mouse reach over and pat his thigh.

‘You’ll get Abby back by staying true to the Course. Being over in the States, seeing how people are embracing it over there, that’s what she needs at the moment. She believes in this more than any of us. More than David, even. Who knows, the two of you could be the next David and Sally. I know that’s what Abby wants.’

Marcus drifted off to sleep, lulled by the rocking of the boat and the sound of rain on the fibreglass roof. The wind lifted small, tightly packed waves on the surface of the canal and sent them slapping against the boat’s hull. Once, the huge gasometer let out a mournful sigh and Marcus turned over, his face pressed against Mouse’s small feet. Darwin snored, curled up on a pile of Mouse’s jumpers in a corner.

Marcus wandered through inchoate, directionless dreams. A noise reached through to his dream-world. He stirred in his sleep. He was aware of a presence, but couldn’t lift himself far enough out of his slumber to decipher it. He felt warm breath on his cheek. He half-opened his eyes and saw that Mouse now lay alongside him, his head on the cushion. One of Mouse’s hands was resting on the point of Marcus’s hip bone, the cold line of his friend’s signet ring clearly discernible.

‘Shh,’ Mouse whispered.

The boat rocked gently and Marcus felt himself drifting off again. Mouse’s breath was sweet. Alcohol, cigarettes and toothpaste. With his friend’s small, tubby body pressed closely against his own, Marcus slept once more. He dreamed of the fern den he had built as a child.

‘Morning, sport.’ The toaster popped and Mouse buttered two slices before topping each one with an egg. Marcus swung his legs over the side of the bed and stretched.

‘Morning. What time is it?’

‘Almost nine. You were out cold. Darwin and I have already been for a walk.’

Marcus jumped up from the bed.

‘Jesus, I need to be at work. Fuck.’

‘Oh, take a day off. I have.’

‘I can’t. I’m sorry. Let me have a bite of that. Listen, would you mind popping into my flat and feeding the dog later? I think my spare keys are here somewhere. .’ He searched through his pockets and found the key that Abby had handed him at the airport. He had been carrying it around with him as a kind of totem.

‘Sure. I’ll go in at lunchtime. I could do with a leg-stretch.’

Marcus wolfed down his egg in a couple of bites and pulled on his clothes. With a wave, he lifted Darwin under his arm, jumped to the grassy bank, and set off up the towpath. When he reached Ladbroke Grove, he jumped on the bus and made his way home. He got dressed without showering, pulled a scratchy razor across his face, and poured a bowl of water for the dog. He realised that he looked haggard and hungover, but he strode into the office with the air of a man who has been working long hours in pursuit of the firm’s interests. His secretary went out to buy him coffee several times during the day and he left just before five, mouthing ‘Meeting’ and tapping his watch at his colleagues as he passed their offices.

*

When Marcus got home he took a bath in the silent flat and pulled on his dressing gown. It was barely dark, but the events of the previous few weeks had left him exhausted. He flicked through a series of mindless programmes on the television before selecting one at random and drifting off to sleep. When he woke, the room was dark save the flickering screen and Darwin was licking his face. He dressed and took the dog for a walk up Portobello Road. When he got back, David Nightingale was standing in front of the block of flats, pressing the buzzer repeatedly.

‘Hello, David.’

The priest turned to watch as Marcus came down the steps towards him.

‘Can I come in? We need to talk.’ The priest’s tone was curt. Marcus could see bags like yellow-grey oysters under the older man’s eyes.

They travelled up in the lift together in silence. Darwin sniffed at David’s trouser leg, whining, until the priest lifted him up and scratched him behind the ear. Marcus let them into the flat.

‘Ah, nostalgia,’ he said, seeing the photographs that Marcus had left strewn across the dining table, the boxes piled beside it. ‘Be careful, Marcus. It can do funny things to you, too much recollection.’

‘It was Abby. I need to clear them up. Do you want a drink?’

‘I’m fine, thank you. What I have to say won’t take long.’ The priest sat down on the edge of the sofa, his knees drawn together, his hands over his kneecaps.

‘This isn’t an easy time for any of us,’ David began. ‘Sally and I’ve been terribly upset by what happened to Lee. I believe you know about her diaries.’

Marcus nodded.

‘I sent Abby away for her own good. She needs to be doing something useful just now. And she needs you to be here for her when she comes back.’ David cleared his throat.

‘I understand you two have been having some troubles. Abby didn’t tell me exactly what, but I got the general idea. The Course will survive Lee. It is a shame and — if she is indeed dead — it is a tragedy, but the Course is resilient enough to deal with this. What I won’t allow is for one girl’s depression, regrettable as that may be, to infect the whole group.’ He stood up and began to pace up and down the room.

‘You must understand that the Course is about leading by example, it is about aspiration, about people wanting to better themselves. I am the model for scores of priests across the country, around the world. They watch the DVD, they read The Way of the Pilgrim, they see pictures of St Botolph’s on a Sunday morning turning worshippers away because the church is so popular. They want that. The Course leaders fulfil a similar role within each Course. People look up to you, Marcus. You may not realise it, but the twins idolise you. The girls in your group hang on to your every word. I had Neil in my study the other day telling me that he thought you should take holy orders. You are a young man, with all the worries and troubles that a young man has. But you are also a senior member of my church, the church which is the centre of the Course, the church to which all others aspire.’ He stopped pacing and looked down at Marcus.

‘I’m not sure I want all that,’ said Marcus quietly.

‘What?’

‘I don’t know if I want to be a senior member of your church, David. I don’t know whether I can live up to what you expect of me. I never felt about it in quite the same way as the others. I believe in God. I’m pretty sure that I believe in God. I just don’t know if I believe everything that goes with it.’

‘So what are you saying, exactly?’

‘I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know anything at the moment. One of my best friends may be dead. Everyone is talking about her suddenly as if she’s dead and yet there’s no body, no real explanation of how or why she died. My wife is three thousand miles away and won’t answer my calls. I’m sorry, David, I just need some time to think.’

The priest knelt down in front of Marcus and laid a hand on his arm.

‘I understand, I really do. If we don’t question our actions sometimes, then we find ourselves leading our lives on autopilot, and we can never achieve fulfilment. Take some time, but remember that we need you. The people at St Botolph’s love and need you so very much.’

David stood up and walked down the corridor to the doorway. Marcus followed him.

‘I’ve big plans for you, Marcus,’ David said over his shoulder. ‘You must remember that no other Christian movement has the money, the connections, the marketing savvy of the Course. We are going to be a global brand before long, and we’ll need smart people like you to run it. Keep strong. Things will get better, you’ll see.’

When the priest was gone, Marcus microwaved a bowl of minestrone and sat down at the dining table. He cleared a space for his bowl among the photographs and began to flick idly through them as he ate. He had taken more photographs at university than he did once he was in London. He smiled at photos of the four friends. They looked so young back then. Mouse and Lee seemed like children in the pictures. He couldn’t believe that he and Abby had been so fresh-faced, so innocent. He noticed how close they all seemed: not just the four of them, but all of their friends from university. There had been so many of them, so many friends left behind once the Course became the most important thing in their lives.

Daffy was in almost all of the photographs from that period. Marcus remembered how the mouthy, energetic Welsh boy had followed them around, had always been the last one drinking at the college bar, an ever-dependable companion for pub crawls or spontaneous trips to seedy nightclubs in town. Marcus had tried to keep in touch with him once they moved to London: he had come to the wedding and they still exchanged occasional emails, but Marcus knew that Daffy felt excluded by the prominence of the Course in their lives. He thought he should probably call Daffy and tell him about Lee. He found the number on his phone and dialled it.

‘Hello.’ Daffy was in a pub. Marcus could hear fruit machines and music and people shouting to be heard at the bar.

‘Daffy. It’s Marcus Glass.’

‘Hold on.’ Marcus heard Daffy move through the bar and then outside. ‘Sorry, it’s carnage in there. Is that you Marcus? Brilliant to hear from you, man. How are you?’

‘I’m OK. Listen, would you like to meet up? I mean, I know I’ve been rubbish at keeping in touch, but I wondered if you’d like to hook up for a drink?’

‘Of course. It’d be great to see you.’

‘What about Saturday?’

‘Day after tomorrow? Sure, why not? I have a thing later on, but we could get together about seven if that works.’ He named a pub in Shoreditch.

‘Yes. Great. See you then.’

Marcus fed Darwin and sat back down at the table. He started to look through the pile of pictures of Lee, realising that Abby had arranged them chronologically, so that he watched his friend age as he thumbed through them. He saw her blue-green eyes lose a little of their naughtiness, saw her face grow thinner and her hair more blonde. And in each photograph the unmatched earrings, one blue, one turquoise, which she had told him once had been a present from her first real boyfriend. She had left the boy behind in Suffolk, but continued to wear the earrings, pleased with the disconcerted glances they provoked and the way they brought out the colour of her eyes.

He went back to the beginning of the pile, preferring to see Lee when she was at her best: young and wicked-looking. He came to a photograph of the band on stage. Lee was standing up at her keyboard, her head thrown to the side so that her hair shot out horizontally. Abby was beside her, the two girls singing into one microphone. Marcus had his head down and was pounding his guitar, while Mouse grinned, slightly out of focus, in the background. The photo had been taken at a college ball. It was still early in the party and dusk was falling behind the stage. The band’s name had changed several times during their university years. He thought at this point it had been Edwin and the Droods.

It was the first college ball they had played, and they had all been nervous, but so many of their friends were in the audience, and the band looked so young and happy that the reception was rapturous. People had been drinking for a few hours and the band played songs that everyone loved, songs that people knew how to dance to. Marcus remembered looking down and seeing couples with their arms around each other as he and Abby took turns singing the verses of a song that had been a hit several years earlier. People were kissing and laughing and getting drunk in the day’s last light. The band had come off stage to a riot of applause and delighted revellers had bought them drinks all evening.

At the end of the night, Marcus had to carry Abby back to their college draped over his shoulder. He tucked her up in her bed and then Lee and Mouse followed him over to his room. He switched on the desk light and opened a bottle of wine. Lee lolled in an armchair, a cigarette hanging from her lips. Marcus called Daffy and some other friends who had been out clubbing in town. They turned up carrying bottles of beer and vodka and someone started rolling joints on Marcus’s desk. Mouse put on a CD and people began to dance in the corners of the room. Marcus crossed the quadrangle to check on Abby. She had kicked the duvet onto the floor and was snoring loudly. He draped the cover back over her and placed a kiss on her clammy forehead. She moaned in her sleep and rolled over.

When he went back into his room, more people had turned up. He didn’t recognise some of them, but Daffy threw an arm around his shoulder and yelled: ‘It’s OK. They’re with me’ in his ear. Mouse was involved in a drinking game that Marcus could already see he was losing. His shirt was wet with beer and he kept tilting backwards on his heels, very nearly toppling over. Lee was still sitting in the armchair, coolly surveying the party. Marcus crouched in front of her and she reached over and tousled his hair. He smiled up at her.

‘You were amazing tonight.’ Marcus took one of her cigarettes and lit it. Her skirt was hitched up around her thighs and he placed his hands on her thin legs. Lee giggled.

‘I really enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘It’s so fun to be up there with you guys.’ She leaned towards him and spoke in a whisper. ‘Listen, I’ve got a bottle of champagne in the fridge outside my room. If no one’s nicked it, do you want to go and drink some?’

They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and Lee took the bottle from the fridge. They went into her room and sat down on the bed. It was always a mess in there: books everywhere, face-down or piled in corners awaiting her attention. Clothes were strewn across the floor, dropped where she took them off. Lee created extraordinarily complicated essay plans in many different shades of ink. When she was done with them she used them to wallpaper one side of the room. Marcus leaned back against a plan that seemed to be dealing with Ancrene Wisse and the contemplative life. Lee opened the champagne and clamped her mouth over the neck of the bottle to stop it fizzing over.

Marcus couldn’t remember what they had talked about as they drank. He did remember Lee crossing to the window and looking out. The view from her room was extraordinary: across the roofs of the town to the first traces of dawn in the east. Marcus came up behind her and put his arms around her. She swigged from the champagne and then held the bottle up. Marcus put his lips over it and she tilted the bottle as he gulped. She turned to face him. A gentle breeze came through the window smelling of mown grass. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She sniggered. He leaned forward again, running his hands down her sides. He kissed her other cheek and then tried to find her lips. She turned her head away.

‘This is naughty.’

Marcus picked up the bottle and went back to the bed. Lee looked over at him. Very slowly, she crossed her room and sat down next to him. Taking his face in her hands, she kissed him on the lips. Marcus stood up and took her in his arms and this time she pressed her pelvis against his and forced her tongue into his mouth. Marcus pulled her skirt up so that it sat around her waist and then slipped his fingers into her pants. He eased his middle finger into her. Someone knocked on the door.

‘Lee? Marcus? Are you guys in there? Tell me you aren’t drinking the champagne I gave you, Lee? That was for us to share.’

Abby walked into the room as Marcus and Lee sprang apart. Lee struggled to pull her skirt back down around her thighs. Abby looked blearily at them.

‘Oh, you are here. And you are drinking the bloody champagne. I woke up with a stinking headache and I really fancied some proper booze. Is there any left?’

Lee handed it to her.

‘I’m still really very pissed,’ Abby said, slumping down on the bed. ‘But this is delicious.’

As soon as possible Marcus had guided the girls downstairs to the party.

He was woken from his memories by his phone. He thought it might be Abby and so he rushed to find the bleating machine. It was in a pocket somewhere and he almost missed it.

‘Hello Marcus?’ It was a man’s voice. ‘Detective Inspector Farley here. Listen, I know it’s a bit late, but do you think I might drop by? I go past you on my way home and I just wanted a quick chat.’

‘Of course.’

The policeman arrived twenty minutes later. Marcus heard him pull up outside and buzzed him in. Farley accepted the offer of a drink and they sat on the sofa sipping a beer together.

‘I’m sorry for being so late. It’s almost ten o’clock, isn’t it? You know when the day just seems to get away from you?’

Marcus took a swig of his beer.

‘We have made no progress with Lee. She’s not on any of the cameras at Banbury Station. We have her driving into town at about ten to five in the morning — one of the cameras that they use for traffic control picked her up — but nothing after that. It seems she disappeared somewhere in Banbury.’

‘I suppose you’ve looked into whether there might be anyone she knows there, someone who might be putting her up while she gets her head together?’

‘It was one of the things I was going to ask you. You’ve heard about the diaries, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re bleak. The girl certainly had issues. But I’m not sure they are the work of someone who was actually going to kill herself. A bit too poised, too much thought about the aesthetics of the whole thing, if you know what I mean.’

Marcus nodded.

‘The other thing that gives me pause is that it’s very rare for a suicide to go undiscovered. A murder, yes. Easy enough to place a body somewhere it won’t be seen for a while if you have a spade or a cellar. But for someone to kill themselves and for the body not to turn up, that’s rare.’

‘So you’re hopeful?’

‘I didn’t say that. People go missing the whole time. You couldn’t imagine the number of cases sitting on the books of police forces around the country where people just vanish, thin air so to speak. But girls like Lee don’t just vanish. And I’m afraid I’m not going to be allowed to let her become another statistic. There’s something about it in one of the tabloids this weekend. You know how the press are. She’s young, she’s posh, she’s pretty, she’s a member of the Course. They’ll be all over it. My superiors will be on at me day and night until I get this one solved.’

‘Listen,’ said Marcus, ‘I know we didn’t have a great start the other night, but I really want to help you. Anything I can do, I will. It’s. . it’s really strange, but people have started to speak about her as if she’s dead. It’s this no man’s land where everyone pretends to be optimistic, says “When Lee gets back” and “Let’s save that for Lee”, but then in the next sentence she’s in the past tense. I’m just not ready to bury her yet.’

Marcus looked up at the policeman.

‘I don’t think she killed herself,’ he said.

‘Neither do I,’ replied Farley.

They finished their beers in silence and then Marcus walked the policeman down to his car. Farley turned to him with a thin smile.

‘You’ll let me know if you think of anything? Can I rely on you to pass things on to me?’

‘Of course.’

Marcus went back inside and carefully placed the photographs back in their boxes, stacked the boxes in the spare room, and went to bed.

Three

On Saturday afternoon Mouse turned up at the flat. He looked hungover and sleep-deprived, and his velvet jacket bore several new cigarette burns. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

‘The bloody shower’s broken,’ he said as he walked in the door. ‘I was over for dinner with David last night and the twins and Neil were there and we decided to go for drinks afterwards. We went to a bar on Walton Street where Neil had some corporate deal and there were all these very beautiful Russian ladies, and my glass kept getting refilled and I ended up ridiculously drunk. I seem to remember walking along the Embankment with the twins, but after that, nothing. I’ve no idea how I got home. Christ, my head.’

Marcus ran him a bath and placed some painkillers and a glass of water by the sink. He sat watching TV while Mouse bathed, smiling as he heard his friend singing to himself and splashing about. When he was done, Mouse came into the room wearing Marcus’s dressing gown. He sat down next to Marcus on the sofa.

‘What’s the plan for tonight? I thought maybe a quiet one? Film and a curry?’

‘Actually, I have plans. I’m going over to east London to see Daffy.’

‘Daffy? Really? How brilliant. Can I come?’

‘Of course.’

They dressed together in his bedroom, and it reminded Marcus of the excitement he used to feel as they got ready for a night out at university: music on the stereo, sharpening drinks and then a spray of aftershave and out into the night with its endless potential. They strolled down to the Tube together and then made the long trip across town on the Central Line.

Marcus liked the way each Tube line had its own identity. This identity was fashioned partly from the upholstery of the trains and the feel of the stations, partly from the districts of London which the line linked and the passengers who travelled upon it. The Central Line was bohemian and trendy, linking Notting Hill to Bethnal Green via Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road. The District Line was more sedate, old-world, running from the City through St James’s Park to Sloane Square. He liked the hurried dependability of the Victoria Line and the deep, dusty donnishness of the Northern Line, while the shimmering futurism of the Jubilee Line and the down-at-heel Bakerloo left him cold.

They got off the train at Liverpool Street and walked along Bishopsgate towards Shoreditch. Marcus had arranged to meet Daffy in a pub behind Hoxton Square. They strolled through crowds of young people wrapped up against the cold, the haircuts and jewellery becoming more inventive as they moved up into Shoreditch. Daffy was sitting facing the door when they came in, and he raised his arm and waved, grinning.

‘I didn’t know you were coming, Mouse. Well, this is brilliant. Come on now, sit down. What are you having?’

Daffy had a thin moustache and wore a denim shirt and skinny jeans, high-top trainers on his feet. He seemed to know the bartender and bought a round of beers with whisky chasers.

‘I can’t tell you how good it is to see you guys, cheers.’ He took a long drink. ‘I run into various people from university now and again, but never anyone from our college. Thought the church had claimed you all. I was the only pagan left.’ He chuckled and raised his glass again. ‘Cheers, anyway.’ He faced them, grinning.

‘It’s good to see you too. Mouse and I were talking on the way over about how sorry we are that we lost touch with you. I mean, I think you know all about the Course.’

‘I do indeed. You tried to persuade me to join last time I saw you. Not my bag at all, you know what I mean? I almost joined just to see you guys, though.’

‘It’s hard to keep in touch with people. The Course just takes up so much of our time. But with you, Daffy. . I mean, I think there are some friends where it really doesn’t matter how long you don’t see them for. When you’ve been through so much together, you can always just pick up where you left off. So tell us what you’re up to now.’

Daffy put his beer down on the table.

‘I’m in advertising. I had a couple of nothing jobs when I first left uni, but I’ve been at this place for over a year now. I work on the creative side. And I live over this way, just down beside Columbia Road. Share the flat with two blokes I met clubbing a few years back. I suppose I’m having a pretty good time.’

‘Any girlfriends?’

‘Oh, too many, too many. But no. There have been a few who stuck around for a while, but no one special. I always get a girl in January or something and then dump them in the summer. I go a bit mad in the sun, see? Basically, life is just this thing I get through either side of Glastonbury, you know what I mean?’

‘I’ve always wanted to go,’ said Mouse.

‘Oh, it’s fucking awesome, man. Come with us next year. A right proper eye-opener, I promise you. That’s a real religion for you.’

They ordered burgers from the bar and watched the pub fill up around them, reminiscing all the time about their university days.

‘And how’s Lee? I haven’t seen her since your wedding, Marcus. She was so pissed then, man.’

Marcus looked at Mouse and saw his friend shake his head very slightly.

‘She’s not really around any more,’ said Marcus, looking down at the drinks on the table, carefully removing the pickle from the top of his burger.

‘Ah, shame. She was fit. Still, it happens, doesn’t it? People drift in and out. Sure you’ll pick up where you left off when she’s back.’

Marcus looked up and saw that Mouse was staring at him.

‘Does anyone want another beer?’ Mouse said, and rose to walk to the bar.

A sofa became free in a corner of the pub and they moved there. They talked for a while longer and then Daffy stood up, rubbing his hands.

‘Right boys, I’m going to a gallery opening. Do you want to come along? It’s Hugo Carrington, you know, the guy from uni.’

Marcus had come across Carrington a few times at university. He was an angular aristocratic type whose father was equerry to the Queen. Carrington had studied art, but left halfway through his second year. He had launched his career to some public acclaim with a show in Mayfair soon after.

‘Sure,’ said Marcus. ‘Yeah, I remember Carrington.’

They walked down through Hoxton Square, which was full of happy chatter and the thud of bass from different bars and clubs. The gallery was on Kingsland Road and already a long queue snaked down the pavement outside. Some cupped their hands to the blacked-out window, trying to make out what Carrington had created inside.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Daffy. ‘I’m guestlisted. I’ll make them add you two.’

They walked past the long line of fashionably attired young people and Daffy spoke for a moment with the woman at the door. They followed him inside.

The noise of a hundred shouted conversations greeted them as they walked through black felt curtains and into the gallery. It was very hot and Marcus could see scores of men who looked just like Daffy, their sideburns razor-cut into daggers, bellowing into the faces of pretty girls. There was a bar along one side of the room and Daffy reached over and passed a warm bottle of beer to Marcus. Marcus thanked him and began to saunter around the room, gently pushing his way past trendy types who didn’t seem all that interested in the art. He walked through an archway and into a gloomy back room which was dominated by a huge spinning sculpture.

Wheels turned within wheels, something whirred manically inside a sphere, a great turbine chugged. The dial of an enormous clock at the centre glowed ominously in the half-light, its hands circling. A swinging blade flashed for an instant and then disappeared. The light was so dim that Marcus could barely make out how each part was connected, but he was enchanted, and turned to look for Mouse. He saw his friend speaking to Daffy on the other side of the main gallery and gestured to him. Mouse crossed the room and stood next to Marcus in the dark. They sipped their beers and stared at the rotating sculpture.

‘It’s strange to see Daffy again,’ said Mouse.

‘Do you think he has changed?’ asked Marcus.

‘I don’t know. Maybe his accent is a little less strong, but other than that. . I think it might be that he hasn’t changed at all.’

They continued to look at the machine for a while longer and then went out to the bar for more drinks.

An hour passed and the gallery grew so full that it was hard to move. Mouse and Marcus had colonised a flight of stairs at the far end of the room where they sat looking down on the people below them. Daffy would rush past every so often, his eyes wild, a huge grin on his face.

‘All right you two? Fucking crazy, eh? Cheers!’

A DJ started playing pounding trance music and some of the younger people tried to dance, their elbows pressed against their sides, grimaces of bored hipness fixed on their faces. Marcus took an armful of beers from the bar and he and Mouse drank them until they were giddy and had to hold on to each other to keep from sliding down the stairs.

Finally, the music stopped and the lights went up. Mouse was asleep, his cheek resting against the banister. Marcus looked down from his lofty position at the crowd as they began to file out into the night. He saw Daffy talking to Carrington, his shoulders twitching as he spoke. The artist kept looking over Daffy’s shoulder and pushed past him to join a group that was about to leave. He took a girl’s arm and began to guide her through the door. The girl turned once to look back at the room and Marcus’s lungs emptied of air.

The girl had a black fedora pulled down over her head and had turned up the collar of her jacket against the cold, but Marcus was almost certain that it was Lee. He shook Mouse awake.

‘Mouse, look!’

He watched his friend’s eyes as he saw the girl.

‘Jesus,’ said Mouse. ‘Is it her?’

‘Yes. I think so. Quick.’

They pushed through the crowd and hurled themselves out into the night. Daffy was leering drunkenly over the woman who worked on the door. There was no sign of Carrington and the girl.

‘Did you see where Carrington went?’

Daffy turned to Marcus.

‘He got in a taxi. A bunch of them are going on to a party at his house. I think he invited me.’

‘Right, let’s go.’

Marcus flagged down a cab.

Carrington lived in a tall Victorian house on the Hackney Road. Marcus could hear the music as soon as they stepped from the taxi. They walked down the overgrown path to the front door and Daffy rang the bell. A girl answered.

‘Oh, hi, Daffy. Come on in.’

It was very dark inside. Marcus followed Daffy down a corridor which opened out into a large kitchen. Candles flickered on the work surfaces and patio doors opened at the back to the garden where people were dancing around a fire. The music was so loud that Marcus could feel his cheekbones vibrating with every thump. Daffy was already bent over the kitchen table cutting up lines of coke. Marcus couldn’t see Carrington or the girl. He and Mouse turned back into the corridor and made their way up the stairs. The rooms were full of people, some of them asleep, some crouched talking. Two girls were sprawled across the bed in the largest bedroom, snorting powder from the cover of a hardback book. One of them turned and caught Marcus’s eye, gesturing him over. He backed out of the room. Mouse was already on his way up to the second floor.

There was a closed door at the top of the stairs. Marcus edged past Mouse and turned the handle. They walked into an attic room. It was Carrington’s studio. There was a potter’s wheel and various unfinished works scattered around the floor. A huge skylight sat in the ceiling, revealing the orange glow of low clouds above. The artist was sitting in the far corner surrounded by ten or twelve others, a lamp on the ground behind him. He had clearly been holding forth upon something profound and looked up, annoyed at the intrusion.

‘Who are you? Go back downstairs. People aren’t allowed up here.’

The girl in the black fedora was sitting on a beanbag with her back to them. Marcus began to stutter. Slowly the girl turned her head and Marcus felt himself tense. Her profile was caught in the bright white light. Mouse leaned against Marcus, breathing deeply. Marcus could feel his friend shudder.

‘Let them stay, Hugo. Don’t be such a prick.’

The voice was not Lee’s. It was higher, posher. She took the fedora off her head and shook her hair out, and Marcus saw that she wore her hair as Lee had before she cut it. She was younger than Lee, perhaps eighteen. Otherwise, the similarity was uncanny.

‘Come and sit down, guys. Hugo was just telling us about his next great work. Do you want a drink?’

The girl poured red wine into plastic cups as Marcus and Mouse crouched on the floor beside her. Marcus felt dazed.

‘I’m Hugo’s sister, by the way. My name’s Rebecca,’ the girl whispered as her brother resumed his monologue.

‘Marcus Glass. I knew your brother at university.’

‘Oh, bad luck. He was an awful bore back then.’

‘I didn’t know him well. He left pretty swiftly.’

Marcus couldn’t escape the impression that he was speaking to Lee. He realised that the reason he had been so easily fooled by her resemblance to his friend was that he had been spending so much time looking at pictures of Lee from university. Rebecca Carrington looked like the Lee of those days: her hair was long and wild, her eyes wicked and flashing. Marcus felt suddenly very sad to think that even if Lee came back, it wouldn’t be this Lee, the person he thought of as the real Lee.

‘Shall we go downstairs? I’ve heard this so many times,’ she said, gesturing at her brother, who was holding up one fist and spinning the other around it in frantic revolutions, talking all the while.

Rebecca took Marcus’s hand and they made their way down into the hot pumping heart of the house. Mouse followed behind them. Marcus turned and smiled encouragingly at his friend, but he could see that Mouse had been sobered by the sight of this strange replica of Lee. His face was drawn and tired and he looked at Marcus with an expression that Marcus couldn’t quite decipher. Something between pity and scorn. Marcus raised his eyebrows questioningly, but Mouse just shook his head and hung back in the shadows.

When they got to the bottom of the stairs, Rebecca let go of Marcus’s hand and skipped down the corridor, laughing. Marcus followed her through the kitchen, where she stopped to grab a bottle of vodka from the fridge, and then into the garden. There were picnic blankets and cushions spread out on the grass around the fire, and Marcus threw himself down beside Rebecca, intent on drinking in her face, searing her likeness onto his memory. A gust of cold wind blew across the garden, carrying with it traffic fumes and dust. The fire’s flames danced. Marcus caught sight of Mouse standing in the kitchen talking to Daffy and a tall black girl with an afro. He turned back to Rebecca.

‘I hate these parties,’ she said.

‘Why?’

Rebecca took a slug of the vodka and passed it to Marcus.

‘Hugo always manages to find inspiration the next morning. So I’m left to clean up the place. It’s my payment for staying here during my gap year. I’ve become the de facto cleaning lady. Which makes me hate these parties. Whenever I see people having fun I just think about the mess I’m going to have to face, hungover, the next day. He manages to make me feel so bourgeois.’

Marcus drew out a cigarette and offered her the packet. She shook her head.

‘No thanks. I don’t smoke. So what do you do, Marcus? Are you an artist too?’ She looked at him with a wry smile. Someone stumbled over Marcus’s legs, apologised, and staggered off into the darkness at the bottom of the garden.

‘God, no. I’m a lawyer. I live in Notting Hill. Um. .’ Marcus stopped. Rebecca yawned. He realised how uninteresting his life would seem to a girl like this. It wasn’t something he considered ordinarily, that he lived an existence that could make a girl yawn. Within the world of the Course he was seen as dashing, bright, a leading light. Here, as the fire burned down into embers, and the noise of the party still swept over them, Marcus felt suddenly old and dull.

‘Are you, like, a real lawyer? Murderers and all that?’

‘No. No, that isn’t what I do at all.’

There was a pause.

‘I secretly do quite want to be a housewife,’ Rebecca whispered, leaning over towards him conspiratorially. ‘It would drive my father wild, after everything he’s spent on education, but I’d like to live in a big house in Henley and have lots of children and dogs. I’d bake on Tuesdays and supervise the gardener on Mondays and Thursdays.’

Marcus laughed. He was slowly getting used to seeing Rebecca as herself, rather than as a reflection of Lee. She leaned towards him again.

‘So what else do you do? What’s your thing?’

Marcus sighed. ‘Do you know the Course?’

‘The cult thing? Yes, of course I do. You’re not involved in that, are you?’

He nodded. ‘I’m a Course leader, no less.’

Rebecca whistled. ‘Jesus. . I mean, fuck. I had a couple of friends at school who went for a while. I always thought it was just a phase. Like anorexia or smoking pot. I didn’t think someone as old as you would still be doing it.’

Marcus winced and lit another cigarette.

‘Am I old?’

‘No, but I mean, you’re not really young, are you? The Course always seemed to me like a crutch that people leant on until they worked out who they were. Something to get you through those in-between years.’

‘I think maybe it was like that for me. But then it became my life. It’s not a bad way to deal with the world, even for someone as old as me.’

‘I’m not saying it is. Just that it seems a little bit easy.’

He could feel her edging away from him. Where before she had been charming and conspiratorial, he now felt her looking at him from a distance, with a kind of anthropological interest.

‘To tell you the truth, Rebecca, I’ve been thinking about leaving the Course. Life just goes by, sometimes, and before you know it you’re thirty and the best things are behind you. I think I did need the Course when I first came to London. I’m not sure I do any more.’

She leaned towards him again.

‘I say my prayers quite often. When I’ve been really bad.’

Marcus looked at her, frowning.

‘That’s one of the things that bothers me about the Course, though. You have so many people who think that they can act without consequence. As long as God forgives them — which of course he always does — they’re in the clear. They can do almost anything — no matter how cruel.’

‘I suppose that’s what makes you Christians seem so otherworldly. You are cut off from the rest of us by your ability to be forgiven. Whereas, even though I try to pray, I never feel all that confident about it.’

Marcus sipped from the bottle and passed it to her. She took a long gulp and choked a little.

‘You look a lot like a friend of mine. A friend I don’t see any more.’

‘I get that quite a lot. I always take it as an insult. That my face is just this tabula rasa that people project their images onto. I want to be an actress, so I don’t suppose it’s the worst thing.’

‘No, but you look exactly like her. It’s bizarre.’

Marcus looked back towards the house, trying to make out Mouse through the kitchen doors. There was a thick pack of bodies in the room. Everyone was dancing and Marcus found it hard to distinguish between the dancers.

‘Shall we go inside?’ said Rebecca, rising to her knees.

‘Sure,’ said Marcus.

Rebecca took him by the hand again and led him into the surging mass of people. She still carried the bottle of vodka and passed it to him as they began to dance. She fixed her eyes upon his as they moved together, leading him through the sweating, gurning partygoers, spinning him in the darkness. A slower song came on, something deep and trippy, and Marcus felt Rebecca press herself against him. She snaked her thigh between his legs and looked up at him.

‘Here, have one of these,’ she said.

Rebecca emptied a small paper package into her palm. Two white pills. She picked one of them up between small finger and thumb and forced it gently between Marcus’s lips. The pill was bitter and caught in his gullet for a moment. He watched Rebecca take her own pill and then she leaned towards him and kissed him, pushing her tongue where moments before she had pushed her fingers. They continued to kiss as they danced, and he realised that she was smaller than Lee, her hands were like paws on his body, clawing away at him, burrowing under his shirt to twist the hair of his chest. He allowed himself to imagine her as Lee, though, and half-opened his eyes to see the pale skin marked by freckles along her cheekbones.

After fifteen minutes, Marcus began to feel the pill working on him. He seemed to hear the music more clearly, to sense the surge and life of the surrounding dancers. His skin tingled whenever Rebecca touched him and when he kissed her the world seemed concentrated in their mouths; then the music changed again, and he was spinning very quickly, and Rebecca took him by the arm and led him upstairs.

Carrington’s studio was empty when they walked inside. The bright lamp was still on in the corner, casting extraordinary shadows across the room, picking up small sculptures and exploding them against the wall as a violent Guernica of strange, dark images. Marcus took Rebecca in his arms and they began to kiss again. They danced in dreamlike patterns, feeling as much as hearing the music from the party below. Marcus thought suddenly that he could see the mist that had moved in the air that night with Lee. He lifted Rebecca’s jumper off and helped her to undo her shirt. Marcus’s heart banged hard in his chest.

It began to drizzle on the skylight above them. Rebecca, wearing only her underwear, dragged a beanbag to the centre of the room.

‘I love to look up at the sky,’ she said.

‘Lee. .’ Marcus moaned, and then reached down to slip off her pants.

She looked very young. Marcus remembered kissing Lee in her room at university, and tried to imagine what would have happened if Abby had not come in that night. He realised he was still fully clothed. He knelt down on the wooden floor, took one of Rebecca’s ankles in his hand, and began to lick slowly up her leg. His tongue went dry very quickly. He suddenly thought of Darwin, and hoped that the dog wouldn’t be lonely without him there. He reached the top of Rebecca’s leg and slipped his tongue inside her. She moaned quietly, placing her hands in his hair. Marcus began to cry. At first silently, wetting the inside of her thighs with his tears, then in great gulping sobs as he licked hopelessly at her.

‘Oh, you poor darling. Come here, Marcus.’

Rebecca was very good about the whole thing. She held Marcus’s head in her lap until his sobbing receded, and then he told her the whole story. She listened in silence to the tale of Lee Elek, nodding sympathetically whenever Marcus looked up at her. The drizzle had turned into driving rain. Marcus lay down beside Rebecca on the beanbag and they looked up at the sky. She shivered and Marcus found a sheet and draped it over her. The effect of the pill was beginning to wear off and Marcus felt suddenly very tired.

‘I’m sorry. I’m such a mess at the moment. I’m so embarrassed.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s better than my usual experiences up here. I like you, really I do. I would suggest we see each other again. If you weren’t married, that is. And a religious nut.’

Marcus spluttered.

‘I’m joking, I’m joking. But seriously, you need to get out of the Course. Those aren’t good people you have been telling me about. You’re better than that.’

As it began to grow light above them, Marcus said goodbye to Rebecca and crept downstairs. People were sleeping everywhere. The last revellers sat smoking in the rain by the dead fire, umbrellas capturing the smoke as they exhaled it, forming foggy huts around them. Marcus couldn’t find Mouse. He walked out into the dreary morning and trudged up Hackney Road looking for a cab.

*

Marcus slept as the taxi made its way through empty streets across London, his cheek pressed against the cold glass. He woke with a start as they sped along Bayswater Road. It was only when they drew up outside his flat that he realised that he had lost his key. He searched through his pockets, turning out tissues, his phone, his wallet, and a packet of cigarettes, but the key was not there.

‘Fuck,’ he said.

‘No money, mate? Need a bank machine?’ The cabby looked at him in the rear-view mirror.

‘No. I’ve lost my key. Shit!’ Marcus remembered that he had given Abby’s key to Mouse. ‘Listen, would you mind taking me to the top of Ladbroke Grove? Just past the Sainsbury’s. A friend of mine has a spare key.’

‘No problem, mate.’

Marcus was feeling terrible by the time they got to the canal. His mouth was dry, his throat had begun to scratch and his sinuses ache; he could sense that he was coming down with a cold. He paid the driver and stepped out onto the bridge, then made his way down to the towpath. The wind sent the rain raking painfully down his cheeks. He held his arm up, shielding his face with his jacket, but the wind whipped around, and he found himself dancing to try to avoid the rain. Dark clouds raced across the sky as he squelched along the path, his shoes wet through, his socks damp and cold. The trees shuddered in the wind, sending spirals of their last leaves down onto the water to float among the cans and plastic bags. The canal was brown with fallen leaves, pockmarked by the rain.

Marcus reached the Gentle Ben and stepped down onto the deck. He banged on the door of the cabin. No response. He cupped his hand to the window where the curtains hung open a crack. He could see no one inside. He banged on the door again, then tried the handle. It swung open. Gratefully, Marcus flung himself down the steps and into the dark cabin. It was cold inside and Marcus tried without success to locate the heating controls. He flicked the light switch and nothing happened. Marcus opened the curtains, but it was so dark outside that it barely altered the murky cabin.

Marcus made his way through to the small room at the back of the boat that Mouse used as a study-cum-wardrobe and found one of his Thomas Pink shirts. Mouse’s jeans would be too short for him, so he took off his own and hung them over a chair, hoping that they might dry a little while he searched for the key. He looked at the papers piled on Mouse’s desk. There were pictures from children’s fairy tales, scholarly articles on C. S. Lewis, a copy of The Way of the Pilgrim.

Marcus padded through the gloomy boat, checking whatever pieces of Mouse’s clothing he found, willing the key to appear from a trouser pocket, or perched on a sideboard. Marcus could picture his bed at home and longed to be back there with the heating turned up, a mug of tea and a book beside him, Darwin sprawled at his feet. He went back into the study and searched through the drawers in Mouse’s desk, looking with interest at the photographs he found. Many were of Lee, or had clearly been taken by her. Marcus realised that he should show Mouse his own collection of pictures. It had helped him to feel closer to Lee, to capture more accurately his feelings for her, when he saw her at her most beautiful, before the sadness set in.

Marcus was about to give up looking for the key when he noticed a small tortoiseshell box on the desk. It was the sort commonly used to house cufflinks, but Marcus thought that the key might have been placed inside for safekeeping. He fiddled with the tiny clasp of the box, opened it and stood staring at the contents, his tired mind suddenly racing. He held the box up to the window. Inside, against the black velvet lining, sat two earrings: one lapis blue, the other turquoise. Marcus picked them up and laid them in his palm. He sniffed them, not quite knowing why. Very gently, Marcus placed the earrings back in the box and carried it through to the main cabin.

Marcus pulled on his damp jeans and sat down. He found a slightly grubby pair of socks, and then wrapped a blanket around his still-icy feet. He felt the box in his pocket. There would be an explanation. There must be an explanation. He dialled Mouse’s phone. It rang several times, but there was no answer. Marcus sat on the bed, shivering every so often, and waited for his friend to come home.

He saw Mouse trudging down the towpath towards him an hour later. The canal curved round past the gasworks, so there was a stretch of about a hundred yards where Marcus had an uninterrupted view of his friend. Mouse’s velvet jacket was drenched. He had his collar turned up and he was doggedly sucking on a cigarette that he had to pause and relight several times as it was extinguished by the rain. He looked very small among the flying leaves and raging trees. His blond hair was soaked to brown, plastered flat upon his head. He jumped when he saw Marcus.

‘Hello, sport.’

‘Hello.’ Marcus heard his voice come out low and cold. He tapped the box in his pocket again. ‘I lost my keys last night. I thought you might have left Abby’s lying around.’

A flicker of worry crossed Mouse’s face.

‘I had it with me. Here you go.’ He reached into his pocket and threw Marcus the key. He set down a copy of the tabloid newspaper that had published an article about Lee’s disappearance.

‘I read it on the Tube. It’s rubbish, total nonsense.’ He paused. ‘Where did you get to last night? I was looking for you everywhere. You were out by the fire with the Lee-girl and then you were gone. I ended up going to sleep down the back of a sofa while Hugo Carrington had sex on top of it. Not my idea of fun.’

There was a silence. Mouse pulled another key out of his pocket, inserted it in the control panel by the steps leading up to the deck, and flicked a switch. The lights came on. Marcus drew out the box.

‘What’s this, Mouse? Where did you get these earrings?’

Mouse stared at him, his eyes wide with panic. Marcus tipped the earrings out onto the table where they rolled for a while and then stopped. Mouse and Marcus looked at each other for a moment longer, and then Mouse turned and ran up the steps to the deck. The boat rocked as he jumped to the shore. Marcus unwrapped the blanket from around his feet and stood up. He pulled on his jacket, slipping the earrings into his pocket. He couldn’t find his shoes. He charged into the study at the stern of the boat. His shoes were hanging on the back of a chair. He slipped them on and ran out into the rain.

Mouse was already out of sight. Marcus sprinted in the direction of Ladbroke Grove, slipping every so often on the muddy path. The rain tore at him as he ran, pricking pins and needles on his scalp. A bicyclist coming in the other direction swerved to avoid him. He lengthened his stride, knowing that he would catch Mouse eventually. Mouse was no athlete. As he rounded the bend by the gasworks, he saw Mouse far ahead. He was moving quickly, in spite of his awkward, waddling gait. His head was down and he pumped his arms out to the sides. A flock of pigeons that had been sheltering in the overhang outside Sainsbury’s rose into the air as Mouse ran past. Mouse turned to look back and Marcus could tell that he had seen him. Marcus watched as Mouse’s pudgy form made its way up the slope towards the road, then over the bridge and north towards Kensal Green.

Marcus reached the bridge just in time to see Mouse turn left onto the Harrow Road. Marcus’s loafers were not made for running and he thought about discarding them, then plunged forward, over the bridge and down the hill towards the traffic lights. A bus roared past him and he saw the face of a child at the window, a young girl of seven or eight who beamed at the sight of the gangly man barrelling down the road in the pouring rain, his bobbing head pointing upwards, his jaw clenched with the strain. When Marcus rounded the corner onto the Harrow Road, Mouse was gone.

Marcus sprinted up the road, thinking that Mouse might have disappeared down one of the side streets leading northwards. But they were empty, and there was nowhere obvious to hide. Marcus turned wildly around, looking for a flash of motion. He heard the sound of falling rubble. He looked up. Mouse was climbing over the crumbling wall of the cemetery. He had shinned up as soon as he turned the corner, and was there, ten feet above Marcus, looking down on him. Marcus stared into his friend’s wild, bulging eyes.

‘Why are you running? Did you kill her?’

‘Of course I didn’t. Of course I didn’t kill her.’

Marcus could see that Mouse was crying. His lip trembled as he looked down at Marcus, then he let himself drop down onto the grass the other side and ran off into the grey maze of tombstones.

Marcus began to climb the wall. He tried to keep his eyes on Mouse as he clambered up the brickwork, using the scaffolding that held the tumbledown wall together for handholds, but he lost the small figure as it moved into the shadow of a line of cypress trees. Marcus reached the top of the wall, swung his legs over, and let himself drop onto the soft earth the other side. He ran in the direction of the trees.

The noise from the roads around disappeared very quickly as Marcus made his way down a gentle slope into the heart of the cemetery. An avenue ran between high family mausoleums, obelisks and statues. At the end of the road a chapel stood on a grassy hill, stone steps leading up to a dramatic columned portico. It looked more like a stock exchange than a church. Marcus walked along the path, kicking at piles of damp leaves, scanning the ground that fell away to his left for any sign of Mouse. When he came to the chapel, he climbed the steps and looked down over the graves. Nothing moved. A blackbird, startled by his approach, made a break for cover, spiralling across the lawn in front of the chapel and into a patch of brambles. Below the chapel, the graves clustered thickly together. Some were very old, and the shifting of the ground over time had broken the ancient stones, so that they slumped forward or leaned perilously against each other. Marcus walked through the chapel’s empty courtyard, where his footsteps echoed in the silence, and down the steps the other side.

It grew wilder as he descended further into the cemetery. He could see the line of poplars that grew along the canal in the distance, and knew that this was the boundary of the graveyard, but there was no other indication that he was anywhere but deep in the country, in an endless labyrinth of tombs. The sky grew darker still. Marcus found himself at a dead end as the path he was following became overgrown with brambles. He tried to force his way through, scratching his fingers, leaving red lines on the back of his hands that swelled white around the edges. He turned around and headed back up the hill. Mouse couldn’t hide forever. Marcus wondered if he should go to the police. He felt for the earrings in his pocket and rolled them between finger and thumb.

He was walking between rows of highly ornate vaults when he heard a noise. The tomb next to him had huge carved sphinxes at each corner. Marcus stepped up onto the head of one of the sphinxes to get a better view. The only movement was the swirling of the rain and the leaves which continued their endless fall. Marcus climbed down and continued along the dark avenue. He heard the sound of a twig breaking.

‘Mouse,’ Marcus called out. ‘Is that you? Come and talk to me. I’ll help you.’

There was no response. Marcus thought he saw something move between two gravestones ahead of him, a flash of dark material and skin. He ran. His tired mind began to panic; the presence of so much death brought images of his father to his mind. The coffins seemed to rear up above him, closing in under the night-black sky. He slipped and landed heavily on a pile of dead leaves, which were slimy to the touch. He lay for a moment, his chest pounding, his breaths coming fast and jagged like the firing and reloading of a gun. He struggled to get to his feet, reached out and pulled himself up on a gravestone, felt the cold dead certainty of the marble beneath his fingers. He began to run again.

The rain started to fall more heavily. The drops felt like hailstones against Marcus’s skin. He ran between lines of ancient graves until he came to a fork in the path. He took the right-hand branch. The pounding rain reduced his visibility to a few yards, but still he turned to look over his shoulder, searching for a dark shape against the misty grey air. He ploughed onwards. Finally, indistinctly, he thought he saw the block of the youth hostel rising above the wall. He increased his speed, tripped over a gravestone and sprawled once again on the damp ground. His clothes were soaked through, his knees and elbows muddy and torn. Picking himself up, he jogged the final few steps into the shadow of the hostel. He stood, resting against the cold stone of the cemetery wall.

Marcus followed the wall along until he came to the main gates. He was breathing heavily, his heart thumping horribly loudly in his chest. He crossed the road and sat steaming in a cafe, drinking scalding coffee until he felt warm enough to face the prospect of the bus home.

Four

Marcus could hear Darwin as he stood in the lift. The plangent yelping grew louder as he opened the front door. He stepped into the flat and the dog launched himself at him, licking his hands and turning delighted circles around his feet. Marcus leaned down to pat him, then went through to the kitchen to refill the water bowl. He poured out some bone-shaped biscuits, which the dog devoured, snuffling and whimpering as he ate. Marcus saw that there was a stringy turd in the middle of the drawing-room carpet, and dark patches of piss dotted around the rest of the flat. He put on rubber gloves, reached under the sink for a sponge and bucket, and set to work cleaning up after the dog.

It felt strange to be doing something so mundane as housework after the morning’s events, but Marcus wanted to put off the decisions that he knew he would have to make, needed to fend off the thought that Mouse might be responsible for Lee’s disappearance. When he had finished scrubbing, Marcus took Darwin downstairs and let him run around the small patch of grass at the back of the block of flats. He threw a stick for the dog, which he pounced upon and then tried to bury, unsure of what was expected of him. He stared up resentfully at Marcus when he picked up the stick, until he threw it again and the sequence was repeated. Marcus found himself smiling at the dog’s mindless enthusiasm. It was still drizzling, but the ferocious wind had passed, and a number of times the sun broke through the low clouds, sparkling on the wet grass.

Back in the flat, Marcus ran himself a bath and stripped off his damp, dirty clothes. It would be the first time he had missed a Sunday morning service in several months. A dull ache nagged at the back of his throat. When he had soaked some warmth into his chilled body, Marcus hunted in the medicine cabinet until he found a packet of Abby’s sleeping tablets and some painkillers. He gulped down a handful of pills, closed his bedroom curtains, and passed out on the bed. He woke a couple of times during the day, and managed to stagger to the kitchen and feed Darwin on one occasion, but didn’t rise properly until it was dark outside.

Marcus made himself bacon and eggs and sat down at the dining table with his computer in front of him. He hadn’t checked his emails since Friday, and it was another thing to occupy his time before he had to think about Mouse. He turned on the machine and ate while it warmed up. When he logged into his account, he saw with a mixture of pleasure and trepidation that there was an email from Abby titled ‘NYC’. He opened it and began to read.

Dear Marcus,

I can’t think when I last sent you an email. It feels strange. I wanted to let you know that I was thinking of you, though. I’m having a very good time out here. The Course is everywhere: in every church in Manhattan, or that’s what it feels like! I’m going up to Connecticut and then on to Boston, where I’ll be making a speech about how to be an effective Course leader. Terrifying.

I want you to know that I forgive you, Marcus. I hate what you did, but I love you. I think being away from you like this has made me realise how much we need each other. David once said to me that we were the best-matched couple he had ever met. I think he’s right and I don’t want to throw this all away because of one drunken mistake.

I wish you were out here with me, Marcus. It is cold, but the sun has shone brightly every day I have been here. The skyscrapers look beautiful in this sunlight. I am staying in the Earl’s apartment near the Frick. It’s predictably lavish, with carpets so thick that your feet disappear into them. I try to stop at the gallery every day — I want to get everything I can from this trip.

David said he might want me to stay an extra week — he’s trying to set something up at Yale. If not then I’ll be home the last week in November. Don’t be too lonely, darling.

Your wife,

Abby xxx

P.S. give me a call on the mobile Monday night your time.

Marcus read the email again and felt a hard knot of shame build in his stomach. He pictured Rebecca lying back naked on the beanbag, saw the childish amusement in her eyes as he licked his way up her leg. It seemed so long ago, though. So much had changed since then, Rebecca seemed like a character from a bizarre dream. He shut his computer and stared out of the window.

He would have to speak to Mouse. He owed it to his friend to give him a chance to explain. Perhaps Lee had given him the earrings before she disappeared, perhaps he had found them going through her possessions and was ashamed to have taken them. Marcus dialled Mouse’s mobile. There was no response. He left a message.

‘Mouse. It’s me. Listen, we need to talk. I want to hear your side of the story. Just tell me where you got the earrings and it can stay between us. No one else needs to know. Give me a call, Mouse. Please.’

Marcus hung up the phone and stretched out on the sofa. He opened up his computer again and found the article about Lee in the newspaper’s online edition. The piece contained very few facts, and hinted with many allegedlys and supposedlys and carefully hedged words that Lee killed herself because the Course was a cult that sought to control the lives of its followers. The newspaper would get a call from the Course’s lawyers, despite the careful manner in which it presented the story. Marcus read it once more and then drifted off to sleep. He woke after a couple of hours and stumbled to bed. Darwin, yawning, came too and curled up at his feet as he slept.

On Monday, Marcus kept his mobile in constant view. He found his work particularly dull that day as he trawled through further documents relating to the legal wrangle between Plantagenet Partners and the Chinese bank. The case was growing increasingly murky. It seemed to him that the hedge fund had acted recklessly and criminally, and now he was being asked to help them cover their tracks. He was surprised, when reading through one of the documents, to see the Earl’s name. He searched through the files on his computer and realised that the Earl was one of the initial backers of the shady hedge fund, and was now a non-executive director of the business. He wondered if the Earl knew the details of the case.

He could hardly muster the energy to care, though. Partly his boredom was driven by the anticipation of speaking to Abby, partly by the recollection of Rebecca’s response to his description of his life. Marcus knew that he was wasting his talents at the law firm, but the money was so good. He walked out for lunch feeling dejected, sniffing as he attempted to fight off the cold that sat threateningly behind his eyes.

Mouse hadn’t called by the time Marcus left the office at seven. Marcus went for a beer with some of his colleagues after work, then walked towards Moorgate. He made his way down into the Tube, determined to call Mouse when he came out at Notting Hill Gate. He sat on the swaying train half-reading a novel and wondering what he’d do if Mouse didn’t telephone. When he came out into the damp West London night, his answerphone alert was flashing. He dialled it as he walked towards his flat.

‘Marcus, it’s Mouse. I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier. I’m sorry about yesterday in the cemetery. I’m sorry about everything. But I can’t tell you how I got the earrings. Please just believe me, sport, I didn’t kill Lee. I’m going to go away for a while. Don’t turn your back on me now, Marcus. Please.’

Marcus listened to the message again and then saved it. He opened the door to his flat, fed Darwin, and sat down to call Abby. She answered almost immediately, her voice full of childish pleasure.

‘Oh, darling, it’s you. Your number doesn’t come up. How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

‘No you’re not. What’s wrong?’

He took a deep breath. ‘A lot of things have been happening, Abby. To do with Lee. I don’t really know what I should. . I found her earrings, Abby. I found them on Mouse’s boat.’

‘Tell me all about it. Start at the beginning and take me through what happened.’

Marcus told her about meeting Daffy in east London and then going on to the artist’s party. He skipped over the episode with Rebecca, but then described finding the earrings in the tortoiseshell box and his pursuit of Mouse across the graveyard. Finally, he related Mouse’s answerphone message. Abby was silent for a while.

‘I believe him, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know. I stayed the night on the boat on Thursday and I just got the feeling that he was hiding something, that there was something awful that he needed to tell me but couldn’t.’

He heard the sound of traffic in the background, a police siren wailed.

‘You should talk to David. He’ll know what to do. If Mouse is going away then he won’t be at the Course on Tuesday night. Go and speak to David afterwards. I’m sorry I’m not there, darling. But I know you’ll do the right thing. I still think Lee probably killed herself. And maybe you’re looking for things to demonstrate otherwise, to take away some guilt. Get lots of sleep, my love. You sound like you’re coming down with something. And call me whenever you want.’

*

On Tuesday evening, David stood in front of the Course members, his skin grey under the spotlight, large purplish bags under his bloodshot eyes.

‘You will have read the lies printed about one of our Course members in the press this weekend,’ he began. ‘I don’t want to dignify such monstrous rubbish with anything more than a cursory response. Lee Elek is a wonderful girl and a dear friend. We all miss her very much. But she has some significant personal problems, and I believe the Course is one of the very few forces for good in her life. Let us all pray now for Lee, wherever she might be.’

After the speech, which was shorter than usual, David and Marcus played an acoustic set on stage. There were candles around their feet and David sang in his high, soft voice. Some of the girls in the front row swayed along with the music. As expected, Mouse hadn’t turned up that evening. The two discussion groups were combined and Marcus would speak to them both in the low-ceilinged crypt room.

Marcus sat and stared at the new members, aware that Sally and David were behind him, watching. His head was fuzzy, his sinuses clogged and aching. While he had tried to steer the conversation around to the evening’s topic, Being an Apostle in the Modern World, the group had only wanted to talk about Lee. One of the quiet girls spoke first, looking down at her feet, her cheeks reddening.

‘I saw the article and, while I realise that it’s journalism, sensationalised, I can’t help but think that some of it must be true. Has David really made people leave because they were gay? It doesn’t seem like him.’

Marcus caught David’s eye and then looked back at the girl.

‘It should be obvious to you now you’ve done the Course that it’s total rubbish. I remember the boy they were talking about. He was trying to make some sort of political statement by coming here. David didn’t ask him to leave because he was gay. He told him that he was here for the wrong reasons and that he should either change those reasons or come back when he would get more from the Course.’

One of the twins raised a thin arm.

‘Alice and I were both very sad when our mummy died. I became quite horribly depressed. And I think we all knew that Lee was sad, suffered from her slumps. I suppose I’d have thought that the Course would insulate you against that kind of thing. Would give you the tools to stop you getting that bad. If Lee was a Course leader and still fell apart like this, what message does it give to us?’

David coughed and the group turned towards him. Marcus sank gratefully back on his chair. The priest stepped forward into the centre of the room, very grave, his hands pressed together.

‘We’re all human here, we all have doubts, many of us have been down — like Ele, like Lee. It’s hard not to look on the things going on in the world and get terribly downhearted. But we have to believe that what we’re doing here is right. I imagine over the next few weeks we’re going to learn a great deal more about the troubles that Lee was facing. And I think perhaps what we’ll end up realising is that it was a miracle that something like this didn’t happen sooner. That actually the Course helped sustain Lee until even her faith and our love couldn’t force away the darkness. I just wish that she had spoken to me more, that she had let me shoulder more of that terrible burden.’

Tears beaded at the corners of David’s eyes. He walked from the room. Sally hurried after him. The Course members sat in silence.

Finally, Neil, who had been leaning back watching them, spoke. A kind of holy glow radiated from his bald head.

‘When my daughter Phoebe died, I tried so hard to understand what was behind it. Unravelling the infinitely complex threads of her life became an obsession for me. It was as if I thought that if I could understand why she stopped eating, I might be able somehow to go back and make it better. Or at least that it might be proof that it wasn’t my fault, that nothing I could have done would have changed it. I spent hours staring at photographs of her when she was younger, trying to read the future in her sunny little smile. But, in the end, mental illness is unknowable to everyone except the sufferer.

‘There is something wrong with Lee, just as there was something wrong with Phoebe. We can go mad trying to find the reasons behind what happened to them, or we can move on. All we can do is love them; the rest is in God’s hands.’

He collected himself, lowered his head, and put his hands in his lap.

‘Thanks Neil,’ said Marcus. ‘I entirely agree. Now let’s get back to the Course material. It’s some of the most important stuff we’ll deal with — how to handle the conflicts that are thrown at Christians in the modern world. We need to arm ourselves against the demons that brought Lee and Phoebe down.’

*

When the discussion group had left, Marcus sat in the room, his head in his hands. Finally, he rose and made his way upstairs, through the darkened church and out into the night. David was waiting for him in the shadows of the porch. The priest coughed.

‘How did the rest of your discussion go?’ David asked.

‘I was on autopilot. I just couldn’t stop thinking about Lee. Did you speak to Abby? Do you know about Mouse? Have you called the police?’

‘Slow down, Marcus. I know about the earrings. But this is not the time to be jumping to any conclusions. I need to talk to Mouse. He’s coming here on Friday. Let me get his side of the story and then, if we need to, we can go to the police together. In the mean time, try to take care of yourself. You look very tired.’

Marcus went home and phoned Abby. She didn’t answer. The cold that had been threatening arrived that night. Marcus woke with his throat raw and swollen, his nose blocked and his chest tight. He swallowed down a handful of painkillers and lay in the dark, feeling profoundly sorry for himself. The next day he struggled into work, determined to put thoughts of Lee and Mouse out of his mind until the weekend. He left the office as early as possible that evening and flung himself into bed.

He had forgotten that it was fireworks night. The curtains were open and he saw the bright explosions of light over Holland Park. Darwin crawled into bed beside him and he hugged the little dog against his wheezing chest. The shards of excited light coloured his bedroom walls as he drifted off to sleep. The last he remembered seeing were blue and green, and in his dozing mind they became Lee’s earrings, her face written into the sky behind them in the pattern of a million stars.

*

On Saturday morning, early enough that Marcus was still asleep, although not so early that he could ignore the call, David Nightingale telephoned.

‘Hello,’ said Marcus, searching for the light switch.

‘Marcus, it’s David. How are you feeling? I thought you looked very ill on Tuesday.’

Marcus had struggled into work on Thursday and Friday, but the cold had established itself in his chest, giving his voice a husky growl.

‘I’m fine. I need to get some rest and then I’ll be fine.’

‘You should come over here. I think it would be a good idea for us to talk to Mouse together. He’s with me now.’

‘OK. I’ll be over as soon as I can.’

Marcus drank a Lemsip as he dressed. His movements were slow and stumbling as he searched through his cupboard for a clean shirt. He realised that he hadn’t put a wash on since Abby had left. Clothes spewed out of the hamper in the corner of the bedroom. He rummaged through them looking for a pair of boxer shorts that were not too filthy to wear. Finally, he made his way out into the bright morning, started the car, and set out for St Botolph’s.

He felt a kind of nostalgia as he turned off the King’s Road and into the high gates in front of the church. So many times he had come here with Abby, both of them full of hope and quiet excitement at the prospect of an inspiring discussion group, or a service, or dinner at the rectory. Whatever happened next, Marcus realised that everything had already changed. Things were not recoverable from here. He imagined himself twenty-three again, tried to steal back the excitement he had felt after his first Retreat, when everything he believed was reshaped by David Nightingale, when the love he felt for Abby and his family was knitted into his love for the church, rather than being twenty-eight and ground down by a boring job, by guilt, by betrayal. He stopped the car and eased himself out onto the familiar crunch of the gravel.

The church clock chimed ten. A robin was singing somewhere. Marcus saw the bird perched on the railings that ran along the edge of the churchyard. The bird tilted his head back, threw out his chest and unleashed a long, liquid stream of notes. Marcus skipped up the steps to the front door and rang the bell.

David answered the door. He was dressed in a blue button-down shirt and chinos. He fixed his pale eyes on Marcus. They were less bloodshot than they had been at the Course on Tuesday night. Marcus took the priest’s hand.

‘Thank you for coming. Gosh, you don’t look well. Do you want a coffee or something?’

‘Yes, that would be great,’ Marcus mumbled. He followed David into the kitchen while the priest made coffee, unwilling to face Mouse alone.

‘Is he here?’

‘He’s in the drawing room, yes. Along with a few others. Let’s go through.’

Marcus followed David across the hall. Mouse was sitting in an armchair directly opposite the entrance. He looked up at Marcus and nodded glumly, then stared back at his feet, which were propped on a velvet pouffe. The Earl was seated in the corner, his fierce eyes fixed on Marcus and David. Marcus stepped further into the room and turned towards the sofa. Abby was there, sitting very upright, a hopeful smile fixed on her wide face.

‘Abby!’

She rose and embraced him.

‘I got the last flight back last night. I wanted to be here for this.’ She took his chin in her hand and looked at his face. ‘You look dreadful, darling. You obviously need me here to look after you.’

Marcus sat down beside Abby. David remained standing, moving behind Mouse’s chair and looking across at Marcus. He carried some of the awful grandeur that had once made Marcus afraid to look at him.

‘I thought we should all sit down together. Mouse has told me everything. We should listen to his story, and then discuss what to do. Mouse has been very brave coming to me like this. Over to you, Mouse.’

Mouse shifted in his chair, leaned forward, and began to speak. He wrung his hands as he talked. He clearly hadn’t slept for a while.

‘Lee’s dead. She died just after five in the morning on the Sunday of the Retreat.’

Marcus felt a wave of melancholy sweep over him. He had imagined this moment so many times that it hardly shocked him. Mouse’s words confirmed something that he felt he had known all along. Abby held his hand very tightly. The priest nodded at Mouse, who was sitting quite still, his eyes full of tears.

‘Why don’t you tell it from the beginning, Mouse? Just like you told me.’

Mouse let out a sigh.

‘It was past four. Marcus and I had come up together from the dining hall around three. I couldn’t sleep, so I wandered over to the west wing. I wanted to find the mermaid frieze that I’d seen the day before. When I came to the top of the winding stairs, I heard the sound of someone crying. I walked down the corridor and the sound grew louder. I came to a further staircase which led to a tower. The one that we saw when we were coming up from the lake. There was a wee room at the top with a desk and a few books.’

‘It’s my study,’ the Earl interrupted. ‘I rarely use it these days, but I like to have a place to work when I’m in the country.’

‘Lee was standing at the window looking down at the moon on the lake and crying. I went up behind her and tried to comfort her, but she was absolutely wild. I couldn’t get near to her. She said that the Course was responsible for her depression. That she had been happy before all the guilt. That was how she put it. She told me what had happened with Marcus on the boat and then she just dissolved in tears.

‘I thought about going to get David or you, Marcus, but she stormed back downstairs and into her room. She started to throw her clothes into a bag, said she was going to walk to the train station at Banbury. She told me that she hated us. That she wished we were all dead.’

A large tear rolled down the left side of Mouse’s face.

‘She ran away from me down the corridor and then started down the stairs. I ran after, she slipped. . or she jumped. I couldn’t tell. She rose up into the air like she was trying to fly. I almost caught her. I was close enough to catch her, but I couldn’t quite grab hold of her jumper. She thudded all the way down the stairs and landed at the bottom with a horrible crunch.’

Mouse was sobbing now and drew his sleeve across his face. Abby let go of Marcus’s hand and crossed to sit on the arm of Mouse’s chair. She stroked his hair with her large hands.

‘When I got down to her she wasn’t breathing. I tried to give her mouth-to-mouth, but there was this huge dent in her head. I couldn’t believe that falling down the stairs could do that to someone, but she landed so hard, and it was marble at the bottom. I panicked. I don’t know why, but it felt like it was my fault. Like you’d all blame me for it, you know? I carried her down to the lake. I opened the boathouse and wrapped her round with fishing line and attached weights to it. I rowed out in the little boat and pushed her into the water. Then I drove your car up to Banbury Station to make it look like she’d run away. When you came down in the morning I’d just got back, Marcus.’

He stopped and looked down at his hands, then up at Marcus.

‘I’m sorry.’

Marcus was fighting for breath. ‘Jesus, Mouse,’ he said. ‘I mean, really. What were you thinking?’

Mouse looked back at him. ‘I just didn’t know what to do. She was dead.’

Marcus looked over at David.

‘So we’re going to the police, right? I mean, we have to tell them all this. Tell D.I. Farley. Mouse can claim diminished responsibility or whatever. I’m not sure that throwing someone who’s already dead in a lake is even an offence. But we have to tell them, don’t we?’

There was a long silence. Finally, the Earl spoke.

‘I don’t quite see who it helps, telling the police.’ His voice was a whisper.

‘Well, it helps Lee’s family for one. Her parents need to know what happened to their daughter. And surely it isn’t a matter of whom it helps. It’s about doing what is right. Lee died and the police need to know.’

Abby crossed back to sit next to Marcus.

‘David told me about this yesterday. I had a chance to think about it on the flight. I agree that it’s a very complex situation.’

‘I don’t think it is,’ Marcus interrupted her. ‘I don’t think it’s very complex at all. It seems like a very simple situation to me.’

‘Let me finish,’ Abby continued, her voice very calm. ‘It is complex. Isn’t it better for Lee’s family to have the hope that she isn’t dead? Isn’t it better that they think she might have gone off to a better life, stowed away on a ship or run off with a billionaire on his private jet? Of course, they’ll always think that she probably killed herself, but I don’t want to be the one who takes their hope away from them. Especially her father. He loved her so much, you know, and Lee was always saying how fragile he was. I worry that taking away this last bit of hope might finish him off.’

‘And more than that is what this would do to the Course.’ David stood in the centre of the room with his hands clasped in front of him. ‘Nothing that we can do will change things for Lee.’

‘She’s lying at the bottom of a lake, David. Of course we can’t change things for her.’ Marcus stood up and faced the priest.

‘Exactly,’ David continued. ‘I want to go up and have a service at Lancing Manor. Just us. Set her to rest properly — that is only right. But I am God’s servant and my obligation is to do what best serves God’s interests. If the news about Lee got out, it would destroy everything we have built here. The Course is about to take off in the States in a very major way. We are now in three hundred churches across the UK. Imagine all the good we’re doing. Imagine what it means to the priests to have their churches full. Imagine how many girls there are like Lee dealing with similar problems who will find a way to peace through God, and all because of the Course. If we go public with this, I will have to resign. The whole thing will come apart.’

‘Why?’ asked Marcus. ‘It’s Mouse’s fault. He can take the blame for this. Not you.’

David looked across at Marcus. ‘Because if Mouse speaks to the police he will have to tell them that one of the reasons that Lee was in such a state was because she had been taken advantage of by her best friend’s husband.’

Marcus sat down next to Abby. She was staring at the floor. The priest continued.

‘Infidelity, lies, a body in a lake. Of course I’ll have to quit if this comes out. Nonsense in a newspaper, I can handle. But not this. I should have seen it. The Devil was working in you and Lee all along, working his evil way through my own Course leaders, and now it is all ruined. Everything I worked to build. . ruined.’

David marched from the room, climbed the stairs and retreated behind the door of his study. The rest of the Course members sat in silence. After several minutes, the Earl stood up.

‘I must be getting home. The car is waiting outside. I take it we can rely upon your discretion, Marcus?’ He strode from the room.

Mouse fixed his large eyes on Marcus, hopefully.

Marcus turned to Abby and said, ‘I think we should go.’

*

When they got home, Marcus lifted Abby’s suitcase from the boot of the car and walked with her into the flat. She padded through the rooms, taking deep breaths, nudging the pile of unwashed shirts in their bedroom with her toe. Marcus felt bruised and empty. His head roared and he could barely speak through his swollen throat. He bent down and started to pick up the dirty clothes.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ Marcus began, but Abby threw her arms around him and kissed him long and wet on the lips.

‘I’m pregnant again,’ she said.

Marcus took her hands in his.

‘That’s amazing,’ he said.

‘I started feeling really tired in New York, and I realised that I hadn’t had my period. I know it’s only early days, but I think that if the baby has made it this far, through all this stress, then it must have a pretty good chance. I mean, I’m really not counting on it, but it just feels much more real this time. Much more like something that should happen to us, after Lee and everything.’

Marcus lifted her T-shirt and put a hand on her belly. Her stomach was warm and pudgy and he smiled at her.

‘How far gone do you think you are?’

‘Five weeks, maybe a little more.’

Marcus went out to the shops and bought some vegetables and chicken which he stir-fried in a wok. They sat and ate at the dinner table, facing each other, refusing to talk about Mouse or the meeting earlier. When they were finished, Abby pushed her bowl away and reached over to take Marcus’s hand.

‘Darling, we need to discuss things. Mouse, Lee, everything. But first, there’s something else I wanted to speak to you about.’

Marcus poured himself a glass of wine and sat looking over at his wife.

‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to be in the States. The Course has just exploded over there. And of course we have only done the North-East. There’s such enormous potential.’

Her face glowed as she spoke.

‘The priests out there really get it. There’s so much energy in the way they deliver the speeches. It feels like it did for us, right at the beginning. The start of an extraordinary journey.’

She paused for a moment.

‘David has asked me to go out there full-time. He needs an administrator in the US, someone he can rely upon to run things, look after the expansion.’

Marcus felt his face drop.

‘But. .’ he began.

‘He wants you to go with me.’

He stared at Abby.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He wants you to come and work for the Course. We’d share responsibilities. You’d run things while I have the baby. It would be a fresh start for us. It would take us away from all of this.’

‘But what about my job?’

‘You hate it. You said you were desperate to leave. The Course can’t match your salary. But we’d be doing something we really loved.’

‘And the baby?’

‘I’ll have it out there. I told David about it and he said he’d make sure the Course looked after the whole thing. It would be wonderful.’

He pictured the two of them pushing a buggy through Central Park on a Saturday morning, imagined what it would be like to be away from London, away from the guilt and the memories.

‘Can I think about it? I mean, it sounds great, but so much has happened. I just need some time to get it all straight in my head.’

*

Mouse didn’t come to the service the next day. It was very cold and Marcus thought that the canal might have frozen over. Mouse used to worry that the Gentle Ben’s hull would crack in the ice and had spent several days the previous winter boiling kettles and pouring them down the side of the boat. Marcus kept looking out for his friend as the service progressed, hoping somehow that seeing him would help unravel the knot of conflicting emotions in his cold-muddled mind.

After the service they went over to the rectory for coffee. The Earl stood in the corner of the drawing room talking to a tall couple. The woman held a tiny baby in her arms and looked down at it, clucking every so often. Her husband smiled at her approvingly. His name was Simon Cooper-Jones and he was one of the City’s most successful hedge-fund managers, not yet forty and worth tens of millions. He was devoted to the Course and a major donor. Marcus crossed and leaned against the mantelpiece beside them, listening.

‘Your boys are doing a fine job of managing the Course funds,’ the Earl said, chucking the sleeping baby under the chin with a meaty finger, but keeping his eyes on Simon. ‘Up twenty per cent plus in this market isn’t easy.’

‘We’re the best. You know that by now. You should give us a bit more of your own cash.’

‘I might just do that. You’re not worried about another Crash?’

‘Always worried, never fearful. That’s my motto. How’s the US expansion going? I really think it’s an extraordinary untapped market.’

‘It’s going very well in New York,’ the Earl replied. ‘David is doing some work with the Ivy League universities. We’re going at the market top-down — it served us well here and I don’t see why it shouldn’t work out there. Do you have a New York office?’

‘Of course. Let me know which church you want them to attend and I’ll send some of my team along.’

After they had finished their coffee, Marcus and Abby stepped out into the frosty sunlit day. As they crossed the car park in front of the church, the Earl jogged to catch up with them. He took Abby’s arm.

‘I hear that you two are thinking of going out to New York full-time. I’m delighted. It has been a ghastly few weeks. It’ll be a new start for you both. And the Course will flourish over there. I know it. You must treat my apartment as your own. Stay for as long as you like. I’m rarely over there these days. Too old and tired for the transatlantic life.’

As Marcus pulled out onto the King’s Road, he saw a man in a faded velvet jacket walking away from them, west towards Fulham. The collar of the jacket was raised against the wind and the man was smoking, taking deep, angry drags and then blowing the smoke into the air above him. Marcus tried to turn around, but the traffic was heavy in both directions. Abby followed his gaze and opened her mouth to speak. A bus crossed in front of them and when it was gone, the figure had disappeared.

When they got home, Abby walked out to the shops to buy lunch. Marcus sat at the table in the drawing room and thought. He realised that he was being given another chance, an opportunity to make things right with Abby, and that this decision would change everything, define the person he was, and who he would become. He crossed to the window, opened it a crack and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the cold air. Everything had changed. Even if he stayed in London, it would be a hollow simulacrum of his old life. He’d be like those friends from college who had remained at university to do MAs and PhDs with the same tutors, who would then teach at the college, forever walking in the footsteps of their teenage selves, trying to recapture those happy years. He worried about leaving Mouse, but otherwise there was nothing keeping him here. He finished his cigarette and shut the window.

There was a picture of him and Abby on the sideboard. They were standing in the portico of a church and Abby’s arm was around him. It was the day of their wedding and he was looking away from the camera, off into the middle distance. He couldn’t remember where his gaze had been directed, whether towards Lee, or Mouse, or one of the pretty Course wives holding a baby in the churchyard. But Abby’s eyes stared straight at the camera, hopeful, her smile full of pride. It made Marcus sad to look at her. He realised that, in his mind, there had never been a time when he had been truly faithful to Abby. He had fucked girls behind her back throughout university and, even though — until his most recent indiscretions — he had kept his infidelity in check since joining the Course, cheating was always there in his mind as an option. Perhaps, he thought, his parents had been too happy together, presenting an unattainable ideal which, because he could never replicate it, he had to destroy.

Now he had the opportunity to start again. He picked up the photograph and looked into his wife’s face. He felt a great swelling of love. They were having a baby together. He was going to be a father. He heard her keys in the door. Abby struggled down the corridor and dropped the shopping bags on the kitchen floor. She took off her coat and flung it on the counter. Marcus stepped behind her and folded his arms around her large frame. She leant back against him, closing her eyes, her head on his shoulder.

‘I’m coming with you,’ he whispered.

Her eyes snapped open. A smile broke gently over her face.

‘Really?’

‘Of course I am. We’ll make a new life out there.’

‘Oh, darling, I’m so happy. I couldn’t have gone without you.’

They stood, breathing heavily, listening to the cars on Notting Hill Gate, an Underground train rattling over a bridge, the distant thump of music. Very gently, he slid his hand up under her jumper and let it rest on her hot, soft stomach.

Five

Marcus discovered that it was possible, with a degree of concentration, to pretend that Lee had never existed. He found it easier still now that Mouse had stopped coming to church. Abby and Marcus had hosted the final Course session together, both groups squeezed into the one room. Marcus seemed especially galvanised as he led the discussion. David and Sally Nightingale looked on with pride as the two young people, heads bowed, prayed with the new members. An atmosphere of quiet contentment hung over the group: they had made it through. They were part of the Course. At the end of the session, the members came up one by one and thanked Marcus and Abby.

The twins bounced in front of them, squealing. Neil slipped Marcus a business card with a sly nod. All the pale, quiet girls from Marcus’s group came up to him and hugged him. David opened some bottles of champagne and they toasted each other, toasted the missing members. Neil suggested they toast Jesus. When the last members went home, Marcus and Abby walked out into the night with David.

‘Well done, you two.’ The priest sounded a little drunk.

‘It was a good way to finish,’ said Marcus.

‘I always knew I could count on you guys. Lee and Mouse were too young, too fragile. I should have realised that. But you two are my stalwarts, you have repaid the faith I showed in you.’

‘It does feel good, to see the new members like that, to know that the Course is now central to their lives. I feel like we have achieved something, that maybe it was worth all the pain, worth losing Lee and Mouse.’ Marcus smiled at the priest and took Abby’s hand.

‘I’m glad you feel that way. Have you heard from Mouse?’ David asked.

Marcus shook his head. ‘I’ll go up to the boat at the weekend. I’ve left him a few messages. I’m sure he’s just feeling shell-shocked by the whole thing. He’ll be back.’

‘He’ll want to see you before you go. And he always loves Christmas at the church. I’m sure he’ll come to the service on Sunday. We’re singing carols.’

Marcus and Abby got into the car just as the first flakes of snow began to fall.

*

On Saturday morning, when the snow had been reduced to a grey dusting on slate rooftops, Marcus and Abby walked up to the canal. They would have to leave Darwin behind when they went to New York, and they looked at the dog fondly as he capered alongside them. Sally Nightingale would care for him until they returned. Marcus led Darwin along the towpath, allowing him to burrow into mounds of wet snow, where he’d draw his muzzle out dripping and dirty and fix Marcus with an accusing glare. When they got to the Gentle Ben there were no lights on. Marcus tried the door, but this time it was firmly locked.

‘Shall we call his mother?’ Abby asked, as they walked back towards Ladbroke Grove.

‘I don’t know. I think if he wanted to see us, he would.’

As they walked back, Abby took his hand.

‘Do you think you'd ever give up smoking? It would mean a lot to me.’

He reached into his pocket, drew out a packet of cigarettes and crumpled it into a ball. He hurled the ball into the canal.

They made their way up the ramp and onto the bridge. The canal was healing over with ice. Darwin poked his nose through the bars of the railings and sniffed the cold air. Marcus looked up through skeletal trees into the graveyard. He could make out the roof of the chapel in the distance, the peaks of the obelisks that lined the avenue where he had slipped. Abby was watching a pair of Canada geese waddling sedately along the towpath.

‘They look like old women,’ she said. ‘Querulous old women complaining about the weather.’

The geese, seeing a gaggle of their companions squabbling over husks of bread thrown from a narrowboat moored further up the towpath, started to run. Flapping their wings and squawking like old-fashioned bicycle horns, they rose up into the air and were suddenly majestic as they wheeled over their comrades. Marcus and Abby walked arm in arm down Ladbroke Grove, inexplicably cheered by the sight of the geese transformed in flight.

Days passed in busy preparation for their move. They would be spending Christmas with Marcus’s mother in Surrey and then flying to New York on the twenty-seventh. There was still no sign of Mouse. Marcus tried his mobile every few days, but it always rang through to the answerphone. He had stopped leaving messages. Snow began to fall again, and this time settled in heaps outside the front door of the block of flats. Marcus persuaded himself that he could see Abby gaining weight. He kissed her very carefully in the mornings before he set off for work. Barely allowing his lips to graze her skin, he’d lean down over her and watch as she smiled in her sleep.

Marcus had handed in his notice to Michael Faraday, his senior partner at the law firm.

‘But you’re doing very well here,’ the sharp-faced little man had said, running his eye down Marcus’s evaluations. ‘There’s a big future for you at the firm if you stick at it.’

Marcus just grinned and shook his head. It was agreed that he would work until Christmas.

In the event there was very little for Marcus to do. No one wanted him to start a case when it was known that he was leaving. The Chinese bank had dropped its case against Plantagenet Partners due to lack of evidence. Marcus spent his days organising the move. They would let the flat in Notting Hill to a couple from the Course. With this income and the salary that he had agreed with David, Marcus worked out that they wouldn’t be much worse off in New York than in London. As he strolled out for long lunches during those weeks in early December, he thought ahead happily to the life they would build in another city, to the child who would come.

*

On the Wednesday afternoon before Christmas, Marcus set out for Senate House. He had spent the morning on the telephone to the removals company that was transporting their books and clothes out to the US. After lunch he sat throwing a tennis ball against his window until the partner in the office next door hurled a book at the wall. Marcus reached for his phone and started to dial Mouse, then stood up and pulled on his coat.

He walked up through the City, along High Holborn and up Farringdon Road. Snow blew in gusts along the wide roads. He saw the flushed faces of lunchtime drinkers, ties loosened around fat necks, hands clasping pints as they braved the weather to smoke. He drew out a piece of nicotine gum and chewed it, realising that he didn’t miss smoking. It had become a chore, the need to make chilly forays into the freezing winter for the diminishing hit of his super-light fags.

When he came to Russell Square he looked up at the tower above him, straining his eyes to see the misty summit. There were strange runic designs in copper set into the front of the tower. It looked to him like the headquarters of a cult. He walked through the heavy metal doors and into the entrance hall. It was gloomy inside. The marble floor was wet with muddy footprints, blown-in snow.

Marcus followed signs for the Special Collections Reading Room. He knew this was Mouse’s domain. The lift was an ancient contraption, and it moaned and clunked as it took Marcus up to the fourth floor. He stepped out and walked over to a bank of turnstiles. It was silent in the wood-panelled hallway. He stood at the desk and rang a bell; it trilled loudly enough to make him jump. Finally, a girl wearing thick glasses and a green cardigan walked through the swing doors behind the desk and nodded at him.

‘Can I help you?’

In the instant that the girl moved through the doors, Marcus had seen Mouse. His friend was in the room behind the doors, his feet up on a table, a mug of tea in his hands.

‘I’m looking for Alastair Burrows. If you wouldn’t mind telling him that Marcus is here to see him.’

‘Um, yes, OK. I’ll go and get him.’

The girl disappeared behind the doors again into what Marcus presumed was a staff room. Several minutes passed and then Mouse came out, alone.

‘Hi, Marcus.’

‘Hi.’

They stood looking at one another in the yellow light of the old library.

‘I can do you a day pass if you’d like to come in?’

‘That would be good.’

Marcus waited while Mouse tapped away at a keyboard. The turnstile opened and he walked through. Mouse stepped out from behind the desk and held out his hand to Marcus. Marcus shook it, then reached over to hug him. They stood in this awkward half-embrace for a moment and then Mouse drew back.

‘I just wanted to check that you were OK,’ said Marcus. ‘We missed you at the last Course session. At church, too.’

Mouse shook his head. ‘Are you just passing by? Or can you stay for a bit? We could go up to my room.’

‘I’ve got some time. I told Abby I’d be back for dinner.’

Marcus followed Mouse out to a stairwell. They walked up three flights and the stairs ended in a door marked Staff Only. Mouse unlocked this and it gave onto a smaller stairway. They climbed up together. Marcus counted the floors as they rose through the library. Mouse panted as he climbed. On the fourteenth floor, Mouse opened the heavy brown door on the landing and they stepped out into an empty corridor with a parquet floor. Marcus recognised the howling wind from telephone conversations that he had had with his friend.

‘Not much further,’ Mouse muttered as he led them down the corridor, through a set of swing doors and then around a corner into another long passageway. They walked through more doors and then the corridor turned again, ending abruptly in a brick wall. Mouse opened the last door on the right-hand side and Marcus followed him through it into a large, echoing hall. Along one side of the hall were long windows, with stained glass in the uppermost panes. Marcus saw a date — 1936 — set into the red and green glass. There were no shelves in the hall, but Marcus nonetheless caught the sweet, dusty scent of old books. At the far end, Mouse had built a den. A wardrobe stood against one wall with a duvet and several pillows lining the bottom. Shirts hung above the little nest. A trestle table sat in front of the window with a desk lamp on it, books piled beside it and scattered across the floor around it. There was a cardboard box in which Marcus saw various bottles, a loaf of bread, some toiletries.

‘Is this where you’ve been living?’ Marcus asked, turning to his friend.

‘Do you want a drink?’ Mouse walked over and found a half-full bottle of wine. He pulled the cork out and poured it into plastic cups. ‘It was cold on the boat. The heating isn’t all that good. And I knew you’d come looking for me there.’

Marcus sipped the wine.

‘It’s amazing up here.’

Mouse walked over and opened a window. Snow was falling outside. They both stood and looked out over the roofs and down to the dome of St Paul’s. Mouse drew out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Marcus.

‘You have to lean out, otherwise the smoke alarms get you.’

Marcus held up his hand. ‘I’m not smoking.’ He paused. ‘Abby is pregnant.’

Mouse turned to him with delighted eyes. ‘You’re joking. Sport, that’s grand. I’m so happy for you both.’

Marcus was touched by his friend’s joy. ‘I shouldn’t really tell anyone yet. You might have guessed that we’ve had some trouble before. But I’ve a good feeling about this one.’

Mouse put his arm around Marcus’s shoulder and blew a jet of smoke out of the window.

‘Have you got names yet?’

‘No, that would feel like jinxing it somehow.’

The snow began to fall more heavily. Mouse finished his cigarette and closed the window. The wind had picked up and moaned balefully as Mouse opened another bottle of wine. They sat on pillows with their backs against the wood-panelled wall. The light had dropped outside and Mouse switched on the desk lamp.

‘We’re going away for a while,’ Marcus said.

Mouse looked across at him.

‘Where?’ he asked.

‘David has asked Abby to stay on in New York. I’m going to go with her. Only for a year. Two at the most.’

Mouse’s face fell.

‘You’ll have the baby out there?’

Marcus nodded.

‘Oh. I was hoping. . I suppose I can come out to visit.’

‘Of course you can. You can come whenever you want. You’ll be the godfather, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Mouse smiled. ‘When are you going?’

‘Straight after Christmas.’

‘Oh. That’s very soon.’ Mouse stared down at his hands. Marcus’s voice softened.

‘I just realised that we had to grow up. When Abby came back, she seemed changed, suddenly an adult. I’m going to be a father; I’m fed up with pretending I’m still a teenager. I want my kid to have a dad he can be proud of.’

‘You’re a Course leader. You’re a successful lawyer. I don’t understand.’

‘All of us, we’re in hiding, obsessed with our narrow little world. I’m not saying that going to America will change all of that, but at least it’ll change something.’

‘But what about me? What about us?’

‘Lee’s death has altered everything. Things can’t go back to how they were. David will find a new group of Course leaders, but The Revelations are finished.’

They drank the remains of the bottle of wine.

‘Listen, I’m going to have to get going. Abby, you know. .’

‘I know. I understand.’ Mouse looked downcast for a moment, then smiled over at Marcus hopefully. ‘Will you stay for just one more drink? I have some vodka over here somewhere.’ He rose. ‘Here it is. Stay and toast the end of an era. Just while I have one last cigarette.’

Mouse filled both their glasses and walked over to the window. Darkness had fallen, but the lights that illuminated the tower blazed up into the night sky. The snow raged in the beams of light, whipped across their field of vision by the wind, swirling upwards and then exploding in all directions as it hit the building. Marcus watched flakes land at Mouse’s feet and disappear into the parquet floor. He crossed to stand behind his friend.

‘You know the story about the lights?’ Mouse was staring out into the blizzard, the cigarette held in his lips, his hands either side of the window frame.

‘During the blackout, Senate House was the only building illuminated in Bloomsbury. A beacon of light for the German bombers. They never switched these things off. But it wasn’t hit. Through the whole of the Blitz this enormous building stood here, like a middle finger raised to the Germans, and never once did they hit it. Bombs fell either side, they devastated the area up towards Euston and across Clerkenwell and Holborn, but never here.’

Mouse raised his glass.

‘Cheers, by the way. Anyway, after the war they found out that Hitler was planning to base the Third Reich in Britain in Senate House. I mean, it has the right feel about it, doesn’t it? The size of the place, the sense that it’ll be here in a thousand years when all the City skyscrapers have been burned to the ground. If Oswald Mosley had won power, he intended to move parliament here.’

Marcus finished his drink and placed the cup on the trestle table.

‘I really have to go now.’ It was almost seven o’clock.

‘Just. . I need to speak to you.’ Mouse didn’t turn around, but drained his plastic cup and sent it spinning out into the snow. Marcus stood in the middle of the room, hands hanging at his sides, looking at his friend’s squat frame silhouetted against the white world outside.

‘I want to go to the police,’ Mouse said. ‘I want to hand myself in. Tell everyone exactly what happened. I just can’t stop thinking about Lee’s dad. I’m responsible for his hope, and it isn’t fair. Every time the telephone rings, every time there’s a knock on the door, part of him — maybe an increasingly small part of him as time passes, but part of him nonetheless — will think it’s her. He’s an amazing man. I always loved speaking to him whenever I went up there. He deserves better than this. We shouldn’t be covering this up.’

Marcus’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it, stood lost in thought for a moment. Mouse continued.

‘I’ve been thinking very hard about this. I almost called D.I. Farley last night. I don’t know what’ll happen to me, but it really doesn’t matter. I’d be fine in jail. I’d cosy up to some big gangster type, offer to soap him in the shower. I’d be grand.’

‘Here, give me one of those.’ Mouse passed him a cigarette. Marcus took a long drag and sighed as he let the smoke out through his nose. He pulled the chair out from under the trestle table and sat down.

‘But it’s more than that. .’

‘Go on,’ said Marcus.

‘The Course used to be about making us better people. I used to believe that, despite the showiness and the money sloshing around, it was a genuinely good thing. But it has changed, you know? The Course has become a corporation. It’s bigger than Lee’s death, and that just can’t be right. Because that’s what David’s saying, isn’t it? That it isn’t worth jeopardising the American expansion for the sake of telling the truth about Lee. The Earl has turned David’s head. Because David is a good man. He would have done the right thing if this had happened a year ago. He wouldn’t have let us cover up Lee’s death.’

Marcus’s phone buzzed again. He answered it.

‘I’m sorry, Abby.’ He knew he sounded drunk. He made an effort not to slur his words. ‘I’m with Mouse. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Eat without me.’ He hung up.

‘Will you come with me to the police station? Will you help me through this? I’m pretty scared. I want to do the right thing, but it isn’t going to be easy.’

Mouse paused, walked over to find the vodka, and took a swig from the bottle. He passed it to Marcus. Marcus gulped, wiped his arm across his mouth and rocked back on the chair.

‘I’ve obviously been thinking about it, too,’ he said. ‘It’s weird, but I’ve changed so much over the past few weeks. I used to think I was in control of things. I always used to feel like I was the centre of the room, at the heart of things, but these days. . everything seems so different. As if life is just rushing by. Like I’m on a train travelling very quickly and I lose sight of things flashing past, have to really concentrate to catch sight of the world. Things are just happening to me.’

Mouse turned to Marcus and looked at him. Marcus found it difficult to meet his friend’s eyes.

‘I agree with you about the Course and about David,’ said Marcus. ‘This whole American dream has given him visions of global domination. He thinks he’s going to be some flashy televangelist preaching to thousands in aircraft-hangar churches, beamed out on prime time to the homes of a million fawning fans.’

Marcus stood, took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it out into the snow.

‘But the Course is a force for good. In this fucked-up world you have to think that getting people to believe in a mild, forgiving God is a good thing. We forget how much the Course has done for us. Imagine who you’d be without it. I’d be a monster, I’m sure. You have to realise that David is right. Letting people know about Lee will destroy the Course. To have a story like this break would wreck it.

‘I think about Abby, too. I’ve been a shit husband. I realise that. And I need to try to make things up to her. I’m going to do everything I can for this baby, for her, for the Course. I’m not trying to change your mind. Or rather, I’m just trying to make you see that if you tell the police it’s going to have huge repercussions.’

‘But isn’t it the right thing to do?’

‘I don’t think anything is as simple as that. I don’t think there’s such a thing as right and wrong any more.’

‘Do you think Abby would be terribly hurt?’

‘Of course. I worry. . I worry about the baby. What the shock would do to her, to the baby.’

‘Oh, Jesus, you can’t use that. You can’t use that against me.’

‘It’s something that I think about, of course it is.’

‘What will you do if I do tell them?’

‘I can’t stop you.’

‘But you won’t come with me.’

‘I don’t know that I can.’

‘Please?’

Mouse’s breath misted in the air blown in from the window. Marcus was staring out at the snow.

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Marcus said. ‘I was totally lost. This move, it gives me a second chance. I know I should help you, Mouse, but I can’t. I’m putting everything in God’s hands. I think, perhaps, it’s God who has been directing things, that’s why I feel like I’ve lost control. I’ve decided to embrace that, to let Him lead me from here on.’

‘That’s really dumb. You can’t mean it?’

‘I just don’t know what else to say. I’m so sorry.’

Marcus put his arms around Mouse and they stood there for a few minutes. Marcus reached over and gently pulled the window closed. There was a line of white snow across the diagonal Vs of the wooden floor.

‘I have to go.’

Mouse’s mouth hung open. His eyes, which had been wide and questioning, suddenly narrowed.

‘OK. I understand. Let me show you out.’

They walked down the long flight of stairs together in silence. Mouse went first, breathing heavily, slowing as they descended. Finally, they stood by the turnstiles in the yellowish glow of the library lights. Mouse’s eyes were red.

‘Goodbye, sport,’ he said. ‘Give my love to Abby.’

Marcus reached out to hug his friend again, but Mouse pulled away.

‘Tell her I hope the birth. . that everything goes well for her.’

Marcus felt in his pocket.

‘I have something for you.’

He dropped the pair of earrings, one turquoise, one blue, into his friend’s hand. Mouse’s eyes filled with tears.

‘Thank you,’ he said, his voice breaking.

Marcus stepped into the lift.

‘I’m sorry.’

Mouse shook his head, tears streaming from his bright, buoyant eyes.

‘Bye, Mouse.’

Mouse stood at the lift doors until they closed, then Marcus rode downwards in the wheezing, clanging contraption. Outside, the snow had begun to drift in Russell Square. Marcus hailed a taxi and made his way back to the flat.

When he got inside, Abby was sitting cross-legged on the bed reading a book about child-rearing, one of a large pile that sat on the dresser in their room. Marcus brushed his teeth and lay alongside her. She closed the book and took his head in her lap, bending down to kiss him.

‘You found Mouse,’ she said.

‘Mmm. He was at the library.’ Marcus stared up at her.

‘How is he?’

‘He’s OK. He’ll be fine.’

‘D’you think he’ll come back to the Course?’

‘I don’t know. I think maybe he will. But I’m so tired. Can we go to sleep?’

‘Of course. We can talk tomorrow.’

She reached over, turned out the light and stretched out with her back to him. Soon she was snoring. Marcus lay in the darkness and heard, echoing through his mind, the wail of a baby, the howling of the wind in the library and the sound of Lee picking out the ‘Promenade’ from Pictures at an Exhibition on her piano. Above all the other sounds, and yet somehow containing them, he heard the high wailing beauty of the tongues.

Epilogue Spring

Abby walked down the main street of the quiet university town. Students were streaming out of classrooms and heading back to their dorms. Some made their way through the gates and across the main road to the shops. It was a balmy March day. The winter had been a cruel one, much colder than she was used to at home, but the past few weeks had been mild. She was growing to like these North-Eastern university towns: Princeton, New Haven, Cambridge, Ithaca. They were manageable, even to a foreigner. She smiled as a man stood aside to let her pass along the narrow pavement. She wondered if he could tell she was pregnant. She was at the annoying stage where she might be mistaken for merely fat.

She stepped into a bar on the main street. It was across the road from the town’s famous record exchange, a white brick building that managed to attract a constant stream of pale, acne-scarred students despite the increasing obsolescence of its wares. The bar was almost empty. She bought herself a glass of wine and then sat at the table in the window, overlooking the university’s main quadrangle. A huge Henry Moore sculpture stood, bright with verdigris, in the centre. The bartender looked over at her. She put her handbag in her lap to hide her bump. She knew what Americans thought about drinking during pregnancy. But she deserved a little celebration. The past few weeks had been marvellous.

She had called her mother the night before and told her that she would be staying for the rest of the year, would be having the baby in New York. Her mother, unusually emotional, had started to cry. Abby’s middle sister Susie had moved back home, after finally divorcing the maths teacher. Abby could hear her shouting at the children in the background.

‘And you really think this is what you went to that wonderful university for,’ her mother was saying. ‘To run a cult thousands of miles away from your family?’

Abby had made vague, soothing sounds and hung up. She rarely spoke to her mother any more. Sally and David were her new parents. And she knew that they were very proud of her. She took a gulp of wine.

A group of students came in. She realised that they had been at the meeting earlier. The girls were exquisite-looking: shimmering with health, their hair bounced as they walked. The young men were tall and wore pastel-coloured shirts tucked into their chinos. They sat at a table at the other end of the bar and Abby had to strain her ears to make out what they were saying.

‘It’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for. Almost all my life, it feels like.’

‘The whole thing was so chic. Because that’s what I always hated about going to church with my family. All the unattractive people there.’

‘And the music is so great. I’ve already downloaded some of the podcasts. A bit of talking, some music. I listen to it on the way to class. Oh, hey, look, there’s Abby. Come and join us, Abby.’

Abby left her half-drunk glass of wine on the table and walked over to the group. She smiled down at them.

‘Can I get you guys a drink?’

‘No. Let us get you one. It’s Ben’s turn to buy. What would you like?’

‘Um. . Could I have a Diet Coke?’

They sat and talked for an hour. A huge bowl of nachos appeared in the centre of the table. Abby pulled out long strings of cheese, negotiating them carefully into her mouth. She enjoyed spending time with these young, burnished Americans. They had none of the scepticism of their English peers.

‘I’m going out to California next week,’ Abby told them. ‘I’ve never been before. I’m terribly excited.’

‘Oh, you’ll love it. Where are you going?’

‘San Francisco and LA. We’re doing a thing in LA with a bunch of Hollywood actors. The founder of the Course was out there last month and there seemed to be such excitement about it. I suppose a drive to make religion stylish was bound to go down well out there.’

‘I’ve got some friends at Berkeley who’d love to come along. Should I let them know about it?’

‘Sure. Please do tell as many people as you can about the Course. This is just the beginning. It’s really marvellous to be there at the beginning of something. David Nightingale, the founder of the Course, is making a huge speech in London today. Some terribly powerful church leaders from over here have flown out to watch him. With their support, the Course is going to simply explode in the US.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I must go and catch my train. I have to be in New York tonight. But here’s my card. Send me an email if you’d like to become campus representatives for the Course. We need as many people to spread the word as possible.’

She strolled downhill towards the train station. The university buildings were the colour of toast. Ivy grew up the wall beside her. On the other side of the road was a vast chapel built by a private-equity billionaire. It was here that she had spoken to the students earlier. Each time she came to one of these events she expected to be greeted by an empty hall, by spiky atheists intent on disrupting the meeting. But the rooms were always full. To see so many hopeful, upturned young faces, it gave her hope herself.

On the train back to New York she slipped her shoes off and tucked her legs beneath her on the seat. She was reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Mouse had sent it to her. It was the edition they had given to him for his nineteenth birthday. He had crossed out their message and written underneath it. The new inscription read: For Mummy and Baby Glass. She smiled. The sun was going down as the train moved out of the leafy New Jersey countryside and into the vast urban sprawl that surrounded New York. She liked to listen to the strange place names as they edged towards the city: Rahway, South Amboy, Secaucus. There was something terribly exotic about it all, even though the towns themselves were ugly smears of industrialised wasteland.

Abby sat back in her seat with her hands resting across her tummy. She knew she wouldn’t feel a kick for another month, knew that there was still a long way to go. But the baby was blessed. After everything that had happened, after all the heartache and the loss, the baby had to survive. It was only fair. It kept the world in balance.

She spoke to the baby sometimes. Only just moving her lips, a half-whisper. She told it about its father. She told it about Lee. She spoke about David. She shivered with excitement as they pulled into Penn Station. She said a little prayer as the train clunked and hissed to a stop. God, please look after the baby. After that, I really don’t care what else happens, just please let the baby survive. Amen.

*

Marcus was drunk. He had stopped at Bergdorf Goodman on the way home from the Course office on 52nd Street. He wanted to buy Abby a dress. They had a fundraising dinner at Trinity Church on Wall Street that evening. Abby was on the train home from one of her university sessions. He had walked through the dimly lit corridors of the mazelike department store until he came to a large room full of beautiful dresses. There was some sort of event being held. A group of women in their sixties stood around drinking champagne. Their hair was immaculately coiffed, their nails dripped red varnish, diamonds hung from earlobes and wattled necks and wide lapels.

Marcus began to wander around the room looking at the dresses. He held one up to the light, trying to make out whether it was black or navy blue. One of the older women came up behind him.

‘You buying something for the girlfriend, sweetie?’

‘It’s for my wife, actually.’

‘Oh, don’t you have the cutest little English accent? So it’s for your wife. It’s for his wife, Carmella.’ She took the dress from him and held it up against her, looking critically in the mirror. ‘Oh, I don’t think she’ll like this. Now what does she look like? About my build?’ She was tiny, her wasp waist held in with a large black belt. Marcus smiled.

‘Oh, no. She’s very tall. And she’s pregnant.’

‘Wonderful! How far along is she?’

‘Coming up for four months.’

‘Well, we must have a drink to celebrate. Come on, take a glass of champagne. Carmella, Nicole, get the girl to bring this young man a glass of champagne.’

Marcus took the glass, feeling rather dazed.

‘Now she’ll want something slimming. Is she showing properly yet? Does she have a bump?’

‘No, not a proper bump yet.’

Marcus drank almost an entire bottle of champagne with the ladies, who he discovered were members of an exclusive Bergdorf Goodman loyalty club. He left carrying a beautiful gold dress, another bottle of champagne slipped into the black-and-white carrier bag.

He walked along the concrete and steel canyon of Fifth Avenue until he reached the great green breath of the park. The sky above was a deep blue. The sun touched the uppermost branches of the trees. He browsed the bookstalls that had colonised the railings along the south-east corner of the park. The first leaves were appearing on the trees above him. He bought a copy of Fitzgerald’s short stories and walked across the busy street. He made his way into the Frick Gallery, flashing his membership pass at the guard on the door, who recognised him and smiled.

He had taken out membership of the Frick on his first day in New York. He walked through the quiet atrium where a fountain babbled soothingly. The gallery would close in an hour and the tourists had already left, heading back for cocktail hour at their hotels. Marcus strode through the rooms that held the major collections, barely looking at the Italian and Dutch masters, which he knew by heart now. He made his way up the narrow winding stairway at the end of the gallery to the second floor where the collection grew more haphazard, less easily negotiated by the portly tourists, less amenable to holiday snapshots. The rooms here were high and dusty, full of Louis XIV furniture and Limoges porcelain.

Marcus wandered through the silent, airless rooms until he came to a gallery overlooking the lily pond with its sparkling fountain. The dusk had a quality to it that he could taste at the back of his throat, something nostalgic and poignant. He knew it was partly that he was drunk. He sat down in a green wing-back chair. The trick was to manoeuvre the chair so that the security guards wouldn’t be able to see him when they did their rounds. Not that they seemed too concerned when they did. He and Abby were increasingly treating these upper rooms as their own.

They chose times when there were few visitors: just after opening time on weekday mornings, or in the evenings when the tourists had gone home. They settled themselves into the high, comfortable chairs and pretended that it was their home. It was an elaborate fantasy, and a thrilling one. Abby would speak about the children downstairs with the nanny, Marcus would bring a copy of the Wall Street Journal with him in order to make worldly-sounding comments about the day’s financial news. They would spend hours moving around the gallery’s labyrinth of still rooms, constructing slight variations in their imaginary lives: in some, Marcus was an oil baron; in others, he had made his fortune in pork bellies. Sometimes Abby was the great heiress and Marcus a devious adventurer.

That evening, he drew out the bottle of champagne from the Bergdorf Goodman bag and removed the cork very slowly to muffle the pop. He sat back and opened the book of short stories, his feet drawn up beneath him. He sipped at the champagne as he read, the small bubbles exploding upon his tongue. The yeasty aftertaste always made him think of money. He was reading ‘Babylon Revisited’, and when he came to the passage where the hero’s wife dies, he was overcome by a sudden heart-clutching sadness. He put the book down on his lap and concentrated on drinking, staring out with cool, dry eyes into the atrium. When the bottle was almost finished, he put it back in the carrier bag and made his way downstairs. He nodded at the security guard as he left the building and walked slowly up 70th Street to the apartment, smoking one of the cigarettes that he kept hidden in the inside pocket of his coat.

When he got inside, he hung the dress in a cupboard, made himself a gin-and-tonic and took a bath, listening for Abby as he lay back in a nest of foam. He could hear his heartbeat in the whisper of bursting bubbles. He missed being able to smoke in the bath. He knew he was drinking too much, and let some of the gin-and-tonic dribble from his mouth and into the water. Stretching one arm along the cold porcelain and resting his head on it, he fell asleep, his half-snores sending little puffs of foam into the air with each out-breath. When he awoke, the water was tepid, the bubbles gone. He heard the clanking of the lift shaft and then, a few moments later, the clink of Abby’s keys in the lock. She dropped her bag in the hallway and sighed. He closed his eyes and muttered a prayer. God, look after Abby and the baby. And when it comes, let it bring light into our lives. I pray for Mouse, Lord. I pray. . But then Abby appeared in the doorway and stood staring down at him. Marcus, shivering in the lukewarm water, felt very vulnerable. He drained the last of the watery gin-and-tonic, folded his hands over his shrivelled cock and closed his eyes.

*

David Nightingale was dreaming about Lee. In his dream, he awoke from a deep sleep and slipped out of bed. He heard the sound of a piano playing downstairs, but couldn’t be sure that this was what had woken him. Sally slept on. In his dream he knew that his wife was taking sleeping pills, perhaps also antidepressants. Something was not right with her, although he wouldn’t allow his conscious mind to acknowledge this. He made his way downstairs in pale blue pyjamas and padded into the drawing room. The standard lamp was on in the corner, casting shadows across the room. Lee was sitting at the piano, playing the ‘Promenade’ from Pictures at an Exhibition. She swayed with the music, her willowy figure stretching upwards and quivering as the song reached its conclusion. When she finished, she paused for a moment, and there was total silence. Then, with a deep intake of breath, she began again.

David crossed the room to stand behind her. He saw a slight shiver acknowledge his presence. She didn’t turn around. He began to stroke her hair, which was long again, and fell down upon her shoulders in waves. He ran his nails across her scalp and then pulled his fingers through her blonde tresses, allowing the hair to tumble through his hands. It was so fine that it was like moving his fingers through sand. Lee shivered again. He stroked her hair in time with the music. The motion of his fingers, and the swaying of Lee’s body, and the wheeling notes of the piano, building towards the great tragic finale: all combined to create an aura of exquisite sadness that pricked tears in David’s eyes. He leaned down and pressed his hard cheek against her soft one, inhaling, twining his fingers deeply into her hair. A heavy scent of straw filled his nostrils.

David continued to run his hands through her hair. The music changed subtly. Minor chords that had previously resolved into tender major arpeggios now dissolved into fluffed notes, discord. The song, which had always made David think of Parisian couples flirting in the Tuileries Gardens, now seemed full of bitterness. Lee’s hair began to come out in his hands.

At first it was the occasional strand. He stopped stroking for an instant and unwrapped a long fine hair from around one finger. It shimmered in the light from the standard lamp. He ran his hands through her hair again. This time more came out. Thick clumps of her lustrous hair fell through his fingers and writhed like eels at his feet. He could see chunks of her scalp attached to the roots. Desperately, he stroked faster, as if trying to wash his hands. Lee’s head was now dappled like coral, tufts of hair rose like anemones from her scalp. He drew his fingers across the bald crown of her head.

Initially a fine dust rose in the tracks of his fingers, then waxy slabs of skin came away with each motion of his hands. Lee was now pressing down keys at random, banging out hideous combinations that mirrored the scream that was rising in the back of David’s throat. He knew that if he was able to scream it would wake him from the nightmare, but the sound was caught in a choked gasp, a gargle of skin and saliva. It felt as if his throat was full of swabs and bandages. Lee’s face was peeling back from her mouth. The top layer of epidermis had come away entirely, and David could see deltas of veins running across her scalp. He knew that she would turn around to look at him, and he would see her skull, her dead eyes pleading. He tried to back away from her. The music stopped. Lee turned.

David’s eyelids snapped open. His sheets were damp and wrinkled. He got out of bed, shuddering for a moment as he thought he caught the echo of the piano. He made his way down to the kitchen and fixed himself a mug of coffee. It was five o’clock. He looked out over the graveyard to the shadow of the church. The first planes lumbered through the sky. He watched their lights disappear for an instant behind the dark peak of the church’s spire. When they reappeared, they seemed somehow changed, blessed by their intersection with the high tapering point of Portland stone. Slowly it grew lighter, and the houses in the square surrounding the church began to show their serene white cheeks.

David woke Sally at seven. She lifted her head from the pillow with narrow eyes blinking at the bedside light. David placed a cup of coffee beside her and opened the cupboard at the end of the bed. He drew out a navy suit with a fine pinstripe.

‘This one?’

Sally, who had shifted into a half-seated position, squinted at him. Her hair was stacked on her head in an untidy pile. For the first time, David remembered his nightmare in its entirety, and realised that it was not the first time he had dreamt it. The images had all seemed horribly familiar. He shuddered.

‘Of course that suit,’ Sally said. ‘It’s your lucky one, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes, this is the one. I had the most awful nightmare.’

‘Mmm. . Did you?’

Sally stretched and David could see the ugly crêpey skin under her arms, blued by stubble.

‘Just terrifying. I’ve been up for a couple of hours.’

Sally smiled at him.

‘It’s a big day for you. You should expect that. To feel nervous.’

They had breakfast together in the kitchen. David insisted on eating standing up. He was gulping coffee, his fourth cup already. He could barely swallow. The muesli tasted dry and seemed to expand in his mouth. The feeling of having a throatful of bandages returned, bringing with it the white horror of the nightmare. Sally came and stood behind him. He knew that she was worried about him, and he tried to relax his tense body against her. David watched his wife pluck her eyebrows in the bathroom mirror while he showered. He bounced his foot impatiently while she straightened his tie. They were ready to leave.

David drove badly when he was nervous. Sally twined her fingers around the armrest and closed her eyes as they made their way through red lights and clipping traffic cones, the wrong way down one-way streets. There was a jam on Park Lane, but they still reached the church far too early. David got out of the car and strode up and down with his mobile clenched in his hand, trying to work out how to use the automated parking line. Sally stood on the steps of the ancient Marylebone church while David went to buy another coffee from an Italian delicatessen up towards the Euston Road. He stood reading his notes as he waited for his coffee. He pulled out a pen and scribbled furiously, held the paper out in front of him, as if judging the effect of his editing, then scratched out the words he had written. His shoulders slumped.

The Earl arrived at ten. He was dressed in a charcoal-grey suit. He looked hard at David.

‘Are you ready? You look like shit.’

‘I’m ready. It will be fine.’

‘It has to be. We won’t get a second bite at this.’ He looked up. ‘It’s going to rain. Let’s go inside.’

They made their way into the cool interior of the church. Someone was practising the organ. David watched the Earl turn his head and listen for a moment, nodding in appreciation. Chairs had been laid out alongside the pews. They were expecting a large audience. David felt a brief tremor of nerves. He breathed in through his nose, savouring the familiar fusty air that reminded him of being a young priest, of the endless hopefulness of those days.

‘We need the help of the American churches, David.’ The Earl guided him into a corner and placed a thick hand on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘With the support of these organisations, the Course will be taken seriously in the States. And not just in New York and LA. We’ll be rolled out across the country. Every white clapboard chapel in every hick town in every flyover state will have your picture in it. Billboards along the highways, ads on the radio blasting your voice across America. I’ve already had talks with three cable channels. One of them will be here this morning. They want you to have your own show. You’ll be watched by millions. It will finance everything we’ve dreamed of doing. You deserve this, David. We all do.’

Time seemed to accelerate suddenly. One moment, David was sitting sipping coffee in the chaplain’s office, then the Earl was pumping his hand and Sally was hugging him and he was walking out onto the stage, blinking into the bright white spotlight that followed him to the lectern. The chorus of a song by The Revelations blasted out of the speakers either side of him.

‘All shall be well,

And all shall be well,

And all manner of thing

Shall be well.’

He realised that he had forgotten his notes. He must have left them on the counter in the cafe. He drew another deep breath and looked down at the audience. Sitting beside the bulk of the Earl was a row of four serious men in dark suits. All in their fifties, all wearing sober ties, wide-collared shirts, shined black loafers. They looked up at the stage with cool, calculating eyes. The representative of the Evangelical Free Church of America took notes in a black leather notebook. The head of the American Family Association stared up into the dim heights of the church’s roof. David recognised the charismatic leader of the Back to the Bible organisation. A heavy thatch of white moustache perched above his lips, a silver fish was pinned to his lapel. Next to the Earl sat the CEO of Mission Media Productions. He leaned back in his seat, chuckling at something the Earl had said, dabbing at the corner of his eye with a hairy wrist.

The Earl was looking up at David expectantly from the front row, his large hands knitted together in his lap. The doors at the back of the church slammed shut. David waited for the music to stop. There were three, perhaps four hundred people staring at him. He attempted to unleash his famous grin, but felt his skin tightening as he smiled. He found himself thinking of the smell of Lee’s hair in his dream, the way the strands had come glittering out in his hands. Pull yourself together, he said to himself, then suddenly worried that he had spoken the words out loud. He smiled again, and the smile came more easily this time. He twinkled his eyes. The music faded. A beat of silence.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. A particular welcome to our friends visiting from across the Atlantic,’ he began, his voice remarkably steady. ‘I started the Course because I kept hearing the same thing from the young people I spoke to. And it was very different from the message that I was hearing from the press, the message I got from my own church. This wasn’t a Godless generation. These young people weren’t drugged up and lacking in morals and beyond saving. They just didn’t feel that the church, or rather the experience of church that they had through school or through their parents, spoke to them at all. So I decided to do something about it.’

It began to rain outside. Shadows passed across the stained-glass windows. He took a sip of water. It was going well.

‘We have three hundred churches in the UK running the Course, a further sixty in Australia and New Zealand. And — and this is our great success this year — we have just signed up the two hundredth church in the United States. So over five hundred churches have decided that change is necessary, that we must find a new way of doing things, that our faith will die if we don’t breathe life into it.’ He was sweating a little.

‘That life comes from the energy, the optimism of the young people in our church.’

David heard, very faintly, the sound of Lee playing the piano. Panic hit him like the smack of a wave. He looked around the hall wildly, then back to the empty lectern. He could feel his heart beating hard in his chest.

‘I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to work with our young people, with the Course leaders. .’ David paused, looked out into the audience. The Earl was tugging at his ear lobe. He tried to remember if they had discussed a secret signal of some sort.

‘We have enough old men in the church. It’s time to give youth a chance. I think sometimes we forget how young Jesus himself was. These young people. .’

David remembered how Lee’s fingers used to look when she played. He recalled placing his hands over hers, feeling the delicate bones moving, nursing the notes from the piano. Her head nodding as she swayed with the music. He remembered that, just before she had died, she had cut her hair. Then he saw her skin peeling from her scalp in his nightmare.

‘. . It’s amazing to see the devotion in the eyes of these young people, before they have been ruined by the world. .’ David’s breaths came fast and shallow. His heart seemed to be skipping beats, dancing across his chest in jags and stutters.

‘. . While they still have hope. .’ Suddenly, terribly distinctly, he pictured the moment when the hairless skull in his nightmare turned towards him. Hollow sockets where Lee’s eyes should have been, pinkish flesh clinging to bone in the corners.

‘It’s. . Working with these young people is so. .’

His mind was blank. He could see his irregular pulse in the corners of his eyes. He looked down at the Earl, whose face had turned very red. He saw one of the Americans glance at his watch. He leaned forward onto the lectern, which began to wobble. His water glass fell to the floor, spilling its contents onto the wooden stage and then rolling off to land at the Earl’s feet.

‘Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. . thanks very much,’ he said, lifting his hand and waving half-heartedly to the audience. He walked from the stage. A few people clapped. Silence followed by the scraping of chairs, muttered conversation. Sally was waiting for him. He hugged her distractedly, looking over her shoulder for the Earl.

‘What the fuck was that, David?’

The big man’s face was purple. He loosened his tie with one hand and pushed Sally aside with the other.

‘You knew what you had to do. I thought you were up to this. I told you. I told you we only had one shot. Fuck!’

David and Sally sat in the rectory later that day. Sally had made them both a cup of tea. They were side by side on the sofa. Sally picked at an embroidery on her lap, pausing every so often to lift her tea to her lips. David stared out into the rain that fell through yellow light.

‘I expect you had too much coffee. It can do that, you know,’ Sally said.

‘Yes, I expect that was it.’

He sat as the light began to fade. Sally went through to the kitchen to make dinner. David knitted his fingers together and started to pray. But where in the past the words of his prayers had come easily, now there was just silence. He once again felt as if the walls of his throat were closing in. He couldn’t find any way to speak to God, to the God who had been beside him for so long, whom he had addressed as a favoured employee might speak to his managing director. He fell down onto his knees, then forward onto his elbows. He lay on the thick carpet and sobbed, words stumbling over each other in his foggy mind: Our father who art, Our father, Our father who art in, Our father. .

*

Mouse sat on the bus as it snaked along the narrow Oxfordshire lanes, his rucksack clutched on his lap. It was raining and the rain was pulled along the windows of the bus, tracing wandering paths like rivers seen from the air. Mouse followed one with his finger. He had travelled up that morning. Sitting on the swaying train as it made its way haltingly out of London, he had fingered the earrings in his pocket, pricking his thumbs with the sharp ends, committing to memory the rough surfaces of the stones.

He was still living in the hall at Senate House. When he visited the boat, it seemed as if it didn’t belong to him any more. He found that he could think much more clearly high in the library tower. He had stood at the window that morning and looked out onto the world and planned. There were a few things he needed to do before he left London. He wrote a letter to Lazlo Elek. It was brief and unsentimental. He had been listening to Lee’s father’s music recently, blasting the famous cello concerto through the empty corridors of the fourteenth floor. The music somehow fitted the place. He wrote to D.I. Farley. He considered writing to Marcus.

He had sent the book to Abby a few days earlier. He imagined her reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to a blond child in her lap in years to come. He thought about the baby a great deal. He wondered if it was his. He hoped that it was. He remembered that momentous night at the Retreat when they had realised that Marcus and Lee were no longer with them, and they both guessed what was happening up in the woods above them, that their friends’ disappearance wasn’t accidental. There was a beautiful symmetry about it. Taking him by the hand, Abby had led him away from the path to a small glade. She had leaned back on a pile of damp ferns and lifted her skirt for him. He remembered the mist that snaked up between her legs. Her nipples had bloomed like pale flowers on her chest as he lifted her blouse and clamped his lips down around them. Her large hand had closed around his cock and guided it into her. An owl had hooted just as he came. They both laughed. It was cold, but they were so drunk that it didn’t seem to matter. She had nuzzled his ear. I love you, my little Mouse. I love you so much. Mouse smiled. He knew that this was the biggest betrayal for her, these few meaningless words.

He hadn’t loved Abby, knew that she didn’t really love him, or not any more than she loved her other friends. But when she had come to see him on the boat in the days following the Retreat, and he had told her what had happened between Lee and Marcus, and how Lee died, he felt a great weight lifted from him. They had fucked again on the small bed. Abby had taken his cock in her mouth and moaned, barely audible, I love you, I love you. Later, when he was inside her and their stomachs slapped together with each thrust, and the boat rocked and her tits swayed with the rocking, she had reached round to cup his balls as he came. Afterwards, she had begged him not to tell anyone about Lee. That it would destroy the Course, but worse, it would destroy her. And out of loyalty, he obeyed her. He felt himself getting a hard-on. It was almost his stop.

He stepped from the bus and walked along the bare ridge, turning up the collar of his jacket against the cold. He swung his rucksack over his shoulder. His hair was damp and he ran a hand through it, sweeping it out of his eyes. He walked down the gloomy driveway. Lancing Manor stood at the end, glowering under its slate gables. Rooks huddled on the roof, heads tucked under wings. Mouse walked around to the side of the house. The Earl was in London, watching Nightingale give his big speech. No lights shone in the mullioned windows. Mouse made his way down to the lake, carefully stepping over the writhing roots that reached up from the damp red earth.

The water of the lake shuddered in the breeze. Rain swept across it, ruffling the surface. At the edges, Mouse could see green fronds of pondweed unravelling from the spongy mud bottom. He walked over to the boathouse, untied the boat and pushed off from the small platform. His hands ached with the cold, but it was a distant pain, easy to ignore. He steered the boat towards the centre of the lake. The rain had begun to fall more heavily and it was hard to judge where the lake ended and the rain began. It was like rowing through mist.

Mouse had a sudden picture of that dark early morning, when Lee’s body had seemed so heavy as he heaved it onto the floor of the little rowboat that he thought the boat might sink. The mist had been very thick as he steered the vessel through it. He had felt close to breaking down, to throwing himself into the water with her. He saw how the fishing wire bit into the skin of her neck, her ankles. After he had threaded the heavy lead weights onto the fishing wire, he had kissed her hard on the lips and tipped her into the lake. For an instant he saw her sinking, dappled by the water that closed around her, and then she was gone.

Now Mouse stopped the boat and opened his rucksack. He drew out a dog-eared copy of Revelations of Divine Love with Lee’s name written in black marker down the spine. He began to read out loud, his voice thin against the sound of the rain falling on the lake.

‘Before miracles cometh sorrow and anguish and tribulation; and that is why we are weak and wicked and sinful: to meeken us and make us to dread God and cry out for salvation. Miracles cometh after that, and they cometh from the high, wise and great God, showing His virtue and the joys of heaven so far as they may be seen in this passing life. He willeth that we be not borne over low for sorrow and tempests that fall to us: for it hath been ever so afore miracle-coming.’

The pages of the book were soon soaked through and he found it difficult to see the words. He was crying so hard that there seemed to be no line between him and his tears and the rain. He looked down at the water, imagining Lee’s fish-stripped bones jostling with the rhythm of the lake moving above them. He reached into his pocket and held the earrings in his palm. He let them fall slowly into the water, the lapis first followed by the turquoise. Then, he gently eased the signet ring from his little finger, looked for one last time at the mouse on the crest, and dropped it into the murky lake. He sat back down in the boat, placed his head in his hands and muttered a prayer. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.