Exposure E-Book

Louis Greenberg

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The second solo novel from one half of the S.L. Grey writing team - for fans of Black Mirror. In a Britain akin to this one, Vincent Rice falls off a ladder, literally at Petra Orff's feet. They introduce themselves, and he offers to take her to Metamuse, an alternative theatre experience like no other that he won tickets to in a competition he doesn't remember entering. Vincent has a complex sense of home, and immigrant Petra senses a kindred spirit in him. As time goes on, inexplicable occurrences pile on top of one another, connected to Metamuse: certainly more than just a theatre experience. Unquiet dead seem to be reaching into the world to protest injustices both past and present.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Louis Greenberg and available from Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

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29

Acknowledgements and Inspirations

About the Author

EXPOSURE

Also by Louis Greenberg and available from Titan Books

Green Valley

EXPOSURE

LOUIS GREENBERG

TITAN BOOKS

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ExposurePrint edition ISBN: 9781789090291E-book edition ISBN: 9781789090307

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UPwww.titanbooks.com

First edition: November 202110 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © Gibraltar Wordworks Ltd 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Louis Greenberg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

1 The falling man appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of the air, right before Petra’s eyes.

Not for long, because then he was at her feet, crumpled on hands and knees. Time slowed, stilled. It was like a dream. She knew she should move – either leap back from this large shape that was about to send her sprawling to the cold, damp pavement; or, a moment later, when she realised it was a human man, and that he had finished hurtling, that she should reach down and help him up. But the instant stayed frozen for an uncounted time, lost to the world, as if her life was telling her to take note of this moment.

A loose black knitted beanie, the back of a honey-yellow jacket with a sheepskin lining at the neckline, dusty jeans and black work boots. A pair of old men had stopped across the road and were looking at them, and she imagined the scene through their eyes – a man supplicating, a woman staring down at him like some sort of pharaoh queen. On Brook Street at lunchtime on a cold, clear Tuesday in February.

‘Sorry. Are you okay?’ It was him talking, him apologising, when it should be her.

The man pushed himself up on his hands and knees, and finally Petra forced herself to move.

‘Jeez, are you alright? I’m just standing here like a…’ She squatted down and tentatively went for his waist to try and help him up, but her tote bag slipped from her shoulder and she didn’t know if she should touch him without his permission. A hesitance she’d picked up in England.

He had soft eyes in a gentle face, the skin of his forehead slightly care-weathered, Petra fancied; a trim beard with a bit of salt in it. He could be anything between thirty and late forties.

Petra forced herself to snap out of her stare again – this wasn’t the way she normally behaved, but there was something about this man that spoke of deep things, like home, familiarity, and love, and acceptance. In his eyes, she felt she didn’t have to choose a pose. If he could just keep looking at her like that, with those kind and open eyes, then she’d know that she belonged. She spent a lot of time later trying to understand this sense. Some people might call it love at first sight.

By this time, he had stood up and was gingerly swivelling his neck, crackling his spine back into place. On his right knee his jeans were ripped, but she didn’t know whether they had been before the fall. Because that’s what it had been, she now realised, piecing together the evidence of the fully extended metal ladder propped against the wall beside them, leading up to an open sash window on the first floor. A large canvas sack, heavy with something angular, was swinging by one handle from the top of the ladder.

‘What happened? What were you doing?’

‘Stupid,’ he said, brushing himself off. ‘I thought it would be easier to lower the stuff out the window than go all the way round the stairs. I was leaning too far out the window and I was distracted. I thought I saw someone… The rope slipped and I couldn’t let go and…’

He stopped talking as he turned his attention to Petra. He scanned her down, then up again, frowning. ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I would have…’ She tried to stuff the words back in her mouth but failed. ‘…remembered.’ She was blushing, she was sure. It felt hot in her clothes. She lowered her eyes and saw blood drooling from the muddy graze at his knee. ‘Oh, God – you’re bleeding. You’d better sort that out.’

He followed her gaze and waved it off. ‘Ah, it’s nothing. I’ll wash it off inside.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘Uh, I’ll be alright.’ He smiled. ‘Thanks.’ He bent and picked up her bag and offered it to her.

‘Okay. If you’re sure.’

He nodded and disappeared through the house’s red front door.

* * *

Petra stood watching the closed red door for a minute, as if it was going to do something remarkable. It was an English door, like you see on TV – a heavy, panelled and bevelled townhouse door – but it was freshly lacquered in good-luck red. At first glance the knocker set in its middle was like the others on this gentrified terrace of Victorian solid-brick abodes, but Petra noticed that it wasn’t a stylised lion or bull holding the iron ring in its mouth, but a mean-looking goat-horned imp – Pan, maybe. It looked at her, grinning, and she looked back until a man hurried past along the pavement towards town and Petra started to move off, not wanting to look like she was loitering.

For a moment she’d forgotten where she was going. Oh, right – to the MyHealth to check in on her mother. But now, jolted off her path, the idea of a surprise visit to her mother before a scheduled routine day procedure seemed odd and invasive – much the same as a surprise drop-in to her changing room or gynae appointment.

Just after Petra had finished university here, her father had died, and they’d agreed that Helena should come to England to be closer to her only child ‘in case anything happened’. Rod, her father, had been an Englishman – a Staffordshire mining engineer deployed to the Witwatersrand goldfields in the seventies – and they had all the requisite documents. At first Petra worried about the effect Helena’s arrival would have on her social life, but she needn’t have. Helena had always been able to look after herself, and made friends easily. Helena didn’t seem to need Petra’s looking-after – in fact, she didn’t need much of anything from her.

There were only twenty-five minutes left of her lunch break. Suki wouldn’t care if she was late back, of course, but Petra would. Keeping her dignity and sticking to her contracted hours in that mercy job was akin to a depressive getting dressed every morning – proving she still had some purpose in the grander scheme of things. The problem was, reality often didn’t match her expectations. She was self-aware enough to know she tended to drift through everyday life with her mind in a soft fantasy of what things should be: work, love, duty, fairness, belonging. Her fancy was far more compelling than mundane reality – she liked to hope, she liked to feel worthwhile, she liked to feel needed; she liked to wait for inspiration, which didn’t hit her all that often. This tendency to impracticality, she knew, didn’t make her a prime candidate for a career in anything. Bless Suki – she’d saved Petra from post-arts-degree destitution, and Petra wasn’t going to abuse her kindness.

Twenty-five minutes, now twenty-four, may not be enough to visit her mother, but it was enough to do something impetuous. She spun on her heel and strode back to Brook Street. At the red door, she tried to lift the knocker, but it was welded down, ornamental. An electronic keypad on the left side of the frame spoke subtly of the modern world. Before thinking too much, Petra pressed the buzzer button at the bottom and heard it sound loudly in the hall. A few heavy clatters and a volley of hammering answered her. No footsteps.

Come to think of it, the falling man hadn’t keyed in as far as she could remember. On the replay, he had swept inside, away from her, without a pause. She pushed at the door – and it swung open.

The hallway was longer than she’d imagined from the outside; it was more of corridor, the only light spilling from a bright doorway down the end, illuminating the dusty bootprints on the sealed-wood floor. Picture frames leaning against the skirting and a paint-flecked dropcloth draped over the open door of a closet, which had disgorged an assortment of weathered cardboard boxes brimming with files and papers and knots of what looked like electrical flex. The banging, then a heavy grate of shifting furniture, was coming from upstairs, accompanied by a loud, echoing phrase and a brief, barked laugh of men at work. Petra glanced behind her at the door, which had swung shut behind her. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. But her feet carried her onward, inward. She’d go as far as the lit room at the end of the corridor, and if she hadn’t found the stairs or any hint of the falling man, she’d turn back.

As she advanced, the creak of the floorboards mercifully swallowed up by the heavy noises from upstairs, Petra noticed that the frames leant against the skirting held album covers and photographs of musicians. ‘Two-Tone Zone’, a Madness-like group of zoot-suited jazzmen posing against a chequerboard backdrop; ‘The Sign of Six’, a collection of Rastas seated around an oil-drum fire under a graffitied urban bridge; some more modern-looking pop stars, with full-on glamour shots; and a long-haired, be-jeaned rock-folk guy she half recognised. Finally, a couple of framed golden records shyly facing the wall.

A recording studio, lined up here alongside the tidy homes? It shouldn’t surprise her, a lot of creative stuff happened in Leamington – games companies mostly, but also design and art and advertising and future tech, even some artists and novelists lurking. The hard part was knowing where to look. Since she’d come to England, she’d enjoyed imagining all the endeavour behind the narrow housefronts, all the private lives and public functions that happened behind those doors and those slender, serried windows. There was teeming variation behind those doors, and it was rare to get a look inside: a dentist’s appointment, that time she went with Helena to the solicitor’s office to witness her will, and the visits to those friends who’d invited her over. A small plaque, perhaps, a discreet name tag, would indicate a multi-million-pound enterprise rather than the brash steel, Perspex and neon signstacks you’d get in Joburg office parks. So, yeah, why not a recording studio too?

Petra had just squatted down to read the label on one of the gold records – The Specials – but she didn’t have time to take in anything else before the air reverberated like the building was imploding and a man careered around a corner she hadn’t even known was there.

‘Watch out, love!’ he called to her, and then was basically through the front door bearing the armload of planks or shelves with which he’d been hurtling down the stairs as if they were propelling him.

Her surprised exclamation died unheard and the air swirled by the plank-carrier settled. The banging and dragging upstairs had stopped and Petra could hear a lower conversation somewhere ahead of her, on this floor, and maybe one of the speakers was the falling man. She’d let him finish his conversation then say what she’d come back to say – before she lost her nerve. She hoped the conversation wouldn’t last too long.

She headed towards the bright room, thinking that was where the voices might be coming from, but when she got to the room, it was empty. The glow was coming from a blend of arc light filtered with cloud-grey cloth reflector hoods, as if this was a photographic studio, and the dull daylight coming in through vast bay windows looking out over a surprisingly large and open garden. The corridor jinked ninety degrees to the right here and the conversation was coming from the next room over, audible now.

‘You’ll have to get this stuff out, too. By tomorrow, yeah?’

‘Tomorrow?’ That was the falling man’s voice.

‘That should be enough time, shouldn’t it? You can just unscrew it and cart it out.’

‘Wait. Listen. I thought you’d agreed with Gloria that we’d have till the end of the month. We need to find a buyer. We can’t just rip out the whole console and… I’ve got nowhere to keep it.’

‘Why don’t you just flog it online?’

‘It’s an Audient Eighty Twenty-Four… you can’t just flog it. It’s high-end kit. Nobody will just…’ The falling man paused, breathing in, clearly gathering himself to speak calmly. ‘It needs to find the right buyer.’

Petra was inching along the corridor as they spoke, trying to get a view through the door without being seen. She peered through the hinge-slit to see a short guy in a pinstriped suit and emerald-green braces showing her falling man his phone.

‘Here’s one on eBay for five hundred quid.’

The falling man took another deep breath and forced his voice to stay level as he looked at the man’s phone. ‘That’s one single preamp module, man. It’s a tiny part of the setup. The whole console goes for tens of thousands.’

‘Whatever. It needs to be gone. Tomorrow.’ The guy in the suit shrugged and Petra, sensing the conversation was over, scurried back into the light room next door as he answered a silent call.

‘I’ve got to ask Gloria what she wants to do with it,’ the falling guy said. ‘I’m clearing this place for her, not for you,’ he added, less confidently, to his back.

But the suited man was already talking on the phone, making it halfway along the corridor before stopping, as if he’d found himself a private-enough bubble. ‘Yeah, I hope so,’ he said, deliberately loud. ‘The boy’s dragging his feet and making excuses, but we’ll get it sorted.’ He listened for a moment. ‘Yeah… yeah.’ He laughed. ‘Yeah, you’re right. In a few a days this place will have a lot less soul… and all the better for it.’ Swallowing his chuckle in response to something said on the phone, he started off towards the front door again.

‘Don’t worry. Ned will sort out the electrical compliance.’ Pause. ‘Yes. These old buildings are always a little dodgy but there’s no reason to trouble the authorities. We’ll make sure it’s safe without their involvement.’

The last thing Petra heard of the conversation was, ‘It’s a great location, Curtis. It’s a great choice.’ He banged the door shut behind him.

Petra knew she should just go. She’d got in the middle of something she shouldn’t be involved in, and she didn’t want the guy to know she’d overheard what that arsehole had said. She thought she heard him moving something in the room next door, so she’d just hurry back down the corridor and leave. The moment had passed – or been punctured – anyhow.

She took a breath and stepped out of her hiding place behind the door – and straight into the falling man.

He frowned for a moment, and then smiled, and his expression – of happiness-to-see-her, of welcome, of hospitality – made her buzz inside, made her organs literally resonate with him.

‘Oh, hi… I…’ She pointed lamely down the corridor, as if that would explain her decision outside on the pavement to ditch her mom and come in here and offer this man her phone number.

He looked at her, but didn’t help her fill in any words.

She straightened up, put her shoulders back, cocked her hip, would have flicked her hair back if she’d had the arm room: he was standing quite close, neither of them had really moved apart since they’d almost run into each other. ‘I didn’t want to leave without, you know, swapping numbers.’

‘Why?’

‘For observation purposes, you know. You were injured and I’d fail in my duty of care if I left you without following up.’

‘You have a duty of care?’

She looked into his eyes, he looked back. It was still there, that gut-pull. She hadn’t imagined it.

He thought for a moment, studying her face. He took his phone out of his pocket. ‘I guess it wouldn’t hurt,’ he said. ‘Duty of care and all.’

She handed him her phone, an act of trust that struck her as unspeakably intimate the few times she had done it. He typed his name and number and handed it back, the plastic slab completing the circuit between them. Falling Guy would be known as Vincent Rice from now on. She texted him back. <Petra. Care and observation.> By the time she thought that sounded a bit cringey and stalkerish, it was too late, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Duty done. I’ll call you about our follow-up appointment.’

‘Yeah, there might be, you know, after-effects.’ He walked her to the door.

‘Who was that idiot on the phone?’ she said as she opened the door. Leaving things unsaid was not a good way to start a friendship.

‘Oh. Just an idiot.’

‘I heard what he said. I’m sure you did, too.’

He shrugged, unwilling to be drawn out.

‘People shouldn’t be allowed to act like that.’

‘Of course not, but they do.’

‘What’s happening here?’ Petra asked. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Dismantling the studio, clearing everything out. My grandfather died last year and those guys just bought the place. I’m clearing his things for my nan, then helping them subdivide.’

‘Sorry. That must be hard.’

‘Yeah. But I’d rather be involved. If Picton and Worthing had their way, they’d throw my granddad’s whole life’s work in the tip.’

2 When Petra got back to the shop, there were a couple of browsers – one a woman with a restless child of about five or six, who Petra immediately red-flagged. A student-looking guy was waiting at the vacant counter. Suki was probably doing something in the back, and Petra felt unnecessarily guilty about having taken a lunch break.

‘Sorry to keep you. Can I help?’

‘No worries. I haven’t been waiting long.’

Petra sold the guy a pack of Sammi Superstars baseball cards from Korea, scanning the CCTV screens for Suki as the debit card machine connected. There was an old couple upstairs flicking through the racks of prints, but no Suki yet to appear on the cycle.

Needful Things. When Suki had named the shop, Petra thought it was named after the Stephen King book about a shop where each item has its true spiritual home. But when she asked, Suki said she’d never heard of Needful Things. Her business plan was to stock the store with ‘things that speak to me’ and wait for the style-starved customers to flock in and buy everything. But Petra couldn’t help thinking, not so deep down, that most of the crap they sold was absolutely needless. There was so much stuff per person in England, you couldn’t even give decent clothes or books or furniture away. Most of it ended up in the charity shops that lined the high streets, a fraction being rehomed. Nobody needed more pointless bric-a-brac in their lives, especially here – not one more designer plastic kids’-movie doll for grown-ups, not one more wine-glass charm, not one more fake neon diner sign, not one more gilded ‘Love’ mantel sculpture.

The shoppers seemed to agree. The business had languished in the red ever since opening. Sales income barely covered a quarter of the rental, never mind Petra’s decent salary or the other overheads. But Suki was a Barlow – the Barlow black sheep no less, as she told it, refusing to go into the family ‘law-slash-finance-slash-fostering-massive-state-corruption-in-third-world-countries’ business. It was irksome for the family that she’d refused to come back home to Hampshire-slash-Kensington from Leamington after studying sociology-psychology-anthropology at Warwick University, of all places. At least she could have taken philosophy, politics and economics, the arts stream for the moneyed student with ambitions. Nonetheless, Needless Things, as Petra heretically thought of it, kept her occupied, and for that reason the relatively tiny write-off was worthwhile to her family.

The restless boy was beginning to act up now, his whining and flopping becoming more intense as his mother continued to ignore him, and from the way he was swinging on her sleeve it was clear to Petra that he was going to knock something over – her bet was on the glass-fronted display cabinet of US Congress Funko figures. As it happened, it was the dump bin of Hot Tattooed Dudes Taking Their Shirts Off colouring books – Suki had ordered fifty copies, no return, and even she had given up the hobby after three and a half pages.

‘Charlie!’ the mother scolded, dragging the kid out into the cold afternoon without an apology or a glance at Petra. It could have been worse. It might have been the Funkos, and although the cabinet was fitted with safety glass, it could have caused an injury. Or it could have been milkshake, or vomit, or piss, all of which she’d cleaned up in the five years they’d been open. She couldn’t blame the kids for getting bored, and she couldn’t blame the parents for wanting a moment’s peace to browse in the shop. It was a blameless situation.

As she gathered up the books, the old couple came downstairs, the man apologetically putting a pack of Cartier-Bresson notecards on the counter as if they ought to buy something after browsing. Petra rang up the sale, made change for the ten-pound note, and the couple left. The shop descended into the stillness of vacancy.

The air circulated differently when there were no customers. Two-thirty now, and the sun had sunk behind the buildings on this side of Regent Street. Without the reflected light from the buildings over the road, it was suddenly dusky inside. Petra resisted turning on the lights. She watched the people passing by the shop window, and for a brief, magical moment she felt transported to fifties Paris, the monochrome silhouettes and shadows composing themselves into stark phrases like those on the old man’s cards.

But the shop was not entirely vacant – from somewhere in the back offices, Petra could hear the low murmur of Suki talking on the phone, the jagged rhythm of half a conversation. More to indicate that she was back from lunch, rather than from thirst, she went through to the kitchen to boil the kettle, and picked up a mug, intending to stand in the office doorway and mime an offer of tea-drinking.

Suki was sitting at her cluttered desk with her chair turned to face the window, the phone pointed at her mouth, not pressed against her ear, as if she didn’t want the other party’s voice in her head. That and her tone, which had become extremely high-bred and formal, meant that it was a family call – most likely Ben, the youngest of her three brothers and the one they delegated to translate the Barlows’ home truths into a language Suki might abide.

When Suki sensed Petra in the doorway, she wrapped up the call. ‘Yah, fine. We’ll talk later.’ The irony never escaped Petra: people like the Barlows said ‘yah’, while she’d soon learned to change the South African ‘ja’ to ‘yeah’ to blend in just a little more. Suki swung around in her chair, setting a pill bottle on the desk in front of her.

‘The meds again?’ Petra asked.

‘Yup.’

‘Couldn’t they just get the prescription filled and deliver the meds to you without you asking every time?’

‘You’d think so. It’s in their power. But they enjoy my mortification, my debasement.’ Suki spoke these words in a deliberately hammy way, and smiled, flicking the pill bottle to the side of the desk.

‘How’s it feeling today, Sook?’

‘Much better. Getting there. I was this close to not calling Ben. Sticking to over-the-counter, but I think I’ll need the special medicaments for another month.’ She winced as she turned in her chair.

Three months ago – blame her new metal-flanged biker boots – Suki had slipped down the stairs in the shop and popped a disc and nicked a vertebra. It could have been a lot worse, she might have been paralysed, but still she’d been in serious pain since. The way her family had handled it was infuriating. Taking complete charge of the private medical bills, yes, but also treating Suki like a child. Petra wouldn’t understand the full dynamics of the Barlow family, but she could recognise the mean mix of punitive control they applied to her. They clearly didn’t like that she’d opted out of her family’s questionable activities, but instead of disowning her or simply letting her go her own way, it seemed to Petra that they used every opportunity to keep her under their thumb, reliant and compliant. She didn’t know why Suki just went along with it, asking cap-in-hand for her medicine every month. She would never understand: here in the old world, old money and old malice was rooted far deeper than she could ever fathom in her colonial naivety.

‘Don’t look at me that way. These are special medicaments, Pet. They’re not easily available on the high street.’ She shrugged. ‘You’re probably right I should try for my own supply, but they’re expensive and it’s not easy to get a prescription. And if I did, I couldn’t afford them.’

Suki’s money was all tied up in the family. She received an allowance on a handful of debit cards, and simply directed all her bills to the family accountants. It never really seemed to bother her that she had no savings of her own. A few years after Petra had come to study in the then United Kingdom, just after Helena had come to join her, the newly independent England had privatised the National Health Service, so now it operated on two tiers. A creaking, delay-ridden basic service, and everything else covered to various extents by expensive private health insurance.

‘Jeez. Tell me about it,’ Petra said.

‘Speaking of which, how’s your mum?’ Suki said as she pushed up and slinked her black-clad frame towards the shop floor; the stiffness of her movements somehow adding to the elegant effect. Petra followed her, regarding the perfect purple-tinted black dye job and the impeccably shaped and knife-keen fall of her hair down her back: the well-bred kid could try to escape her family but somehow she would always remember her breeding. It was as if she’d gone to walking school, for God’s sake.

Petra hesitated. ‘I didn’t actually get to her.’

Suki turned and smiled quizzically. ‘You didn’t go and see your mum, then?’

‘Well, it was a very minor thing and I doubt she even wanted me there. Anyhow, I’m going to pick her up later, so…’ Her guilty prattling ran out of steam.

‘What did you do instead, Pet? You look like the cat who got the cream.’

Petra waved her phone with its precious cargo: Vincent Rice, Falling Guy. ‘I met someone interesting.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I know I have a track record of dubious attachments…’

Suki smirked – she’d helped Petra mop up after a handful of her embarrassing forays up the wrong tree.

‘But this is different, I can feel it.’

3 Yes, Petra had chosen to chase Vincent instead of check in on Helena before the procedure, so she was anxious to collect her on time at least. It was a really short drive, but there was a broken-down bus on Dormer Place and she hurried into the MyHealth Clarendon Hospital’s waiting room ten minutes after the agreed time.

‘I’m sorry I’m late, Mum,’ Petra said as she hurried into the waiting room.

‘No problem, love. I’ve been enjoying these adverts on the screen here.’ Helena’s full-chested voice and unmodified West Rand accent reverberated through the little space – an old parlour of a Victorian house subsumed into a modern conglomerate, now lined with veneer flooring and white paintwork and a cabinet that might have held free tea or water back in the day but now only supported racks of brochures. The room was fitted with three large flatscreens showing frames of public health advice between adverts. About ten waiting patients sitting evenly spaced from one another on once-plush scandinomic chairs, bought before bankers’ wages were prioritised over public services. ‘And who’s this Mum you’re talking about?’ It was something of a running joke, Helena calling out Petra’s attempts to blend in to her new home still, after years in immigrant limbo. Petra had never referred to Helena as ‘Mum’ before they came to England; in private she still defaulted to ‘Mom’, and Helena saw this as a lack of authenticity. Petra used to counter that trying to blend in showed consideration for your hosts, a respect for their hospitality, a willingness to get to know them, but she’d given up arguing. She knew Helena understood and was just needling her for fun.

Helena’s loudness could be read as the hearty jollity of an arty woman launching into her sixties, the way she intended it. But Petra knew that it might just as easily be seen as arrogance or aggression, a form of attention-seeking, deliberately designed to upset the delicate social order in awkward public spaces like this. Already an old man in the corner by the window, woollen coat and scarf still protectively wound about him despite the overheated air, coughed and murmured, and Helena, awkwardometer operating on high, turned to face him.

‘You’re from here, aren’t you? I mean, you’re English born and bred?’

The man said nothing.

‘Could you tell me, sir – would you like it better if she started calling me “Mum” to pretend to be English, or do you think she should share her wondrous and exotic uniqueness with her new compatriots? Bring them some of the warmth and spice she carries from Africa?’

The man stared fixedly ahead of him. Petra was about to say something to her mother, but her glance was drawn to the woman sitting two seats over from them in a slant of transient sunlight from the window. A shock of orange curls, half a face. The other masked in shadow. The woman turned, and for a moment she was out of the shadow, in complete sunlight. But she still only had half a face. It wasn’t a mask or a bandage. The lower half of her jaw was just… not there. As if it had been eaten away by small teeth. That’s how it seemed for the second the woman turned. But she settled back into the slant of light and her face looked natural again. Just a weird optical illusion. The shift in light and contrast. The woman was looking back towards her, but not really focused on her. Petra thought she should stop staring. Besides, Helena was still talking.

‘I always tell her she’s too old to be learning new ways to fit in. That’s what a kid does at school, hey?’

‘Stop it,’ Petra hissed, turning her attention back to her mother as she felt the spite coming from the old guy. She physically rotated her mother towards the door.

‘I think people should be themselves, don’t you?’ This was directed more at the air than at anyone specific. Helena was winding down, her voice mercifully becoming less public. ‘The rest of the world can like it or lump it. Hey, love?’

‘Yes, Mum. Shush, Mum,’ Petra said.

‘You’re too right, love,’ the man said, clearing his hoarse throat and offering a smile to Petra’s great surprise and relief. She’d been envisioning Helena stoking an ugly scene, an episode of go-back-home apoplexy. ‘My daughter’s the same. They worry a lot, don’t they? Too many people telling them how to behave.’

Helena turned to face him. ‘My point exactly, sir,’ she laughed. ‘It’s a pleasure to know you.’

Petra kept her arm around Helena’s shoulders and directed her towards the exit. ‘Let’s go, Mom.’

‘Far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome here, love. Just be yourself,’ the man advised. ‘And remember to have fun. Life is short.’

Once they’d signed the paperwork at the reception desk, Petra hustled Helena through to the cashier’s room, remembering not to drag her mother too fast. Helena was giving no indication that she’d had her side sliced open a few hours before and a vacuum tube stuck into her organs… ‘Is a gallbladder even an organ?’ she asked Helena. They were like that – Petra fully expected Helena to slot into the gap in her thoughts, and often she did. As an only child with nobody else to compare with, Petra thought she had a close bond with her mother. Sometimes she imagined them like the sort of sisters you’d see on TV; Helena had always been on the same wavelength as Petra. She could follow the unspoken trail of logic that had led from one utterance to the next.

‘I think so, ja. It stores bile. For later use.’ She handed her discharge forms to the woman behind the reception desk. ‘I’d prefer not to store my bile,’ she told the receptionist.

The woman nodded noncommittally. ‘Could I see your medical insurance card? We don’t seem to have it on the system.’

‘You guys photocopied it when I came in,’ Helena said.

‘They must not have entered it. Do you mind?’ She stuck her hand out.

‘Not at all.’ Helena fished in her backpack – she didn’t do handbags – and finally retrieved her wallet containing the card. The woman generated a bill and Helena paid the shortfall amount that went over the deposit she’d already paid. Trying not to wince, Petra bit her tongue. This wasn’t the place or time to discuss her mother’s finances.

‘Wasn’t that a nice old man?’ Helena said as they stepped out to the road. ‘I hope he’s going to get better.’

‘I thought you were embarrassing him. I thought he was going to get angry.’

‘I know you did, love.’