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  Fifteen minutes later, cradling his tea, the music still open on the seat beside him, Arkady Alexandrovitch Kolokov (as he now was) offered up his passport. The squat guard, whom no cap nor boot could elevate, barely looked at it, nodded, and left the compartment. Arkady sipped some more and felt the heat coursing inside him.

  Five minutes later another official—this time a taller Latvian— entered the carriage. He sat down on the bench opposite and took out his flashlight, though the light was working well enough. He examined the passport. He pointed the beam into Arkady's face. Arkady blinked. He examined the passport again. Then shone on the music.

  He spoke in Russian. "Where are you going?"

  "London."

  "Good."

  The Latvian stood. Passed back the passport. And then he was gone. That was it.

  Arkady swore repeatedly under his breath. Stay here. Put some more clothes on. The cold wasn't so bad. Better than having to talk to people. In any case, he had another glass of tea lined up.

  He sat alone, listening to the guard moving down the carriage. He wondered if the British authorities would be quite so easy.

  Twenty minutes later the train hauled itself into the night, heading due west again.

  33 Highgate Hill

  The next day, Sunday, was wintry sharp but pleasingly so, the faintest frost still whispering white on the branches that the two women stooped beneath, the cold air thicker on the breath. Mornings like this reminded Isabella of Petersburg—the colors all reduced to their essences and only the bravest red flash of a robin's breast daring to challenge the cobalt of the sky. They were walking together up Swain's Lane, the steep road that divided the famous Highgate Cemetery into two plots—east, west—and took them up to village beyond. The pavement narrowed every few steps to accommodate the wayside trees, so they went along sometimes side by side, sometimes in single file. Roots had cracked and cleft the path, and they had to be careful not to stumble or slip.

  At Isabella's suggestion, and then at Susan's urging, they were on their way to call on Francis, the keeper of the old Highgate house. As girls and then teenagers, they had done this walk many times before, though it was the first time Isabella had been back in nearly five years. She realized that this was her allotted session: Sunday morning—cordoned off from Adam and the children, negotiated, set aside; and ordinarily such a choreographed falsity would have irritated her. But there was something about old friends, something that exonerated Susan from the usual strictures of Isabella's unforgiving mind.

  The two women passed the last tree in the immediate line and the pavement widened so that Isabella could step beside her friend again—Susan's sensible walking shoes click-clacking on the pavement while her own sneakers made no noise.

  Susan looked across. "So you can store your stuff in the old house? If you decide to move back properly, I mean."

  "If I'm coming back, I want my own flat." Isabella shook her head ruefully. "Just watch me—twenty-four hours in London and all the psycho crap will be forgotten and I'll be after all the usual: job, flat, man. Not necessarily in that order."

  "I doubt it." Susan smiled and went ahead as they came to another tree. Over her shoulder she said, "And you know you are welcome to stay with us for Christmas."

  "That's kind, Suze."

  Susan stopped to retie her lace. "You didn't write back this morning?"

  "No. Not yet. Which is pretty stupid, since I started it."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. Because..." Isabella stood watching her friend fashion a methodical double bow. "I suppose because I'm shocked to hear from him at all. Because it's been ten years. Because of his stroke. Because I don't know exactly what to say. And because I still really, really dislike him. Because everything."

  "Do you feel sorry for him?"

  "I feel sorry for anyone who has had a stroke ... but. It's hard to explain, Suze ... It doesn't change anything. It shouldn't change anything."

  "But it does, it does." Susan rose and they went on. "You do want to stay in contact now, right?"

  "Yeah. It's just the idea of actually doing it that makes me feel sick. It's almost worse, now that I know he is actually reading what I write. And I definitely can't face the thought of talking to him on the phone or—Christ—seeing him. Then there's the whole thing with Gabs."

  "You mean you can't tell Gabriel if you are in touch with your dad?"

  "No. No way. He would be really upset. He'd be crazy. He'd think that it was some kind of betrayal." She paused. "Are you sure of that, Is?" Susan asked. "Yep. It's probably the only thing I can't talk to him about."

  "It's still that bad?"

  "It's worse."

  "Gabriel wasn't that keen on your dad when he was little." Susan clicked her tongue. "Well, either we have to think of a way of telling Gabriel or you have to stop bothering with your dad."

  They were side by side now.

  "Yeah. Except I feel like I owe Gabs. I want to help him despite himself, if you know what I mean. Apart from anything, he's been so good to me with all my fuckups. I don't want to give you the twins shtick, Suze, but there is something about being born on the same day or whatever—you know, a weird kind of extra loyalty. Maybe it would be different if we had more siblings, but ... Well, seeing as it's just us two and we've always been that way and—"

  "But come on..." Susan waited for the noise of a passing bus to die down. "Come on, Is, surely he's got to take care of himself?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, of course, in some ways ... But I worry that he can't see the problem. It's as if ... as if Gabs carries this backpack of hatred or hurt with him everywhere these days. And he never takes it off or talks about it. But it stops him sitting still, and it gets in the way when he wants to move. Basically, it's hindering his whole life. And only I can see it. It's ridiculous. I was exactly the same. Until, for some reason, I think Mum's dying changed me." They were coming to the steepest part of the walk. "I left Petersburg two days after Gabriel, Suze, and I was on my own and I had to go back to her flat again and box some more of her papers and stuff up to be shipped here. And I was in the maddest state I have ever been in. It's hard to describe—it's like total obliterating-everything sadness and you feel so on your own with it, because she was no one else's mum, I suppose, and you are on your own with it. And I was walking along the canal where she used to live and I crossed the bridge outside—it's the Raskolnikov bridge, where he stops in the book—and I wasn't even crying. More like I had just been punched in the stomach or whatever and was completely winded, completely empty, everything gone inside, everything totally gone, like a child turning around from the fun at a playground and realizing that her mum has left not just for a minute but forever—feeling really, really desolate. But on that bridge it was as if I suddenly caught sight of my true reflection in the water—as if I suddenly saw myself with this huge lump of a backpack on my back. And even though it has taken me weeks to get the shit off, all that time in New York sitting at my stupid desk at work, I have definitely done it now—I've taken my backpack off and I've got it where I can see it. Unpack. Face. Sort."

  "It's difficult for me to imagine. I've never lost anyone." Susan slowed. They were coming to the entrance to the cemetery. "But I sort of understand. You're stuck. You can't tell Gabriel if you speak to Dad, and you can't speak to your dad without telling Gabriel."

  "And now I'm worried that I'm running out of time with Dad too."

  They stopped. A crowd was gathering for the next tour of the morning.

  "What on earth happened between those two, anyway?" Susan asked.

  "Oh, about fifty million things. Apart from the general fact that he was the worst father of all time, Dad used to like to mock and humiliate Gabs in front of other people when he was young. Belittle him. Although it was only when Gabs was older that Dad got seriously nasty. He used to go around to Gabriel's girlfriends' parents' houses and tell them not to trust Gabriel." They set off again. "All kinds of shit went on between them.
You remember when Gabs came home from college and put on his play at the Gatehouse? As You Like It—you remember?"

  "Of course I remember. I went. It was fun."

  "Yeah."

  "Shame about that horrible review," Susan said. "He was so upset."

  "Right." Isabella nodded. "It was a massive thing for him—you know, he had borrowed money from the bank to finance it, rehearsed all the actors, persuaded them not to go up to Edinburgh, directed the play, more or less designed the set, the lighting, everything ... It was a huge risk, and it meant everything to him—you know what it's like when you're twenty-one. He really wanted to be a director badly. And he thought this was make or break." Isabella looked across. "Well, anyway, that review: Dad wrote it."

  Susan stopped. "Oh shit—no." Her mouth fell open and she shook her head slowly, her even features aghast. "No ... That's ... that's sick. All that stuff about how students shouldn't be allowed near the stage?"

  "Yep. All of it. Dad was mates with the theater critic and they swapped jobs that week for a joke."

  "And Gabriel found out?"

  "Wasn't difficult. Dad told him."

  "You're kidding."

  "No. Dad gave him this long horseshit lecture about how he had to understand the cut and thrust of the adult world, and how it was an honest review and it was better that Gabriel heard the truth from him rather than someone else. Let this be a lesson to him. That he should have got a proper summer job and learned how to support himself and stop hanging around. Earn his keep. And ... and Gabs just lost it. He went crazy. I don't think they ever spoke again. Not alone."

  Susan let out a low whistle. "I didn't know. I mean, I had absolutely no idea ... That was your dad."

  "Well, Gabriel didn't want anyone to know. So we kept it quiet. What else could we do? It's not exactly the sort of thing you can explain." Isabella shrugged. "And nobody came to the play then, of course, so he lost the money he had borrowed as well."

  "My God."

  Isabella began walking again. "That was just one thing, Suze. There was a lot of other stuff too. And physical violence between them. All the way through. Though I don't think Gabriel ever struck back. Even though he could have put Dad on the floor."

  Susan's voice hardened. "Did your father hit you?"

  "Yes, sometimes. When he was angry. Until I was about thirteen."

  "Your mum?"

  "Not sure. I don't think so. I reckon Dad has all the classic misogyny stuff going—women are to be worshipped or denigrated. Virgins, whores, princesses, dolls, waifs, angels. I think it would go against some twisted machismo of his to hit grown women. He prefers to use money to fuck with their minds."

  "No wonder you both hate him."

  "I don't hate him, Suze." Two gray squirrels shot out in front of them and raced across the road. "Maybe it's something to do with Mum dying. Or maybe I never absolutely hated him. Not like Gabriel hates him. I just think he's ... I don't know—that he's emotionally selfish, that he's a bully, that he's congenitally manipulative, abusive..." Isabella made a face that acknowledged the ironic humor. "All the things Gabriel has in his magazine."

  They were almost at the top of the hill.

  Susan clicked her tongue. "You know, I completely missed all the stuff that must have been going on in your house. I mean ... I suppose-pose you don't see the whole story when you are little. You think someone's dad is strict or whatever, or their mum is a bit mad, but there's no reason that you'd get beyond that." They stood aside to let a family pass, and Susan turned to face Isabella. "Of course, I remember the stuff when we were older. All that palaver about your boyfriends. What was that about?"

  "Don't ask."

  "And those fights you used to have with him. You screaming. Bloody hell, Is, it makes me cringe just to think about them."

  "Not as much as me." They came to the edge of Pond Square.

  "Now I think about it," Susan said, "the last time I saw him—God, it must have been before you went—the last time I saw him was in your kitchen. He started telling me all this rubbish about how hard it is out there and you've got to learn your lesson and pull your weight and pay your way and all of that. He was so snide. I didn't know what to say. I was furious."

  "There's nothing to say. Dad just repeats himself to anyone who is around. Or he used to. It's a kind of self-validating mantra or something."

  "And I thought, Hang on a minute—I work seventy hours a week and what the hell has he ever done, anyway? Six or seven jobs on local rags—part-time at best—while his wife has worked solidly for twenty-five years as a copy editor on a serious and stressful newspaper in her second bloody language."

  Isabella had to smile.

  "Apart from anything else," Susan said, "it's very hard to understand why a man like your dad, who's basically had a pretty good life, should have such a sense of grievance."

  "That's just it. That's exactly it." Isabella nodded and turned her head to meet her friend's eyes, appreciative of the accuracy of the observation. "He does have this overwhelming sense of grievance. And it sort of permeates everything he says and does and thinks. He can't get away from it. Every conversation, every action, everything has some reference to this grievance of his. Which we all have to acknowledge and dance around, even though none of us—including him—have any idea what specifically he is so aggrieved about."

  "I guess it's also a way of building himself up," Susan suggested. They were walking along one side of the square, watching for a break in the traffic.

  "If you're doing better, he wants to pull you down," Isabella said. "If you're doing worse, he wants to gloat. He's only got one mode of discourse. He can't converse—all he can do is goad."

  "Maybe that's just how he is with people our age, Is, or his children or something." Susan shrugged. "Maybe he's completely different with other people when you're not around."

  They crossed the main road and walked toward the Grove, the tall Georgian houses seeming all the finer in the sharp winter's sun.

  Susan looked across. "Have you thought what you are going to ask Francis?"

  "I'm going to ask him lots of questions about the house and I'm going to be very normal and then—"

  "No. You need to actually ask him outright if he was your dad's lover, Is." Susan's expression was pure, wholehearted sincerity. "You need to do that. You have to be absolutely no shit now. And you've got to start today. If you don't, I will. I mean it. You cannot spend the rest of your life kowtowing to whatever messed-up version of reality your dad enjoys. We'll just have to think of a way of telling Gabs."

  Two hours later, Susan caught the bus back down the hill and Isabella set out alone, wearing her friend's gloves for the return walk, the sky still a burnished December blue. She knew two more things for certain now: that she could enter her old home without weirdness after all, and that gentle old Francis had indeed been her father's lover. Most of all she felt relieved. But, curiously, she also felt (at last) that she was nearly as old as her father and mother—not in age, but in the sense that she was no less an adult than they, and not in the fake way she had pretended to be an adult in her twenties but for real: parity. Perhaps it had been Susan's influence.

  The cemetery tours were thriving. Old ladies bossily shepherding groups this way and that.

  Karl fucking Marx.

  Fierce histrionics or fierce history (there was, as ever, no way of telling), she had once seen her mother cry real tears at that grave. Tears for the parlous state of her marriage, tears for her fate, tears for the fate of nations. Or tears for Karl himself and all the murder done in his name. Impossible to know. Impossible even to guess. But she could remember the afternoon clearly—could see the fresh flowers, bright yellow and crimson, lying scattered on the hard cut stone, could the hear the hushed voices of the visitors (as if the dead might be further offended—beyond the final insult of mortality), could feel her mother, not much older than she was now, letting go of her arm to press the heel of a hand into the corner of one ey
e, then the other.

  And even as an eight-year-old girl, Isabella was conscious that she was supposed to see her mother's tears. And conscious that she was absolutely not supposed to see them. That was the whole reason she had been brought along: to see tears and not to see tears.

  34 For His Due

  The sickness was on him. The sleeping pills were wearing off. He hadn't got any. All he had to do was get up, somehow. Go. Find some. (Call Grisha.) Then this would be over. He hadn't got any. (Club Voltage—go there.) The stink was unbearable—acrid. Each cramp a fresh agony. Make it quicker, God, make it quicker. You bastard. Make it quicker. The smell was the worst thing. And this was him: this body, in these moments. He was this man. Cramp. Shudder. Flesh like a gray plucked goose. (All he had to do was get up.) His stomach squirting. So onto his side, braced against it. His eyes squeezed shut and watering. His nose streaming. Then eyes open again—used syringes. Onto his back. The sallow ceiling. So ill. He was sweating the mattress sodden. Then eyes shut—a blackness made of headache reds and flashing yellow shapes. He wanted to die. All he had to do was get some. (Get up and go. Find. Easy. Half an hour?) He was hot. His armpits wet. He wanted it over. (No. Stay—take the rest of the pills.) He could not keep his legs still. Twitching, shifting, jittery. Worms burrowing through his stomach. So back onto the other side. The pain in his bones, an aching that seemed to dwell in his marrow's marrow. Oh God. All he had to do was get some, end it. Then it would be over. (Don't take the pills. Get up and go.) Lizards' feet on his skin. A nip. A tremor. Take the rest of the pills. Use them all up now. Adrenaline. Oh God, he hadn't got any. All he had to do was get some. Roll over. The sear of a sudden spasm. Oh. God. There was liquid shit in the bed now. He could not do this. He could not believe this. He could not believe that this was he, living and conscious through these moments. This was his life. And he had made it so. (All he had to do was get up. If he got up, he could stop the pain. Go out. Get some.) He gulped at the water. He swallowed the sleeping pills, all six. Make it quick. Take this from me, God, you bastard. I owe nothing. (All he had to do.) I have nothing. I know nothing. I am nothing.