Though she was recognising this one. River had pushed his chair back onto its rear two legs; was leaning against the wall, eyes half-closed.
Louisa glanced towards the room’s other desk, currently vacant; its most recent former occupant a smudge on a distant hillside. And she thought about Emma Flyte, who hadn’t been a slow horse; who had, let’s face it, been better than any of them. Both more recent casualties than Sidonie Baker, but fresh wounds make old scars itch. It didn’t take a genius to work out why River Cartwright was turning Sid’s barrette over in his hands; the hair slide that was all the Park’s removal men had left of her presence.
She said, ‘I’m not a therapist, God knows, but—’
‘She’s alive.’
‘I know you want to think that. I do too. But until she actually turns up—’
‘No, seriously.’ He let the chair fall back onto all four legs, and laid his hands flat on the desk. ‘She has done. Turned up. Sid’s alive.’
Louisa stared, but it didn’t take her long. He meant every word, she could see that.
‘You— Really? Jesus, River!
He glanced ceilingwards, and shook his head. ‘Not here.’ And then he was on his feet, heading for the door. His coat hung on a hook, and he scooped it free in passing.
She followed him a moment later, barely caring that Lamb might hear them, or that leaving Slough House without his permission was a hanging offence.
They were out in the yard a minute later; in the pub over the road shortly after that.
Her hair was different. Maybe that’s what death does to you. It was still mostly red but now punkishly short, with a white stripe across her left temple where the bullet had passed, leaving in its wake a shallow channel, which gave her the appearance of having been imperfectly sculpted. Her dusting of freckles had faded and her skin seemed whiter, though that might have been the effect of dim lighting. She was skinnier too, her upper body swamped by a hoodie whose American university brand name disappeared inside its own folds. Once she’d been all clean lines and fresh air; now that same thought conjured up an image of her hung out with the washing. But she was still Sid. She had Sid’s eyes and Sid’s mouth, so she was still Sid; back from joe country, and in his grandfather’s house. How had that happened?
And what did he say?
He said, ‘Jesus. Sid.’
Two resurrections.
She watched as he entered, shutting the door. It seemed necessary to keep this encounter within a closed space; to seal off the emptiness outside. It was just the pair of them in a familiar room, in which nothing had changed, bar everything.
‘Hello, River.’
Her voice was the same too, if a notch quieter. And there was something considered about the delivery; as if Sid were playing off-book for the first time, not entirely comfortable with her lines yet. ‘I heard you coming in. I knew it was you.’
The chair she sat in was the O.B.’s. If River squinted, he could make out the smooth patches on its arms, the indentations of its upholstery, all of it adding up to the faded shape of his grandfather. His own chair, the one he’d spent so many evenings in, listening to the old man conjure stories out of memory, hadn’t yet shaped itself to him. Favourite chairs were like your future; the form they would eventually take depended on your input, your commitment. River hadn’t sat in his for a while. There’d been no need to, since his grandfather passed.
He crossed the room, crouched next to her. ‘Sid? It’s really you, right?’
‘It’s really me.’
He wanted to touch her, to make sure. Weird kind of hallucination this would be, one he’d driven miles to encounter at a neighbour’s invitation, but still: he wanted to know her flesh was still flesh. So he reached a hand out and she took it. Her hand felt curiously warm.
‘You’re alive.’
‘Of course I am.’
As if the alternative were out of the question, though the last time he’d seen her she’d been prone on a pavement, a pool of blood blotting out her horizons. His memory of what followed was mostly of a loud journey through zombie-strewn streets, sirens jangling.
‘And you’re here … Why didn’t you let me know?’
‘I was going to. I knew you’d come, though. Sooner or later. I mean …’ She glanced around the room. ‘This.’
The room, she meant; its intact status in an empty house. You didn’t clear a building, leaving just one small corner of it furnished.
‘What is it, a shrine? Your grandfather died, didn’t he. And this is preserving his memory?’
‘Not exactly. I mean, yes, in a way, but … It doesn’t matter. What are you
‘I called you.’
