of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, which has been secreted, sideways, on top of a row. He pulls it out with a small, wry smile of recognition. It’s a miniature hardback – under three inches in width – wrapped, like an expensive chocolate, in shiny black, red and silver foil-effect paper. He enjoys the sumptuous feel of it in his hand. He opens it up.
‘Simulated chaos is given birth from control,’ he reads. ‘The illusion of fear is given birth from courage; feigned weakness is given birth from strength.’
He muses on this for a moment, his attention briefly distracted by the sound of a phone ringing in a far corner of the house. He can tell from the distinctive ringtone (Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’) that it is his phone. He scowls. The ringing stops. His eye returns to the Sun Tzu and he slowly re-reads the previous sentence: ‘Simulated chaos is given birth from control; the illusion of fear is given birth from courage; feigned weakness is given birth from strength.’
Ransom considers this for a while, then he smiles, almost sentimentally, closes the book, carefully slots it under his elbow (alongside the other two) and is about to grab his cereal and move away when his eye alights on a distinctive-looking beige and black hardback with an old-fashioned drawing of an open palm on its spine. He pauses. His mind turns – very briefly – to the previous evening and to Jen.
Ah yes, Jen. Jen with her pale arms, her chapped upper lip and her infinite lashes. Jen with her ponytails and her pierced – and piercing – tongue. Jen. He winces. He draws in closer. Written above the illustrated hand he reads: Cheiro’s Palmistry for All; 2/6 NET.
‘Cheiro?’ He pronounces the name out loud, as if trying it on for size.
‘Cheiro.’
He pauses. Then, ‘Goll-uff,’ he murmurs, quizzically. ‘Gol-ol-ol-ol …’
He shakes his head. ‘Cheiro! Cheiro! Cheiro!’
He tweets the name like a canary, then snorts, pulls the book out and opens it up, randomly, to ‘an autographed impression of Lord Kitchener’s hand given to “Cheiro”’ –
‘Eh?’
– ‘on the 21st of July, 1894 (hitherto unpublished).’
As he gazes down at the photograph, two important things happen. The first is that the boy – the stroppy, dark-haired teenager – enters the room, holding out a dripping mobile.
‘I just found this in the toilet bowl,’ he’s saying. ‘Is it yours by any chance?’
The second is that a loose wad of papers falls down from within the pages of the palmistry book – an old letter, a dried flower, a couple of photos, the order of service for a funeral …
Ransom curses, loudly, as the order of service and the photo slide down on to the floor, but the dried flower and the letter plop into his cereal bowl. He instinctively snatches for the letter – keen to preserve it – but, in his panic, he clumsily knocks his knuckle into the fork and tips up the bowl, sending it (and all its contents) cascading down on to the carpet.
Ransom stares at the milky, wheaten mess, agog.
‘Wow!’ The boy is impressed (and Ransom can instantly deduce that it takes a fair amount to impress this kid): ‘You really fucked up,’ he announces, delighted (like all teenagers, immeasurably enlivened by the prospect of a catastrophe), ‘that stuff belonged to Mallory’s dead mum.’
Ransom’s already on his knees, yelping plaintively, plucking photos and dried flowers from the goo.
‘Kitchen roll,’ the boy announces, sagely, and then promptly abandons him.
‘I don’t understand,’ the woman mutters, peering over Gene’s shoulder. ‘You’ve come to collect Nessa, but now that you’re here you’ve decided to …’
‘Read the meter. Yeah.’ Gene tries to sound nonchalant as he straightens up, switches off his torch and scribbles the relevant digits on to his clipboard. ‘It’ll save me from bothering you twice, that’s all.’
‘I see.’
The woman gives this some thought, and then, ‘But you are actually friends with Valentine?’ she demands (she is short and heavy-hipped, with long, wavy, black hair, down to her waist, and a piercing, brown gaze). ‘I mean you do actually know each other?’
‘Uh …’ Gene frowns. He senses trouble. ‘Uh … Yes. Yes. Of course I know Valentine,’ he insists. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Of course you do.’ The woman laughs, nervously, then smiles up at him, somewhat ruefully. ‘God – I’m getting so cynical in my old age! I mean it’s hardly as if you just turned up at her house to read her meter and then the next thing you know she’s railroading you into …’
Gene clears his throat and glances off, sideways.
The woman pauses, alarmed. ‘I mean she wouldn’t …?’
‘Good gracious, no!’ Gene exclaims. ‘That would be …’ He struggles to find the right word, but can’t; ‘pathetic,’ he eventually manages.
Pathetic?
‘Yes.’ The woman’s keen, dark eyes search his face. ‘Sorry,’ she eventually apologizes (plainly mollified by whatever it is that she finds there), ‘you must think I’m completely paranoid.’ She shakes her head, exasperated, then turns and guides him down the corridor. ‘It’s just that I’ve known Vee since she was a teenager’ – she glances over her shoulder, raising a single, deeply expressive, black brow – ‘and she’s always had this incredible gift – this … this knack – for making people feel …’
She suddenly checks herself. ‘Have you been friends with Vee for long, then?’
‘Long?’ Gene parrots, like the word is somehow incomprehensible to him.
‘Yeah. Long. Long …’ She rolls her eyes, sardonically. ‘As in how’d the two of you first become acquainted?’
‘Uh …’ Gene tries to think on his feet. ‘I work in a bar. At the Thistle. In town.’
‘Okay …’
The woman nods, as if expecting something more.
‘It’s not full-time,’ he elects, ‘I just fill in when they’re short-staffed, sometimes.’
‘Right.’ The woman sniffs, nonplussed. She is silent for a moment and then, ‘Well it really has been incredibly tough on her,’ she confides (determined – in spite of Gene’s best efforts – to broaden the level of their interaction). ‘I mean what happened to her mother …’ She shudders. ‘And to lose her dad like that. Then all the problems with her brother. Then her sister-in-law being carted off into …’
She points her finger to her temple and rotates it.
‘Awful,’ Gene confirms, in studied tones.
‘Devastating,’ the woman persists. ‘And I do think she’s coped extremely well …’ she concedes (perhaps a little grudgingly), ‘I mean under the circumstances. Although in some respects she barely copes at all – just doesn’t have the emotional …’ She rotates her hands, struggling to find the correct adjective. ‘Chutzpah!’ she eventually finishes off.
They arrive at the kitchen door. She pushes it open and waves him through.
‘I blame the parents, obviously …’
She grimaces, self-deprecatingly, after delivering this cliché. ‘D’you have kids of your own?’
‘A couple.’ Gene nods. ‘A boy and a girl …’ He pauses. ‘Both adopted,’ he qualifies.
‘I mean I love Vee,’ she insists (barely acknowledging his answer). ‘Who doesn’t love Vee? She’s a wonderful girl. Very sweet. Very creative. Very genuine. Just a bit of a lame duck,