David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

Must admit, it’s a good argument. Drag by drag we share the last Benson & Hedges. I sort of apologize for being grumpy this morning.

“What,” Gwyn sort of teases, “my little sermon? Nah, you should’ve seen me when I left home.” She does a piss-take dozy-cow voice: “I don’t need your help so you can just get lost , can’t you?” She stretches and lies back. “Godalmighty. I had not a clue. Not a clue.”

The supermarket van trundles off with the day’s strawberries.

I think Gwyn’s wondering whether to say nothing, a bit, or a lot …

“I was born in a valley above this village, Rhiwlas, near Bangor, in the top left-hand corner of Wales, like Ivor the Engine. I’m an only child, and my father owned a chicken farm. Still does, for all I know. Over a thousand birds, all in these little cages not much bigger than a shoebox that the animal-rights campaigners talk about. Egg to supermarket shelves in sixty-six days. Home was a cottage hidden behind the big chicken-house. My father inherited the house and land from his uncle, and built up the business over time. When God was ladling out charm, my father got a triple helping. He sponsored the Rhiwlas rugby team, and once a week he’d go to Bangor to sing in an all-male choir. Firm but fair employer. Donations to Plaid Cymru. You’d be hard put to find a man in all Gwynedd with a bad word to say about him.”

Gwyn’s eyes are shut. There’s a faint scar across her eyelid.

“Thing is about my father, there were two of him. The public one, the pillar of the community. And the indoors one, who was a cruel, twisted, lying control freak, to put it nicely. Rules, he loved rules. Rules about dirt in the house. How the table had to be laid. Which way the toothbrushes faced. What books were allowed in the house. Which radio stations — we had no television. Rules that kept changing because, see, he wanted my mother and me to break them, so he could punish us. Punishment was a length of lead piping, padded with cotton wool so the skin wouldn’t show it. After the punishment, we had to thank him. My mother, too. If we weren’t thankful enough, it’d be round two.”

“Bloody hell, Gwyn. Even when you were little?”

“It was always his way. His da’d done the same.”

“And your mum just … stayed put and let him?”

“If you’ve not been through it, you can’t understand, not really. Lucky you, I say. Control is about fear, see. If you’re afraid enough of the reprisals, you don’t say no, you don’t fight back, you don’t run away. Saying yes is how you survive. It becomes normal. Horrible, but normal. Horrible, because it’s normal. Now, lucky you can say, ‘Not standing up to him is giving him permission,’ but if you’ve been fed this diet since the year dot, there is no standing up. Victims aren’t cowards. Outsiders, like, they never have a clue how brave you have to be just to carry on. My mum had nowhere to go, see. No brothers, no sisters, both her parents dead by the time she married. Da’s rules kept us cut off. Making friends down in the village was being neglectful of home, and that meant the pipe. I was too scared to make friends at school. Asking anyone home was out of the question, and asking to go and play at other houses meant you were ungrateful, being ungrateful meant the pipe. A lot of method in that man’s madness.”

Alan Wall’s gone in. His shirt and jeans hang, dripping.

“Couldn’t you or your mum report your dad?”

“Who to? Da sang in Bangor choir with a judge and a magistrate. He charmed my teachers. A social worker? It was our word against his, and Da was a war hero, with a commendation for bravery from the Korean War, if you please. Mum was a husk of a woman, on Valium, and I was a messed-up teenager, who could hardly string a sentence together. And his final threat,” Gwyn adds a note of false jollity, “on my last night at home, was to describe how he’d kill Mum and me, if I tried to blacken his name. Like he was describing a DIY job. And how he’d get away with it. I won’t spell out what he’d just done to me to bring things to that pass, but what you’re probably suspecting, it’s that. I was fifteen.” Gwyn steadies her voice and I wish I’d not started this. “Your age now, right?” I’ve nodded before I know it. “Five years ago, this. Mum knew what he did to me — it’s a small cottage — but she didn’t dare try to stop him. The day after it happened I left for school with some clothes in my gym bag, and I’ve not set foot in Wales since. Any more smokes, by the way?”

“Gary’s are gone, so we’re back to mine.”

“I much prefer Rothmans, if I’m honest.”

I pass her the box. “It’s Sykes. My name.”

She nods. “Holly Sykes. I’m Gwyn Bishop.”

“I thought you were Gwyn Lewis.”

“They’ve both got an i and an s in them.”

“What happened after you left Wales?”

“Manchester, Birmingham, semi-homeless, homeless. Begging in the Bull Ring shopping center. Sleeping in squats, in flats of friends who weren’t so friendly after all. Surviving. Barely. It’s one miracle I’m here to tell the tale, and another that I dodged getting sent back — until you’re eighteen, see, all Social Services’ll do is pass you back to the local authority you came from. I still have nightmares about my father welcoming home the prodigal daughter while the liaison officer looks on, thinking, All’s well that ends well , and then my father after he’s locked the door. Now, why I’m telling you this tale of joy and light is to show you how bad it has to be before running away is a smart move. Once you’ve fallen through the cracks, you don’t get out. It’s taken me five years until I can dare to think the worst is behind me. Thing is, I look at you, and—” She breaks off ’cause a boy on a bike’s skidded to a halt smack bang in front of us. “Sykes,” he says.

Ed Brubeck? Ed Brubeck. “What’re you doing here?”

His hair’s spiky with sweat. “Looking for you.”

“Don’t tell me you cycled ? What ’bout school?”

“Maths exam this morning, but I’m free now. Put my bike on the train and just rode over from Sheerness. Look—”

“You must really want your baseball cap back.”

“The cap doesn’t matter, Sykes, but we need—”

“Hang on — how did you know where to find me?”

“I didn’t, but I remembered talking about Gabriel Harty’s farm, so I phoned him earlier. No Holly Sykes, he said, only a Holly Rothmans. I thought it might be you, and I was right, wasn’t I?”

Gwyn mutters, “I’m saying nothing.”

I say, “Brubeck, Gwyn, Gwyn, Brubeck,” and they nod at each other before Brubeck turns back to me.

“Something’s happened.”

Gwyn gets up. “See you in the penthouse suite.” She gives me a go-for-it-girl look and waltzes off.

I turn back to Brubeck, a bit annoyed. “I heard.”

He looks uncertain. “Then why are you here?”

“It’s on Radio Kent. The three murders. At that Iwade place.”

“Not that.” Brubeck bites his lip. “Is Jacko here? Your brother?”

“Jacko? Course not. Why would he be here?”

Sheba comes running up, barking at Brubeck, who’s hesitating, like someone who’s got abysmal news. “Jacko’s gone missing.”

My head spins as it sinks in. Brubeck tells Sheba, “Shut up !” and Sheba obeys.

I ask feebly, “When?”

“Between Saturday night and Sunday morning.”

“Jacko?” I must’ve heard it wrong, over the noise. “Missing? But … I mean, he can’t be. The pub’s locked at night.”

“The police were at school earlier, and Mr. Nixon came into the exam hall to ask if anyone had information about where you were. I almost spoke up but I’m here instead. Sykes? Can you hear me?”