David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

I know, I know. One man alone could extract Cheeseman from his Bogotá hellhole and that is Crispin Hershey — but consider the cost. Please. By offering up a full confession, I’d be facing prison myself, quite possibly at Cheeseman’s current address. The legal fees would be ruinous, and no friendsofcrispinhershey.org would procure me a private cell, either — it’d be straight to the piranha tank. Juno and Anaïs would cut me off forever. So a full confession would be tantamount to suicide, and better a guilty coward than a dead Judas.

I can’t do it to myself. I just can’t do it.

Beyond the parade ground the dusty track fizzles out.

We all take a few wrong turns. I turn my bike around.

THE AFTERNOON SUN is a microwave oven, door wide open, cooking all exposed flesh. Rottnest is small as islands go, only eight square miles of naked rock and baked gullies, twists, and bends, ups and downs, and the Indian Ocean is either always visible or always around the next bend. Halfway up a hill I dismount and push. My pulse bangs my eardrums and my shirt’s sticking to my unflat torso. When did I get so sodding unfit? Back in my thirties I could’ve streaked up this slope, but now I’m so knackered I’m nearly puking. When did I last ride a bike? Eight years ago, give or take, with Juno and Anaïs in our back garden at Pembridge Place. One afternoon in the holidays I made an obstacle course for the girls with plank ramps, bamboo-stick slaloms, a tunnel out of a sheet and the washing line, and an evil scarecrow to decapitate with Excalibur as we cycled by. I called it “Scrambler Motocross” and the three of us held time trials. That French au pair, I forget her name, made ruby grapefruit lemonade and even Zoë joined the picnic in the fairy clearing behind the foaming hydrangeas. Juno and Anaïs often asked me to set the course up again, and I always meant to, but there was a review to write, or an email to send, or a scene to polish, and Scrambler Motocross ended up being a one-off. What happened to the kids’ bicycles? Zoë must have disposed of them, I suppose. Disposing of unwanted items proved to be her forte.

Finally, gratefully, I reach the ridge, remount my bike, and coast down the other side. Iron trees untwist from the beige soil around gloopy pools. I imagine the first sailors from Europe landing here, searching for water in this infernal Eden, taking a quiet shit. Yobs from Liverpool, Rotterdam, Le Havre, and Cork; sun-blacked, tattooed, scurvied, calloused, and muscled as all buggery, and—

Suddenly I’m aware that I’m being watched.

It’s strong. It’s uncanny. It’s disturbing.

I scan the hillside. Every rock, bush …

… no. Nobody. It’s just … Just what?

I want to go back to the beginning.

AT THE NEXT turnoff, I follow the road to the lighthouse. No spray-cloaked monarch of the rocks, this; the Rottnest Light is a stumpy middle finger sticking up from a rocky rise, grunting, “Sit on this, mate.” It keeps reappearing at odd angles and in wrong sizes, but refuses to let me arrive. There’s a hill in Through the Looking-Glass that does the same until Alice stops trying to arrive there — maybe I’ll try the same. What’ll I think about, to distract myself?

Richard Cheeseman, who else? All I wanted was to embarrass Richard Cheeseman . I’d pictured him being held for a few hours at Heathrow airport while lawyers scrambled, and a much-humbled reviewer would be released on bail. That’s all. How could I have predicted that British and Colombian police were enjoying a rare season of cooperation that might result in poor Richard being arrested at Bogotá International Airport, pre flight?

“Easily,” my conscience replies. And yes, dear reader, I regret my actions very much, and I’m aiming to atone. With Richard’s sister Maggie, I set up the Friends of Richard Cheeseman to keep his plight in the news — and, lamentable though my misdeed was, I’m hardly in the Premier Division of Infamy. I’m not a certain Catholic bishop who shuffled boy-raping priests from parish to parish to avoid embarrassment for the Holy Church. I’m not ex-president Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who gassed thousands of men, women, and children for the crime of living in a rebel-held suburb. All I did was punish a man who had smeared my reputation. The punishment was a little excessive. Yes, I’m guilty. I regret it. But my guilt is my burden. Mine . My punishment is to live with what I’ve done.

My iPhone trills in my shirt pocket. Needing a breather I pull over into the shade of a shed-sized boulder. I drop the phone and pick it up from the bleached grit by the Moshi Monsters strap that Anaïs attached to it. Appropriately, it’s a text from Zoë or, rather, a photo of Juno’s thirteenth birthday party at the house in Montreal. A house I paid for, owned by Zoë since the divorce. Behind a pony-shaped cake, Juno’s holding the riding boots I paid for, and Anaïs’s pulling a goofy face while holding a sign saying, BONJOUR, PAPA! Zoë’s contrived to get herself into the background, obliging me to guess at the photographer’s identity. It could be a member of La Famille Legrange, but Juno’s mentioned some guy called Jerome, a divorced banker with one daughter. Not that I sodding care who Zoë puts it out to, but surely I’ve a right to know who’s tucking my own daughters into bed at night, now their mother has decided it won’t be me. Zoë’s attached no message but the subtext is clear enough: We’re Doing Fine, Thank You Very Much .

I notice a handsome bird on a branch, just a few meters away. It’s white and black with red cap and breast. I’ll photo it and send it to Juno with a funny birthday message. I get out of MESSAGES and press the camera icon, but when I look up I find the bird has flown.

TWO BIKES ARE leaning against the lighthouse when Crispin Hershey finally arrives, which displeases him. I dismount, sticky with sweat, my crotch saddle-sore. I walk out of the nuclear brightness to the shady side of the lighthouse — where, oh, great, two females of the species are finishing a picnic. The younger one’s wearing a faux Hawaiian shirt, knee-length khaki shorts, and daubs of bluish sun-block over her cheekbones, cheeks, and forehead. The older one has earth-mother tie-dyed clothes, a floppy white sun hat, unruly black hair, and sunglasses chosen for maximum coverage. The younger one leaps up — she’s still a teenager — and says, “Wow. Hi. You’re Crispin Hershey.” She speaks in estuary English.

“I am.” It’s been a while since I was recognized out of context.

“Hi. My name’s Aoife, and, uh … Mum here’s actually met you.”

The older woman stands and removes her sunglasses. “Hello, Mr. Hershey. There’s no reason in the world you’d remember, but—”

“Holly Sykes. Yes. We met at Cartagena, last year.”

“ Wow , Mum!” says Aoife. “ The Crispin Hershey actually knows who you are. Aunt Sharon’s going to be, like, ‘Whaaa?’ ”

She reminds me so much of Juno that I ache, a little.

“Aoife.” There’s a note of maternal reprimand; the megaselling Angel Authoress is uneasy with her fame. “Mr. Hershey deserves some peace and quiet after the festival. Let’s get back to town, hey?”

The young woman swats away a fly. “We only just got here, Mum. It’ll look rude. You don’t mind sharing a lighthouse, do you?”

“No need to rush off on my account,” I hear myself saying.

“Cool,” says Aoife. “Then have a seat. Or a step. We saw you on the ferry to Rottnest, actually, but Mum said not to disturb you ’cause you looked dead beat.”

Angel Authoress seems keen to avoid me. How rude was I to her at the president’s villa? “Jet lag won’t take ‘please’ for an answer.”