Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

‘Pretty funny. I was pretty upset at the time, but now – you know, you chalk it up to experience. It was about four hours ago, actually. I mean, I’m still pretty upset about it if truth be told. I wasn’t completely – you know, I did what you do. Went out and just left her. You can’t – you can’t recover from that, you know. But you live and learn, move on. Into every life a little rain must fall. It’s not the end of the world. It just feels -’ his voice quavered – ‘like the end of the world…’

What was Jones looking at? What was the last thing his eye saw of the world? Had he been looking at her when he died? She couldn’t remember.

Bree looked up and across the waiting area. A young black guy, lanky arms shining with sweat, was muttering and yipping. A girl in a hooded top sat with her hands folded in her lap, her lips moving silently. There was blood down one side of her face. A bulky man in a pale blue T-shirt, wedged into one of these chairs, had his right arm wound round and round with toilet roll. He was dozing, coughing out sporadic, apnoeic snores.

There was a noise. Through the door to the outside there came a man dressed in a white jumpsuit and a dark wig with extravagant sideburns holding a wad of bloodied tissue paper to his nose. He still had his sunglasses on.

Bree saw Alex look up, and something that might in another circumstance have been amusement passed across his face.

‘It’s not, honey. It’s not. Not the end of the world,’ said Bree, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘Life goes on. You just feel sad for a bit. Maybe a long time. I had a husband. Marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

‘Are you still with him?’

‘Had.’

‘What happened?’

‘He left. I wasn’t easy to be married to.’

‘Did you love him?’

‘Yes,’ said Bree, a flat matter of fact.

‘Still?’

‘No. Jolly Rancher?’

Alex frowned.

‘It’s a candy,’ Bree said. She pulled half of a stick of Jolly Ranchers from her pocket, the paper wrapper in a spiral tatter where she had been attacking them. Alex took one, unwrapped it, put it in his mouth. It clinked against his teeth like sticky glass, then started tasting of sour artificial apple. ‘My friend liked these.’

‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ Alex said. Talking was making him feel – not better, exactly. But it was like not looking down. In the back of his mind there was still this sinkhole, this gap, widening, between what he had thought his future was going to be, and what it was now.

With every passing moment, the gap got wider. It was irredeemable. Bridges crumbling and falling into the sea. Alex replayed Carey saying the one thing, the thing that was impossible: ‘Can we just forget this?’ It was done.

‘How does it get better?’ Alex said.

‘What?’ Bree had three Jolly Ranchers in her mouth and was unwrapping a fourth. The Ranchers didn’t seem to be imparting the jollity their name promised. It occurred to Alex that there was something about her – a look around her eyes? – that made him think he knew her. As if she were someone he saw often and paid little attention to, and then met in another context: like bumping into your old dinner lady in the supermarket a couple of years after you’ve left school.

‘Better,’ repeated Alex. ‘How long does it take?’

‘Long time,’ said Bree. ‘Wait. Waiting does it. Apparently.’

‘Look,’ Alex said. He dug a hand into his pocket, and half stood up, and out of his pocket he pulled a square box. ‘I even got a ring.’ He popped the box open.

Bree reached out. Her fingers were chubby, her nails bitten down. She took the ring and turned it round in her hands.

‘Pretty,’ she said. ‘The number eight. Swirly. Ah… I’m sorry, kid.’ She drew it a little closer to her eyes. ‘What’s that written in it there?’ She indicated some scratchy markings.

‘Hallmark, I think.’

‘No. Hallmark looks different. Longer. That’s just…’ Bree angled the ring in the harsh light of the waiting room. ‘ “AB” it says.’

Alex took the ring off her and looked at it more closely. It did – right up by where the band swooped into its figure-eight design. The letters had been worn almost to indecipherability by the warm friction of the finger that had once lived in the ring. Bree remembered something Red Queen had said.

‘What do those letters mean?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ he said truthfully. ‘I hadn’t noticed them. I bought the ring second-hand.’

‘Used?’

‘I bought it from an antique shop.’

Banacharski’s mother was called Ana. The letters they had intercepted had gone on and on about her. She had died.

‘You’re lying,’ said Bree.

The look Alex gave her – weariness mixed with fear – was enough to convince her that he was not. And if this was it – why show her? ‘Let me see it again,’ said Bree. She held it up to the light once more. On the leading edge, the metal seemed for an instant to have a diffracted blue light – a blur, as if it had slipped sideways in space.

‘When? Where did it come from?’

‘Just a shop. A shop in Cambridge. A couple of weeks ago. I happened to stop there – I saw it and I thought it might be nice to… you know. To ask her to marry me.’

Bree rubbed her eyes. It felt like there was grit in them.

‘I think,’ Alex continued, ‘I – I don’t know. I don’t know what made me think she would say yes. I know she’s got… she’s much more experienced than me, is what. And she’s got what she calls “issues around commitment”. She’s said that before. She didn’t have a normal family, like I did – she was fostered when she was a teenager and never sees her birth parents. Never talks about them.’

There was a very long silence between them. Alex drew the space blanket tighter around his shoulders, and Bree tugged at where the fabric of her blouse had wedged into her armpit.

‘How did you find me?’ Alex asked.

‘Dumb luck,’ said Bree. ‘We’d lost you. But the man who was chasing you – we had a fix on his cellphone. You can triangulate them. Good as a tracking device. He followed you and we followed him.’

‘How did he find me?’ said Alex. Bree shrugged. A known unknown.

‘I don’t know what they had on you. My boss thought they were getting information from inside our organisation. There’s a lot riding on this.’

‘But why did you think I had this thing of yours in the first place?’

‘We were watching the Banacharski Ring…’

‘The Banacharski Ring? It’s a web ring. An academic group. We share papers about maths.’

‘Ostensibly. Our cryptographers say different.’

‘Not ostensibly. Really . Isla -’

‘Isla Holderness?’

‘Yes, exactly. Isla set it up after she corresponded with him. It’s just a website with a discussion forum attached. My supervisor took it over when she left. He was friendly with Isla when they were at Cambridge together, before her accident.’

‘Uh-huh? OK. So tell me about your supervisor.’

‘Mike? Not much to tell. He’s a research fellow at my college. We meet for supervisions. I show him my work. Sometimes we have a drink. That’s it…’

‘Mike Hollis?’

Alex looked perplexed. ‘You know him?’

‘No,’ said Bree. ‘Colleagues of mine were interested in him.’

Alex shook his head. He still had no idea what was going on. He wondered where Carey was now, and then pushed the thought out of his mind.

‘Hollis sent an email,’ said Bree. ‘He mentioned you. He said he was leaving the ring in your hands. Shortly afterwards, you left for America. And here you are with the ring. Are we not expected to find that suspicious?’