David Mitchell - Slade House

“Kate!” Fern the future A-lister forgets us, her embarrassing taggers-alongers. “So glad you gave a monkey’s about Monkey’s .”

“You kidding?” Kate Childs takes a long drag on her spliff and releases a plume of dope smoke. “I literally died of envy.”

Lance asks, “Are you smoking what I think you’re smoking, you wicked wick ed worstest witch?”

“That depends,” the American girl gives Lance a dubious look, “on what exactly it is you think I’m smoking.”

“Shut it a sec, Lance,” says Angelica. “Excuse me — Kate. We’d just like you to settle something: is that building Slade House?”

Kate Childs smiles like it might be a trick question. “Unless they’ve renamed it in, like, the last half-hour: yes.”

“Thank you,” Angelica continues. “And who lives here?”

“Me, and about fifteen other Erasmus exchange scholars. You guys are here for the Hallowe’en party, right?”

“Definitely,” says Lance. “We’re six psychic investigators.”

“So just to be clear,” says Angelica, “the university owns Slade House, this building, where you live?”

“Technically, the Erasmus Institute owns it, though a university groundsman mows the grounds on his shit-on mower. There’s a sign round the front that — Christ, did I just say, ‘Shit-on mower’? I did, didn’t I?” Kate Childs bends over with silent laughter, which vanishes as quickly as it came. “Sorry. What were we saying?”

“The sign,” says Axel. “The sign round the front.”

“ ‘Slade House, Erasmus Scholarship Center, Sponsoring Cross-Cultural Understanding in Education since 1982.’ Walk past it every day. It’s by the”—she jabs a finger over the roof of Slade House—“big gates. So if that ’s all settled …” Kate Childs points to the big house. “Eat, drink, be merry: tomorrow we …” she waves her hand to shake out the last verb, but gives up and offers Lance her spliff.

Lance turns to us. “I’ll see you guys later.”

“I’ll lodge a formal apology on ParaSoc’s records,” says Axel, as he, Angelica, Fern, Todd and me approach the house. “My uncle swore that Slade House had never been found.” Axel slaps the stone wall of the building. “Either he’s a liar or delusional. Who cares? My first error was to believe him.”

I feel bad for Axel. “He’s your uncle. Don’t feel guilty.”

“Sal’s right,” says Todd. “No harm’s been done.”

Axel ignores us. “My second error was a failure to reconnoitre the locale. A short stroll down Cranbury Avenue would have done the job. It was unforgivable.” Axel’s near tears. “Cavalier. Amateurish.”

“Who cares?” says Fern. “Looks like a slinky humdinger of a party.”

Axel adjusts his scarf. “ParaSoc is suspended until further notice. Goodnight.” With that, he walks down the passage around the side of Slade House.

“Axel,” Angelica rushes after him, “hold your horses …”

Todd watches them disappear. “Poor guy.”

“Poor Angelica,” says Fern, which I don’t understand: I thought Fern hated her. “Well, when in Rome …” She trots up the steps and slips inside. Todd turns to me and makes a What a night! face. I make a Tell me about it! face. He readjusts his glasses. If I were his girlfriend I’d make him get frameless ones to let his doomed-poet good looks shine. “Todd, you wanted to ask me something.”

Todd looks all hunted. “Did I?”

“Earlier. On the street. Before Lance found the alley.”

Todd scratches his neck. “Did I? I …” I deflate. Todd’s pretending to have forgotten because he’s got cold feet. It’s all these waif-thin girls gyrating their skinny bodies around. “Maybe if we go inside and chat, Sal,” Todd’s saying, “it’ll come back to me. I–I mean, if you’ve got no other plans tonight. A quick drink and a chat. That’s all.”

“Just the one sister,” I tell Todd a second time, louder, because “Caught by the Fuzz” by Supergrass is pumping on the stereo. We’re huddled in a corner by an oven with a noisy fan. The kitchen’s crammed, misty with cigarette smoke and smells of bins. Todd’s drinking a Tiger beer from a bottle and I’m drinking shit red wine from a plastic cup.

“Your sister’s older than you, I’m guessing,” says Todd.

“Was it a fifty-fifty guess, or can you really tell?”

“An eighty-twenty hunch. What’s her name?”

“Freya. She lives in New York these days.”

Laughter explodes nearby; Todd cups his ear: “Wassat?”

“Freya. As in the kick-ass Norse goddess of … um …”

“Love, sex, beauty, fertility, gold, war and death.”

“That’s the one,” I say. “As opposed to ‘Sally,’ a doomed pit pony, or a tart in the East End docks in a Dickens novel.”

“Not true!” Todd looks hurt. “Sally’s a sunny name. It’s kind.”

“All the research suggests that Freyas go way farther in life than Sallies. Name me one famous Sally. Go on. You can’t, can you? My sister won every medal going at school; picked up good Mandarin in Singapore; fluent French in Geneva; graduated in journalism from Imperial College this June; moved in with her boyfriend in Brooklyn, who is of course a hotshot Chinese — American documentary maker; and got a job with a photo agency on Bleecker Street. Not an internship: an actual paid job. All within a fortnight of touching down at JFK. That’s so Freya. If I sound jealous, I am. God, Todd, did you spike my wine with truth serum?”

“No, but don’t stop, Sal. I love hearing you talk.”

I actually heard him perfectly well but I love hearing Todd saying the words “I,” “love” and “you” in close quarters so I ask him, “Say that again?”

“I said, I love hearing you talk. Maybe Freya’s jealous of you, too.”

“As if! Here’s my potted biog, since you asked: Sally Timms, born Canterbury in 1979.” Todd’s paying close attention, like he really wants to hear this. “Dad was a Shell Oil Man and Mum was a Shell Oil Wife. They still are — Shell’s like Hotel California: you can check out but never leave. Dad got promoted to the Singapore office when I was eight, and we all moved out. Singapore’s all rules, every square yard’s hemmed in. When I was twelve, I had a, kind of … breakdown, and …” I hesitate, wondering if Todd’s admiring my honesty or thinking, Head-case, head-case, pull back, pull back; but his beautiful brown eyes encourage me to carry on. “My parents decided I wasn’t culturally adaptable, so I ended up at a girls’ school in Great Malvern, in Worcestershire. Six years of English weather; of crap English food; of Singaporean girls, ironically; lots of internationally rich people’s problem daughters, too. Like me.” But slimmer, prettier and bitchier. “I should’ve fitted right in, but I … Actually, I loathed it.”

Todd’s unfazed. “Did your parents know you were so unhappy?”

I shrug. “It was a matter of making my bed and lying in it. Dad got promoted to Brunei, Mum stayed in Singapore, Freya left for Sydney — this was all pre-email, of course, so we all had to … to build our own lives, pretty much independently. We reconvened for summers and Christmases, but while Mum and Freya were like long-lost sisters, I was the … well, I’d like to say ‘black sheep of the family,’ but black sheep are kind of cool. Todd, I can’t be lieve you want to listen to me whinge on.”

“You’re not whingeing. You had a tough time.”

I sip my shit wine. “Not compared to an AIDS orphan or any North Korean or a Shell Oil Wife’s maid. I forget my good luck.”