If I can just get out of here alive.
The nursery has shelves of books and chests full of wooden and pewter toys, but is dominated by a brass bed. The bed is big, but it looked even bigger a few moments ago. It shrank as I left it. But other things haven’t changed. Indigo still looks like a dachshund wearing a fur coat and Simon is sitting propped up against the pillows and is staring into space like he’s watching TV.
The windows are closed but there’s no smell – not even clean linen.
This might work, I think.
Charles is standing at the end of the bed, and this time I get to see him with all of my brain engaged. White, very pale, nine or ten, with the junior vampire look. His wrists are thin and I bet if I had his pink nightgown off I’d be able to count every rib. He’s really not well and I’ve spent enough time in the Children’s Ward to know death when it’s sitting patiently in the corner.
He smiles at me and it’s bright and radiant and so like Simon’s that I’m sure he’s stolen it.
‘Stay with me,’ he says, and walks towards me. ‘In the bed where it’s nice and warm.’
We’re face to face – almost close enough to kiss – which gives me an idea.
‘If you like me so much,’ I say, ‘why don’t we have sex?’
Charles takes an actual step backwards, a look of horror on his face.
‘Sex?’ he says. ‘That’s dirty. Why?’
‘It makes people happy,’ I say – and it certainly makes Mum happy, which I know despite her trying to muffle it with a pillow. ‘How about a kiss?’
I pucker up and lean forward.
Charles jumps backwards, a disgusted look on his face. That was me when I was nine. All right, truth be told, that was me when I was twelve, too. But since then I’m coming round to the idea – in theory. There may be some experimentation in the future with an appropriate range of test subjects. Once I’ve worked out what the range is, of course.
‘Abigail and Charlie sitting in a tree,’ I say, ‘K-I-S-S-I-N-G.’
‘No,’ he says in a voice that is too deep and too old to be that of a poor sod of a boy who’s spent most of his short life trapped in the attic. I squint at him and there’s a booky kind of solidness about him – a fleeting cement pattern on his nightshirt, flashes of yellow-red brick in his eyes.
‘You’re not him,’ I say. ‘Are you?’
‘Darling Abigail, always thinking, always looking for answers,’ says Charles. ‘I’m not poor Charles who was trapped up here in his unreliable body – although certainly I can relate. His memories are part of me, a foundational part, as are those of many of the ones that sheltered under my roof.’
He’s been talking but I’ve been moving slowly. A millimetre at a time towards the stairs, looking to put the bed between me and Charles, who maybe I should be calling House now, and get close enough to make a grab for Simon.
‘Although, let’s be honest,’ says Charles, his voice grown older – less Dickens, more downstairs Downton, ‘by the standards of the time, young Charles’s life was not too awful – now was it?’
‘Everyone’s life could be better,’ I say, but I’m not really concentrating because I’m feeling for the plugs I have stashed in the pocket of my jeans.
‘What about your brother?’ asks Charles. ‘What about his happiness?’
I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out.
‘How long does he have left?’
‘What the fuck do you know about anything?’ I yell – control gone – fist clenched – why am I so easy to mess with?
Charles speaks again, only now his voice is high-pitched, a girl, familiar. Someone I know.
‘It’s so sad,’ he says. ‘She’s got like this brother with one of them diseases, you know, like you’re born with it. You start off okay but like you get worse and worse and then you die, like, before you’re twenty. Like I said, sad, innit?’
Charles has made a mistake. He had to prove himself and that little pause let me pattern myself and get myself under control. I take a big breath and let it out slowly. He thinks he’s got a deal. I’m thinking I should find out what it is – because you never know.
It might be a good deal.
‘What about Paul?’
‘He could live here,’ says Charles. ‘With me – forever.’
‘What, as a ghost? No thank you.’
The wizards never really settled whether ghosts were people or not, but I’ve met enough ghosts and played enough video games with crappy AI to know that, at best, ghosts are bad imitations of people and, at worst – sad memories. The Shadow Lady certainly felt the same. And she should know.
‘You misunderstand me, Abigail,’ says Charles. ‘Here with me outside time – outside death.’
Outside time, outside time, outside time?
Sooner or later there will be a cure, everybody knows that – a retrovirus, a gene replacement or a drug therapy or all of those – but not soon enough, not for my brother, not for Paul.
But outside time?
Then why not open a clinic – stick all the doomed kids in a happy stasis until cures are found.
‘How would that work?’ I ask, because it would be so good.
‘You would bring him here,’ says Charles. ‘And we would be playmates forever.’
‘And Simon?’
The pause gives it away and I know the answer before Charles speaks.
‘Simon stays with me too,’ he says. ‘I need him and, besides, be honest, he’s going to be happier here.’
I shut my eyes – it would have
