Cages

death. He has his arms outstretched – Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man. The tips of the fingers on his left hand stretch under his bunk to touch the wall. His right hand falls three inches short of the opposing brickwork. He spends twenty minutes in this position every morning and again before lights out. He suffers with a painful back, and despite repeated requests to see a physiotherapist or masseuse, he has so far been denied this most basic of human rights. Instead, he allows gravity to work on the knotted muscles and creaking vertebrae. Presses himself flat to the cold floor and waits for the series of flicks and cracks that inform him his bones are being inexorably pulled downwards: through three floors of institutional brickwork, and deftly rearranged by the magnetic pull of the earth. He enjoys such moments of communion. In his mind he is able to see the different layers of strata beneath the foundations of the old prison building. Can see bones and pottery shards, masonry; scattered remnants of the villagers that once made home on this flat, windswept land. Can see the multicoloured bands of rock and earth; make out minerals and sparkling seams of unmined rock. Can see all the way down to the earth’s core.

It would be a meditation, of sorts, were Griffin Cox not reaching out with the eye of his mind to grasp the remains of the children he has left beneath the ground. Would be an act of mindfulness, of therapy, were he not remembering the sensation of their skin beneath him, and listening again to the memory of their screams.

FIVE

Annabeth dreams.

She sees her father: a five-penny piece atop a tuppence: pudgy arms, short fingers, fell-pony legs. Bald, with bottle-black strands teased backwards from what used to be a widow’s peak. He’s reading the big broadsheet newspaper, licking his thumb to turn the page. There’s butter and a smear of marmalade on the bottom corner of the front page. And he’s talking to her. Talking in that low, rumbly way of his, that means he’s embarrassed and irritated and wishes somebody else could do this for him but that there’s nobody he trusts to do the job properly.

‘… even if it did happen, what do you expect? Making all those moony eyes at him, sitting on his lap at the staff party, and that little top you wore, with your belly button out for everybody to see – we didn’t know where to look. If it’s there on a plate, people are going to eat, Annabeth. We never had this with your sisters. You’re going to get yourself into all sorts of trouble and it’s the poor chap who falls for it who gets in trouble. Your mother can’t even stand to think about it. We want no more talk about this. No more. You’ll be keeping your legs closed from now on, and I suggest we do the same with that bloody mouth of yours before it gets you into trouble …’

The image flickers; distorts. She’s eighteen. She’s standing at a bus stop in a little tourist town in Cumbria. She’s been kicked off the bus for having used a day-old ticket, scavenged from a bin and carelessly flashed at the driver ninety miles back. She’d hoped to make it as far as Dumfries, just over the border, where a girl she met in a hostel has told her she’s secured a bedsit and that she’ll be welcome on her sofa for a few days. The driver had demanded a second inspection of the ticket when he saw her scratching at her arms, shaking and wriggling, feverishly, way down the back of the coach. He’d kicked her off at the next stop, telling her he wasn’t having some junkie slag puke up on the upholstery. And now she’s sitting on her rucksack, wrapped up in her own arms, hoping that some late-night dog-walker will spot her and ask if she’s OK – maybe direct her to a refuge or invite her home for the night. She’ll adapt to the situation as it develops. If it’s a man she’ll play pitiful: let them be her knight in shining armour. She’ll feign pride and self-sufficiency if it’s a woman – repeatedly refuse offers of help until she hears the magic words ‘I insist’. Something will turn up. She just needs to score, that’s all. Needs to take something to shave the edge off …

And now she’s getting in the car, with the darkish, plumpish man. And he’s telling her he has a habit of picking up waifs and strays. And he’s telling her he has a place she can stay, if she’s quiet, and does as he asks.

In her sleep, Annabeth twists. Grimaces. Bites down so hard she can taste blood. And in the clutch of the dream she is beneath him. She can feel his blood hot and wet upon her skin. Can feel the weight of him. And she is sitting, caked in gore, shivering, crying, rocking back and forth, and then the door is opening, and the tall man is telling her to go, to just go, that he’ll tidy everything up, she just needs to go before anyone sees …

And now she’s a mother. She’s holding Ethan close as she climbs in through the broken window at the rear of the abandoned house. It’s a fairy-tale cabin: a gingerbread house – big round logs and chipboard windows, thatched roof and birds in the eaves. And she’s holding Ethan so close, so tight, that she fears crushing his fragile bones. Eight months old now, and still he doesn’t look anything like his father. Still there’s no sign of the dead man in his boy. And Annabeth knows she can keep doing this. She can keep moving from place to place, staying a step ahead of whatever’s chasing her, and that she’ll fight to her last breath to stop any harm coming to her baby.

She shifts in her