Believing the Lie

time the burglar alarm kept howling. It was a good five minutes — perhaps more — when they finally broke the lock through the doorjamb. Freddie stumbled inside the inner room, shouting over his shoulder, “Manette, you must wait.”

Again, she ignored him. If he was walking into danger, she wasn’t about to let him walk into danger alone.

They were in a digital printing room that gave onto a storeroom. Two aisles comprised this, at the end of which strong lights were shining, although the rest of the place was in darkness. The alarm’s noise continued unabated, so they watched for movement from the shadows. But a cold breeze wafting towards them spoke of an escape having been effected out of the back door. They could only hope someone had been left behind. They could only hope that someone was Tim.

At the far end where the light was brightest, they saw the crude film set. Manette took it all in in an instant — beds, window, Big Ben in the distance, dog at the foot of a bed — before she saw him. He was a figure lying on his side in what looked like a nightshirt. But the nightshirt was pulled above his head, green tights were tied round the top of it like a sack, and the boy himself lay on his side with his hands bound in front of him and his genitals on display. He was fully erect. An X on the floor not far from the bed on which he lay indicated where the camera had been positioned and what its primary focus had been.

Manette said, “Oh God.”

Freddie turned to her. She read his lips because there was no way to hear him, not while the alarm kept shrieking like a banshee come to claim a soul. You stay here. You stay here.

Because she was frightened at that point, she remained where she was. If Tim was dead, the truth of the matter was that she simply did not want to see.

Freddie went to the bed. Manette saw his lips form he’s bleeding and then Tim old man I say old man as he reached for the tights that bound the nightshirt closed above Tim’s head.

Tim’s body jerked. Freddie’s lips said Easy there. It’s Freddie my man let me get you out you’re all right old man and then he had the nightshirt released from its binding and he was lowering it gently to cover Tim’s body and Manette saw from the boy’s eyes and his face that he was drugged which in that moment she thanked God for because if he was drugged there was a small chance that he would not remember what had happened to him here.

Phone the police, Freddie said.

But she knew there was no need for that. Even as she approached Ian’s son where he lay on the bed, even as she reached to untie his hands, the alarm ceased howling and she heard the voices.

“Bloody damn mess,” someone called out from the shop itself.

How true, she thought.

MORECAMBE BAY CUMBRIA

Everything you do in quicksand is counterintuitive, Nicky had told her. When you hit it, your inclination is to freeze in place. It seems that struggling will make you sink faster. Any movement at all will presage more danger and an inconceivable end. But you must remember several things, darling. The first is that you have no idea how deep the sand really is. You’re only in a scour and while it might be deep enough to swallow a horse or a tractor or an entire tour coach, it’s more likely that you’re in one of the shallower scours, which will suck you in only to your knees or, at worst, your thighs, leaving you otherwise free until rescue comes. But you don’t want to discover that — especially if you’re going to go in up to your chest — because if you sink that far there’s no getting out because of the suction involved. At that point only more water can get you out, water from a fire hose blasting into the sand to free you or water from the incoming tide driving sand from the scour again. So you must move quickly once you’re in the sand. If you’re very lucky, it’s not deep and before it can suck upon your boots and entrap them, you can move across it or back away from it. If you can’t do that, then you must lie on the surface of the quicksand. Lie down upon it as soon as you’re able. You’ll see that you’ll sink no deeper and you’ll be able to roll away from it.

But no matter the words of her husband, who had lived his life in this strange part of the world, to Alatea the thought was madness. She was in the sand up to her thighs, so no quick movement out of the scour was possible. This meant lying on the top of the sand. And she could not bring herself to do it. She told herself to. She said aloud, “You must, you must,” but all she could think of as she settled more slowly downward was the insidious movement of the sand inching up her supine body, crawling into her ears, touching her cheeks, slithering like menace incarnate towards her nose.

She wanted to pray but her mind would not produce the appropriate words that could effect a miracle. Instead, what it produced were images, and central to them was Santiago Vasquez y del Torres, thirteen years old, a runaway only as far as the closest city to Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos. There in a church he had stowed himself for refuge, dressed in Elena Maria’s clothing, face painted with Elena Maria’s cosmetics, a shoulder bag containing some little money and a change of clothing and three tubes of lipstick, and a scarf covering hair that was too long for a boy and too short for a girl.

When the priest found her, he called her my child and daughter of our Heavenly Father and he asked her if she was there to confess. And confession seemed like the path she should take — “Go, Santiago. Go where God points,” Elena Maria had whispered — so Santiago Vasquez y del Torres had confessed. Not to sin but to his need for help because if he could not be what he needed to be, he knew he would end his life.

The priest listened. He spoke gently of the grave sin of despair. He said that God did not create mistakes. Then he said, “Come with me, child,” and together they walked to the rectory, where Santiago was given absolution for whatever sin he had committed in running from his home and a meal of beef and boiled potatoes, which he ate slowly as he looked round the simple kitchen, where the priest’s housekeeper eyed him with thick black eyebrows drawn together and a furrowed brow. When he was finished with his meal, he was led to a parlour to rest, my dear child, for your journey has been a long and difficult one, has it not? And yes it had, oh it had. So he lay on a sofa covered in corduroy and he fell asleep.

His father awakened him. Face like a stone mask, he’d said, “Thank you, Padre,” and he’d taken his wayward son by the arm. “Thank you for everything,” and he’d made a hefty donation to the church or perhaps to the betraying priest himself, and home they had gone.

A beating would change him, his father decided. So would being locked into a room until he saw clearly the crime he had committed not only against God’s law but also against his family and their good name. And nothing would change about his situation — “Do you understand me, Santiago?” — until he agreed to stop this mad behaviour.

So Santiago had tried on manhood, for all the ill-fitting suit of clothes it was. But pictures of naked ladies shared in secret with his brothers only made him want to be like the ladies, not to have them, and when his brothers touched themselves in guilty pleasure at the sight of these women, the thought of touching himself in a similar way made him both nauseous and faint.

He did not develop as a boy: hairy of arm and leg and chest, bearded and needing to shave. It was so clear that something was wrong with him, but the only answer seemed to be toughening him up with contact sports, with hunting, with rock climbing, with daredevil skiing, with anything, in short, that his father could think of to make him into the man he was intended by God to be.

For two long years Santiago made the attempt. For two long years Santiago saved every bit of money he could. At fifteen, then, he ran for the final time, and he made it by train to Buenos Aires, where no one knew he was not a female unless he wished to make the fact known to them.

Alatea recalled the train ride: the sound of the engine and the scenery passing. She recalled her head against the cool glass of the window. She recalled her feet upon her suitcase. She remembered her ticket being punched and the man saying, Gracias, senorita, and being senorita from that time forward as the train carried her away from her home.