Nine Perfect Strangers

He was not real. She knew this. It was very easy to see what was real and what was not. Her mind was very sharp, sharp enough to differentiate.

She closed her eyes.

Her baby’s voice was calling for her. No. Not real.

She opened her eyes and he was crawling across her office floor, babbling nonsense to himself.

She closed her eyes quickly. No. Not real.

She opened her eyes. A cigarette would calm her.

She opened her secret cupboard once more and removed an unopened packet of cigarettes and a lighter. The geometry of the pack enthralled her. Each of its four mathematically aligned angles was so pleasing.

She opened the pack, removed a cigarette and rolled its cylindrical shape back and forth between her fingertips. The lighter was orange, a colour of such depth and beauty it astonished her.

She ran her thumb across the tiny rough-edged wheel of the lighter. A gold flame burst forth, instantly and obediently.

She let it go and did it again.

The lighter was a miniature factory producing perfect flames on demand. There was such beauty in the efficient production of goods and services.

A thought of crystalline clarity: Masha should forget the wellness industry completely and return to the corporate world. Forget pivoting. She should jump. It would simply be a matter of reactivating her LinkedIn account and within a very short time she would be headhunted, fielding offers.

The boy in the baseball cap sat on the other side of her desk, dripping puddles of iridescent colour all over her floor.

‘What do you think?’ she asked him. ‘Should I do that?’

He didn’t speak, but she could tell he thought it was a good idea.

No more entitled, ungrateful guests. She would once again conduct multiple departments of a company like an orchestra: accounting, payroll, sales and marketing – it was all coming back to her, the glorious unassailable solidity of a documented reporting structure with her name at the top. She would micro-dose daily to optimise her productivity. Ideally her staff would do the same, although the people in HR would have all sorts of objections.

She had begun a new life when she emigrated, when her son died, and again when her heart stopped. She could do it again.

Sell this property and buy an apartment in the city.

Or . . .

She studied the tiny, flickering flame. The answer was right there.

chapter sixty-six

Ben

‘So, Napoleon, I’ve got you,’ said Ben, walking next to the older man as he strode up and down the length of the cellar. ‘I mean, I’m defending you.’

He felt like he should call him Mr Marconi or Sir. He had that teacher-ish manner. The sort of teacher you still wanted to impress even after you’d left school and bumped into him at the shops looking startlingly short. Not that he could imagine Napoleon ever looking short.

‘Thank you, Ben,’ said Napoleon, as if Ben had been given a choice.

‘So, okay,’ said Ben. He rubbed his stomach. He had never been so hungry in his life. ‘I guess it’s pretty simple why you deserve a stay of execution. You’re a husband and a father, and, well, I hope it’s okay to include this in my speech – but your wife and daughter have already lost enough, haven’t they? They couldn’t lose you too.’

‘You can say that if you like.’ Napoleon smiled sadly. ‘That’s true.’

‘And you’re a teacher,’ said Ben. ‘So kids depend on you.’

‘They do. Yep.’ Napoleon rapped his knuckles on the brickwork. Ben had seen him do this a hundred times since they’d been down here, as if he were hoping that he’d find a loose brick that would give them a way out. Ben knew it was hopeless. There was no way out of here except that door.

‘Anything else I should say?’ asked Ben, and his voice cracked. When he’d had to deliver the toast at Pete’s wedding he thought he might pass out. And now it was his job to defend this man’s life?