The Rat (not-yet-Rat) slides her body into the gap. She takes a few steps and nothing happens, the floor doesn’t collapse or the sky explode. She can smell fresh air blowing through the gaps in the roof.
She goes down the stairs. She’s holding out her hand, wanting Mam to take it. But Mam is out of reach, standing by a little round window with a black one, a human-headed crow. He laughs, and immediately she dislikes him, wants to run forward and drag Mam away.
‘… mustn’t come up here, not in daylight – you gave me a shock.’
‘I was curious. You didn’t go back to your room.’
‘You mustn’t follow me!’ But she sighs, and the Rat can hear the beginning of a laugh in her voice, like the onset of a cold.
‘I can’t resist your animal magnetism.’
‘I’m not an animal. I’m a woman.’
‘You can say that again …’ He leans forward. ‘I could do it here, right now. Just looking at you …’
‘No!’
He laughs again, and grabs her. They reel. The Rat shivers, wanting to rip him off, somehow knowing that Mam would be angry. The two of them are crushed together as if they’re trying to step into each other’s clothes. He grunts. He nuzzles into her neck as though he’s going to bite her.
Then he stops. He looks up, over Mam’s shoulder. At the Rat.
‘Where did that come from?’
Mam whirls round. Her mouth opens. ‘Get back!’
‘Is it yours?’ He tilts his head, looking at the Rat as if he’s calculating how much meat is on her bones. ‘I didn’t realise … She looks like you, doesn’t she?’
‘You mustn’t tell – no one knows – they’d throw me out.’
‘Of course I won’t,’ he says. But he’s smiling, his eyes still narrowed, and his gaze hasn’t wavered. ‘A bastard in the attic. I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? When you’re such a hot little whore …’
A silence. Mam’s face is flushed. Those words were bad words, you could hear it in his voice, but she is smiling. Smiling as though she hasn’t heard. The Rat – the bastard, whatever that means – takes a step down, towards them both.
Mam says, ‘Get back to the room! I told you before. Now.’
She hesitates. She opens her mouth.
‘Now!’
She stares at them. The black-robed man’s smile widens. He raises his hand and gestures, twirling a finger in the air: go on then, run away. Then he pulls Mam back into his arms. He puts his mouth on hers: but his eyes flick to the Rat with a pleased glint, enjoying his victory.
The Rat turned and went up the stairs. All the way up she was waiting for Mam to run after her and take her hand. But she didn’t. The Rat got to the room and lay down on her back, with the door open a crack. The sunset-light went redder and smaller and then it was dark and Mam still didn’t come, and she stayed awake for as long as she could, waiting and waiting for Mam to say goodnight, but she didn’t come that night and the way it feels now it’s like she never came back at all, ever, after that; even though she did.
Watching the man breathe out the last lungful of smoke, the-fat-and-old-but-same man, she remembers the empty ache in her chest, the sobs building, because Mam had never – she always – she loved, before that the Rat had always known that whatever happened she loved—
It is the same feeling as the not-hunger she feels now, thinking of Simon. And fear. Fear like now, too. She puts her hands over her mouth, very quietly, and bites into the soft part of her palm.
The man puts his hands in his pockets and walks forward, towards the foot of the stairs. He cranes to peer upwards. Then he ascends, step by deliberate step. The banister wobbles and he shakes it harder, pausing to enjoy the faint crackle of breaking wood. Then he disappears into the darkness at the top.
She relaxes. Her insides are shivery, but now he’s gone. She can run. The predator-shadow has passed over her. His attention is elsewhere.
His attention … He must be at the foot of the other staircase now, the one that leads up to her little room – Simon’s room.
Simon. Simon is hiding too. He mustn’t be found. It’s important. Whatever you do you must not … Not by this man, especially not by this man.
She scampers up the stairs. She has made the decision too quickly to be afraid; too quickly to see how unratlike it is, or to care. She makes noise, deliberately. And then they are facing each other, at the foot of the second flight: as they were ten years ago (a lifetime ago) only reversed, with him on the lowest step, her below. He jumps and blinks at her. His teeth are bared.
He says, ‘My word.’
She lets him see her. She stands in his gaze, even though it burns. A rat would run. She should run.
And now she does. She spins and swerves, takes the grey ones’ corridor and flies along the length of it, nearly silent on her bare feet. She pauses at the end, where she could go either way: and she looks back over her shoulder. He’s following, intent, treading lightly. He is a hunter. A wave of terror goes through her; but there’s something else there too, a fierce pleasure, because (this time at least) she’ll escape, and she has led him away from Simon.
32: Léo
It’s Midsummer Eve. The air is still, like glass. The valley holds the night like a bowl, frothy with stars. The silence is as thick as deafness. Léo sits in the Magisters’ courtyard, lighting match after match and flicking them away. He could be the only person left in the world. A few nights ago – after he’d been drinking with Emile and two of the Magisters – he went past Claire’s door and stood there listening, aching to knock. But she was on retreat, and he couldn’t face the thought of her anger. Can’t we go back? No … Now, when it’s too late, he wishes he’d been braver. Tomorrow he’ll be sitting with the other Gold Medallists, another face in the audience. She doesn’t even know he’s going to be there.
Everyone else is asleep. The guests that arrived yesterday are asleep in the scholars’ cells, and for once, although it’s not midnight yet, there’s no light in Emile’s window. Léo stares up at it; he wouldn’t put it past Emile to be standing in the dark watching him. He has felt Emile’s gaze on him for days, sly and constant. Even when Léo is alone, there’s an itch at the back of his neck, a sense that he’s no longer safe. If he ever was. It’s almost better when he’s in Emile’s rooms, drinking and politicking, ignoring the others’ jokes about female Magisters: at least then he knows he’s under scrutiny, and he can perform as though he were back at Party headquarters. At least then he knows it isn’t paranoia.
But he has no right to complain. For months, he’s been the spy. Those fucking letters. Details of who was a Party supporter, who’d said something subversive, who had a weakness and might be bribed … How could he have thought that gossip was innocuous? He sees his own treachery in the way Emile smiles at him. Another thing he wants to confess to Claire and be forgiven for, somehow.
And not only is he a traitor, he’s a coward. He should have done more to help Charpentier than leave food out for him in an unlocked room: half-eaten bread and sausage and fruit piled on a plate, easily deniable. It’s not enough, but now Emile is watching him he daren’t do anything else. He’s hesitated about writing a note – leaving cash, or the contact details for an official who owes Léo a favour – but if Charpentier can get into his room, so could Emile. His skin crawls at the prospect of Emile finding incriminating evidence. So the food is all he can do; food, and an occasional sheepish prayer. Sometimes he hopes that Charpentier has absconded, but then the next day’s leftovers will disappear, and Léo guesses with a sinking heart that he’s still in hiding, slowly starving. If only Léo knew what to do – or if only he had never tried to help in the first place …