The women in the office look at Darrell.
They’re all thinking: what would Roxy do? He can see it on their foreheads like they’ve written it there in marker pen.
Darrell feels the skein in his chest start to throb and twist. He’s been practising with it, after all. There’s a part of Roxy right here and that part knows just what to do. He’s strong. Mightier than the mightiest. He’s not supposed to show any of these girls what he can do – Bernie’s been very clear about that – the cat is not to be let out of the bag. Until he’s ready to be shown off to the highest bidders in London as an example of what they can do … he’s to keep it secret.
The skein whispers to him: She’s only one soldier. Go out there and give her a fright.
Power knows what to do. It has a logic to it.
He says, All of you, watch me. I’m going out.
He talks to the skein as he walks down the long gravel path and opens the gate in the perimeter fence.
He says: Don’t fail me now. I paid good money for you. We can work together on this, you and me.
The skein, obedient now, laid out along Darrell’s collarbone as it had once been in Roxy’s, begins to hum and sizzle. It is a good feeling; that is an aspect of the situation Darrell had suspected but not confirmed until now. Feels a little bit like being drunk, in a good way, in a strong way. Like that feeling you get when you’re drunk that you could take all comers, and in this case you really could.
The skein talks back to him.
It says: I’m ready.
It says: Come on, my son.
It says: Whatever you need, I’ve got it.
Power doesn’t care who uses it. The skein doesn’t rebel against him, doesn’t know that he’s not its rightful mistress. It just says: Yes. Yes, I can. Yes. You’ve got this.
He lets a little arc pass between his finger and his thumb. He’s still not used to that feeling. It buzzes uncomfortably on the surface of the skin, but it feels strong and right inside his chest. He should just let her go, but he can take her, no sweat. That’ll show them.
When he looks back at the factory, the women are crowded around the windows watching him. A few of them are straying out on to the path to keep him in their eye line. They’re muttering to each other behind their hands. One of them makes a long arc between her palms.
They’re sinister fuckers, the way they move together. Roxy’s gone too easy on them all these years, letting them have their weird little ceremonies and use the Glitter in their off hours. They go into the woods together at sunset and don’t come back till dawn, and he can’t fucking say anything, can he, because they turn up bang on time and they get the job done, but something’s going on, he can tell it by the smell of them. They’ve made a little fucking culture here, and he knows they talk about him, and he knows they think he shouldn’t be here.
He crouches low so she won’t see him coming.
Behind Darrell, the tide of women grows.
Roxy says in the morning when she and Tunde are dressed again, ‘I can get you out of the country.’
He had forgotten, really, that there is an ‘out of the country’ to get to. Already this feels more real and more inevitable than anything that has come before.
He pauses halfway through pulling on a sock. He’s left them to dry overnight. They still stink, and their texture is crisp and gravelly.
‘How?’ he says.
She shrugs one shoulder, smiles. ‘I’m Roxy Monke. I know a few people around here. You want to get out?’
Yes, he does. Yes.
He says to her, ‘What about you?’
She says, ‘I’m going to get my thing back. And then I’ll come and find you.’
She’s got something back already. She’s twice her natural size.
He thinks he likes her, but he has no way to know for certain. She has too much to offer him to be a simple proposition right now.
She gives him a dozen ways to find her, as they walk the long miles from here to there. This email inbox will go to her, even though it looks like a shell company. That person will always know how to reach her, eventually.
She says, more than once, ‘You saved my life.’ And he knows what she means.
At a crossroads between fields, next to a shelter for a twice-a-week bus, she uses a payphone to call a number she knows by heart.
When the call’s finished, she talks him through what’s going to happen: a blonde woman in an airline hat will pick him up this evening and drive him across the border.
He’ll have to be in the boot; sorry, but that’s the safest way. It’ll take about eight hours.
‘Waggle your feet,’ she says, ‘or you’ll get a cramp. It hurts and you’re not going to be able to get out.’
‘What about you?’
She laughs. ‘I’m not getting in the boot of a bloody car, am I?’
‘What then?’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
They part just after midnight outside a tiny village whose name she cannot pronounce.
She kisses him once, lightly on the mouth. She says, ‘You’ll be all right.’
He says, ‘You’re not staying?’ But he knows how this goes; the process of his life has taught him the answer. If she were seen taking particular care of a man, it’d make her look soft, in her world. And it’d put him in danger if anyone thought he meant something to her. This way, he could be any kind of cargo.
He says, ‘Go and take it back. Anyone worth knowing will think more of you for surviving this long without it.’
Even as he says it, he knows it’s not true. No one would think anything much of him for surviving this long.
She says, ‘If I don’t try, I’m not myself any more anyway.’
She walks on, taking the road to the south. He puts his hands into his pockets and his head down and strolls into the village, trying to look like a man sent on an errand that he has every right to be about.
He finds the place, just as she described it. There are three shuttered shops; no lights in the windows above them. He thinks he sees a curtain twitch in one of the windows and tells himself he’s imagined it. There’s no one waiting for him here and no one chasing him. When did he get so jumpy? And he knows when. It wasn’t this last thing that made it happen. This fear has been building up in him. The terror put its roots down into his chest years ago and every month and every hour has driven the tendrils a little deeper into the flesh.