“What do you mean?” Dad looked worried, probably imagining Mum had given Lesley Gavey some of our money. Mum, however, was referring to the currency of unpleasant experiences.
“I only got to find out the truth because she started weeping again,” she told Dad.
17
Tuesday 18 June 2024
Sally
The next day, Sally wakes up in a beautiful bedroom more than twice the size of her own. She knows it’s beautiful, having seen it last night with the lights on.
It’s morning. She and Champ have survived one night since the policeman’s visit. That means they can survive many more; it stands to reason. Everything is looking and feeling better now that the Lamberts are in this luxurious sanctuary. Corinne’s Lake District home is decorated and furnished exactly like Ismys House: furniture with elaborately carved wooden legs, white walls, wooden floors, gorgeous blocks of color everywhere, more deep and rich than bright, and patterns only in the textures of things. Corinne explained that principle last night in response to Sally’s compliment about the gorgeousness of everything.
There was also art, lots and lots of it, some very ancient looking and some obviously modern: a mix of bright, splodgy abstracts and more subtly colored, darker paintings of actual things. Sally wastoo tired last night to inspect anything closely, but she remembers lumpy, authentic-looking faces, a tractor in a muddy field in front of an orange sunrise, girls in white dresses sitting near a clump of reeds by the side of a lake. There were some framed pieces of writing too, which she made a mental note to read tomorrow.Today.
Champ is lying on the duvet beside her, stretched out and pressing into her side. This is one of his habits and very different from Furbert, who used to curl up at the foot of the bed or on the squashy, fat back of a nearby chair. Champ likes to get as close and pressed up against his humans as he can when settling in for the night; his Donut bed is only his favorite place for daytime naps. At bedtime, only the big bed with Mum and Dad will do.
“Soz, Champy, gotta get up. Me, not you,” Sally clarifies. She walks over to open the curtains, eager to see the room again now that she’ll be able to focus properly on everything in it. She has slept deeply and feels refreshed, though there was one slightly disturbing dream: that she was on the run from the police. (Well, that was true—but in the dream there was an official manhunt, and she was its target, not Champ.) Sally was proud to be an outlaw in the dream—one who spat in the face of the law and hated all representatives thereof.
“I do hate them,” she told herself doubtfully. It was certainly true that she scorned the teenager she had once been who’d idolized Cagney and Lacey. COVID and the lockdowns had changed her feelings about the police, probably forever. Ree and Tobes had been yelled at by a local uniformed dickhead in Cambridge for sitting on a bench side by side. “Do you two live in the same house?” the cop had demanded.
“Yes, actually,” Ree told him, probably with some attitude—his own fault, given his rude, unfriendly tone—and he accused her of lying. He ordered her and Tobes to put more physical distance between them immediately if they didn’t want to be taken to the nearest police station and have their parents summoned.
“Oh, please,please, ring my mum and make my day,” Ree said.
“Yeah, let’s get Lester involved,” Tobes agreed. “Good idea.”
Sally feels the same pride she felt when Ree first told her the story in April 2020.My kids know I’ll defend them, no matter what.Champ knows. Furbert, wherever he is, knows too.
Especially against any bastard who called himself police while perpetrating more injustice than most criminals. Another one had stopped Sally for looking at her phone while in stationary traffic last November. Well, in fact, hehadn’tstopped her, which was the whole point—she’d pointed it out to him, too. She was in traffic that wasn’t moving—hadn’t for nearly twenty minutes—and had her car in the park setting; she was going nowhere and a danger to nobody. Officer Dickhead had been thrilled to tell her that didn’t matter, that it was still against the law to have her phone in her hand. It had taken him half an hour to take all her details and give her a stern lecture, and then guess what? Nothing happened. Six months later Sally still hadn’t heard from anyone official about it, and Mark said that meant she’d got away with it. The so-called justice system couldn’t now do anything; her crime (as if! I mean, really…) was past its sell-by date and she was off the hook.
Mark and the kids had thought the whole episode was hilarious, especially the part where Officer Dickhead had asked Sally if she was “wanted for anything.” “Yes!” she’d told him, exasperated. “I’mon my way to meet a friend in town, and I’m running late. And then after that my mum’s coming to stay. I’m wanted and needed by lots of people!” Quickly, efficiently, she’d then reeled off every good quality she could think of that she possessed, before concluding: “That’s why people want me in their lives! And you’re wasting my time with this nonsense!”
It turned out the policeman had meant something different: Was she wanted for any other offenses? When he put her driver’s license number into his silly little machine, would he find out that there was a warrant out for her arrest?
The curtains won’t open, which is annoying. Sally can’t wait to see all the objects in the room she, Mark, and Champ have slept in. What might they tell her about Corinne Sullivan, her family’s mysterious guardian angel?
Sally can’t work out if there’s a mystery to be solved in relation to Corinne. Maybe she’s just kind and helpful. Perhaps that’s her only motivation for helping, and she will ask for nothing in return. But Mark thinks she’s greedy and selfish; he whispered as much to Sally in bed last night. She told him to shush, then he did the same to her when she started to sing Champ’s night song.
Sally is convinced Mark misunderstood the joke Corinne made soon after they got here. She told them they could stay as long as they liked, then laughed and added, “Or, I suppose I should say: you’re welcome to stay until Keir Starmer takes over from Rishi Sunak as Thief in Chief and decides to requisition all my properties for fun communist shindigs.”
Sally is proud of the successful resistance she put up, at 2:00 a.m., in the face of Mark’s determination to explain why Corinnehaving made this joke must mean she’s a terrible person. Sally told him he was wrong and that she just wanted to sleep. She’d already spent far too much of the last month saying, “Hmm” and “Really?” while Mark ranted about the awfulness of those very same two men: Sunak and Starmer. Yet now Corinne insults them, and he’s dead against her?
Sally has no desire to understand. She believes politics are nothing more than a distracting pantomime. Is there any way of knowing which of the various candidates for prime minister would be keenest to help Champy escape the so-called justice system, at great cost to himself and his party? Sally doesn’t think so, and so she won’t bother voting in the election on 4 July. It’s unlikely she’ll be back in Cambridgeshire before then anyway.
Which means, since it’s only 18 June now…
Will Sally lose her job if she doesn’t turn up for a week or two? Or more? Mark won’t, she guesses. And didn’t Corinne say last night that Sally shouldn’t worry about money, that all would be made good on that front? What had she meant by that?
Nothing Sally tries persuades the bedroom curtains to open. Then she remembers she’s not supposed to do it in the normal way. There are buttons that look like light switches but aren’t. Corinne showed her last night. As she presses the one that looks most promising, ajhoom-ing sound starts up and the curtains begin to slide open as if they have all the time in the world.
The room floods with sunlight. Champ sits up on the bed, looking startled. “Wow,” Sally says, staring out. “Look at this, Champly Pamps.” There’s a row of stone urns topped with huge lavender bushes and, beyond these, six large square lawns set outin front of the house, separated by corridors of reddish-orange gravel. Off to the right there’s a long, high hedge, and Sally can see past that a large swimming pool with white-cushioned outdoor sofas and chairs around it, and a tennis court. “Shall we live here forever?” she says. Champ, who trotted over when Sally called him—seriously, he must be the most obedient dog in the world, which is extremely unusual for a Welshie or any kind of terrier—stands on his hind paws next to her, front paws on the windowsill. “Impressive, or what? Maybe being on the run is going to be fun.” Sally starts to sing, “Being on the run, Is gonna be fun, Being on the run, Is going to be fun,” then stops when the door swings open with a loud creak.
Sally expects to see Mark, but it’s Corinne, carrying a large yellow pottery mug. “Earl Grey in the morning, Lapsang souchong at night, right? That’s the intel from your son. Hope he’s right, ’cause this is Earl Grey. Morning, Champ!” Corinne strokes the top of his head.
Sally takes the tea and thanks her, then looks at the wall-mounted clock that’s been ticking insistently all through the night. It has an antique appearance—the top is a kind of wooden balcony arrangement with a rearing horse on it, front legs pointing upward. If it’s telling the correct time, then this is the latest Sally has woken up since having children: twenty to eleven.
“Tobes has surfaced this early?” Sally is surprised.
