Shewasn’t the same child who’d returned from France after Christmas.She hadn’t come back to the same world.Laurie had sat with her inthe remains of her old one and tried to explain to her the thingsthat had been changed.He was grateful for Gibson’s presence, andhis aunt’s, but the words had had to come from him: that her fatherwas dead, her mother incapable of looking after her.Conscience,strain, and overwrought nerves had met in Lady Fitzroy a week or soafter her confession, and she was now repeatedly assuring the staffof a discreet private nursing home that she would do anything,anything at all for that poor boy.
Clarahad listened to him.She had been very calm.She had said she wastired and wanted to go to bed.Laurie had carried her upstairs.Tucking her under the duvet, Laurie had asked her what shefelt—just that, because he needed to know she felt something, thatshock had not wiped her blank.She had said, “I don’t really mind,Laurie.I know I should, but I don’t, as long as I haveyou.”
Laurie had tried.He had finished his run as Flamineo at theEmpire to great acclaim, and acceded to Mr.Jacobs’s insistencethat he now move on and find himself a company that could pay himaccording to his worth.It hadn’t taken long.Laurie, who detestedmusicals, hadn’t wanted to go into rep withLes Misérables, but the money wasgood, even for the kind of bit part that was all he could swing forin a big West End show, and the juggernaut that wasLes Mizshowed no sign ofslowing down or stopping.Ever.Regular work, a decentwage.
Thesethings established, Laurie had put in a hopeless application forClara’s guardianship.A kindly social worker had come to the flatin East Hill.Laurie could afford something better now, but hecould not move.How would Sasha find him?The social worker, whohad seen children thrive in accommodations far more cramped andsqualid than this, had told him that the flat was not the problem.He was an actor, wasn’t he?He lived alone.No matter what he did,he could not guarantee to be at home when Clara needed him.And hewas young.Give it a couple of years, some changes in hiscircumstances, and perhaps they could look at his applicationagain.
EliseDevereaux, who was fond of her nephew and had not contested hisguardianship claim, had waited until he came to her, pale andtired, and asked her please to take his sister in.She wanted to benear to Marielle, she said, and rather than disrupt Clara’s lifestill further by a move to France, she would, with Laurie’sconsent, move with her family into the Mayfair house until thingswere calmer.That way Laurie could visit—she understood he did notwant to move back in—and Clara could go and see him.Laurie hadsmiled at her in gratitude and told her it really was not up tohim.Sir William had been as good—or as bad—as his word and hadleft his entire property to Clara, to be held in trust until shewas eighteen.
He livedfor Clara’s visits.She came, face alight with the adventure of it,every weekend when he had both days off, and they slummed it,although Laurie’s standards of housekeeping were now quite high,and they washed and recycled their tins when they’d eaten the beansdirectly out of them.They had long walks.The heath was thenearest big stretch of outdoors, and Clara loved it, flying aroundin its windy vacancies, forgetting for a while that she wasdifferent now.That she was sobered, shadowed, leaving childhoodbehind.Her hand in his pocket clenched and stirred, and Lauriestroked her hair.“All right, love,” he said.“Let’s gohome.”
“All right.Areyouall right?What was here?”
Lauriecouldn’t tell her.Sometimes he thought the events of that nighthad broken him in ways he didn’t yet understand.He was fine whenhe was busy, and he lived as good and regular a life as he couldmanage.But when he let his guard down, things were strange.Walking home from the Tube stop one night, he had picked up atail—a couple of thugs who catcalled and jeered and followed him ablock or two, long enough to make his heart beat fast, and yet whenhe’d turned a corner, they’d been gone.The Indian general dealer,one day when he’d been short of cash and gone in to do what hecould with a fiver, had handed him a twenty, assuring him he’ddropped it on the floor last time he had been in.Laurie somehownever felt entirely alone.
But hewas.Sasha had vanished as completely from his world as he had fromoff John Kucharski’s radar.Laurie, always ready, had waited.Waswaiting still.He took Clara’s hand.The year’s first snow began tofall, whirling in wind-driven spirals around them.Soon the edgesof the world were blurred, the air a dancing chaos.Laurie waiteduntil the flakes were coming fast enough that he could halfconvince himself the caravans were back again, and then he turnedaway.
* **
February the second.Only just—Laurie heard his alarm clockbeep midnight as he fell through the door.HisMisérablesnights seldom ended muchearlier than this, but tonight he’d got entangled in an after-showparty and barely caught his last train home.Counting on hisfingers, he worked out what day it was and how many times he’dmanned the barricades and danced up and down the streets ofrevolutionary Paris that week, and decided with relief thattomorrow had to be his day off.
There’dbeen food at the party, and since tomorrow was Saturday anyway, hedidn’t need to cook himself the dutiful late supper he seldomwanted but knew he had to have if he wanted to wake up the next daycapable of getting out of bed.He hadn’t foreseen—probably fewstraight-drama actors did—the sheer bloody effort of musicals.Hewas aching from his hip bones down to the balls of his feet.Flopping down onto the sofa, he kicked off his shoes and socks andinspected the damage.Not too bad.His blisters from the first weekhad callused over, and his arches, though throbbing, wereintact.
He lethis head fall back.He wondered if he had the energy left to belonely.If so, it was his own doing.He could have had companytonight.The boy playing Enjolras, who had been gently circling himfor the last week or so, had made his move, emboldened by cheapchampagne.Laurie, cornered in the cloakroom, had for a few secondsbeen too surprised to do more than stand there, pressed back amongthe coats, letting Enjolras kiss him and run hungry hands down hisspine to his backside.The extrication had been hard.Enjolras hadbeen embarrassed and upset.And there was nothing wrong with him,or with what he had done—on the contrary, for that first moment histouch, the press of his body, had been delicious.It was just thathe wasn’t Sasha.
Laurielifted a hand to touch his lip.It was a bit sore.Enjolras,nervous, had been rough.Pressing the bruise, Laurie tried toconjure the mouth he did want there.Always warm.Texture of grapeskin and suede.Often as not, smiling as it descended ontoLaurie’s, not just a kiss but a grace, a benediction.Shivering,Laurie rested a hand on the fly of his jeans and arched up againsthis own touch.But he was too worn-out even for that, and he closedhis eyes, letting his hand fall away.
Februarythe second.Candlemas, St.Bridget’s day.He hoped she was lookingafter Marielle Fitzroy, other than whom she had no more devoutworshipper.Laurie remembered being taken to the early morning massat St.Patrick’s in Soho Square and seeing the church full ofsnowdrops and candle flame, heralding the arrival of spring.Bride’s day, too, the goddess of painters, poets, metalsmiths, andplayers.That had been the excuse for the party at the Queen’s.Theatrical people were careful to placate all available deities.Laurie had heard whispers that Bride had been good to him and thedirector was going to ask him to try out for Marius.Laurieshuddered.He prayed not.The pay would be too good for him to turnit down, and yet he did not think he could spend six nights a weekpersuading Eponine in musical couplets not to die.Perhaps hisindifferent voice would save him.Good enough for spoofing opera toClara.Not, he was fairly sure, even halfway strong enough to fillthe Queen’s capacity-crowd spaces, vibrating the plasterwork andthe audience’s heartstrings like their majestic Valjean andJavert.
Histhoughts became disjointed.He should get himself to bed, he knew.But he was suddenly too tired to move, and his sleepy brain hadcaught some trace of Sasha in its electrical flickering.Somethingso clear that Laurie, when he inhaled, could smell him, could feelhis skin against his palms.Smiling, letting go, Laurie followedhim into the dark.
* **
Cold airwoke him at dawn.Unwillingly he watched the vivid tapestry of hisdreams bleach out to black-and-white, then fall apart in cobwebs.That was the trouble with passing out here on the sofa, hereflected, sitting up stiffly.Waking with a crick in his neck andchilled to the bone.The contrasts between his night world and thiswere sharper than if he’d at least come around in his bed, wherecombined lingering scents of his own and Sasha’s allowed him a fewseconds’ cushioning fantasy.Well, it was Saturday.He could goback there for a while, drag the duvet over his head and slip awayfor a little longer, try to catch the tail of the dream the chillin the room had interrupted.With him on the heath once more—onlythis time it had been summer—Sash lying in the long grass besidehim, trailing a fern leaf down Laurie’s chest, over his solarplexus, and down his naked belly.Smiling, shivering, Laurie swunghis legs off the sofa.
God,though, it was cold, even for a one-bar-fire flat.Glancing over,Laurie saw he’d left it on.Fire hazard as it was, at least it wasfree.It wanted to be, he thought.It was doing nothing.The livingroom was freezing, as if…
As if awindow was wide-open.Laurie stared at the room’s far wall, tryingto make sense of its differences.What he could see of the skybeyond the railway lines and the terrace beyond them was stunninglyclear.Only a first luminescence, not so much dawn as the distantpromise of it.The nights were getting a bit shorter, he had begunto notice, though normally he did not see it until he was outside.The windows on the railway side of the building were gray withdiesel.Now Laurie could pick out silver blue from the first traceof rose, and every single fading star.
Yes.Theveiling glass was gone, the window shoved high as it would go.Theother difference on that side of the room was the dim human shapeoccupying the space between the window and the sofa—dead still, asif watching in silence for God knew how long.Laurie’s heart shotup in his chest, so hard he thought it would burst.His throatclosed, squeezing his cry to a whisper.“Sasha!”
“No.”The shape moved, and Laurie saw his mistake.Sasha’selegant silhouette would have fitted twice into the bulk nowoutlined against the translucent dawn.Too sleepy and astonished tofeel fear, Laurie knew only the swipe—like a vast descendingwing—of loss, of renewed sorrow.The voice was not dissimilar.Soft, loaded with velvety intonations.Romanian… “Why, gajo?Isthat the way he lets himself in?Through the window, or”—the humandarkness took a step toward him—“or do you open your door to him,like the littlepoloneyou are?”
Laurie barely had a second to begin to wonder what he had beencalled this time—let alone who this thug was, althoughgajobrought back plentyof memories.A fist like a lump of kebab meat fastened in hisshirt.The room shot around him through a hundred and eightydegrees, window exchanging place with the door.The edge of thesink unit punched him in the stomach, and its metal draining boardleapt up to smack the side of his face.Once, then again, as hisassailant swapped the grip on his shirtfront for one at the back ofhis neck—and a third time, which made him care less abouteverything somehow.He was just vaguely glad he’d cleaned it.Hecould smell disinfectant, and the depressing tang of old food,eaten joylessly and lonely, which rose up from the sink no matterhow thoroughly he scrubbed.Then connections formed in his ringingskull.The accent.John Kucharski’s story of a vengeful father whowould not let go.He heard himself say, with surprise that he couldstill talk and take an interest, “Are you…are you StefanPetrica?”
Laughter shook his assailant.Yes, a vibration.Silent, butLaurie felt it through the hot bulk pressed tight to his back.Thegrip had moved again—from his collar into his hair, whichtheLes Mizdirector was making him grow for the sake of the revolution.Probably little suspecting how much it would hurt when grabbed andtwisted.“Stefan!”the dark voice echoed, a harsh explosion upagainst his ear.“For a little fish like you?You’re joking.”Laurie’s scalp burned as the grip yanked him upward.A thin line ofcold, like a wire, stung suddenly against histhroat—but you need two hands togarrote someone, don’t you?Just the blade of a knife, then.Almosta relief.“Where is he?Where’s Stefan’s brat?”
“I don’t know!”For the first time, Laurie was glad that it wastrue.Wildly glad—this thug could do as he pleased with him, andstill it would not lie within Laurie’s power to betray Sasha again.Some suicidal gleam of amusement went through him at the stupidityof Interpol agents and Romanian heavies, and he added, as he had toKucharski, “Do you think I’d…bloody tell you, if Iknew?”
Thistime his assailant laughed aloud.Laurie guessed he didn’t like hisvictims too docile.“Oh, you will.You will, polone.Yousoft-skinned gaje never know how much pain you can feel, untilyou’re shown.And I’m in no hurry.We can have a little fun whilewe wait.”He shifted, and his grip left Laurie’s hair.His movementbrought the heated press of his erection up against Laurie’sbackside.“Come on.You’re used to it, aren’t you, little faggot?Iknow you let Stefan’s boy fuck you.It’s not like you don’t knowhow.”
And nowfear struck at Laurie like a snake.Not of rape—although, Christ,he did not want the long, hot shaft now unzipped and shoving athim, could not imagine it tearing up into his flesh—but what itwould take from him.What it would wipe out.He had been Sasha’s inthat way.Only once, but for always.Laurie didn’t know when thatresolve had burned into his mind, but there it was.He didn’t knowwhat life would bring.All he knew was that he had done with thatpart of it, until and unless Sash came back to him.A bed in arusty, damp caravan.A sleeping bag spread out for warmth.“Sasha,”he whispered—no more than a movement of his lips.A promise.Agood-bye.
He felt,with an indescribable shudder of mind, flesh, and bone, the knifeblade burst the skin.
A softthud.Laurie caught his breath to silence it.Behind him, he feltthe big man go still too.Laurie could not define it.It was as ifa cat had jumped into the room.No.Larger.A panther or one of themythical beasts that haunted English fields and started black beastpanics in the countryside.
Then asharp command in a language he did not know.In a voice heabsolutely did.He jolted upright, suddenly able to—his assailanthad jerked up too.He felt himself dragged backward, the knifefollowing, searing its hot ice across his throat.His visionreddened and sparked, and through its glitter, he saw… God, he sawSasha, poised against the brightening sky.
