‘Foul abuse,’ the vicar put in. ‘She shouted about her wedding. There were more f-words than I could count.’ He grimaced. ‘She shouted, “How can I get married on Saturday if they put me in isolation?” She was railing.’ He pulled a strange expression, showing the overlapping greys of bad teeth, leaning at angles over his lower lip like seasick sailors in a rescue dinghy.
Moira also grimaced with eyebrows raised, tilting her head. The two of them stepped back from the front door.
‘We’ve seen the news. They say radiation.’
Walking towards the living room, Theo, in his thin, reedy voice, a voice that sounded as if it was choked by the dog collar on his narrow neck, said over his shoulder: ‘When will we find out exactly what happened in that pizza place? She shouldn’t have run in, should she?’
Kim thought:What I love about Stevie is that she is the one person who will always run in.
‘Why doesn’t our daughter think?’
She doesn’t think, she feels.
They put the TV on. Pictures showed an older woman, face streaked with rust-coloured trails from cigarettes or chemicals. Her hair was held tightly at the back with a yellow ribbon and she was captioned PROF FLO VEITCH. The huge inflated suit she had worn was now deflated and hung off her like a wrinkled prune. She was holding what looked like a lump of dark green metal and spoke in front of a small portico.
‘This isn’t up to the job, a Geiger counter from the Seventies, but thank God I had it.’ When she lifted it towards the camera, they saw it had an L-shaped handle, like a Victorian clothes iron. A cutaway showed the top side, where a dial, a light and a circular meter with a needle were riveted into the metal surface. The reporter said something off-mic. ‘Yes!’ Flo Veitch answered. ‘This thing went completely crazy.’
It was obviously a packaged report, because Flo Veitch’s remarks were sliced short and the viewpoint now switched to the professor’s garden, where six people in hazmat suits lifted a huge paving stone off the top of the hole and then used long pincers to access something inside it. The object was dropped into what looked like an enormous foil bin bag.
The shot cut back to Veitch. ‘Are you aware that the head of police in Devon is having to answer questions about how you came to be asked to do this?’
‘No comment,’ said the professor. ‘I do science not politics.’ She shook her hair like a horse at pasture.
‘What do you say about the report that the head of Devon Police used a set of chopsticks to move this material?’
‘No comment.’ A big gappy smile from the professor, showing yellowed teeth, one missing on the right-hand side.
Now the report cut to some archive footage of a short policewoman with a square face, walking along a passing-out parade of new recruits, all standing to attention. ‘Devon Police Acting Chief Constable Jane Thorne is under pressure because—’
‘Turn it off.’
Moira and Theo froze.
Kim turned. Stevie was in the doorway.
They all stood in silence for a moment. In her mind, Kim begged Theo and Moira not to say the obvious:Should you be down here, darling, if you’re isolating?But it was Stevie who spoke first.
‘I was sent a number to call.’ She pushed her mobile towards them. ‘It says “Urgent and Personal, from London Metropolitan Police.” I rang and heard a message and I’m sorry, I didn’t take it well. Can you listen again with me, Kim?’
‘Let me see that,’ said Kim.
‘I don’t see how looking at the message helps, considering I just read it out, you bell-end.’
Kim laughed – ah, a precious glimpse of the normal Stevie! – but her parents gasped in shock at the language.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Kim, ‘I love your daughter dearly. I probably don’t get called a bell-end enough. Stevie, let’s go upstairs.’
‘Just keep a little distance. I’m serious.’
Kim followed several steps behind. The gap made the two women almost the same height. In her bedroom, Stevie opened the window, as if that would send any radiation out with the breeze. It was dark outside, a summer’s night. Kim sat at the other side of the room in the only armchair, beginning to think that this might be a bad idea. She had no idea whether radiation on one person could move to another and stick, though they had spent enough time together squeezed into her little sports car that the point was probably moot. The room was small. Stevie sat cross-legged, at a diagonal. At least they were in the furthest corners.
‘Am I glowing? Am I fucking glowing?’
‘Put the light out and I’ll take a look.’
To Kim’s surprise, Stevie took the joke seriously and did it. They sat in darkness.
‘You are not glowing.’
