Lady Lazarus

Lady Lazarus The domed city is a city of spooks.

Lady Lazarus

First published in Sleer as Folk.

***

I have done it again,
One year in every ten
I manage it

Sylvia Plath


Now

Resistance, I hear now, can be collusive. This is counter-intuitive, perhaps - or worse: the discursive manoeuvre of an idea itself coerced into collusion, emptied of integrity, flailing for air in a moral vacuum where the singular truth is choked by diverse lies. But collusion and resistance have always seemed the same to me. Treading the muddy waters that lie between the high life and the low life, I have learnt to spot the secrets that lie beneath the claustrophobic confidence of the chattering classes, the slippery polish of the politicos, the trivial rationalizations of the intelligentsia.

Resistance, I believe, crawls along the edges of the open spaces, or else it lies in ambiguity - of the word or the look that can mean one thing and signify another. Complicity! I hear the men of the Resistance rage; Treachery! - but I have never earned the certainty that comes from purity of principle. Chesku grips my arm and the spirit, as ever, resists; the flesh, which can be suppressed, has been conditioned to give no outward sign.

With the furtive anxiety of the born sycophant he sets down his glass and pushes me forward to present me to his new patroness.

'My wife,' he breathes.

'How charming!' she exclaims.

'We've met,' I mutter; but caught up in their appreciation - he for her, she for herself - neither are listening.

Around us, our closeted society slithers and chatters, and I see it, as ever, with double vision: hosts and parasites, high life and low lives. And she, more glittering and brilliant than any other, is no less ghosted than the rest of them - but I am the most secret, the most elusive of all our society's spooks. For ten years she has waxed and I have waned until now it seems to me that I am defined only through negation, through being what she is not. Sometimes it seems to me that I am made of air.


Ten years earlier

Eyes half-closed, the grey ceiling of the barracks above her blurring through strained vision and unwept tears, Cadet Grant lay on her bunk, surveyed her future, and wondered if she should live. Around her she could hear the gentle noise of other people settling, and tried to let their murmurs and restless movements lull her to sleep. On cue, as if to remind her to whom she owed her continued survival, she heard the sudden soft sigh of Servalan, settling in the bunk below and, instead of sleep, despair washed over her.

The morning had brought a strange death, the final extinction of what she had until the very end refused to admit was a forlorn hope. And yet – to her surprise - she had survived; although liminal, ghostly, only performing the actions of a living being. Performance, she realized now, was nothing new for her.

She closed her eyes and pressed her head into the pillow, the nails of her right hand digging into her upper left arm, something she had taught herself years ago. The physical pain distracted from the other source of pain and, after a few moments, she felt her body relax. But as she slid into sleep, she thought of her mother, as she had last seen her, and of her lover, being taken away. In the final moment before sleep overtook her, it came to her that they had both looked at her in the same way - in shock, and in accusation.

It was meant to be a warning... I wish you had understood. It was the only way I had left to let you go...


The morning of the day before

Servalan jumped slightly as the datafiles crashed on the canteen table beside her, then frowned and pursed her lips as she saw that her coffee had spilt over the edge of the cup.

‘Well, what the fuck was that all about then?’ Cleis said cheerfully, as she clambered into the seat next to her. ‘Christ knows what Kasabi’s on, but I don’t think it can be legal.’ She dumped her tray on top of her files.

Cleis had a lot of good qualities, Servalan reflected - loyalty and physical courage coming to mind - but sometimes it was an effort not to show one’s distaste. Excellent bodyguard material, but useless for, say, diplomatic occasions. Durkim, on the other hand, fretfully dabbing up the spilt coffee, was almost the exact opposite. Serious, dedicated - perhaps a little over-anxious - he would make an excellent adjutant.

Unaccustomed to self-reflection, it did not cross Ilse Servalan’s mind that not many second years at the FSA routinely planned the composition of their staff. If she had given this a moment’s thought, it still would not have troubled her. Servalan knew - even if her tutors had not recognized it yet - that she was a unique student.

Durkim sighed. ‘Well, whatever she was talking about, I can’t see any way I’m going to pass an exam on it.’

‘Crap,’ Cleis said firmly. ‘You work harder than any of us. Well, except her.’ She jerked her head towards the end of the table.

Servalan turned to look. The slight figure at the end of the table was engrossed in reading a view screen which she had propped up on a dish in front of her.

Perhaps now is as good a time as any to test my theories about you, Anna.

She took a sip of her coffee. Cleis, she realized, was talking to her.

‘What did you think of the lecture, Ilse?’

Servalan put down her cup as elegantly as was possible with institutional crockery, and said thoughtfully, ‘I’m not sure that I thought it was... appropriate.’ She looked at Grant again. ‘But I’d like to know what the class philosopher made of it.’

Cleis, her instructions issued, promptly picked up Durkim’s empty drink carton and threw it down the table. It bounced off the screen of the viewer. Anna blinked.

‘Grant!’ Cleis shouted.

With a sigh, Anna moved the carton, closed the viewer, and looked down the table. ‘What?’

‘We want to talk to you!’

A little wearily, Anna stood up and went towards them. Servalan looked her over. She seems so... ordinary. You would never guess. That’s what’s so insidious.

‘Well?’ Anna said, putting her viewer down on the table.

‘What the hell was Kasabi on about this morning?’ Cleis said.

‘Got too technical for you, did it?’

‘Fuck off. She’s meant to be teaching us military history. Battles, victories, and stuff. Tactics. Not jargon.’

‘It’s not jargon,’ Anna said patiently, ‘it’s theory. Look, it’s perfectly simple. What you so eloquently described - “battles, victories, and stuff” - that’s just one way of writing history. But any account like that is as interesting for what it leaves out as for what it puts in. So, when you read something like... say, a report from Space Command,’ she was warming to her theme now, Servalan noticed, ‘you have to ask yourself, “What’s going on here? What’s being left unwritten, left obscure? What’s this account trying to justify?”’

Throughout this mini-lecture, Servalan had been allowing her eyes to widen little by little, her mouth to curl more and more in astonishment.

Anna stopped suddenly. ‘At least,’ she concluded, ‘that’s one interpretation.’

‘It sounds a very odd interpretation to me,’ Servalan said mildly. ‘Why would Space Command need to justify itself? Perhaps you could enlighten us further, Anna?’ The use of her first name was a deliberate insult, implying, as it did, an equality of grade between them that was arguable - or even superiority on Servalan’s part, which was also arguable, given the Grants’ recent history.

Anna kept her cool. ‘There is a political tradition on Earth - Ilse - which accords authority to the civilian Administration as well as to the Armies of Federation.’

Well handled, Anna, Servalan thought. Kasabi has trained you well. ‘Of course,’ she mused out loud, ‘we might expect such an opinion from someone with a family history like yours.’

That got a reaction. Anna flushed angrily. ‘Not everyone finds it necessary to flaunt their connections to advance in life, you know.’

‘And I think that’s a great pity. Perhaps if more discrimination were used in deciding who should be admitted to the Academy, we might not be forced to listen to the lies Kasabi was promoting this morning.’

Anna gave a short, contemptuous laugh. ‘Your grandfather was a beta grade who got a field commission, Ilse, and you know it. You can try to pull elite rank on this pair of provincials,’ she jerked her head at Cleis and Durkim, ‘but you don’t impress me.’

‘And yet your family, for all their long history, has shown an appalling lack of judgement in recent years. Why was it again that your father resigned from the High Council, Anna?’

Durkim looked with sudden interest down at his cutlery. Cleis whistled under her breath.

‘Fuck you, Ilse,’ Anna eventually ground out.

So this is the weak spot...!

‘It always struck me as somewhat pathetic,’ Servalan continued, concealing most of her delight, ‘that the best your father could do to ingratiate himself with the authorities was to send you here. I imagine your brother made a more impressive cadet but, well...’ She left the rest unsaid. ‘You may be bright, Anna, but I really don’t think I’ve met anyone less well-suited to the army than you. You should have stayed a civilian. Gone to the University.’

And from the look on your face, that was exactly what you wanted to do. Does family mean that much to you, Anna?

She picked up Anna’s viewer and offered it to her, effectively dismissing her. ‘The civilian administration is a thing of the past, Anna. Space Command’s the future.’

‘Over my dead body,’ Anna shot back. She wrenched the screen from Servalan’s hand and strode out of the canteen.

Servalan watched her thoughtfully and, after a few moments, got up and followed her, hurrying to catch up.

‘Anna, wait.’

Anna swung round angrily. ‘Fuck off, Ilse - I have nothing to say to you.’

‘I, however,’ Servalan replied, taking Anna firmly by the arm and manoeuvring her away from the crush of the corridor, ‘have a great deal more to say to you.’


That evening

‘Have you gone mad?’ Kasabi said later, eyes flashing as she glared at the younger woman curled up on the bed.

‘Maybe I over-reacted -’ Anna admitted.

‘Over-reacted...? Anna, do you know how much trouble you could have caused? I’ve warned you about Servalan. And so you get into a pathetic little argument defending the rights of the elite families! That has got to be a joke!’

‘She insulted me!’

‘When are you going to get it into your head that it doesn’t matter? These pointless arguments! This has nothing to do with real life, Anna; nothing to do with what we’re doing!’

‘She insulted my father!’

‘I’ll say it again, Anna - it doesn’t matter. This family pride - it’s ridiculous. It’s something from the past. What’s it got to do with real people? A tiny bunch of elites flit through life playing petty little power games - and everyone else can rot. You have got to leave this behind you!’

Anna turned away from her in angry frustration.

‘You know better than this, Anna. She was baiting you. She was hoping you’d let something slip - ’

‘Oh, give me some credit! I gave away absolutely nothing - ’

‘She is dangerous, Anna - ’

‘Now I think you’re over-reacting - ’

‘And I think that you’re under-estimating that girl. She’s ambitious, Anna, she’s clever, and she is ruthless.’

‘Then you should have fucking recruited her instead!’ Anna shot back.

Kasabi slapped her once, hard, across the face.

After a very still moment, Anna curled her legs up under her further and wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘Well,’ she said eventually, forcing a brittle smile. ‘That went well.’

Kasabi sat down next to her on the bed, and tried to take her hand. Anna clenched her arms more tightly about her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kasabi said at last, and was unsurprised that Anna did not answer. She stroked a finger along Anna’s hand, which was twitched away - but she reached back and repeated the movement until it was accepted.

‘There’s something I... need to tell you,’ Anna said, indistinctly.

‘You’ve not done something else, surely?’

‘No, no, nothing like that.’

‘Then what, Anna?’ She caught the girl’s hesitation, and gently but firmly at last got her to release one of her hands into her care.

‘Something... happened to me once. Something that... will explain a lot.’ She faltered.

Kasabi felt that she was on the edge of something of profound significance. ‘Tell me, Anna,’ she said. ‘You can trust me.’


Buried at the deep point, at the centre, is the moment of definition. When I disinter it, nails scrabbling at the layers left by the years, and I find the place that the child that I was once upon a time inhabited, I find to my surprise that I have come no distance at all. As it loses its hold on me, I can see how the passage of time - the accretion of experience - has acted as a narcotic, numbing emotion, providing the means to intellectualize and so to distance. I see now how my precocious perception atrophied, became retarded maturity.

Buried at the deep point, then, half-suffocated, lies the definitive truth. There are times that I convince myself that I have staked it through the heart, but always it comes back to life, worming its way to the surface, gagging for air.

My recollection had always been that this occurred during a holiday from school but, later, checking the files to see the date that my brother escaped, I found that it could not have. This accounts for why I was so sure that, despite the presence of my parents, the interview did not take place at home. I had assumed it was an attempt on my part somehow to distance the scene of the crime from the family home - such a concern being central to everything I did afterwards - but now I suspect that it took place somewhere at my school, in one of the rooms to which students did not normally gain admittance.

In any event, the family were there - with the exception, naturally, of my brother, whose absence had provoked the meeting in the first place. Sitting directly on my left was my father, masking his terror through the performance of outrage; next to him sat my mother, as pale and unfocused as ever.

The focus of my own attention was, of course, the man in uniform sitting at the desk in front of me. The exaggerations of childhood transformed him in my mind into a dark and sinister figure, but reappraising him now with more knowledge of his kind, I suspect that he was just a young man on his first significant case. To me at that time he seemed omnipotent. And indeed, although his powers were not supernatural, I had guessed correctly that he had the only power that mattered - of life and death - over us all.

‘Tell me, Anna,’ he said, ‘when did you last see your brother?’

I glimpsed, at the corner of my eye, my father’s knuckles whitening as he gripped more tightly the arm of his chair.

Children are more perceptive than adults usually allow. They are also in the habit of deflecting these adults from the truth. Very carefully, I answered, ‘He left home for the Academy months ago.’

He looked back at me coolly. ‘That isn’t what I asked.’

‘That’s when I last saw him,’ I said quickly, and then gasped in surprise at the ferocious slap my father delivered to my face. He was not a man easily given to violence.

‘This isn’t a game, Anna,’ he snapped, and I was sharp enough then to realize that this was mostly for the benefit of the officer. It still hurt. ‘If you have any information about your brother, tell the Commander directly and truthfully.’

‘Thank you for your assistance, Councillor,’ the officer said, perhaps a little dryly. ‘I believe Anna understands how grave a situation she is in.’ He turned to address me again. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Anna?’

I nodded.

‘Of course you do. I know from your school reports,’ and he waved a file at me, ‘that you’re an intelligent girl. But let me explain my situation to you. I know when your brother left Earth. But I don’t know how. And that worries me, Anna, because is means that other people - other traitors - can leave Earth the same way.’ He paused. ‘You do understand that your brother is a traitor, Anna? I know how fond of him you are. But you understand, don’t you, that just because you love someone, it doesn’t mean that you should lie for them? Lying is wrong, Anna, and it has consequences. Do you understand that?’

Again, I nodded.

‘Good girl. Now, let me tell you what else I know. I know that just a few hours before he left Earth, your brother contacted your family home. This was just before you came back to school. Now I’m going to ask you a question, Anna, and I want you to remember what I said about lying. It’s very important that you understand that the consequences for lying could be very severe. So tell me the truth, Anna: did you speak to you brother then?’

I looked back at him fearfully. He gave me an encouraging smile.

‘Yes,’ I whispered, and I don’t know if I’ve ever been so afraid of the truth.

‘Good girl! See, that didn’t hurt too much, did it?’ He smiled again. ‘Now, you weren’t the only one to speak to him, were you?’

‘No,’ I said, hoping that if it was said quickly it would hurt less.

‘Who else did he speak to, Anna?’

‘For God’s sake,’ my mother whispered, ‘she’s only ten years old - ’

‘Be quiet, Marina!’ My father turned to the officer. ‘My apologies, Commander. My wife is over-wrought - it’s been a difficult time for her, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

The officer inclined his head in acknowledgement of the apology and turned quietly back to me. ‘Anna, who else spoke to your brother that day?’

I sat in shock for an age, staring across the desk at the man’s crisp black uniform, and the silver insignia, which has always seemed to me to be like an arrow shooting a target. I thought faintly to myself that maybe, if I didn’t answer, he might give up and go away.

In the event, it was my father who broke. ‘For Christ’s sake, Anna, answer the question!’

Impaled between the officer and my father, I was left without words. I started to cry.

‘Anna,’ murmured the officer, ‘who else spoke to your brother?’

‘Answer him, Anna!’

I could only whisper my reply. ‘She did,’ I said, twisting my head slightly towards my mother, but looking down at the floor. When eventually I dared to raise my eyes, it was to see the glow of success on the officer’s face, the ruin inscribed on my father’s And my mother... my mother, still distant, still pale, but with a tear rolling down her cheek. That was the last time I saw her. I remember feeling somehow cheated. Nobody said that the truth had consequences too.

Buried at the deep point, then, is the moment of definition, when I was formulated in a phrase, the moment when I formed and understood my own nature. This is the moment - the act - that defines and pre-determines everything I do. Everything else - dutiful daughter, devoted student, attentive lover - has been performance, no more than layers to be peeled back and leave what remains exposed for what it is.


The room had gone dark while Anna had been speaking, grey settling over the colours of the bedspread, the piles of books, the abandoned plates from the earlier meal, the distance between the couple on the bed. Kasabi made no move to turn on a light. Eventually she said, ‘They made you denounce your mother...’

Anna stretched on the bed. ‘No-one made me do anything.’ She reached for the cigarettes, and lit one. The spark illuminated her face, defined her features and their shadows, for one, quick moment. ‘I could have kept quiet, played dumb - ‘

‘You know as well as I do that if those people want you to talk, then they’ll make you talk.’

‘Not a child, surely...’

‘I didn’t think you were so naïve any more,’ Kasabi said softly. ‘Have I taught you nothing in two years? Anna, these people are without scruples. They are inhuman.’

‘But still...’

‘Still nothing.’ She spoke urgently, pressed the girl’s hand. ‘This is exactly why we fight, Anna. These people - they pervert everything. They take love and they make it a crime. You aren’t the guilty one here.’

‘I feel guilty...’

‘That’s how they want you to feel - as if the fault’s yours, not theirs.’ Kasabi’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘And it is theirs - because they have to have power, because they need us to be regimented and boxed in and controlled... It’s rotten, Anna. And it has to go, all of it, it has to go.’

‘I suppose...’ Anna whispered, her face hidden behind the haze from the cigarette.

‘You’ll have to be surer than that.’

Anna collected herself. ‘I know,’ she said, nodding. ‘I’m sure.’

Kasabi started to laugh. ‘You know that you’re the best recruit I’ve had in years - and I’m counting your brother there, Anna!’ she said. ‘You’re more subtle, cleverer. I think you can do great things for the resistance.’ She released Anna’s hand, but only so that she could raise the girl’s chin to look at her more clearly. ‘I don’t offer you an easy option, Anna. I think you’ve always known that, god knows I’ve never tried to hide that from you. But I do offer you the truth. You understand that, don’t you?’

‘I understand,’ Anna replied, very quietly, holding her gaze. ‘I understand.’


That night

Servalan waited in the darkness with patient certainty and, as she had predicted, it was not long before she heard footsteps clattering down the stairwell. She switched on her torch and said,

‘Anna.’

The girl jumped and swung round.

‘Hurry up,’ Servalan continued. ‘You may be used to this sort of thing, but it’s all too self-consciously clandestine for my taste.’

Anna glared at her, and then reached into her pocket. ‘Here,’ she said, handing over the recording. ‘There’s enough in there for a conviction, I should think.’

Anna’s hand, Servalan noticed as she took the small packet from her, was trembling.

‘If it’s any consolation, you’ve done the right thing,’ Servalan said, and put her own hand on Anna’s arm. It was shaken off, viciously.

‘Don’t you dare lecture me on what’s right,’ Anna whispered. You’ve got what you want, and that’s an end to it. I never want to speak to you again - about ethics, about anything.’

Servalan put her hand back on Anna’s arm, more firmly this time. ‘I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that, Anna.’ She tightened her grip, pulling the other woman round to face her. ‘Surely you didn’t think you could make amends for what you’ve done so easily?’

‘Make amends...?’

‘You disgust me, Anna,’ Servalan said, with sudden and venomous sincerity. ‘What do you imagine your beloved father would think of your little affair? What about the military authorities?’

Anna, she saw with satisfaction, had gone very pale. The flesh on her arm, underneath Servalan’s grip, had started to go red. Servalan pressed more tightly. ‘What’s on this recording won’t just ruin Kasabi, Anna. How much more disgrace do you think your precious family can with stand? A daughter cashiered from the service? Do you know how long a sentence you’re facing?’

‘Ilse, whatever you want - ’

‘I should let you rot.’ She punctuated the last word by throwing Anna back against the wall. ‘Whatever I want? Is that really what you have to offer me, Anna?’

Anna remained gratifyingly silent.

‘Well,’ Servalan said, regaining control. ‘I think you should carry on as you were.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘With your associates. I’d like to know more about them.’

Anna laughed in disbelief. ‘Ilse, after tonight I can’t go anywhere near the resistance - they’ll know what I’ve done!’

‘Then you’d better tell them something very convincing, hadn’t you?’

Anna pushed her hands through her hair.

‘You can go now, Anna. But I’ll remember what you said - “whatever I want”. I’m sure I’ll think of something else, very soon.’

A successful evening, she reflected, watching Anna make her shaky way out. Once she delivered the recording - edited, now, to protect her source - to the Academy authorities, she would have made her mark most effectively. And as for Anna...

A bodyguard, an assistant - but what I was lacking was a source of information, someone living on the margins who can tell me about the places I can’t afford to go to myself. Loyalty was not just a matter of affection. Sometimes there were much better ways to tie someone to you. Anna, Servalan suspected, was going to be an asset. A long-term asset.


Two months later

Ready.

Using a gun had never come naturally to her, but Anna had been working on it.

Aim.

Given the precariousness of her current situation - and the demands that she anticipated would be made on her in the future - she had no intention of going through life unprotected.

Fire.

‘Have you seen this?’

Missed. You could only concentrate on one thing at a time, and she had not heard Servalan approach. Controlling her irritation as best as she could, Anna took her time setting down her weapon before taking the news file Servalan was waving at her.

‘If this is another story about a remarkable victory on the part of Space Command, I feel I ought to say that your collection is beginning to take on the appearance of an obsession.’

‘Just read it, Anna.’

Almost demurely, Anna dropped her eyes and began reading. Gradually, her expression shifted from studied boredom to frank disbelief.

‘When did this happen?’ she said abruptly.

‘Last week, apparently. They had a news blackout, but now they’re appealing for information.’

‘They don’t know what happened?’

‘Only that when the interrogator turned up for the morning session, the cage was open and Kasabi had flown.’

Anna finished the article, handed it back, and then silently picked up her gun again.

‘This is something only the resistance could have pulled off.’ Servalan added. ‘I sincerely hope, Anna, that I won’t find out that you had anything to with it.’

‘No,’ Anna answered. ‘You won’t.’ She gazed back steadily as Servalan looked at her carefully.

‘Why do I get the feeling you’re taking pleasure in playing with semantics?’ Servalan said eventually.

Anna turned back to face the target. ‘I’m not an idiot, Servalan. You know what I... I know that I owe you.’ She fired, hitting the bull’s eye dead on.

‘I’m glad you remember that,’ Servalan murmured. She nodded at the target. ‘You’re getting better at that. I imagine I’ll find that useful one day.’

‘Your wish,’ said Anna bitterly, ‘is my command.’


Now

This, then, is how and why she owns me; because she realized that even at twenty I had mortgaged myself, that I owed interest on an old debt - and she used this knowledge without compunction. Kasabi was willing to pay outright the full price for being true to herself - I, alas, am not made of such stern stuff. Or perhaps I do myself an injustice. I suspect the truth of the matter is that I was never a revolutionary in the first place. Perhaps, after all, I have been true to my nature - it’s just that my nature is flawed.

I disentangle myself from Chesku and make my way towards her. If I were free to pick my own metaphor for our encounters, I would choose something other than the obvious one of a game of chess, with her the queen and me the pawn, but it clearly pleases her. She was never what one could call an intellectual.

Her heavy perfume corrodes the air between us. She is dressed in white, with feathers. I remember a story I read when I was young, of a swan which is killed for the amusement of children. I think how well her dress would look drenched in scarlet.

We always play endgame, and tonight is no different.

‘Anna, I’m so glad to see you.’

Check.

‘You called, I came.’

Block.

‘You are always so obliging.’

Mate.

I light a cigarette to mask her scent, and sigh deeply as I draw on it. ‘What is it this time, Servalan?’

She nods her head slightly, and I barely catch her breathe, ‘Him.’

I glance across to where she is looking. The son of a high councillor. I had noticed him earlier, chain-smoking, very bored. I don’t ask what she wants me to do with him, since she could only have one plan for the son of a rival. As I make my way across to him, I try to recall all that I have heard about him and, by the time I have reached him, I have remembered more than enough to be able to use his correct title. Propriety, you must understand, is very important.

‘Dr Avon, are you enjoying the party?’

He looks back at me and murmurs something blandly polite. He seems to like small talk about as much as I do.

‘I hear you’ve just received an interesting commission from the Central Bank,’ I continue. ‘I hope we’re not tearing you away from something terribly pressing.’

‘Well, there’s always something to think about.’ I watch him cast a cool gaze over me, taking in my bare arms, my low neckline. ‘So, Madame Chesku,’ he says, in a tone which does not even attempt to avoid patronizing me. ‘What do you do with your days? Beyond prepare for occasions such as this, I mean.’

He thinks I’m some sort of society wife - which is what I look like. ‘Well, Dr Avon,’ I say, stopping just short of simpering, ‘I’m professor of military history at the FSA.’

His eyes widen, and I see the sudden, startled respect. So he values intelligence.

He collects himself. ‘That’s very impressive,’ he says, ‘for someone so young.’

‘Well,’ I reply, ‘I’m extremely good at it.’

He smiles, very suddenly, and with almost disarming charm. It’s not just intelligence, then, that he values, but arrogance.

‘Your cigarette has gone out,’ he says, and reaches in to relight it. His hand brushes against mine, and he stops suddenly and looks at me with confusion. In that moment it seems to me that he already knows one lesson I could teach him, that half a life - the life of the mind - is better than no life at all. And I suspect it will not be long before he has learnt what else I know - that love has no connection with patience or kindness, or faith or hope. Love is always and only treason.

I slide my fingers round his throat and start to press.

‘You really are... quite lovely,’ he murmurs.

‘Thank you.’

Out of the ash I rise
With my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Chesku’s hand upon my arm, Avon’s eyes undressing me, and she, she, always my ambition. I resist, I collude, I endure. Beware.