Which was as good a segue as she could ask for. She brought up an image in her mind: something she’d never seen but could easily imagine. A red badge on a black blazer: the lamb-with-a-banner device that turns up in a lot of religious iconography because it’s meant to represent the Lamb of God, the sacrificial victim who turned out to be a Trojan horse for Man’s redemption. Alex had said a goat with a flag, but that was an easy mistake for a kid to make.
(And kid meant goat. And children had been sacrificed lots of times, in lots of places.)
You remember this? she asked him.
Yes, Alex said. Of course I do.
You said it was the badge of your school. And that the motto was dum spiro spero. “As long as I breathe, there’s still hope.”
Alex shook his head. Miss Loach told us: “While there’s life, there’s hope.”
Did she now? What else did she tell you?
That it was Cicero who said it. He was a lawyer in ancient Rome, and he said it in a murder trial.
Of course he did, Jess thought. Where else?
Did Miss Loach call you by your first name or your last name? she asked. She was trying for a casual tone, but of course he could read her thoughts. He saw past the question to the intent behind it.
A second later, she realised that he wasn’t beside her any more. She turned to find that he’d stopped and was staring at her hard.
I don’t remember, he said.
“Okay.” She held out her hand for him to come and join her, but he stayed where he was.
What were you trying to do, Jess? Trick me? Do you think I’m lying to you or hiding things from you?
“No. No, Alex. Not that.”
Then what?
She braced herself. It was going to be hard to explain something that she didn’t understand herself. But if there was any way of getting to the truth, then it lay on the far side of this conversation.
“The lamb and flag badge, and the motto. Alex, they belong to a girls’ school.”
So?
“So how could you have gone there? Did you have a past life where you were a girl?”
Maybe.
“What?” She laughed. It seemed to her that he had to be joking.
Maybe. Yes. I think I did. I think I was a girl until you came.
“But…” Jess protested. “That doesn’t make any… Why didn’t you ever say this?”
I was scared to. Alex’s tone was level, inflectionless. I kept remembering more, but I didn’t want you to stop liking me, and you only liked me because you thought I was him. I was always a girl. You made me into a boy when you looked at me.
There was no gainsaying that flat certainty, but Jess dug in her heels and tried anyway. “Alex, you said…”
No, I didn’t, Jess. You said. You told me you knew me. And I didn’t know who I was, so I believed you. But before you came, I looked different. I was… I wasn’t ever like this. You made me be like this!
Jess almost staggered. Only the fact that this wasn’t her real body, her physical body, kept her on her feet. Her mind reeled and raced at the same time. She’d heard his voice before she saw him – a high, clear voice, like a child’s, but all children’s voices have the same pitch. You can’t tell a boy from a girl with your eyes closed until they hit puberty. And then when she did finally catch a glimpse of him, he was a silhouette, backlit by the ever-changing colours of the dream world. The detail resolved gradually. His face had been indistinct at first, then had come clearer and clearer as she…
As she shaped him with her mind, the same way she’d shaped this ramshackle body she now wore. The same way she’d given Tish wings and a magic necklace.
It was insane. But what was the alternative? Mr and Mrs Beech falsifying the birth records for their daughter? Dressing him as a boy? Raising him as a boy? Telling him and the whole world every day that he was a boy? And then sending him to a girls’ school?
“Oh my God,” Jess whispered. “Alex—”
But Alex was scanning the fractal landscape, suddenly alert.
“What is it?”
Someone’s coming.
Abruptly, impossibly, the night world shook and lurched. No, it was Moulson herself who was shaking, her upper body riven by shudders of involuntary movement that made her stagger and lose her footing.
She tried to back away, feeling herself gripped by a force she didn’t understand and couldn’t fight. But it refused to let go of her.
“Alex!” she cried. But she’d been twisted round somehow. She had to turn her head as far as she could to get a glimpse of him, and when she did, she could only see a blur, an outline with all the detail left out. Its rudimentary shape wavered from one second to the next. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female. If it was human, even.
“Moulson,” a voice said. “Come on. Time to go.”
Something took her by the arm. Pulled hard.
Lifted her like a fish caught on a hook.
71
After that little conversation with Devlin, Sylvie Stock headed back to the infirmary at a fast trot. She wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. But along the way, she thought better of it and slowed right down.
Eight o’clock was when Sally was meant to be signing out, and regulations meant he couldn’t hang around past his shift, but it wouldn’t do for Stock to get there any earlier than five past eight. Better still, she should find a vantage point from which she could watch the duty desk and not go in until she’d seen him leave.
She chose the Goldstein room, also known as God Botherer HQ. While the prisoner blocks at Fellside were named after women who were scientists, the meeting rooms were named after novelists and poets and playwrights. Stock had no idea which of those three categories Goldstein fell into, and as far as she knew, nobody else on staff did either. The room had got its nickname because it was the biggest of the meeting rooms and nobody was allowed to call a meeting there except Save-Me Scratchwell, their beloved and devout leader.
What mattered to Sylvie right then, though, was that GBHQ had picture windows looking down into the open space (the equivalent of the commons in the prisoner blocks) where processing and registration took place, and where staff signed in and out at the start and end of their shifts.
Stock sat in the room with the lights out until she saw Sally walk by below her. He took his time about signing out, talking for a good few minutes to the guard on the desk and wearing Sylvie’s nerves to shreds before he finally scribbled in the book and headed for the main gate. Even then he hesitated. He looked at his watch, then away down the corridor, back the way he’d come. Yeah, Sylvie thought, keep looking. I’ll come when I’m good and ready.
Technically the handover was supposed to be face to face, but the nurses didn’t usually stand on ceremony. The infirmary was in central admin, locked up tighter than a nun’s hope chest, and Fellside was a busy place. It wasn’t unusual for Sally to leave without ever seeing the nurse who was carrying the night shift. Tonight he seemed keen to hand over in person, which meant he wanted to brief Stock about Moulson and make absolutely sure she was on-message. That was definitely not going to happen. She waited Sally out with a slightly vindictive satisfaction and gave him a little wave behind his back when he finally gave up and walked out past the duty desk. The barred access gate clicked shut behind him.
Sylvie waited a few minutes longer in case he changed his mind again. Then she ventured down from her little sniper’s nest. She felt ridiculously nervous. Nothing she was going to do tonight was against regulations. That was the whole point of not meeting up with Sally and not having a formal handover. If she had, he would have given her a progress report which would have had Moulson in it. This way, she only officially knew what she saw with her own eyes.
But when she got to the bottom of the stairs, she heard her name called. Sally had pulled a flanker on her. He’d gone through the access gate but he’d waited on the other side of it. He shouted out again, and waved to her. “Sylvie! Over here!”
Stock thought about just walking away, but it was obvious that she’d seen him. Their eyes had met.
“I’ve got to go, Sally,” she called. “I’m on duty now.”
“Yes, but it’s handover!” he said. “I need to tell you something.”