Darrell thinks, How do I know you haven’t been fucking skimming? There’s no way to know. Say you’ve dropped a load in the forest, who’s to know that you didn’t keep it for yourself? Fuck. They’re not afraid enough of him, that’s the problem.
One of the girls – a slow, thick one called Irina – makes a frown and pushes her lips forward. She says, ‘Do you have a guardian?’
Oh, this old fucking noise again.
‘Yes, Irina,’ he says, ‘my sister, Roxanne, is my guardian. You remember her? Runs this place, owns the factory?’
‘But … Roxanne is gone.’
‘Just on holiday,’ says Darrell. ‘She’ll be back, and for the time being I’m just keeping everything ticking over for her.’
Irina’s frown deepens, her forehead huge and crenellated. ‘I listen to the news,’ she says. ‘If guardian is dead or missing, new guardian must be appointed for men.’
‘She’s not dead, Irina, she’s not even missing, she’s just … not here right now. She’s gone away to … do some important things, all right? She’ll be back eventually, and she told me to look after this all while she’s away.’
Irina turns her head from side to side to absorb this new information. Darrell can hear the gears and bones in her neck clicking.
‘But how do you know what to do,’ she says, ‘when Roxanne is away?’
‘She sends me messages, all right, Irina? She sends me little emails and text messages, and she’s the one who’s telling me to do all the things I’m doing. I have never done a thing without my sister’s say-so, and when you do what I tell you, you’re doing what she tells you, all right?’
Irina blinks. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I did not know. Messages. Is good.’
‘Good, then … so, is there anything else?’
Irina stares at him. Come on girl, dredge it up, what’s in the back of that massive head?
‘Your father,’ she says.
‘Yes? My father what?’
‘Your father has left you a message. He wants to talk to you.’
Bernie’s voice hums down the line from London. The sound of his disappointment makes Darrell’s bowels turn to water, as it always has.
‘You haven’t found her?’
‘Nothing, Dad.’
Darrell keeps his voice low. The walls of his office at the factory are thin.
‘She’s probably crawled off into a hole to die, Dad. You heard the doc. When they get their skeins cut out, more than half of them die from the shock. And with the blood loss, and she was in the middle of nowhere. It’s been two months, Dad. She’s dead.’
‘You don’t have to say it like you’re happy about it. She was my bloody daughter.’
What did Bernie think was going to happen? Did he think Roxy was going to come back home and run the bookies after they did that to her? Better bloody hope she’s dead.
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘It’s better this way, that’s all. This is the way round things ought to be, that’s why we did it. Not to hurt her.’
‘No, Dad.’
‘How’s it bedding in, son? How are you feeling?’
It wakes him up every hour through the night, squirming and twitching. The drugs they’ve given him, along with the Glitter, are making him grow his own controlling nerves for the skein. But it feels like a fucking viper inside his chest.
‘It’s good, Dad. The doc says I’m doing well. It’s working.’
‘When you gonna be ready to use it?’
‘Nearly there, Dad, another week or two.’
‘Good. This is just the start, boychick.’
‘I know, Dad.’ Darrell smiles. ‘I’ll be deadly. Come along with you to a meeting, no one will expect me to be able to do nothing, then pow.’
‘And if we can get it to work on you, this operation, think of who we couldn’t sell it to. Chinese, the Russians, anyone with a prison population. Skein transplants … everyone’s going to be doing it.’
‘We’ll make a killing, Dad.’
‘That we will.’
Jocelyn
Margot sent her to a psychotherapist because of the shock and trauma of the terrorist attack. She hasn’t told the therapist that she didn’t mean to kill that man. She hasn’t said that he wasn’t holding a gun. The therapist works out of an office paid for by NorthStar Industries, so it seems like it might not be safe. They talk in general terms.
She told the therapist about Ryan.
Jocelyn said, ‘I wanted him to like me because I’m strong and in control.’
The therapist said, ‘Maybe he liked you for different reasons.’
Jocelyn said, ‘I don’t want him to like me for different reasons. That just makes me think I’m disgusting. Why would you have to like me for different reasons than any other girl? Are you calling me weak?’
She didn’t tell the therapist she’s back in touch with Ryan now. He emailed her – from a new address, a burner – after that thing happened at the NorthStar camp. She said she didn’t want to hear from him, couldn’t talk to a terrorist. He said, ‘What. I mean, what.’
It’s taken him months to persuade her that it wasn’t him on those bulletin boards. Jocelyn still doesn’t know who she believes for sure, but she knows that her mother’s got into the habit of lying so completely that she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. Jos felt something curdle inside her when she realized her mom might have deliberately lied to her.
Ryan says, ‘She hated that I love you just how you are.’
Jos says, ‘I want you to love me in spite of my problem, not because of it.’
Ryan says, ‘I just love you, though. All the pieces of you.’
Jos says, ‘You like me because I’m weak. I hate that you think I’m weak.’
Ryan says, ‘You’re not weak. You’re not. Not to anyone who knows you, not to anyone who cares. And what would it matter if you were? People are allowed to be weak.’
But that’s the question, really.
There are advertisements on hoardings now, with sassy young women showing off their long, curved arcs in front of cute, delighted boys. They’re supposed to make you want to buy soda, or sneakers, or gum. They work, they sell product. They sell girls one other thing; quietly, on the side. Be strong, they say, that’s how you get everything you want.
The problem is, that feeling is everywhere now. If you want to find something different to it, you have to listen to some difficult people. Not everything they say seems right. Some of them sound mad.