Oxford, March 1968

Since the trial Frank had been on a leave of absence. Pending further psychological evaluation, the letter from the Authority said. So instead of driving the familiar route past wintry fields to the facility at Barton Hall, he went for a walk. Every day, shortly after Gail left for work, he swung on an old waxed jacket, filled his pockets with lemon sherbets, and set out into the sharp spring mornings. Their flat was at one end of a street which, at first glance, may have seemed respectable, lined as it was by Victorian villas and expansive trees whose roots ruptured the paving stones. Look again, however, and there was a mattress dumped in a front garden, a car on bricks, windows boarded up.

On this last day of March the sun sliced low over the chimneys. A soft wind carried the clang of barrels being unloaded at the pub on the corner. Frank thought of his street as representing a border, a transition between the nice roads to the north, where academics and wealthy students lived, and the not-so-nice roads to the south, crowded by workers from the Cowley car plants. Frank liked to be perverse, walking east along this imaginary borderline, as if reserving his loyalty. He had no allegiances. Not to town, not to gown. His line of work was cold and hard and unforgiving, like a steel blade. He saw the physical world around him – the brick walls, the parked cars, the overgrown front gardens – as bloated. Beneath the surface hummed the true layers of existence: the atoms and molecules too tiny for humans to crush.

This was his truth. His secret universe, invisible to all but a lucky few. Only a handful of men in the world did what Frank did. He was an expert in instability. His days, at least before all this nonsense, were spent bent over a microscope, examining radioactive material for signs of degradation.

And now… Now he just walked.

Past the little parade of shops. A decrepit old woman pushing a shopping trolley, a younger woman staring at her toddler. The mother as pale as a cadaver. Children did that to you. Beyond the shops was a metal gate, giving onto a small park, just a scrap of green hemmed in by ramshackle gardens. On its other side was an alleyway that led to the canal.

A very serious criminal incident…the letter had gone on to say. We need to ensure that you are wholly fit to return to work and do not pose a threat to yourself, your colleagues or the wider community. Was this to be another trial? Hadn’t the police done their job to everyone’s satisfaction? Would he have to become a monkey in the Authority’s laboratory just to get back to work? He missed his work. Away from it he was getting weaker, mentally and physically. Yes he’d been found guilty. There were too many witnesses to realistically expect any other outcome. But a suspended sentence meant he should be able to return to work immediately. He was a good man. He’d acted to protect the girl, in her interests.

When the letter came he composed a reply, informing the Authority that the only way they would get inside his head would be to split it open with an axe. Of course, Gail had opened and read the letter before he’d had a chance to post it, immediately ripping it to shreds. Idiot, was the only word she’d said to him that evening.

As he neared the entrance to the alleyway, Frank noticed a couple on the other side of the grass, following the other path towards it. They were moving very slowly and seemed to be conversing quietly, their heads leaning together, though not in the manner of lovers. The man was dressed in a dark overcoat and had a rather comical shape – all shoulders and chest, teetering on tiny feet in dainty polished shoes. His companion was slight and walked with a stoop. She too had on a dark coat, beneath which a green dress swished around her knees. A black hat was pulled low over her eyes.

The pair separated, the man darting forward so that he reached the entrance to the alleyway ahead of Frank, who hesitated. But on seeing that the woman had stopped to light a cigarette, he carried on. They were having an argument, or perhaps the man was late for an appointment. Now they were between two fences, brambles and blackberry bushes narrowing the gravel path, their crunching footsteps falling into a rhythm. The man was ahead, his upper body swaying. Then Frank. Then the woman, for she followed him into the alleyway.

And just as Frank realised that the three of them were walking at the same speed, and wasn’t that a bit strange, the man stopped and turned around. Frank was about to say excuse me, but out came a pair of fists like mallets. One hand grabbed Frank’s lapel, the other jabbed him hard enough that he tottered backwards and wound up sitting on his backside.

The man’s coarse, florid face loomed over him, breathing cigarette fumes as he shoved Frank’s shoulders to the ground, then knelt on his ribs. His weight was crushing. The woman in the green dress stooped over them both. Now the smell of cigarettes was overcome with a sickly floral scent. Somewhere above them a crow began to laugh.

Her face was skeletal. White skin stretched over bone. Clownish make-up dragged across her lips and eyes. And those eyes… The fury in them made Frank’s body twist in fear. An icy burning sensation tore across his skin and his mind filled with noise as he made the connection. The woman in the magistrate’s court who’d shouted from the public gallery. Justice, this is not justice.  

Her bruising accomplice backed off and she sank onto her haunches, her knees now on Frank’s chest, though she was no weight at all. And from her fingers flashed a short blade.

‘For my boy,’ she said. Her voice was hoarse and carried a country burr.

There was no pain as she pulled the knife across his face, starting at his temple and cutting diagonally, through an eyebrow, skimming his eyelid, deep into his cheek and down to the corner of his mouth, where she finished with a flick.

Heat spread across his skin, blood climbing out of his new fissure. Blackness. Swimming colours and sounds. A kick in the stomach that he barely felt because now came the pain screaming in.

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