Slow River

“Both.” She swallowed her ice and took another experimental sip of loc.

“I have—had—two sisters and a brother. But one is a half sister, Greta, my mother’s daughter, and she’s so much older than me she’s more like an aunt-”

“Is this relevant?”

“-and the other brother and sister are twins. Were twins. Stella killed herself.” Now she was listening. “In some ways I was like an only child. And my parents should have divorced fifteen years ago. I am used to hiding things that matter to me, keeping them close. It’s what I do. Who I am.”

“Tell me why the fuck I should care about that! You think that just because you can buy me and Hedon Road, probably the whole city, a hundred times over I’ll nod and say, Fine? Just like that? Without even an explanation of why you’ve been hiding, lying to me? Lying to everyone.”

There was no way to deal with her anger. I ignored it. “This job, Hedon Road isn’t a game to me. I need it. I have less money than you do.” Not true, not true. What about the thirty thousand? The faces shimmered, each with their own secrets.

The muscles in her jaw had relaxed a little, and her pupils were returning to normal.

“I was kidnapped. You know that. When they, when I escaped, I couldn’t go back.” The rest stuck in my throat like small polished pebbles.

“Why? And why did you lie?”

I sat there, mute.

“I feel like such a fool. Do you have any idea how used I feel? All that time I was ordering you around, telling you to bring me this readout or that, treating you like an apprentice. Making you work like that. All that time, you knew, you knew…” She swirled the remains of her loc around the glass. “You know something? You’ve made me feel ashamed of myself. Of how I bullied you. I don’t like that.”

“You didn’t bully me.”

She wasn’t listening. “But why? That’s what I don’t understand. You say you need the money, but why? Why aren’t you back with Mummy and Daddy-”

“Don’t.” Sharper than I intended. “Please, don’t call them that.”

“Fine. Your family, then. Why aren’t you with them, in your fancy house, or estate, or whatever?”

“Ratnapida.”

“What?”

“The house. It’s called Ratnapida.” Stella in the fountain. Oster. Then, later, Oster and Tok, standing side by side. Tok looking beaten.

“Whatever. You could be in the sunshine, doing nothing. So why are you hiding? And what happened to the real Sal Bird?”

I think I killed someone, I had told her. “I never met her. She died in an accident.” I waited for her to decide whether or not to believe me. I knew I looked calmer than I felt. Years of training at the dinner table.

She absorbed that, nodding. Still expressionless. “Go on.”

“The man I killed…” I swallowed. The man I killed. “It was one of the men who kidnapped me.” I told her about the tent, the drugs. About Crablegs and the camera. About finding the nail.

“This is hard. I haven’t thought about it. It was… So when they took me outside, after they’d told me my family hadn’t paid… I thought… it just…” Another swallow. I looked down at my hand on the bar. This was not something I wanted to think about. I stared at my fingertips, the way the skin curled pinkly around the nails. She put her hands on mine, warm and dry. I still couldn’t look up. Try, that hand said. “I had the nail hidden in my fist. When we got outside I hit him in the neck.”

She lifted her hand from mine and picked up her drink. “Was he dead?”

“The other one, Crablegs, he said I’d killed him. “But…” But of course Crablegs would want me to think that. Keep me confused, docile. “I don’t know. I just assumed.”

“Then that’s the first thing we do tomorrow.”

“We?”

She just looked at me, indecipherable.

I felt strange. “I need another drink.”

We were quiet while the drinks arrived.

“When did it happen, the kidnap?”

“September. Three years ago.” Crisp clean air like the scent of apples. The cobbles, blood. Only he might not be dead after all. And Magyar had said we.

“September. Right. So we’ll look at all the murder reports from three-”

But I wasn’t listening. I might not have killed him after all. “Do you have any idea what this means to me?” I said suddenly.

Her voice was soft. “Why don’t you tell me?”

I put my hand on hers, the one still wrapped around her glass. Neither of us said anything. We both pretended our hands weren’t warm and soft together, palm to back, finger on finger, the hair of her forearm touching the underside of my wrist.