Odette Read online

  She sat to his right, in front of his computer. ‘My internet’s buggered, so I’ve brought in the migrant workers’ house piece.’ She rummaged for the memory stick in her bag. ‘And I had an idea I wanted to run by you. It’s—’

  The telephone on John’s desk jangled. He grabbed it.

  ‘John Wilkins. No. When? Take a look at the paper, madam, and you’ll notice that our arts features only cover forthcoming events.’

  Who’d be an editor, thought Mitzi, handing him a leaflet and thanking heaven she didn’t work here full-time.

  John glanced at it. ‘What’s this? Fairy tales?’

  Mitzi knew John had children, but they’d be teenagers by now and out of touch with magic – assuming they’d ever been in touch. Sometimes she wondered what his wife was like. ‘It’s a folklore festival in Branswell. I know it’s slightly out of our usual catchment, but it’s something different and it’s good for the diversity angle – a celebration for Christmas, with stories from all over the world.’

  ‘Hmm.’ John glanced up and down the leaflet, then, surreptitiously, up and down Mitzi.

  She focused on the slatted blinds. She could see fingerprints in the dust. ‘I can ring up the director, Robert Winter, but I’ve done a bit of research myself.’

  ‘I thought you were a journalist, not a bloody student.’ John didn’t aim his newspaper at that element of the town, though it ran to thousands.

  Mitzi counted to three. ‘I think it’d be good. I mean, everyone loves fairy tales.’

  ‘Why’re you so keen all of a sudden?’ He gave her a quizzical glance.

  Mitzi cursed her perennial problem: a readable face. ‘So, the thing is, Robert Winter is actually my landlord. But he hasn’t asked me to do this. I don’t know him at all, I’ve never even met him – I deal with his letting agent. It’s just that the flat is full of these amazing old books and…’

  John exhaled. ‘Right-oh. Diversity does it, I guess. Heaven knows the readers hate it, but I think it’s good to keep it going. Four hundred words and we’ll run it as a preview.’

  Mitzi, smarting inside as she usually did after seeing John, switched off her phone, then cycled towards the river, a long-limbed figure in blue jeans and purple fleece on a red bike, strands of her fair hair escaping her woolly hat and blowing into her eyes. A car honked at her before overtaking so close that her bike wobbled. She yelled and waved two fingers in the air, but the car had sped away.

  At the towpath, she dismounted and began to walk, pushing the bike. She’d ridden beyond the turning for her home to enjoy the crisp air, which had been in short supply this dank December. On the river, rowing teams were training. A long, low boat sliced through the water; she could hear the cox shouting orders, and glimpse muscular figures at work, reddened faces, hands gripping wooden oars. Ducks drifted, curious, in the wake – and there sailed the swans again, minding their own business. Compared to the human river users, they looked serene, until one climbed out onto the bank, where its dignity disappeared as it waddled towards some bread that three little girls were scattering. The children all wore pink padded coats and descended in height like Russian matryoshka dolls.

  Mitzi sat on a bench, rubbing her hands to keep warm, watching the birds and the family feeding them. She should go home and work – but her flat, with its tangled sheets and abandoned coffee cups, was the last place she wanted to be. Instead, she turned towards town and spent an hour browsing in the university press bookshop, which was nice and warm, and indulging in a triple chocolate muffin from a favourite bakery.

  She was unchaining her bike from a set of railings, her new books in a blue canvas bag in the basket, when a plaintive thread of sound caught her ear. In some of the shop doorways, down the high street and around the market square, piles of cardboard and padded sleeping bags lay; here, some of Cygnford’s homeless would take shelter from the cold. The number had increased through the year and while Mitzi had expected that winter would see them resort to hostels, it didn’t seem to be happening. She’d got to know some of them through writing her articles for the paper. Last week one boy, to whom she had sometimes given sandwiches, had frozen to death in a supermarket car park.

  The call she heard now was a woman’s voice: high, probably young. Mitzi turned to gaze around until she spotted her, down a slip of side street from the bakery. She was sitting on the pavement beside the music shop doorway, a paper cup in her outstretched hand. She was fair haired and smooth skinned, no more than twenty, wearing jeans and a fleece, without hat or scarf. Mitzi tied up the bike again and went over, ice-numbed fingers hunting for her purse.

  ‘It’s so cold,’ she said, giving her a pile of change. ‘Are you OK? Have you got somewhere to sleep tonight?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t sleep at night. Too dangerous. I’ll have a kip somewhere in the afternoon.’ The girl’s accent hinted at Yorkshire. She sounded so unbothered that Mitzi’s curiosity was piqued.

  She crouched. ‘How long have you been living like this?’

  ‘Two days.’

  ‘What happened? Do you mind me asking?’

  The girl began to tell her: it was a hideous story, but not untypical – and not without hope. A fight with her boyfriend, who was violent. A miscarriage after he punched her in the stomach. Discharged from hospital, she refused to go ‘home’. All she wanted now was to get back to her dad in Ripon. He’d take her in, she was sure.

  ‘There’s a women’s refuge three streets away,’ Mitzi suggested.

  ‘Nah,’ the girl scoffed. ‘I’d rather find myself the bus fare and get home to my dad. You can’t do that if you’re sitting in some kitchen, listening to people’s stories and going, like, “Yeah, me and all”. Like you know anything about their lives. Like they know anything about yours.’ Her eyes were bloodshot with cold and stress, but her jaw was set and strong.

  Mitzi unwound her own scarf. ‘Please, take this. You need it more than I do.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t generally wear ’em,’ said the girl.

  ‘Please, take it,’ Mitzi pressed. ‘You could wrap it round your hands or your feet or your middle. This town’s punishing in winter.’

  ‘Yeah, they say the wind’s straight from Siberia. Wherever that is.’ The girl gave a shiver and accepted the scarf with a smile that was partly a flinch.

  ‘You going to be OK?’

  ‘I’m glad to be out of that situation, to be honest. I can get myself back on my feet now, if I can just reach my dad.’

  Mitzi, who could never see her own dad again, pulled out all the cash she had in her purse – twenty-five pounds – and stuffed it into the paper cup. ‘I don’t know how much the bus costs, but it might help.’

  Now the girl’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You’re an angel, you. Thank you, darling. Merry Christmas.’

  2

  When Mitzi checked her phone, four messages were waiting. First, a call from a journal, Nature Now, with a commission – the sort of message she received with relief; even after five years of freelancing, she always feared her next feature could be her last. Then a message from an in-house corporate journal, which she loathed, but which paid well, wanting an article before the weekend. Third, her brother Harry’s voice: ‘Mits? Me. Catch you later.’ No doubt he’d ring back or drop in.

  Finally, the voice of her financial services date said, ‘Hullo, sweetie, hope you’ve had a wicked day.’

  After several hours of transcribing interviews, Mitzi switched both landline and mobile to voicemail. Her eyes were sore and the tendons in her wrists were twanging with tiredness. It was nearly 6pm. She poured a glass of wine and reached up to the bookshelf nearest the window for a well-fingered volume she had spotted there – tucked to one side, half concealed behind the velvet curtain, where it rubbed shoulders with sepia-edged copies of the Mahabharata, the Bible, the Koran, the New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, a black-jacketed volume called The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley, and several tall, hardcover volumes of Arthur Rackham drawing
s. It was leather-bound, with gold embossed titling. The ivory paper felt as heavy as canvas under her fingers and the illustrations seemed ripe for Pre-Raphaelite celebrity. Fairy Tales from Many Lands.

  Once upon a time, in a country far from here, there lived a king and queen who had no children. One winter day, when snow whitened the world, the queen sat by her window embroidering on linen across an ebony frame. Accidentally, she pricked her finger on the needle. Three drops of crimson blood fell onto the black wood and shone against the iciness outside. ‘Oh,’ cried the queen, ‘how I wish I could have a daughter with skin as white as snow, cheeks as red as blood and hair as black as ebony!’…

  Mitzi lay on the leather sofa, pulling over her a blanket made of many-coloured squares her grandmother had crocheted; protection against the draught from the sash windows. One cheek against a cushion, she let the words spin filigree webs before her eyes. She knew the stories well, yet to read afresh the poetic words of ‘Snow White’, ‘Rapunzel’ or ‘The Little Mermaid’ sparked in her a sliver of longing that had no place in a local news rag or corporate journal.

  The drawings, with sensual swirling outlines and distant washes of landscape, the trees and figures traced with the lightest of pens, were so vivid she could almost imagine stepping through the paper into them. If she did, would she ever want to come back again?

  In these timeless tales, pumpkins could change into coaches and girls into trees; heroes proved their love through tests that should kill them, but didn’t; witches and fairies watched over you, waiting to instigate harm or help, rewarding virtue, punishing evil. If you pursued a path of goodness, yet suffered for it, you might be rewarded with a better fate in the future or, sometimes, a merciful death, dissolving into foam like the Little Mermaid. If those you loved were to die, you might be consoled later, or even follow them into the underworld. The images multiplied, reflecting one another along a hall of mirrors in her mind. The pain of her father’s death could still rise and grab her by the throat when she least expected it. She hadn’t cried since the day of his funeral.

  She put the book aside and wandered back to her desk, where a small sketchpad lay upended. Somewhere she had a soft 2B pencil – lurking under the spikeful of dog-eared receipts beside the computer screen. Finding it, she turned to a blank page and began to doodle. The backs of three be-coated children, like little matryoshkas, watching something beautiful by a river. The four towers of Duke’s College Chapel, pointing upwards like the feet of an animal on its back. A face, large eyes with pale irises and reddened rims, sad and hopeful all at once…

  Thinking of the girl outside the music shop, she let her pencil coax the image onto the page as if from deep beneath a blanket of dreams. She tried to count her blessings. Unfair that she should still feel as if an icicle had pierced her stomach, even though she had a beautiful flat around her, a warm blanket, central heating and supper. She’d done what she could – given her cash, her scarf, her heart. But maybe if she were to look up COACH FARE CYGNFORD–RIPON, then find the rest of the money and take it to the girl—

  Two minutes later she had the answer. The journey would involve changing buses twice, once in Milton Keynes, once in Leeds. It would cost less than forty pounds. If only she’d given her just a bit more…

  Mitzi threw on her coat and rushed out into the busy evening. The cashpoint was a ten-minute cycle ride away, in the market square. There she tethered the bike and queued behind a roll-stomached man puffing on a cigarette and three anxious-voiced American tourists trying card after unsuccessful card in the slot. A whiff of sour liquor struck Mitzi’s nostrils as a wiry individual, stubbled and shuffling, approached the queue. ‘Spare some change for a cup of tea…’

  Mitzi was at the front. She pressed CHECK BALANCE. After paying rent, council tax, utilities, phone and her credit card bill, her account held £49.76. The Cygnford Daily’s pay round was next week – money for work she’d done two months ago, an arrangement that had somehow become standard in the industry. The corporate journal and Nature Now would pay at some point, when she got around to invoicing them. She pressed buttons and in a series of whirrs and bleeps the machine presented her with three quarters of her funds. She forced herself to ignore the drunkard and set off against the wind for the music shop.

  Gone. As if she’d never been there at all.

  Perhaps she’d already managed to plead the remaining cash. Perhaps someone had persuaded her to go to the refuge. Perhaps she’d been arrested. Or given up and gone ‘home’ to give her man one more chance to change…

  If only she’d asked the girl’s name. She could trawl cafés looking for a tired young woman tucking into a sandwich. She could enquire at the refuge; she could try the bus station and check the queue for Milton Keynes. Or she could go home and warm up, reassuring herself that, all things considered, she had done the best she could.

  Safe inside again, anxious but helpless, Mitzi glanced out – a malignant stillness was settling in the air, as if it might snow. She dried her hair, put a potato in the microwave to bake, then glanced at her sketches. Awful. Never mind. Someday she’d learn to do it better. She could try again now; or she could dive back to the dream-world into which Robert Winter’s capacious leather sofa and book of fairy tales lured her.

  The potato, with a mound of cheese and salad, absorbed some of the wine, but not too much. She was just settling down again to read ‘The Firebird’ when a long buzz on the doorbell sent her scrambling for the entryphone.

  ‘It’s me,’ came Harry’s voice. Her brother had taken to arriving once a week with his washing. Mitzi pressed the buzzer, then nipped into the kitchen, through the archway from the living room, to make sure she’d remembered to empty the washing machine of her own load. Her feet and hands felt as lumpy as raw wool. Could she handle Harry tonight?

  He bounded in with a flourish. ‘Hey, sis.’

  She reached up to hug him. ‘Hey, Hal. Here’s the soap.’

  Harry dumped his jacket, cap and scarf on a chair before shunting his bulky canvas bag to the kitchen and emptying the contents into the drum. ‘My thanks to you, good mistress Mitzi.’

  ‘Oh, God, are you going for another Shakespeare?’

  ‘I’m going to get another Shakespeare.’ He bounced in his trainers towards Mitzi’s fridge. ‘They’re doing Twelfth Night in June and the competition for Feste isn’t exactly inspiring.’

  ‘You want to play Feste?’ Mitzi stopped herself. If her little brother wasn’t good enough for the part, he wouldn’t get it and he didn’t need her to tell him so. She was meant to look after him, not criticise or doubt his abilities.

  ‘Methinks my fair sister hath been at the bottle so wouldst not object were I to have a beer?’ He spun round, ending with one ankle flexed in front of him, arms extended towards her, with his broadest grin. Mitzi smiled despite herself. Harry, two and a half years out of a performing arts degree, might be struggling, but knew how to work his own charisma.

  ‘Bottom shelf,’ she said. ‘So, what’ve you been doing?’

  ‘Auditions. Tons of them.’ He straightened up, can in hand. ‘I was in London for three days. Agents. Directors. Fuckers. If at first you don’t succeed, and so on. But I met this seriously cute redhead on the bus coming back and we’re going for a burger tomorrow.’

  ‘You and your girlies…’ Mitzi gave him an affectionate wink.

  ‘It’s quite demanding, trying to keep up with them all…’ Harry raised an eyebrow. He had the same strong, level brows as their father, darker than their fair hair. There the resemblance ended: these days Harry, who was taller and thicker-set, boasted designer stubble and a tattoo on his right shoulder that showed Shakespeare’s face above the words WILL POWER. He settled into the absent academic’s green leather chair, with his feet up on the footstool, while Mitzi closed the curtains. It seemed a long time since she’d opened them.

  She knew why girls gravitated to Harry. His frenetic energy might annoy her, but it combined with those self-m
ocking insights into the sort of charm she’d learned to avoid because it was so dangerous. Blue-eyed Harry, five years her junior, hadn’t yet lost the glow of boys about to become men, or men who haven’t quite ceased to be boys. By twenty-six it would be dwindling, by twenty-nine almost gone. It saddened her to think it might vanish from her brother so soon.

  ‘Coming to see me be Oberon?’ he asked. ‘It was great yesterday. It feels so incredible, Mitzi, being up there, saying all those fucking fantastic lines – it’s like you’re – like you’re—’

  ‘King of the fairies?’ said Mitzi. ‘But why are the Shakespeare Players still giving you top parts when they’re a student group and you’re just hanging around in Stuart’s house avoiding the Spectre of the Proper Job?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mits, you sound like Mum. It’s not as if I’m not trying. I’m doing auditions every bloody week, more or less, I’ve got the audition speeches coming out of my ears and I’ve been crashing on pretty much every floor in south London… Anyway, you can’t talk.’

  On that, Mitzi had to concede.

  ‘Actually, I don’t know anybody who’s got a “proper job”,’ Harry mused. ‘Besides, it’s all of two roles, and I’m bloody pleased to have them.’

  ‘So, it’s fine that Mum’s helping you out and Stuart rents you the room cheap, but it can’t go on forever. What happens next year? More student theatricals?’

  ‘Dunno. Might do. Or I might do something else, like win an actual role through an actual audition. Or I’d apply for a postgrad course, maybe something at RADA…’

  ‘Which you’ll pay for how, exactly?’

  ‘Oooh!’ Harry shrank down in his chair. ‘Here’s my nose, Mits – go on, rub it in… But I can’t do anything else, can I?’