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  “Jesus, kid,” the magician said, “are all your jokes about cheese?”

  “No,” Harry said. “I went into a shop to buy a cake and I said, ‘I’ll have that one, please—’”

  “Is this a joke,” the magician asked, “or an incredibly boring incident in your life?”

  “A joke.”

  “Just checking.”

  “—and the woman behind the counter said, ‘That’ll be two pounds.’ ‘And how about that one over there?’ I said, pointing at another cake on the shelf. ‘That one’s four pounds,’ the woman said. ‘But,’ I said, ‘it looks like the same cake as the first one. How can it be twice the price?’ And she said, ‘Oh, that’s madeira cake.’”

  “Weeell,” Bunny said, stretching the word out, “it’s sort of funny, if you were maybe ten years old. A lot of it’s in the delivery, though, Harry. You sound like you’re making an insurance claim.”

  Harry didn’t mind being critiqued (© Bella Dangerfield) by Bunny. Well, he did, sort of, but he knew if Bunny said something negative it wasn’t spiteful and was meant to be helpful. He supposed if he wanted any kind of career in the theater, whether it was behind or in front of the curtain, he was going to have to learn to face criticism, even hostility.

  “Wey, aye,” Bunny said. “It’s nothing but pure hate out there. It’s a shit life, really, but what are you going to do?”

  They were in Bunny’s dressing room, which he shared with the magician. Out of the two of them Harry didn’t know who complained more about this arrangement. (“You should be grateful it’s not the ventriloquist—then there’d be three of you in here,” Harry said. “That’s a joke,” he added. “Is it?” the magician said.)

  Bunny was in his stocking feet and his wig was off, revealing the flimsy monk’s tonsure that rescued him from complete baldness. Otherwise he was in full costume and makeup because he didn’t bother leaving the theater in between matinées and evening performances. Bunny and the magician were playing a complicated card game, the same game that they had been playing since the start of the season. It seemed never to reach a conclusion although money frequently changed hands. Apparently the magician had learned it in “the big house.”

  “He means prison,” Bunny said to Harry. The magician cocked his head to acknowledge this fact.

  They paused the game so that the magician could pour a measure of whisky into the two smeared glasses. Crystal would have had a fit at the state of them.

  “Want a tipple, Harry?” the magician asked.

  “No. Thanks, though.” It was the cheaper, blended sort of whisky. Harry only knew that because his father bought an expensive malt. Encouraged by his father, Harry had tried it, but even the smell made him feel sick. “Yeah, you have to stick at whisky until you get the taste for it,” his father said. Harry thought it might be something it would be better not to get a taste for.

  “What have you done with the bairn?” Bunny asked.

  “Candace? The chorus girls are spoiling her in their dressing room.” The last time Harry had checked he’d found that the girls had made Candace up—eyeshadow and lipstick and sequins stuck on her face. Her fingernails had been painted green by the dancing girls and a feather boa was wrapped around her neck and most of her body. He could only imagine what Emily would have to say about this get-up.

  “Sorry,” he’d said to the room in general, as several girls were in a state of undress.

  “It’s all right, Harry,” one of them sang out. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.” Well, he thought, that wasn’t exactly true.

  “Those girls’ll eat that kid up,” the magician said gloomily.

  Bunny produced a cigarette packet, offered one to the magician, and said, “Light us up, Harry, will you?”

  Harry obligingly produced his lighter. “Can you show me a trick?” he asked the magician.

  The magician picked up the cards, shuffled them in a grandstanding kind of way, and then fanned them out and said, “Pick a card, any card.”

  As Harry approached Barclay’s dressing room a girl flew out. She surprised him by saying, “You’re not Harry, by any chance, are you?”

  “I am.”

  “Oh, good.” She was Scottish—she said “gud.” “Mr. Jack was asking for you. He needs his pills, he can’t find them. I can get them if you tell me where they are.”

  “Is he all right?” Harry asked. “He’s not had another funny turn, has he?”

  “He seems a bit distressed,” she said.

  Harry didn’t know why Barclay didn’t have his pills on him and he had no idea where they might be. He popped his head back in the dancing girls’ dressing room and Candace squealed with delight when she caught sight of him. A tiara had been added to her ensemble, one of the girls’ cheap rhinestone ones that they wore for a high-kicking routine they did to “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” (“And they are, Harry,” one of them said to him. “Never forget that.” “I’ll try not to,” he promised.)

  The tiara was far too big for Candace and she had to hold it to stop it slipping off. Harry rescued her before she could be eaten. He was going to have to use some of Bunny’s makeup remover on her before Crystal saw her. (Where was his stepmother?)

  No, the girls hadn’t seen Barclay’s pills, neither had the ventriloquist. Nor had Clucky (according to the ventriloquist). Harry returned, defeated, to Barclay’s dressing room. There was another young woman in there now and they had been joined by Bunny, so it was a terrific squash.

  “Turns out Jessica Rarebit there had them,” Barclay said, holding a bottle of pills aloft for Harry to see.

  “Hospital gave me them last night,” Bunny said, “for safekeeping.”

  “Twat,” Barclay said succinctly.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Jack?” Harry asked.

  “I’m freezing to death. Shut that door, will you?” It was stiflingly hot in the dressing room. Harry wondered if Barclay really was ill, he certainly didn’t look well, but then he never did. As requested, Harry shut the door and was startled by the expression of absolute horror that washed over Barclay’s face. He looked as though he’d just seen some kind of ghastly apparition. Barclay’s mouth had fallen open, revealing his ratty, nicotine-stained teeth. He held up one trembling hand and pointed at Harry.

  “What?” Harry said, alarmed, thinking of the decomposing son who had appeared at the door in “The Monkey’s Paw,” a story that had kept him awake at night recently.

  “It’s behind you,” Bunny said, in his best pantomime inflection.

  Harry whipped around, expecting at the very least a vampire, but then he saw what had given Barclay a fright. Scrawled on the back of his dressing-room door in messy red paint was one word, in capitals: PEEDO.

  Oh, for goodness’ sake, Reggie thought. Whoever had written it could at least learn how to spell.

  There was a tentative knock on the door, but no one said anything so it seemed to be up to Reggie to say, “Come in.”

  They all had to shuffle around so there was room to let another person in. A ventriloquist’s dummy, some kind of repellently unattractive fowl, put its disembodied head around the door.

  “Fuck off, Clucky!” the drag queen yelled at it. There was what sounded like a scuffle outside in the corridor, as if Clucky was having an altercation with someone, and then Thomas Holroyd’s wife squeezed herself into the dressing room and joined the cast of misfits. This was what the Black Hole of Calcutta must have been like, Reggie thought. Only worse.

  “Mummy!” a child, sequinned and feathered and invisible up until now, yelled at Crystal, holding her arms out to be picked up. She sounded relieved, and who could blame her?

  “Mrs. Holroyd,” Reggie said. “Fancy seeing you here. It’s a small world, isn’t it?”

  Funny Business

  Your name came up in connection with one of several individuals we’re investigating and so we would like to ask you some routine questions, if that’s all right? Why? Why Tommy, of all people? Cr
ystal puzzled. How could he have known about those days? He was only a handful of years older than her and Fee. Had he been one of the kids at their parties? Her heart was popping in her chest and Fee said, “You all right, Teen? Have a fag. I could make some tea?” She didn’t look capable of wrangling a kettle but Crystal said, “Yeah, go on, then. Thanks.” She didn’t say anything about herbal or no dairy, she knew how stupid that would have sounded to Fee.

  She hadn’t even recognized Crystal when she’d opened the door to her. “It’s me. Tina,” Crystal said. “Christina.”

  “Fucking hell,” Fee said. “Look at you. Miss Universe.”

  “Let me in,” Crystal said. “We have to talk. The police are asking about the magic circle.”

  “I know.”

  It seemed that the judge had a daughter. Crystal hadn’t known that. She was called Bronty, apparently, and the same thing had happened to her as had happened to them. Fee said she remembered her, but Fee had gone to more parties than Crystal. Now, all this time later, Bronty Finch had gone to the police and that was why everything was suddenly unraveling, the past and the present crashing into each other at a hundred miles an hour. “And Mick, too,” Fee said. “Seems it’s prompted him into naming names. Have they found you yet? They were here, I told them what they could do with themselves. We could tell them lots, couldn’t we? Lots of names.”

  “I’m not going to talk, not to anyone. I found this on the car.” Crystal showed her the photo of Candy and the writing on the back. “It’s a message. They’re threatening my kid.” Fee held the photo for a long time, just staring at it, until Crystal took it back. “Nice,” Fee said. “Nice kid. I had something too.” She searched in her bag and came up with a piece of paper. The message on it was less succinct but still pretty straightforward. Don’t talk about anything to the police. You’ll be sorry if you do.

  The judge was dead now, of course, a lot of the magic circle were. The knight of the realm—Cough-Plunkett—was still on the go, he’d made a decrepit appearance on TV not long ago. And the MP, now a peer, who liked—no, don’t even think about what he liked—he was right at the top of the heap now, blustering on about Brexit. “Call me Nick,” he said. “Old Nick. Ha, ha.” It gave Crystal the willies every time she saw him on the television. (“Let’s not watch the news, Harry, it’s depressing.”) He still had all sorts of connections, to all sorts of people. People you didn’t even know existed until they started threatening you.

  Crystal had gotten away when she was fifteen. Carmody had given her a handful of cash—dirty notes “from the ponies”—he was the silent partner in an on-course bookmaker’s, Crystal’s relationship with laundered money went back a long way. Dirty into clean, the story of her life. “Get lost,” Mick said as she stuffed the money into her bag. She was too old now, he said. So she went to the station, got on a train, and left. Simple as that, she realized. You just turned your back on everything and left. Christina, running away.

  She’d begged Fee to come with her but she’d chosen to stay, already listlessly hooked on drugs. Crystal should have dragged her kicking and screaming out of that trailer, out of that life. Too late now.

  She had gotten a room in a flat and it wasn’t as if her life changed overnight like in fairy tales or Pretty Woman, and she had to do some lousy stuff to survive, but survive she did. And here she was now. New name, new life. She wasn’t giving it up for anyone.

  They drank the (weak) tea and smoked without pause.

  “You married, then?” Fee asked, dragging hard on her cigarette. She was more animated and Crystal wondered if she’d taken something while she was making the tea. “An old married lady,” she laughed, amused by the idea.

  “Yeah, married now. ‘Mrs. Holroyd,’” Crystal said, making rabbit ears and laughing because it suddenly seemed absurd that she should be this person, Crystal Holroyd, when the life she had really been destined for was sitting in front of her twitching to get out on the streets and earn her next fix.

  “Yeah?” Fee said. “Any relation to Tommy?”

  “Tommy?” Crystal echoed, little warning flags going up all over the place in her brain.

  “Tommy Holroyd. Worked for Tony and Mick in the old days. Oh, wait, I think that was after you left. You were before Tommy’s time with them. He did really well for himself after—he’s the Holroyd in Holroyd Haulage.”

  “Haulage?” Crystal echoed again.

  “Yeah,” Fee snorted derisively. “That’s the nice word for it. Don’t tell me you married him? You did, didn’t you? You did. Fucking hell, Teen.”

  Crystal had been hit in the stomach once by a bloke, a big bloke looking for a punching bag and finding Crystal, or Tina as she still was then. The blow had been painful beyond belief. Took her breath away, literally, so she ended up curled up like a bean on the ground, wondering if her lungs were ever going to start up again or if that was the end for her. But that didn’t compare to now. Everywhere she looked she saw her world collapsing.

  Turned out that Fee had known Tommy a lot longer than Crystal had. Knew a lot more about Tommy than Crystal did as well. Tommy and his associates. “Do you really have no idea what he’s up to? You used to be the smart one, Tina.”

  “Not anymore, apparently,” Crystal said. “I’ll put the kettle back on, shall I? And then you can tell me everything I don’t know.”

  The thing about the past was that, no matter how far you ran or how fast you ran, it was always right behind you, snapping at your heels.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Crystal said as the whistle on the kettle screamed.

  She gave Fee fifty quid—all that she had in her purse—and Fee said, “What about your watch?” so Crystal gave her the Cartier too, the one that was inscribed From Tommy with love.

  Crystal had never stepped inside the Palace Theatre before. It was a cheap version of something more opulent. It had a grand staircase and mirrors, but the paintwork was old and the tartan carpet was worn. The smell of stale coffee had drifted into the foyer from the café. There were already posters up advertising the Christmas panto. Cinderella. Rags to riches. No one ever wanted it to be the other way around, did they? Tony Bassani had taken her and Fee to the pantomime, as though they were kids. Which they were. Peter Pan. Someone off the telly was playing Captain Hook. Alan something. No one remembered him now. Tony bought them a box of Black Magic to share and they’d sung along to all the songs when they put the words up on a board. It had been a great evening, they’d really enjoyed themselves, and then Tony took them backstage afterward and introduced them to Captain Hook in his dressing room. “Christmas present for you, Al,” Tony said when he left them there. “A token of thanks—it’s been a great panto season.”

  The place was quiet, the matinée must have finished, and she had to ask someone in the box office where to find Harry. They didn’t know who Harry was so she asked for Barclay Jack instead, said she was his niece when they looked doubtful and said, “Are you sure? He doesn’t like visitors.”

  “Neither do I,” Crystal said. They directed her backstage to his dressing room and she knocked on the door.

  You couldn’t have gotten more people in the room. It was like a game of sardines. The magic circle had liked to play a version of that. Fun and games, Bassani called it. The detectives from earlier were in there, but Crystal shelved this fact, she already had enough to think about. Ditto the fact that Barclay Jack looked as though he was about to expire and that there was also a drag queen, without a wig (this must be Harry’s new friend Bunny, she supposed). No sign of Candy, and Crystal felt a spasm of panic until Harry pushed his way out of the scrum with her in his arms. She looked as if she’d been shot by sequins. Crystal shelved that thought as well.

  Crystal was a fast driver and a nippy overtaker so it had been a challenge for Jackson to keep on her heels until she reached Whitby. She was good at parking too, magically maneuvering the Evoque into a spot on the West Cliff that was intended for a much smaller vehicle. Jackson negotiate
d the less tractable Toyota into a parking bay as far away from Crystal as he dared, before setting off on foot after her. She didn’t just drive fast, she walked fast too. She’d ditched the heels and the short dress from earlier and was in trainers and jeans now, toting Snow White in her arms as she passed through the Whalebone Arch and down the stone steps to the harbor and the pier. She set a pace that Jackson found hard to keep up with, let alone Dido, although she was making a game effort.

  Crystal strode along, slaloming around the holidaymakers who were jamming the pavements, moving slowly like a tide of mud. Jackson held back, mingling with the crowd, trying to disguise himself as a day-tripper in case Crystal turned around and spotted him.

  Music—although it barely merited that term—blared out from an amusement arcade as he passed. Despite the good weather it was teeming with people inside. Nathan loved those places, Jackson had endured several brain-freezing hours hanging around with him while he fed coins into the bottomless maw of a coin pusher or a claw machine. Thus were addictions formed. The museum’s mummified Hand of Glory was no match for the Claw. None of the current habitués within the strident walls of the arcade looked like healthy citizens. Half of them were sloth with obesity, the other half looked like they’d recently been released from jail.

  Jackson was taken by surprise when Crystal suddenly ducked into something called Transylvania World. A vampire thing, presumably—the town was awash with bloodsuckers. It didn’t seem a suitable entertainment for a three-year-old—but then what did he know? (Luddite!)

  Jackson loitered in the gap between a shack selling seafood and the booth of a fortune-teller, on which a sign announced Madame Astarti, clairvoyant and spiritualist to the stars. Tarot cards, crystal ball, palm reading. Your future is in your hands. A glass-bead curtain hid Madame Astarti from the prying eyes of the world, but he could hear the low murmur of voices inside and then the voice of Madame Astarti, presumably, saying, “Pick a card, love, any card.” It was the stuff of nonsense. Julia would have been in there like a shot.