After spending the past month as a cheerful amnesiac, drinking gin and making jokes while his world disintegrated, Jack Cade finally has his memories back. That means he knows exactly who Ellini Syal is, and how he feels about her. Unfortunately, he...
The first thing Jack noticed was a dim throbbing in his head. It was a rhythm he'd been half-aware of while he was unconscious, but it got stronger as he woke up, like an approaching siren. He didn't know where – or even who – he was at this moment, but he knew he had to get out of its way.
And then, like someone surfacing from a long stint underwater, he opened his eyes. At the same time, his stomach muscles tightened and dragged him into a sitting position.
Something horrible had happened. He could just make out the edges of it in the haze. He tried to push it back, but it was inside him now – in every tensed muscle and wave of nausea. His body was remembering for him. He could feel names on the tip of his tongue and screams rising up his throat.
He forced his eyes open and tried to concentrate on what he could see. It had rained since – since then. His skin was damp with it. But there was still a smudge of red across the cobbles, leading around the Radcliffe Camera and into Catte Street, where the train of her dress...
Oh god, OK, no thinking – not yet. Follow the trail. There's nothing else but the trail. It isn't real until you see it's real.
He hardly knew which way was up, but he launched himself at the line of red and staggered along it. He poised his feet on it like a tightrope walker, while vertigo pounded at his head and made his stomach lurch.
It wasn't over yet. He still had the trail. At the end of it might be salvation or damnation but he mustn't think about either, not yet. Just live in the line of red until it throws you out, and then we'll think about salvation, and the – the other one.
He was watching the trail so closely that he didn't notice the crowd in Broad Street until he'd blundered into it.
It was a very quiet crowd – that was the first semi-rational thought that struck him. There was no bustle, as of people running for help, and no muttering, as of people wondering what was going to happen. They knew what was going to happen. It had already happened.
No, no, no, no, no – not yet. Wait until you see it. It's not real until you see it.
But he didn't have to wait long. One of the silent spectators removed his hat, and Jack could now see the steps of the Turl Street Music Rooms over the man's head.
Ellini was lying there, a red cascade down the white marble. Sodden skirts, seeping blood, and one arm hanging down the steps, its fingers curled, as if beckoning.
He had kept his feet firmly planted on the trail all this time, but now he reached out, trying to find something solid to slow the fall. He clung onto the nearest wall and slid down it, and went on sliding, even when he could feel solid ground beneath him. All the memories that had been trying to topple him ever since he'd regained consciousness broke over him in a great wave, rose up in his throat, drowned him from the inside as well as the out.
Not salvation, then. The other one.
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