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Time grows elastic at moments of stress. Apparently science supported this proposition, though for Max it was lived experience:
the city was full of angry pedestrians, hooted at by angry drivers and sworn at by angry cyclists, while angry buses trundled past full of angry passengers, and the angry sky rained angry rain, and the angry morning would never end.
The new working-from-home norm, embraced as a lifestyle enhancement by the young and thrusting, had gone hand in hand with the shedding of employee benefits, the imposition of zero-hours contracts and a rise in mental health issues among workers. Official statistics offered rosier pictures – average salaries had risen across the board, according to a recent government release – but painting by numbers was an illusory business. When you axed lower-paid jobs, the average rose without anyone becoming richer.
This was Westminster, and London Rules were in play, which – right below Never apologise, never explain – stated Never admit you made a mistake.
Afterwards, she recognised this as the key moment in their conversation, the point at which he revealed his outlook. Always decide who’s to blame before anything goes wrong. It makes the subsequent investigation much simpler.
If you were going to be turned, Berlin was very much the place where this might happen. She’d read enough about the city, and heard from friends for whom it was a clubbers’ paradise, to know that much.
‘Berlin,’ said Otis, ignoring him. ‘You have to understand that, for years, Berlin was a city unlike any other in the world. More than a city, it was like some giant car crash, where everyone stops to look at the damage, and a bottle gets passed around, and before you know it there’s a party under way, right here at the accident site, where the flames haven’t even died down yet.’
‘Dangerous is what poets ought to be. Dangerous and drunk.
‘Berlin is a city of spooks,’ he told her as they walked. ‘Always has been. Nobody worries about them. They worry even less when they’re made fun of, and that’s going to happen, believe me. So you step in first and make fun of yourself. Pretty soon, everyone remembers the punchline, no one recalls the joke.’
Strange to recall details like hunger, all these years on, but she can, if required, add weight and colour: say that the smells of other lunches kept reaching her desk – a hot soup warmed up in the Station House kitchen, or a spicy concoction carried in from a nearby stall – and describe how they tormented her all afternoon; explain how famished she was by the time evening rolled around, and she was able to eat. This would not be lying; would be mild fictionalising, at worst. Such embellishments provide context, and encourage hidden details to emerge – the past lies behind a wall, but
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‘Yeah. Welcome to the new austerity.’ She turned to face him over the slack form of their docile companion. ‘You’re not the reliant type, Max, but then, you’re still relatively young. My older clients, they’re not going to be getting the help they need, because there’ll be a whole new set of criteria operating. Heating bills? We’ll supply extra blankets, encourage them to huddle up warm. Food bills? Older people eat less, we all know that.’ She shook her head. ‘They’ve already made sacrifices for the good of the country. Won’t kill them to make a few more.’ ‘Except it might.’ ‘Except it
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You never know. You never know when treachery might strike, or from what quarter. This is true whatever the time, but especially true after dark, since how we act in the light of day is largely for other people’s benefit, but what we do in the secret hours reveals who we really are.
‘People always get that wrong,’ she told him. ‘They think one rotten apple, no real harm. But the point is, rot spreads. If you’ve got one rotten apple, you can lose the whole barrel.’
He’d known about it before it happened. If I have to listen to you two falling in love, I might just puke all over the table. Except it hadn’t been love. It had simply been Berlin.
‘The Park is fighting a losing battle, not least because the ideologies that will dismantle it are precisely those it was established to protect. Capitalism always eats its young in the end. Any history book will teach you that.’
