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Life is about understanding opportunities. Understanding how rarely they come along, and then rising to meet them when they do.
‘Do you ever feel different from other people, Bogdan? Like you’re outside looking in?’
Richard Osman sums up the autistic experience so beautifully and I'm not sure he even knew what he was doing.
‘Everyone wants to feel special, but nobody wants to feel different,’ says Bogdan.
‘We all work for someone, old chap,’ says Stephen, eyes still scanning the books. He’s up to something, God bless him. ‘Not me,’ says the Viking. ‘I’m the boss.’ He howls like a wolf, for an uncomfortably long time. Elizabeth waits, patiently, for his howl to end.
W H E E Z E
Not rollercoasters, not skyscrapers, just the accumulation of small moments that turn acquaintance into friendship.
Mike finds it hard to cry, because he started having Botox treatments before they’d really got the hang of them, and his tear ducts are blocked. But he knows the tears are there, and he welcomes them. The tears only exist because Bethany existed.
People were always trying to tell you something, and all you really had to do was let them.
The ideal scenario would be to not have to murder Viktor Illyich. But the Viking would kill Joyce in two weeks, unless given a good reason not to. The choice was Viktor or Joyce, and that was no choice at all.
The swimming pool runs between the tops of two tall, residential buildings. Its glass floor makes it seem suspended in mid-air. Elizabeth is unimpressed. It’s just engineering plus money. Perhaps some imagination too, but she bets they copied it from somewhere. Perhaps if someone had built it for the public to use, she would marvel at it. But you can only swim in the sky if you have money, and if you have money you can do pretty much anything, so forgive her for not getting excited.
‘I’m terribly sorry, no. The way Mr Illyich spoke about you, I thought Elizabeth Best must be a much younger woman.’ ‘Well,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I used to be much younger, so you’re excused.’
‘Straight into the lens,’ says Carwyn. ‘That’s what we call it in news.’ ‘Down the barrel means something very different in the police force,’ says Chris.
What if she wasn’t just plain bad? What if that’s a lie she has told herself all these years? That would be too much to take. She could just stop seeing Ibrahim, but it feels like he has opened a door that can never be shut again.
‘Skunk is very good for arthritis,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I don’t have arthritis,’ says Ron. ‘And I’ve never seen the classified files on the assassination of JFK,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Pull the other one, Ron, it’s got bells on.’
Pauline has persuaded Ron that he might like to have a massage. The air is scented with eucalyptus, heavy and warm, and it thrums and trills with the sounds of the rainforests. He is wrapped, fairly insecurely, in a thick white towel, as he treads, barefoot, across Moroccan floor tiles, beside an azure pool, and he is deeply anxious about how relaxed he is supposed to be feeling. To think he could be interviewing Jack Mason about the murder, rather than going through this ordeal.
Neither spas nor brothels were of any interest to Ron. If someone wants to touch you, they had better be your doctor or your wife, or, at a push, a stranger next to you in the pub when England score.
She is talking so quietly and calmly, it makes Ron want to fling himself out of a window. Except there are no windows. The walls are hung with ornate Persian throws, and mirrors reflecting the soft, warm light of the scented candles. There is no escape. He is going to have to be touched, and make conversation. He is going to have to relax, God help him.
The whales continue to sing, and, actually, when you get used to it, it’s not so bad. He read once that whales were lonely.
‘Sorry to make you work on a naked man in a freezing hole,’ says Viktor. Pauline shrugs. ‘I work in television, darling.’
Viktor remembers Ron’s name from many years ago. He was on a list. It was a long list, but he was on it. Someone, at some point, would have spoken to him, ‘sounded him out’, seen if he was sympathetic with the Soviet way. Meeting him now, Viktor wouldn’t fancy their chances.
If life ever seems too complicated, if you think no one can help, sometimes the right person to turn to is an eight-year-old.
Donna gets a message on her phone. It is from Bogdan, watching her at home. She sneaks a peek as the studio count reaches five. His text is three emojis. A star, a heart, a thumbs-up. A heart, eh? The camera is just in time to catch Donna’s beam.
Joanna took me aside and asked me if there was anything going on between me and Viktor, and I told her there wasn’t, and she gave me a look halfway between relief and disappointment. He is very lovely, Viktor, very kind, but he’s not my type. Gerry was my type, Bernard was my type. Perhaps another one will be along one day. He’d better get a move on though, I’m nearly seventy-eight.
‘Anahita,’ says Kuldesh, looking over. ‘The Persian goddess of love and battle.’ ‘Love and battle, good for you, Anahita,’ says Donna. ‘I love her.’
And why? Well, a hundred reasons. A thousand reasons. But those reasons were all tied together with a knot of shame. And it was that knot that Bethany began to unpick. Bethany refused to let Mike feel shame.
‘You OK?’ he says to Donna. ‘Of course I’m OK,’ says Donna. ‘You?’ Chris looks down at the body. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m OK too.’ They are both OK, but they put an arm around each other regardless.
And the name is what had finally made her mind up. Because the name scratched into the bullet was not ‘Bethany Waites’. She could have handled that. The name was ‘Mike Waghorn’.
The money, the murder, the evil that people do. It was simply their stock in trade. Where you saw a cosy family chimney, they saw a corpse being burned. Such is the way of things after nearly sixty years in the business.
You keep swimming, Joyce. You keep swimming, my beautiful friend. You keep your head above the water for as long as you can.
