Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson

the only ones. A tourist settlement called the Border Experience had sprung up in the vicinity, with theme hotels, fast-food restaurants and souvenir shops. Sanguine people came from far and wide to climb the viewing platforms, each hoping for a brief taste of life on the other side. They all had their photos taken with a guard, and they all bought knick-knacks for family and friends back home. It was as if some of the cholerics’ notorious materialism had seeped over the wall. On the way to our hotel, I stopped and looked in a shop window. There were ashtrays in the shape of watch-towers, and tiny, realistic attack dogs made of china. There were snowstorms with miniature replicas of no man’s land inside. I saw tins of Border Shortbread and Border Fudge, and border guard dolls standing to attention in clear plastic cylinders. I saw mugs with words like ‘Furious’ or ‘Livid’ printed on them. My favourite souvenir was a T-shirt. On the front it said
I came I saw I lost my temper.
On the back, simply,
Welcome to the Yellow Quarter.
    At the Frontier Lodge, we took three rooms – one each for Whittle and me, and one for Dunne and Chloe Allen. My room overlooked the car-park – there, below me, was our minibus, dwarfed by tourist coaches – but if I leaned on the window-sill and looked to my left I had a clear view of the border. Two walls ran parallel to one another, about a hundred yards apart. Between them, in no man’s land, I could see life-size versions of the souvenirs I had noticed earlier: watch-towers, searchlights, concrete crosses, rolls of barbed wire and a sandy, mined section known as a death strip (in aerial photographs, the border often had the look of a stitched wound). Despite the fact thatnothing was happening, I couldn’t seem to tear myself away. It was in these eerie halfway places that one was able to appreciate the full power and extent of the Rearrangement, and it inspired an inevitable reverence, a kind of awe.
    As I stood by the window, I heard a click behind me and turned in time to see Chloe Allen slip into my room. I watched her lean back against the door until it closed. She was wearing the same outfit as before, only she had removed her black jacket and her shoes. She took a few quick steps towards me, stopping when she reached the bed.
    â€˜You’re not supposed to leave your room,’ I said.
    â€˜You don’t mind, though,’ she said, ‘do you.’
    Thinking I should fetch one of the relocation officers, I tried to edge past her, but she moved to block my way.
    â€˜Let’s forget about the other two,’ she said. ‘Let’s run away together.’
    Her smile was sly but genuine.
    Taking the hem of her T-shirt in both hands, she deftly lifted it over her head and tossed it on to the bed. She was wearing nothing underneath.
    â€˜They’re pretty, aren’t they,’ she said.
    â€˜Chloe,’ I said. ‘Put your clothes back on.’
    â€˜You used my name.’
    I attempted to edge past her again. This time she grabbed the front of my jacket. When I pulled free, she began to flail at me with loosely clenched fists. I caught hold of both her wrists and held her at arm’s length. I realised I was laughing. I had no idea why I might be doing that. There was nothing remotely funny about the situation. Chloe was insulting me now, not loudly, but in a malignant, strangled whisper, as though her fury was such that she couldn’t find her voice. I pushed her away from me, then turned and hurried out into the corridor.
    I tried Pat Dunne’s room first. She wasn’t there. Whittle had disappeared as well. I stopped a couple who were making for the lift and asked if they happened to have seen a woman of about fifty with curly hair. The man thought he’d seen someone like that. She was further down the corridor, he said. By the drinksmachine. She seemed to be having trouble with it, he added,