Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson Page A

grinning.
    When I found Dunne, she was standing in front of the machine, banging the stainless steel with the heel of her hand. ‘The fucking thing,’ she said. ‘It ate my money.’
    She must have noticed the look I was giving her.
    â€˜I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, ‘but listen. If you go into choleric territory, you have to act like them, or you don’t survive.’
    â€˜Chloe Allen’s in my room,’ I said.
    Something loosened in her face. ‘What? When I left her, she was sleeping.’
    â€˜Well, she’s awake now.’
    When we burst into my room, it was empty. We found Chloe where she belonged, in the room she was sharing with Pat Dunne. She was lying on her side in bed and breathing steadily, the covers pulled up over her face, one strand of dark-gold hair forming an innocent question mark on the pillow.
What, me?
    Dunne looked at me sideways. I held her gaze.
    â€˜I didn’t imagine it,’ I said.
    Back in my own room, I locked the door. The air smelled of perfume, its sweetness rendered more intense by the grey walls, the dull blond furniture. I opened the window, then sat down on the edge of the bed.
    Let’s run away together.
    She had noticed me as soon as she walked into the living-room that morning. I had shown up on her adolescent radar. She’d identified me as the one unstable element, a weak point she could probe, exploit.
    They’re pretty, aren’t they.
    I decided not to risk another confrontation. I could already picture the sequence of looks that would appear on Chloe’s face at the breakfast table as she tried to turn me into her accomplice, her jilted lover, or even, possibly, her rapist. I stayed upstairs until I saw Dunne and Whittle walk her across the car-park. Halfway to the minibus she looked up, scanning the hotel façade, but I stepped back from the window. I don’t think shesaw me. I waited until the minibus joined the queue of vehicles at the checkpoint, then I went down to the restaurant.
    Dunne and Whittle didn’t return until mid-afternoon. As we drove back to the capital, they told me about their day. No sooner had they crossed the border than Chloe became totally unmanageable. She had used the foulest language and hurled herself repeatedly against the wire-mesh. In the end they had been forced to sedate her. Whittle thought her behaviour had been triggered by my absence. He found my eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘You know, I think she took a shine to you.’
    I laughed softly, then looked out of the window.
    Pat Dunne turned to face me. ‘What actually happened in your room last night?’
    â€˜Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing happened.’
    Later, I wondered whether the transfer I had witnessed had been an elaborate test of my moral fibre, with Chloe playing the role of temptress, but then I dismissed the idea as overheated, a paranoid fantasy brought on by the pressures of my new working environment. It was also conceivable that the authorities had been reminding me of the commitment I had made. After all, my family might have been treated much as Chloe had been treated, had immunity not been granted. I couldn’t be sure, though, and it wasn’t the kind of question you could ask. And even if I had been able to ask, I knew what the answer would be. The authorities would claim that being sent out on the road as an observer was a crucial part of the induction process. I had been given a look at the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the job, they would tell me, a ‘unique insight’ into what life was like ‘in the field’. I couldn’t really have taken issue with any of that.
    I had made a pact with the ruling powers, and they were as good as their word: Victor and Marie were left alone. No visits from state officials, no check-ups, no brown envelopes with scarlet peacocks stamped in the top left-hand corner.
They’ve obviously given up on