The Mermaid's Child by Jo Baker

away.
    â€œI won’t be long,” he said again. He came over and kissed me on the mouth. “Once I’ve got this all sorted out, we can head on. Go somewhere else.” He smiled at me. “Anywhere you like. Think about it. Anywhere at all.”
    Then, before I could even ask if I could go with him, he left, dragging the door shut behind him. I heard his footsteps on the stairs, then the streetdoor slam, then the scrape of his boots on the cobbles. I crossed over to the window. He was already at the end of the street. He turned right.
    I went back and sat down on the bed, pulling my knees up close to my chest, tugging my shirt down over them. I clasped an arm around my legs, hugging them close. I slid the smoothness of a thumbnail back and forth across my lips, remembering that kiss. Just this last bit of business and we’d be ready. We’d have enough to leave. I felt my heart begin to beat a little faster. We’d go anywhere I liked, he’d said. Anywhere at all.
    His coat was lying in folds, slung over the back of the chair. He’d gone without it. His hat was there too, sitting black and pristine on the chair’s fraying straw seat. He’d catch his death.
    I’d have to be quick if I was going to catch him. His spare shirt and britches were lying on the same seat so I pulled them on: it was quicker than buttoning myself into that dress. I gathered up his coat and hat and made for the door. If he wasalready too far ahead, if he was going too fast, if I had to just follow awhile and see where he went and who he met, well, that wouldn’t be my fault. It wouldn’t be spying. I was just bringing him his hat and coat.
    I slipped out through the front door and hurried down to the end of our street. At the corner I caught sight of him going uphill, his head down, hand to mouth. I followed.
    After climbing about half a mile, he turned abruptly and stepped into Bashful Alley. I ran up to the corner and peered round. He was just reaching the far end, was just turning to the right. I ducked down the passageway, trying to run softly on the flagstones, and stopped at the end to peer after him. The lane was steep and cobbled. He was climbing slowly: he looked tired. And I was getting breathless too. Clutched to my chest, his coat was bulky, cumbersome, and his hat was getting crushed. I slipped his jacket on over my own, tapped the hat down onto my head. It sank down low over my eyes. If he glanced round, he’d hardly recognize me. He wouldn’t stop and send me back. I slid round the corner, followed him.
    Each turn he took was dragging us further uphill, each narrowing street bringing us further round in a shallow curve from our lodgings towards that dark and threatening quarter, that rat’s nest of dives and dens and brothels up behind the quays. He’d been there all last night, and he was already going back. Despite the extra layers of clothing, despite the exertion of the chase, I felt cold.
    We were coming to the brow of the hill and a crossroads. Ahead of us, Hope Street sloped down towards the waterfront. The cobbles were thick with filth, the street overhung with dripping, carious tenements. The darkest, most notorious of slums. I felt anxiety rise inside me, like sickness. He turned down a sidestreet and I followed.
    Thirty yards or so ahead of me, on the far side of the street, he’d stopped. I slid my back up against a wall and watched. A trick of the town: at the end of the street was a view out across the rooftops to the world beyond. A slice of saltmarsh, fading evening sky, and river. Sailortown’s speciality, these sudden perspectives, glimpsed at the turn of a mildewed street, at the brow of a hill, or through a cavity left by collapsed tenements. Cut against this backdrop, his silhouette looked crooked, his head slumped forward from his shoulders like an old man’s. Anxiety rose again inside me, but I swallowed it back.
    He’d made it