If only the strong survive, nobody will.  Rosalyn kept turning that around in her head.  A message like that, hidden away at the back of an old fabric shop where barely anyone could see it.  Written in spraypaint when no-one was looking.  Five years ago?  Twelve?  Maybe even more than that?  Who knew?

Judith had managed to get them a list of names, people who’d worked for Fabric City twelve years ago and might know something about the note or the graffiti.  She’d told them to try cross-referencing them with a list of students who’d graduated from Berrylands University between 1994 and 1998.  “If they managed to get into the university library, then they were almost certainly a student there,” Judith had said, “And we can reasonably assume that they were somewhere in the Humanities department, considering the part of the library where they hid it.  So that narrows it down a little.”

Rosalyn had spent the last two hours back at the library, looking through the alumni list on the university database, and so far she’d found two names on both lists.  Kimberley Peacock (BA History), and Benjamin Sugar (BA Linguistics) had both graduated in 1996.  All she needed to do now was see if she could find any contact details on the internet.  And then all she’d need to do was pluck up the courage to call them.

If only the strong survive, nobody will.  If Benjamin Sugar or Kimberley Peacock had written that, then Rosalyn loved them, based on that alone.

Because she knew why they’d written it.  She knew the kind of thing that people said.  Survival of the fittest.  You’ve got to be a fighter.  Are you strong enough to survive, or will you fall at the first hurdle?

It felt like Rosalyn always fell at the first hurdle.  She’d never won anything.  She’d never pushed herself to the limit.  She was short, chubby and ginger, and she had to take pills every morning to stop her brain from falling to bits.  But to Kelpie and Silkie, none of that seemed to matter.

If only the strong survive, nobody will.

If it was the last thing she did, Rosalyn was going to find out who’d written those words so she could thank them.

She went across to the cafeteria, and got a cup of coffee from the machine.  There were still little piles of the university paper on some of the tables, complete with the headline about the bombs.  Rosalyn looked at the nearest pile as she waited for her cup to fill up.  There were the beginnings of an idea, gradually coming together.

She sat down a couple of seats away from the pile, and, after taking a couple of sips from her cup and checking that no-one was watching, she quietly pulled one of the copies towards her.  She opened it to page five, pretending to read it carefully, and slid a biro out of her bag.

Rosalyn paused for a moment, trying to think of the right thing to put, and thought of a trick her dad had told her about when she’d been little.  She uncapped the pen and wrote in the bottom left corner, Don’t think of an orange penguin- Kelpie and Silkie.

She kept the paper in front of her for a few minutes, in case anyone was watching, then put it back in the middle of the pile.  Sometime this week, someone else would come across her message, and be really confused, or amused, or inspired.  Rosalyn would probably never know who, or when, or what happened next, but sometime this week, she’d affect someone’s life.  The thought gave her a strange, shivery feeling.

*

Alex made an announcement at dinner.  “I’m going to Amsterdam next week.”

Actually, ‘at dinner’ was a bit of a misleading phrase- it wasn’t as if they were all sitting down to a shared hearty meal.  Alex, Natalie and Rosalyn had each separately microwaved something, Mariam had eaten earlier and was just kind of hanging around the kitchen, and Isaac, who hadn’t had much of an appetite lately, was picking at a tub of pineapple slices.  “Yeah?” he asked, “What are you going to do there?”

“Photography, Isaac.  It’s a fascinating city.”  And, before Isaac could make any insinuations about why it was so fascinating, he quickly added, “I’m leaving on Saturday, and I’ll be gone for two weeks.  So I want to take you all out before I go.”

“So we don’t forget you exist while you’re gone?” asked Mariam, with a grin.  She was leaning against the fridge and tilting her head in a way that made her fringe partly cover her face in a semi-transparent, blue-black curtain.

Alex smiled back.  “I’m hoping that absence will make the heart grow fonder.  Now, where would you like to go?”

Isaac dug a bit of fruit pulp out of his back teeth with his tongue.  He couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do.  If he wasn’t worried about sounding like a killjoy, he’d just suggest that they stay in and watch terrible horror movies.  After what happened last time they’d all gone out together, planning something else just made him feel uneasy.

“Something in Central London?” suggested Rosalyn, “Like one of the museums?”

Natalie nodded, swallowing a mouthful of lasagne.  “Can’t say no to dinosaur skeletons.”

Alex looked from one end of the room to the other.  “Mariam?  Isaac?  All in favour of South Kensington?”

“Sure,” said Isaac.  Not much point in saying anything else.

Mariam frowned.  “Are you alright, Isaac?”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another bite of pineapple, “I love dinosaurs.”

*

Natalie and Rosalyn ended up wandering around the shops after their lectures.  Neither of them really wanted to buy anything, but neither of them wanted to go home just yet either.  Natalie had told Rosalyn that if they spent one more minute in Superdrug she’d gnaw her own arm off, so they’d gone down one of the side streets to look round the second-hand shops instead.  This one was cluttered with an assortment of dusty, vaguely sinister-looking things, with a rusty clothes horse that looked as if it was about to come to life and rampage through the neighbourhood looming over life-sized statues of Laurel and Hardy and a mantelpiece fresco showing something called “The Helston Furry Dance.”  Rosalyn was crouched down by a little shelf of books (wedged between an old dollhouse and a willow-patterned tea set), and she was clearly up to something.

“You know what you were saying earlier?” she asked, looking up from the little bit of paper that had materialised in her hand while Natalie wasn’t looking, “About that guy in your seminar?”

“What, Kyle?”

“Yeah.  The one with all the opinions.”  Rosalyn was completely wide-eyed and earnest as she said this- not a smirk in sight.  Which was more than could be said when Natalie talked about Kyle.

Kyle had opinions, alright.  He believed that it was better to burn out than to fade away.  He believed that happy people never made good art.  He believed that all the best artists had burned through life as quickly and intensely as they could, destroying their health and alienating the people around them in their single-minded pursuit of truth and beauty. Kyle believed a lot of things, and he shared them at every opportunity.  At length.  No matter how quickly everyone else’s eyes glazed over.

“Well, what do you think of this?”  Rosalyn turned the piece of paper over in her hand.  In tiny, pencilled letters, it read, There’s a big difference between having an artistic temperament and just being a wanker- Kelpie and Silkie.

Natalie put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.  “Perfect.  What are you going to do with it?”

Rosalyn ran her finger along the top of the books, and picked out the third from the left- something called How To Be A Wally.  “Give me a number between one and a hundred.”

“Forty-two,” said Natalie, and she watched Rosalyn flick through the book, fold the paper in half, and slip it in between pages 42 and 43.

“There,” she said, putting the book back in its place, “Now what should we do next?”

Natalie looked around.  There were only a handful of other people in the shop, and they were all on the other side of big piles of debris, so there wasn’t much risk of getting caught.  Not that writing notes and putting them in second-hand books was exactly a capital offence, anyway- at worst, the staff might suspect them of vandalising the books and make them pay for them.  “How about, I’m telling, you’re smelling, you went to Batman’s wedding?”

Rosalyn laughed.  “Why?”

“Why not?”

So Rosalyn tore off another bit of paper and wrote it down.  This one went between pages 42 and 43 of The Mr Men Annual 1986.  “Can you imagine how shocked someone would be if they bought more than one book from here?” asked Rosalyn, “And then they found that they all had weird little notes on the same page?”

“It’s like a free gift,” said Natalie, “So, come on, what’s the next one going to be?”

*

The giant sequoia piece was about three or four metres across, and exactly the same colour as those brownies they sold in the university cafeteria.  It was so smooth that it was hard to imagine it ever being sawn out of a real tree.  According to the sign, the original tree had started growing in 557- you could prove it by counting the rings.  557 barely seemed like a real year.  William the Conqueror had invaded Britain, the Black Death had wiped out a third of Europe, Henry the Eighth had beheaded his wives, Oliver Cromwell had overthrown the king, and all the while, halfway across the world, this tree had been there, digging its roots into the same earth.  How had anyone dared to cut it down?  Hadn’t they been worried that something that big and that old would have some hidden ways to protect itself?

Alex was beside her, an odd, taciturn look on his face, as if he was inspecting the exhibits for signs of forgery.  He noticed Rosalyn glancing at him, and said, “I read somewhere that the wood from giant sequoias isn’t very good.  It’s too brittle.  People would see how tall they were and cut them down expecting a big payday, but they’d end up with piles of splintery wood that they just couldn’t sell.”

“Serves them right,” said Rosalyn, with a laugh.

Behind them, just down the stairs a bit, Natalie and Mariam were talking about one of the other exhibits they’d been to earlier.  “Don’t you get holier-than-thou on us, Natalie.  You were enjoying it just as much as anyone else.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t fun.  Just, imagine if you’d actually been in that earthquake, and then you come to London and find out that someone’s turned it into a ride.”

“If you think that’s in bad taste, I’m never taking you to the London Dungeon.”

“That’s different.  You’re allowed to make fun of tragedies that happened more than a hundred years ago.”

Further down, Isaac called out, “Hey, I think the queue for the dinosaurs has died down.”

Natalie took a couple of steps down, and peered over the bannister.  “You’re right.  Some of those school groups must have gone home.”  She looked up at the other three.  “Want to head over?”

Like she even had to ask.  They’d all wanted to go and see the dinosaur exhibit as soon as they got to the museum, but apparently everyone else here had felt the same way.  Instead, they’d gone to the ‘Creepy Crawlies’ section first, but only after Mariam had got Natalie to lead her around by the hand and tell her to open her eyes when there weren’t any spiders in sight.  Some of the other patrons in there had given them some seriously weird looks.

“OK,” said Rosalyn, “Then the V&A?”

“Why not?” said Alex.  He put his hand on Rosalyn’s shoulder and ushered her downstairs, towards the others.  Ahead of them, Rosalyn saw Mariam catch up with Isaac, touch his elbow, and say something she couldn’t hear.  Isaac grinned wide and shook his head.

“His cuts are healing up well, aren’t they?” Rosalyn asked Alex, taking care to keep her voice low.

Alex nodded, looking down at the others instead of at her.  “With any luck there won’t be any scarring.  He’s…”  Alex took in a sharp breath, and shook his head again.  “You never quite know what’s going on beneath the surface, do you?”

“No.”

“I wish he’d talk to us about it.”

“I’ve always heard that’s a lot harder for men.  Talking about your feelings, I mean.”  Heaven knew it sometimes felt like pulling teeth even for Rosalyn, and no-one had ever tried to make her feel like a disgrace to her gender for doing it.

“You know, Rosalyn, I think you might just have put your finger on it.”  They were moving a bit slower than the other three, thanks to Alex’s limp and Rosalyn’s short legs, so they didn’t have to worry too much about Isaac overhearing.  By the time they’d got to the foot of the stairs, Isaac was already joining the queue for the dinosaurs across the hall.

Rosalyn and Alex caught up with them just as Natalie was inspecting a plaque next to a stegosaurus skeleton.  “It turns out a lot of these are casts,” she told Rosalyn when she reached her side.

Rosalyn nodded.  Earlier on, they’d passed by a sign about extinct animals that said that no-one knew for sure what the dodo had looked like because there were no surviving specimens, and Natalie had got annoyed and insisted that there was a stuffed dodo in this very museum.  She’d led them all the way to the ‘Birds’ section to point it out… and then they’d noticed the little sign saying that it was a replica.  That had thrown Natalie for a loop.  She’d spent the next two minutes muttering, “I was so sure…” even after the others had tried to cheer her up by taking her to see the goofy-looking polar bear in the ‘Mammals’ section.  “Them, too?”

“Yeah,” Natalie said mournfully, “It’s like finding out that Santa’s not real, all over again.”

Mariam laughed.  “Not to rub salt in the wound or anything, Nats, but the blue whale we saw earlier was just a model.”

Natalie gave a dramatic gasp and clapped a hand to her forehead.  “No-o-o!”

Rosalyn’s gaze wandered over to a nearby wall display, with photos and dates to do with the first dinosaur bones identified and the archaeologists who’d found them.  They were black and white, those photos, showing serious-looking people in Victorian clothes, but compared to that sequoia slice upstairs, they were from about five minutes ago.  “Look at that,” she said, nodding towards the display, “Isn’t it weird how recent it all is?  Two hundred years ago, they didn’t have a clue that dinosaurs ever existed.”

“Mm,” said Natalie, “It’s not that they never found any bones until then, though.  They found them- they just assumed they were dragons.”

Rosalyn looked back at the stegosaurus skeleton, with its spikes and its funny little head.  You couldn’t imagine one of those devouring maidens and burning villages to the ground.  They looked far too approachable.

Natalie jolted her back out of her thoughts.  “In fact, that’s what Young Earth Creationists still think.  I found this website once, and you would not believe the kind of things they come up with.  Apparently, carbon dating is just God testing their faith.”

Rosalyn’s chest went tight.  She fought the urge to put her hands over her ears.  It’s alright, she thought, This is just a normal conversation.  You’re fine.

“I’m guessing any evidence they don’t like is just God testing their faith,” said Isaac over his shoulder.

“Not all of it,” said Natalie, “Some of it’s just been fabricated by the evil liberal media.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of them.  Very evil.  Especially Channel Five.”

Some people just wanted to shrink the world and use God as an excuse.  They wouldn’t let you have dinosaurs.  They wouldn’t let you have space travel, or heart transplants, or cleaner energy.  They wouldn’t let you have ambition, or independence, or imagination.

Rosalyn felt something on her left cheek.  Alex had brushed some of her hair out of her face.

She turned sideways and saw the crooked smile on his face.  In a low voice, he asked her, “What is it the Dalai Lama said?  ‘My religion is very simple.  My religion is kindness.’”

She should have been embarrassed that she’d been so obvious that Alex had worked out, not just that she was upset, but what had upset her.  She should have been embarrassed that she’d let such a tiny thing get to her in the first place.  She wasn’t, though.  A warm feeling of relief worked its way through her, like getting into a hot bath on a cold day.

“Sorry about that,” she whispered.

“Nothing to apologise for,” he replied, putting his hand on her back as they walked on.

*

Natalie noticed Mariam staring critically at the crotch of one of the Ancient Greek statues.  “I heard something interesting once,” she said, “Apparently, they used to believe that a small penis was a sign that your focus was on spiritual matters, not carnal ones.  So the smaller the penis, the higher-minded you were.”

Mariam snorted.  “Keep telling yourself that,” she told the statue.

They were going up to the theatre section, because Rosalyn said she remembered seeing these neat little light-up dioramas of stage settings when she’d been here a few years ago, and she wanted to see if they were still there.  They also had costumes and clips from plays on display, so that would probably be fun, too.  “As long as it doesn’t remind Isaac too much of work,” she told the others.

Isaac rolled his eyes.  “I wish I got to design light-up scenery dioramas at work.  Instead of dealing with some jerk complaining that we don’t sell popcorn.”

“Why don’t you sell popcorn?” asked Natalie.

“The Lambtons are above that sort of thing,” Isaac said airily, “If it was up to them, we’d only serve roast pheasant.”

“I thought it was up to them.  Aren’t they in charge?”

“Yeah, but the RSPCA would have their arses if they tried it.”

They were halfway up the stairs, admiring the big dragon statues as they went, when Mariam remembered something.  “Fuck!”

Beside her, Alex stopped in mid-step.  “What?”

“I just remembered- the Oakmen meeting’s tonight.”  She didn’t remember what time it had said on the leaflet, but it was getting on for four now, it would take them a good forty minutes to get home, and they hadn’t even had dinner yet.  No chance of getting there on time now.  “It’s not that important,” she added quickly in case Alex thought she was implying that his goodbye trip was an inconvenience, “Just, I completely forgot about it.”

Alex didn’t reply right away.  He kept his gaze on her, eyebrows lowered in… concentration?   Concern?  Mariam couldn’t tell.  Alex just looked a bit intense sometimes.  You couldn’t get any more specific than that.  To make things worse, the other three had gone on ahead, so she was the only one here for him to be intense at.

“Mariam,” he said, after a few seconds, “when you met Shaun on Monday, he came up to the bar just after the man who asked you about our arms, right?” 

“Yeah, why?”

Alex took a deep breath.  “How soon after?”

Mariam thought back.  “I don’t know.  He was just behind him in the queue, that’s all.  I didn’t notice him until he started talking.”  She frowned.  “Why?  What’s this about?”

“I’ve… been thinking about what you told us on Monday.  And there’s some things that don’t make much sense.”  He counted on his fingers.  “The Student Union always has loud music playing, but Shaun heard everything the other guy said…”

“Well, yeah, he was standing right behind him…”

“But he also said he knew how you’d hurt your arm because he heard your friends talking about it earlier.  Would they really have been talking about your personal business in front of customers?  Loud enough to be heard above the music?”

“What are you implying?”  The words came out a bit more confrontational than she’d meant, but she definitely didn’t appreciate Alex dancing around the point like this.  “That Shaun put that other guy up to it?”

Alex sighed.  If he’d looked as if he was fed up with her, Mariam would probably have wanted to poke his eyes out, but he didn’t.  He just had a troubled, faraway look.  “I’m just saying, there are a lot of things that don’t make sense.”

“You’re reading too much into it.”  Mariam started climbing the stairs again.

“Maybe,” replied Alex, in that particular way that told her he still thought he was right but was prepared to drop it for now.  She supposed that was the best she could hope for.

*

Isaac’s chest was starting to feel tight again, but as long as he kept moving, he could distract himself.  He didn’t want to deal with the others and their concerned looks right at the moment, so he slipped sideways into one of those big white gallery rooms.  No-one else there.  Good.  He got out his phone and looked up the numbers he’d saved into it earlier.

Him and Rosalyn had managed to find two English Literature students who’d worked at Fabric City in 1994, and then they’d managed to find phone numbers for them.  Or for people with the same names as them, anyway.  And if Benjamin Sugar and Kimberly Peacock getting an annoying phone call was the prince of Isaac keeping his mind from cracking apart as badly as his face, then sorry, Benjamin and Kimberly, but you were going to get annoying phone calls.

He found the number for “KP,” pressed the green phone and listened.

It sent him straight to voicemail.  For a moment, he felt like chucking the phone right into one of those landscape paintings on the wall, but then he remembered that he was not, in fact, mental, and that Kim Peacock probably hadn’t turned her phone off just to spite him personally.  He hung up, and tried the other one.

It rang, and Isaac gritted his teeth.  This room was too big.  The slightest noise you made echoes for ages.  Any moment now, somebody was going to come in and ask him what…

“Hello?”

Isaac jumped a little.  “Hi, is that Benjamin Sugar?”

“The very same.”

He sounded as if he was in a good mood.  That put Isaac at ease, a little.  “My name’s Isaac Green.  I’m a student at Berrylands University.”

“Mm?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but, um, me and my friends were doing a bit of research, and we found out that you worked at Fabric City in 1994?”

“I did, yes.  About five months, I think.”

Isaac swallowed.  “Can you tell me anything about Kelpie and Silkie?”

Ben Sugar went silent for two or three seconds, during which Isaac convinced himself that the guy thought he was a nutter.  Then he said, “Oh, you mean the graffiti round back?  Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was a couple of local boys on a dare.  There were a couple of teenagers who worked at the shop next door, and they were often hanging round the back.”

“Right.”  Isaac felt as if he should be making notes.  “You don’t remember their names, do you?”

Ben Sugar made a strained, thoughtful noise.  “I want to say Andrew?  Maybe Anthony?  Can’t be any more specific than that, sorry.”

“That’s OK.  It was twelve years ago.”  He sat down on a nearby bench.  His chest didn’t feel as tight as before.  “You’ve given me something to go on, anyway.  Thanks for your…”

“Oh!  Wait!”  Isaac thought he heard a crash on the other end, as if Ben Sugar had knocked something over in his excitement.  “I almost forgot- I think I know where they got the idea!”

“Really?” asked Isaac.  From the corner of his eye, he saw Mariam poke her head round the door to check on him.  At least if she saw him smiling, she wouldn’t worry.

“Yeah!  There’s another bit of graffiti up in the woods near Croydon.  I don’t know exactly where, but it’s on an old railway bridge, and it’s signed ‘Kelpie and Silkie.’”

That was less helpful- “near Croydon” could mean just about anything- but it was a definite lead.  Something to tell Rosalyn.  “Do you remember what it says?”

“Not exactly.  I only saw it once.  But it’s old-it was old even in 1994.  The boys couldn’t have written it themselves.”

“I guess not.”  Isaac stood up and began to walk up to where he’d seen the others last.  “Thanks for this.  You’ve been really helpful.”

They had a shop to track down- whatever was next to Fabric City twelve years ago- and a former employee called Andrew or Anthony or possibly something else.  They had an old railway bridge to find somewhere around Croydon- they could spend months looking for that.  Months on end when Isaac would have something to think about other than the tight feeling in his chest.

 Rosalyn was going to be over the moon when he told her.

*

Mariam woke up in the middle of the night.  Not gradually, not drifting in and out of sleep in a confused daze- this was a zero-to-a-hundred thing.  One moment she was off in the Land of Nod, and the next, her eyes were wide open and she knew something was wrong.

Mariam’s room was the closest to the front door.  If her curtains had been open, she’d have been able to look right at the front drive.  She’d have been able to see whoever was out there, and they’d have been able to see her, too.

There were voices, right outside the front door.  Not on the pavement ten feet away- right there.

Someone tried the front door.  Mariam heard it rattle.

She stayed frozen, lying there in the dark.  She didn’t know how much the curtains would block out.  If she moved from the bed, they might be able to see her shadow.  And if she turned the light on, they’d almost definitely see that.  There was a chance that they were just kids messing about or drunk people who’d got the wrong house, in which case seeing that someone was awake downstairs might scare them off.  But if there was something nastier going on, then that might spur them into breaking in, just to shut her up.

One of them laughed, and another one shushed him.  It made Mariam’s skin crawl.

The door rattled some more (How strong is the lock? wondered Mariam), and then the voices started up again.  She couldn’t make out any words, but she was pretty sure all the people talking were men.  At least three of them.

The voices continued for a while, then seemed to trail off.  Moving away? thought Mariam.  She didn’t dare hope.  And even if they did go away, there was nothing to stop them coming back later.  Maybe with better equipment for smashing down the door.

Mariam thought through all the objects in her room, wondering which ones she could use as a weapon.  The Norton Anthology was a few thousand pages long, and the size of a brick.  If she put that in a bag and swung it, she could probably knock somebody out.  And if she had time to get to the kitchen…

There was another noise, this time towards the back of the house.  It sounded like it came from the little hallway off to the side of the kitchen.  The hallway was a chilly place with bare plaster walls, and there were exactly three things in it- the washing machine, the downstairs toilet, and the back door.

The back door hadn’t been opened since they’d moved in.  No-one knew where the key was.  But if you were the sort of person who snuck into someone else’s garden at one in the morning, you might try and think of other ways to get it open.

Mariam crawled out of bed and up to the bookcase.  She felt around the bottom shelf, put her hand on top of the Norton Anthology, and crouched there in the darkness, listening.

There was a loud thump, then another.  After that, silence. 

Mariam stayed there, huddled in the corner by the bookcase, for another hour, but she didn’t hear anything else.  Whatever they’d done to the back door, it had held.

It was another two hours before she dared to turn the light on.