Henry Pepper had had a stressful week.  Between that extra load of legal papers that management had clean forgotten to tell anyone they had to look over and sign until exactly the last minute, Sally constantly arranging meetings with the adoption people without checking with him first, and the sure knowledge that the car was on its last legs and he didn’t know where he was going to get the money for a new one, he’d barely had a chance to sit down.  But looming at the end of the week was the scariest thing of all.  He and Sally were going to take his kids out for dinner, sit them down, and tell them they’d decided to adopt another child.

Henry didn’t know how they were going to react to that- tears and jealousy, or just plain indifference?  Because, yeah, the kids were eighteen and nineteen, but nobody liked having their lives shaken up when they were counting on smooth sailing, did they?

Making things all the more complicated was the fact that it would be the first time Sally and Rosalyn had been in the same room for about two years, and Henry didn’t know if he trusted either of them not to make a scene.  Heaven knew Sally had come up with grand plans to confront Rosalyn over her perceived wrongdoing before now.  “I think there’s still a small part of her that isn’t happy about the choices she’s made,” Sally would say, “I say we try one more time.”  And then Henry would have to talk her down from showing up at Rosalyn’s school to expose the hollowness of her lifestyle.  If she’d pulled a stunt like that, it would have been exactly the excuse Henry’s ex-wife would have needed to completely deny him access.

He’d been pleasantly surprised that Rosalyn had even agreed to this dinner, but that didn’t mean he could drop his guard.  When they met the kids at the Taj Mahal, Henry had prepared himself for the two girls to glare at each other and instantly go on the warpath, probably egged on from the sides by Oliver.  But so far, it hadn’t happened.  They’d been here an hour, and both kids were making polite conversation, as if they and Sally had never had a screaming argument over a Franz Ferdinand CD.  Maybe this evening wouldn’t be so terrifying after all.

“So you’re a journalist now?” Henry asked Rosalyn as they finished off the naan bread.

“More like a publicist.”  Rosalyn looked better-groomed than Henry had seen her in years, with her hair neatly tucked back under a blue-and-mauve headband that matched her dress.  “People send me new messages every ten minutes.  It’s mad.”

Henry smiled.  He’d never heard of these ‘Kelpie and Silkie’ messages, but apparently they were a big thing around Berrylands.  Students had always found silly ways to amuse themselves, he supposed.  “But how do you know which ones are real and which ones are fake?”

“Well… they’re all real.  Even the ones they just wrote in the last thirty seconds.  If they exist, they’re real.”

“So you don’t care much about provenance?”

“I do, but I think the messages themselves are the important thing.”

Sally cleared her throat.  “If you ask me, they all just want to be part of something bigger than themselves.”

Rosalyn turned to Sally, and- wonders would never cease!- gave her a warm smile.  “Yeah, I think so, too.  It’s like my RE teacher said- ‘humans are by nature social.’  People form communities around anything they can find.”

Sally peered at Rosalyn over the top of her glasses.  “The funny thing about life is…”

“What if you start getting really weird ones?” Oliver interrupted, “Like if a Neo Nazi group gets hold of it?”

Rosalyn frowned.  “I don’t know.  I guess I’d have to start filtering some out.”

“The funny thing about life is,” Sally repeated, a little louder, “people can build a life around minutia, and forget what’s really important.”

Henry shut his eyes.  Here it came- the lecture.  Since Rosalyn had started university, Sally had made constant insinuating remarks about the student lifestyle she was sure Rosalyn was living.  Now here was her chance to turn her away from sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, and back to Jesus.

But Oliver interrupted again.  “Well, you’ve got the names of people who send you things, right?  If you get any Nazi ones, you can just report them to the university.”

“Yeah,” said Rosalyn.  Suddenly, her face brightened up.  “Oh, that reminds me!  My friend Mariam…”

Sally spoke over her.  “I think you need to think about your end goal in all of this.  Collecting little bits of graffiti?  It’s fun, I suppose, but is it really going to help you in later life?”

Oliver turned to her with a heavy-lidded, sage-like expression, and recited, “He knows not where he’s going / For the ocean will decide / It’s not the destination / It’s the glory of the ride.”

Henry looked over at Sally.  Her mouth had seized up like a cat’s bottom.  “Go ahead, Oliver!  Spend your whole life quoting birthday cards at people!  I’m sure that will lead to a fulfilling life!”

Henry put a hand on her arm.  “Sally…”

“I try so hard with you two!”  Henry heard her voice start to break.  “You want me to respect your beliefs, but you can never quite bring yourself to respect mine, can you?”

Henry didn’t know where to look.  Let’s have a nice family dinner, we said.  Reconnect with the kids, we said.

Rosalyn did her best to calm things down.  “I don’t think Oliver was being…”

“My faith doesn’t come from a birthday card!”  Definite tears in her eyes now.  People at nearby tables were looking around to see what all the hubbub was.  “It doesn’t come from some graffiti on a toilet wall!  And if you expect that to give you anything meaningful, then I feel sorry for you!”

Oliver’s voice almost a squeak.  “All I did was…”

“I feel sorry for you!”

There was a long pause.  Sally glared daggers at Oliver.  Rosalyn fidgeted.  And eventually the awkwardness got too much, and Henry cleared his throat and said, “Rosalyn, what were you saying about your friend Mariam?”

Apparently that was exactly the wrong thing to say, because Sally slammed her fork down on her plate, stood up, and stormed towards the exit.  The three of them sat open-mouthed, watching her go.

After a while, Oliver turned to Henry.  “All I did was quote the ‘Zen Dog’ poem!”

Henry sighed.  “I know, son.  I know.”

*

For the last year, Jonathan Lambton had worked constantly to try and get his little brother to come out of his shell.  It had taken them weeks just to persuade him to get out of bed for more than a few minutes at a time, and when they’d got him to come in and do some secretarial work at the theatre, it had felt like a triumph on the level of climbing Mount Everest.  Denny seemed to shrink back from anything new, hiding in his room or in the back of Jonathan’s office, doing his best to disappear.  Until this month, the only person he’d interacted with outside his family had been Alex Rudd.

But a couple of weeks ago, Octavia had told him about coming across Denny in the café downstairs, and seeing him sitting with Alex’s friend Isaac and one of the girls they lived with.  “It wasn’t him doing most of the talking, but he was definitely joining in,” she’d said, her eyes lit up, “Now, how long’s it been since he’s done that?  Even with us?”  It was true.  Denny often had to be prodded into conversation.  It was as if he thought anything he had to say would be the wrong thing.

So it wasn’t so surprising that Jonathan wanted to encourage Denny to spend more time with Alex’s friends.  It was a little more surprising that when his mother asked him to find a Berrylands student who’d be prepared to work for her part-time, he’d thought of them first.  But they were easy to get ahold of, and if you wanted to encourage one connection, it made sense to form others, right?  When Jonathan had asked Alex which of his friends was best suited to scanning things into a computer all day, he’d suggested Natalie.  So, Natalie it was.

“It’ll be six or seven weekends,” he explained to her in his office, “Maybe fewer, if you’re willing to work some weekdays as well.”

“Fantastic,” said Natalie, with a wide-eyed shrug.  She seemed a little tougher and more composed than some of Alex’s other friends, which was probably why he’d recommended her.  You needed a thick skin to deal with Josette Lambton.  “I’ve been looking for a part-time job since September, but I couldn’t find anything that fit around my lectures.  This’ll be great.”

Jonathan wondered if he should tell her that their mother’s initial idea had been for Octavia to do the work, and for free.  Octavia, who hadn’t spoken to their mother more than twice a year since she was sixteen, had laughed in Jonathan’s face when he’d asked her.

Instead, he said, “Now, this will involve you having to put up with my mother…”

“Couldn’t be worse than putting up with Alex’s mother,” said Natalie, with a grin.  Jonathan had to admit that was probably true.  His mother might not be the easiest person to deal with, but she’d never held somebody at gunpoint and smashed their head against a doorframe.  “What kind of things will I be sorting out?”

“Old family documents.  Invitations, newspaper articles, society pages.  My mother knew a lot of interesting people when she was younger, and she wants to document it.”

Natalie gave another happy shrug.  “Sounds good to me.”

Jonathan smiled.  You strengthened connections by building up additional ones.  Just as long as Natalie didn’t hate his guts in six weeks’ time.

*

Rosalyn had come by the theatre again.  This time, she wanted to tell him how her weekend had gone.  Denny didn’t have much to contribute- his weekend had gone the way it usually did, with plenty of visits to the mattress army- but he liked hearing her talk.  Her voice had a low, gentle sound to it.

Anyway, this weekend, Rosalyn and her brother had been out to dinner with their dad, and their stepmother had lost her temper and left the restaurant for no good reason halfway through the meal.  Rosalyn’s stepmother went to the kind of church that thought the Crusades had been a good idea.  “Not the killing,” explained Rosalyn.  Then she thought for a moment, and added, “Well, probably not.  But the bit where they were trying to convert everyone to Christianity by force- Sally and her friends would be all for that.”  Her face tightened in what was almost a scowl.  “They’d um and ah and I-know-it-sounds-terrible-but, but they’d definitely be in favour of invading the holy land.”

Denny nodded.  Pinder had never ummed and ahhed.  He’d just come out and said horrible things, whenever you were least prepared.  And before that thought could go away, before he could squeeze his eyes shut and tell himself that Pinder had had his reasons and he’d never get anywhere trying to make him into some sort of villain, Denny realised that he’d said it out loud.

“What kind of horrible things?” asked Rosalyn.

Something in his mind was still screaming at him to stop it, that this train of thought couldn’t lead anywhere good, but Rosalyn had already heard him.  There was no backing out now.  “Well, he’d wait until the end of a really hard day, or when you were sick, or when you’d just fallen out with someone, and then…”  Denny tried to call as many of them to mind as he could.  There had been a few.  “You’ll never really be happy.  I think you just need to accept that.”  He counted it off on his fingers.  “I think your problem is that you’re mediocre.  You’re just smart enough to have an ego about it.”  That one had been spooky- some of his teachers had said the exact same thing.  “You already know that no-one will ever really like you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be useful.”  Three was enough.  He didn’t want to dominate the conversation.

Rosalyn was quiet for a moment.  It was hard to read her expression.  “Did he just say that stuff to you, or to everyone?”

Denny’s first instinct as to say that of course it was just him, that he’d been a special case… but then he remembered hearing something Pinder had said to Jo.  Something about the marks on her legs.  Pathetic.  There are people in the world with real problems.  “Um…  I don’t know.  He didn’t usually say it where other people could hear.”

Rosalyn took a sip of her coffee, and looked off into the distance, thoughtful.  “I think…  I think Sally’s church assume that if something they say sounds terrible, that automatically makes it true.”

Denny smiled.  “Yeah.  Because they’re such wonderful people that they’d never dare say such terrible things unless they were completely convinced.”

Rosalyn held his gaze for a few seconds, studying him.  “Well, lots of people are absolutely certain but still wrong.”  She took another sip.  “And lots of people think they’re good, but aren’t.”

*

Natalie’s bedroom smelled of fruity shower gel and the bags of sweets she kept in her top drawer, which probably made it the most pleasant room in the house (Isaac’s room smelled of the weird starchy washing powder his mum had made him pack, for example.)  That was probably why they’d ended up there this afternoon.  While the TV played in the background (Natalie had put in one of her Comic Strip Presents DVDs), Mariam sat in the office chair by the window and read her new emails. 

Alex had given her fifteen names, Mariam had managed to find working email addresses for eight of them, and so far, two of them had replied.  The first guy, Colin Mitchell, had only really lived with them for a couple of months in 2001, but that had been long enough for Shaun Pinder to fuck up his degree by insisting that he fill his thesis with references to unrelated things that Shaun was supposedly an expert in.  Charity Stobart had lived with them for two and a half years, and her story was a lot scarier.  She’d annoyed Shaun somehow, and then, a couple of days later, she’d had horrible stomach pains just after lunch.  She managed to sneak off to the nearest A&E, where they pumped her stomach and found traces of a number of toxic substances.  “Not enough to have killed me by themselves, but definitely enough to stop me complaining for a while,” Charity had said.

“When did it happen?” asked Alex, who’d perched on the right arm of the chair.

Mariam checked the email.  “Last May.  That would have been not long after you got Denny out, right?”

Alex nodded.  “Did she say what happened afterwards?”

“Her parents made her move back in with them and cut off contact with Shaun and the others.  Can’t imagine she argued much.  The police didn’t manage to prove anything, apparently, but I bet that’s why they left Dorset and changed their name.”  Mariam looked back at the screen for a moment, then something occurred to her.  “Hey, do you think he’s done that before?  Changed the group’s name and moved them about when a scandal happened?”

Alex considered this.  “I don’t know.  He’d have only been in his early twenties when I first met him, though.  There wouldn’t have been him for him to go through too many identities.”

“So you don’t know his exact age, then?”

“No.”

As far as Mariam was concerned, that meant he could be any age at all.  Alex might have thought he’d been in his early twenties when they met, but there were some very fresh-faced thirty- and forty-year-olds.

Mariam hadn’t been sure to what extent the others had been listening to her and Alex’s conversation- the TV was on, and she and Alex were no French and Saunders- but just then, Natalie asked, “Do you know anything about his parents?  Or where he grew up?”

Alex sighed.  “He’d tell us different stories.  One week, he’d be talking about how oppressive and religious they were, and the next, they’d be free-thinking hippies who’d taught him all he knew.”

“So why did it take you so long to work out that he couldn’t be trusted?”  Mariam hadn’t originally planned to say this- just think it sarcastically- but, on reflection, it seemed like something that ought to be said.

Alex didn’t take offence.  “I’ve asked myself the same question.  I suppose part of it was that he never said anything that directly contradicted anything else- there are religious hippies, and I guess most parents are oppressive in some areas and free-thinking in others.  But that’s really just splitting hairs.  I think the main reason was that it’s easy to overlook things when you’re already emotionally invested in someone.  If you notice something that doesn’t fit, you rationalise it.”

Well, that was basically Mariam’s entire romantic history on a nutshell, so she accepted it.  “Jonathan Lambton said ‘Mandeville’ was his mother’s maiden name…”

“Really?  Maybe he did some research of his own.  We should talk to him.”

“What, you think he might have hired a private detective?”

Alex shrugged.  “More likely he just asked around and found out what he could.  Just like we’re doing now, in our own way.”

Isaac leaned back against the bed.  “Bet you anything he heard a lot of stories about him torturing small animals and setting fire to stuff.”

“That’s serial killers,” said Natalie, “Not cult leaders.”

“They’re not that different.”

Mariam wished they wouldn’t say stuff like that.  She was worried enough already.  For a moment, she thought about saying, Guys, stop it- you’re upsetting Peps, but she decided against it because of the very real possibility that Peps would turn around and say, No, they’re not.  That would be embarrassing.

“I don’t know about that,” said Alex, “but maybe he knows the area that Shaun grew up in.  There might be family members we can talk to.”

Isaac looked round.  “What are you going to do with all this research once you’ve finished?”

“Dunno.”  Mariam closed her laptop.  “Just have to hope that knowledge really is power, I suppose.”

*

Natalie had half-expected the door to be answered by a maid or a butler in full uniform, but no- Mama Lambton opened it herself.  She shook their hands, then took them through the hallway, pointing out pictures and items she thought they should see.

“Meiji Period,” she explained, jabbing her finger at a painting of a group of Japanese girls sitting under a tree, “1908.”  She looked at Natalie as if she was challenging her to say something.

“Right,” said Natalie, doing her best to sound impressed.  As opposed to how she really felt, which was completely out of her depth.  Mama Lambton was quite an elegant old lady, with her silver hair and neat designer suit, but the way she spoke and looked at you made it seem as if she was constantly trying to pick a fight.

Apparently disappointed, Mama Lambton turned away and led them into the living room.  “Them” being Natalie and Jonathan, who’d given her a lift into Richmond so she wouldn’t have to catch the bus.  And probably so she wouldn’t have to face his mother on her own.

The living room wasn’t huge, but it was covered with little details and designs in the furniture and rugs and wall hangings that told you even the smallest thing cost more than your house.  Mama Lambton sat down in a pink armchair that looked more like a throne.  “Sit, sit,” she told them, waving a hand.  Jonathan perched on the sofa, and Natalie joined him.  The whole room smelled of dust and dried flowers.

Mama Lambton fixed her eye on Natalie and took a deep breath.  “May I ask how old you are?”  She sounded almost sarcastic, as if she’d asked Natalie a question before and got her head bitten off.

“Nineteen last month,” said Natalie, making sure to sit upright and fold her hands politely in her lap.  This was definitely not the kind of house where you sprawled all over the sofa, even if you weren’t here for a job interview.

Mama Lambton snorted.  “Nineteen?  Appreciate this time while it lasts, then.  I can safely inform you that the rest of your life will be a complete anti-climax.”

 Jonathan leaned forward.  “Natalie’s studying English Literature, Moth…”

“Age takes everything from you,” continued Mama Lambton, raising her voice to drown out her son, “Good looks, vitality, friendship.  Mark my words- no sooner does a flower bloom, but it starts to wither.”

A thought popped into Natalie’s head.  She thinks she’s acting in a play.

“You’re not withered, Mother,” said Jonathan patiently.

“In my opinion, all artists should be shot at the age of twenty-five to avoid disappointment.”  She chuckled.  The same goes for athletes, but then I think they should be shot on general principle.”

Natalie thought about bringing up Johnny Cash or Ian McKellen, wondered if it would be worth it, and quickly decided it wouldn’t.  Instead, she said, “Jonathan says you used to know a lot of artists…?”

Mama Lambton waved her right hand in the air, holding an imaginary cigarette.  She definitely thinks she’s in a play, thought Natalie.  “Yes, ‘used to’ is the key word, isn’t it?  Because we actually had artists back then, not just dullards selling their unmade beds to galleries.  I don’t suppose you’ve ever even…”

“I think what Natalie was saying, Mother,” said Jonathan (getting his own back for her talking over him a minute ago), “is that you knew a lot of interesting people, and it’s worth documenting.”

Mama Lambton sighed.  “Is anything truly worth documenting?  The past is the past.  All you can do is present it to the younger generation and hope they might take an interest.”

Suddenly, Natalie remembered what she’d said when Shaun had asked them to the Oakmen meeting.  We have got to go.  I want to see just how much of a trainwreck this can be.

*

Mariam tried to hide it from her, standing in front of the phonebox and blocking the message, but it was too late.  Rosalyn saw.

A few seconds ago, they’d been languidly walking to university, listening to Isaac explain why he thought all Bratz dolls would someday come to life and kill their owners.  Rosalyn had been laughing.  She hadn’t thought…

And then she’d seen it.  Written across the window of the phonebox on the corner, in white paint or Tippex.  Save the world, stab a spastic- Kelpie and Silkie.

The air went right out of her lungs.  She read the words, and then read them again, trying to make them mean something different.

Isaac shot an arm out and pointed at it.  “That wasn’t there yesterday!” he said quickly, for Rosalyn’s benefit, “Mariam, you saw it, right?  It definitely wasn’t there yesterday!”

Rosalyn read the words over and over, trying to absorb them properly.  If she read them enough times, the shock would go away.  They’d sink into her mind and become part of the general background of what she knew about the world.  The deeper they sunk, the duller the pain would get.

“Someone must have come along last night and written it!  They’d have known we were going to be coming this way in the morning!”

“OK, Rosalyn, I think you need to sit down, alright?  Sit down and breathe a bit.  Come on.”

Save the world, stab a spastic.  Save the world, stab a spastic.  Save the world, stab a spastic.

Well, of course, thought Rosalyn, barely noticing as Mariam manoeuvred her towards a nearby bench, You didn’t think Kelpie and Silkie were going to be kind, did you?  You didn’t think you could actually trust them?

Isaac was pacing about, still ranting about something, and Mariam was crouching in front of her, telling her to lower her head and take deep breaths.  But all Rosalyn could think about were those words.

You brought this on yourself.  Who pins all their hopes on some random stranger who writes notes on walls?

She lowered her head all the way.  She stared at the pavement.

Pathetic.  Delusional.  Stupid.