Page 47 of Never a Hero

‘We’ll be upstairs,’ Jamie said. ‘The Liu rooms are on the right.’

Joan nodded. She made a quick sign for Ruth: pointing her thumb toward Nick and then crossing her forefinger over it. Watch over him. Promises or not, she didn’t like the way the Lius had looked at him. And Nick didn’t even know enough to be afraid of them.

Ruth nodded slightly to show she’d registered it. ‘I’m really going to need that long story soon, though,’ she murmured.

The room emptied. Joan stared at Astrid. She could see the Liu family resemblance now, in Astrid’s straight-backed posture—Ying and Jamie had the same slight air of formality.

When everyone else was gone, Joan found her voice again. ‘You fought alongside Nick.’ She couldn’t believe it. ‘You—’ And then she was so angry suddenly that she could hardly speak. ‘You helped him kill my family.’ Her voice cracked with emotion. ‘You killed all those people! How could you when you’re a monster? You’re one of us!’

‘One of who?’ Astrid said. ‘I’m no more monster than you; and no more human. We just made different choices.’

Joan stared at her. She was half-human like Joan? ‘But …’

‘Come on,’ Astrid said. ‘I’ll get you some tea, and I’ll tell you exactly how much you fucked everything up.’

fourteen

Astrid went to the galley kitchen and opened a cupboard, revealing tins and cardboard boxes of tea, colourful as paints on a palette: red canisters with Chinese characters, fancy Fortnum blues, and big boxes of PG Tips and Yorkshire blend. Astrid selected a pale-yellow tin. ‘You like ginger, right?’ She spooned tea into a silver pot, and then filled the pot from a hot-water urn. Ginger and lemongrass scented the air in a slow diffusion.

Astrid had been a fencer in the other timeline. At Holland House, she’d taught tourists how to fight with foam swords. She still looked capable of fighting—she was lean and poised in her black skirt and black blazer. She opened another cupboard and took down a novelty ceramic jar—a red-and-white boat. It opened with a scrape. ‘Only orange creams left.’ Astrid wrinkled her nose. ‘What’s even the point of them if no one eats them?’

Anger hit Joan again—it kept coming back. Why was Astrid fussing about biscuits and tea? ‘We hung out for weeks at Holland House!’ They’d volunteered there together. They’d bonded over having Chinese fathers. They’d had inside jokes. Joan had told Astrid about her quirky London family. And all that time, Astrid had been plotting with Nick to kill that family.

‘I remember,’ Astrid said. In the other timeline she’d always been animated—whether laughing or glowering or rolling her eyes, her expression had filled her whole face. Now, though, she seemed dialled down. Joan had no idea what she was feeling.

Joan took a few steps toward her. Her own emotions were all over the place. ‘Were you there that night?’ She wanted to yell it—to have Astrid yell back. Joan’s family had died. She needed an explanation. ‘I was. I was there when my gran died!’ She could almost feel Gran’s blood all over her again, weighing down her dress, smearing her hands; the butcher’s-shop smell of it thick in the air. She could hear her breath coming faster. ‘My cousin Bertie died. My aunt Ada. My uncle Gus.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Astrid met Joan’s gaze, clear-eyed. ‘I’m sorry you went through that.’

‘You’re sorry? You killed people! You helped him kill my family!’

‘I wasn’t there that night. I fought with him sometimes, but not that night.’

Air hissed out from Joan’s lungs, the wind punched out of her. ‘But you helped him. You were on his side last time.’

‘I helped him,’ Astrid agreed. ‘I fought with him.’ She anticipated Joan’s next question. ‘The Lius don’t know I was on his side.’

‘Why?’ Joan couldn’t understand it. ‘God, Astrid. How could you? He was slaughtering people!’

To her frustration, Astrid just poured tea into two little cups, one finger on the pot’s lid. Steam rose, misting spots on the window. As she bent, her face shadowed, making her look younger—more like the Astrid Joan had once known. ‘How could I fight monsters—my own people?’ Astrid said. ‘I don’t know, Joan. How could you fight your own people?’

‘I—’ Joan stumbled at Astrid’s phrasing. Joan hadn’t fought against humans. She’d only fought Nick. ‘I didn’t.’

‘So you haven’t noticed the missing humans yet?’

It was Joan’s turn to pause. The room seemed very quiet suddenly, the only sound the low machine hum of the fridge. ‘Missing?’

‘People are missing from this timeline—people who were here last time.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But Mr Larch’s kind, round face had already flown into Joan’s mind. He’d been missing from her school since the start of term. Margie hadn’t even known who he was. There’s a Mr Larch Reading Garden behind the library, Margie had said. Some teacher who died ten years ago. Is that what you mean?

‘Come on, Joan,’ Astrid said, with a little of her old impatience. ‘What do you think happened to them?’

Mr Larch must have moved to another town over the summer break. He must have been teaching at another school. He had to be. ‘I …’ I don’t know, Joan wanted to say.

It wasn’t just Mr Larch, though. On her last days in London, Joan had noticed other faces absent in Gran’s neighbourhood: a girl who’d worked at the supermarket checkout; the panhandler outside the Tube station; the neighbour who’d always walked his poodle in the afternoon. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time—people’s routines changed. But now, she wondered … What do you think happened to them?

Joan shook her head, but her stomach spasmed painfully out of nowhere—like she was about to be sick. Like her body was starting to understand a truth too big for her mind to hold.

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