deliberately. Just pace yourself. You want this. Go out and get it. I can feel something inside my jacket weighing against the top of my thigh. A banana. I sit up, take it out, peel away the skin, and eat it in five gulped bites. Slow-burn carbohydrates. Then I lean back against the tank and feel the flush handle dig hard into my back.
The water has stopped running out of the taps on the other side of the cubicle door. I check my watch. The time has drifted on to 8:50 A.M. without my keeping track of it. I slam back the lock on the door and bolt out of the cubicle. The room is empty. The corridors, too. Just get there, move it, don’t run. My black shoes clap on the linoleum floors, funneling down the corridor back to B3. I reenter, trying to look nonchalant.
“Right, he’s here,” says a man I haven’t seen before who obviously works in the building. He has a strangulated Thames Valley accent. “Everything all right, Mr. Milius?”
“Fine, sorry, yes.”
Leaning against the window in the far corner of the common room is the fifth and last candidate, Elaine Hayes. I don’t have time to have a proper look at her.
“Good. We can make a start then.”
I find a seat between Ogilvy and Matt on one of the sofas, dropping down low into its springless upholstery. One of them is wearing industrial-strength aftershave with a curiously androgynous fragrance. Must be Ogilvy. The man hands me a piece of paper with my timetable on it for the next two days.
“As I was saying, my name is Keith Heywood.”
Keith’s sparse hair is grease combed and badger gray. He has skin the color of chalk and puffy hairless arms. He looks sixty-five but is probably twenty years younger. Most of his working life has been spent in this building. He wears a light blue short-sleeved shirt and black flannel trousers with meandering creases. His shoes, also black, are at least five years old: no amount of polishing could save them now. He looks, to all intents and purposes, like a janitor.
“I’m your intake manager,” he says. “If you have any questions about anything at all over the course of the next two days, you come to me.”
Everyone nods.
“I’ll also be monitoring the cognitive tests. You won’t, of course, be permitted to talk to me during those.”
This is obviously Keith’s big opening-speech gag. Ogilvy is polite enough to laugh at it. As he smiles and sniggers, he looks across and catches my eye. Rivalry.
“Now,” Keith says, clapping his hands. “Do you have any questions about your timetables?”
I look down at the sheet of paper. It is headed AFS NON-QT CANDIDATES , a phrase that I do not understand. I am known only as Candidate 4.
“No. No questions,” says Ann, answering for us all.
“Right,” says Keith. “Let’s get started.”
Keith lumbers down the corridor to a small classroom filled with desks in rows and orange plastic chairs. We follow close behind him like children in a museum. Once inside, he stands patiently at one end of the room beside a large wooden examiner’s table while each of us chooses a desk.
Ann sits immediately in front of Keith. Matt settles in behind her. He places a red pencil case on the desk in front of him, which he unzips, retrieving a chewed blue Bic and a fresh pencil. Ogilvy heads for the back of the room, separating himself from the rest of us. Elaine, who is older than me, sits underneath a single-pane window overlooking the trees of St. James’s Park. She looks bored. I position myself at the desk nearest the door.
“I have in my hand a piece of paper,” says Keith, surprisingly. “It’s a questionnaire that I am obliged to ask you to complete.”
He begins dishing them out. Ann, helpfully, takes two from his pile, swiveling to hand one back to Matt. She moves stiffly, from the waist and hips, as if her neck were clamped in an invisible brace.
“It’s just for our own records,” says Keith, moving between the desks. “None of your answers will
The water has stopped running out of the taps on the other side of the cubicle door. I check my watch. The time has drifted on to 8:50 A.M. without my keeping track of it. I slam back the lock on the door and bolt out of the cubicle. The room is empty. The corridors, too. Just get there, move it, don’t run. My black shoes clap on the linoleum floors, funneling down the corridor back to B3. I reenter, trying to look nonchalant.
“Right, he’s here,” says a man I haven’t seen before who obviously works in the building. He has a strangulated Thames Valley accent. “Everything all right, Mr. Milius?”
“Fine, sorry, yes.”
Leaning against the window in the far corner of the common room is the fifth and last candidate, Elaine Hayes. I don’t have time to have a proper look at her.
“Good. We can make a start then.”
I find a seat between Ogilvy and Matt on one of the sofas, dropping down low into its springless upholstery. One of them is wearing industrial-strength aftershave with a curiously androgynous fragrance. Must be Ogilvy. The man hands me a piece of paper with my timetable on it for the next two days.
“As I was saying, my name is Keith Heywood.”
Keith’s sparse hair is grease combed and badger gray. He has skin the color of chalk and puffy hairless arms. He looks sixty-five but is probably twenty years younger. Most of his working life has been spent in this building. He wears a light blue short-sleeved shirt and black flannel trousers with meandering creases. His shoes, also black, are at least five years old: no amount of polishing could save them now. He looks, to all intents and purposes, like a janitor.
“I’m your intake manager,” he says. “If you have any questions about anything at all over the course of the next two days, you come to me.”
Everyone nods.
“I’ll also be monitoring the cognitive tests. You won’t, of course, be permitted to talk to me during those.”
This is obviously Keith’s big opening-speech gag. Ogilvy is polite enough to laugh at it. As he smiles and sniggers, he looks across and catches my eye. Rivalry.
“Now,” Keith says, clapping his hands. “Do you have any questions about your timetables?”
I look down at the sheet of paper. It is headed AFS NON-QT CANDIDATES , a phrase that I do not understand. I am known only as Candidate 4.
“No. No questions,” says Ann, answering for us all.
“Right,” says Keith. “Let’s get started.”
Keith lumbers down the corridor to a small classroom filled with desks in rows and orange plastic chairs. We follow close behind him like children in a museum. Once inside, he stands patiently at one end of the room beside a large wooden examiner’s table while each of us chooses a desk.
Ann sits immediately in front of Keith. Matt settles in behind her. He places a red pencil case on the desk in front of him, which he unzips, retrieving a chewed blue Bic and a fresh pencil. Ogilvy heads for the back of the room, separating himself from the rest of us. Elaine, who is older than me, sits underneath a single-pane window overlooking the trees of St. James’s Park. She looks bored. I position myself at the desk nearest the door.
“I have in my hand a piece of paper,” says Keith, surprisingly. “It’s a questionnaire that I am obliged to ask you to complete.”
He begins dishing them out. Ann, helpfully, takes two from his pile, swiveling to hand one back to Matt. She moves stiffly, from the waist and hips, as if her neck were clamped in an invisible brace.
“It’s just for our own records,” says Keith, moving between the desks. “None of your answers will
Similar Books
