Desolation by Tim Lebbon Page B

debate.
    â€œWell,” she said, but her sentence fizzled out in the smoky café air.
    They sat together and drank coffee, ate cake, stared from the window at the few people walking by, and only when the silence started to become awkward did Magenta ask Cain where he came from.
    He had no wish to answer. If she knew his background, it would surely scare her off. She was pretty unique, of that he was sure, but she was a woman with a job, an income, and a flat of her own. Cain was, as the kids in the street had greeted him, another fuckin’ nutter.
    â€œI’ve just come here for a change,” he said.
    Magenta smiled and nodded. “Another fucking nutter, then.”
    Cain sat back and blinked at her, shocked as much by her brashness as what she had said.
The siren
, he thought,
it’ll bear in and take me down soon, so much input here, so much to see and hear and smell and understand about this strange woman
. But the siren remained silent, and when Magenta laughed it was a pleasant sound, and he knew that she was not really mocking him.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said, still giggling, “that’s really fucking awful of me. I’m so sorry. It’s just that Peter makes a living hiring out his flats to people who may not be able to get accommodation elsewhere. He’s much more . . . open-minded.” She raised her eyebrows and sat up straight. “How polite is that? I’m even complimenting myself, considering what I’ve done.”
    â€œWhat?” Cain asked, but she ignored him again.
    â€œSo please accept my apology, Cain. Don’t want us to start off on the wrong foot. It goes for an entertaining time living in Endless Crescent—and
there’s
a name! You don’t seem all that unusual to me, to be honest. Nice guy. Something about your eyes, though . . .”
    â€œI’m sorry if you don’t like the way I look at you,” he said, not really meaning it.
    â€œNo, not that, not at all. I mean, there’s something powerful in there, deep, and deep down.” She leaned across the table, knocking over her cup but ignoring the rush of coffee into her lap. She moved so close to Cain that he could smell her, strangely muted traces of coffee and the tang of something more elusive. “It’s as if you know so much more,” she whispered, and for the first time Cain thought he was hearing her true voice.
    â€œI read a lot of books,” he said.
    Magenta snorted, sat back down, wiped at the spilled coffee. “Right, that’ll be it, then.”
    They fell silent for a couple of minutes, Cain picking at his cake, Magenta scratching at the remnants of makeup and smiling at him. “Not much of a conversationalist, are you?”
    â€œI haven’t had much experience of it,” he said.
    â€œWas it so bad, the place you came from?”
    Cain wondered which place she could mean—his father’s house of torture and deprivation, or the Afresh home with the Voice and the Face doing their best to make him better—but then he realized that she knew neither.
    â€œOnly as bad as my memories make it,” he said.
    â€œOh, very profound.”
    â€œMemory’s changeable, don’t you think? You ever had a dream that you thought was a memory, or a memory that may have been a dream?”
    Magenta stopped picking makeup from the corner of her eye and nodded. “Oh yes.”
    â€œWhat’s happened to me is like that.”
    â€œAnd what
did
happen to you?”
    â€œYou’re very forthright,” he said. She smiled, but did not withdraw her question. “Well, I’ve told you as much as I want to,” Cain said. “As much as I’ve told anyone since . . . Well. And here we are, only just met.”
    â€œI’m glad you’re living in Flat Five!” Magenta said, and she sat back and picked at her cake, embarrassed.
    â€œSo when is your next impersonation