‘Tell me about your mother, Tom . . . the truth.’
Her eyes wouldn’t let me lie.
‘The reason they killed her is me.’
‘What?’
‘There is something most strange about me, Rose.’
‘What is it?’
‘I am not growing older.’
‘What?’
‘Look at me. Time passes, but not on my face. I am in love with you. I am. I truly am. And what use is that? I am like a boy trying to climb a tree but the branches keep getting higher and higher.’
She was so dumbfounded by what I was saying she could only utter, ‘I am not a tree.’
‘You will look fifty years old and I will still look like this. It is best you leave me. It is best I go. It is best I—’
And she kissed me, then, simply because she wanted me to stop talking.
And she could only half believe it. For days, she thought I was insane. But, as the weeks and months passed by, she realised it was true.
It was something she couldn’t comprehend, yet there it was. There it was.
My truth.
London, now
I have no idea if anything I have said to Anton has got through. I have only been alive for four hundred and thirty-nine years, which is of course nowhere near long enough to understand the minimal facial expressions of the average teenage boy.
So, it is pretty late, twenty past twelve, when I finally make it into the staff room for lunch break. I sit there inhaling the scent of instant coffee and processed ham. My headache is bad today. Also, I have tinnitus. I get that too, sometimes. Have had it on and off since the near-deafening artillery fire I heard in the Spanish Civil War.
I no longer go to the supermarket at lunch. Instead I make my own sandwich in the morning. But I’m not even hungry, so I just sit there, eyes closed.
When I open them I see Isham, the geography teacher, busy working out which sachet of herbal tea to put in his mug.
I also see Camille.
She is on the other side of the room and is peeling open her carton of salad. She has apple juice too, and a book, which she is using as a kind of makeshift little tray.
Daphne, taking a clementine from the communal fruit bowl, gives me a smile that might be a smirk. ‘How are you, Tom? How are things going?’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘I feel good.’
She nods, knowing it is a lie. ‘It will get better. The first ten years here are always the hardest.’ She laughs, and heads out of the staff room to her office.
I feel bad about Camille. I had been rude to her the last time we had spoken. I notice now that she is taking something out of her pocket. A pill. She swallows it down with the help of some apple juice.
I should just stay in my seat.
That is what Hendrich would want me to do. I mean, it is now – from an Albatross Society point of view – perfect. Camille will probably never speak to me again.
Yet, here I am, crossing the room.
‘I just want to say sorry,’ I tell her.
