The Transition

A single petal fell from the cherry tree now and landed at his feet.

‘I don’t know that we’re any worse than the rest,’ said Karl. ‘Maybe they liked my face.’

‘Your face,’ said Genevieve.

‘I have a very symmetrical face.’

‘Are you two just going to stand there?’ Janna leaned out of the first-floor window. ‘The door’s open – Stu’s made drinks.’

‘Stuart,’ said Genevieve.

‘Stu,’ said Stu.

They were sitting in the first-floor living room with gin and tonics. The upper branches of the cherry tree touched the windowpanes. It was beautiful.

‘Stu. Are you and Janna in charge of The Transition?’

‘Oh no, no, no,’ said Stu.

‘Ha!’ said Janna.

‘We’re lieutenants, at most,’ said Stu. ‘Department heads. All of the mentors have a managerial role within the institution – keeps things democratic. We take turns doing the talks. I just like the sound of my own voice, so …’ he shrugged.

‘So is there, like, a CEO?’ said Genevieve. ‘Who’s in charge?’

‘There’s a committee,’ said Stu. ‘If you mean who thought up the whole concept it came out of a think tank called Bury the Lead. That was twelve years ago. It started very small. There’s a chapter in the book about it. It’s on your tablet.’

‘I’ll read it,’ said Genevieve.

‘It’s an interesting history,’ said Stu. ‘Not without a few skeletons in the closet, but we’re in a good place now. We’ve managed to avoid attention, thanks to the whole confidentiality thing – we don’t allow our graduates to acknowledge the scheme in interviews. Why should they? You earned it – The Transition is just a leg-up. Most of them end up successful enough to be interviewed, which is the important thing. Generally they’re only too happy to move on – they’ve earned their right to a fulfilling life, we just gave them the means to start the journey. All we ask is you keep in touch, maybe come back to talk to a future year group.’ He got up. ‘Come on, you must want to see your quarters.’

Karl and Genevieve’s attic was not completely self-contained – cohabitation was stipulated in The Transition’s terms and conditions – but Stu had installed a small but luxurious bathroom with grey granite fittings. The shower head was the size of a frying pan.

‘Ooh, it’s like a hotel!’ said Genevieve. She tried the taps. The bevel was gentle and heavy like a volume knob and the water poured out with calm insistence.

They weren’t labelled.

‘Are you just supposed to know which is hot and which is cold?’ said Karl. ‘I can’t live like this. I have no memory for things like that.’

The rest of the attic had been divided into three rooms, one with a double bed and a small flat-screen TV on top of a chest of drawers; one with a sofa, a side table with a bowl of oranges and a print of Klimt’s Forest framed on the wall; and the last was a study with an old school desk and a new office chair, based on the audience seats in The Transition’s mezzanine. A little bookshelf had already been stocked with Karl and Genevieve’s library of twentieth-century fiction and poetry, the only possession The Transition’s removal service had had to contend with. A tall, bronze anglepoise lamp lurked in the corner like a prop from a steampunk movie. Next to it a blue Wi-Fi router blinked fitfully.

‘This is actually really thoughtful,’ said Karl, propping the second cardboard box of clothes on top of the first.

‘No more damp,’ said Genevieve. ‘I’ll have my fur coats taken out of storage.’

Each room had a Velux window and the view from the bedroom was of a tree-lined green with a wrought-iron fence and a locked gate. The four tall houses overlooked six parallel streets of Victorian terraces, the ornate and defunct public baths, a cordoned-off area of scrubland promised years ago to a major supermarket, and a hill with a busy road that wove down to the valley. Standing behind Genevieve, Karl put his hands on her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder.

‘We’ll manage, won’t we?’

He started working her skirt up and she pulled it down again.

‘I think so.’

By the end of the scheme, as long as they carefully followed the financial regimen, the young couple should have saved enough for a five per cent mortgage deposit on one of the new-build estates that sponsored the pilot scheme, as well as having developed the skills and responsibilities necessary to meet repayments. He kissed her neck.

‘You don’t even notice the Mohican after a while,’ said Genevieve.

They lay on their new bed, a firm mattress that yielded just enough to make you feel like you were lying in mid-air when you closed your eyes. The bed in their flat had felt like a giant bag of spoons and Karl was accustomed to arranging his internal organs around them when he slept. He lay on his back, speechless, while Genevieve took her square tablet out of her rucksack. She started to read the History.

‘“Everything was temporary,”’ she read. ‘“Because they could be moved on at any time, nobody felt like a stakeholder in their community, so the very idea of community had started to erode. Once, we gathered round the piano in the pub or the town hall to sing songs together in harmony; now we sang at one another in cold-lit karaoke bars, a lonely imitation of the fame we felt was our only possible escape.” That’s by Hannah Eldridge – she was part of the think tank ten years ago.’

She stopped reading out loud and Karl closed his eyes. Both of them were drifting into sleep when they heard Janna at the foot of the stairs.

‘Um … guys? Food’s ready.’

Dinner was roast squash, pumpkin seeds and rocket leaves with fresh bread and yoghurt. Stu explained that they weren’t vegetarian, but that they only ate meat twice a week. Janna opened a bottle of Rioja.

‘He only ever buys wine wrapped in a wire cage,’ she said. ‘He thinks that’s how you tell if it’s good. Look, we’ll talk through some basic rotas and stuff tomorrow, but tonight let’s just have a drink. We’re very happy to have you here. Cheers.’

‘THEY SEEM REALLY LOVELY,’ said Genevieve. ‘I think we’re very lucky.’

They were drunk on red wine, lying in each other’s arms.

‘I think we’re going to be okay,’ said Karl. ‘This could actually be the best thing that’s ever happened to us.’

Very suddenly, Genevieve started snoring.

Karl slept lightly and woke up at what his tablet told him was 4:26. He could hear a faint, uneven squeaking noise. It sounded like a pulley being operated.

‘You awake? You hear that?’

‘I’ve been listening to it,’ Genevieve whispered. ‘It’s crying.’

‘What? No, I mean the squeaking noise.’

‘What do you think I mean?’

‘It isn’t crying.’

‘It’s coming from the next attic. Someone in the attic next door is weeping.’

Spooked, Karl turned on the green glass library lamp on his bedside table.

‘It’s a creaking sound.’

‘It’s crying.’

‘It’s pipes or something.’

‘Someone,’ said Genevieve, ‘is crying.’

‘Let me get close – OW! Motherfucker!’ said Karl, falling back onto the bed, holding his foot. ‘What is that?’

‘Poor thing,’ said Genevieve. ‘You’ve stubbed your toe.’

‘I think they’re broken,’ said Karl. ‘All of them. Who installs a fucking metal buttress in the middle of their floor?’ He went down on his hands and knees and inspected the silver girder he’d dashed his foot against. Difficult to miss, now that he saw it. When his toes felt better he tried to get his ear flat to the low wall, but whatever the noise was, it had stopped.

7

‘OH, HEY, LOOK at this. Look. How did you sleep? It’s telling me precisely how I slept. These are the points where I was dreaming. This is where it brought me out of a dream that seemed to be upsetting me. I’m not sure how it does that. Did you have any bad dreams? Karl? Karl?’

Karl woke up. He was not hungover. There was no crust in his eyes. Genevieve was sitting up playing with her tablet. The smells of fresh coffee and bacon drifted up to the attic.

‘I’m a “full disclosure” kind of guy,’ said Stu. He poured them both a cup of coffee from the stove pot and pushed a jug of steamed milk towards them. They were sitting at the black granite breakfast bar. ‘Anything we do that pisses you off, you tell us, okay? Everything out in the open. Even if it seems really petty. If I come back from kiteboarding and trail wet sand through the house—’

‘Which he does every bloody week, so good luck with that,’ said Janna.

‘I want you to tell me. If Janna intimidates you with her coarse language and aggressive personality, I want to know about it. Don’t let it bottle up and explode.’

‘We’ll do the same,’ said Janna. ‘There’s nothing more poisonous than pretending everything’s fine when it’s not. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Karl.

‘You’re being so lovely,’ said Genevieve, stirring her coffee. ‘You don’t need to be so lovely.’

‘Genevieve, the loyalty you’ve shown in joining your husband on The Transition; and Karl, the guilt you’ll be feeling about that … we understand this is a strange situation for you both. I promise you, it’ll be over before you know it, you’ll have a permanent residence and you’ll be doing the job you always dreamed of. How do you want your eggs? Poached?’

‘Poached is great.’

‘Right answer.’

‘This is how we start,’ said Janna. ‘Tomorrow is Monday and you go back to work as normal. We share every duty – we have a rota – it’s on your tablets so you’ll be reminded when it’s your turn to cook or clean up. You don’t have to pay anything – that’s part of it. Not just rent, but bills, food, travel to work – we’ll have a Transition car drop you off and pick you up. It’s all covered.’

‘See it as a complete break from ordinary life – a total anaesthetic while the operation takes place.’

‘Ick,’ said Janna. ‘But you don’t have any money either. So it’s a kind of economic house arrest for the first couple of months. We know that’s … patronising.’

As per the contract, Karl and Genevieve’s wages were paid straight into The Transition’s holding account. Half of Karl’s income went towards paying off his outstanding debts and fines. The rest accumulated and would eventually become their down payment.

‘But in losing your economic freedom you’ll gain something you didn’t even know you were missing: time.’

‘The language you’ve always wanted to learn, the weight you wanted to bench-press. All the things you’ve been putting off,’ said Janna.

‘I always wanted to learn Italian!’ said Genevieve. ‘Or Spanish, or maybe French!’

‘Pick one,’ said Janna. ‘You’re learning Italian.’

‘Molto bene!’ said Genevieve.

‘I don’t actually know what a bench press is,’ said Karl.

‘You’ll be surprised how quickly you take to it,’ said Stu. ‘And you’ll be surprised how quickly it makes a difference. To everything.’

Karl looked at Stuart’s thick and gladiatorial torso. He seemed like a different species, or at least a fantasy – what Karl imagined a man to be when he was growing up.

‘I have been thinking about getting in shape,’ he conceded.

‘But the first thing we want to talk about,’ said Stu, ‘and this may surprise you, is actually that lesion on your face, Karl.’

‘It’s an ingrown hair,’ said Karl.

‘Is that what it is?’ said Stu.

‘Whatever it is,’ said Janna, ‘it’s clear that you’re not leaving it alone to heal.’

‘I don’t even realise I’m doing it,’ said Karl, scratching his cheek to illustrate.

‘I’ve tried to get him to stop,’ said Genevieve. ‘For, like, a year.’

Karl felt his face flushing.

‘Mindfulness,’ said Stu. ‘You may wonder why we’re focusing on something so small, especially in the first lesson, but think about your face, Karl. Think about the face in general. It’s the first thing people see, before they even start talking to you.’

‘We believe that that mark on your face is a microcosm,’ said Janna, ‘of everything else you’re doing wrong with your life.’

‘Wow,’ said Karl.

‘Oh, do me,’ said Genevieve. ‘What do my split ends mean?’

This particular ingrown hair had followed the plot of a never-ending police procedural, with Karl the brilliant but obsessive detective on the trail of an ingrown-hair-stroke-serial-killer who might or might not even really exist; digging and gouging the same spot on his cheek night after night; thinking he once caught a glimpse of it, long ago; taking the drastic and controversial decision to stop shaving altogether for a fortnight; insisting that it was there, finding nothing, alienating his co-workers; letting it scab over, then going at it again too soon.

– I’m calling in the tweezers.

– Every time you call in the tweezers without a warrant you set our department back five years of good practice.

– I want the tweezers goddammit.

– Take some time off. See your family.

‘Karl?’ Genevieve called.

‘Yep?’

‘I hope you’re not fiddling with your face again.’

Karl’s hand shook as he turned off the shaving light.

‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I think it’s maybe just a spot after all.’

8

ON MONDAY KARL woke up to find that Genevieve, Stu and Janna had already left for work. It was half past nine. His tablet displayed a chart of his time spent in REM sleep. There was also a text message from Keston. Stu had showed them how to re-route everything through the tablet. Karl had already bagged up their mobile phones to send to a mail purchasing service, which ought to make them a couple of hundred pounds in emergency funds.

– How’s the prisoner?

Karl thought about it, stretched, put a jumper on over his Garfield T-shirt and replied.

– This is a joke, right? I’m a petty criminal and I’m being treated like a long-lost son.

Keston replied while Karl was buttoning the fly of his jeans.

– Safety nets, broseph.

While the prosecution had moved for Karl being banned from the internet altogether, his livelihood still depended on fake consumer reviews and essays and his lawyer had been able to prove this was a basic human right. On his first day working alone in the house Karl stayed within his quarters, writing five-star reviews of a new orthopaedic desk chair for eleven different office-product sites. ‘It goes way beyond health-neutral!’ he wrote. ‘This chair should be prescribed before you even know you have a back complaint.’ After 3,500 words of copy he felt bored. This wasn’t his internet connection, and he was on best behaviour. That he had used it so far solely to check his emails and search for information on the human spine was an act of discipline in which he took an almost ascetic pride. Perhaps this was The Transition working subtly in him already. He went to the little oak bookshelf he and Genevieve had shared since they were students.

He took out his copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince, opened it in the middle, flicked through it from the beginning and dropped it. He frowned. He took out Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and did the same thing, dropping it on top of The Prince. This was perturbing to Karl because he kept a Polaroid photograph of Genevieve sleeping naked in his copy of The Prince; formerly he’d kept it in Leaves of Grass until they heard a radio documentary about Leaves of Grass and Genevieve said she’d like to read it. She hadn’t shown much interest in any form of intimacy over the previous months, which he supposed was probably understandable, but it was getting to the point where she got dressed and undressed hurriedly, irritably, as if on the beach, and the Polaroid had become an increasingly treasured possession. He started going through each of the paperbacks in turn. When he got to the first book on the second shelf, Hartley’s The Go-Between, a MasterCard with the name MRS GENEVIEVE TEMPERLEY landed face up on the carpet. Genevieve had apparently judged The Go-Between the novel least likely to appeal to Karl or to Janna or Stu in the event of a spot check. Well, whatever. He felt happy that she had a secret. What was she going to use it for? A work do? Clothes? It was harmless.

What if she decided she’d had enough and got on a train? What if she skipped town? What if she caught the train to the airport? What if she skipped town, fled the country and didn’t take her medication? God, he loved her. He wanted to look at the photo.

He searched every book on the shelf, but it wasn’t there. Maybe Genevieve had found it. Had found it ages ago, hated him for it. Maybe it was a fairly innocuous thing to have by most people’s standards, but the fact remained he had taken the photo, four years ago, while Genevieve was asleep, two T-shirts wrapped around the camera to muffle the sound of the shutter, and some of the frisson of looking at the photo came from her unawareness of its existence. A betrayal. A seedy little voyeuristic betrayal. Is that why … No. He had last ogled the photo when they were packing a few days ago, while he was loading the books into a cardboard box, while Genevieve was out of the room. He distinctly remembered slipping it back into The Prince. Fucking hell.

Karl put Genevieve’s credit card back in The Go-Between, decided to say nothing and sadly went back to reviewing the chair. He took breaks in the kitchen to make tea or coffee and eat chocolate digestives, which he consumed at the rate of a hyperactive child. For lunch he boiled an egg and baked a tomato and garlic flatbread he found in the fridge. It was a Smart Fridge. He had read about them, reviewed a couple of models. The back of the fridge was a locked metal door which opened directly onto the backstreet and it got replenished every four days by an automated delivery service. You didn’t even need to order anything unless you wanted something special.

After overeating he went straight back to his work.

THIS RESPECT FOR Janna and Stu’s privacy lasted until that afternoon, when Karl made a reconnaissance of the ground floor. The dining room had feature wallpaper depicting a storybook woodland. Karl cracked a walnut by throwing it against the tiled floor. In the living room two unblemished white sofas sat in an L shape. A vast flat-screen TV faced a large abstract painting on the opposite wall. It was grey, black and white; the paint looked like it had been slathered on with a trowel and could have been taken for a DIY process abandoned part way through. Karl didn’t like it, but he liked that Janna and Stu liked it. He liked that there were things in the world people loved which he didn’t understand.

When he turned he noticed a low emanation of yellow light between the black-painted floorboards by the living-room door. Some kind of underfloor lighting? The light vanished, and Karl imagined the click of a switch, although he heard nothing. Then the light appeared again, for a moment – as if someone had forgotten something and returned temporarily to retrieve it – then off again. Karl lay down and tried to look between the floorboards, but the gap was too narrow. ‘Hello?’ he said. He got up, brushed the dust off his face and stamped on the floor. It sounded hollow, but this meant nothing – the usual cavity under the floorboards. What he had seen, presumably, was the glow of a light fitting mounted in a ceiling beneath the ground floor. He walked to the hallway and stamped on the red tiles, which felt solid. He unlocked the front door and walked into the street. The front garden had a cherry tree and pale Hepworth-like stone. There was no indication that there might be a cellar. He tried the door of the understairs cupboard. It was locked. It had a big Chubb keyhole, which was a bit much for a cupboard. He looked in the little wooden key house by the front door and it didn’t contain any likely keys, which only cemented his notion. Something else was wrong, something askew, but it took him a while to identify it.

‘There are no books,’ he said to Genevieve, that night. ‘Unless you count the Blu-ray manual.’

Genevieve shrugged.

‘They’re not readers,’ she said. ‘Don’t be a snob.’

The next day he decided to explore the first floor. He let himself fall backwards onto Janna and Stu’s king-size bed. It felt pliant and firm, like lying in plasticine, but then it moulded to his form. He looked upwards at the black metal chandelier – a silhouette. In the corner there was what looked like a trapeze – a chrome bar hanging from a ceiling reinforcement on two wires. Behind it a framed print, white on red in large block capitals:

GET

THINGS

DONE

From their bedroom window you could see the neighbours’ gardens. The one on the left was dominated by a trampoline, but its flower beds were very neat, with lines of bedding plants and a large fuchsia. Janna and Stu’s garden was a well-maintained vegetable allotment, all the way down to the garage. When did they have time to work on that? In contrast the garden to the right was completely overgrown with brambles, taller than the fence and thick as snakes; some fresh and livid green, some dead grey husks. There was a bald patch in the middle of the wasteland, and Karl was surprised to see a single, gnarled foot and the beginnings of a grey-haired shin gently kicking. He craned his neck, but this only revealed a little more of the shin. Crazy old man sunbathing in his bramble forest.

He felt a prickle on his hand and looked down to see a tiny brown spider crawling over it. Karl recalled hearing something about Lyme disease being transmitted by ticks which looked like small spiders, so he flicked it onto the windowsill and crushed it with a corner of his wallet. The spider curled up and was still twitching when he took the wallet up. You have to really finish the job, reduce it to something non-sentient, a paste of minerals. He used his thumb. Karl noticed a silver key propped up in the corner of the windowsill, a substantial little Chubb key. His brain lit up as if he had picked up the key in a computer game. It had to be for the locked cupboard. He grabbed it and ran down the stairs.

The door to the understairs cupboard chocked open when he turned the key and in the darkness Karl could make out a bracketed shelf holding a pot of screws and a torch. He picked up the torch and a square of card fluttered to the ground. He knelt. It was the photo of his wife, lying on her side, eyes closed, a half-smile, one arm folded under her breasts. It felt like someone had hit a mute button in his head.

He put the photo in his pocket and was about to turn on the torch when he heard the jangle of a bunch of keys being dropped on the front doorstep and Janna swearing. He just had time to close the cupboard, lock it and pocket the key before Janna’s key was in the front door. When she came through he was walking down the corridor and turned, as if surprised.

‘Oh, hi Karl,’ she said, brightly.

‘You’re back early,’ he said. ‘Tea?’

‘I work from home Tuesday afternoons. I’m fine, thanks,’ said Janna. ‘Is Genevieve at work?’

‘School, yep. Inter-tutor football tournament, actually.’

‘Oh, that’s fun.’ Janna sat down on the hallway chaise longue to take off her shoes. ‘Although I can’t really imagine Genevieve with a PE whistle.’

‘Ha. No.’ Karl had wandered back into the hallway with the full kettle. ‘I really like your chaise longue,’ he said.

‘Oh, thanks,’ said Janna. ‘I reupholstered it, actually. Evening class.’

‘Wow. That’s ace.’

Was ace something he said? Was it something anyone said? Was the general consensus that ace was an acceptable term of approbation?

‘Karl?’

‘Yes?’

‘Does your wife like me?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Karl passed the kettle from one hand to another. ‘Really. I mean we’ve only just met you, but she really likes you, yes.’

‘She said something odd to me yesterday.’