Being Light 2011 Read Online Free PDF Page A

plunging neckline edged in seed pearls exposing the cleft of her bosom. Two Dalmatians stand very still against her glimmering skirt while the photographs are taken. There are so many bracelets on her arm that after careful study of the contact sheets the next day, the photographer will fancy he can still hear them chiming.

    Roy would come back home, if he could. It is the one unarguable fact in Sheila Travers’s life. Why would he not come back? She has an unshakeable faith in Roy ’s compulsion to find his way home, as if he were a spawning salmon and south London a sparkling stream. She is alone in this; even her own family are beginning to doubt she will see her husband again soon.
    ‘Sheila, maybe Roy has lost his memory? Or perhaps,’ Sheila’s sister faces the inevitable on her behalf, ‘perhaps he’s not alive.’
    ‘I’m sure he’s alive.’
    Given that Roy ’s will to come back is a constant, everything else Sheila has ever believed is negotiable. Sitting in her finery in the upper circle of the Palace Theatre with her sister, trying to take her mind off Roy’s disappearance, Sheila receives a message about him.
    ‘Do you mean someone passed you a note?’ Sheila’s sister is bewildered when Sheila tries to explain as they sip their pre-ordered interval drinks. ‘I saw nothing.’
    ‘It wasn’t a note. It was a message that went directly into my head.’
    ‘The voice of God?’ Sheila’s sister’s lips are drawn very tightly over her teeth and her eyes are small. She disapproves of religious experiences very strongly indeed.
    ‘Oh, it wasn’t the voice of God. I’ve always expected that to be like an announcement over a tannoy system, very loud and slightly distorted. It was more like telepathy. I didn’t hear words, even. I just reached an understanding.’
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘He’s been abducted. He can’t come back because he isn’t free. Someone has taken him.’
    Tickets for West Ends shows are expensive. Sheila’s sister bought them as a treat to try and cheer her up. The two women sit through the rest of the play. Sheila’s sister is furious because Sheila distracts her, sitting and fiddling with her earrings as if tuning them in to some Mayday frequency from outer space. ‘Come in, Lieutenant Uhuru,’ she says when she recounts the story to her husband that night, mimicking Sheila to make him laugh and relieve some of the tension she’s feeling.
    Back at her flat with a cup of tea, Sheila wonders whether there was something special that allowed the message to get through. Were her earrings acting as some sort of aerial?

Chapter Six ~ Sylvia

    Sylvia Arrow is humming It’s raining men as she kneads the day’s supply of bread. Sylvia was a high wire artiste in her youth, but her hips and thighs broadened as she reached her twenties. She has the kind of body that will always be strong and flexible but she became too heavy to perform professionally. Sylvia remained with the circus for a while, the only life she knew, grounded but content, knitting spangly bikini costumes for the other girls using very fine gauge needles.
    When she grew tired of the performers teasing her about her doughy limbs and pinching her arms and legs to make red dots in the white flesh, Sylvia ran away from the circus. She left behind the only person she’d ever loved, a boy whose superficial resemblance to herself meant Sylvia treated him like a brother, whispering him stories from where she sat knitting in her deckchair as he rested between performances as an acrobat in the big top.
    For five years Sylvia worked as a croupier, salting away the pay and dreaming about the circus. For five more years, Sylvia trained animals, working for the undisputed expert in the field, Venetia Latimer. Then she ran away from that life too. Sylvia’s name is a reminder of the very early days; she chose it for herself when she went into show business. As she flew in the air, spinning above people in the big top,