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silence—and the crazy idea that seconds before he had entered the front door there had been TVs blaring, laughter, doors slamming as people moved from one flat to another, mixing and mingling and being involved in one another’s lives. And yet he also remembered a story he had read once, inwhich everyone in a block of flats was so reclusive that they ignored a brutal murder in their own courtyard. For them, everything was somebody else’s problem.
    The lobby was still. If this was the heart of the house, his entering had caused it to miss a beat.
    He started upstairs, and halfway to the first-floor landing he paused as something annoyed his ear. Shaking his head, scratching with his finger, swallowing hard, none of these cleared the sensation. It was as if a fly had flown in and was hovering against his eardrum. He moved on, and two stairs later realized that he was hearing music.
    Cain paused. The sound came from so far away that it must surely be outside the house, beyond the street, aimless. He held his breath, expecting the music to recede as a car moved away, but it was still there. He moved up to the landing, stood outside Flat Four, and knew that the music was coming from inside. He could almost see the timber in the door shimmering and shifting as it transmitted the sound, becoming fluid under such relaxing notes. It was pan pipe music, the type the Face would play at Afresh to calm someone gone wild. The music of the elements; soulful, soothing, evocative. There was no particular tune, no identifiable melody, but it held an allure that bade Cain stay and listen. He remained on the landing with his Indian meal cooling in the bag, bottle of wine in his other hand, dusky sun shining through the landing window and lighting dust motes dancing to the music. The pipes continued. Cain began to think about energy and how it formed, the subtlevibration of the universe all around him, how matter did not matter, and that was not his way of thinking at all.
    The music stopped. He shook his head again, this time trying to recapture the tickling against his eardrums. There was a thump from inside Flat Four—a door slamming, perhaps—and then total silence once more.
    Cain walked up to his flat, glancing at the scored door next to his before entering. That was a heavy door, and those were deep scratches. He would ask Peter about them tomorrow. There was much that Peter had yet to reveal. But time was on Cain’s side—time was
his
now—and with freedom the likes of which he had never known beckoning, there was no reason to rush things at all.
    Occasionally, when Cain knew things he should not, he tried to attribute it to nothing more than observation. Anything else was too frightening. He had read a lot since his father’s death, fiction and nonfiction, and sometimes he could close his eyes and read people like an open book.

 
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Chapter Two
Silence
    His father has not allowed him to talk for over a week.
    The room is utterly silent. The door remains closed, apart from when his father comes in with a meal or to remove the toilet bucket. Then the lights flicker on and off as a signal for Cain to wear his earplugs. They are the same set he has been using for a week, and they are filthy, smelly, greasy. But he cannot open his mouth to tell his father about them, because if he does there will be trouble. Before putting him in the room his father warned him of this, and though the “trouble” was unspecified, Cain knows what it will be. He has experienced such trouble before.
    He looks down at himself and is surprised to see that he is a small boy. His mind has aged, expanded by his years of reading at Afresh, used to dwelling on the cruelties of time and contemplating what his life may become. But the body here now is small,unformed, weak. The arms are thin. The legs are scrawny. It looks as though he has not exercised in months. He raises his hand and stares at it for a long time.