Every Smile You Fake by Dorothy Koomson

Author:Dorothy Koomson [Koomson, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

8 June, Central London

‘What part of I never want to see you again, didn’t you understand?’ Dennis hisses to me. We are alone. Properly alone. I could make a quip about the fact we are down a passage to a mews property in central London and we may as well have signs on ourselves saying ‘SPY’ and ‘FORMER SPY’, but I don’t. He is too angry to appreciate it.

Up close, Dennis looks tired, exhausted, defeated. His lines are like craters, his skin mottled, his eyes dulled and sunken. I would think it was guilt that had done this if I didn’t know him. Guilt doesn’t penetrate someone like him.

‘PICK IT UP!’ Dennis’s voice and words suddenly echo through my head. Being this close to him has unhooked that memory, that time. I underestimated the impact proximity could have.

‘It’s good to see you, too, Dennis,’ I reply.

‘I told you to stay away from me. From all of this.’

‘You’re sounding quite hurtful there, Dennis. I’m sure you don’t mean to. Anyone who didn’t know you better would think you didn’t want to see me.’

‘This wasn’t the agreement.’

‘I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important,’ I say, hating myself for the tremor cracking my voice now I know he won’t be mollified. Now I realise he can make me feel twenty-six again. Twenty-six and naïve. And oh so very stupid.

My voice tremor makes him bold enough to get right in my face. ‘Nothing is important,’ he hisses. ‘Nothing.’ He steps back a fraction so he can jab his finger at me. ‘You were set up for life. You could do whatever you wanted on condition you would stay away.’

‘Pick that up,’ 1999 Dennis shouts in my head. ‘What about Brian? Was he set up for life, too?’ I reply.

Suddenly Dennis doesn’t want to be near me. Suddenly he is stepping away and his anger and indignation fail him.

‘It is important,’ I say with a stronger voice and renewed courage. ‘It’s vital. And I’m not going away until you agree to help me.’

November, 2000

Maisie and I entered T.H.I.U. office to find Brian standing at his desk, cardboard box in front of him, two security guards on either side of him. He was loading the items from his desk into the box, making sure to place everything just so inside it. A place for everything and everything in its place.

‘Brian, what’s going on?’ Maisie asked even though it was pretty obvious what was going on. Dennis sat in his glass-walled office, pretending to type but obviously watching our interaction so he could gather another piece of the puzzles that were Maisie, Kez and Brian. So he could work out how to successfully play us, control us, break us probably. Just like he’d broken Brian.

‘I’ve been sacked,’ he said, shifting stuff in the box so his pot plant, a cheese plant I bought him, would fit. ‘Sorry, what was it they called it, “giving me the opportunity to pursue other interests”.’ He gave something that was a cross between a smirk and a snarl, his disgust evident.

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