Slough House by Mick Herron

Author:Mick Herron [Herron, Mick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529378672
Google: AqadDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2021-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

8

AT THE MEETINGS SHE attended less often than she should – My name is Catherine, and I’m an alcoholic – they suggested that you let go; not fret over things you couldn’t control. This was for the avoidance of guilt. One of the side effects of addiction, or recovering therefrom, was that you felt you had let the world down, as if you’d nodded off at a critical moment and allowed things to slide. And given the parlous state of that world, and the moral bankrupts governing it, it would be hard not to let the guilt become overwhelming. She knew all this. It was a series of small steps heading in the wrong direction: best to stick to the twelve recommended at those meetings. Make amends to those we have harmed, for instance.

Kay White was on her mind.

It was a peculiarity of Slough House that its occupants tended to know where everyone was. If some organisations had Chinese walls, to prevent confidential information spreading, Slough House’s walls were Swiss, inasmuch as they were full of holes; both literally – occupants had been known to punch the plaster – and in the sense that there was always leakage. The anguish of the floorboards and the creaking of the stairs told you who was where: it was an aural panopticon, wired for sound. And yet, it was easy to forget about each other. The separate miseries that slow horses came wrapped in, and the ongoing drudgery that was their daily grind, meant that much of the time they were on their own. Some more so than others. Kay White, for example. Nobody had liked her. She never shut up, for a start. So it felt no huge surprise when she’d betrayed them, and no huge loss when she’d been sacked. And what it felt like now she was dead, thought Catherine, was just more of the same: the woman had left no mark here, nothing to grieve over, and where there was no grief there was often guilt.

To assuage which, Catherine Standish was making mental amends. The working day was done but she remained at her desk, hands clasped on her lap, eyes closed. It might have looked like prayer, but was simply the summoning of memory: she was trying to find a moment she’d shared with Kay White, something that stood out against the background noise. But there was nothing of substance. Most moments spent with Kay had been an attempt to block her out. When she’d departed, along with – the name escaped her – it had been a relief. And that wasn’t a matter of blame, Catherine told herself. It was just life, which was full of passing strangers, even if some of them hung around for years.

… Struan Loy. That was the name. Loy had been here at the same time as Kay, and Lamb had kicked the pair of them out together.

And Struan Loy too had joined that chorus invisible; those who’d drifted from the margins of memory.

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