The Bone Clocks

Olly Quinn passes the window, just three feet and a pane of glass away, accompanied by a cheerful-looking man in a sheepskin jacket. Camp-Psycho-German’s right hand, I presume. Quinn looks pale and sick. The duo march past the phone box where our Olly had his Ness-based meltdown only yesterday and into Swissbank’s automated lobby where the cashpoints live. Here Quinn makes three withdrawals with three different cards, before being frog-marched back. I hide behind a conveniently to-hand newspaper. A Normal would feel guilt or vindication; I feel as if I just watched a middle-of-the-road episode of Inspector Morse.

“Morning, Poshboy,” says Holly, holding a hot chocolate. She’s beautiful. She’s utterly herself. She’s got a red beret. She’s perceptive. “So, what sort of trouble are you in?”

I don’t know why I deny it. “Everything’s fine.”

“Can I sit down, or are you expecting company?”

“Yes. No. Please. Sit down. No company.”

She removes her ski jacket, the mint-green one, sits opposite me, places her red beret on the table, unwinds her cream scarf from her neck, rolls it up into a ball, and places it on her beret.

“I just went to the bar,” I admit, “but figured you were skiing.”

“The slopes are shut. Because of the blizzard.”

I glance outside again. “What blizzard?”

“You really should listen to the local radio.”

“There’s only so much ‘One Night in Bangkok’ a man can take.”

She stirs her hot chocolate. “You ought to be getting back—the forecast’s for whiteout conditions, within the hour. You can’t see three yards in a whiteout. It’s like being blinded.” She eats a spoonful of froth and waits for me to confess what sort of trouble I’m in.

“I just checked out of the Hotel Chetwynd-Pitt.”

“I’d check in again, if I were you. Really.”

I do a downed-plane hum. “Problematic.”

“Unhappy families in the House of Rufus Sexist-Git?”

I lean forward. “Their hot totties from Club Walpurgis turned out to be prostitutes. Their pimps are extracting every last centime they can scare out of them as we speak. I exited via an escape hatch.”

Holly shows no surprise at this common ski-resort tale. “So what’s your plan?”

I look into her serious eyes. A dum-dum bullet of happiness tears through my innards. “I don’t know.”

She sips her hot chocolate and I wish I was it. “You don’t look as worried as I would be, if I was in your shoes.”

I sip my own coffee. A pan hisses in the bakery kitchen. “I can’t explain it. It’s … impending metamorphosis.” I can see she doesn’t understand, and I don’t blame her. “Do you ever … know stuff, Holly? Stuff that you cannot possibly know, yet … Or—or lose hours. Not as in, ‘Wow, time flies,’ but as in,” I click my fingers, “there, an hour’s gone. Literally, between one heartbeat and the next. Well, maybe the time thing’s a red herring, but I knowmy life’s changing. Metamorphosis. That’s the best word I’ve got. You’re doing a good job of not looking freaked, but I must sound utterly, utterly, utterly bonkers.”

“Three too many utterlies. I work in a bar, remember.”

I fight a strong urge to lean over and kiss her. She’d slap me away. I feed my coffee a sugar lump. Then she asks, “Where do you plan to stay during your ‘metamorphosis’?”

I shrug. “ It’shappening to me. Not me to it.”

“Which sounds cool, but it hardly answers my question. The buses out aren’t running and the hotels are full.”

“Like I said, it’s a very poorly timed blizzard.”

“There’s other stuff you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

“Oh, tons of stuff. Stuff I’ll never tell anyone, probably.”

Holly looks away, making a decision …