The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel Faber Read Free Book Online Page B

teenagers everywhere, you know, even in Bosnia, even during wars.’
    â€˜And your boyfriend?’
    â€˜What about my boyfriend?’
    â€˜Was he … injured?’
    â€˜He was killed—’
    â€˜â€”I’m so sorry—’
    â€˜â€”four weeks later, by sniper fire. He’d already dumped me by then. Said he just couldn’t see it working out, him and a disabled person. He’d have to devote his whole life to taking care of me, he thought.’
    Mack grimaced, tarred with the guilt of a fellow male he’d never even met.
    â€˜You’ve done brilliantly, though,’ he said.
    â€˜Thank you.’
    â€˜No one would know.’
    â€˜Not unless they tried to make me run up a hundred and ninety-nine steps, no.’
    â€˜I’m really sorry.’
    Siân patted Hadrian’s head. It was as far as she was willing to go towards letting the dog’s master off the hook. Let him sweat , she thought. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Every muscle on his torso seemed already to be defined with the stuff.
    â€˜Speaking of contrition …’ she said. ‘Your message in a bottle … your confession …’
    â€˜Yes?’ He seized the change of subject gratefully, his head cocked in deference.
    â€˜The job is trickier than I thought. You’re going to have to decide what’s more important to you, Mack: knowing what that document says, or keeping it the way you like it. The shape of it, I mean. If I succeed in peeling those pages apart, I’ll be doing well. I can’t give them back to you in the form of a nice tight scroll inside a bottle.’
    â€˜So what are you suggesting?’
    â€˜I’m not suggesting anything,’ she said, manoeuvring him gently towards where she wanted him. ‘It’s your heirloom, Mack. I can glue the bottle shut again, return it to you tomorrow.’
    She turned away to acknowledge Michael coming up the steps, greeting the poor little duffer with a cheery wave. Michael nodded back, squinting, almost tripping over his own feet in his attempt not to intrude. She could tell that in his myopic eyes, she and Mack were the enigma of romance, stumbled upon, unearthed, only to be handed over to experts for analysis. Sweet, shy little man – how she despised him …
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Mack was saying. ‘There’s something magic about it, just the way it is …’
    â€˜Well, there is one thing we could do,’ she said, figuring she’d softened him up enough. ‘I could make you a new scroll out of papier mâché, and stick a facsimile of the outermost page on the outside. I know how to make things like that look old and authentic. The original papers could be mounted on board, preserved properly, and you could have a replica that’d look pretty close to what your dad found.’
    He laughed.
    â€˜More historical fakery, eh?’
    She looked him square in the eyes.
    â€˜Do you want to know what the confession says or not?’
    He pondered for no longer than three seconds. ‘I do,’ he conceded.
    That afternoon, Siân and her colleagues at the dig said goodbye to Keira and Trevor, who were decamping to the Middle East. In their place, the ‘very nice people’ from north Wales had already settled in – another married couple who’d been together forever. They wore matching jumpers and identical shoes. They whispered to each other as they worked, and kissed each other on the shoulder or on the side of the head. Siân knew very well they were adorable, but disliked them with an irrational passion. They smelled so strongly of happiness that even on the exposed headland of Whitby’s East Cliff, the odour was overpowering.
    I want, I want, I want.
    At three-thirty, the heavens opened and the site supervisor declared the day’s digging at an end. Thirteen of the fourteen archaeologists hurriedly dispersed into