Read Chapter 15: Margaret March

Theo’s mother lived in a terrace house in Walthamstow where nothing appeared to have been selected by an algorithm.

The hallway contained twelve framed family photographs, three umbrellas, a ceramic dog, and a radiator that clicked every forty seconds.

Margaret March opened the door before Theo knocked.

“So this is Eleanor.”

Eleanor had prepared for suspicion.

Margaret hugged her.

It was brief and firm.

“Come in. He has told me almost nothing useful.”

Theo sighed.

“Mum.”

“You said she works too much, walks too fast and reorganises cupboards.”

“All true,” Eleanor said.

Margaret smiled.

“Good. Tea?”

The tea lived beside the oven.

Eleanor did not comment.

They ate roast chicken at a table covered in small scratches accumulated over decades. Anna’s photograph stood on a shelf behind Theo: laughing, head turned away from the camera, one hand raised.

Margaret noticed Eleanor looking.

“She hated posed photographs.”

“She and Theo look alike.”

“Unfortunately.”

Theo looked wounded.

After dinner, Margaret asked him to find a box in the loft.

The moment he left, she turned to Eleanor.

“Are you frightened of him going?”

Eleanor nearly choked on tea.

“I see where Theo gets his conversational style.”

“He gets avoidance from his father. Directness is mine.”

“Yes. I’m frightened.”

“Good.”

Eleanor blinked.

Margaret folded her hands.

“Not good that you’re frightened. Good that you know.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.”

“Nothing clever.”

This family, Eleanor thought, had developed a coordinated attack on cleverness.

Margaret looked toward Anna’s photograph.

“She was clever. That was part of the trouble. She believed if she could understand what was happening, she could control what it meant.”

Eleanor remained still.

“The computer told her the relationship mattered,” Margaret said. “But that only worked because she already wanted suffering to mean something.”

“That wasn’t her fault.”

“No. But meaning can be dangerous when we use it to excuse pain.”

Eleanor thought about ninety-nine point eight four.

“Do you think I should ignore the score?”

Margaret laughed softly.

“My dear, I don’t care if a machine thinks you should marry my son or throw him into the Thames. I care whether you can tell the difference between being changed and being harmed.”

Theo returned carrying a cardboard box.

“What are you conspiring about?”

“You,” Margaret said.

“Obviously.”

The box contained Anna’s papers.

Letters. University notes. Old photographs. A printed copy of the Continuity Study consent form.

Margaret handed Theo a sealed envelope.

“She wrote this after St Pancras.”

Theo stared at it.

“You never showed me.”

“She asked me not to unless you became obsessed with fixing what happened.”

“Mum.”

“I judged the condition met years ago.”

He opened it.

The letter was short.

Theo read silently, then passed it to Eleanor.

Anna’s handwriting sloped downward across the page.

Theo,

If I don’t get better, please don’t turn me into your reason for hating everything that tried to help me. The system was wrong about us, but I was wrong too. I wanted certainty. I kept asking whether the relationship was important when I should have asked whether I was free.

Do something noisy with your life.

Anna.

Eleanor looked up.

Theo was crying without sound.

Margaret stood and put one hand on his shoulder.

For once, he did not turn grief into a joke.

Later, on the Overground back toward central London, Theo rested his head against the window.

“You knew she’d say something like that,” Eleanor said.

“No.”

“You acted like you did.”

“I have spent five years arguing with a dead woman. You start predicting the opposition.”

Eleanor took his hand.

“Do something noisy.”

He looked at her.

“I design silence.”

“Rebellious.”

Theo squeezed her fingers.

“I’m still going to Montreal.”

“I know.”

“I need you to stop hearing that as leaving you.”

She looked ahead at their reflections in the dark glass.

“I’m trying.”

“Don’t try to be good at it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Be sad. Be angry. Ask for things.”

“Such as?”

“Visit me.”

The answer came so easily she mistrusted it.

“For how long?”

Theo smiled.

“There she is.”