The Art of Love

PART TWO

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-SIX

FORTY-SEVEN

FORTY-EIGHT

FORTY-NINE

FIFTY

FIFTY-ONE

FIFTY-TWO

FIFTY-THREE

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PART ONE

ONE

‘If I’m not Polly Smith, then who am I?’

‘What a profound question,’ said Oliver Fraddon.

The two of them were standing side by side in a gallery at Somerset House, home of the Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths for all the counties of England.

‘The world in little, one might say,’ Oliver went on, looking along the floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with thousands of large red ledgers that contained the transitions of millions of lives, present and past. ‘All of us written down here, captured, immortalized. Volumes full of names and identities, A to Z, plain and extraordinary. We’re born, we marry — or some of us do — and we die, and each time we are set down on a page in here. A frightening thought.’

‘Never mind the frightening thought, what concerns me is that I’m not among those immortalized here,’ Polly said.

‘Very true. I suggest we go back to the desk and ask the recording angel for help.’

He led the way down the metal spiral staircase, warning Polly to watch her step. ‘Or you’ll end up as a new entry under Deaths.’

The clerk standing behind the long wooden length of the main counter had not a touch of the angelic about her. She wore pince-nez attached to a thin chain and had a harassed air. Oliver addressed her. ‘This young lady seems to have gone missing.’

The clerk looked at Polly with worried, faded grey eyes, eyes that were kinder than her pinched mouth. ‘Oh dear. Can’t find yourself? Not where you should be? Your name is Smith, you say. Well, there are rather a lot of Smiths, but in the end there’s only one of you. It comes down to having the right dates and the right address. Once we’re sure of that information, we can find you. Unless,’ she added, her voice sharpening, ‘unless you’re a foreigner.’

‘Do I look like a foreigner?’ Polly asked, indignant, not because she minded being taken for a foreigner, but because she wanted to assert her rightful place, numbered among all her fellow citizens here, in those large red books.

‘No, but if you were born abroad, even if you were as English as me and Mr Grier over there, then you wouldn’t be in the main part of the registry, but in the records we keep elsewhere.’

‘In the nether regions?’ suggested Oliver in Polly’s ear. ‘The brimstone section, with devilish clerks scurrying to and fro.’

‘It doesn’t arise,’ said Polly, ‘I was born in Highgate. 11, Bingley Street, off Archway. My mother still lives there. On May the first, 1908.’