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Entanglement
Katy Mahood
‘Dexterously structured … wise debut’ Observer‘A hugely impressive debut’ Stella Duffy‘Beautifully written’ Hannah Beckerman‘A really accomplished debut’ Red MagazineOn a hot October day in a London park, Stella sits in her red wedding dress opposite John. Pregnant and lost in thoughts of the future, she has no idea that lying in the grass, a stone’s throw away, is a man called Charlie. From this moment, Stella and Charlie’s lives are bound together in ways they could never imagine. But all they have is a shared glance and a feeling: have we met before?Entanglement is a bewitching novel of love and sacrifice which explore show our choices can reverberate across the generations, and the sparks of hope they can ignite.
Copyright (#u4c5dda64-b6cf-55ff-8adc-d7a9d1e02ec4)
The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Katy Mahood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Excerpt from ‘Love After Love’ by Derek Walcott reprinted from Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986) by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux
Excerpts from ‘Sea Fever’ by John Masefield reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of John Masefield
Excerpt from ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802’ by William Wordsworth
Copyright © Katy Mahood 2018
Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Cover photograph © ITAR-TASS/TopFoto
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780008245658
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008245672
Version: 2018-09-25
Praise for Entanglement (#u4c5dda64-b6cf-55ff-8adc-d7a9d1e02ec4)
‘Dexterously structured . . . [a] wise debut’
Observer
‘A beautifully deceptive novel that gently entraps the reader with the lightest-touch characters and a slowly gripping story, studded with glittering moments. It is about how we arrive at who we are now, thinking we were heading along one route and only finding our true paths in retrospect. A hugely impressive debut’
STELLA DUFFY
‘Beautifully written and sensitively observed’
HANNAH BECKERMAN
‘A really accomplished debut novel about how life is a series of connections, coincidences and chance’
Red Magazine
Dedication (#u4c5dda64-b6cf-55ff-8adc-d7a9d1e02ec4)
For my parents, Tess and Jim
Epigraph (#u4c5dda64-b6cf-55ff-8adc-d7a9d1e02ec4)
When two systems enter into temporary physical interaction due to known forces between them, and when after a time of mutual influence the systems separate again, then they can no longer be described in the same way as before … I would call that the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought. Because of their interaction these two quantum states have become entangled.
‘The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics’ by Erwin Schrödinger, 1935
Contents
Cover (#u0450a708-1711-5bb1-a9a8-433631238fed)
Title Page (#ud5daac58-ec73-58c2-a467-d7d1dd06522b)
Copyright
Praise
Dedication
Epigraph
Prelude
1. Collision
Chapter 1.1
Chapter 1.2
Chapter 1.3
Chapter 1.4
Chapter 1.5
2. Duality
Chapter 2.1
Chapter 2.2
Chapter 2.3
3. Superposition
Chapter 3.1
Chapter 3.2
Chapter 3.3
Chapter 3.4
Chapter 3.5
Chapter 3.6
Chapter 3.7
4. Non-Locality
Chapter 4.1
Chapter 4.2
Chapter 4.3
Chapter 4.4
Chapter 4.5
Chapter 4.6
Chapter 4.7
Chapter 4.8
Chapter 4.9
Chapter 4.10
Chapter 4.11
Chapter 4.12
Chapter 4.13
Interlude
5. Decoherence
Chapter 5.1
Chapter 5.2
Chapter 5.3
Chapter 5.4
Chapter 5.5
Chapter 5.6
Chapter 5.7
Chapter 5.8
Reprise
Acknowledgements
About the Author (#u3a9b5560-b630-5bfa-8bce-acbee4bc9400)
About the Publisher
PRELUDE (#u4c5dda64-b6cf-55ff-8adc-d7a9d1e02ec4)
4 August 1977
At first she thinks it is a cloud, or smoke. But its undulations are too regular, too melodic. As the train closes the distance, the movements become more granular, a lace-like pattern of dark and sky, curving rhythmically in waves and turns above the countryside, and Stella sees it is a group of fast-flying birds. Wingtips almost touching, they move in perfect motion, against the evening sky.
Murmuration. There is magic to it, this seamless dance of small birds weaving a form that exists only in their togetherness. The tree on the horizon, the church, the hill: these things stand still as time moves around them. But this is something more; a new dimension forged in time and motion.
The train arrives. From above, the arches of the roof of Paddington Station curve and roll, ripple marks made by the tide of progress. The concourse teems with life, eddying across the mica-flecked floor. A fresh flood flows from a newly halted train and somewhere within the throng is Stella, returned early from her summer break. She struggles with a heavy bag, nervous for the tiny life pulsing within her, a secret that at this moment is hers alone. In the summer heat the station air is hazy. Specks of smut rise and glisten, and she looks for the face of the man who will meet her, but for now sees only the fuzz of people and particles pushed by the waves of warm air and urgency.
And then, there he is. He moves stop-start through the throb of the crowd, long limbs that don’t quite know where to be, long hair falling in his face. John is thinking, she can see, not at that moment of her, but a thought scored through with formulae that could unlock this tangle of bodies, noise and motion. He lifts his head, eyes narrow in the glare of the dipping sun, and sees her silhouette with its halo of gold-lit hair, her shoulders stooped beneath the heavy bag. And though he knows the physical impossibility of it, time for him is suddenly slowed, revealing gaps he’d not discerned before, through which he moves to claim this fresh-skinned girl. They press together and the world around them speeds up once more, gusting fumes and breath and microscopic fragments of life, up, up and into the spiralling dance overhead.
4 August 2007
From below, the arches of Paddington Station reach towards the night sky. Stella sits, silent in her wedding clothes, sipping tea from a paper cup, waiting for the call to the sleeper train. Beside her, John leans back on his chair, his arm resting on their luggage. On the other side of the station, on a bench near a darkened shop front, Stella notices a man in a hat. He looks up and their gaze meets across the concourse. When he nods, Stella smiles in return.
John looks up at the arches of the roof. He knows that they are moving through time and space, spinning on a planet that is orbiting a star – and yet the late-night station seems quite still. A moment later, a clutch of pigeons bursts upwards; his knee knocks the table; hot tea spills. Stella leaps to her feet, skidding in her high heels as John reaches out to catch her a fraction too late. She lands with a gasp on the floor and looks down at her expensive cream skirt, where a murky stain blooms along the thigh. Her ankle hurts. She swallows hard and looks up. For a fraction of a second she sees his face as it once was: wide-eyed and taut with longing. A fine trail shimmers in the light above them and she turns towards the roof, searching for a tiny piece of the young woman who stepped from a train and the young man who was once there to meet her – but all she can see now is dust.
