The Protected

The label on the cassette case had been written in blue biro. The ink had faded at the edges, but the letters were still clear enough: PW – Christmas 93 – Sherlock.

Elodie McCoy turned the case over in her gloved hands and looked again at the catalogue record.

Item BM-20C-8841. Compact audio cassette. Claimed association: Prince William, later William V. Date of association: circa 1993. Provenance: private gift, 2078.

The gift note from 2078 was enthusiastic and short on evidence. Somebody’s grandmother had kept a box of tapes. Somebody’s grandmother had once worked in a house where the young prince had stayed. The rest was inference dressed up as fact.

Elodie set the case down on the foam block and opened the audio file Conservation had taken off the tape two years earlier. A man’s voice began to read, measured and slightly theatrical. Not a household recording. A commercial audiobook, the sort sold in high-street shops when people still bought plastic rectangles to put into machines.

She paused it.

The problem was not that the tape was uninteresting. The problem was that the museum had published the association as though it were settled.

She sent a request through to Archives for the original accession file and the 2078 donor correspondence. If the paper trail was as thin as she suspected, the public record would need amending.

Her credential chimed softly against the reader at the edge of the bench as the request went through. She barely noticed it. She used it a dozen times a day.

Penny Maddox arrived ten minutes later with a slim folder under her arm and the look of a woman who had already decided this was not going to be a short visit.

“Your accession file,” she said, setting it down. “And before you disappear into 2078, Friday is still on. Comedian, drinks, no excuses. Charge your entertainment token tonight or you’ll be standing at the door like a tourist.”

“I’ll charge it.”

“You said that last time.”

“I did charge it last time. It ran out because you made us stay for the second show.”

Penny pulled out the stool opposite and sat. “That was research. You work with the twentieth century. You ought to support living performers.”

“He was barely living by the end of the second show. He was repeating himself.”

“Charge the token,” Penny said. “And while we’re on the subject of things you’re avoiding, has Jason from Accounting found his spine yet?”

Elodie felt heat creep up her throat. “He is not my type.”

“You go pink every time I mention him. That is a type.”

“It is irritation.”

“It is not.” Penny tipped her head. “Any word from the new landlord?”

“No.” Elodie opened the folder because it was easier than looking at her. “Which is odd. The references went through. The deposit is sitting there. He said he’d confirm by Monday.”

“It’s Wednesday.”

“I had noticed.”

“Well, if he’s found someone else, he can say so. You have a flat. You’re not sleeping on a bench.”

“I like my flat. I would like a slightly larger one. That is the entire ambition.”

Penny smiled, then glanced at the cassette. “Is that the royal Sherlock?”

“It is a Sherlock. Whether it is royal is another matter.”

“You’re going to take the association off the record.”

“I’m going to put a note on it until someone produces something better than a grandmother and a wish.”

“Cruel. The donors will be heartbroken.”

“The donors can read.”

They were still sitting there when Milo Dylan came through from the Egyptian galleries with a tablet in one hand and a pencil behind his ear. He stopped when he saw the cassette.

“Is that the one with the prince attached to it?”

“Allegedly,” Elodie said.

“Good. I have a dating question and I’d rather ask you than Conservation. They look at me as if I’ve brought sand in on purpose.”

“You do bring sand in on purpose,” Penny said.

“It is dust. Very old dust. There is a difference.” He set the tablet on the bench. “We have packing material from a twentieth-century crate that turned up with a lot that should not have been near it. Newsprint. I need a better date than ‘sometime after the war’.”

Elodie leaned in. The paper in the photograph was yellowed, the type still sharp enough. She read the column headline and then the small print at the edge.

“That masthead changed in 1987,” she said. “And they dropped that typeface in ninety-two. So between those two, if the crate was packed with fresh paper.”

“Which it may not have been.”

“Which it may not have been. But it is better than after the war.”

Milo nodded, already satisfied. “That is why I ask you. You don’t invent a century to make the label tidy.”

“I invent nothing. I take things off labels.”

“Same talent.” He looked at her properly then. “You’re still coming on Friday?”

“Penny has issued instructions.”

“Good. Charge your token.”

“Why does everyone assume I won’t charge my token?”

“Because you live on tea and catalogue records,” Penny said. “Sinead’s grandfather has finally been given a Protection package, by the way. The whole family is relieved. He’s been wandering.”

“Good,” Elodie said. “At least someone’s keeping an eye on him now.”

She meant it. Protection was for people who needed it. Old men who left the house in their slippers. People who could no longer manage safely on their own. It was one of those Commonwealth arrangements she had never had cause to argue with because she had never had cause to think about it for very long.

Milo took his tablet back. “I’ll put 1987 to 1992 on the crate and wait for someone to tell me I’m wrong.”

“You won’t be wrong,” Elodie said. “You may be incomplete.”

“That I can live with.”

He left them to it. Penny stayed long enough to watch Elodie turn the first page of the donor file, then tapped the folder.

“Friday,” she said. “Token. And if Jason speaks to you in the canteen, try answering in a complete sentence.”

“Go away.”

“I’m going. I have actual archives to mind.”

The donor correspondence was as thin as Elodie had expected. A covering letter, a typed list of household items and a later note from a junior curator who had accepted the royal association on the strength of the grandmother’s story. No inventory from the house. No photograph of the tape in situ. No second source.

By late afternoon she had written the amendment. Association unconfirmed. Provenance insufficient for public attribution. Recommend the object remain on display as a late-twentieth-century commercial cassette, with the claimed royal connection moved to the internal file.

She sent it for review, returned the cassette to its box and signed out of the bench. The museum was settling towards the end of the day. School groups gone. Visitors thinning. Staff credentials flashing at the inner doors as people moved between public and private spaces.

Outside, Bloomsbury was its ordinary mixture of stone and glass. The older museum front held its blackened columns. Across the road a new frontage ran flush with the pavement, Commonwealth offices behind pale brick that had already begun to weather. A tram slid past on the dedicated lane. People came up from the station with bags and children and the end-of-day look of people who wanted to be home.

Elodie walked. She had no particular reason to hurry. At the corner she nearly kept going towards the bus, then changed her mind and turned down the smaller street to The Tea Shack.

The window was steamed. The board outside still offered the same three sizes it had offered since she had started at the museum. She asked for a large tea, no sweetener, and stood to one side while it was poured.

Penny liked to say that Elodie’s blood had been replaced with builder’s tea and obstinacy. Elodie had never bothered to deny it. She took the cup, tapped her credential to pay and went back out with the heat of it in both hands.

The walk home was the same one she always took when she did not catch the bus. Past the bookshop that still sold paper. Past the chemist. Past the place that had been a bank and was now a clinic. London had not been rebuilt so much as added to. The Commonwealth sat in the gaps and on the signs and in the readers at every door. She moved through it without thinking, because it was hers.

Her building was a converted block behind a quieter street, three floors of flats with a shared stair and a courtyard that never quite dried. She climbed to the second floor, let herself in and put the tea on the counter before taking off her coat.

The flat was not large. It did not need to be. Books on the shelves and in a stack beside the chair. A print of the Thames above the heater. A bowl of keys and badges and the small objects she brought home from jumble sales and then forgot to do anything with. Last night’s mug. This morning’s toast plate.

She changed out of her work clothes into a jersey and old trousers, rinsed the plate and considered cooking. In the end she cut bread, found cheese and ate standing up with the rest of the tea. It was not a meal that required thought.

Only when she had finished did she sit down with her tablet and open her Personal Correspondence Inbox.

Two messages sat at the top. A reminder from the building about the courtyard drain. A staff note from the museum about next month’s display rotation. She read both, filed both and was about to close the inbox when she saw the third.

NOTICE OF PROTECTIVE RECLASSIFICATION

Office of Protective Administration

Commonwealth of Britain

She stared at it.

What?

She opened it.

The letterhead was plain. The language was polite.

Following a scheduled review of your current circumstances, your Protective Classification has been reassessed. You have been placed under Protective Status, effective immediately.

Elodie read the sentence again.

Then she checked the name at the top.

Elodie McCoy. Her citizen number. Her registered address. Her date of birth.

There must have been a mistake.

She scrolled.

In accordance with your revised classification, the following provisions now apply.

Certain financial transactions will require prior authorisation.

Changes to your registered residence are restricted pending assessment.

Travel outside your residential district must be notified or, where indicated, approved.

Your current employment falls within consultation provisions. You are not required to leave your post. Changes to your working arrangements should be discussed with your allocated Guardian before they are made.

She set the tablet down.

Then picked it up again.

She was employed. She had a home. She paid her bills. She went to work every day and came back again. She had spent the afternoon correcting a museum record because somebody in 2078 had accepted a story without sufficient evidence. She did not need protecting from anything.

She read on.

A Guardian has been allocated in accordance with your revised Protective Classification.

Elodie laughed once, without humour.

“I don’t need a Guardian.”

The flat did not answer her.

She said it again, louder, glaring at the screen.

“I don’t need a bloody Guardian.”

There was a section headed Review. Of course there was. The Commonwealth did not simply impose things and walk away. She could request a reassessment. She could submit supporting evidence. She could ask for her file to be examined by an independent officer. The rights were listed neatly, each with a reference number.

None of them paused the classification.

Protective Status is already in effect. Review procedures run concurrently and do not suspend the provisions set out above.

She sat back.

Then she reached the Guardian information.

Allocated Guardian: Julian Grosvenor CC

Elodie looked at the name for a long time.

The first feeling was not anger. It was relief, and the relief surprised her.

She knew who he was. Everyone who paid even passing attention to public life knew who he was. Senior barrister. Commonwealth’s Counsel. The man who had taken the Meridian custody case and made the judgment look inevitable by the time he sat down. She had watched part of an interview with him two or three years ago, late one night when she had been too tired to find anything better. He had been measured and dry and entirely uninterested in performing for the camera. An experienced Guardian, the caption had said. An exemplary record.

If somebody had to look at this, Grosvenor was as good as she could have been given. He would see the mistake. He dealt in evidence. She dealt in evidence. That, at least, they would have in common.

She began, without meaning to, to assemble the case. Employment history. Stable housing, even if the new flat had gone quiet. Finances in order. No dependants. No incidents. No reason on earth for the Office of Protective Administration to decide that Elodie McCoy required a Guardian.

This was fixable.

She read the rest more calmly.

Your Guardian will contact you within twenty-four hours to arrange an initial assessment. You are required to cooperate with that assessment.

Then the last line, set on its own.

No action is required from you at this time.

Elodie almost laughed again.

Plenty of action would be required tomorrow.

She closed the notice.

Something would not sit still.

She opened it again and read from the top, more slowly.

Not Proposed Reclassification.

Not Pending Reclassification.

NOTICE OF PROTECTIVE RECLASSIFICATION.

And in the body, the same phrase she had rushed past the first time.

Effective immediately.

She looked up.

The flat was as she had left it. Books. Clothes over the back of the chair. The heel of the bread on the board. The ordinary clutter of a life that had been, until ten minutes ago, entirely her own.

Nothing in the room had changed.

She called Penny.

Penny answered on the second ring, already talking.

“If this is about Friday, I have the tickets. Do not tell me you—”

“I’ve been reclassified.”

There was a pause.

“What do you mean, reclassified?”

“Protected.”

A longer pause.

“You?”

“Yes, Penny. Me.”

Penny made a sound that was not quite a laugh. “That cannot be right.”

“It is in my inbox. Office of Protective Administration. All very polite.”

“They’ve sent you a Protection notice.”

“They’ve sent me a notice that I am already Protected. It is effective immediately. And they’ve allocated me a Guardian.”

“Already?”

“Apparently.”

“Who?”

“Julian Grosvenor.”

Silence.

“Julian Grosvenor?”

“That is what it says.”

“Well—”

“Don’t.”

“I was not going to say anything.”

“You were going to say I am lucky.”

“I was going to say that if they have made a mistake, he is probably the person you would want looking at it.”

Elodie let out a breath. “I thought the same thing. Which is how I know I have lost my mind.”

“You have not lost your mind. You have been sent an idiotic notice. What does it actually restrict?”

“Money, to a point. I cannot change my address. Travel outside the district has to be notified or approved. Work is under consultation, whatever that means. I am allowed to keep the job, provided I discuss any changes with my Guardian.”

“Those will be the standard provisions. They attach them to the classification. He can waive them once he has spoken to you.”

“Can he?”

A tiny pause.

“I assume so. That is what Guardians are for, isn’t it? To look at the person, not the form.”

Neither of them knew. Elodie could hear it in Penny’s voice as clearly as in her own.

“Does it say why?” Penny asked.

“Not properly.”

“There must be something.”

“There is a classification reference and a line about cumulative risk indicators. Whatever that is supposed to mean.”

“Can you challenge it?”

“Yes.”

“Well. There you are.”

“It does not suspend anything.”

“What?”

“While I challenge it. I am Protected now.”

The line went quiet for a moment. When Penny spoke again, the joke had gone out of her voice.

“That is a bit much.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

Elodie looked at the room. At the tablet. At the tea gone cold on the counter.

“No. I am all right. I am angry, which is not the same thing. We will be at work tomorrow. There is no reason for you to come across London because the Commonwealth has sent me a stupid letter.”

“Then come here. We can open some wine and work out what you need to do.”

Elodie nearly said yes. The evening stretched in front of her, the notice was still on the tablet, and Penny’s kitchen was a known thing.

“No. Tomorrow is soon enough.”

“All right. Charge your token anyway. And if Grosvenor contacts you tonight, write down what he says.”

“I will.”

“Elodie.”

“Yes.”

“It is a mistake. People get mistakes. Then they get them taken off.”

“I know.”

She rang off.

The flat was quieter than it had been before the call. Penny’s disbelief had helped. Penny had known her for years. Penny had not said at last, or I wondered, or perhaps they have a point. She had said you, and she had meant it as an objection.

Julian Grosvenor would look at the file and see the same thing. There was a review. Tomorrow she would start it.

Elodie picked up the tablet again.

She found the travel paragraph and read it twice.

Travel outside your residential district must be notified or, where indicated, approved.

Penny lived in Hackney. That was another district. Elodie had been there a hundred times. She had never told anyone she was going, because there had never been anyone to tell.

She sat with the sentence and felt, for the first time, a small, stupid question form.

Am I allowed to?

She stood up, annoyed with herself.

Of course she was allowed to go to Penny’s. She was being ridiculous. No one had locked the door. No one had even written to her except a department with a letterhead. Julian Grosvenor had not contacted her. The notice said no action was required.

She put the tablet down.

She did not put on her coat.

She did not go.

Outside, a tram passed at the end of the street. In the flat nothing moved except the light on the heater. Elodie stood in her own room, among her own things.

The Commonwealth had not locked a door. It had only made her hesitate before opening one.