Chapter Thirteen
Having established the principle of her freedom, the human hand grenade disappears into the next room to watch TV, while the others begin an intense technical discussion, orchestrated by Ned. The first priority, he says, is to obtain Traxorac’s seismic data; the second, to ensure that the warning they issue at the press conference reaches the maximum audience. ‘I have a stunt lined up involving the marine biologist mate whose house we’re in, and a team of his in Greenland. But in the meantime…’ He clicks the laptop to reveal a screen filled with eight columns of bullet points over a map of the North Sea. ‘Here’s the way forward as I see it.’ I understand why Frazer Melville recruited him. He is a strategy machine. But there’s an item he has not yet factored in. While Harish Modak stops Ned with a question about the tonnage of Buried Hope Alpha and Frazer Melville and Kristin Jons dottir reach for their notepads, I leave the room unnoticed and roll down the corridor.
Huge and sombre, the farillhouse kitchen has low beams and a dark oakwood table, varnished to a high gloss. On it sits an open laptop. I set the kettle to boil on the range, locate teabags, cups and milk, boot up, and check the news online. Sure enough, the story I have been dreading ever since the phone call from Kavanagh is one of the main headlines.
The photo is unflattering, and doubtless chosen to suit the story: it shows me looking vengeful. I recognise the occasion from the shapeless outfit I’m wearing, an unhappy hybrid of tracksuit and dress. They held a small party when I left the Unit in Hammersmith. It was Dr Sulieman’s idea. Perhaps he thought it would cheer me up. But it didn’t. I got drunk, and someone had to ring for a taxi. The image of the physicist is smaller: an anodyne corporate shot in black and white. The BBC Online article, which describes us, mortifyingly, as ‘the couple’, continues with a quote from Leonard Krall, demanding the immediate return of his estranged daughter, for her own safety and that of others. This is followed by a statement from Detective Kavanagh, another from an Oxsmith spokeswoman, and a defensive comment from the senior administrator of St Swithin’s hospital. Joy McConey is quoted only towards the end of the article. ‘There’s something I believe that her kidnappers haven’t understood. Bethany Krall is damaged, dangerous and very angry.’ I picture her homeopathically pale eyes. ‘She has killed before. She’s quite capable of killing again. Whoever is sheltering her should know that unless she is safely contained, lives are at risk. The best way to help Bethany is to return her safely to the professionals.’
I presume that the BBC, along with the main news agencies, will not run its interview with Joy in full because it has a reputation to maintain. But the rest of the net is free of such scruples. Within a few clicks, I have located a video clip of Joy McConey, extracted from a longer interview. I turn up the volume and press play. She has worked hard on herself since our meeting in the playground. Gone is the combat gear. Her pale red wig is coiffed into a feminine chignon, while discreet make-up and a sombre business suit provide a professional gravitas she must be credited for mustering at such short notice.
‘When she was an inmate at Oxsmith, Bethany Krall foresaw several disasters which all then happened on the exact dates she predicted,’ she says. I remember Joy’s voice when she called me on the phone, shrieking at her husband while he battled to restrain her. Now, levelly and reasonably, she runs through the list of catastrophes Bethany foresaw, starting with Mount Etna a year ago, and ending with the Istanbul quake. ‘My biggest concern isn’t that Bethany Krall can predict events like these.’ She pauses to emphasise her point. ‘It’s that she’s somehow able to cause them. I don’t say this lightly. I myself have personal proof of how powerful the forces within her are. When I contracted cancer two months ago…’
The kettle is boiling but I have given up on tea. I pause the clip and hurtle back to the others.
‘Right, this’ll mean a change of plan,’ says Ned, when I have conveyed the news, to which he and the others listened with evident alarm, though if any of them now regrets the decision to allow Bethany to stay with us the cavil is not voiced. ‘Gabrielle.Instead of coming with us to London, you, Frazer and Bethany will need to stay here. We can’t risk you being seen. After the press conference, we’ll collect you by helicopter.’ He flips open his phone and punches in a number. ‘But I’ll organise alternative transport for you, just in case.’ He looks at his watch, sandwiching his mobile between cheek and shoulder. ‘Kristin, Harish: we’ll need to leave here within the next couple of hours. Hi, Jerry. Ned again. Another car, untraceable… yes, today.’
I glance at Frazer Melville, the man who showed me a new world, then smashed it. If the morose expression on his face is related to the sudden prospect of staying here with me and Bethany, instead of going to London with his lover and the others to warn the world about the catastrophe on the horizon, then I share his gloom.
The others have left, and it is late. Frazer Melville has prepared a Marks and Spencer’s ready-meal, which we eat in the kitchen around the oak table, largely in silence. The food sticks in my throat. Even Bethany is subdued.
‘I’ll be sleeping on the sofa in the living-room,’ I say, when Bethany has left the kitchen, announcing that she is going to bed.
‘We need to talk,’ says the physicist.
‘There’s nothing to say. I’ll clear the dishes, if you check on Bethany and lock the doors.’
By the time he returns, fifteen minutes later, I have settled on the sofa with a blanket over me. Like a coward, I am faking sleep because I cannot face him. I’m too tired and too forlorn and I know that the conversation we will have will make me feel even worse than I already do. I’m aware of him coming in, approaching the sofa and squatting next to me. I stay immobile. He kisses my forehead and I feel a huge wave of sadness.
He whispers, ‘Gabrielle. I know you’re awake. Please stop being angry. You have to forgive me. We have to talk again. We have to move on.’
But I don’t shift.
I long for him to kiss me again, to touch me. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he sits a little longer, then gets heavily to his feet, and leaves the room. What is he feeling? Pity, guilt, remorse?
A moment later I hear his tread on the stairs and then the murmur of him talking on the phone. He must miss her, because it’s a long conversation.
Unlike lovers who betray, those who die remain forever constant. If I could erect a No Trespassing notice to prevent Alex creeping into my dreams at night, I would do it. Whenever he infiltrates, I awake with reluctance, knowing that surviving the day ahead will require an act of faith, a pledge to optimism that I will have trouble summoning. Another hour’s sleep and my perspective might change, but now the dream — an unsettling one in which Alex twisted my hair into bewildering shapes — is too recent for that to be an option. And reality is too penetrating.
‘Come on, Wheels. Let me show you the lake.’ She’s flapping a white towel in my face. Through the blinds, there is already a striped glow of light. Eight o’clock, at a guess. ‘Come on! Get moving! Let’s get some air!’
The day stretches ahead: a day of stress, of waiting for the phone to ring, of avoiding the physicist.
‘Give me five minutes,’ I say, and pull on a T-shirt.
Wheelchairs and mud do not get along well, but there’s a concrete walkway that takes me close to a waterline fringed with reeds. Bethany has run on ahead and is stripping off.
‘What are you doing? Bethany, you’ll freeze!’
‘It’s great!’ she yells, balling up her towel and flinging it at me.
But I understand her urge because suddenly, with a rush of blood to the head, I share it. I, too, would love to strip off my clothes and swim. The sunrise is a delicate tangerine, the air so warm it could still be August. There’s a faint breeze. Gulls and starlings wheel above us and hop about in the mulch. Just a few years ago, being able to swim outdoors in Britain in October would have seemed as outlandish as the arrival of seahorse colonies in the Thames or commercial papaya orchards in Kent. Now, warm autumns are just another in a long list of pill- sweeteners as we descend into the ninth circle.
Bethany has hurled her clothes on to the narrow sloping beach. Naked, she is a pitiful amalgam of skin and bone: thin ribcage, negligible breasts, concave stomach, gaunt thighs studded and criss-crossed with the scars of cuts and cigarette burns, a fuzz of dark hair between. She has abandoned her bandages but the wounds on her
