'She knows nothing, absolutely nothing. She's the last person I'd choose. She's a silly old fool who's hardly worth her bed and board, but my mother finds a use for her, and so do I. She hates my mother, and I've told her that Mummy is checking on my life and to let me know at once if there are any telephone calls for me or any visitors. It helps make her life with Mummy tolerable. It makes her feel important, helps her to believe that I care about her, that I love her.'
'Do you? Do you love her?'
'I did once. A child has to love someone. I grew out of it and I grew out of her. Well, there was a call and there was a visitor. On Tuesday a Scot, or someone pretending to be a Scot rang. And today a visitor came.'
'What sort of visitor?'
'A young man who said he'd met me in France. It was a lie. He was an impostor. He was from MI5. Who else could have sent him?'
'But you can't be sure. Not sure enough to send that signal, leave everything, put yourself in their mercy.'
'I can. Look, who else could it have been? There were three separate incidents, the postcard, the telephone call, the visitor. What else should I wait for? The security services kicking down my door?'
'What was he like, this man?'
'Young. Nervous. Not very attractive. Not particularly convincing either. Even Nanny didn't believe him.'
'Funny kind of MI5 officer. Couldn't they do better than that?'
'He was supposed to be someone I'd met in France who fancied me and wanted to see me again and had steeled himself actually to call at the flat. Of course he appeared young and nervous. That's the kind of man they'd send. They'd hardly choose a seasoned forty-year-old veteran from Curzon Street. They know how to select the right man for the job. That's their business. He was the right man, all right. Perhaps he wasn't even meant to be convincing. Perhaps they were trying to scare me, get me to react, flush me out.'
'Well, you have reacted, haven't you? But if you're wrong, wrong about it all, what will they do, the people you work for? You've blown Operation Birdcall by running away.'
'This operation has been aborted but the future won't be jeopardized. My instructions were to telephone if there was firm evidence that we'd been discovered. And there was. And that's not all. My telephone is being bugged.'
'You can't possibly tell that.'
'I can't tell it for certain, but I know.'
Suddenly Amy cried: 'What did you do about Remus? Did you feed him, leave him water?'
'Of course not. This has to look like an accident. They've got to believe that we're lesbian lovers who went for an evening boat trip and were drowned. They've got to believe that we only intended to be away for a couple of hours. He gets fed at seven. They've got to find him hungry and thirsty.'
'But they might not start looking for you until Monday! He'll be frantic, barking and whining. There's no one close to hear. You bloody bitch!'
Suddenly she flew at Caroline, screaming obscenities, clawing at her face. But the girl was too strong for her. Hands gripped her wrists like steel bands and she found herself hurled back against the boards. Through the tears of rage and self-pity she whispered: 'But why? Why?'
'For a cause worth dying for. There aren't many of those.'
'Nothing's worth dying for, except maybe another person, someone you love. I'd die for Timmy.'
'That's not a cause, that's sentimentality.'
'And if I want to die for a cause I'll bloody well choose it myself. And it won't be for terrorism. It won't be for bastards who put bombs in pubs and blow up my friends and don't give a damn about ordinary people, because we're not important, are we?'
Caroline said: 'You must have suspected something. You're not educated but you're not stupid, either. I wouldn't have chosen you if I couldn't be sure of that. You never questioned me and you wouldn't have got an answer if you had, but you couldn't have thought that we were going to all that trouble for frightened kittens or butchered seal pups.'
Had she thought that? Amy wondered. Perhaps the truth was that she had believed in the intention but never that it would actually be carried out. She hadn't doubted their will, only their ability. And in the meantime it had been fun to be part of the conspiracy. She had enjoyed the excitement, the knowledge that she had a secret from Neil, the half-simulated frisson of fear as she left the caravan after dark to plant the postcards in the ruins of the abbey.
She had hidden behind a broken breakwater almost laughing aloud that night when she had nearly been caught by Mrs Dennison and Mr Dalgliesh. And the money had been useful, too; generous payment for so small a task. And there had been the dream, the picture of a flag whose design was as yet unknown, but which they would raise over the power station and which would command respect, obedience, instant response. They would be saying to the whole world, 'Stop it. Stop it now.' They would be speaking for the captive zoo animals, the threatened whales, the polluted, sick seals, the tormented laboratory animals, the terrified beasts driven into the abattoirs to the smell of blood and their own death, the hens crowded together, unable even to peck, for the whole of the abused and exploited animal world. But it had been only a dream. This was reality; the insubstantial boards under her feet, the dark suffocating mist, the oily waves slapping against their frail craft. The reality was death, there was no other. Everything in her life, from the moment she had met Caroline in that Islington pub and they had walked back to the squat together, had led to this moment of truth, this terror.
She moaned: 'I want Timmy. What about my baby? I want my baby.'
'You won't have to leave him, not permanently. They'll find a way of reuniting you.'
'Don't be daft. What sort of life would he have with a terrorist gang? They'll write him off like they write off everyone else.'
Caroline said: 'What about your parents? Won't they take him? Can't they look after him?'
'Are you crazy? I ran away from home because my stepfather knocked Ma about. When he started on me I walked out. Do you think I'd let him have Timmy, him or her?'
Her mother had seemed to like the violence, or at least had liked what came after it. Those two years before she ran away had taught Amy one lesson; have sex only with men who want you more than you want them.
Caroline asked: 'What about Pascoe? Are you sure he knows nothing?'
'Of course he doesn't. We weren't even lovers. He didn't want me and I didn't want him.'
But there was someone she had wanted, and she had a sudden vivid memory of lying with Alex in the dunes, the smell of sea and sand and sweat, his grave ironic face. Well, she wasn't going to tell Caroline about Alex. She had one secret of her own. She would keep it.
She thought of the curious paths by which she had come to this moment in time, to this place. Perhaps if she drowned her whole life would flash before her as it was said to do, everything experienced, understood, made sense of in that final annihilating moment. But now she saw the past as a series of coloured slides, clicking in quick succession, an image briefly received, an emotion barely experienced before it disappeared. Suddenly she was shivering violently. She said: 'I'm cold.'
'I said to come with warm clothes and nothing else. That jumper isn't enough.'
'These are the only warm clothes I've got.'
'On the headland? What do you wear in winter?'
'Sometimes Neil lends me his greatcoat. We share. Whichever one of us goes out gets the coat. We were thinking we might get one for me from the Old Rectory jumble.'
Caroline took off her jacket. She said: 'Here, put this round you.'
'No, that's yours. I don't want it.' 'Put it on.'
'I said I don't want it.'
But like a child she let Caroline push her arms into the sleeves, stood obediently while the jacket was fastened. Then she crouched down, almost wedging herself under the narrow seat which ran round the boat, shutting out the horror of those silently advancing waves. It seemed to Amy that she felt for the first time and with every nerve the inexorable power of the sea. She saw in imagination her pale and lifeless body plummeting through the miles of wet darkness to the sea bed, to the skeletons of long-drowned sailors where the uncaring creatures swam between the ribs of ancient ships. And the mist, less thick now but mysteriously more frightening, had become a living thing, gently swirling and soundlessly breathing, stealing her own breath so that she found herself panting, insinuating its damp horror into every pore. It seemed impossible to believe that somewhere there was land, lighted windows
