They were awake early, neither having properly slept. Alice said hi and Jane made a sound and there was the awkwardness of the previous night, after they’d both broken down and cried together. Alice needed to be sick and had to use her toothpaste-smeared finger to clean her teeth and her mouth afterwards. Turning from the basin she trod barefoot on a cockroach, which wasn’t crushed but whirled underfoot, and in jerking away Alice hit her stomach without any real force against the sink edge, tensing, motionless, for an internal injury pain that never came. She had to learn, Alice thought, happily: so very much to learn. The awareness stayed. She had to learn how to be a mother! To be a mother! It was going to be so marvellous.
As she went back into the room Alice said: ‘I left you the toothpaste. You’ll have to use your finger. The water’s only tepid, even if you’re thinking of showering, which I wasn’t. And didn’t.’
Jane made another sound that Alice didn’t make out to be a word. She was ready the moment Jane disappeared into the bathroom, letting herself out of the cabin to hurry to a parking-lot garbage can that had been overturned during the night by a forest scavenger, strewing its contents all around it. She very carefully threw the pharmacy sack holding the bright-blue proof of her pregnancy inside the upturned container.
It was a grey day, relentless rain soaking down from lowering clouds. Everywhere was deserted, unmoving. Alice could hear the wetness hissing against the surrounding trees. She was anxious to get away, now that it was light. Away to a new existence, just her and John jr. The name was instantly adhesive. Absolutely right.
She got back to the cabin before Jane emerged from the bathroom but when she did Jane said at once: ‘You’re wet. Where have you been?’
‘I thought I’d check the car. It’s raining.’
‘I guess that’s why you’re wet. And how’s the car?’ The tone was mocking.
‘OK.’ Alice hoped the car really was intact. ‘We’re going to call the FBI.’
‘I thought you wanted to go back to the cabin?’
‘I want to get us safe.’ She had a baby now, thought Alice: something – someone – far more precious and tangible than a photograph. She didn’t want to bounce for hours in a hard-sprung car back up a twisting mountain road. She’d ask the Bureau to get her case. Their son should know what his father looked like. She didn’t know how to fish. She’d have to learn, if she were going to teach him. So much to learn.
‘I’m not sure I want to go in yet,’ announced Jane.
‘I am!’ insisted Alice. ‘I’m through running.’
‘I want lawyers. Guarantees.’
‘We can get lawyers when we’re there, where no one can get to us.’ Jane was being sensible, objective, Alice acknowledged. But she didn’t want to wait any longer: risk anything further.
‘I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about my father and my husband and the firm. And me,’ listed Jane.
‘You’ve got lawyers: you spoke to them yesterday!’
‘Yesterday we hadn’t talked completely. I didn’t know what I know now.’
‘You know now you could be killed. Will be killed!’
‘I’m going to take proper advice. Go in to the FBI with lawyers, not bare-assed naked.’
‘What about the baby?’ demanded Alice, openly for the first time. ‘You’ve got the…’ She only just stopped short of calling it a boy. ‘… baby to think about now!’
Jane matched the hesitation before saying: ‘It’s the baby I’m properly thinking about.’
‘I’m going in now!’
There was another hesitation from Jane. ‘I already told you, you’re not involved.’
‘I understand,’ said Alice slowly, who belatedly did. Was there enough in the printouts to get her into a protection programme: to get an amnesty, or whatever the word was, for the deaths of three innocent people in England? Or did she really need Jane and whatever else it was John had hidden? ‘I could have gone in a long time ago. I stayed out to save you. For John.’
‘I’m grateful. Thanks.’ The mocking tone was still there.
Jane had the right, Alice told herself yet again. ‘I’m going to call Hanlan to come here and get me.’
‘OK.’
‘You want a head start, to find somewhere to meet your people, you can have the car. I guess I don’t need it any more. Just some things that are in the trunk.’ For you, John. Everything’s for you and our son.
Jane Carver stood regarding Alice for several moments. ‘OK.’
‘But I’d rather you stayed with me. That we went in together.’
‘I’m looking after myself now. It’s about time.’
‘Everything I told you was the truth. About John. And you.’
‘You keep telling me,’ said Jane.
‘I want you to understand.’
‘I do. Finally I understand it all.’
‘You do hate me, don’t you?’
‘I’ m learning.’
‘I’m sorry. That you hate me, I mean. And that you’re not waiting for them to come and get us.’
‘You want to get your stuff out of the car?’
‘You don’t have any money,’ said Alice, going into her satchel. ‘You’ll need money.’ Her hand came out clutching fifties, six of them.
‘Three hundred,’ accepted Jane. ‘It’s a loan.’
Alice said: ‘You think we’re ever likely to meet again?’
‘I’ll get it to you.’
They walked, unspeaking, through the drizzle to the back of the single-storey building. Jane started the engine and ran the wipers before popping the bonnet trunk for Alice to retrieve the canvas bag in which she’d packed the printouts. Despite the rain Alice didn’t move at once, watching the Volkswagen disappear, knowing it would be the last she’d ever see of it. The beginning of her new life, she guessed: everything of the old discarded, abandoned.
Alice went back to the room and shook as much rain off her coat as she could and dialled reception, impatiently waiting what seemed an age for a reply. She thought she recognized the voice of the man who had booked them in the previous day. Before she could speak he said: ‘You owe for telephone calls,’ and Alice wondered how much he had listened in to the conversations.
She said: ‘I’m coming to settle. I need some help. I think we got a little confused on the map yesterday. Where, exactly, are we here?’
The man laughed. ‘Just two miles east of Long Valley, New Jersey.’
Alice had never heard of it. ‘Where’s the nearest town of any size?’
‘That would be Morristown.’
‘I’ll be by in a minute, to settle the charges. Just one more call to make.’
‘I’ll be in the office.’
‘Where the hell are you two?’ exploded Hanlan, the moment Alice was connected.
‘In a truck-stop motel two miles east of a place called Long Valley, New Jersey. I don’t…’
‘Why’d you run?’
‘Come and get me. I’ll explain everything when you take me in.’
There was a pause, of half awareness. ‘Where’s Jane?’
‘Gone. She won’t come in without her lawyers.’
‘Mary Mother of Christ!’ moaned Hanlan, who wasn’t Catholic.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Everything’s blown. In all the newspapers, on every television channel. Her picture’s everywhere!’
‘What about mine!’
‘Name. The picture’s bad.’
‘Jane’s got my car! It’s…’
‘I know what it is and I know the license. I’m frightened they do, too.’
‘They?’ There was a deja vu about the question.
‘They got to the cabin before we did, yesterday.’
