A few more paces carried Alena past the guard and the people on the TV sofa. The corridor ended here. The door facing her had a toilet sign and a disabled symbol. She stepped inside and locked herself in.
She was shaking, her legs felt weak and out of control, and she leaned forward, letting go of what she was holding to support herself against the wall.
Again, she saw someone reflected in the mirror, someone who wanted to go home. Just wanted to go home.
Alena put her shoulder bag on the lid of the toilet seat. She had wrapped the plastic bag tight round its contents, trying to make the package as small as possible. Pulling it out, she weighed it in her hand before putting it into the waste-bin. She saw the tap, swore at herself as she turned it on and flushed the toilet. Noises which had to be there, in order not to be noticed. The paper towel dispenser was nearly empty, but she got out a wad, scrunched the towels up one by one and hid the plastic bag underneath them.
Lydia hurt everywhere.
Her body punished her every time she moved. A little earlier she had asked the Polish nurse for a couple of morphine tablets.
She sat on the TV sofa next to the two boys, whom she had seen before and smiled at several times but never talked to. She didn’t actually want to know them, there was no point. She wasn’t interested in the news broadcast and didn’t understand a word anyone said. The guard didn’t take his eyes from her.
From the corner of her eye she had noticed the woman walking past, holding a box of chocolates and a bouquet.
Ever since, her breathing had been laboured.
She waited for the sound of the toilet door opening again
and for the woman’s footsteps to pass and fade away. She wanted to close her eyes, to lie belly down on the sofa and sleep through it all, only waking up when it was all over.
It didn’t take long. Or maybe it did. She wasn’t sure.
The woman opened the toilet door. Lydia heard it perfectly clearly. Shutting out the noisy TV programme was no problem. She only registered the sounds from the corridor. The woman’s steps came closer; she picked up the moving shape without turning her head, barely an awareness of the passing body, a glimpse of a person walking swiftly back in the direction she had come from.
Lydia stole a glance at the man in the green uniform.
He had noted the passing visitor but no more. He didn’t get up to follow her, and her presence passed out of his head the instant she left the ward.
Lydia let the boys know she wanted to get up from the sofa and passed them. Then she looked at the guard, nodded to him, pointed at her bladder and then in the direction of the toilet. He nodded. It was fine for her to go to the toilet. He would stay here.
She locked the door, sat down on the lid and took several deep breaths.
It must never happen again.
She got up. Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp had kicked her hip and she limped a little. She turned on the tap and let the water run. She flushed the toilet twice. She went over to the bin and with her good arm, removed the top layer of paper towels.
Lydia recognised the plastic bag, an ordinary supermarket carrier. Inside was everything she had asked for. The handgun, the ammunition, the Semtex, the video, the ball of string. She didn’t know how Alena had managed to do what she wanted, but she had. She had gone to box 21 at the Central Station, evaded the policemen who presumably guarded number 3 Volund Street, and got through the two locked doors to the cellar.
She had done her bit.
Now it was all up to Lydia.
Almost all the patients wore white, baggy items of regulation hospital clothing. Lydia’s long white coat had been much too large to start with, but she had asked for an even bigger one. It flapped round her body, which didn’t exist. In one coat pocket she had a roll of white hospital tape. First she secured the gun with it, after winding tape twice round her waist, and then the Semtex. Gun to the right, plastic explosive to the left. The video and string she left in the bag, which she pushed down inside her panties, adjusting them to make sure it was secure.
One last look in the mirror.
Her battered face. Cautiously, she fingered the many large bruises round her eyes. Her neck was a thick roll of white bandage around a supporting collar. Her left arm hung there, stiff with plaster.
It would never happen again.
Lydia opened the toilet door and limped out. Just a few steps along the corridor. The guard saw her, but she shook her head at the TV sofa and pointed towards her room. She wanted to get back to bed. He understood, nodded. She moved slowly, making signs to show that she wanted him to follow her to her room. He didn’t get it. She tried again, pointing at him, then at herself and then the room: he was to come with her, she needed his help. He raised his hand, understood, no need to explain any more. He mumbled ‘OK’ and she thanked him by curtseying as well as she could manage.
She waited for him to get safely inside her room, until she could hear him breathing behind her.
Then everything happened fast.
Still with her back to him, she pulled at the tape that held the gun on the right-hand side of her ribcage. Then she swung round. She showed him the gun, and released the safety catch in one quick movement.
‘On knee!’
Her English was clumsy, and heavily accented. She pointed with the muzzle of the gun to the floor.
‘On knee! On knee!’
He stood still in front of her. Hesitated. What he saw was a young woman who had been admitted to Casualty yesterday, still unconscious. She limped, had a plaster cast on one arm and a bruised face. The sagging coat made her frail, like a nervous bird.
Now she was threatening him at gunpoint.
Lydia saw him hesitate, raised her arm and waited.
She had been only nine years old.
Death had been on her mind then. She had never thought of it before, at least not like that. She only had nine measly years behind her, when a man in uniform, not that different from the man in front of her now, had held his gun to her head and screamed
Now she was pointing a gun at another person. She pressed it to the man’s head, the way others had done to her. Lydia knew exactly how it felt, knew the hellish fear that tore at your insides. Just a little extra pressure from the finger on the trigger and, from one moment to the next, your life would be over. She knew he’d had time by now to think of everything ending: no more smells, tastes, sights and sounds, no more sensations of being touched, no more being with others in any way. Everything will carry on as before, only I won’t be there. I’ll have ceased to be.
She thought of Dimitri and his gun, which he had pressed against her head more times than she could count, and of his smile, which was just like the smile on the face of that military policeman when she was nine, and like the smiles of all the men who had later gone down on her, invaded her, forced their way in.
Lydia hated them all.
She stared at the guard and knew how he felt, understood what having a gun against your head was like, and kept it there, holding her arm raised high and glaring at him in silence.
He sank to his knees.
Then he clasped his hands behind the back of his neck.
Again Lydia used the gun to point; he was to turn his back to her.
‘Around. Around!’
He didn’t hesitate this time, turned round on his knees until he was facing the door. She grabbed the gun by its muzzle, aimed with the handle at the back of his head and hit out as hard as she could.
He fell over forwards, unconscious before he hit the floor.
She pulled out the bag, carried it just like any ordinary shopping bag and hurried out of the room, down the corridor towards the lifts. It took a minute or so before one came. People passed her, but didn’t see her, absorbed
