62
“Lily!” Eva waved as she saw her coming out of the school gates in a huddle of girls.
Lily looked as though Eva had turned up naked. She said something to her friends, and they hugged each other as though they wouldn’t be seeing each other ever again. Certainly not as though they hadn’t spent all day together, would be tomorrow, and would probably be online to each other all evening.
Eva gave them their space.
“Mum, what’re you doing here? It’s not cool, meeting me from school. I’m nearly twelve, I can get home by myself.”
Eva laughed. “When you’re thirty-five, you’ll still be my baby.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “What’s up?”
“Thought we might go for dinner.”
“Why?”
“Well, we have to eat. Where d’you fancy going, anywhere you like.”
“Anywhere?”
“Apart from a champagne and caviar bar, obviously, not until you at least look eighteen.” Lily rolled her eyes again. “What about a Mad Hatter tea party?”
Lily grinned in a very unlike-an-eleven-year-old way. “That sounds great.”
The lemonade came in little bottles with ‘drink me’ labels tied around the necks. The Battenberg cake had a skewer through the middle on which a tiny flag demanded ’eat me’.
“We should toast.” Eva picked up one of the bottles. “You go first.”
“To being twelve, skol.”
Eva laughed and toasted her daughter. “Skol, to being twelve, that’s a special birthday.”
“Your turn.” Lily held up her bottle ready.
“I had an offer today, to go back to my old job.”
“Are you taking it? You do need one.”
Eva smiled at Lily telling her how it was. “I do. The thing is though, it will probably mean I have to go away from time to time. What would you think about that?”
“I can stay with Anya, her mum won’t mind. Anya’s stayed with us lots of times.” Lily looked excited at the thought.
Single mums helping each other out, that could maybe work.
Lily waggled her lemonade bottle and Eva gasped.
“Mum, you all right?”
“Yes, of course, everything’s good.” She’d never noticed it before in Lily but it had been right there in her expression, a glimpse of Eva’s father in his granddaughter’s smile, as though he approved.
Working in intelligence would be a more fitting legacy for him, for Eva to truly follow in his footsteps, doing what she could to keep her loved one safe, to shine a light on the truth he paid such a heavy price to find. Proof every day, if she needed it, that she hadn’t chosen to stay small.
“So are we toasting it, or what?” Lily asked.
Eva clinked her bottle to Lily’s. “To running towards the bullets.”
THE END
To Jasmine Walt
With heartfelt thanks that, when you reached backwards to help those behind you, you took my hand
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Acknowledgments
Writing is mostly a solitary thing but the bringing together of a book takes a team and I’m very blessed to have the best people around me. You know who you are! But, in case, you need reminding, my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you:
To my wonderful husband, Dave Guyler, for making my beautiful office a reality, I’m grateful every day for such a lovely workspace (and you probably are too when I’m pacing around plotting and reading the book out loud….) To my fabulous daughter, Makenna, thank you for your invaluable input and encouragement, for fitting reading and rereading The Society into your crazy busy schedule, and for making so many coffees, merci mille fois. To my lovely son, Connor, you visual techy wizard you, for creating this gorgeous cover, you know you have that job going forward, right? To my other lovely boy, Kade, thanks for all the interruptions of videos I just had to see right then and for now understanding that the best way to come up to my office is bearing a cup of tea. To my ‘gained’ children, Adam Wilson, for being patient every time I say, ‘Adam, why has this tech done that?’ and Natalie Wickenden for spreading the word.
To my street team – you are all awesome! Thanks for your input, for helping me shape this story into the best it can be and for being the best cheerleaders and telling everyone about it: Beverley Bishop, Nick Cook, Katie Cooper, Deb Day, Makenna Guyler, Helen Hanna, Jon Mayhew and Mark Robertson, thank you.
To the Collective, you crazy, funny, wise lot. Thanks for the wisdom, the advice, the laughs, the camaraderie and the encouragement – my mad plan for this year is all your fault.
To Mariëlle Smith, wordsmith extraordinaire, (https://mswordsmith.nl) for helping me find the hidden nuggets in the blurb and for that ‘bitch-slap from the universe’ card back in Edinburgh. Here it is, as instructed, ‘my own fucking magic’.
To 20BooksEdinburgh, where I found my tribe, you all rock, and can’t we dance?! With special thanks to Jasmine Walt and Craig Martelle for your generosity in
