They lose themselves in the greetings for a moment but after that, their eyes flash with something like despair, something like envy, something like warmth and coldness, all at once.
Thomas plucks Mimi out of the swing and leaves us for a moment, the three of us, standing together and mute.
‘She’s lovely,’ Marie says to me, in the end.
‘Yes,’ Leo adds. ‘Beautiful.’ It sounds like something they’ve said too many times, there’s a hollow ring to it.
I try to reply, to force some words that would be appropriate from my mouth but I am empty, I have nothing.
All that I can see is Tia’s smile, looking up at her mother. All I can see is her face as she was carried over the shoulder of the enforcer before she disappeared.
‘Good to see you again,’ Marie says.
‘Yes…’ Leo agrees quickly but he lets the word hang as though, like me, he knows that he should be saying more but can’t bring himself to do it.
We say goodbye. We don’t pretend that we will see each other again, that we would want to. I watch them leave.
They reach for one another. They take small steps as though if the other weren’t there to support them, they would stumble and trip.
‘Shall we go home?’ Thomas asks me, returning to my side.
I know what he’s really asking me: can we go home. He doesn’t want to be here while I watch, I wait, I pounce.
I try to push Marie, Leo and Tia from my mind but they float up, stubbornly buoyant, breaking the surface of my thoughts.
‘I haven’t made my quota,’ I murmur. I shouldn’t be saying this to Thomas. The numbers are confidential.
‘Mama?’ Mimi says. I look down towards my daughter and let myself, for a moment, swim in her gaze. She is the reason, she is the only reason.
‘Not yet,’ I say to Thomas. Steel lines my voice.
I spot a mother and father who talk to each other animatedly while their son climbs the steps of the slide. His feet edge close to the drop of a stair, his hand reaches out for the bar clumsily.
I walk towards them with a purpose I do not feel, reaching into my pocket, gripping the ID I was given. The card is alien in my hand, the raised letters of OSIP embossed into its surface.
They spot me when I am just a few steps away.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to Jo Harwood, Sarah Mather, Katharine Carroll and everyone at Titan. Also thanks to Sam Matthews for fastidious copy-editing and Natasha MacKenzie for brilliant cover design.
For reading and always being encouraging, thank you Richard Ho-Yen, Celia Ho-Yen, Hanna Arnold and Alexa Weaver.
To Dan and Bee: thank you for just about everything.
This book simply would not be here without the unflagging support of two awe-inspiring women: my agent Clare Wallace and my editor Cath Trechman. Thank you for your excellent advice, patience and energy, every step of the way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Polly Ho-Yen was born in Northampton and brought up in Buckinghamshire. She studied English at Birmingham University before working in publishing for several years. She was then a primary school teacher in London and while she was teaching there used to get up very early in the morning and write stories. One of those stories turned into her first novel, Boy in the Tower. Boy in the Tower was published in July 2014 by Random House Children’s Publishers. It was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. Her second novel, Where Monsters Lie, was published in 2016 and her third novel, Fly Me Home, was published in 2017. Both of these novels were also nominated for the Carnegie Medal. She now writes full-time and lives in Bristol with her husband and daughter. Find her on Twitter @bookhorse.
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