Cora delved to the ground. The repeat sound of her voicemail announcing she had a message had stopped. She crawled towards the coffee table. The only piece of furniture that had not been toppled down.
She fumbled around desperately, pushing aside cushions, blankets and broken pottery. Her phone had slid underneath the overturned settee. She stretched out her arm to reach it, extending her fingers as far as she could. She felt the tactile cover of the mobile under the tips of her fingers, and clawed it slowly towards her until she could grasp it.
As she looked at the screen in her hand, the picture of herself with Ollie filled the screen. Two grinning faces looked straight at the camera with a now unbearable display of happiness. She choked back a sob as she checked who had called her last. She didn’t recognise the number and almost pressed the recall button, but a muffled sound stopped her dead.
Cora half stood up, creeping as low as she could to avoid being seen from the window. She grimaced at the debris of her favourite vase crushing under her feet. She climbed the open staircase, ignoring the pain in her foot. Someone was coming. Her phone rang again. She killed the call immediately and cursed.
Now, whoever was calling her knew she had the phone and was in the flat. She dashed across the mezzanine and opened a side window overlooking the backyard. She yanked the window fully open, slamming the upper part against the frame as she did so. She was about to step onto the ledge when a voice called her name.
He was inside the flat already.
Cora’s mind focused … she breathed in deeply. She was a Chinese woman from Hong Kong. She was an artist … she knew what a government could do to those who expressed dissent and she knew the sort of people they used to carry out their orders.
Cora ignored the 30ft drop and stepped into darkness.
* * *
The box file still lay open on the coffee table. Nancy stopped in the middle of the lounge. She had not expected to be entertaining Pole that evening. Papers and photographs were arranged in neat piles, covering the glass of the table almost completely. They extended to one armchair and invaded the couch.
She walked over to the organised mess, lifted a few pages and stopped. Pole knew what these documents were. He had even sourced a large number of them for her.
Nancy re-organised the stacks, one on top of the other cross-wise to preserve their categories:
Time spent with family in China
Family in Paris
Father returning to China
Nancy lingered over a picture and smiled. For a very long time, that picture had remained hidden in the small file Nancy had kept about her family’s history. But the pressing desire to reconnect with the past, to find out what happened in China more than 30 years ago, had forced her to pull it out of its faded envelope.
The black and white photo had turned a pale shade of yellow. A young man in his early 30s, sporting an elegant three-piece suit and a mandarin collar shirt. A young woman with long dark hair flowing freely over her shoulders, wearing a short dress with broad stripes of what Nancy recalled were vibrant colours.
They are smiling, not at the camera but at each other. He has wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulders and her hands rest in turn on the shoulders of a little girl called Nancy. Unlike her parents, Nancy is looking straight at the camera with a toothy grin. She seems to like the attention, or perhaps the person taking the picture is making her laugh.
Nancy can’t recall the moment although she can remember her mother’s dress. By then her parents had already left China as the Cultural Revolution of 1966 was taking hold. They had arrived in Paris after months of travelling through the Chinese countryside, escaping the communist regime, before reaching Hong Kong and finally France.
Nancy sighed heavily, glad that the pain of remembering had become more bearable. Pole was now there to help carry the burden. With care, she replaced the photo on the top of the appropriate pile. She should get it framed. It had been a moment of joy she had let unfold again in her memory. Why keep pushing it away?
The ring of the doorbell told Nancy the takeaway delivery had arrived. She moved to the intercom, pushed the front door release button. “I’ll be down in a moment.”
She scooped up her door keys and mobile from the coffee table, making her way downstairs. The lift door opened. The security guard was reading his paper. As she stepped forward into the spacious hallway, she looked around. There was no one there.
Perspiration is running down her spine and yet she is shivering. Cora has reached the roof of her building in a perilous ascent, along a ledge that is barely 1ft wide. She continues along the pipes that are running along the building’s façade, a remnant of its original industrial purpose.
She’s glad she and Ollie insisted on preserving these otherwise redundant features … it will look just like the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
She almost slips twice but every time her athletic body regains its balance and holds her in place. The roof is flat. She crouches down as soon as she reaches the top, listening for sounds of movement.
Apart from the rumbling noise of London in the distance, she can hear activity concentrated at the front of the building. She rises and, slightly bent forward, dashes to the other side of the roof to reach the external fire staircase. This too is a feature that Ollie and she had insisted be preserved. It is difficult to spot from the front of the building as it leads into the backyard.
She risks a peek over the wall before she starts her descent. Once she’s on her way down there won’t be any escape if
