She hurried to her bungalow to place the call. There was only one person she could think of who might be of help, who would be able to think clearly in this situation, and she rang his mobile.
Lynley said, “Yes? Barbara? Is that you?” over a tremendous roaring of noise and music in the background. Barbara felt a surge of gratitude and she said, “Sir, sir, yes. I need — ”
He said, “Barbara, I can’t actually hear you. I’m going to have to — ”
His voice was overwhelmed by the cheers of a crowd. Where in God’s name
He said as if in answer, “I’m at the exhibition centre. Earl’s Court…” More cheers and roaring and Lynley saying to someone, “Charlie, has she gone out of bounds? My God, the woman’s aggressive. Can you tell what’s happened?” Someone said something in reply and this was followed by Lynley’s laughter. Lynley laughing, Barbara realised, as she’d not heard him laugh since before last February, when it had seemed his laughter had died forever. He said into his mobile, “Roller derby, Barbara,” and she could barely hear him over the background noise although she managed to catch “…that woman from Cornwall” and she thought, Is he on a date? With a woman from Cornwall? What woman from Cornwall? And what is roller derby? And who is Charlie? Someone otherwise called Charlotte? He
She said, “Sir, sir…,” but it was hopeless.
Another roar from the crowd and he said to someone, “Is that a point?” and then to her, “Barbara, may I ring you back? I can’t hear a thing.”
She said, “Yes,” and she thought about texting him instead. But there he was in a moment of happiness and pleasure and how on earth could she tear him from it when the truth of the matter — as she bloody well knew despite her words to Azhar — was that there was nothing he could do? There was nothing anyone could do officially. Whatever happened next was going to have to happen in an extremely unofficial manner.
She ended the call. She stared at the phone. She thought of Hadiyyah. It had been only two years since Barbara had met her, but it did seem as if she’d known her the length of her very short life: a little dancing girl with flying plaits. It came to Barbara that Hadiyyah’s hair had been different the last few times she’d seen her and she wondered how much different it was going to become in the ensuing days.
How will she make you look? Barbara wondered. What will she tell you about your disguise? More, what will she tell you about where you’re going once it becomes clear there are no half siblings for you to meet at the end of your journey? And where will that journey take you? Into whose arms is your mother fleeing?
For this was the truth of the matter, and what could be done to stop it when Angelina Upman was only a mother who’d come to claim her child, a mother who’d returned from “Canada” or wherever she’d been with whomever she’d been with, who was, of course, the very same person to whom she was running, some bloke who’d been seduced by her, just like Azhar, just like all of them, seduced into waiting instead of believing…
She had to get back to Azhar, but Barbara began to pace. Every black cab in London, she thought. Every mini cab, and there were thousands. Every bus and after that the CCTV films from the Chalk Farm tube station. Then the railway stations. The Eurostar. After that the airports. Luton, Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow. Every hotel. Every B amp; B. Every flat and every hidey hole there was from the centre of London working out to the edges and then beyond. The Channel Islands. The Isle of Man. The inner and outer Hebrides. Europe itself. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal …
How long would it take to find a beautiful light-haired woman and her dark-haired little girl, a little girl who was going to want her father soon, who was going to manage — God in heaven, she
So do we wait for the call? Barbara asked herself. Do we set out to find her? Do we simply pray? Do we convince ourselves with any amount of lies that no harm is meant and no harm will be done because this is, after all, a mother who loves her child and who
God, how she wanted Lynley to be there. He would know what to do. He would know what to say. He would listen to the entire anguished tale and he would have the right words of hope to give to Azhar, the words she herself couldn’t muster because she hadn’t the skill. She hadn’t the heart. But still she had to do something, say something, find something, because if she didn’t, what sort of friend was she to a man in agony? And if she couldn’t find the words or develop a plan, was she in truth a friend at all?
It was nearly ten o’clock when Barbara finally went to her bungalow’s small bathroom. Lynley had not yet rung her back, but she knew he would. He would not fail her because DI Lynley did not fail people. That was not who he was. So he would ring as soon as he was able, and Barbara believed this — she clung to this — because she had to believe something and there was nothing else left to believe and she certainly didn’t believe in herself.
In the bathroom she turned on the shower and waited for the water to heat. She was shivering, not from the cold, for the electric fire had finally warmed the bungalow, but rather from something else far more insidious and more deeply felt than frigid temperature against one’s skin. She looked at herself in the mirror as the steam began to seep from the shower. She studied the person she had become at the behest of others. She thought of the steps that had to be taken to find Hadiyyah and to return the little girl to her father. The steps were many, but Barbara knew the first one.
She went to the kitchen for a pair of scissors, a nice sharp pair that sheared easily through the bones of chickens although she’d never used them for that or, as it happened, for anything else. But they were perfect for the need she had now.
She returned to the bathroom, where she shed her clothes.
She adjusted the temperature of the water.
She stepped into the shower.
There, she began to hack off her hair.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As an American writing a series set in the UK, I am continually in the debt of people in England who willingly help me in the early stages of my research. For this novel, I’m extremely grateful to the staff and owners of Gilpin Lodge in Cumbria who provided me a lovely safe haven from which to launch my exploration into the countryside that became the backdrop for this novel. The Queen’s Guide to the Sands — Cedric Robinson — was a generous and invaluable source of information on Morecambe Bay, having spent all of his life living on the bay and most of his life guiding people across its perilous expanse at low tide. Mr. Robinson’s wife Olive graciously welcomed me into their eight-hundred-year-old cottage and allowed me to pick her brains as well as those of her husband during my time in Cumbria. The ever resourceful Swati Gamble of Hodder and Stoughton once again proved that, armed with the Internet and a telephone, nothing is impossible for her.
In the United States, Bill Solberg and Stan Harris helped me in matters pertaining to lakeside life, and a chance encounter with Joanne Herman in the San Francisco greenroom of a Sunday morning talk show put me in possession of her book
I’m grateful for the support of my husband, Thomas McCabe, for the always cheerful presence of my personal assistant Charlene Coe, and for the readings of early drafts of this novel done by my longtime cold reader Susan
