by Rennie Airth
What to do with the proper one now, though? That was the question she had to decide. Give it back to the Russians? No way. They wouldn’t thank her for it, those crooks. They might even decide she knew too much and she’d wind up as another fucking side effect.
According to Uncle Matt, Rose had gone along with the idea of stealing the money; it was the killing she couldn’t stomach. But he could as easily have been lying and would have done so without compunction. Addy preferred to think he’d told Rose the stick held something of value other than money, something important to their country perhaps. She must have known that he’d worked for the CIA and maybe thought he still did. Maybe she’d only discovered the truth about him later – after the plane crash he was supposed to have died in – and had played the stick on her MacBook and found out what was really on it. It was more comforting to think of her that way, but it was also wishful thinking, and the truth was, when it came to money, you couldn’t be sure how people would behave. Addy knew it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that when Rose planned to join her in New York – she’d booked her flight after all – she was going to tell her they were rich. All they had to do was lie low for a while and wait for the right moment to cash in. Or maybe she had realized that the Russians would always be on her trail once they had figured things out and just wanted to say goodbye to Addy before she tried disappearing herself.
But what to do with the stick?
Maybe she should just keep it, Addy thought, put it somewhere safe and give herself time to decide what to do with it. The idea was enticing, but that was the problem: it was too seductive. It was a way of hanging on to the stick for now while telling herself she would just put it away and make sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. But she knew she was kidding. It wouldn’t work that way. The longer she had it in her possession, the more it would eat away at her – the thought of the money. It was like that ring in the book that she and Rose had read together when she was a child, the Tolkien epic. It would wind up devouring her.
So in the end it came down to what you really wanted in life, and if it was money then the solution to her dilemma was clear enough. She should just keep it, put it away for a year or two and then take her time figuring out the best way to extract the loot from it. Or sell it to someone else maybe – that was an idea – some big-time billionaire who would know how to deal with the problem in such a way that the Russians wouldn’t be tipped off, while paying her a nice fat finder’s fee.
And then she could join them, the ones who lived in that other world far above the struggling mass of humanity, who were going to get fried anyway if global warming turned out to be true, or maybe drowned when the oceans rose. The ones who stayed safe in their palatial homes (their four or five palatial homes), untouched by the pain and misery that seemed the lot of a good percentage of the planet’s population. The ones who wouldn’t know a day’s hunger or a sleepless night spent figuring out how to pay the rent, who would just sail on regardless.
Yes, she could be one of them – and why not? It was a tempting thought.
Addy thrust her hand out over the fast-flowing river – quick, before you change your mind – and dropped the stick into the muddy water just a few feet below. It vanished in a moment.
‘Oh, Rose …’
It was all she could think of to say.
She was in no hurry walking back. Though free of the burden she had just shed, there was still a lot she had to think about, and they were not questions that could be settled in a moment. More had happened to her in the past few days than in the rest of her life put together, and it was hard to believe she was still the same person who had trudged through the snow only a week ago toting her bags and searching for Rose’s address. Yet she was the same girl, just a thousand years older.
She had learned things about Rose she never would have thought possible, and if she had put her on a pedestal before, she had only herself to blame. The person she had loved above all else was the same woman who had fallen for a man devoid of any moral sense and, for better or worse, Rose had cast her lot in with him almost to the bitter end. If there was anything to learn from it, it was that love made its own rules, and the same was true of Hideki Kimura who had risked all for love and, when love was gone, had let himself bleed to death rather than let his life go on. And if it came to that, she could apply the same lesson to herself because in spite of all she knew about her now, she loved Rose as much as ever and always would.
Yes, and there were other darker things she had learned and they were about herself. She had watched a man die in savage circumstances and no matter how great her shock at the time, so far from experiencing any regret at the part she had played in Uncle Matt’s death, she felt only a fierce satisfaction. It was no more than the bastard had deserved. But what that said about her was something she hadn’t yet come to terms with and would have to one day.
What Addy felt as she made her slow way back up the river was that somewhere inside her was a great lump of experience which, like a rock brought back from the moon or some asteroid, she would have to examine grain by grain until all its secrets were revealed. She would have to carry them through her life – her dark secrets – along with a sense of loss and bereavement that would always be a part of her now: a part that might also serve to turn her into the kind of actor she hoped to be one day. Though nothing was certain, she could see herself one day in a darkened theatre holding an audience rapt. Yes, in the palm of her hand, and they would be following every word that came from her mouth, every gesture she made, all held captive in the moment, all wondering where this knowledge she seemed to possess, this understanding of the human heart and of the pain that love could bring in its wake had its source. From what depths had it been drawn; where had she learned it?
And they would never know.
But all that lay way in the future, years ahead, and meantime there was life to be lived.
The Anchor was just ahead of her now and she saw he was still there, sitting where she left him, and she paused for a moment to watch as he scanned his phone, pushing his forelock back in an unconscious gesture.
Cute. Definitely cute.
As she stepped on to the terrace and came over to the table, he looked up with a smile.
Addy cocked an eye at him.
‘So how about this pizza?’
