The Hit List

by Holly Seddon

  The man starts again. ‘We’ve got a skeleton staff now, and—’

  ‘Everyone else has left! I need my wages.’

  I reopen the front door and shut it loudly. The woman comes out of the office with a tired smile. She’s elegant, top to toe in black, and tiny. Her hair is whipped up into a chignon, the kind I could never master and have often paid someone else to do.

  ‘Can I help you, madam?’

  ‘I’m here to see David Ross,’ I say. At this, a man in his forties bounds out of the office and the woman sits down at the computer and closes the card game.

  ‘David Ross,’ he says, thrusting a hand at me. He’s good-looking in a dishevelled way but there’s something off about him. As I shake his hand, one of his fingers caresses my palm and I pull back in shock. He looks me up and down, smirking. ‘You have the delivery?’ he asks.

  Greg

  Monday, 22 July 2019

  ‘And lastly,’ Greg asks the pale and nervous girl curling in on herself in the chair opposite him, ‘do you know your blood type?’

  She nods, unquestioning. ‘I think it’s A negative,’ she says, so quiet he can barely catch it. He writes it in his notebook next to her name and date of birth. The form he has filled in, the one all new sign-ups at the charity have to answer, will be filed with the rest. The extra details that he’s jotted in his notepad will not.

  *

  That night, he uploads the details of potential girls that he has collected so far.

  Why are there still so few?

  The quiet of his flat is not helping. The air coming through the window is thick with heat, the sweet, sickly smell of traffic and cigarette smoke, weed and warm beer. Summer in the city. While he tries to think of a new way to reply to this now familiar question, he puts on a record. Leonard Cohen suits his mood.

  The Hacker Supermarket people never believe him but the only answer he has is the truth. ‘I can only ask the ones that speak English for their blood type, otherwise they’ll have an interpreter in the room as well.’

  None of these are B positive. We need B positive for the first scheduled client.

  He closes his eyes and grits his teeth before replying. ‘But I can’t help that. I’m only telling you what they tell me.’

  The street door downstairs slams, rattling the front of the building. By the time Marianne gets inside the flat, Greg is measuring out flour to make pastry. His wedding ring on the windowsill, glinting in the evening sunlight. ‘Not long now,’ he calls out as she sighs, dumping her heavy bag on the floor. Just a few weeks left of the term, his wife is always bloodied and limping at this point. Teachers live in reverse hibernation: Marianne breaks herself into tiny pieces for the kids all year, then spends summer sleeping and putting herself back together.

  She kisses his shoulder and rests her head on his back as he starts to cube butter. ‘I love you,’ he says, trying to twist his neck to see her, but she’s clamped on tightly.

  ‘Always,’ she murmurs, into the damp dip between his shoulders. ‘But isn’t it a bit hot for pie night?’

  ‘It’s never too hot for pie night.’ He thinks again of the postcards. ‘I just really want to do something nice and something …’ What? Something that doesn’t involve you flirting with teenagers and me … he can’t finish that thought. ‘Something normal,’ he says and she murmurs agreement, holding on even tighter.

  *

  Thursday, 29 August 2019

  ‘And lastly, Kenza, do you know your blood type?’

  ‘B positive,’ she says. He gets up slowly and walks to the door, closing it quietly. She sits rigid, staring at him.

  He swallows, cracks his knuckles, then speaks quietly.

  ‘Kenza, have you ever been offered money in exchange for …’ He falters. Her eyes watch him, expectantly, but she says nothing. ‘For parts of your body?’

  She frowns and looks down at her chest and stomach as she sits uneasily in the yellow room. ‘For having sex?’ she says, finally. A matter-of-fact question spoken with a trembling voice. He shakes his head and she breathes out, relieved.

  ‘No, not that. But, say, parts of your body that you could … that you could donate. Organs, like your kidneys, where you could live healthily with just one.’

  ‘No one has offered me money for that.’ She sits up.

  ‘If they did,’ Greg says, so quietly she leans forward to hear, ‘would you have been interested?’

  ‘Is this a test?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Would I be healthy afterwards?’

  He nods.

  ‘How much money?’

  He writes it down on the pad in front of him. When he looks up she is watching him expectantly, a light in her eyes that wasn’t there before. ‘If that was a real offer,’ she says, ‘I would take it.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Most definitely.’

  He swallows again, feels his throat constrict as if trying to stop the words getting out. Stopping him taking this next step. But he has to.

  ‘The offer is real, Kenza.’

  Samantha

  Friday, 2 August 2019

  I thought about cancelling my brunch with Paula but the more out of character I act, the closer people will look at me.

  She’s already seated when I get to the coffee shop, sitting straight as true north, blowing on her coffee. I notice that while her face is as smooth as it ever was, her hands look wrinkled and claw-like. I sometimes forget our age gap but it’s twisting its fingers in front of me right now.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ Paula says quietly as she stands to kiss me hello.

  She smells of citrus and peonies and wears a cashmere cardigan even in this heat. Whatever the weather, she is always herself. I’m envious of such self-possession.

  I tug up my metaphorical mask and plaster on a smile as we hug and sit.

  The coffee shop is filled with women like us. This is our domain, both the place and the time. Late morning on a Friday, when the world works, we sit. We feel our way with small talk about the traffic, building up to proper conversation like fighters, pacing the ring.

  The hum of background chat is punctuated by the iron clangs of the coffee machine, the calls of baristas, working like machines for minimum wage. I wonder where they sleep, whether they have proper contracts.

  ‘Flat white!’

  ‘Matcha latte!’

  Paula cuts me off as I’m about to gossip pointlessly about the ‘orangery’ that our neighbours are building.

  ‘Samantha, I have to ask,’ Paula says. My stomach drops as she pauses and looks me up and down. ‘Are you pregnant?’

  I laugh before I can stop myself. Of all the things she could have asked.

  ‘Shall I take that as a no?’ Her brown eyes bore into mine. She’s not laughing.

  ‘It’s a definite no,’ I say, smiling, giddy in my relief that she’s so far off the mark.

  ‘It’s not impossible at your age,’ she says, looking chastened.

  ‘Oh no, I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you for asking. I’m just taken aback.’

  ‘You looked so peaky the other night and with empty nest syndrome on the horizon …’

  ‘Joe will be at home for years to come,’ I say, a little too quickly. ‘Hopefully.’

  She looks at me again, head tilting like she’s trying to read something just under my skin. ‘You never wanted another?’

  I shake my head. I always said I didn’t want any children but I don’t tell her that. I tell her another truth instead. ‘I just love him so much,’ I say. ‘I feel really lucky to have him and that’s enough for me.’

  She nods and takes a sip of her coffee, swallowing hard. For a moment we say nothing and a swell of guilt grows in my gut. My luck is inversely proportional to hers. What I gained, she lost. I’m about to apologise when she starts to speak.

  ‘When I had Heidi, I didn’t want any more children because I loved her so much too.’ For a moment I think that’s it, but she
leans forward and settles her cup on the saucer. ‘But if I had had more children, they might have been a match for her.’ She exhales and dusts invisible crumbs from her lap. ‘And while she was being treated, I started to imagine them.’ She smiles as I struggle to understand. ‘The other children, Samantha. I started to imagine the children I was so stupid, so wicked, to disregard. I even suggested to Andy, my first husband – I’m sure you know about him – I suggested that we have another baby. He was … well, it made things worse. Heidi was in a desperate state, she couldn’t have waited that long anyway.’ She sighs and I look away. ‘Of course, I wasn’t being logical by then.’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ I managed to splutter. I have imagined, and it turns my heart to ashes.

  Paula looks into the distance. Wherever she is, she’s not here in the coffee shop with me. Perhaps she’s back in the children’s ward with Heidi, or arguing with her first husband. Perhaps she’s thinking of my Joe, the extra years he has had that Paula’s daughter never got to see.

  ‘I never forgot those children, Samantha. I thought of them, I think of them, alongside Heidi as if I lost them all. And I miss them too, somehow. I spent so many years trying to will them into existence. Jonathan will tell you, it was all I thought about for a long time.’

  I don’t know what to say. She’s never spoken this openly before and I don’t want to frighten her, even though it’s almost unbearable to hear.

  ‘I really hoped that Jonathan and I would have a different kind of luck to me and Andy,’ she says, so quietly I have to lean towards her. ‘But we didn’t.’

  She smiles, her eyes glassy.

  ‘I know I’m incredibly lucky,’ I say. ‘And I’m so sorry you didn’t get to have any more children.’

  I want to say it’s never too late but I know it is.

  ‘You really don’t think you would have another?’ she says softly. I shake my head. I’m too old, too exhausted, too haunted. ‘Well, if you ever even think of it, just go for it. That’s my advice. You never know when all your chances will suddenly dry up and your luck will run out before you even knew you were lucky.’

  She holds my gaze until I look down. ‘And I’d love to be an aunty again,’ she laughs.

  *

  Monday, 2 September 2019

  About three weeks ago I arrived at yet another E-Z Luggage & Lockers. A different teenager ignored me as I opened the long, thin locker to retrieve the parcel. It was wrapped tightly with brown paper and tied with string. It was heavier than it looked, tricky to carry, and when I got outside with it, it slipped from my hands. I just about managed to stop it hitting the floor, but the paper had torn and inside I could see that it was a carrying case. I rushed to the toilets tucked near the concourse at Waterloo but a poster ground me to the spot.

  LOOK below the surface – does he or she want to be here?

  ASK the right questions – offer opportunities to speak alone

  CALL if you suspect someone could be a victim of trafficking

  I thought, of course, of my old friend Cristina. I didn’t know her exact route into the UK, but I know she didn’t leave her home out of choice. Unlike me, who ran, she was dragged. She was the only person I ever told about what happened before I left. She knew about my family, about the way my dad had prepared me to defend my mother. She knew what happened when that moment came, how I’d let everyone down. She knew I could never return.

  The package in Waterloo grew heavy in my arms but I moved slowly. In the furthest toilet cubicle, I carefully laid the paper on the floor, placed the case on top and opened it.

  I should not have opened it.

  I doubt it means anything legally but morally, personally, I found it so much easier to square this ‘job’ when I was bathed in ignorance.

  But that day, kneeling on the floor in a Waterloo Ladies cubicle, I was confronted by the reality of what I was doing.

  That day, I could not claim any ignorance, as a polished shotgun shone up at me. A sight I hadn’t seen since my much younger days, one I hoped to never see again. With slippery hands, I fumbled the case closed and wrapped it carefully again. Then I propped it next to the sink as I washed my hands, over and over again.

  The next instructions arrived on my phone as I dried each finger carefully.

  Two hours later I had collected a case of bullets from a short, squat locker at King’s Cross and delivered everything to a third locker on the fraying fringes of Stansted.

  But something had changed. Some tiny little tear, not much more than a paper cut, had divided how I used to be with how I was now. I could no longer choose ignorance and denial, so I chose knowledge and self-protection. With every assignment since then, I have unpeeled each coating, checked every detail, done my own research. When I look back at how I operated just a few months ago I am astonished I’m still here, walking around. To act as if I’m merely a benign courier, when I could have been carrying things that would set off alarms. Or blow me to scraps. Or harm people, children, standing nearby.

  I check every detail these days and I leave nothing to chance. This isn’t a new way to live for me, more a life that was lying dormant. I can’t remember how old I was when my dad first sat me down and told me what I might need to do. ‘Your mother doesn’t have it in her, but you do.’ I was maybe eight, maybe ten. He seemed to read the future more acutely, and earlier, than the other fathers. ‘They’ll come for me first,’ he’d said, matter of factly. ‘So it will fall to you to protect your mother.’ He was right.

  *

  Steve noticed my agitation the day after that trip to Waterloo, asking over breakfast: ‘You seem on high alert all the time, are you OK?’

  I smiled as warmly as I could manage and touched his arm when I said, ‘I’m fine, don’t worry.’

  ‘Is there something I should know?’ he asked, moving away just slightly so the contact was broken.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ he said, looking down. Emotionally charged conversations are torture for him.

  Could he have found out? Could he have read my emails? Could he have seen something in my behaviour and picked at that scab? I stared back while my brain turned cartwheels.

  ‘Have you met someone else, Samantha?’

  I laughed with relief. ‘Oh my god, no! No, I promise.’ He hadn’t returned the laughter, looking into my eyes instead and holding my gaze until his own turned watery.

  ‘Please don’t hurt us,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I never, ever want to hurt you,’ I said. My laughter had gone and my throat grew thick as he stood and left the kitchen.

  Since Waterloo, there have been no more guns, trips to hotels or shopping lists. Instead, for the last five or so weeks my work has involved collecting stacks of prescriptions in neat unmarked envelopes. Along with each package, I receive a separate envelope furnishing me with a fake ID. This ID is far better than the papers I ‘bought’ years ago. Papers, long lost, that I was nevertheless still paying for when I met Steve.

  These are so convincing, I consider getting them to produce something for me as Samantha Redfern, but the idea of asking them for anything sickens me.

  While they provide various fake IDs, the backstories and the itineraries are mine to decide as I navigate non-chain pharmacies to collect sheafs of Xanax pills, oxytocin sprays and tubes of Ritalin. And other drugs I’ve never heard of before – steroids and immunosuppressants.

  My latest identity is Jane Douglas. I’m forty-two and take Ritalin for adult ADD, only diagnosed in my thirties. Or I take oxytocin spray for extreme anxiety brought about by PTSD from my time in the armed forces. Or I take Xanax for chronic insomnia. Or I take immunosuppressants following an organ transplant. I’m lucky to be alive.

  I’m no stranger to building a backstory and acting a role, but I’ve never enjoyed it. When I first arrived in London, I painted a picture that was as far as could be from the truth. But that only made the lie more obvious. The trick, I learnt from Cr
istina, was to stay as close to the truth as possible. Which was how I came to tell her my whole truth. When I got to the worst of it, she gripped my hand. ‘Don’t ever tell anyone that last part.’

  So when I first met Steve, I told him the broad strokes of where I lived, where I came from and why. It was close to the truth but the lies were buried in the details.

  It’s Jonathan’s birthday today and he’s turning fifty-four. The four of us are meeting for dinner tonight as we always do on the brothers’ birthdays. Jonathan often mentions golf buddies and friends from ‘the club’, meaning the tennis club he and Paula are members of, and yet he and Steve still gravitate to each other. In all these years, I’ve never met any of Jonathan’s friends. I wonder if he really has time to see them; he rarely talks of anything except business. He’s CEO of a company that does something technical for finance companies but is so boring I’ve stopped asking.

  Steve doesn’t have friends, I know that much. Friendships, relationships of all kinds actually, are a labyrinthine challenge for him. From early on he found them punishing and dangerous, so now he controls the maze himself. Letting only a few of us into his heart and guarding us with his life.

  As a result of their close quarters, the brothers – ‘the boys’ as Paula calls them, though she herself is in her late fifties – exist in a frozen state of childhood. Best friends but bitter rivals. Events like birthdays seem to take the rivalry up a notch. Both of them vibrating at a higher frequency. Gifts ever more lavish, dinners finer and finer.

  Whatever wine we all decide on, Steve will panic and call the waiter back to ask for a more expensive one instead. He will insist we all have dessert regardless of how full we are, how ready for bed. Desperate for everyone to be happy, he will strong-arm us in lieu of knowing how to make it happen naturally. And he’ll realise he’s doing it but not be able to stop.

  It is as well worn as the ruby red dress I ask Joe to zip me into, as I stand in front of the landing mirror and wince at how spindly I’ve become.