The Hit List

by Holly Seddon

  ‘Mum,’ he says into my ear as he so carefully tugs at the zipper. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say softly, watching us both in the mirror and catching his eye.

  ‘You’re looking thin,’ he says. His thick knuckles brushing the knobbly vertebrae of my back as he seals me in.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, but it’s not a compliment. The dress, which I hadn’t been able to get into for years, is ill-fitting and loose.

  ‘Maybe it’s “the change” coming early,’ I say. But he’s a medical student and he can diagnose my bullshit. In place of anything better to say, I hug him tightly. ‘Remember,’ I tell him, just as I have since he was a tiny boy, skinny in his pyjamas, begging us not to go out, ‘I’ll always come back.’ I touch my forehead to his and try not to cry.

  *

  We arrive in Chobham late. There are no spaces near the restaurant so we have to park down the little high street, and walk back to the restaurant. I am taller than Steve in these heels, something that is no problem when sitting in a car or restaurant but makes me stand out when clattering up the road. I feel as if everyone is turning to stare. Steve is oblivious to my discomfort, stressing about being late, worrying about the present.

  ‘It’s a beautiful gift,’ I say gently. ‘Wouldn’t you love to receive it?’

  He stares dead ahead as if reading something, then I see his shoulders loosen and he slows his stride just a little. ‘I would, you’re right. Thank you.’

  Like all long-term relationships, we have gradually learnt each other’s language. What we need to hear and when, what we are really asking each other. We may not have the electricity of some marriages, but we have a shared shorthand that is our own armour.

  Jonathan and Paula are already seated when we walk in. From the angle of the foyer, they can’t see us yet and I watch as she snatches her hand from his, while he rolls his eyes just slightly and picks up his phone. She follows suit.

  They rise, all smiles, when we approach and there is the usual flurry of four-way kisses and back slaps. Paula looks drawn, and when we hug our clavicles clang into each other. I suspect her own thin frame is due to spinning classes rather than the morbid fear fired up by going on a one-woman crime spree.

  In the bathroom, we refresh our make-up together. She’s pink-cheeked from wine whereas I’ve been sipping water, happy to be a designated driver for Steve. It’s funny, he’s so cautious, so careful, but he lets me drive him around illegally and uninsured. Wilfully choosing to believe in the story we tell others.

  I watch in the mirror as Paula paints her smudged features back in place. She sharpens the line of her lips and straightens her hair. Her actions seem hypnotic, as if she’s in a trance.

  ‘You look lovely,’ I say.

  ‘Tell that to Jonathan,’ she mumbles. I don’t know how to respond and I watch in the mirror, drying my hands, as she flicks her eyes to me. ‘You’re lucky Steve is so devoted to you,’ she adds.

  ‘I’m very lucky,’ I say. On paper, she is far luckier than me and yet she’s one of the saddest people I know.

  ‘I don’t know how you’ve managed it,’ she says and I freeze. There’s something sharp in her tone, a drunken swing hidden in there, and I don’t want to get caught in the crossfire of whatever is actually pissing her off. Jonathan, I’m pretty sure.

  ‘Are you OK, Paula?’

  She smiles at me in the mirror. ‘Just ignore me,’ she says. ‘Too much to drink, I think.’

  Back at the table, conversations roll around business and Brexit, old jokes that are no longer funny and well-worn gripes about taxes and the government. I notice both Paula and Jonathan are trying a little too hard to seem happy. Both of them surreptitiously slip their phones into their laps a few times, tapping furiously. I suspect whatever argument they were having before we arrived is still rumbling on, relegated to below the table.

  I slip away to use the toilet again, glad when Paula doesn’t follow me.

  I haven’t dared look at my phone at the table, so now I check the other SIM while buying myself some peace. I have received a message through Whispa.

  Go back to Michael Sutherland’s house to collect another consignment.

  ‘When?’ I write back.

  Now.

  ‘I can’t, I’m out for dinner with family. I can’t just leave.’

  Collect it before midnight or your family won’t want to have dinner with you ever again.

  I stare at myself in the Ladies’ mirror, wipe away the make-up that’s slid under my eyes like bruises. I’m sweating all over my face and neck, and no amount of dabbing with paper towels stops it.

  You have no choice, I tell myself. So just get on with it. It’s a mantra that has carried me through my whole life but it’s getting very old now, and I’m so tired. Nevertheless I sigh, refresh my make-up as best I can and rush from the restrooms and straight into Jonathan. He’s leaning on the opposite wall, hidden from our table and smiling. I can tell from his glassy expression that he’s had way too much to drink. I worry which one of that couple plans to drive home.

  ‘Birthday kiss?’ he says, winking.

  I laugh it off and try to move past but he catches my arm. His smile has faded and he’s staring at me. ‘Please?’ he says. ‘Just one.’

  ‘Just one,’ I say, cringing as I think of what Paula said about devotion. ‘If you do something for me.’

  ‘What?’ he says, leaning in and brushing my lips with his. I kiss him back, eyes wide open and looking out for our respective partners. I don’t know if I feel worse for Paula or Steve. This is a moment I’ve thought about so often and now my secret feelings have been picked raw and transformed into a utilitarian step in a last-minute plan.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I say, as we pull away. ‘Please keep Steve occupied until at least midnight.’

  ‘Why?’ he frowns, but moves his head to kiss me again.

  ‘Just please,’ I say, unable to hide my desperation. He nods, looking worried, so I let him kiss me again.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I say, as I walk back towards the table to make my apologies.

  *

  ‘She’s out with her NCT group,’ Michael Sutherland says quietly as he opens the door. ‘It’s the only time I could do it.’

  I’m still wearing my red dress and it catches on the door frame as I go inside and grab the first boxes, already stacked to go in the living room.

  I realise as we load that I’ve forgotten to switch the registration plates over. Shit. Hopefully no one is keeping track.

  ‘Where did you get this stuff from?’ I ask, and he shushes me.

  ‘My daughter’s asleep,’ he hisses. ‘And you know where I got it from.’

  ‘I’m not one of them,’ I say, my voice catching in my throat. ‘They make me do this too.’

  He pauses, pulling the door closed as he steps outside with me, carrying the last of the boxes. ‘I work here,’ he points to the name on the box: Deaman Biomedical Supplies. ‘In fulfilment.’ He waits for a reaction. ‘The warehouse,’ he adds as it clicks into place.

  ‘What do they have over you?’

  ‘What do they have over you?’ he replies. Neither of us says anything else.

  He goes back inside to his sleeping daughter as I start the engine and tap on my phone.

  I have the boxes. I can deliver them tomorrow.

  The reply comes straight away: Deliver them to the Bluebell tonight.

  It’s ten thirty already but I’ve learnt there’s no room for negotiation. I head for the A21 as fast as I dare.

  *

  David Ross is waiting in the carpark when I arrive. He’s more baggy and dishevelled than before. His hair tufts out as if he’s been woken in a hurry. Perhaps he was.

  ‘Do you live at the hotel?’ I ask.

  He pulls a hand through his hair and nods, adding: ‘Would you like to see my room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I love your dress.’

  ‘I’m in a hurry
. The boxes are in my car.’

  There’s no need to point out which car it is, there’re only mine and David’s here. Business is clearly still slow.

  We walk to the side of the hotel and carry the boxes up a flight of metal stairs and in through a fire door. My heels are rubbing my feet and I take them off, leaving them on the staircase. I follow David barefoot down the hallway and load the boxes into the same room as last time.

  It takes twenty minutes to get everything out and when it’s done, I take a photograph to upload as proof. I’m about to dash back to my car, grabbing my shoes on the way, when David pushes the door closed with his fingertips.

  ‘Do you need to rush off?’ he says, standing between me and the door. Another man standing in my way. How tiresome. All I can focus on is the strip of hairy belly that peeps through his too-short rugby shirt every time he breathes.

  ‘Open the door,’ I say. He stands for a moment, studying the situation. I don’t have time for this stupid little man and I grab and twist his arm the way I was shown a long time back by my father.

  He jerks out of the way, rubbing his arm as I yank the door open.

  ‘Just a misunderstanding!’ he shouts as I slam the door and run down the main staircase and out into the night air.

  *

  On the M25, driving barefoot, I push my car to its limits as the clock ticks down. The tarmac rushes under my car like a great black river, too many miles of it in front of me still. I consider calling Jonathan, asking him to delay Steve even longer, but it’s too risky. Steve or Paula could easily see who is calling as Jonathan’s phone lights up. And it’s not fair to use his affections like this, especially on his birthday. I’m no better than ‘them’ if I do.

  Instead I press the pedal to the floor and don’t notice the speed camera until it flashes me.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I scream into the drive just before midnight. The house looms dark. Joe must be in bed and I hope to god that Steve isn’t home yet. I wince my way over the tiny stones and let myself in the back door, clawing at my zip as I creep up the stairs. A crumpled Cinderella.

  When I’m on the landing, I hear car tyres on gravel outside and rush into my room, diving under the covers just as the taxi drives away again.

  My heart thunders as I lie in the dark, still wearing my dress. Downstairs, Steve slams the front door and thumps up the stairs unsteadily. On the landing, I hear him hover outside my room.

  When I first moved in, we shared the same bedroom. I brought my little bag of belongings and asked for a drawer to keep things in. Steve opened up the big wardrobe, one half completely cleared already. I had almost nothing to put in it. We went shopping that day, me marvelling at the ease with which he paid for things. And that night, wearing the nightdress we’d both blushed at buying, we lay down together.

  I was younger than him, less experienced, but I was eager to please and desperate to make things work. Gradually it became harder for me to enthuse and harder for Steve to ignore that.

  Joe was a tricky sleeper and more often than not it made sense for me to sleep in his room, getting up to comfort him or give him milk, until he was far older than many toddlers to need such care. I miss those moments, him in the crook of my arm finally daring to close his eyes. The way his little lips parted as he eventually nodded off, the sweet smell of a warm and well-loved child under clean and soft covers. I was so proud to give him that.

  By the time Joe reached primary school, it was just easier for me and Steve to keep to separate beds. Ostensibly mine is another guest bedroom but all of my stuff is here and I’ve slept nowhere else for years. I wonder if Steve regrets this drift. If he asked to go back to how it was, I would agree. Of course I would. But he’s never broached it and if any visitors were to query it, his snoring and my restless insomnia are perfectly good excuses.

  My door creaks open now and I feel Steve step inside the room. Under their lids, my eyes dart around in fear. Is any of my dress showing? Can he tell I’ve just got back?

  The air changes while I try desperately to slow my breathing.

  ‘You awake?’ he says eventually, his voice muffled, his tongue thick with drink.

  I say nothing. He watches me for a while and then I hear the thud of his belt on the floor, a rustle as the shirt is tugged away from his barrel body.

  He climbs onto the bed and lies down next to me, one hand flopping across my chest then slipping off again. Seconds later, he’s snoring. I wait to be sure and then slip out from under the covers and pull off my dress, stuffing it on a chair in the corner. I tease my pyjamas out from under the pillow and then climb back in and wonder if he’ll wake up full of regret or intent.

  While he sleeps, I turn my phone screen away so I don’t wake him, then upload the photo from the Bluebell and send a confirmation message. I wonder if I should add an addendum, warn them about how flaky David Ross is. How loose with his intentions. I owe them nothing, but I’ve been tied into the same net as him and I don’t want to be pulled down.

  Five minutes pass, ten. In the end I send nothing more. The phone sits in my hand like a held breath, Steve groans and rolls over slowly. I reach across and stroke his shoulder in some kind of secret apology. I kissed his brother tonight, his best friend. I kissed his brother and then I didn’t even think about it again, because everything else I was doing was even worse.

  Greg

  Friday, 27 September 2019

  At Waterloo they meet like lovers, under the railway arches. In the time since he first offered her the money, Kenza has been sent to collect a parcel containing a syringe and preloaded credit card from some locker store, been told to draw her own blood and then leave it in another locker, using the credit card to seal it and then throwing it away. It all sounded absurd to him but she’d just got on with it. The tests were fine, apparently. And here she is.

  He hoped, somehow, that he would feel like a good guy today. Trying to ignore the vicious way he was forced into this; it is better that the girls work with him than some predator. Instead he feels like a monster.

  He buys tickets from the machine, avoiding human contact wherever possible. Kenza leans on the machine’s steel side, watches people streaming past. She makes eye contact with a man in his twenties with one of those long beards, shaved hair at the sides. He looks away, blushing. Those posters Hidden Humans and related organisations petitioned to get into train station toilets are coming back to haunt him.

  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

  No one is looking below the surface. No one is wondering whether Kenza wants to be here or not. And she’s not being trafficked, she’s not being shipped out to another country or locked up in a brothel. Not anymore. But nor has she arrived happy, excited for her adventure. She seems less sure now than when he first suggested this. He wants to ask her, ‘Have you changed your mind?’ but if the answer is yes, what will happen to him? He’ll lose his marriage and his job. He could go to prison.

  *

  The train rattles into Godstone station. It’s unmanned and they’re the only ones to alight. Kenza trails behind him up the steel staircase, over the tracks and down again. He looks back, fearful of her breaking away, but she’s used to this. Greg wonders how many similar journeys she’s been on with other men, men different to him in shades too close for comfort.

  ‘You remembered not to eat?’ he says to her. She nods. ‘Or drink?’

  ‘I didn’t drink anything.’

  The train is already a memory, the station has been swallowed up in silence again. They wait in the flimsy shelter and watch for a black car.

  *

  ‘I might as well tell you my real name,’ David Ross shrugs, after doing just that. ‘It’s easy enough to look it up.’

  ‘Hi, David,’ says Greg, lifting Kenza’s small carrier bag of neatly fo
lded clothes and a toothbrush into the boot of the Audi.

  Kenza says nothing.

  They turn from the quiet village road onto a narrow lane that surges up hills and around brambly bends. Kenza affects a look of passive disinterest but she worries at a loose thread on her cardigan until her fingers pick a hole. The car bumps up over a cattle grid and eventually comes to rest in the nearly empty carpark of the hotel.

  ‘We’ve only got a skeleton staff working today,’ David says as he ushers them out of the car. He lifts Kenza’s little bag from the boot and hands it to her. She takes it in silence as he points towards the side of the building, away from the main entrance.

  They pass a large Lexus as they round a small extension and start to climb a metal staircase. ‘Our grateful customer,’ David says, gesturing to the fancy car. It takes Greg until the top of the stairs to realise that David does not mean a customer of the hotel.

  ‘Will I meet him?’ Kenza asks, suddenly.

  David Ross shakes his head. ‘Her. And no. You’ll be asleep by then.’

  The small party walks briskly down a carpeted hall, bedrooms to the right of them, a view over Surrey countryside to the left. At the far end, David unlocks a door with a big brass key, no keycards here. Part of the charm, Greg supposes.

  Inside the room is a set of old-fashioned twin beds. They have been stripped of the fancy bedding Greg would expect, replaced with blue disposable bed sheets. Greg stares in alarm at the straps hanging from the bedposts.

  As the door is locked behind them, a man and woman in surgical scrubs stand up to attention. They all smile uneasily, like people waiting to be interviewed for the same job. The man and woman talk to Kenza about what will happen next. She doesn’t react to any of it, instead slides her bag onto the vanity table in the corner of the room.

  ‘I’ll just check on our guest next door,’ David says.

  ‘She’s been prepared,’ the woman says to him. ‘She just needs bringing in when the time is right.’

  *

  Greg waits on the made-up bed in an unused bedroom down the hall. He doesn’t dare turn on the boxy television set or make any other noise that could attract attention from the ‘skeleton staff’. Instead, he sits back against a nest of over-stuffed cushions and tries to get his phone connected to 3G. He’s done his bit, there should be an address and details waiting for him in his secret account, but he can’t get to it until he gets home.