by cass green
Angel looks at me expectantly and for a moment I’m baffled before realization sinks in.
‘I haven’t got the fucking key, have I?’ I say. I’m not the biggest swearer. Ian used to tease me about it a bit. Maybe it’s hanging around these two people all night, or maybe it is just this intolerable situation, but I want to use all the swear words I can think of now. The filthier the better.
‘Oh right, course.’ Angel rifles in her handbag and produces my keyring. It feels so surreal. Even after all these hours, I still can’t quite believe this is happening to me.
Inside, I’m mocked by the usually comforting smell of the house. I can’t name what makes it, but it is the unique scent of home and it makes my eyes sting with emotion. Looking at my watch I see that, incredibly, it is still only nine am. I picture Sam in the car on the way to the airport, looking anxiously out of the window as he contemplates the worries to come.
Lucas, I belatedly realize, is crying softly. He climbs the stairs, two at a time, and then the bathroom door slams shut.
‘What’s going on?’ I say. ‘I don’t understand. What’s wrong with him?’
Angel regards me for a moment and then shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘But we’re going to have to enjoy your hospitality for a little while longer.’
‘Great,’ I mutter as we go into the kitchen. ‘That’s just great. Come right in, make yourself at bloody home!’
‘Look, don’t get bitchy with me!’ snaps Angel. ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind, OK!’
‘I expect you have!’ I almost shout. ‘What with holding people hostage! You’re quite the busy bee!’
Angel mutters something and goes to the sink to fill the kettle again.
When she speaks, I don’t catch it at first.
‘What?’
‘I said, do you want some coffee?’
I sigh heavily. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I want all the coffee in the world.’ Then, ‘It’s in the cupboard above the sink.’
Angel reaches for the cafetiere that is drying on the draining board.
She looks beaten; shoulders hunched over, face drawn. Whatever happened in that car, Angel seems to have been weakened by it. All the spikiness and energy that has been there all night long has been replaced with a flat kind of tiredness.
She doesn’t want to be here either, is what I’m thinking.
That’s when I notice that Angel has left her large black handbag on one of the kitchen chairs, about a foot away from me, the top of it sagged and folded over. My senses prick up. Is the gun in there?
Heart thudding so hard it pulses in my throat, I carefully edge a little bit closer and then say, ‘I’m going to lay Zach on the bed upstairs. Is that alright? I can’t hold him any more and it might give us all some peace if we can just get him to have a proper sleep.’
‘Yeah, good idea,’ says Angel distractedly, yawning. As she pours the boiling water in the cafetiere, some splashes onto her hand, making her cry out.
‘You alright?’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘Run it under the tap.’ Better if I look like I care right now.
Angel murmurs something in response. She looks as though she might, in fact, be close to tears. But she obeys the command and turns on the tap, plunging her hand into the cold water with a wince.
‘Keep it there for a while.’ My knees are knocking together with my own audacity and just as Angel squints down at her wrist, frowning, I scoop the handbag over my arm and hurry out of the kitchen, my body pulsing as one giant heartbeat. It weighs a ton.
Forcing myself not to run, I climb the stairs, but I can’t stop myself from hurrying up the last two at the top, Zach heavy in my arms. Breathing hard, I see that Lucas has closed the door of Sam’s bedroom, so I go into mine. There is no lock on the door but I quietly close it, wincing at the rasp of wood on wool carpet, which is absurdly loud to my ears.
I lay Zach down on the bed and, evidently surprised by this change of scene, he looks around benignly, sucking on one of his fists.
Shaking so hard I seem to have lost all fine motor function, I tip the handbag out onto the bed, as quietly as I can.
Cigarettes, a lighter. A purse, a packet of tampons. Gum, tissues, a pair of knickers. A grubby flowered make-up bag and a hairbrush thick with black hairs.
No gun. No phone.
Bugger. With frantic hands, I go to the zippered compartment inside the bag. Fingers scrabbling in there, I touch cool metal straight away and, with a gasp of relief, pull out the small handgun. I stare down at it, terrified I might accidentally fire it at Zach, too scared to grasp it properly. It’s so much lighter than I always imagined a gun would be. It weighs hardly anything. Ridiculous that something so insubstantial can be so deadly. I don’t even know what to do with it. But it’s something.
The slow handclap sound from the bedroom door almost makes me drop the gun in shock.
Angel. Standing in the doorway, arms folded, expression unreadable once again.
Rising slowly to my feet, I force myself to point the gun at her, gently hooking my finger so it is over, but not touching, the trigger. I suspect there is some magical way I’m supposed to do to release it. But the important thing is that I have the gun in my hands.
I’m the one in control. Finally.
Angel is not looking worried though, or even angry. Instead, jewel-like tears are brimming over in her large eyes. This isn’t what I expected. I expected fury; a torrent of swearing and bitterness. Angel sniffs loudly and runs a finger under her nose, appearing to gather herself.
‘I suppose you think you’re clever now,’ she says thickly.
I stiffen my back and force myself to sound calm.
‘I just want you to go,’ I say, ‘you and Lucas. Leave here and let me get this baby back where he belongs.’
There is a long, long pause.
I can hear my heartbeat, snuffles coming from Zach on the bed and the all-familiar low hum of traffic from the main road.
Angel is perfectly still. Then her shoulders rise and fall with an exaggerated sigh.
‘Oh, Nina,’ she says quietly. ‘You don’t know anything, do you?’
My anger begins to rise again. It’s an intoxicating feeling, knowing I have a gun in my hand. I could shoot this home invader right now. No one would blame me. The thought then seems to curdle in my stomach. How could I even think something like that? What have these people done to me?
But I must pretend.
‘I don’t?’ I say, raising the gun a little higher, so it is trained directly on her forehead. Then I cry out, ‘Stay still! What are you doing?’
Angel is calmly walking towards me, hand outstretched for the gun.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she says. ‘It isn’t even a real gun.’
30
Lucas
The wedding announcement was in Hello! magazine, online, courtesy of a Google Alert for the name Nick Quinn. Now the book was no longer number one in the bestseller charts, the prompts came with a lower flow.
The piece said: The renowned war reporter Nick Quinn married dancer Alice Sommerton at the bride’s family’s local church in Chester on Saturday.
Quinn, the author of the bestselling book A Bitter Cosmic Joke: Stories from the Frontline, has been reporting from war zones for over twenty-five years for the BBC. Alice Sommerton is a rising star at the English National Ballet but an ankle injury has meant she has temporarily stopped dancing. The couple met at a garden party in Henley-on-Thames held by the theatre director Anthony Lowly and had what they call a ‘whirlwind romance’ before the small ceremony with family and a select number of friends.
Alice Sommerton beamed out at Lucas, her face a picture of innocent happiness. He had enlarged the picture and looked more closely. Large, blue eyes, dark hair coiled into an elegant bun and a wide, red-lipped smile.
Lucas had looked at her slim, pale neck and her delicate wrists and all he could imagine was what they would look like bent and blued with bruises.
It wasn’t
very difficult to find out where they lived.
Hello! magazine helpfully ran a spread of the couple’s new home ‘in a charming Hertfordshire village’ and then Lucas had studied Alice’s Twitter feed for clues about where she lived. He narrowed it down finally to a village called Mirestone and then all he’d had to do was hang around, watch and wait.
The house wasn’t as big as Lucas had imagined it. But it had still gone for over a million and a half pounds, according to the property website he’d researched.
It was red brick and three storeys high, fronted by a driveway and with a large garden at the back.
On the other side of the road from the house there was a little-used alley linking this road with the one parallel to it. It was a good spot to stand and watch the comings and goings across the way.
At first, the house was a constant hub of activity, with delivery vans from upmarket furniture shops and builders coming to and fro. Lucas noticed a woman who looked Middle Eastern who came in two or three times a week. She wore her dark brown hair in a tight ponytail and had nervous eyes. She would scurry into the house carrying a large bag over her shoulder and then emerge some time later. A cleaner, he realized after this pattern repeated a few times.
There was also a gardener, who came in a van a couple of times a week. Lucas managed to catch him one day as he was coming out of the house and asked if he had any work. The man, who was in his late fifties and called Bob, said he might need a bit of help. Lucas swiftly gave up his council job and found a bedsit in Redholt. And so it was that he found himself part of the household.
His careful watching had made him familiar with the rhythms of the house and he was easily able to avoid being there at the same time as Quinn. He always wore a blue beanie, pulled low over his distinctive black curls, just in case.
He got to know Nooria, the cleaner, who was almost monosyllabic. Not because her English was poor. If anything, it was rather good. But she was a shy person with a mousey demeanour who avoided eye contact when she brought out cold drinks to the garden as the days started to get warmer. Sometimes she brought her daughter to work, a happy little girl of about six.
Then Bob, a taciturn man, had a bereavement of some non-specified sort and Lucas was left in charge of the general gardening duties.
This was when he took to watching Alice as she practised in the upstairs room with the big window.
Watching, and waiting.
31
Nina
For a moment, it is hard to breathe.
Helplessly, I let her take it from my hand. Somehow, I know she’s telling the truth. She waves the gun about, a sneery look on her face.
‘It’s a replica. Not even a good one,’ she says. ‘I can’t really believe you even fell for it.’
I feel pure, hot rage now. It is all I can do to stop myself from slapping Angel across the face. But I’m better than her. Than them.
Instead, I sink back onto the bed and place a hand carefully on Zach’s tummy, grounding myself in something pure and good. Incredibly, he is asleep.
Struggling to control my voice, I say, ‘So you made me believe for all these hours that I was a prisoner? That you would shoot me? Just what exactly is wrong with you, Angel?’
Angel flinches, as though genuinely hurt by this comment.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know what the fuck to do, earlier! Lucas needed me and I just panicked. This belongs to my boyf … my ex-boyfriend, and I thought it might be useful. It was a joke thing a mate gave him. I was never really going to hurt you.’
When I stand up again she says, ‘Wait, what, what are you going to do?’
I scoop the sleeping baby up, wincing at his immediate whinny of protest. But this must be done. I’m not leaving him anywhere near her now.
‘I’m going downstairs and you’re going to give me my phone,’ I say in a confident, clear voice. ‘Then I’m going to ring the police. I know that you won’t deliberately hurt Zach now, and you have no gun. So how do you plan to keep me here?’
Angel reaches a hand towards me and I gaze down at it as though it is radioactive. She withdraws it again. Then she bursts into tears. The way people usually use that expression doesn’t do justice to how Angel cries. It’s like a storm. She seems to go from 0–60 in seconds; dry-eyed to tears literally dripping off her chin. It’s not an act, I’m sure of it.
‘Please,’ she begs. ‘Please just give me five minutes to explain. Then we’ll leave. Please Nina!’ When she sees the derisive expression on my face her voice skids into total panic. ‘I’m literally begging you!’
I look at her, this messed-up wreck of a girl, and feel nothing but disgust. I owe her nothing. But I find myself saying, ‘Five minutes. Then I’m ringing the police.’
On the landing, Angel peeks her head into Sam’s bedroom – Sam’s bedroom – where Lucas is, presumably, sleeping, then gently pulls the door over. I want to go in and shake the mattress until he falls off it. But something tells me this conversation might be easier without his presence. Not that I’m scared of him now. I’m not scared of either of them any more.
Downstairs, I walk decisively into the sitting room, finally in charge in my own home. Angel follows, somewhat meekly. The kitchen, once a place where I loved to spend time, feels unappealing. Maybe it’s been spoiled forever. All the happy family meals, the peaceful cups of coffee with a newspaper in the morning sunshine, all feel wiped out by this strange, horrible night.
In truth, I’ve mainly been crying and drinking there lately anyway. But I dismiss this unwelcome thought and lay Zach on the sofa, before sitting down. He has dropped off again. Thank God.
Angel takes the armchair opposite, sniffing and snuffling into her arm. Her hands are around her bony knees and she looks like a little girl who has been sent to the headteacher for a telling-off.
‘So, come on,’ I say and even to my own ears I sound exhausted. ‘Let’s hear your explanation.’ I deliberately drag the last two words out, sarcastically.
I mean, how could she ever begin to justify what they have done tonight?
32
Angel
A photograph on the mantelpiece is all she remembers of their father. A man with light brown eyes and raven-black hair that flopped disobediently over his face, sitting in some dusty, hot backdrop. A wide, slightly goofy smile. But even the picture is hazy now, because it disappeared, and they never saw it again. He was a cameraman, killed by a roadside bomb in Lebanon.
That was how Nick Quinn came into their lives. They were dear friends, so he said, when he came to visit Marianne, Angel and Lucas’s mother, a couple of years later.
The time Before was cuddling up on the sofa under duvets, watching movies and eating jam directly from the jar. It was having cartwheel competitions, their mother’s slim, strong legs chopping into the blue sky and her funny, high-pitched laugh. It was also, sometimes, days when she was there but not there, when they foraged for cornflakes directly from the box, or took money from her purse for fish and chips. Those days were far fewer than the happy ones though.
Everything changed when he entered their lives. Mealtimes became regular again and there was no more wandering about the garden without shoes, or staying in your pyjamas all day if you felt like it. There were good things too, at first. Gifts started to magically appear in the house: the new television, the Tamagotchis, the MiniDisc players. It felt like Christmas every day for a while. Quinn didn’t speak to her and Lucas directly that much, but would stand there with a slight smile on his face while they fell upon the presents with glee.
Then she and Lucas were sent off to Scotland to holiday with Granny and Grandad and, when they came back, they were told their mother was now called Mrs Nick Quinn. Marianne had shyly shown off the gold wedding ring and Lucas had squealed and been all stupid about it. But Angel remembers how cheated she felt, robbed of the chance to wear a pretty bridesmaid dress and lord it over her friends at school. She was so cross she hadn’t spoken to her
mother for a whole day afterwards. Quinn seemed to think her hot, fierce will was funny.
But not for long.
Angel had always been aware that Marianne wasn’t like other mothers. It wasn’t just that they could call her by her name, but something about the way others reacted to her. She didn’t blend.
The way she thought of it was like this: Lucas had one of those Mega Magnet toys when he was tiny. He’d scoop up paperclips from a table until the whole thing bristled like a metallic hedgehog. Angel thought, when they had parents’ evenings at school, or they were occasionally invited to a local party, that people’s gazes did that with her mother. Stuck to her and couldn’t be shaken free. There was something hungry about it that she didn’t like. She sometimes used to imagine a wolf coming along and eating her up when she was little.
In a way, isn’t that what happened?
That hungry look was magnified twenty times in Quinn, who, at first, they called Nick. Angel used to look at how he watched Marianne moving through the room, eyes greedy, and it made her feel funny inside. One day, early on, he had grasped Marianne by the leg as she walked past the chair where he was sitting and had slid his hand right up under her skirt. Just like that. Angel’s face had burned furiously. She wanted to hit both of them for it; but her mother only laughed in that too-bright, sharp way she had sometimes and gently moved away.
She had changed, after they came back from their wedding. There was something brittle about her now. All her softness that made cuddling into her so good was disappearing into angles and planes. She’d heard Quinn say she was fat and now she didn’t seem to like eating crisps or cake any more. There were no more multipacks of Monster Munch in the house. No more Coco Pops.
The first time they saw Quinn hit her, Angel had been too shocked to react. They had been eating dinner. It was Angel who started it. (It was always Angel who started it.) She had been complaining about her meal – just low-level whining after a tiring day – and Quinn shouted, telling her she was a little brat who needed discipline. Marianne had begun to defend her, saying it was no big deal and she could leave the broccoli, or peas, or whatever it was on her plate. His hand had moved so quickly that for a moment Angel wasn’t sure it had happened. Then Lucas began to wail as the red mark flowered on Marianne’s cheek and she knew it was all real.
