by Kate Johnson
‘Can you get the pilot to find out? Radio down?’
‘No, I’m afraid we can’t do that, sir.’ Her smile had flattened into a grim line now.
Luke got out his phone and switched it on.
‘Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to switch that off.’
‘No.’
‘Sir, airline regulations prohibit –’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Please give me that phone.’
‘No.’
She snatched it from his hand, and Luke lunged after it, shoving her back against the opposite seat.
The nearby passengers gasped.
The stewardess righted herself, glared at Luke, and said, ‘I’ll have the police waiting for you when we land.’
Luke opened his mouth to tell her to go ahead, but if he had to go through the whole being-arrested thing he’d never get to find out anything about Sophie. He had no ID on him to prove he was an intelligence officer. Nothing to keep him from being shoved into the system while the woman he loved lay rotting in a Maine mortuary.
He raised his one free hand. ‘All right. Fine. I’m sorry. I’m going through a little bit of stress right now. I’ve been shot, I’ve been beaten up, and there’s a strong possibility my girlfriend’s dead. Now, can I have my phone back?’
The vindictive bitch glowered at him. ‘No,’ she said.
The cabin crew all glared at him as he got off the plane. Luke didn’t care. He switched on his phone but the bastard battery had gone dead again. None of the TVs he passed in the terminal were showing the news. It wasn’t shown on any of the papers. Sophie was the most important thing in the world, and the world didn’t care.
He made it to the car, fell inside, and fumbled for the phone charger plugged into the dash. Waited the agonising interval for it to find a signal. Dialled Sophie again.
Nothing.
Harvey. Nothing.
His fists slammed against the steering wheel, again and again, the car rocking with his frustration. Tears burned his eyes. Spilled over his cheeks. Sophie. Oh God, Sophie.
She lay soft and warm in his arms, the two of them listening to the music drifting up from the ballroom. The band was playing something slushy, and as the faint sounds drifted up he found himself straining to hear the words. Romantic, melodramatic words, which nonetheless fit his mood perfectly.
‘Reckon Angel and Harvey have taken their eyes off each other yet?’ Sophie asked drowsily.
‘Probably not. Has she been making googly eyes at him all day?’
‘Yes, but I figure if you can’t make googly eyes at your husband on your wedding day, when can you?’
‘Never,’ Luke said. ‘You ever go googly-eyed on me, I’m leaving you.’
She punched his shoulder. ‘Liar.’
He smiled and stroked his hand down her back. Her skin was hot, damp with sweat, her body draped luxuriously over his. He quite literally couldn’t remember ever being so happy. He barely wanted to move, in case he broke the spell and the perfection ended.
Sophie wriggled a little closer, her lips brushing his jaw. She didn’t seem to mind he was about twelve hours past a five o’clock shadow.
‘Did you miss me?’ she asked. ‘While you were out in Saudi?’
‘Stop fishing for compliments. You know I did.’
‘I missed you,’ she said quietly. ‘I mean, really missed you. I was frightened you’d …’
‘I’d what?’
‘Forget me,’ she mumbled, her head buried against his neck.
‘Sophie, believe me, you’ll be burned into my memory until the day I die,’ he said. ‘I love you, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
At that her head came up, her eyes bright with surprise. ‘Then you have stayed me in a happy hour, for I was about to protest I love you,’ she said.
He stared incredulously. ‘You’re quoting Shakespeare at a time like this?’
‘He says it better than I could.’ She cupped his jaw in one hand and kissed him softly, tenderly. ‘I love you, Luke. I really do.’
‘You see,’ he murmured, ‘I think you said it pretty well.’
The shrill tone of his phone woke Luke, and as his head shot up his neck snapped in protest. Reality crashed into place around him. He wasn’t lying in bed with Sophie telling him she loved him. He was sitting in an airport car park, aching in a million places, and Sophie was – was –
She was lost in America, and she might never come back.
Swearing, he picked up the phone and peered groggily at the display. ‘Evelyn?’
‘Hello, Luke. I was just wondering if you were quite finished with my car? Only I’d quite like it back.’
He stared at the dashboard. Yes. Evelyn’s BMW. He had a nasty feeling he might have stolen it.
‘Your passport says you’re back in the country.’
Luke stared some more, this time at the car park outside the window. It seemed to be daylight. The clock on the dash said it was just after seven. He remembered putting his head down on the steering wheel and weeping, but he hadn’t realised he’d cried himself to sleep. Humiliating.
‘Luke? Are you there? Only Sheila would quite like to see you. Damage limitation, she says.’
‘Damage limitation?’
‘Yes. Apparently 5 had no idea about this whole Alexa Martin débâcle. Quite humiliating for them. The whole Service is in trouble.’
‘Right,’ Luke said vaguely.
‘And now your Sophie has blackmailed her way into freedom – although by now I’m sure the Home Office has claimed it as their idea …’
She was still talking, but Luke wasn’t listening.
Sophie blackmailed her way into freedom.
Sophie is alive.
‘She – she did what?’
‘Told the Foreign Secretary you were one of her best officers and that now there was no conflict of interest, she’d quite like you back. So then –’
Sophie said that? When did she ever speak to the –?
Understanding dawned. The world was too full of powerful women.
‘No, not Sheila,’ he said, with what he thought under the circumstances was heroic patience. ‘Sophie.’
‘Oh. Yes, apparently she’s managed to convince Harrington that she could sell her side of the story to the papers. Made out she’s best friends with Penny Grayson – you know, she writes for The Times now – and turns out they were both bridesmaids at Angel Winter’s wedding. Personally, given what you’ve told me of Harrington, I think she’s mad, but I suppose by now there are enough people who know the Home Office has screwed up over Alexa Martin that Harrington hasn’t much choice in the matter. After all, when you take away all the crimes we had pinned on her that Alexa confessed to, there’s just a bit of petty larceny, and I’m sure we can talk that Lanley woman around about the armed robbery. Your friend James Harvard has even managed to pull some strings to get her off the rest of the charges in America – well, what’s a charge of Grand Theft Auto between friends? Luke? Are you still listening?’
His head fell against the back of the seat. He felt giddy, mad, dizzy. He wanted to laugh.
‘Is she all right?’ he asked.
‘Sophie? A bit banged up, I think, but she’ll live.’ Evelyn paused. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you any of this? Did you even know she was back in the country?’
Luke shook his head, then when the silence stretched on, managed, ‘No.’
‘Ah,’ said Evelyn. ‘I think perhaps you’d better come in.’
He ended the call, and on the display were several missed calls and messages from Harvey, who apologised for being on a plane to Langley when Luke called. Sophie was alive and Jack was dead. Harvey was about to make a phone-call to Maria about her brother unless Luke fancied doing it for him. Sophie was being taken into custody. Sophie had somehow managed to wangle her own freedom. Sophie was being sent home to her parents’ house, which was information Harvey had had to flirt out of someone called Sunita and he hoped Luke w
ouldn’t tell his wife about that.
Luke’s finger hovered over the ‘return call’ button, then he dismissed it. There was something else he needed to do first.
He dialled, waited, and when the furious voice answered, he smiled.
‘Harrington,’ he said. ‘Old boy. Hear the case is all wrapped up.’
Harrington let out a stream of invective that rather impressed Luke.
‘Precisely,’ he agreed. ‘Now, just to clear up a few things. Do you want to tell my boss you beat the shit out of me, or shall I do it?’
By the time I’d gone over the repeatable parts of the story with my parents and my brother, and my mum had phoned everyone she’d ever met and my brother had texted everyone he’d ever met, I was exhausted. I hadn’t wanted to talk about it in the first place, and after going through the minutiae of it with Harrington yelling and swearing at me, the sympathy and horror of my family was too much to bear.
‘Have you contacted Luke?’ Mum asked me about seventeen times a minute. ‘You should call him.’
I scrunched my eyes shut. I had absolutely no idea what to say to Luke; and anyway, I didn’t even know what phone number he was using these days.
And even if I did, the thought that MI6 would almost certainly be listening in at this stage made me want to weep. A tearful reunion was one thing. A tearful reunion listened to by half the Service was quite another.
After Mum had offered me every sort of foodstuff in the house, plied me with wine and hugged me about a million times, I excused myself for a lie down, escaping to my old bedroom with Tammy clutched in my arms like a teddy bear.
For once, my contrary little cat didn’t protest, but let me hold her and stroke her and sob into her fur.
I must have fallen asleep, because it was getting dark when the doorbell awoke me. I blinked at the curtains and the lamp, at once familiar and unfamiliar, and tugged at my pyjamas. No, not pyjamas. They’d given me scrubs to wear in the hospital in Maine and I’d never got around to changing them for proper clothes.
I sat up, wondering if I had anything wearable in the wardrobe here, trying to calculate how many hours it had been since I last took a shower or changed my clothes, and my mother opened the bedroom door.
‘There’s someone to see you,’ she said, picking up Tammy as she made a bid for freedom. Cat sympathy only lasts so long.
‘Who?’
‘You’d better come down,’ Mum said, and didn’t move until I’d limped past her and hopped down the stairs. My ankle wasn’t broken, only sprained, but it had stiffened up something terrible while I slept, and felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
‘Oh,’ I said when I got to the front door.
‘Hey,’ said Luke, standing there in the late afternoon gloom, looking tired and dishevelled and strong and, above all, right there.
‘Hey.’
Conversation thus exhausted, we stood in silence for a bit. I wondered if he could tell, if I looked different in a fundamental way, if all my misdeeds were written across my face in scarlet letters.
‘How about if I go and put Tammy in her box,’ suggested my mother, ‘and you can take her home?’
I nodded, still avoiding eye contact with Luke.
‘Do you have a car?’ I asked, gesturing to the splint on my foot.
‘Brought yours.’
I nodded. More silence. This was excruciating.
My mother handed me Tammy’s travelling box, complete with grumpy cat, hugged me about a million more times and told me to call her soon. Tomorrow. Tonight. The second we got in. For heaven’s sake, I only live around the corner.
We got into the car. My car. My lovely Ted. I fell against the cold vinyl seat, stroked the battered plastic dash, breathed in the faint scent of wet dog that seemed to have pervaded from the previous owners.
Tammy miaowed, and I focused my attention on her, not on the man sitting less than a foot away, lean and handsome and silent.
Nobody said a word until Luke parked the car outside my flat and came around to take Tammy’s box from me.
‘I can manage,’ I said, and started to get down from the car, only to realise I’d left my crutches in my parents’ living room.
‘No, you can’t,’ Luke said. He slid his shoulder under my arm and tugged me from the car, leaving Tammy’s box on the seat. I was so shocked at the thrill of contact that I couldn’t think of a word to say.
Luke’s arm went around my back and I leaned on him, my body against his, feeling the heat of him through his clothes. And every part of me went, Yes. This one. This is right.
He helped me round the corner, into the little courtyard outside my flat, and then opened the door and I was home.
For a long moment we stood in the darkened vestibule, and I willed him to say something. To put his arms around me. To kiss me. To tell me he’d missed me and he loved me. To tell me that despite the horrors of the last month, I was still the same person, still the girl he fell in love with. To not know, to not care, about the things I’d done.
‘I’ll get Tammy,’ he said, and walked out.
A sob tore itself from my throat, as if a giant hand had punched me in the stomach and forced all the breath from me. Another sob. Another. My hand covered my mouth and I half-limped, half-fell across the room and onto the sofa where I doubled over, grief and pain wrecking me. I couldn’t breathe.
I hadn’t cried when I found Sir Theodore’s body, when this all began. I hadn’t cried nearly as much in the last month as I might have. But I cried now, now that it was all over; great, huge, ugly sobs that shook my whole body. Whatever had been keeping me going – adrenaline, hope, blind stupidity – fell away and I couldn’t hold myself together any more.
I’d ruined everything.
I didn’t notice Luke coming back in. Didn’t hear if he closed the door, didn’t see if he let Tammy out of her box, just curled there on the sofa in the darkness, weeping so hard I thought my body would shatter into pieces. Those silent, racking sobs, so violent they had a life of their own.
Then a light came on, and Luke said, ‘Sophie,’ and then he was there, arms around me, pulling me against his body, stroking my hair. He rocked me gently, murmuring things I couldn’t hear above my own violent weeping.
Eventually what he was saying penetrated my ears. ‘It’s all over now. I’ve got you. Sophie, talk to me.’
I raised my face to his. I must have looked like hell, but Luke gave me a gentle smile and kissed my forehead.
‘I read the transcripts,’ he said. ‘5 sent them over. No one should have to go through what you did.’
‘It’s all my fault,’ I hiccupped.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Luke said with such authority I stared up at him, startled. ‘None of this could possibly be construed as your fault.’
I pressed my face against his shoulder. His shirt was wet through where I’d sobbed and snotted all over it. ‘You don’t know,’ I said, voice wobbly. ‘The things I’ve done.’
‘Of course I know,’ Luke said, but he didn’t sound like he wanted to kill me so he probably didn’t. ‘And I don’t care. I just don’t care what you’ve done.’
You would if you knew, I thought bleakly.
‘None of it changes who you are. I’ve seen your charge sheet. It’s just theft, Sophie. It’s just things. Money. Most of it’s covered by insurance.’
I shook my head, wanting to tell him I was guilty of so much more, wanting it and not wanting it at the same time.
‘There’s nothing on that list you can’t come back from,’ Luke said.
I stayed silent.
‘I know you, Sophie Anne Green. I know you’re brave and loyal and honest, and if you steal someone’s credit card it’s not out of malice or greed. I know you’ll do what you have to in order to survive.’
The awful desolation of the last few days howled through me, like a great wind scouring out everything inside me and leaving me hollow. Surviving? Was that what I’d been doing wi
th Jack?
The worst part was that I thought it might.
‘I thought I was going to die,’ I said, my voice cracked. His arms tightened. ‘I thought I’d never see you again, and I was desperate, and … oh Luke, I did awful things.’
‘I’ve done some pretty awful things, too,’ he said. ‘But look. You didn’t murder anyone. You didn’t hurt anyone. Everything else can be fixed.’
Including us? I thought. Can we be fixed?
‘I wish you’d never sent Jack to me,’ I whispered, and Luke murmured appalled apologies into my hair.
I shifted my grip on him to sit up properly and tell him how much I loved him, but Luke flinched, agony in his eyes as I gripped his right shoulder. He covered it fast, but I hadn’t missed it.
‘What is it?’ I said. I took in the bruises on his face, much more apparent in the light. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Nothing,’ Luke said, swatting away my hands as I tried to pull open his shirt to see. ‘Fell down some stairs.’
I gave him a disbelieving look. Luke had the grace and balance of a cat.
‘I’m only graceful and elegant ninety-nine percent of the time,’ he said irritably.
‘Let me see.’
‘Sophie –’
His right arm was decidedly more sluggish than the left. I hadn’t noticed it before in all my self-absorption, but it had been his left arm doing all the work. For a right-hander like Luke, this was unusual.
I gripped his left wrist and grappled one-handed with his shirt buttons. Luke fought back, struggling against me, and then he slumped and said, ‘All right, fine,’ and let me unfasten his shirt.
His right shoulder was all the colours of the rainbow, purple and blue and yellow with bruises. There were more marks on his ribs, his stomach, his chest, but it was the shoulder that looked really ugly. A puncture wound was partly healed in the middle of all that bruising.
I looked up at his face in shock, and saw now that we were in the light and I wasn’t being horribly self-absorbed, that he was sporting a terrific black eye, and that the shadows on his jaw weren’t from stubble so much as bruises.
‘Fell down some stairs?’ I demanded.
‘Some large stairs. With fists.’
