by Mike Shevdon
She would want to see Alex as soon as possible, I knew that, but I wanted her to have chance to get over the shock first, and prepare herself. It had been hard dealing with Alex's loss and I didn't know how she would take the news that she was alive, especially given the circumstances. Alex couldn't go back to living with her mother, and I had to convince Katherine that this was the right decision for all concerned.
She wasn't going to like that.
I sat on the bench under the shifting light cast by the clouds. The forecast had promised to be dry, but hadn't mentioned the gusty breeze or the scurrying clouds. I hoped Katherine had remembered the sweater. The car pulled in late. It had taken over two hours to get here, and I could see by the time she emerged that she was already annoyed. It showed in the set of her shoulders and the determined pace as she walked up the rise to the bench. If she had been trying to pump Tate for information she would have got nothing. That might explain her mood.
"You really have a nerve," she told me folding her arms. "What is this, a quarry? What the hell are we doing here?"
"Take a seat."
"I'd rather stand. I've been sat in that car for over an hour and the driver wouldn't even tell me where we've been going. Where is this, anyway? What all this about?"
"Sit down."
"I will not."
"I have something to tell you, and you're going to have to sit down to hear it."
"Are you ill? Is Blackbird all right? Is it the baby?" Her voice had shed some of its crossness but was rapidly escalating into hysteria.
I stood up. The immediate height advantage meant I was looking down on her, so she sat down. I sat down, leaving a small gap between us.
"You remember last year when there was all the trouble?"
"When they fished you out of the Thames, you mean?"
It had been the Fleet, not the Thames, but I let that go. "Something happened then that I've never told you about."
"I've always thought that was dodgy. You're not after money are you? Is someone blackmailing you?"
"What? Don't be absurd. I'm trying to tell you — something happened that changed me."
"Are we talking about Blackbird? If you want to get married I won't stand in your way."
"No — I was changed. I found something out about myself, about my family and my history that meant that everything had to change with it."
This was not going well. I looked down at my hands.
"I inherited something from my family, an ability, I suppose you would call it, or a trait maybe. Something passed down from one of my ancestors."
I looked up. Katherine's face was frozen. All colour had drained from it, and she wasn't looking at me, but past me. I turned my head to see what she was looking at. A little distance away Alex stood on the grass, her hands in her pockets, a look of terrible uncertainty on her face.
"Mum?" she said.
"That's… what I was trying to tell you," I said.
Katherine ignored me. She stood, and then rushed forward, but hesitated before she reached Alex. Her hands tangled together in front of her as if she was wringing something from them.
"Alex?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
"It's me, Mum. It's really me."
She rushed forward and enveloped Alex in her arms, crushing her enough to elicit a squeak from Alex and then a murmur of reassuring words, "It's OK, Mum, it's really OK."
Katherine laid her head on Alex's, holding her close, her tears heedlessly running down her cheeks into Alex's hair, dripping onto Alex's face so that she tried to say something, and then they were both crying and hugging each other. Neither could speak but that the other would start wailing again. Katherine couldn't seem to stop squeezing her as if she might slip away at any moment. That gave Alex hiccoughs so that she cried and squeaked alternately.
I stood apart, watching Katherine come to terms with her daughter's return. My eyes were hardly dry either, making me realise I had finally done the right thing.
Katherine, extracted a hanky from her sleeve and started dabbing at her eyes, and then managed to blurt out, "How?" and then started crying again, which set Alex off and neither of them had breath for words for a while.
"How?" she repeated.
"How is easy," I said. "She was never dead in the first place. They took her from us at the hospital under cover of their rules and their regulations. They deceived us."
Katherine looked at Alex, "You've grown, changed, something's different. Your hair, your…" she was fishing for what was different about Alex, but it wasn't one thing. It was everything. "Where have you been?"
"I've been staying with Dad's people, just for a…"
"You knew?" She threw it at me like an accusation. "You knew she was alive?"
"I've known for a little while. It hasn't been easy."
She strode up to me and poked me in the chest with her finger. "Easy?" She poked me with her finger, punctuating her words, "Easy? You selfish, heartless, mean… shadow of a man. You self-centred, self-obsessed bastard, you…" She ran out of words, the tears running down her cheeks again. She raised her hand and slapped me full across the face. There was a crack, and for a moment my head spun.
"Don't!" cried Alex. "It wasn't Dad's fault. It's not him, it's me!"
"Stay out of this, young lady. You mean bastard of a man! How could you? How… dare you!" she slapped her hand hard against my chest, doing no harm but venting her rage, She did it again, harder. I stood there, taking it.
"How could you keep it from me? How? What gives you the right? Who appointed you lord high saviour of… anything? Do you have no feeling, no comprehension of what it's been like?"
"I've been meaning to tell you," I said softly.
"Meaning to? When's that? When it comes up on your agenda? When you get around to it? When you get off your selfish arse and do something?" She was shouting.
"It's complicated," I tried.
"How complicated is it? She was dead, Niall. D-E-A-D, Dead!" She spat the words through her gritted teeth. "We went to her funeral, God help me. You gave a speech! You cried, dammit!"
"I didn't know then."
"When? When did you know? I want you to tell me right now," she insisted, she dashed tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Afterwards."
"How long afterwards?" she insisted, drilling her finger into my chest.
"Mum, there's stuff you don't know," interrupted Alex. "Things are different. I'm different."
"You are still my girl," she turned on Alex, "but this is between me and your father." She turned back to me, "You have a lot to answer for Niall Petersen."
"More than you know," I confirmed, trying not to react to her anger.
"When did you know that Alex was alive? You won't answer that question, will you?"
"I wasn't sure at first. I thought… I thought I was going mad."
"You still won't tell me."
"After the funeral, the memorial service, whatever it was. I heard Alex's voice. I thought I was imagining it."
"Where? Where did you hear her voice?" she insisted.
"In the bathroom."
She stopped, taken back by the simple honesty of my response. Then she recovered. "You can't disguise your deception like that, I'm not listening to any more of your lies. I want the truth."
"That is the truth."
All the history was coming back to me now. Her doubts and her suspicions, going through my clothes, though my things, always looking for anything on which she could hang her accusations. I remembered why I used to love this woman, but I also remembered why I came to hate her.
"You always twist things," she said. "You don't even know what the truth is!"
"I've had enough!" I shouted back at her. "You have no freakin' idea what you are talking about."
I batted her hand aside where she was about to poke me again.
I was breathing hard. "You ask me whether I have rights, well I do! I am her father. It was me who went
through hell to find her, tore buildings down to reach her, saw things that no man should have to see — just to save her!"
I was spitting the words out. Katherine's face flushed like she'd been slapped.
"You talk about pain, you have no clue. You carp on about how you feel and what you went through, but it's all about you! You don't know what pain is. You're living in a dream! You sit on your fat arse in your cosy house with your cosy man and his bloody Toyota…"
"Leave Barry out of this."
"…dreaming of holidays in the Algarve and a new greenhouse. What did you risk? What did you do? A big fat nothing, that's what!"
"You're only angry because you're in the wrong," she accused.
"In the wrong? How can I be in the wrong? I brought your daughter back from the dead, didn't I? Isn't that enough?"
I pushed her backwards, which I swear is the first time I had ever laid hands on her. "You don't know anything. You think you're safe. Your house was watched, did you know that? There were two guys in a car, outside, watching your house."
"My house? What for?"
"They were looking for me and they couldn't find me, but they knew where you were." The moment I said it I knew I'd said the wrong thing.
Her eyes narrowed. "People were spying on me because of you? What kind of people? Police? Is that what you're saying, because you're involved in something dodgy and it sounds like you're up to your eyeballs in it."
"Not police, something else."
"Gangsters, is it? Are involved with organised crime? I wouldn't put it past you."
"Is that what you think of me? Is that what you think I've been doing?"
"All I know is that you're bloody evasive about it. Whatever it is you and Blackbird do, you are both in on it. She's even more vague than you are." She pointed back to the car park. "Who is the heavy in the car? What does he call himself… Dave? I bet that's not his real name. For that matter, where did you get a car like that? You don't even have a job for God's sake! Is it drugs? Is that what's funding this lifestyle? Is that what you've got my daughter involved with?"
"Your daughter? Yours? Don't you mean ours?"
"Alex, get in the car now! We're going home." She looked around. "Alex?"
I looked around and there was no sign of her.
"Shit!" I said.
"Well, she can't have gone far. She's probably sulking somewhere."
"You have no idea, do you?"
"Don't start that again. Find your daughter. You keep telling me what a wonderful father you are. Do something." She twisted around, searching for a sign of Alex.
"I knew this was a bad idea," I said.
"Don't just stand there. Search for her. She's probably in that coppice on the rise."
I went back to the bench, and sat down heavily, holding my head in my hands.
"Niall! Where's Alex?"
"Good question! Where is she? It took me months to find her but I dare say you can do it in a few minutes, so go and look for her!"
"All right, I will." She bustled off towards the wood, shouting for Alex.
The coppice was where the node point was for the Ways, so if Alex had gone there she could be miles away by now. She had probably gone back to the courts, fed up of seeing her parents in one more slanging match. I turned and looked back to the car park, where Dave waited with the car. His head was back and he looked like he was asleep. Maybe he didn't want to get involved in the conflict either.
I watched Katherine march back over to me. "She's not there."
"No."
"She won't answer me."
"She's probably gone back. She'll be all right."
"Gone back where? How? For that matter, where's your car?"
"I didn't bring one."
"Do you live nearby?" She looked around. I had deliberately picked somewhere isolated, so there wasn't much to see beyond the lake that was once a gravel pit, the occasional distant dog-walker, and the rolling countryside.
"No. It's many miles from here."
"That's what I mean about you being evasive." The note of criticism crept back into her tone.
I stood up. "Katherine, I'm tired of arguing with you. I'm tired of protecting you, and I'm tired of your constant carping. You may or may not like what I am and what I do, but I'm tired of trying to explain things to you. Actually, I'm just tired."
"Well, if you behaved like any decent man…"
"Come on." I walked towards the cluster of trees.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to look for Alex."
"I've just been up there. She isn't there."
"She could be ten feet away and you wouldn't know it. She'll turn up when she's ready."
"Where are you going?"
"Home."
She trotted after me. "There's no need to be like that. We'll give you a lift. We can drop you off. I'm sure your man knows where to take you. He can drop you off first if you like?"
"You don't understand," I repeated.
"What don't I understand?"
"Everything's changed."
"That's what Alex said, and frankly you're not making any more sense than she did. I don't know what the pair of you think you're up to, but it's not good enough."
We reached the spot in the coppice and I pulled a cursory glamour about us, in case anyone nosey was watching. No one would notice either of us until the glamour faded.
"I'll call you when I've found Alex," I said. "We'll arrange something. You need to talk."
Katherine looked around, then shrugged her shoulders. "Where are you going, Niall? There's nowhere to go. We're in the middle of a wood."
"When you've finished looking for me, head back to Dave and the car. He'll take you home."
"What are you talking about?"
I felt beneath me for the Way that ran beneath us, feeling it rise to my call. I stepped forward and they was a twist of air, a sense of falling, and I was many miles away. There was no sense of a previous passage — Alex must have left some time ago while I was arguing with Katherine. I felt a pang of guilt at neglecting her once again, but ultimately the rows, the constant accusations, the crying and the shouting, were what had driven me away from my home in the first place.
If there was one thing I'd learned it was that you couldn't go back.
SEVEN
When I reached the courts, Amber was in the cellar where the node point was. She was stood against the wall, waiting.
"Has Alex come back through here?" I asked her.
She ignored my question. "Garvin wants to see you."
"What about Alex?"
"I haven't seen her."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"No," she said. "It doesn't."
I sighed and went up into the house.
"Garvin's in the weapons room, working out," she called after me.
I went upstairs first to Alex's room. The bed was unmade, items were scattered around the dresser, a book was open on the bed. It was a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped. I wondered whether there was any significance to that. She had clothes in the drawers, make-up on the shelves. I tried to remember what she was wearing at the lake, but I had no clear recollection. Jeans? A T-shirt? It didn't matter anyway, since she could look however she wanted.
I looked for personal items; a purse, a piece of jewellery, a hair brush, to see if any of it had gone — and then realised that almost nothing in the room was actually hers. It was all borrowed, or bought for her, or provided for her so that she would be comfortable.
She told me: I want my music, my books, the things from home. I'd heard what she said, but hadn't understood the significance of any of it. I'd heard, but not listened.
I sat down on the bed, heavily. "Now what am I going to tell Katherine?"
I'd assumed that she'd come back to the courts, that she would return here at least to collect her things, even if she was going to try and return to her former life with her mother, but I sat in her room and realised
the truth. She didn't need to. Nothing here was hers. She could walk away and not look back.
I rubbed by eyes, feeling tired and stupid. I hadn't considered what it would all mean for Alex. I knew Katherine would be upset and in the event she had acted predictably. We both had. It had sparked another in our long list of unresolved arguments and Alex had been left on the sidelines to watch. Worse than that, I hadn't realised why she was there. She wanted to see her parents reunited. She wanted a homecoming. The trouble was, the home she wanted to return to no longer existed.
Katherine was going to be angry. She would already be pissed off with me for leaving her in a wood. That had been petty, but I'd just wanted to prove to her once and for all that she didn't know everything, and that there were things that I couldn't explain, even if I wanted to. Now I had to tell her that I didn't know where her daughter was.
It would be better to find Alex before I had to explain that.
Alex waited until the noise ceased. She waited until the arguments were over and the shouting was done.
In the lake the sound was a muted echo. In the lake she didn't have to listen to her parents fighting. She had walked into the water to distract them from yelling at each other, but they hadn't even noticed. She could have drowned and they wouldn't care.
She didn't drown, though. They'd proved that again and again at Porton Down, holding her under while she kicked and struggled until she could hold it no more, until the water surged into her lungs on the indrawn breath. Only then did she realised she wasn't drowning. The water entered her lungs, but it didn't hurt her. It couldn't hurt her. It was hers, and it would support her and hold her, until the hurting stopped.
She'd spat water into the faces of the doctors, which had earned her a day in the goldfish tanks, the name the inmates gave to the glass-walled cages with iron wire woven into the walls and iron locks on the doors. They'd given her no food and only plain water, and left her to stew.
It had been worth it.
Beneath the surface of the lake it was dark, the water cloudy. Yes, it was cold, but she could handle it. She'd learned that in the goldfish tanks too, when they'd stripped her naked and thrown her in, turning the temperature down to soften her up. She remembered the goose-bumps on her skin, her embarrassment as she turned away from the glass to hide her growing breasts and the light fuzz of hair in her groin, only to see the camera staring down at her. She'd cowered in the corner as they leered through the glass at her. She'd cried… oh yeah, she'd cried. But then she'd got stronger. She'd learned how to stare back until it was they who turned away. She'd learned how not to cry.
