The Division Bell Trilogy

by Rachel McLean

Only something was wrong, a tautness in the air that made her flesh feel cold.

  She reached the top of the escalator, the one she always used to get home. It was blocked. She shrugged and shifted to the next one along.

  At the bottom of the escalator, she peered across the track towards her normal platform. It was boarded up. She checked the screen; this wasn’t the right platform either, no sign of her train on the list.

  She pulled her thin jacket closer and wished the shoes she’d picked out for court weren’t so tight. The escalator going back up was broken and roped off. She headed further up the platform to the stairs. She just wanted to get home, to Yusuf.

  She emerged onto the station concourse and paused to get her bearings. At this end, a big chunk of the station was boarded off, reminding her of the year the new station had been built, the sweaty underpasses and dim corridors that had passed for the concourse in those days. Now the station was a gleaming beacon of welcome to Birmingham, a vast temple filled not only with ticket offices and departure boards, but cafes, shops and restaurants.

  She approached the hoarding, hoping to find a sign that would explain things. It was decorated with nothing more than graffiti and the scuff marks of hundreds of passing shoes.

  She found her train and headed towards the correct platform. She felt numb, tired from her journey from Oxfordshire, where she’d been incarcerated in the British Values Centre. Just this morning she’d been in Yonda Hughes’s office, being told that she’d earned her release. And just yesterday she had been drugged for her Celebration ceremony, required to prove her loyalty to the state in front of an audience of over a hundred fellow inmates.

  She passed a woman struggling with two heavy suitcases and three small children. She wore a black headscarf and looked hot and tired. She was muttering to the children, trying to persuade a boy not much older than Jennifer’s own son Hassan to carry one of the suitcases for her.

  The boy snapped back at his mother, who looked like she might burst into tears. Jennifer stepped forward.

  “Can I help? You look like you’ve got a lot to manage.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “No, no. Please. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? It’s no trouble.”

  “Leave her alone. She shouldn’t be here anyway.”

  Jennifer turned to see a young woman watching them. She wore a bright red suit that made her skin look yellow. She wore a look of disgust.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think—” Jennifer began.

  “Leave it,” said the first woman. Her youngest child, a girl of about eighteen months with a chocolate-ringed mouth and tangled hair, started to cry.

  The woman in the red suit turned to her. “Get out of here. We don’t want you here.”

  The other woman looked up through her eyelashes but said nothing. She pulled the little girl out of her pushchair and started making shushing sounds.

  “Please,” said Jennifer. “Leave this woman alone. She’s doing you no harm.”

  “Yeah, right. The sooner they all go home, the better.” She marched off, her heels clipping in the muffled quiet.

  A crowd was gathering now, people hanging back but staring nonetheless. Jennifer looked back at them, isolated with this woman and her children in a ring of surveillance. Was this how things had got, while she was away?

  She thought of her oldest son Samir, and the racist taunts he’d received at school. The way he’d retaliated and almost got himself expelled. Even then, the head teacher had sided with the racists and not with her Muslim son. She’d been entertaining a dim hope that she might find him back at home when she got there, and not in prison or detention. Judging by the atmosphere here, that would be unlikely.

  She turned back to the woman. The girl had stopped crying and she was lowering her into the pushchair. Her big brother looked scared, gazing back at the hostile crowd with huge dark eyes. Maybe they were her constituents. Maybe she could help them.

  But her arrest had stripped her of her parliamentary seat; she had no constituents now. She wondered who had taken her place, whether her successor would be sympathetic to this woman.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Home. Manchester.” The woman’s eyes fell. Jennifer looked again at the children, not envying their mother the ordeal of getting all the way to Manchester.

  “I’ll get you a porter,” she said. “You need help.”

  The woman looked up. “No. I’m fine. Please.”

  “OK. If there’s—”

  She was interrupted by the air behind her stirring and a sharp, guttural sound. The woman threw her hand up to her face. A glob of spit had landed on her cheek and was running down towards her chin.

  Jennifer span round, hot with anger.

  “Who are you?” she shouted. “Leave this woman a—”

  “Bloody terrorist. Go home, bitch!”

  A man stood a few feet from then, glaring at the woman. Jennifer was expecting a stereotypical thug; young, rough round the edges. But this man looked like anyone you’d sit next to on a train journey home. He wore a faded black suit and a red and white tie over a pale blue shirt. He was her age maybe, with grey wisps around his ears. Jennifer stared at him, lost for words.

  The crowd behind him was starting to break up. A few people drew forwards, whether to offer support or consider attack she couldn’t tell. But most were moving away; checking watches, glancing at the screens. Hurrying home.

  She spotted a policeman, possibly the reason the crowd had broken up. She felt her chest lift.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “This woman needs your help.”

  The policeman looked her up and down. She’d had her own clothes returned to her, the ones she’d been wearing when she’d arrived at Bronzefield Prison, but they hung loosely. She wore no make-up and her hair was a mess of tangles and sharp grey roots. He’d never guess she’d been a local MP until just four months ago.

  He bent his head to his shoulder and muttered something into a communications device. Then he raised an eyebrow.

  “How can I help you, madam?”

  She pointed back at the woman. She had her arms around the middle child now, a boy aged about five. He was wailing. His big brother stared at him with a look of resignation.

  Beyond her, the man in the suit was retreating; he’d be gone soon.

  “That man over there,” she said. “In the black suit and the red tie. He spat on that woman. Called her a terrorist.”

  “And?”

  She turned back to him. “What do you mean, and?”

  “If the police got involved every time people called each other names, we’d be overrun.”

  “He spat at her. That’s assault.”

  The policeman shook his head. Jennifer looked back to see the man disappear onto an escalator.

  “Please,” she said, resisting an urge to pull at his arm. “He’ll get away.”

  “And what do you expect me to do?”

  She frowned.

  “It’s a hate crime,” she said, remembering all the debates in Parliament. Back when she’d been a government minister. Before she’d brought down her own government. “He needs to be arrested.”

  The policeman gave a heavy sigh. “Alright, then.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll talk to the woman. I’m not going after the man.”

  He approached the woman, who was still holding her son. The older boy had his hand in hers now and was watching the people passing. He looked scared.

  The woman looked up from her children. Her eyes widened. The older boy drew back behind his mother.

  “Now,” said the policeman. “You need to get out of here. Leave the station, please.” The woman nodded. She picked up the larger of her two bags, which was leaning against her leg. She muttered to her children.

  “Hang on a minute,” Jennifer said to the policeman. “She’s done nothing wrong.” She looked after the man who had spat; he was long gone. “There was a man. He spat at he
r. It’s him you should be telling to get out of here, not her.”

  “It’s alright,” said the woman. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  Jennifer put a hand on the woman’s arm; she flinched and Jennifer pulled back. She thought of Maryam, the way she would twist her hair around her neck for want of a headscarf. Bel, and the way she would moan and mutter her way through group sessions.

  But this wasn’t the British Values Centre. This was New Street Station, not much more than a mile from the borders of her old constituency.

  This was wrong.

  “Has she broken the law?” she asked.

  The policeman sighed. “No, but—”

  “But nothing.” She hesitated. “You can’t force this woman to leave the station if she’s done nothing wrong.”

  “It’s alright, honestly it is,” said the woman.

  “But you have to get to Manchester. How are you going to do that if he makes you leave the station?” She looked up at the Departures screen; had she made the woman miss her train?

  The woman shrugged and hurried away. As she moved towards the exit, people stared at her, not hiding the hostility in their eyes.

  When Jennifer had been sent to prison, there had been hostility towards Muslims. But nothing like this.

  She turned to the policeman. He was moving away from her, ignoring the woman and the people who glared at her.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Madam, I really don’t think—”

  “Don’t madam me, please. I don’t understand why you told her to leave, and didn’t go after the man who assaulted her.”

  “Assault is a bit of a stro—”

  “He insulted her, he used racist language, and he spat at her. Isn’t that a crime anymore?”

  The policeman scratched his head. He looked towards the boards that separated them from Jennifer’s usual platform.

  “You’re not from around here, I assume,” he said.

  “I am. I live near Spaghetti Junction. I used to be…” She stopped, not wanting to tell him who she’d been.

  “Then you’ll know about the bomb.”

  “The bomb?”

  “Right here. New Street Station. Three months ago. Hallowe’en.”

  She felt herself deflate. “The bomb.”

  “Sixteen dead, over two hundred injured. Including kids. And two of my colleagues. Surely you know about it.”

  She nodded.

  “Well, you should know that it’s safest for people like your friend there to stay away.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. It wasn’t her who planted the bomb.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “No one planted anything. Suicide bomber. Muslim woman, pretending to be pregnant. The bump was a parcel of plastic explosive. Surely you know this?”

  “Of course I do. I still think—”

  “Either way, it’s safest for us all if Muslims stay away from here, for now. For their own safety, as much as anything. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got things to do.”

  Jennifer thought of Yusuf. Was he affected by this? Had he become a pariah in his own city? And what about Hassan?

  She had to get home.

  “Thank—” she began. But the policeman was gone, dealing with a group of young women who looked like they’d had too much to drink. She frowned at his back and looked towards the exit. The woman and her children had disappeared.

  She shivered. The easy familiarity of arriving back in the city had left her and she felt only dread. She hurried towards her platform, eager to be home.

  Chapter Two

  Jennifer tried not to look into the neighbours’ windows as she approached her house. They would all know where she had been. They would be surprised to see her. She wasn’t in the mood to talk.

  She kept her head down, hoping that her longer, undyed hair would be enough disguise. She rummaged in her bag. It didn’t contain much: the keys to the house and her old London flat, her wallet, her phone – dead, as she’d discovered when trying to call Yusuf from the train – and a pack of tissues. Her parliamentary pass had been confiscated on arrest. She wondered if she’d be allowed back in there. If she’d be able to see her old boss John Hunter, Leader of the Opposition. Would he be the first to visit her, or would he stay away?

  Or would it be the Home Secretary Catherine Moore who got in touch first? She ran over their meeting at the British Values Centre; Catherine’s cool professionalism, her reluctance to help. But then Jennifer had been put forward for Celebration, and released. Catherine’s doing, surely?

  The house was only six doors along. She stood on the pavement, staring at it. Remembering the last time she’d been here, not long after Samir had disappeared. Before she’d discovered him hiding in her London flat.

  She took a deep breath and clenched her fists. Mark – Dr Clarke – had said that Hassan was with her mum, but then she couldn’t believe anything Mark said. He might be in there, in the house. Would he welcome her back, or would he be wary of her? Four months is a long time, when you’re twelve.

  She looked at her watch; 6.30pm. She imagined them all inside. Hassan in his room, doing homework after half an hour of arguing with his dad about it. Yusuf downstairs – doing what? What shape had his life taken in her absence?

  She looked at Samir’s window, at the front of the house, and felt something claw at her stomach. His room would be quiet and dark. The same posters on the wall as when he had run away in September. The same piles of school books mixed with political tracts. No laptop; that would have been taken away by the police.

  She closed her eyes, pulling on a smile, and stepped onto the driveway. Her car stood where it always had during the week, waiting for her to come home and use it. She wondered if it had moved in the last four months, and if it would start. An unfamiliar car stood in front of their house, on the street. Yusuf’s normal place, but it wasn’t unusual for it to be taken by someone using the nearby station. His could be anywhere; their road was a popular parking spot.

  She was at the front door now. She raised her hand to knock, then reconsidered. She opened her bag to pull out her keys.

  She found the right key and glanced round, worried the neighbours might be watching. A curtain moved in the house opposite. The Danburys. Someone was watching her from an upstairs window. Mrs Danbury – Susan – was friendly, but they had never been close. She lived with her adult son. Was it him, behind that curtain, or his mum?

  She shook her head and willed herself to stop being paranoid. All those cameras in the centre had got to her.

  She put her key in the lock then thought again and knocked on the door just before turning it. She waited for the rumble of feet pounding down the stairs or the sound of Yusuf shouting for one of the boys – just Hassan, now – to get it. Or maybe with Hassan busy with school work, Yusuf would answer it himself.

  She hoped so.

  She waited for the door to open. Her key was still in the lock; she let go of it and left it hanging.

  There was no sound. After thirty, forty seconds, her keys had stopped moving and there was silence.

  She licked her lips. Maybe they hadn’t heard her. She knocked again, louder this time.

  She put her hand to the key and counted to ten. When the door still hadn’t opened, she turned it, feeling her skin grow cold.

  She eased the door open.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing. She opened it further, taking in the familiar scent of home. It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  “Hello?” The door was fully open now, but there was no sound from inside.

  She turned to see the curtain in the window opposite move again. She frowned at it, then berated herself. She stepped into her house and closed the door.

  She padded into the kitchen and put her bag on the table, the familiarity of the action feeling odd. There was no sign of cooking on the hob, no smell coming from the oven. No dirty dishes waiting to go in the dishwasher.

  She sniffed the ai
r. She stood still and listened. Nothing.

  “Hello? Its me, Mum. Jennifer. I’m back.”

  She waited for someone to come down the stairs or emerge from another room. She remembered all the times Samir had stormed up those stairs, the times he had shouted at her for not understanding what he was going through, for being too sympathetic to the powers that be. For being naive. Why hadn’t she worked out what he was doing? The truancy should have been a red flag, but they’d been so caught up in everything that was going on in the family; between her and Yusuf, and at Westminster. It wasn’t until Catherine had warned her that she’d even considered the possibility of her son being in trouble.

  She picked her bag up and dropped it again on the table, then clattered around the kitchen opening doors, slamming a mug onto the counter. This was useless.

  She headed for the stairs, pushing the living room door open and checking inside on the way. It was empty, with all the toys piled neatly in the baskets either side of the fireplace.

  She stomped upstairs, calling all the way. There was a chance they hadn’t heard her. Maybe Hassan had taken to wearing headphones while he worked.

  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see Hassan’s door open. She put a hand to her chest, relieved. A cat shot out and darted between her legs, running down the stairs. It was small and ginger. Unfamiliar.

  She smiled and pushed the door further open.

  “Hi love. I’m ho—”

  But the room was empty. The desk had magazines and school books piled on it as haphazardly as ever, and there was a half-drunk glass of orange juice sitting on the bedside table. The duvet was crumpled into a heap.

  She picked up the glass and sniffed it, then recoiled. Hassan was a messy boy, his room always littered with books, toys and stale food. Going in there was like a trip to IKEA; you always came out laden with glasses and crockery. But this glass had been there at least three days. Yusuf would have taken it to the dishwasher by now, if he hadn’t managed to browbeat Hassan into doing it.

  She resisted the urge to slump onto the bed, and made for her own room. When she opened the door, it was dark; no sign of Yusuf.