They stopped at the second gate and repeated the routine. A red light was replaced by a green one, then the gate slid open. Beyond it was the outside world. Rita looked from the windscreen to her companion, grateful to be up here with a view. She wondered if the windows were greyed out from the outside, if people would be able to see her. Could she get someone’s attention?
Don’t be stupid, she told herself.
They reached the junction and stopped. The policewoman turned to her.
“I’m Sonia,” she said, putting out her hand.
“Rita.” After a moment of silence, Sonia withdrew her hand.
They followed unfamiliar roads to the M4. Rita had never driven but she knew that this motorway ran from London to Wales. Neither direction took her home, to Birmingham. Or maybe they would go west, and then take the M5 north?
She felt her pulse quicken as Sonia positioned the van in the road, nearing the roundabout. She was heading for the westbound carriageway.
Rita felt as if she might float off the seat. Could she really be going home?
Chapter Eleven
Jennifer knocked on her son’s door.
“Hey sweetie, only me.”
She pulled on her brightest smile and pushed the door open.
He was at his desk, schoolbooks open in front of him.
“Hey,” she said.
He didn’t turn. “I’m not your sweetie.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
He bent over his work and put his pen in his mouth. He waggled it between his teeth then pulled it out and sniffed.
“Bye.”
“Bye? I’ve only just got back. I wanted to see you, find out how you’ve been.”
“I’ve been fine.”
“Good.”
She stepped towards him. His back stiffened. She stepped back.
“I’m sorry, love. About everything that’s happened.”
He turned. His face was wet. She resisted the urge to run over and pick him up.
“Why did you leave us, Mum?”
“I didn’t leave you. They took me.”
He wiped his cheeks and said nothing.
“What did Dad tell you?”
Hassan shook his head. “Samir was arrested. He had a girlfriend. She was a terrorist.”
“I’m not sure she was actually a terrorist.” She thought of Meena, helping her get through her Celebration. She still wasn’t sure if she’d been sent to the centre as a spy, or if her story was genuine.
A shrug. “Same difference.”
She sat on the bed. He still had his favourite soft toy on the pillow, a stuffed mouse. The kitten she’d encountered the previous night was curled up next to it. She stroked its fur and it shifted in its sleep.
“Who’s this?’
He smiled. “Poppy.”
“Nice name. How long have you had her?”
“A month. She’s ten weeks old. She can go outside in two weeks.”
“That’s good.” She left her hand on the cat’s back. She could feel its ribs rise and fall under her fingers.
“She’s cute.”
“Yeah.”
He turned back to his work. “I missed you.”
She felt her stomach hollow out. She took her hand off the cat and leaned towards him. “I missed you too. I missed you so much. I couldn’t wait to be back here with you.”
He turned. “Really? You’re not going straight back to London?”
“No. I’m staying here.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I promise.”
“Yeah.”
He stood up and left the room. She stared at the cat, waiting for him to come back. She continued waiting.
She felt the house vibrate as the front door slammed.
She hurried to the top of the stairs. Yusuf was opening the front door.
“What was that?”
“Hassan.”
“What? Where’s he gone?”
Yusuf grabbed his coat. “We don’t have time.”
He yanked the door open and rushed outside. Cold air gusted in after him. Jennifer stumbled down and stared out.
“Yusuf? Hassan?”
Yusuf was walking back along the street towards her, all but dragging Hassan after him. His lips were tight and he was sweating.
Jennifer grabbed the doorframe. Samir had pulled this trick a few times; had Hassan learned it from him?
Yusuf was struggling to keep hold of him now. He put an arm around Hassan’s shoulders and bundled him towards the house. He spoke into his ear and glanced at the houses around them. Nothing moved; no twitching curtains, no doors closing, nothing.
Jennifer drew back to let them in. Hassan gave her a wary look then disappeared upstairs. Yusuf called after him.
“No! I want you down here, where we can talk.”
“Maybe he needs some time,” Jennifer said. “You told me—”
Yusuf’s eyes were blazing. “I’m not letting this happen again.”
She said nothing.
Half an hour later, Hassan had apologised and promised not to run off again. The house was quiet; he’d brought his homework down to the dining room and Yusuf was in the kitchen, sifting through letters from constituents. Every third letter or so he would tut loudly, scrunch the paper into a ball and toss it towards the bin.
“Yusuf, calm down. Please.”
His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. It’s just—it’s been hard, without you here.”
“That’s not exactly my fault.”
He stiffened. “No. I know. I missed you. I didn’t know where you were. Samir. Hassan’s taken it hard.”
She stepped in behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I know. Talk to me. Tell me about him. Please.”
He followed her to the table. “What is there to tell?”
“Let’s start with school. How’s he getting on?”
Hassan had started at secondary school in September, just weeks before her arrest.
“Seems to be OK. He told me there are only two other Asian kids in his year. He’s made friends with them.”
“Really? Samir’s year group had, what, twenty? Thirty?”
“It’s the new school. Most of the Muslim kids are going there. They’ve been building links to the mosque.”
“Is the council encouraging that?”
“The council is being instructed to.” His face was hard. “By Catherine Moore’s government.”
“Please, don’t start that again.”
He looked at her. “And they’re being made to recite this oath.”
“I know.” She thought of Rita. Where was she? “I know someone who was arrested because of it. A teacher.”
“Someone you met in the centre?”
She felt heavy. “Yes. Rita.”
“He misses Samir, you know.” Yusuf’s voice was low.
“Of course he does.” She put her hand on Yusuf’s. “We’ll get him back. I’ll call John again. Catherine.”
Yusuf pulled his hand away and stood up. “I need to make lunch.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“I have to. If I don’t look after him, who knows what will happen?”
“Do you blame me? For being away? For getting arrested?”
“No. You were helping Samir. If he hadn’t come to your flat, he’d have been on the streets.”
“He wanted to go to France, you know.”
Yusuf pulled back from the fridge. “What?”
“He had his passport.”
“He’d have been stopped.”
“That’s what I told him. But I think that’s where he was going, when they arrested him. After he broke out of my flat.”
“I heard about that. He was locked in.”
She felt her cheeks grow hot. “That was me. I didn’t want him running off again. We were going to fix it, with that debate in Parliament. Me and Catherine.” She saw his jaw tighten. She ignored it. “Except then he was arrested, and it all turned bad.�
��
Yusuf closed the fridge door and stared out of the window. Jennifer looked past him to see that the back garden had started to grow wild and the lawn hadn’t been cut.
“Did you get to see him at all?” she asked. “After he was arrested?”
He lowered his head, his back still to her. “No. I haven’t seen him since the night before he left.”
“It was me who saw him last.”
“Yes.”
Yusuf picked up a packet of tomatoes and crossed to the bread bin. His movements were stiff.
“I have to see what I can do,” Jennifer said.
Yusuf said nothing. He pulled a bag of bread put of the bin and started to butter slices.
“Are you OK with that?”
Still he said nothing. He returned to the fridge and took out a pack of cheese, not making eye contact.
“Yusuf, please. We need to talk about this. We need to do this together.”
He spun round. His eyes were red. “There’s no point.”
“I don’t see how—”
“You don’t understand. That’s OK—you’ve been away. You don’t know what’s been going on.”
“I know there’s been a bomb, and that there are cameras everywhere. People seem jumpy. Susan over the road—”
“You went over the road?”
“Yes. I needed to use her phone. Last night.”
“Bad idea.”
“Why? We’ve known Susan for years.”
“She’s white.”
“So?”
“I’m not. The kids aren’t. They don’t trust us anymore. Not since the bomb. None of them trust us.”
Jennifer stood up. “But this is Birmingham, for Christ’s sake. It can’t be like—”
“Do you remember the pub bombings? In the sixties? The IRA?”
“It was before I was born. But my mum told me about it.”
“Do you remember how much people in this city hated the Irish after that?”
She shook her head. Since she’d been a teenager, Birmingham had been proud of its Irish community. There were Irish pubs, and a St Patrick’s Day parade every year. But then she remembered what it had been like before that, and the stories her mum had told her. She’d worked in a department store. Her best friend was Irish. She’d been sacked for no reason.
“But this is the twenty-first century,” she said. “People aren’t like—”
“They are. It’s worse. Because the government is encouraging it. With the new segregated schools, and the oath, and the rewards for reporting suspected extremists. They even make us recite it before every council meeting now.”
“What?”
“The oath. The British Values Oath.”
“Shit. We had to recite it in the centre too. And more.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry. I know what they put you through. I shouldn’t take it out on you. But my parents are thinking of going back to Pakistan.”
“They’d never do that.”
“Things change. At least they won’t be hated there. Won’t be spat on in the street.”
Jennifer thought of the woman she’d helped at the station. Had she even made it to Manchester?
“You’ve made me even more determined,” she said.
“How so?”
“Forget John. I’m going straight to Catherine.”
“You know what I think about that.”
“Just let me try. Give her the benefit of the doubt. She risked a lot to tell us about Samir, after all.”
Yusuf stopped what he was doing. “Do you still have it?”
“Have what?”
“The note. The note she gave you about Samir. The warning.”
She frowned. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.”
“It’s evidence.”
“Evidence?”
“That she broke the law. The Official Secrets Act. Find that, and you’ve got her.”
“I’m not doing it like that. She came to see me, you know.”
“What?”
“In the centre. It was her who ordered my Celebration. That’s how I got out.”
“Are you sure—”
“She’s my friend. She’ll help us.”
Chapter Twelve
The motorway flashed past. Rita stared out at it, marvelling at the novelty of the outside world. How long was it since she had seen grass, and trees, and the sky?
The Malvern Hills were looming to their left, dim grey shapes against the pale sky. The day was one of those bright but sunless days when a thin layer of cloud denied the people scurrying beneath the joy of sunshine. But it was good enough for Rita.
The hills were directly to their left now, which meant they couldn’t be more than twenty miles from Worcester. Where Ash lived. Not far from Birmingham, and home. Rita sat on her hands, reminding herself that they could be going anywhere. This could just be a coincidence. But as the motorway signs counted down the miles, she felt her heart rate rise.
The policewoman hadn’t spoken since inviting Rita into the front of the van. She gripped the wheel in her pink-tipped hands, focusing on the road ahead and occasionally muttering when another driver pulled in front of them or got too close.
As they passed another sign – 35 miles to home, Rita hardly dared breathe – the traffic slowed and then stopped. After a few stationary moments the driver pulled on the handbrake and took her hands off the wheel. She turned to Rita.
“You doing OK?”
“Yes.” Rita nodded. She kept her eyes on the surrounding traffic, the fields beyond it. “Where are we going?”
A smile. “Sorry, I can’t tell you that. Not too far now though.”
Rita could feel her pulse throbbing in her wrists. She put a finger on each and willed herself to be calm. Tonight she could be home. She could contact Ash. If he hadn’t been arrested too.
The policewoman – Sonia, Rita reminded herself – reached into the pocket of her door and brought out a chocolate bar. A Twix. She opened the wrapper with one hand.
She waved it at Rita. “Want one?”
Rita had been surviving on institutional food for weeks. She could feel her ribs.
“Yes please.”
Sonia pulled a bar out with her teeth and handed the wrapper to Rita, with the second bar inside. Rita stroked the gold plastic, pushing down an urge to swallow the chocolate in one bite.
At last she let herself pull the bar out and took her first bite. It was like velvet on her tongue. She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat.
“How long since you last ate something decent?”
She opened her eyes again and shrugged. “Weeks, maybe. What’s the date, today?”
“You don’t know the date?” A pause. “Hang on, nor do I.” Sonia laughed and pulled a phone from the same pocket where the chocolate had been. Rita eyed it. Could she steal it, use it to call Ash? Her family? She hadn’t spoken to her parents for two years and they wouldn’t have missed her, but still.
This woman was being nice to her. Stealing would be no way to repay her.
The traffic started and Sonia dropped her half-eaten stick of chocolate in her lap to take the steering wheel again. They edged forwards a hundred yards or so and then stopped. Sonia groaned.
“I hate the M5.”
Rita nodded. She had rarely used it, despite living less than four miles from it. School was a thirty-minute walk from home, and if it was raining, the bus was easier than driving. No parking to worry about.
Sonia applied the handbrake again and picked up her chocolate. She downed it in one gulp, then wiped her lips. Rita was still nibbling at hers.
“Do you want me to make that easier for you?”
Rita looked back at her. “Sorry?”
“The handcuffs. They can’t help.”
Rita’s eyes widened. “Yes. Of course.”
She held her hands out, the chocolate in the left one. Sonia pulled a keyring from her belt and stretched the elastic to bring it to Rita�
��s hands. She unlocked the cuffs and Rita felt the cold metal slide off her wrists. She wriggled her fingers then ate the rest of the chocolate in one bite.
“Don’t get any ideas though. The doors are all deadlocked.”
Rita eyed the passenger door next to her. Did she dare try it, in case Sonia was bluffing? Or would that just get those cuffs slapped onto her wrists again?
She decided to leave it, for now.
The traffic started to move. Sonia crept forwards, keeping a steady distance behind the car in front.
“So what did you do?”
Rita frowned. “Sorry?”
“What did you do? To get yourself sent here?”
If Sonia didn’t already know, there would be a reason. And Rita didn’t like to talk about it. She still didn’t know who had informed on her, who had told the authorities that she wasn’t reciting the oath with the children in her class each morning.
She rubbed her wrists; they ached from the handcuffs but that was nothing to the soreness from the beating in group. She couldn’t risk having those cuffs on again. Safest to respond.
“I’m – was – a teacher. I didn’t recite the oath with the children. The British Values Oath.”
“That all?”
Rita nodded.
“Blimey. I had you down for some kind of terrorist or something. One of the women they rip the headscarves off as soon as they arrest them.”
“I’m not Muslim.”
“Oh.”
“Not that that’s relevant, of course.” She remembered all those conversations in the pub, the anger at the rising Islamophobia they saw all around them. When it was stoked by the government, there wasn’t much you could do to stop it.
“Right,” said Sonia. Rita looked at her. A white woman, working in the police force: of course she would be Islamophobic.
Sonia turned to her, taking her eyes off the road for a second. “You think I’m a racist, don’t you?”
“I never said—”
“No. But you do.”
“I didn’t—”
Sonia raised a hand and looked at Rita, more squarely now. Rita glanced at the road, nervous.
“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you my girlfriend’s Muslim, would you?”
Rita looked back at her. Was she telling the truth? Or was this a way to get Rita to trust her? She shrugged.
The Division Bell Trilogy Page 56
