Heartstream

by Tom Pollock

  The screen goes blank. Polly’s shrunken features look back at me in the reflection of the dark glass. “All options are on the table,” she echoes softly. She sounds hopeless. “They’re coming in, then.”

  I wheel to face her. “What do you mean, coming in? They can’t come in. What about the bomb?”

  “Oh, once the word terrorism starts getting thrown around, all the rules change. There might be other bombers. There might be a conspiracy. That justifies them trying bridges, shunts, radio-jamming the detonator, all manner of risky, finicky ploys to get in here and grab me. That’s why, I imagine, my dear old ex brought it up.”

  She almost laughs, but tears glimmer in her eyes. “Tell me, Amy, how many terror attacks can you remember on London?”

  “What has that got to do with—”

  “Humour me. Please.”

  “Four.” A little spike of adrenaline jabs through me at how close her hand is to the trigger of her bomb vest. “Tulse Hill, Tufnell Park, Paddington and Greenwich.”

  “Four, yes, very good. And for any of those four, can you remember the mayor going on TV three times in less than twelve hours?”

  “I don’t … I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”

  “No, it’s always the Met commissioner, or the officer in charge. But our Ry’s taken the lead on this one; in fact he seems to be taking a rather hands-on role, doesn’t he? I wonder why?” Her finger and thumb toy with the little silver cap on one of the flasks of explosive on her vest.

  “From haven’t ruled out terrorism to confirmed terrorist contacts to start of a coordinated terror attack in under half a day. Just like I have some concerns to she’s very problematic to she should go die in a fire.”

  She makes a sound in the back of her throat; her mouth twists like she tastes something nasty. “Next thing you know, they’re burning your house down. Bless him, Ryan never could act without working himself up into a total state first. Force is always a last resort,” she snarls. “Yeah, well, last resorts are where fuckboys end up when they don’t have the guts to take responsibility for anything. I bet dear old Dr Smith thought keeping me locked up and drugged up was a last resort too.”

  She’s stumbling over her words; her eyes are staring, feverish. My stomach cramps up with fear. Her fingers flicker at her bomb vest.

  She’s going to do it, I think. She’s really going to do it.

  “I misjudged you, Ry,” she murmurs. “I thought you’d be too weak for this. I should have known. It’s always your weakness that’s hurt me. I should have been more afraid of your weakness than your strength.”

  Her gaze seems to clear and settle on me. “They’re coming in. If they can, they’ll take me. If not, oh well, they’ll shoot me and probably shoot you too and say I did it.”

  “Polly.” I reach out towards her. “Cat, please.”

  “Well, fuck them.” Tears are streaming down her face now. She howls it. “Ryan, Ben, Evie, all of them. I’m not going to let them take me. I won’t go back; I won’t let them take me. I won’t let them, Amy, I won’t let them I won’t let them…”

  Her hand tenses on the bomb vest and every muscle in me seizes up with the premonition of the blast.

  “I WILL NOT BE DESTROYED!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cat

  As my fingers tense on the vest, a smell pricks my nostrils, a smell from memory, the one time in my past when I triggered an explosive.

  Smoke pouring from a keyhole, the acrid stench of paint, peeling as it burned, the clunk of the door handle falling to the floor. The leap in my chest as I skidded out into the doorway, my shirt flapping around me. I didn’t have a plan. I was too lost for plans; the only thought in my head was seeing you again.

  I made it sixteen feet up the corridor before I felt Joy’s meaty forearm on my back, bearing me back to earth. I cried and howled and clawed at the floor. Twenty minutes later, I was in another room that looked identical to the one I’d blown up. Nothing had changed, except that for two months my meals were brought to me in my room, and when they let me out into the garden for twenty minutes once a day, a nurse shadowed me to make sure I didn’t infect anyone else with my escapee fervour.

  Will Jenkins of the Beaconsfield Jenkinses got moved to a different clinic, or maybe prison, where perhaps he’s still chewing his cuffs and dreaming of blowing up Parliament. I didn’t see him again, but I never forgot what he taught me about bombs.

  “Don’t!”

  I blink.

  “Please.” You’re stretching out an imploring hand towards me. “Polly, Cat…” You swallow hard and force the syllables into your throat. “Mother, please.”

  “Don’t. Call me. That,” I snap, and you recoil. Oh God, you look so frightened. Guilt and self-disgust flood through me. I fight to gentle my voice. “Please, Amy, don’t call me that. Not when you don’t mean it. I can’t bear it.”

  My promise to myself whirls through my head. I won’t let them destroy me. I won’t let them destroy me. I won’t let them destroy me. I won’t I won’t I won’t.

  But I already have. I thought I’d endured, but – I pluck at the vest I made with the scraps of what Will taught me – how much of the Cat Canczuk they locked up in that place survived?

  I roll my gaze hopelessly around the room. Evie’s kitchen. Evie’s tasteful lighting. Evie’s elegant Swedish furniture. Evie’s drawers upended, Evie’s fancy cutlery scattered all over the floor by me, Evie’s pricey health food stamped into the floor by me. Despair mounts in me like a wave. She was always so ordered, so careful, so in control. I’m a ball of chaos and undirected rage. I couldn’t even break out of the hospital she put me in; I had to wait for her to die so they’d let me out. I’ve never done anything right. How could I ever have expected this to work?

  And now I’ve got you, my child – my only child – cowering away from me.

  “They’ve already won,” I say softly.

  I look down the hallway, at the four glass panels set into Amy’s front door. I look at the heavy latch stamped BANHAM and imagine the wood around it splintering under a police battering ram, the way our locks splintered, the way our boundaries shattered on that night more than seventeen years ago when that hilarious Internet prankster called in the raid.

  I remember my face ground into the familiar patterned carpet of my old living room, friction burns springing up on my cheek, my arm bent around to breaking, men’s voices screaming at me “DON’T MOVE! DO NOT MOVE!” I remember feeling a cold metal ring pressed into the back of my neck and knowing it was the muzzle of a gun because I could see the same thing jammed into Mum’s back. I remember the pain of the pressure as my swollen abdomen was forced down. How easy it would be now, as it would’ve been then, for a pumped-up scared shitless twenty-year-old boy in a flak jacket to let loose a stray round.

  The vest is suddenly stifling. My head is pounding and I’m parched. I feel like I haven’t had a drink in years. I look down. Two switches gleam greyly where they emerge from the nest of gaffer tape that fixes them to the old cigar tin I’ve drafted as a control box. The blink of the green light is oddly soothing. My hand strays towards my chest without me even meaning it to.

  “Don’t!”

  You utter a little frightened mew, and I look up sharply. Slowly you come out of your defensive crouch. I want to curl up and weep at the fear I’ve put on your face, but despite it, you take one step towards me, then another. Your eyes, the same shade as his, hold mine. You stretch out a hand towards me.

  “Please. You don’t have to. Walk out of here, with me. Give yourself up. Tell your story.”

  Your voice is high-strung, desperate. Judging by your expression, the sour laugh that bubbles up out of my chest shocks you as much as it shocks me.

  “And who’ll believe me? A confirmed mental patient who claims the mayor of London fathered her baby?”

  I put my hand back to my chest. You scream and tense to jump, but there’s no time for your muscle
s to unwind as I pull one of the bottles from my vest.

  I unscrew the cap. “It’s only water,” I tell you, and to prove it I take a long draught. “See?”

  You gape at me. The silence makes me feel guilty and embarrassed and I spill on into it, trying to explain.

  “I had to make it look like a real bomb, because I knew they would have caught me on some camera coming in here, and you had to believe it, because I knew I couldn’t watch you the whole time and search the house, and if you sneaked out and ran to the cops, they’d kick down the door in thirty seconds flat and I’d lose my one chance to find the proof that…”

  I’m gabbling, desperate to ease the terror I can still see on your face. I take a deep breath, let it out, drain and then drop the bottle. You flinch, but all it does is bounce.

  “It doesn’t matter. I failed. There is no proof.”

  I stand aside to give you a clear path to the hallway and, beyond that, the front door, your fans, your life and … your family.

  “Go.”

  You don’t move.

  “Amy, go. Judging by the way our dear mayor’s sounding off on TV, they’re about to come in shooting. That really would put you in danger, and what kind of a mother would I be if I let that happen?”

  It’s a weak attempt at humour, and I can’t make you smile. I guess I’ve given up that privilege. I go around behind you and gently push you towards the hall.

  “I said go. Don’t say anything about your mother, or the mayor or anything else. If Ryan knows you know, I don’t know what he’ll… Look, just tell them I was an obsessive fan of yours, OK?”

  And finally, mercifully, you begin to shuffle over the tiles.

  “Amy?”

  You look back, your eyes wild and frightened.

  “I’m glad I got to see you again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Amy

  When I try to walk, I find I can only manage a kind of zombie shuffle. My limbs are full of pins and needles; I feel like I’ve been tied up. My head is a cloud of static. Ahead of me, through the kitchen doorway, I can see the hallway, the front door with its bubbled glass and, through that, the milling vagueness of the police and the news cameras and the gawking crowd. Out there is safety, only a few steps away if I could just walk properly. Out there are Dad and – my heart flickers in my chest – Charlie.

  I feel her eyes on me as I leave, and, despite myself, I look back from the threshold to the hall. Her eye sockets are like pits. She looks desolate, but in a way almost relieved, like she’s even more glad that this is over than I am. There’s something familiar about the expression, but in my dazed state it takes me a second to place it. It’s the exact expression that stared back at me from the bathroom cabinet the morning after Mum died. The face you wear when someone you love has been suffering, and you’ve been suffering with them, and you hate yourself that you didn’t do more for them, but at least it’s over now.

  My tongue feels like it’s stuck to the roof of my mouth with glue and sawdust, but I prise it away to ask, “What about you?”

  She looks startled. “Oh, don’t worry about me.” She flaps her hands at me, waving me away. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Seems like,” I say, “I’ve been told a lot of lies by a lot of people, not least you, and apparently I’ve swallowed most of them, but even I can spot that one.”

  She laughs. “Fair enough.”

  I wait for her to say more, but she just smiles at me sadly, mouthing go.

  “Well?” I press her.

  “Do you really care?” she asks.

  “No.” I shake my head. “I don’t know. Let’s say for the sake of argument that I do. What are you going to do when I walk out of here?”

  “Well, Ry’s already branded me a terrorist, and I suppose you know what he does with them.” I swallow and nod. “Well, don’t worry.” That sad, relieved smile stays on her face. She reaches behind her vest and pulls out the little snub-nosed pistol.

  “I’m not going to let them take me back.”

  We stand there for long enough for me to become aware of the ticking of the kitchen clock.

  “Amy,” she says gently. “Go. Please. There’s not much time.”

  I don’t move. I don’t know why not. I feel like everything inside me was thrown up in the air when I saw her drink from that bottle, and it hasn’t landed yet.

  “You … you could still come out with me,” I say. “There are press out there; you could tell them your story.”

  She just laughs at that. A shocking, deep laugh, from the roots of her belly.

  “A freshly released lunatic who’s already been branded a terrorist on national TV?” she scoffs, tears running down her cheeks. “Oh, I can definitely see them taking my word for it. I need proof, Amy.”

  “There’s … there’s Mum’s secret phone.”

  She snorts. “Even assuming I can convince them I didn’t plant that, all it shows is someone leaned on Dr Smith to do something and that a dead woman was somehow involved. I need proof that indisputably connects me to Ryan and Evie, and there isn’t any.”

  She raises the gun and I flinch hard, but she’s only using the back of it to wipe the tears away.

  “Go. Don’t worry about me. What happens to me isn’t your problem. Go see your brother.”

  Charlie. I turn and make my way into the hall, the parquet slats creaking under me. The hubbub outside grows louder. My legs feel like they could run now. In seconds I could be out there, with him, looking after him, like I so desperately owe him.

  What happens to me isn’t your problem.

  Into every life a little rain must fall, Mum liked to say, and sometimes more than a little. And now the Internet can pipe every drop of it into our front rooms until we feel like we’re drowning in it, and what on earth is the point if we don’t sometimes make it our problem?

  I look back at her. She’s smiling, but braced rigid as though for a blow, waiting to be abandoned one last time.

  “There is,” I say softly, and as I speak, I realize I’ve decided.

  “What was that, Amy?” she asks.

  “You said there’s no proof, but there is; there has to be.”

  The resigned smile vanishes instantly. Now there is only anxious, barely daring hope. I fight not to look away.

  “W-w-w-what do you mean?” Her gaze is so vulnerable it’s painful, like looking at a naked bulb.

  “When I was thirteen,” I begin slowly, still working through it in my head as I speak, “and Mum was first diagnosed, I went into a proper moody, rebellious phase. Wouldn’t leave my room, wouldn’t clean it either. Mum would yell at me to get off my arse, to do something, anything, that wasn’t doodling or dicking around on the Internet. ‘This isn’t an excuse,’ she’d say, and then point to herself. ‘I’m going to be fine.’

  “Then, one day, I came home from school, dropped my bag on the floor by the door like I always did, stomped my way up the stairs like I always did, and she was standing in my bedroom doorway with her arm across it like a tollbooth pole. She was holding up her phone; it had one of those email coupons open on it for something called Jazzercise – it’s as awful as it sounds.

  “‘We’re doing this,’ she said. ‘The docs say I need to stay active, and they’ve got a two for one offer.’ I looked at her like she’d just sworn undying loyalty to Satan, because I was thirteen years old and, like an idiot, I said I could think of literally nothing that would be more embarrassing than tap-dancing sweatily in a leotard next to my middle-aged mother.

  “And then Mum got this victorious smile on her face and said, ‘I can.’ She swiped right on her phone, and there was a photo of me from Easter a few years before, wearing this fluffy yellow chick outfit. Come to think of it, it’s still on there – you saw it earlier. ‘Think of it this way,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be seen dead at a Jazzercize class with your aged parent, correct?’ ‘Correct,’ I said.

  “‘Then I imagine none of your school friends wou
ld either. Which means they won’t be there to see you. On the other hand, if I hear another word out of you that isn’t Yes Mum, what a lovely idea, Mum; we’ll get some exercise and spend some quality time together then this adorable photo of you might just become the new banner image on your school intranet site, maybe with some of your baby shots as well, I haven’t decided yet. Might put a bit of a dent in your image, that. Mightn’t it?’”

  “You remember it word for word?” Polly puts in. She sounds sceptical, like she thinks I’m trying to con her. She’s sat down and put the gun on the tabletop, but her hand is still only an inch or two away from it. “Four years later?”

  “I…” I grimace. “She’d just been diagnosed for the first time and all I heard was the word cancer. I didn’t understand that it can take years to work through. So, just for a couple of weeks, in the evenings I took to writing down everything she said, all our conversations that I could remember, like I had this idea I could keep her alive that way. Since she died I’ve been reading them back.”

  Polly winces, and sways a little on her feet like she’s been hit. “I see,” she says. “So what’s your point?”

  “My point is, how did Mum get your shrink to do what she told him? She threatened to post his junk where people would see it. She blackmailed him. Same as she did to me.”

  I think of her going through the house, straightening plates and stacks of paper. Making right.

  “Mum liked order. She liked patterns. She liked habits and routine. She had her ways and she stuck to them.”

  “A place for everything,” Polly says. “And everything in its place.”

  “Exactly. So we have a woman with form for blackmail, who founded a cybersecurity company, who engaged in a conspiracy with the father of your child and current mayor of this city to illegally imprison you in a mental hospital and steal your baby to raise it as her own.”