Evelyn’s companion turns back around, winking at Paula. “Dinner tomorrow night, Paula, after I bail you out of jail? I think you still owe me dinner for the last time.”
“I love and appreciate all the bailing you’ll ever do for me, Allan.” Paula winks back at him, then disappears into the crowd to distribute more chains.
Within another half hour, Evelyn and Allan have settled themselves in their seats in the gallery. Evelyn’s instructions are to wait for one of the leaders to stand up and start shouting her protest, at which point they assume several guards will haul her out of the gallery. During the commotion, the other women are supposed to whip out their chains and attach themselves to their chairs or the nearby railings. Then they’ll each shout out in turn until—hopefully—the Speaker shuts down the proceedings.
Evelyn’s heart starts to race as the doors are shut and locked by those very same security guards, each with crossed arms and generic stern faces.
“Bloody hell, this is fun,” Allan mutters beside her with a chuckle.
Evelyn smiles, despite her nervousness. She glances down at the members of Parliament strolling in across the pea-green carpet below. Suits, bald heads, and shoes shinier than mirrors. The men who have never in their lives had to worry about getting pregnant, dying in childbirth, or trying to access an abortion within their own restrictive system. Paula’s right, Evelyn thinks. It is time for their voices to be heard. To show these clueless men what it feels like to have your life disrupted by the actions of others. To feel helpless and afraid and angry and unable to stop what’s happening to you.
Just a few minutes in, a woman on the west side of the gallery stands up and bellows down into the Chamber, shaking her fist. “Free abortion on demand! Women are dying because of your law, Trudeau! Shame on you, sir! Shame on all of you! Free abortion—”
The two guards at the gallery door immediately descend on her as the Prime Minister and all the representatives in the Chamber turn their heads up toward the commotion. The Prime Minister looks back down at his desk and purses his lips, ignoring the woman.
“Evelyn, the chain!” Allan says.
“Damn it!” She was so distracted by the shouting woman that she forgot her cue. “I’ll wait for the next one,” she whispers back, but already feels as though she’s failed. Allan nods.
Almost instantly another woman yells out, this time in the east gallery. “We won’t be silenced, Trudeau! Free abortion on demand! Free—”
The guards, anticipating the disturbance, apprehend the woman, but this time Evelyn is ready. She lifts the chain out of her purse and wraps it around and around the arm of her chair as quickly as she can with Allan’s help. A woman behind her gasps.
“Order in the gallery!” the Speaker shouts upward, his booming voice carrying into the very back rows. “Order, I say! Control yourself, madam!”
The third protest comes from a woman several seats down on Evelyn’s right. The fourth from the west side again. The fifth from Evelyn’s own mouth, before she even has a chance to think about what she’s saying. It’s as if a stranger stood up in her body and shrieked the words over the excited, outraged chattering from the public gallery and the dark mutterings of deep male voices from the Chamber.
As the entire gallery erupts around her, Evelyn makes eye contact with the Prime Minister, who holds her gaze before strong male hands grasp each of her arms. She stiffens as one of the guards yanks on the chain, but when they nearly lift her rigid body into the air to carry her out, her self-defence training kicks in, and she goes limp. Both the guards pitch forward as her weight drags them all back down. Her head smacks against the back of the chair, and she winces as Allan shouts an admonishment to the guards. Everything is chaos. Evelyn stays as lifeless and heavy as a sack of onions. The guards end up half dragging her out of the gallery.
One of the guards gives her a kick in frustration. “Get up!” he bellows at her, his face beet-red and his doughy forehead beading with sweat. He’s angry. He feels helpless. He’s unable to stop what’s happening. And that’s all Evelyn needs.
“Make me, asshole!” She hardly recognizes herself, but she doesn’t care. “Make me, then!”
He spits on her and reaches down, grasping her arm again in both his hands. He pulls—hard—and Evelyn feels something in her shoulder wrench out of place. She cries out as the other guard yells at his partner to stop.
Dizzy with the pain, all Evelyn registers is the utter pandemonium in the room, the shouting and screams and rattling chains, the Speaker bellowing commands that go unheeded. The sudden dampening of the sounds as she’s hauled out of the gallery into the hallway. The relative quiet of the security office and the feel of the chair underneath her. The ache in her shoulder and head.
It isn’t long before she’s joined by a crowd of others, all the women who stood up to protest, and some of their male allies, too. She spots Paula among them. Everyone looks rather the worse for wear; collars are torn or sitting sideways, mascara is smeared, ties are crooked, hair has come down from carefully pinned coifs. Some of the women, like Evelyn, suffered injuries. Lips are bleeding and bare arms are blooming bruises.
The security guards shunt them all into the small office where Evelyn is still seated, and they bake in the heat for what feels like hours. Evelyn thinks her adrenaline should be wearing off by now, but the panic hasn’t set in the way the pain in her shoulder has. She’s still quaking with exhilaration at her own daring, and thinks wryly about what Tom’s reaction will be when she calls to tell him that she has, in fact, been arrested and needs to be bailed out of an Ottawa jail.
There’s much muttering and complaining in the holding room. “Our protest became a riot,” Paula says proudly. “Well done, girls!”
“But when are we going to get out of here?”
“Where are the others?”
“Do you think they’ve shut it down?”
“Did we do it?”
“Are they going to arrest us, or what?”
“I don’t think they have enough handcuffs…”
“They could borrow our chains!” Paula says.
There’s a chorus of appreciative chuckling before the door finally opens and a tall, burly man with no neck strides into the room. All heads turn in his direction.
He glares at them, his lower lip downturned like an angry bulldog’s. “I’ve never seen such madness in all my years here!” he barks. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. The Speaker’s closed the Chamber.”
Evelyn is proud to see all her fellow protesters meet his gaze with wide smiles. No one looks away. No one is backing down. It unnerves him, this huge presence of a man who takes pride in the fact that he can intimidate people. Evelyn can’t remember the last time she felt so good. She could spit fire if she wanted to.
The man’s Adam’s apple slides up and down his thick, clean-shaven throat. “Well, we can’t hold you all. Just get the hell out of this building within the next three minutes, or so help me God, you’re all under arrest.”
CHAPTER 13 Angela
FEBRUARY 2017
When she leaves the store, Angela takes the copy of The Jane Network with her for Tina. They spoke briefly on the phone when Angela first discovered it, and Tina asked for a closer inspection.