Passing one of the other bedrooms, she thought she heard a whimper from inside. Night tremors.
She descended two flights silently, dropped to a crouch on the landing and peered round the banisters, like a child in a movie, eavesdropping on parents.
In the lobby below, a woman was behind the reception desk. Shirley could see the back of her head, enough to identify her as the staff member who’d fetched her from the stableyard that morning. She was capable looking, with hair nearly as short as Shirley’s, and a slightly squashed nose, and was calmly explaining to a bullish-looking man that he was in the wrong place, all the while with one hand out of sight. There’d be a button beneath the desk, Shirley knew. Press it and security would come.
She switched her focus to the visitor, who was broad-shouldered, and either worked out a fair bit, or spent part of his day lugging barrels from one side of the street to the other. Dark curly hair; stubbly throat and chin. Jeans and a zip-up jacket. She could make out a stain of some sort, unless it was a tattoo, on the back of his right hand: visible as he rubbed his jaw.
The woman said, “It’s a private facility. We have no rooms available.”
Shirley thought: Yeah, and how come he’d just wandered through the front door? The San wasn’t high security, but it didn’t put out a welcome mat. How come this character had got as far as the reception desk?
He’d tipped his head to one side. It was possible he thought this charming. “A friend’s staying here. I’m just paying a visit, okay?”
Shirley remembered from her morning walk how you could approach the house through the woods, if you had a mind to. Because they weren’t prisoners. Even Shirley was here of her own free will, if you overlooked the fact she’d been given zero bloody option. So yeah, she could walk out, anyone could, but the other side of that coin was, if you had a pressing need to get in, it wouldn’t take military genius.
“Just for a few minutes?”
The accent was familiar; so much so, it took a moment for Shirley to clock it. He was Italian. Shirley had an Italian grandfather, though she’d never met him. To be honest, she wasn’t convinced her grandmother had known him all that well. Still, blood was blood: she had that accent in her genes. She knew it when she heard it.
“For the last time, sir, if you don’t leave, I’ll have to call security.”
“There’s no need. Just a quick visit.”
Press the button, thought Shirley. He’s a threat or he’s a flake. But whatever he is, he’s not a lost tourist.
And then he said, “My friend, she’s called Shirley Dander. Just give me her room number, and we’re all good.”
Driving out of London had been easy, and traffic light. For the first half hour, Whelan listened to the news—the PM had just shared his vision of post-Brexit Britain as an imperial powerhouse, its weights and measures system the envy of the world –then a podcast on rising racial tension in the wake of low vaccine take-up in minority communities, before deciding silence was preferable. This carried him through the next sixty miles, and by the time he was approaching the small town nearest the San he recognised familiar territory, though one ravaged by recent events. About half the retail premises were shuttered, and a canvas banner reading “Food Bank—Tues/Thurs” had been hoisted across a car park gantry. London, he knew, had taken a battering. But this felt like a disaster zone; a community flattened by history, and not yet back on its feet.
It was a relief to be out the other side; to leave the main road and bear left, heading uphill along a single-track lane. On his previous visit, in early summer, this landscape had been all greens and gentle browns, the British countryside at rest. Now the car was surrounded by waves of blacks and blues, shifting in the wind. On both occasions, the lane approaching the facility took its time; it bent round fields, and went some distance out of its way to admire a farmhouse. Driving slowly, nervous of curves, Whelan was starting to have doubts. It was nine thirty; late to be paying a call. On the other hand, the San was a medical institution. Not all of its guests would arrive in daylight; some would be delivered as wreckage, under cover of the small hours. And he was still a figure in the Service; his name would ring bells, open doors. Besides, if memory served, when the car crested the next hill he’d be almost there; in his headlights’ beam he’d have a view of the San below; its elegant driveway behind its tall iron gates, the long wall bordering its eastern side. All of it at ease with the peaceful countryside.