“Please. Please don’t do this. Please let me go home.”
They bring me to a room upstairs and lock the door from outside. The room is empty except for two single mattresses on the floor.
I should have mentioned Sweet Afton, I should have described seeing him there, that might have made me more real to him. We’ve spoken before, though I can’t remember the specifics, if I asked him for a light, if we chatted about the weather. It seems impossible for me to have forgotten, that those encounters hadn’t seemed particularly significant at the time, when this man might be the difference between returning to my son or never seeing him again.
I lie down on a mattress in the quiet. I’d rather have them threatening me, hurling abuse at me. It’s worse in here, the quiet is worse. In the silence, I think about how I might never hear my son say his own name. I might not find out his likes or interests, and I have some guesses, but I need to know what he chooses for himself. I might never have a conversation with him over dinner or on the phone. I might not introduce him to Roald Dahl or C. S. Lewis. I might not know him as a boy, or a teenager. He might never introduce me to someone he loves.
Tom and Briony would do their best, and maybe that would be enough, or maybe he would always feel the gap of not having his mam.
He cries sometimes when I leave his line of vision. He’s one year old. How could I leave behind a one-year-old? It’s not possible. Even if they shoot me, that can’t be the end. I’ll have to find a way to reach him. I’m his mam.
39
THE DOOR OPENS AND Marian appears with the two men at her back. She startles when she sees me. “Why is Tessa here?” she asks the men.
When they don’t answer, she flies at them. They manage to step back into the hall in time, and she shouts, then starts to throw herself against the door. She is, I realize, trying to break it down. Eventually she turns to me, panting. “Tessa—”
“It’s all right, Marian. It’s not your fault.”
“Where’s Finn?”
“He’s safe.”
She sits on the mattress facing mine. She has on her wool jumper, and her hair is held back in a gold clasp. “Are you hurt?” she asks. “Did they hurt you?”
“No. Who are they? Do you know them?”
“Not well,” she says. The bouncer’s name is Aidan, and the older one is Donal. “They’re waiting for someone to interview us. I don’t know how long that will be, it could be a few days.”
“Have you signaled for help?” I ask, nodding at the tracker in her filling.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s fine. Eamonn will send in a team.”
“They should have come by now,” she says.
Maybe they’re already here. Officers might be in the woods at this moment, they might have the house surrounded.
Marian moves around the room, studying the baseboards, the ceiling, the window, and the metal grate soldered to its frame. On the ceiling is a brass fixture, but they’ve removed the light bulb.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“I told you about this place,” she says. “This is the farmhouse.”
The wooden table in the kitchen is where she built bombs. The tiled counter is where she stood, after being hunched over a device for hours, and stretched her back, and made tea.
In the summer, she tells me, she often swam in the river behind the house. The river is frozen now, but in summer the water is warm, flowing slowly between grasses and overshot wildflowers. She’d paddle past dragonflies and kingfishers, with only her head above the surface.
Marian is telling me this as a sort of punishment for herself, she’s allowing me to hate her, or that version of her, a terrorist swimming naked in the river behind the house where I might now be killed.
But I can’t be angry with her. I don’t have the energy, not while I’m trying to work out how to escape.
When the room grows dark, we lie down on the two single mattresses on the floor. The men dragged the mattresses up to this room. I want to know where I was while they prepared this room for us, how long I’ve been walking around with this place waiting for me.
The sheets are new, the fabric stiff from never having been washed. One of the men went into a shop and picked them out. I picture him standing in front of a shelf, considering the different options, knowing what they would be used for. The ones he chose are sky blue.
* * *
—
Marian has fallen asleep. Outside, the moon is bright enough to stain the sky around it green. On the other side of the clearing, wintry trees stretch away for miles. No lights. No pylons. I wonder how long we’d have to walk to reach the nearest house.