“No.”
The nurse carries a tub of warm water over from the sink. I watch her roll my jeans away from my feet, without feeling anything. She gives me some pain medication. “This will hurt,” she says, and eases my feet into the water.
Under the surface, my feet are white. I look down at them, curious, and then the burning starts as they warm, the skin turning red, then purple. “That’s good,” says the nurse, “that’s what we want to see. Are you okay?”
I nod, fighting to hold them in the water. She takes my blood pressure and temperature, checks my fingers and ears for frostbite. It feels nice to be handled. She doesn’t mention the blood on my clothes, or ask whose it is. Eventually she lifts my feet from the water and wraps them in gauze bandages. “They’re going to blister,” she says. “But on the bright side, you’re going to keep all your toes.”
She’s fastening one of the bandages when I hear a baby’s cry in the hall. “Sorry. Sorry, one minute.”
I hobble into the corridor. Finn is sailing toward me, grumbling, carried in my mam’s arms, with Fenton and two uniformed constables behind them. I hurry forward, clumsy on my feet, my heart surging with wild joy, and then Finn turns his head and sees me. “Mama,” he says, pointing at me, and throws himself forward into my arms.
Marian comes out of her room, too, and claps her hands when she sees the baby. The detective looks from me to her. He says, “I don’t know where to begin.”
41
IDON’T WANT TO FALL entirely asleep. I’m too comfortable, this is too pleasant, the soft hospital bed, the pillows.
I lie on my side, with a pillow under my head and another between my knees. They didn’t cut off my clothes earlier. I don’t know why I’d expected they would. The nurse asked me to change into a hospital gown. Afterward, I watched her put my stained clothes into a clear polystyrene bag and hand it to a constable. She scraped under my fingernails, and gave him those samples, too.
We’re in a new hospital, a teaching hospital, with modern equipment. A doctor performed a trauma exam, pressing each of my vertebrae for tenderness. She checked me for bruises or abrasions, folding back one part of the hospital gown at a time so the rest of my body was covered. When she finished the exam, she said, “Your blood pressure and heart rate are a little low, most likely from dehydration. We’ll start an IV drip with fluids and electrolytes.”
Her tone was brisk and practical, without a shred of curiosity or morbid interest. I was so grateful to her for speaking to me normally.
An orderly brought me dinner on a tray, with ice water and a chocolate pudding cup. “Are we getting special treatment?” I asked, and he laughed. He thought I was being sarcastic, and I said, “No, it’s really good.”
He said, “Imagine how you’ll feel about food that’s actually good.”
For the first time in ages, I don’t have to do anything. My family is safe. A few hours ago, a constable drove my mam and Finn to a nearby hotel for the night. My hair is cool against the pillow, and something in the room smells like eucalyptus. I stay in this hinterland, drifting.
* * *
—
Fenton returns in the morning. He explains that Marian and I will be interviewed separately, for preservation of evidence.
“Were you close to finding us?” I ask.
He hesitates, then says, “No.”
“Did you coordinate with MI5?”
“They said they had no record of you or your sister ever working for them.”
I stare at him. “Have you told Marian?”
He nods. Her pledge account was emptied. She called the Swiss bank and was told her account had been cleared two days ago, the day of our abduction.
“I don’t understand.”
“Let’s start at the beginning,” he says. “Why were you under suspicion?”
“It wasn’t anything we’d done. An operation to assassinate the justice minister went wrong, and someone blamed it on us. Someone set us up.”
“Who else knows that you’ve been informing?”
“Our mam,” I answer, “and our handler, Eamonn.”
The detective has me describe my meetings with Eamonn. He asks for a physical description of Eamonn, and an account of everything he ever asked me to do. He says, “Did you ever meet with anyone else from MI5?”
“No. Why didn’t Eamonn help us?” Even if, somehow, Marian’s tracker had failed, Eamonn knew the location of the farmhouse. He could have had it checked.