This had been sufficient. It tagged her with a school-age daughter. The two women drew her to one side and gave her the information she wanted.
That was, she wrote, how she came to know of the clinic in Kingsland High Street. She took Simisola there to arrange for her to be cut. That was how she came to know a woman called Easter Lange who was Mercy Hart. At this clinic, Mercy examined Simisola and told Monifa that her daughter was fit to have the procedure. She would be unconscious while it was done. Awakened later, she would remain for one night at the clinic to monitor her well-being. The procedure was expensive, yes. It required three hundred pounds just to reserve an appointment. But it was also guaranteed painless.
So, everything the police suspected about the clinic in Kingsland High Street was true. While she had not been an actual witness to any procedure, Mercy Hart—or Easter Lange, as she’d called herself—had understood why she was there with Simisola and why she’d brought along three hundred pounds.
Monifa signed her name. She added the date. She had to believe that Alice Nkata was right about her son. She had to hope that he was a man of his word.
STOKE NEWINGTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
“Is someone out there, Tani? Who’re you looking for?”
Tani flicked the sheer curtain back into place and turned to the bed. Sophie was sitting up, her back against the pillows and the headboard, her breasts sweetly balanced on the arm she held across her body. Beneath the sheet pulled up to her waist, she was starkers.
He’d known it was not a particularly good idea to come to Stoke Newington once he left Lark. Thus, he needed an excuse for not returning to Chelsea directly as he’d told everyone he would do. He used the passports as this excuse.
Sophie had been surprised to see him, but she was quickly on board when she saw the passports. She took a thin, sharpened knife and, up in her bedroom, cut her mattress along its seam at the foot of her bed. The cut she made was just slightly larger than the width of the passports. She slid them inside. She offered to sew the seam back together, but Tani sidetracked her. It was her bedroom that had done it, it was the mattress, it was the opportunity.
Upon his arrival, he’d told Sophie briefly where he’d been and what had happened.
“She fell? She’s all right, isn’t she?” and when Tani lied and said Lark was fine—because, after all, he did not know—she went on with, “Are you sure your father didn’t follow you here?”
That was something Tani also didn’t know, although he said that he was sure about everything. Once Abeo arrived at Lark’s flat, Tani declared, his father would stay with her because she fell. No way would he leave till he’d rung the midwife or taken her to A and E to have her checked. His first priority would be Lark and their baby.
But, he’d explained, he needed to leave the passports with her, with Sophie. Because of Lark, his dad would now be searching for him. He reckoned it wasn’t beyond belief that his dad would also ring the coppers to charge Tani with assaulting Lark. So he didn’t want the passports to be anywhere near him. Could Sophie hide them where Abeo would never think to look even if he somehow managed to get inside the Franklins’ house?
Sophie said, “But you said he didn’t follow you.”
“He knows the street, Soph. He named it last time I saw him.”
She’d thought about it and decided upon the mattress in her bedroom. When she had it all seen to, though, Tani couldn’t bring himself to leave her. With the bed just where it was, they put it to use and dozed afterwards. When he awakened, he saw that two full hours had passed.
Quickly, then, he’d swung out of bed and gone to the window to flick the sheer curtain to one side, to look at the street, to gaze at each house and each car and each potential place where his father might lurk. Abeo had had more than enough time to see to Lark’s well-being and then to start the search for his son.
So when he turned from the window to answer Sophie, what he said was, “He’s not out there.” He began dressing. She did the same.
She followed him down the stairs to the door. He kissed her, his fingers dipping into her baby-soft hair. Then he eased the door open to check the street once again. He gave her a nod and set off on his way.
He dug his mobile from the pocket of his jeans as he walked towards the station. It was more than time to let his sister—not to mention the occupants of the big house in Chelsea—know that he was safe, fine, and on his way back.
When he looked at the mobile’s screen, he saw that he had missed several texts and a phone call. He paused on his way to the Stoke Newington rail station to see what was what. Two texts from Deborah St. James, one from her father, one from Zawadi at Orchid House. There was also a voice mail, so he listened to that as he resumed his walk to the station.