by Asia Mackay
I bit my lip and ignored the dig. ‘I came back to work because I felt ready to.’
Doc looked as if he expected me to say more. He wasn’t going to get it. I wasn’t going to confess that I needed my work life down here to balance out my home life up there. To suffocate rather than be suffocated.
The music played on as we stared at each other.
‘Look, Doc, I might be a mother now but I can do my job just as well as I did before. Considering how many Rats are parents I’m surprised you’re making such an issue of this.’ I was daring him to say the unspoken. That it was different because I was a woman.
He remained silent.
‘Just sign me off as fit for duty and I promise to not go on a wild violent killing spree.’ I smiled. ‘Unless it’s department sanctioned.’
*
Safe in the knowledge I had the all-important green light from Doc, I headed to Platform Eight’s gym. Adjoining the car park, the gym was a square room, thirty metres wide with mirrored walls and filled with rows of high-tech gym equipment. In the centre was a boxing ring. My latest adversary was perky, blonde and bare-knuckle pounding one of the punch bags along the back wall.
Her ponytail swished as she turned around to face me.
‘Holy shit, what happened to you? You look terrible. Your face . . . all the light has drained out of it. You look so much older. And so tired. I know you can’t talk about it but whoever held you hostage has really done a number on you.’ She circled me and slapped my thighs. ‘It’s weird to gain so much weight in captivity . . .’
Candy Reardon was Eight’s in-house fitness instructor.
I had always hated her.
‘Actually, Candy, I just had a baby.’
‘Wow.’ She clasped a hand to her mouth and giggled. ‘Really? That’s all?’ She gave me another once-over. ‘I mean, even your arms have got fatter. How does that happen? It’s just so weird – the baby’s only in your tummy, right? How does the fat just spread everywhere?’
‘Water. Retention,’ I said through gritted teeth.
Candy’s pink manicured nails were already flicking through her iPad. ‘I see your upcoming mission is a residential break-in. Luckily nothing too strenuous but you’ll need to pass a fitness test before I can clear you as fit for duty.’ She motioned towards the training bike. ‘Climb aboard. Then it’s the running machine, then the cross-trainer, then weights and then you do it all over again. And again.’
As irritating as I found her there was no denying Candy was good at her job. She had a steely authority that kept even the hardest of Rats in line. We all knew that she had the power to bench us, and as such she needed to be respected.
I got on to the bike and started pedalling.
I knew I should be grateful. Most new mothers hardly have the time to get back in shape, let alone the motivation. When sleep-deprived, getting up off the sofa was tough, never mind doing a few laps round the park.
But here I had no option but to get fit again. As Candy kept screaming at me – my job depended on it. My life depended on it. Since having Gigi I had a newfound respect for my body. It had created, carried and borne life. And now, sporting the after-effects of this monumental act, I needed to remember the bigger picture. I might never fit a pair of jeans the way I used to. But fuck it. I had birthed a human. And I needed to get back in shape not because I really gave a shit about how I looked in a bikini, but because being strong meant being healthy. Being strong meant staying alive.
Who cared about beach body? I needed battle body.
‘Okay, Lex, that’s it.’
I dropped the handlebar of weights I was holding and sank to the floor. Sweat was pooling into my cleavage.
‘You’ve passed. Just.’ Candy shook her head. ‘A year ago you were one of my top-performing Rats and now you’re barely scraping through. I’m going to up your training sessions to daily. We’ve got a lot of work to do.’
*
At 8 p.m., with one hour to go until departure for Isaac Onegin’s house, I went over the plans for the break-in. It should be a straightforward job. The easiest break-ins were those when the owners were home and still awake. No alarm system to dismantle thanks to the sweet belief intruders always waited until everyone was tucked up in bed. Surveillance records showed their cook left every night at 10 p.m. by the basement door. Earlier in the afternoon Robin had succeeded in slotting a small device, which Geraint had named ‘the jammer’, into its locking mechanism by posing as a delivery man.
Tonight, as the door shut behind the departing cook, the jammer, activated remotely by Robin in our van, would stop the lock from working and hold the catch back for a whole four minutes. I needed to be in position to race in as soon as the cook was clear of the basement entrance. Beyond that was a short flight of stairs up to the study on the ground floor. Surveillance had reported that after dinner neither Onegin nor his wife ever ventured back downstairs, preferring to stay on the first floor to continue drinking in the dining room or stumble through to their home cinema.
Nothing shouted wealth more than having a dining room two floors away from the kitchen – who needed them next to each other when you had staff?
*
I headed to the ladies’ toilet. The very few women of the Platform had fought hard for this room. It was a converted broom cupboard with just enough space for a loo and a sink but at least the floor wasn’t pee-stained and there wasn’t always some guy straining in a stall. No one had gotten round to getting a mirror for above the sink but where one should have been someone had written on the wall in marker pen, ‘It’s okay, you’re beautiful!’
I had yet to work out if it had been done by one of the other women as a shout-out to her fellow sisters, or by one of the guys as a sarcastic piss-take.
The wobbly shelf above the sink was crammed with a bumper pack of Panadol, a large bottle of foundation, a red lipstick (my go-to tool for looking dressed up and made up) and a small bottle of contact-lens solution (Nicola was always complaining how the long days in front of a computer screen hurt her eyes. I had once suggested she should just wear her glasses and she looked at me like I had spat at her). Next to the loo was a small red medical bin marked ‘Anatomical Waste: Please Incinerate’, borrowed from Interrogation, and used to dispose of sanitary products. All in all, it was nothing much, but it was all-female territory and an important sign that management realised that times were changing, women were capable of working in this world and that we were here to stay. One small room saying so much, all behind a door which had a crudely drawn outline of a woman with massive breasts brandishing a gun.
No confusion over whether it was us or them responsible for that bit of graffiti.
I attempted to manoeuvre myself into my Platform-issue skin-tight breaking-and-entering outfit. All-in-one black catsuits with temperature-regulating microfiber, and inbuilt holsters for small-calibre pistols were not designed for lactating women with oversized breasts. It was a testament to the quality of the material that despite being severely overstretched it showed no signs of ripping under the strain. I pulled my coat on and headed to the car park.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: *HOT*HORNY*READY*TO*GO
MISSION: #80436
UNIT: UNICORN
WEASEL: DIMITRI TUPOLEV
ALERT: ACTION INITIATED: ONEGIN BREAK-IN
Chapter Seven
‘YOUR CARRIAGE AWAITS.’ ROBIN flung open the passenger door of Unicorn’s van.
I clambered in beside him and started to get in the zone. Heading out to a mission was not dissimilar to that feeling you get on the way to a party. You’re all hyped up, ready to go, you get in the car, excited, anticipating what lies ahead, then, as the car pulls up outside the venue, the dread hits. What if I have no one to talk to? What if I die?
Tonight, though, the dread hit early. Halfway there I realised I had forgotten to put my breast pads in.
I tried to work out how bad this was.
All our training drilled us to never leave behind any physical sign of our presence. If an op went wrong and the room was swept after we left, there should be no identifiable traces of our DNA that could be kept and filed on a database. We were invisible. We didn’t exist. I was in a high-spec specially designed suit, with inbuilt gloves and balaclava, all expertly engineered to limit the risk of leaving behind any remnant of my presence. And I was a ticking timebomb of imminent seepage. Was this going to be a minor inconvenience or a major problem? Did breast milk have DNA in? I outlined the problem to Robin. He looked at me eyes wide, mouth open.
His superior was talking to him about leaking breasts.
‘Call Sandy?’ Was all he could offer. I looked at my watch. We needed to be in position to operate the jammer in fifteen minutes and were still a few streets away from the house.
I took a deep breath and rang Sandy. From what I could gather, amid the loud expletives, he was not sure if breast milk had DNA in it either.
I tried to placate him. ‘It’s fine, I’ll look it up on my phone.’
This just angered him more.
‘Look it up on your phone? We have the full resources of the Security Services behind us. We have access to the country’s top DNA specialists, experts who have actually undertaken research on this subject. Done studies.’
‘Yes but it’s nearly 10 p.m. It’s going to be a bugger getting hold of anyone. And our window for the break-in ends in under ten minutes.’
There was a long pause.
‘Okay, fine.’ I could hear the grimace down the phone as he gritted his teeth. ‘Fucking google it. Just sort this out.’
My friend Google confirmed yes, breast milk did have DNA in it. Shit. We had seven minutes to go by the time we found an all-night chemist and Robin had raced in shouting, ‘Breast pads! Breast pads!’ When we finally pulled up outside Isaac’s house it was 10.03 p.m.
We could have missed our window.
I stared at the door, willing it to open. Two long minutes later, the cook stepped out.
Robin activated the jammer.
As soon as she was clear of the house I slunk down the stairs and gently pushed open the door.
I was in.
*
I walked past the industrial-sized kitchen and headed straight to the bottom of the stairs. I stopped and listened. Hearing only the distant noise of a television, I headed up to the ground floor. The large oak-panelled door to the study was halfway down the hallway. Moving fast, I slipped inside and gently closed the door behind me. Along the back wall of the study was domineering mahogany floor-to-ceiling joinery, which, according to the architects’ plans concealed a secure fire-proof cupboard within it. I silently opened the large wooden double doors, revealing another door – except this one was made of reinforced metal and had a keypad. Exactly which company had fitted this custom-built cupboard had been easy to track down and thankfully the brand and make of the keypad were exactly what I was expecting. I fixed Geraint’s specialist safe-cracker, a small black box the size of a mobile phone, to the keypad. The lights on it flashed red as it started to attempt to break the code. It should only take a few minutes. I stared at the lights willing them to go green.
The silence was broken by the unmistakable click-clack of heels on marble stairs. Shit.
I looked around the study. There was nothing but a large partners’ desk, Russian-book-lined shelves, a leather sofa and a flatscreen on the wall. Clearly his territory and not hers. The click-clacks grew louder as she headed down the hallway towards me. I closed the wooden doors as best I could but the bulk of the safe-cracker attached to the keypad stopped me from shutting it completely. I had to hope she wasn’t going to come in. I quickly moved across the room and stood behind the door; there were nowhere else to hide. The click-clacks came to a halt. I held my breath and waited for the door to open.
It stayed shut.
Then a whispered, ‘When can I see you?’ Silence and then low laughter. ‘Oh yes, I can definitely help you with that.’ A pause. ‘I’m going to be thinking of that when I’m alone later.’ More laughter. ‘You bad, bad boy! That’s just the type of cardio I was thinking of. That place next to the gym, then? I’m going to—’
A shout from upstairs echoed down the hallway.
‘What’s taking so long?’
‘I can’t find it!’ she yelled back.
‘Just hurry up.’
‘Christ, Isaac . . . Give me a bloody chance.’ Her Essex twang came out stronger when she was angry.
I looked over at the mahogany cupboard. The door was ajar and I could just see that the lights on Geraint’s device were now amber. I checked my watch; one minute to go.
‘Get my iPad while you’re down there. It’s in the study.’
Shit. I squashed myself up behind the door as it opened and she came in. I bit my lip.
‘Do you see what I live with?’ she whispered. ‘Fucking hell.’ My view was blocked by the door but I heard her stalk up to the desk and a rustle of papers as she looked for the iPad. With any luck she might not notice the fact her husband’s usually secure cupboards had one door ajar.
‘I know, darling. Don’t worry, we’ll make up for it tomorrow.’ A pause and then low giggles. ‘I can’t. I mean, I want to . . .’ She let off a gentle moan. ‘Oh yes. That’s exactly what I need . . .’
I grimaced. I always knew there would be moments where I would question if coming back to work would be the right thing to do. And now here I was, not at home watching Netflix with my husband as our baby slept upstairs, but hiding behind a door, listening to a stranger about to have extra-marital phone sex.
‘What the hell are you doing down there?’ Another shout from her oblivious husband.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she muttered before yelling back, ‘I’m coming!’ She lowered her voice again. ‘Well now I’m bloody not.’ She giggled. ‘So tomorrow night, sweetcheeks. We can finish what we started.’ She ended the call and walked out the door, letting it slam behind her.
I exhaled slowly and walked quickly over to the cupboard. The green lights were flashing and a four-digit number was displayed on the screen. I entered the numbers into the keypad and heard the welcoming clunk of the locks opening. Pulling open the metal doors I was confronted with rows and rows of drawers, each one neatly labelled with dates. They went back years – Isaac clearly didn’t trust any of his many business associates. I flicked through the drawers until I found last Friday’s date. There were three tapes for that day but only one of them had the initials ‘D.T.’ on – I pocketed the tape and returned the empty box.
Now to get out of here.
Isaac and Dimitri had more in common than they realised; they were both powerful, rich men being betrayed by their wives. One was in bed with her personal trainer and the other was in bed with the British security services.
Although only one of these illicit relationships would lead to bloodshed.
‘I told you Isaac, I’m not watching another fucking war film,’ came the shrill scream from upstairs.
Or maybe not.
I crept out of the study and started to head down the corridor when a faint jangling noise made me stop. What the hell was that? The sound got slightly louder and I looked to the stairs just as a small white Chihuahua wearing a pink diamante colour with a little bell attached to it came into view.
Fuck.
The Onegins’ file had clearly stated ‘no pets’. There was a pause as the dog observed me. I froze, although I knew it was pointless. The barking began. It flew down the stairs towards me.
I heard Isaac roar, ‘Christ. Your sister’s bloody dog got out again.’
There was nothing left to do but run.
I raced down the stairs and through the kitchen, the dog yapping at my heels, its barks getting more and more high-pitched. I made it to the basement door, I turned around, picked the dog up and slid it across the polished r
esin floor, its four legs spreading as it careered back across the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs. The shock of its sudden speedy journey altered its barks into one long low yelp. Better for Isaac to find it shell-shocked there rather than yapping at the door as if someone had just left. I made out a ‘What the hell is wrong with you, Sparkles?’ just as I quietly closed the basement door and slipped out into the cold and quiet of the night.
*
I collapsed into our bed, exhausted, and curled up next to a sleeping Will.
Two minutes later, Gigi started crying. And didn’t really stop until daybreak.
All night I paced the floors, letting her comfort feed as I counted down the minutes until I could dose her again with Calpol. Bloody teeth. They obviously hurt just as much coming in as they did coming out.
It was a special kind of torture to put in a full day at work and then have to put in a full night at home. I’d had no idea just what I was pulling the pin on when, over a year ago, I had sat staring at a little pee-covered stick bracing myself for impact.
No other inanimate object could give such profound joy or misery to different women, or even the same women just at different times in their life.
Pregnant. BOOM! And everything was changed forever.
As dawn broke, I looked down at Gigi, finally asleep in my arms. Her long eyelashes still damp with tears. Her little chest slowly going up and down. The sound of her soft breathing. It was all worth it.
I crept towards the cot and gently lowered her in. The foghorn screaming started again.
Except maybe on nights like these.
*
‘Lex, get the fuck in here,’ shouted Sandy from his open office door.
The next morning I was so sleep deprived I felt like I was seeing stars. There was an ache in the back of my head that wouldn’t stop.
‘Morning,’ I trilled as I walked in. It was a naïve hope that blinding him with perkiness would encourage him to forget the phone call about my breasts being an operational liability. Sandy was sitting with his feet up on his desk chewing on the end of a biro.
‘So what the hell happened last night?’