I went to the metal filing cabinet we kept in the nurses’ station, behind the reception desk. The cabinet was a relic, as we transitioned from paper to electronic systems. Hidden inside was an unidentifiable burner phone that I had stashed. To find and extract the phone, I had to rummage through the mess of blank request forms for blood tests and MRIs and X-rays and imaging and CT scans and echocardiograms. There was a second phone in the drawer beneath, as a fallback, buried beneath out-of-date guidelines and thick British National Formulary books.
I was still moving as I opened the professional voice recording app I’d installed. It had an extra-sensitive microphone. Standing to the side of the door jamb, I held the phone as close to it as I dared with my fully extended arm.
My heart was pounding in my ears out of fear that I would be caught. My stomach felt as if a butterfly was flying inside it. The din of machines on the ward was like a motorbike revving in my head.
My other hand floated to my belly. That was when I grasped that what I was feeling was not a psychosomatic response to the nervousness occasioned by my technological eavesdropping. What I was feeling was physical and real. After days of not quite being certain, there was no doubting it. I was feeling my baby kick.
A couple minutes later, the side room door smashed open, and I turned on my heel, bringing the phone to my ear as if engaged in a conversation. I looked behind me and saw Milly. Her face went bright red, and I knew that she guessed I’d been listening. I knew also that she would never give me away. But her horrified expression made me certain that whatever she and Scarlett had been saying would not be easy for me to hear.
Zac was on nights, no doubt assisted tirelessly by Joanne, whose shift began an hour before mine ended. I glimpsed her trailing after him as I left the hospital, but I still double-locked the front door. If he did somehow come home early, I wanted the extra warning of his loud curses when he realised he needed to undo the second lock.
I had thought some more about Zac’s discovery of my orange journal in its kitchen hiding place, trying to quell the mortification and force myself to examine the circumstances clearly. I’d also been replaying the way he came home to find me inspecting his old suitcases – he said he’d forgotten his phone, but I was no longer convinced. I wondered what really made him turn around and come back. The only explanation I could think of was that he somehow saw me dragging the suitcases out of the cupboard. And he saw me hiding my journal.
That is why I brought a new toy home with me, a multi-function sweeper for detecting hidden cameras that I’d stashed at work. My extremely disturbing theory was that Zac had installed some kind of surveillance system. If so, chances were that it recorded onto the cloud, so he could have infinite storage space and be able to check the footage from anywhere. He would want to be able to watch in real time or fast forward through it until he caught something interesting.
Turning the Internet router off was the best way I could think of to kill any cameras, because I certainly didn’t want him to see me sweeping the house. My heart was pumping faster as my finger approached the router’s off switch. I was crossing my fingers and toes that there wasn’t a lens trained on the router.
If there was, then I would casually mention to Zac later that the Internet had been playing up, and wonder aloud if he had had problems too. I would also say that I turned the router off for a few minutes to try to reset it and improve things.
The router sat on a small table on the first-floor landing. I aimed the sweeper at every possible place a camera might be. When it became clear that there was nothing there, I exhaled in relief. Zac might still notice the outage, but everyone’s Internet sometimes blipped.
I peered through the flashing red monocle of the camera lens finder, going from room to room, scanning as systematically as I could. I found four tiny red dots. Zac had been spare but targeted, favouring central ceiling positions with the widest vantage points. He had chosen rooms where conversations and activities were most likely to happen, but he had left private spaces, undoubtedly for himself. I was bending my neck to wipe the tops of my cheeks against my arms and blinking hard, angry at myself for crying as the reality hit that he had been using visual surveillance on me.
One camera was tucked in the sitting room’s chandelier. It made me remember my first night with him, making love beneath it. As I suspected, another was in the kitchen, in the middle of the track lighting, which confirmed how he watched me hide my orange journal. The third was in the main hallway, which would ensure he saw whoever came in and out of the house, and also took in the cupboard under the stairs – so that was how he’d caught me with the suitcases.
The fourth camera was in the pendant that hung above our bed.
My hand was visibly shaking as I switched the router on again, but my stomach was a tight ball of fury. I tried to calm my breathing as I went to the camera-free zone of the baby’s empty room, taking along some scatter cushions from the sitting room. I piled them in a corner and made myself as comfortable as I could.
There was that saying about fighting fire with fire, though I was no longer sure which of us was first to light the flames. I did know he had been spying and me, and I intended to spy right back. I would not sit and weep myself into a crumbling wreck over the camera he’d trained on our bed.
I got to work on the recording, reducing the distortion, sharpening the clarity, fine-tuning still more before finishing off with the amplification tool. I relaxed into the cushions, rested my hands on my lower belly in the hope that I would feel her move again, and listened.
It was Scarlett’s voice first, picked up mid-sentence – ‘to the police but they didn’t want to know.’ Scarlett paused. ‘Are you going to tell her?’
There was a small gasp and I realised I had inadvertently recorded myself, capturing my elation at feeling my baby kick for the first time.
Milly spoke next, her voice trembling like it always did when she was upset and trying not to show it. ‘She’s barely recovered from the bleed and the sickness. She’s lost so much confidence.’
There was a rustling, somebody moving, and I imagined Scarlett closing in on Milly to offer a gesture of support. A squeezed shoulder. Maybe a hug. ‘You’re an amazing friend,’ Scarlett said, ‘but she won’t want to hear it. He’s got her completely brainwashed. She doesn’t sneeze these days without his permission.’
‘It’s hard to look at,’ said Milly. ‘It’s hard to be around her right now.’
Milly. That was my Milly. Saying those things of me. Feeling that about me.
‘Joanne keeps saying she thinks he’s charming,’ Scarlett said. ‘She thinks Holly’s lucky he’s so protective, that she doesn’t appreciate him, doesn’t deserve him.’
Milly mumbled something. I played it again and again, but it was impossible to hear it clearly, so I let the recording run forward. ‘Did the healthcare assistant make a formal complaint?’ Milly asked.
‘Yep. Said he pressed up against her.’ It was Scarlett’s voice again. ‘Said he made comments about her breasts.’
Milly groaned. ‘What exactly did he say?’
‘That they were ripe,’ Scarlett said.
‘Please excuse me while I puke,’ Milly said.
As my heart sped up, listening, my baby seemed to wake up too, and it was the strangest co-existence I had ever known of despair and pure joy. I hit pause for a minute, to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. Then I steeled myself and pressed play again.
Scarlett went on. ‘He denied it, of course – it was her word against his. They moved her to Care for the Elderly.’
Milly sighed. It was a sigh I knew well, and one that she got from Peggy, who used it when the state of the world made her sorrowful. ‘Don’t you love it? He harasses her and she’s the one who has to move.’
‘I’m so sorry for Holly,’ Scarlett said.
The last few seconds of the recording were the creak of the door and my own footsteps as I hurried away, stunned by the expression on Milly’s
red face.
Now Persistence
Two years and one month later
* * *
Bath, Wednesday, 3 April 2019
After the events of yesterday and that grand finale of a late-night visit to my grandmother, I need the stress relief of this morning’s trip to the gym more than ever. My heart rate is a steady 135 beats per minute. The speed of the treadmill is held at 10 kilometres per hour. It has taken almost two full years to get this strong. When I first moved here, I wasn’t allowed to exercise properly. Once the doctor said I could, I would clasp my side and gasp for breath after one minute of what could barely be described as a slow jog.
The skin where my bump used to be is tight again. You’re young – you’ll spring right back. That’s what everybody said. Nobody would guess she ever existed, unless they saw the scar. Work, exercise, good food, fresh air, not shutting yourself away, staying busy. Those are the things the professionals advise.
Working in the paediatric unit helps. We are all different, and for some it would be too painful, but for me, though it hurts, seeing children who can still be saved is a kind of therapy.
I am nearly finished with the five kilometres I routinely do at the gym on working days, when I have to be at the hospital early. Otherwise I’d run for an hour. Maybe I’d run all day, or until I exhausted myself and fell over. So often, when I run, I hear Zac’s voice. You know you’re not strong, Holly. Maybe this used to be true, and that’s why he chose me. Or maybe it wasn’t true but I let him make it so.
I hear Milly’s voice, too. It’s the rejection from MI5 – that’s why you let Zac do whatever he wants – you think you don’t deserve any better.
The treadmills are positioned in a row on the first floor, in front of windows that overlook the tiny car park. It fits six cars, so I try to get here a few minutes before the gym opens. That way, I can be in and out super-fast. Already, the car park is full.
I watch a familiar SUV pull in. It belongs to George, who joined the gym a few months after I did. He is smiley and chatty to everyone. He told me once that he worked in computer security, and I remember thinking that he had the vague, civil-service-y profile of a perfect spy. I’d promptly dismissed the idea as ridiculous and chided myself for being paranoid. I was starting to feel stronger, then, and it had been easy to let the thought drift away in the wake of medical appointments and counselling sessions. But given Zac’s reappearance, and the fact that this is the first time I’ve seen George in weeks, I am wondering if I should have taken my initial instinct more seriously.
Instead of finding a space on the street like any normal person would do when they see the car park is full, George leaves his car right in the middle of it. He blocks me in. He blocks everybody in. My heart rate climbs. 138, 140.
Again I hear Zac’s voice. It isn’t safe for you to drive, Holly. I can’t let you go, Holly.
I speed up. I watch George jump out of his car, whistling to himself as if he has done nothing wrong.
I look again at the fitness tracker circling my wrist. My heart rate is climbing so fast I can scarcely believe it. 142, 144. What if I need to get away suddenly? 146, 148.
I can see George’s mop of thick blond hair, flopping over his brow. He probably thinks this is a charming look. Dark grey tracksuit bottoms. A loose black T-shirt. Navy trainers. I take all of this in as he dashes from his car and disappears from my sight through the door and into the building.
My heart rate is increasing still more. 150, 152.
It’s dangerous to put your heart under strain, Holly.
You can’t think of yourself, Holly. You need to think of our baby.
Maybe I’m wearing the tracker too low, so it isn’t accurate. I try to push it higher up my wrist but there is nowhere left for it to go. It is snug enough. There is no doubt.
A minute later, George is on the next treadmill, barely a metre between us, foppish hair bouncing. He smiles and nods hello, as if what he did is so normal he has already forgotten it. His eyes are blue. George blue should be in the OED to signal the brightest blue ever seen in organic human form. They crinkle in the corners as he continues to smile. He puts the speed at 12 kilometres per hour and runs with the ease of someone on a gentle walk.
His mouth moves. I can read his lips. ‘Good morning.’
I give him a small nod of acknowledgement, continuing to look in front of me as if my lab-rat motion requires absolute concentration. Despite this, I am still aware of him in my peripheral vision. I grab the hand towel I laid over the console and wipe my forehead. My black-framed spectacles have slipped down. I push them back in place, wondering if I will ever get used to them, and swipe at the sweat beneath them.
George is motioning for me to turn off the sound on my earphones.
I touch my phone to pause the music. ‘What?’
He is studying my wrist and looking worried. ‘Something wrong, Helen?’
‘What could be wrong?’
‘Your heart rate’s a bit high. Do you think you should slow down? I’m only concerned.’
I’m only concerned, Holly.
I look again at the tracker. 165. The number practically gives me a heart attack. ‘My heart rate was fine until you blocked me in with your car.’
‘I park like that when there are no spaces – lots of people here do that. I’d move it as soon as you asked.’
‘I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to have to search for some arrogant stranger.’
‘Sorry.’ His expression manages to be a smile, an embarrassed grimace and an apology all at once.
‘I don’t want to have to spend time interrupting people – men – during their workouts.’
‘Why men?’ He ducks his head slightly.
‘Because you can bet it’s men who do this, not women. I can just hear myself. Hello. Are you the inconsiderate bastard who blocked me in? No thank you. And then I’d have to plead with him to move as if he were doing me a favour.’ I look behind me, where a handful of men are urging each other on with the weights. ‘What if you were with them? I’d have to deal with all of you.’
‘But I’m not with them.’ The effort of speech doesn’t make him breathe any faster.
‘I want to get away when I want to get away. I don’t want to have to negotiate some kind of treaty to do it.’
Want, want, want. It’s always what you want. Why is what you want the only thing that matters?
Is it really so terrible to want?
George jumps his legs to either side of the treadmill belt so he can hop off before the machine slows and stops. A few seconds later I see him striding towards his car, jumping in, driving away. In five minutes he is back on his treadmill, again gesturing for me to turn down my music so I can hear him.
‘I’d never want to make anybody uncomfortable. I should have thought.’ His balance is perfect, even though he is looking sideways at me. ‘Glad to see your heart rate is calming down.’
I glance at the tracker. Already it has fallen to 145, though I can’t blame George entirely that it rose in the first place. Jane – what Zac did to her – the fact that he is so near – all of this is a big factor in my increased heart rate. George blocking me in was merely the tipping point.
‘Can I buy you a coffee when we’re finished here? To apologise for being such an inconsiderate idiot?’
This is unexpected. ‘I can’t.’
Eliza and Alice will be waiting for me at the little park near the hospital for our early morning date. Eliza has promised to bring flasks of coffee that I am predicting will rival a professional barista’s. I will bring nothing but my suspicion, hidden beneath smiles and the new moves of embryonic friendship.
‘No worries. We’re all busy. I know I am.’ He is running at his steady 12 kilometres per hour and there isn’t a drop of sweat.
Oh? I think. What are you busy at?
My suspicion that George is a spy no longer seems at all ridiculous. In fact, the suspicion has grown so huge that my urge t
o test it is now irresistible. ‘What is it that you do with computers, George? Am I remembering right that it’s something to do with security?’
I have an impression that he wipes away all emotion from his face as if he were erasing a chalkboard with one swipe. His voice goes flat, where before it was expressive. ‘I work with information systems.’
‘Tell me more.’ As soon as the words are out, I remember Maxine using them against me.
He manages a half-smile. ‘It’s boring.’
‘Is it cyber-security?’
‘You could call it that.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘The civil service.’
‘Ah. You said.’ Of course you did. ‘Can you find stuff out? Find people?’
He taps his mouth with his index finger. ‘Sometimes.’
Workout finished. Congratulations. My treadmill slows, comes to a stop, but the world around me seems to be moving, still, in a funny kind of near-vertigo.
I climb off the treadmill and sling my bag over my shoulder. ‘Can I ask you a favour?’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘I’m intrigued.’
Push, push, push. Test, test, test. What will you do, George? What will you reveal?
‘There’s someone I need information about,’ I say.
‘Mysterious.’ He brings two fingers to his chin. There is more tapping.
‘Exactly. Because I can’t find much.’
‘“Curiouser and curiouser.” Who?’
I reach into my bag for a pen and paper and sketch a bare-bones version of Jane’s family tree. I circle her brother’s name and point. ‘Him.’ I hold the paper in front of George.
He stops his treadmill for a second time, then jumps off and leans against the machine, his arms crossed. ‘Why does he matter to you?’
Because I want to know why Maxine and Martin were talking about him the day Jane was killed.
I Spy Page 12