The Running Lie

by Jennifer Young

  ‘I haven’t slept. Really at all. So I’m always a bit dizzy. I’ve been dizzy since that night.’ Nightmares followed so quickly when she tried. Last night Charlie had woken her, the night before it had been Dad.

  ‘It’ll be okay.’ Emma hugged her. ‘Will you call him?’

  Max pressed her lips together. ‘I’ll give it a couple more days. Maybe it’s stress.’

  ‘He’d…’

  ‘Marry me. I know.’ Tears pricked at her eyes. ‘I just didn’t want it like… He might not even be at home.’

  ‘Victor saw him. Ran into him on the Heath,’ Emma added. ‘He’s recuperating at home. Medical leave.’ She smiled, however strained. ‘Apparently, he’s grown a beard. He can’t shave properly with his left arm and his right is…’ She stopped. ‘But he’s getting better.’

  Max nodded. Medical leave. ‘Please, please don’t tell Victor.’

  ‘Promise.’ Emma held her hand. ‘Will you call me, though? Either way?’

  ‘Promise,’ Max said. ‘Now, tell me about art. Or your garden or something utterly normal. Please.’

  Emma smiled. ‘Okay. How about the Olympics? The opening ceremony’s this afternoon, isn’t it?’

  Max went home and paced. John had said he’d never imagined a baby was a possibility, until her. What would he say if she rang? Without doubt, to get married, immediately. Emma was right. But it’d be as forced a wedding as if he’d stayed in her room that night. If Mother had found them.

  Charlie insisted they have the radio on during lunch to hear the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The description of the lighting of the torch failed to distract her, but at least she didn’t have to talk to Charlie and Dad.

  Two days later, after a stilted dinner with Vivian and Dad that even Charlie’s jokes couldn’t lighten, Max paced her room. The phone rang, and she ran to answer it before it could wake Samantha.

  ‘Max,’ Emma said. ‘I’m sorry to call so late. Has anything… happened?’

  ‘No.’ She exhaled. ‘Five days.’

  ‘It could still be stress. Will you call John?’

  Max stared at the phone’s base. Voices rose and fell at Emma’s house. Male voices. Emma would be standing in the hallway holding their phone, while in their comfortable living room, friends sat with Victor, having a normal conversation, maybe over drinks or cards. She’d been that guest so many times.

  ‘Max?’

  ‘I should let you get back to your company.’

  ‘It’s just dinner.’ Why had Emma hesitated? ‘Will you call him?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Morning?’

  ‘Okay.’ Somehow Max found a smile. ‘If you insist.’

  ‘Come for lunch, no matter what happens.’

  ‘Thanks, Emma. For everything.’ Why couldn’t she be having a carefree dinner at their home? ‘Do you—are you still optimistic?’

  ‘I can’t believe you even remember that, given your circumstances. Yes, so far. Fingers crossed. For both of us.’

  For wildly different outcomes. For wildly different circumstances. Max closed her eyes.

  ‘Remember, lunch tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay. Bye.’ Max replaced the receiver. At least she’d had a deadline. Max went in the study and lifted six books without opening any of them. She tried sitting on her sofa but threw a pillow across the room. It bounced off the wall with a soft thump. They’d been so careful, so scrupulous about protection. How could this have happened? John would have said if a condom had broken. Surely, she would have felt it? Her head ached. They’d only had sex twice since her last period.

  Tomorrow.

  But did it need to be tomorrow? Five days. Did she just want to talk to him?

  She went outside and carried the phone into her study. She got his sheet of paper, although it only confirmed she’d memorised his number already. It lay on top of his shirt, and she slid her arms into it.

  His phone rang. And kept ringing. She hung it up, replaced the phone and went to bed.

  Max lay in bed, staring at the dim canopy of her bed. She pulled the edges of his shirt around her body. She could call him right now, before everyone else was awake. They’d simply have to cope with his job. It’d be even worse though, with a baby at home too. Samantha curled into her…

  She could talk to him. Hear his voice. See that he was healing. Touch him.

  She rolled over on her side. It still hurt to rest on her right cheek. How could he sleep with all his injuries?

  Max breathed deeply. She could wake him. Last night he could have been anywhere. At a music club. Walking. Deeply asleep from pain medication. She stood up, and a bubble of liquid welled between her legs. Max pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. This was better. Her mother would have been horrified, the speed of a wedding… And no baby. She went to the lavatory and then crawled back into bed.

  Max rang Emma early, although she never knew what their hours were like. Victor answered, clearly awake.

  ‘Could I speak to Emma, please?’

  ‘Sure.’ He paused. ‘You okay, kiddo?’

  ‘Peachy.’ Tears clogged her throat.

  ‘You know you don’t have to avoid me. I won’t hound you. Promise.’

  ‘Thanks.’ How could she explain that Victor was too linked to John, too much like John? That awful drive home from the hospital?

  ‘Here’s Emma.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It started.’ Max half laughed. ‘Is it possible to be incredibly relieved and impossibly crushed at the same time?’ She twirled the phone cord.

  ‘Darling, call him. He’s miserable; you’re miserable. Nothing is worth this. Not being pregnant doesn’t change…’

  ‘It changes everything.’ Max pleated the hem of John’s shirt. ‘Look, I’m not sure I’m up for lunch, Emma, but...’

  ‘If you don’t meet me, I’m coming to your house and dragging you from your study. Let’s go to a restaurant. You don’t have to see Victor.’

  Max flushed. ‘That obvious?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, I’m picking you up.’

  Max sighed. ‘All right. I mean, thanks, Emma.’

  ‘Be kind to yourself, Max. See you at twelve.’

  Max replaced the receiver. She shrugged out of John’s shirt and replaced it in the drawer. Then she took it out. Maybe she shouldn’t even keep it at all. When had this become a John drawer? The sheet with his phone numbers. The note he left in her robe pocket. The photo that Charlie had taken of them, the morning of the Fourth, as her mother opened her birthday presents. In the photo, they sat a respectable distance apart, although John’s arm curved around her shoulders. When she looked at it, she could practically smell his skin. She should put all of it all somewhere less accessible. Maybe... She slammed the drawer and threw the shirt on the sofa. Kind to herself. Maybe that meant postponing moving anything.

  She closed her eyes. The summer stretched before her. When her mother returned from Norfolk, she’d gently suggest that Max go out again. Eventually, Mother would stop treating Max like glass and start pushing eligible men at her again. Max would find herself in a ballroom in the autumn, wearing a constrictive dress, watching the door for the man who wouldn’t appear. Whom she’d told not to appear.

  She pulled on her dressing gown. This spring, she’d decided to fly to Scotland. Flying held little appeal right now, but she needed to do something.

  Max replaced the phone on the hall table and slid her hands into her robe’s pockets. Would anyone notice if she simply went back to bed?

  ‘Good morning, Max.’

  Uncle Marcus climbed the stairs. Two men stayed at the foot of the flight. His new guards. Max swallowed.

  ‘Morning.’ She tightened her dressing gown’s tie. ‘I’m sure Dad’s having breakfast.’

  Uncle Marcus stopped in front of her. ‘I’m not here to see him. You’re clearly not going to ring me, so I’ve come to see you.’

  His eye opened easily now, but some discolouration remained. �
��Me? Why?’

  Uncle Marcus tapped the banister. ‘Max, don’t.’

  ‘Okay. Come in.’ She turned into her study. Would he wait while she dressed?

  Uncle Marcus sat on her sofa and crossed his legs. ‘Bartlemas says you aren’t sleeping well.’ His fingers lifted the cuff of the shirt on the sofa, the sleeve rising with it. A sleeve that could only be part of a man’s shirt.

  Max flushed and snatched it away. She shoved it back in the desk drawer and exhaled. She sat in her desk chair, only half turning back to Uncle Marcus. ‘No.’

  ‘That’s normal. I don’t know if you know that. Most people who go through what you did—they’ve had training. Orders. A pay cheque. An oath to Queen and country.’

  Max looked at her nails. They should look different, shouldn’t they, after killing someone?

  ‘And even with all that, agents can still find it difficult. Particularly when they lose someone close to them.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I don’t think you do.’

  A knock sounded at the open door. Who else could it be? Would her father... but Harris eased through the door carrying a tea tray.

  ‘Thank you,’ Max said, although she hadn’t asked for tea. Or for Uncle Marcus to talk to her. Harris deposited the tray on her coffee table.

  ‘Could you close the door, please, Harris? Thank you.’ Uncle Marcus poured Max a cup of tea and rose to pass it to her as Harris left.

  ‘You planned it all out.’

  ‘I suspect this came from Bartlemas.’ He smiled. ‘We’re all worried about you, darling.’

  ‘Not as much as you should be about Vivian.’

  ‘Vivian is going through perfectly ordinary grief.’

  ‘Ordinary? She has a five-week-old baby who will never know her father. She has…’

  ‘Max, I’m not saying it’s easy. But there are protocols for what we, as a society, do when a young woman with children loses her husband. There are no protocols for a woman who killed someone to save her family and her nation—nations—when she isn’t employed by an intelligence agency.’

  ‘Two people.’ She put down her tea untasted. ‘I didn’t listen to John. And when I ran to Rawls…’

  ‘Your father—and by extension my staff—told you that Rawls could be trusted. I thought Rawls could be trusted, or he would have never been in your house. That’s my failure, not yours.’ He placed his tea on the table. ‘Besides, Bartlemas and I weren’t the main targets. Gould was.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I shouldn’t tell you this. But Gould had access to information about nuclear weapons that the Soviets want, rather desperately. When he cracked—’

  ‘But you don’t know...’

  ‘Anyone would when their two-year-old is threatened, or actually tortured.’

  Max flinched. Little Bobby, sweet Bobby, who still couldn’t understand that Daddy wasn’t coming home.

  ‘Darling, I’m speaking bluntly, and yes, partly to shock you. But it’s true. They also would have tortured you, first to get to Knox...’

  Max took a deep breath, but he kept talking.

  ‘Please let me finish. I’m fairly certain he would have capitulated, to protect you. And after that they would have used you to blackmail your father. I know you feel terribly about Gould, but believe me, he knew exactly what would happen.’

  Max stared at the closed desk drawer. ‘Are you saying Brian tried to kill himself?’

  ‘Not at all. Clearly, he wanted to get to his son. I’m simply pointing out that Gould would find this situation vastly preferable to having Bobby in the Soviet Union. Or any of you.’

  People don’t often come back, John had said.

  ‘Imagine if the Soviets dropped an atomic bomb on London or New York. You saved a lot of people, Max.’

  ‘If. Weighing that up against Brian and Henry and poor Vivian and...’

  ‘Knox?’ Uncle Marcus’s blue eyes studied her over the rim of his teacup. ‘You don’t have to cut yourself off from him. He could quit, or if you wanted...’

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’ She stood to pace. ‘You just said he’d crack to protect me. How on earth could he do his job with me? And if he quits, he won’t be doing what he wants to do.’

  ‘He’d be with you.’

  Max shook her head. She forced herself to peel her arms from her abdomen. She hadn’t even realised she’d been hugging herself. Her empty womb.

  ‘All right.’ Uncle Marcus tapped his fingers on the arm of the sofa. ‘For what it’s worth, Knox is unusual.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  He laughed. ‘Not because he’s an agent. I meant he’s unusual as an agent. From a large family, not Ivy League. There aren’t very many basketball-scholarship educated agents.’

  ‘He’s prickly enough about money as it is.’

  ‘Maybe with reason. He’s as out of step with his peers as you are.’ He sipped his tea carefully. ‘I could offer you a different peer set, however. You happen to have a more traditional educational route.’

  ‘What?’

  Uncle Marcus smiled. ‘How would you like to work for me?’

  Max shook her head. ‘Uncle Marcus, that’s kind. But I don’t want to sit in an office, even if the people I see understand what happened in Norfolk.’

  He laughed. ‘Max, darling, you crash landed a plane. Your actions kept important secrets from Moscow, saving countless lives. I’ll be damned if I’m going to turn you into a secretary. I want you to be an agent.’

  Max stared at him. ‘The daughter of the Home Secretary can’t possibly be a spy.’

  ‘Mm. Some discussion has been had about that. You already go off places by yourself. You’ve proven yourself capable, more than capable. And we’d give you training, orders, a pay cheque. All the things that would have made Norfolk easier.’

  ‘My mother...’

  ‘Wouldn’t know.’

  ‘And if I get killed?’

  ‘The alternative seems to me you sit in this room being miserable and drinking yourself into oblivion. I’ve tried that too, and it doesn’t work.’

  ‘Were you an agent? Before?’ That seemed easy to process, whereas his offer...

  ‘Say yes, and I’ll tell you the answer.’ He grinned.

  Max rose and paced. She could find a dig, but she’d probably have a trench supervisor as awful as Will Firmin. She swallowed. ‘Would I—would I always have some man telling me what to do? Even if I’m better qualified than he is? I get that all the time in archaeology and...’

  Uncle Marcus stood. ‘Will you always have a man giving you orders? Yes. But it will be me. You won’t be a second-tier agent, Max. I’ll treat you like anyone else.’ He smiled. ‘Mostly. I’ve never had an agent I first saw two days after they were born.’

  ‘Could you really send me off to kill people? To maybe get killed?’

  ‘It isn’t always death, Max. And for what you can bring to our nation’s defence, yes, I can. And I will. Will you?’

  A bored and brilliant archaeologist, Victor had said. And she was, bored at least. What did she have to look forward to? The questionable lure of balls? Not getting called to interview for the Durham job? Working a quarter of a trench? On Mull, she’d been terrified. But she’d survived. And she, at least, had survived Norfolk. ‘All right.’

  ‘Excellent. How’s your health? It was just the cheek, right?’

  Max nodded.

  ‘Then report for training tomorrow morning at nine. We can do the paperwork in the afternoon.’ He handed her a card with an address in Pimlico. ‘You didn’t think I’d send you straight out in the field, did you? I’ve seen what you can do with just your raw nerve, but I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do with some proper training. Just normal clothes.’

  ‘Will you set me up in some fake job?’

  ‘When you have the most brilliant cover possible? Of course not. We’ll just direct your travel rather more.’ He smiled. ‘You aren’t the first archaeologi
st to work for the Intelligence Services. And no, I can’t tell you. But yes, I was an agent.’

  ‘Does Dad know about this?’

  Uncle Marcus crossed his arms. ‘Yes. He perhaps has a slightly different view of how active you will be.’

  ‘I’d need to lie.’

  ‘Perhaps a little.’

  ‘They’ve lost one child already.’ She bowed her head.

  ‘That was a risk they took when you joined the ATA too.’

  It looked like a normal office building that she would have driven or walked past without noticing at all. The receptionist smiled.

  ‘Dr Falkland?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her cheeks didn’t seem to work properly to smile.

  ‘Come with me. Would you like some water, tea, coffee?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Maybe they wouldn’t immediately start teaching her to incapacitate people silently.

  ‘If you can just wait in here, please. Your trainer will be right with you.’

  The room had a table and two chairs, but no other furniture. Beyond the rather thick curtains, scrubby grass grew in a small courtyard. A small folding chair sat unevenly on the cracked paving stones.

  ‘First lesson, don’t turn your back on a doorway.’

  ‘Victor?’ She turned and he grinned at her. ‘What the... All this time?’

  ‘Yep.’ He reached up and hooked his fingers on the door lintel. ‘How on earth did you think we survived on all our various bits of work?’

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’ Pieces clicked into place—his absence at the cafe, the surprise of Uncle Marcus coming to the ball, Uncle Marcus suggesting Victor could help John.

  ‘I nearly did, before I drove you to the hospital.’ He rubbed his face. ‘That’s sort of haunted me.’

  ‘John knew.’

  Victor nodded. ‘And your father. Not that I’m doing your training. I didn’t know that till this morning.’

  ‘Wait a minute. That’s why you came to Berlin, wasn’t it? To look after me? Is that why you’ve been friends with me all along?’

  ‘Max, every peer’s kid doesn’t get protection. That’d cripple the service. Only since your father was made Home Secretary. It wouldn’t even normally be an agent, but it was easy since we were already friends.’ He smiled. ‘I might have had you fly me around to take photos that weren’t for archaeology a few times though.’