The fine glittering line that outstretched from Luke’s palm shimmered in the heat.
‘What is that?’ said Connie wonderingly. They were both raw, exhausted, lying companionably on a pile of Harris tweed. It was afternoon, and the lorry was jolting along. The novelty of movement had slightly worn off, but everything else to Connie was fresh and vividly alive.
Luke squinted. ‘Just a bit of extra electrical energy my body doesn’t need, which I can use,’ he said. ‘It’s not very complicated. And I can see it, which is a lot better than all the screens you have around you.’
‘I can’t believe you have any extra energy left,’ smiled Connie, but Luke was already leaping up.
‘21 0,’ he said. ‘We’re nearly here, Hair. And I think we need to go before he stops.’
Connie scrambled up, her temporary calm gone in an instant, the adrenalin shooting through her once more.
‘Yup,’ she said. She pulled her own clothes back on.
‘Look out of the covering thing,’ Luke said. ‘Are we somewhere safe to go? I can’t tell. But we’re in Warsaw.’
Connie crawled over to the side of the trailer and lifted a flap.
‘Wow,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Connie. ‘It’s just bigger and fancier than I’d expected.’
She blinked in the sunlight. Outside it was sunny, but distinctly chillier than the Netherlands had been. The Warsaw skyscrapers and huge, old buildings shimmered in the light; they were thundering up a wide boulevard crammed with cars. Closer at hand, the buildings were painted bright pinks and orange. The overall effect was extremely pretty. The pavements were full of the usual ragtag found in contemporary cities: businessmen, hawkers, beautiful women with little dogs, anxious backpackers.
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Probably not right now.’
The huge lorry steamed and jerked its way through the traffic while Connie searched in vain for a place they could make a subtle escape. Finally, the truck started nosing its way downwards into a huge underpass, absolutely crammed full with rush-hour traffic.
‘I think this might be us,’ whispered Connie. ‘Everyone is driving in here with their sunglasses on. They’ll all be as blind… well, as you,’ she said, smiling and taking his hand. ‘I think this is our moment.’
They looked at each other for a second.
‘I do too,’ said Luke. ‘We have to go.’
Connie nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘When I say.’
The traffic entering the tunnel was coming to a complete standstill; either there were lights up ahead or just a massive jam. The light passing through the gaps in tarpaulin changed from brightness to plunging darkness, and the truck came to a halt again.
‘Okay,’ said Luke. ‘Let’s do this.’
He pulled the great clanging door down, but among the traffic noise in the enclosed space of the tunnel, nothing could be heard in the general din. Connie espied a small side pavement that led back to the surface – it was easier to see out of the tunnel than in – and indicated to Luke that they would head for that.
‘Take my hand,’ he said worriedly. ‘It’s just white and black to me.’
‘I know. One, two, three…’
Of the four cars that saw them jump, one saw only a blur, one was texting furiously on his phone and didn’t notice a thing, one was a very old lady whose father had escaped from a forced labour camp, who crossed her fingers for them and wished them well, and one was a harassed mum who thought to call the police then realised she couldn’t have described them anyway, it was so dark in there, and there would be more traffic holdups, and she had to pick up the children and was running late as it was, never mind dinner, so she was just going to casually turn her head to the side and hope that they hadn’t left two kilograms of plastic explosive in there, although the way she was feeling at the moment, sudden obliteration was oddly appealing if it meant she didn’t have to make another bloody dinner.
Connie, hat back tightly on, held Luke by the hand, swallowed and tried to look as normal as possible walking up the pavement to the tunnel as if they had simply got lost on a stroll. At any moment she expected someone to shout and ask them what they were doing there, but nobody did; everyone was huddled in their cars, wrapped up in their little tin boxes, concentrating on their own lives, their own problems.
Just before they turned to cross the four-lane road at the top of the tunnel, Connie cast a glance back at the truck. She wondered who the driver was, what he looked like, how he would never know what he had done for them. She hoped his life would be kind.
Then they ran.
Warszawa Centralna railway station was an ugly place, a big seventies blocky building with damp stains seeping down its concrete walls and numerous confusing signs everywhere. But on the upside, it was absolutely teeming with people. Absolutely hordes of humanity was here, from old ladies in headscarves carrying animals and workers, plainly dressed and well built, heading to the homes and cafés of London, Copenhagen, Dubai; to the sleek-suited, new eastern, wannabe-oligarchs with their expensive phones and watches and briefcases attached to wrists with handcuffs.
Connie changed some money quickly in an automatic machine to avoid getting into another debate with Luke about universal currency, while he, in rapid and fluent Polish, bought their train trickets: an overnight stopping train through Kalinkovichi would take them to Mozyr, Belarus early in the morning.
‘We’ll be two hours ahead,’ said Connie. ‘Will that give us time…?’
She looked at him.
‘Do you know where your ship is?’
Luke nodded.
‘Of course.’
‘And you can fix it?’
‘Of course.’ He sounded insulted. ‘The only reason I didn’t was that I knew I didn’t want to go home again. I don’t want to go home again.’
Connie wandered off to buy slightly odd-looking sandwiches, fruit, water and, on impulse, a bottle of the local vodka that appeared to be everywhere. She glanced briefly though the British newspapers in the newsagent, but there was no mention of her and Luke anywhere, or anything about the signal. She gave a sigh of relief. She toyed with the idea of going to a nearby internet cafe and emailing Arnold, but quickly told herself not to. They had ways of figuring this stuff out nowadays, she knew; she could probably trace the IP herself. It would be suicide.
She browsed the shops a little longer, buying a grey T-shirt to change into. Luke simply didn’t seem to need fresh clothes. He didn’t do everything like a human, then. A smile played on her lips as she turned around…
‘CONSTANCE MACADAIR! Well, bless my whiskers!’
She froze. A large man with a bushy beard and a ridiculous, deliberately OTT moustache stood right in front of her in a shirt which appeared to have food on it, and holding a large bundle of messy papers. Behind him was a long line of anxious-looking students, all boys. Connie clapped her hand to her mouth.
‘Professor Knighting.’
‘The very same, Dr MacAdair! Well, isn’t this a coincidence!’
Professor Knighting had been her PhD supervisor. She hadn’t seen him for five and a half years.
‘Extraordinary luck! Now, students, this is one of my finest candidates ever. Knocked her viva out the park… by the end of it she’d expressed a few notes and asides on re-normalising probability algebras with particular complex measures – she thought they seemed trivial – which, I don’t mind telling you, really confirmed some results I was finding in my own research. Yes, ladies and gentlemen… ahem, gentlemen. Yes, indeed. Now, Constance, where’s that glorious hair of yours? I do love a natural redhead.’
His voice boomed around the terminal. Connie held on to her hat.
‘Ha, well, you know… lovely to see you.’
‘Yes, are you here on this British Council trip too? There’s the most fabulous conference on at the university on some results that have recently come out in local invariant in probabilistically defined elli
ptic curves. It’s going to be a wonderful fun; are you attending? What about that nice young man of yours, Dr Weerasinghe, was it?’
Connie felt like she was in a nightmare. Where was Luke? They had to get away. She looked around desperately.
‘Haven’t got a pass, eh? I’m sure the consul can help you out… well, cultural attaché, you know, but I say consul to be polite… Bridford!’
Very slowly, an immaculately dressed man with a thin face and very, very pale blue eyes turned round and looked at Connie. And the instant he did, he frowned.
Connie stared at the floor, her face flaming. At that precise moment, Luke blundered his way over to her.
‘Oh, there you are. I can’t see a damn thing. You are impossible to find…’
He was right in the middle of the group.
‘Ssh,’ said Connie desperately, as the consul took in, slowly, both of them together, with a nervous look. Then, unhurriedly, keeping his eyes trained on them, he drew his phone like he was drawing a gun.
‘We have to go,’ said Connie loudly, sounding alarmingly fake to her own ears. ‘Late for our train… TO PARIS!’
Ignoring the confused look on her old, well-meaning professor’s face, she grabbed Luke by the arm and tore him away, half jogging, half marching him across the terminal. Glancing back, she saw the consul still staring at her, still holding his phone like the weapon it was. They dashed down the nearest flight of stairs, vanishing into the crowd, thankful for the first time that the railway station was confusing and crammed and vast.
They went outside the station, Connie trying not to panic. Luke calmed her down, reassured her there was nothing she could have done, bringing up a map of the station on his hand. He inspected it carefully, all its 3-D passages and platforms, and finally identified a service door that would get them onto the platform without going through the ticket barriers. They picked their way carefully across the tracks on a back-staff access bridge, empty at this time of night, hurrying them down to get on at the wrong end of the train, away from the checks and controls.
Once their cabin door was firmly shut behind them, Connie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Please. Please let them stay ahead of Interpol, or whoever it was. Please just get moving. Please let the consul have had trouble calling in his discovery (he did, of course – Dahlia was tied up on the phone, as since the description had gone out on the wires, every bored bureaucrat from Calais to Hyderabad had been calling in redheads and it was driving her nuts; she was meant to be in Dorset this weekend, and at this rate she hadn’t a hope in hell of getting there – and it took for ever for the local police station to pass him up to Malik).
At last there was a jolt, a screech of engine brakes, a slow huff and the train began to move. Connie leapt in the air. At home, the cultural attaché, who never got cross, hence his general usefulness to MI6, swore and poured himself a glass of whisky over his ridiculous evening wrangling with the telephone. He wondered what would happen if there was ever a matter of real national security, rather than some runaway with a boyfriend.
‘Oh, thank God! Thank God!’
The huge train was not busy – there was a quicker, express service – and their first-class cabin had two freshly made up bunks with tight white sheets. Connie looked at them longingly. At the moment, she was absolutely desperate for a shower, but a clean bed was a good start.
Luke lay back on his bunk.
‘Do you sleep?’ asked Connie. ‘I’ve never seen you do it.’
‘Sleep is to repair brain cells,’ said Luke. ‘My job is to get rid of a few, before they start leaking out of my ears.’
Connie laughed.
‘Seriously?’
He smiled his lazy smile at her.
‘No. But I can rest and process things.’
His gaze fell on her. She had changed into the grey T-shirt, her hair loose, and was sitting in a tiny chair by the window, looking out at the landscape as the train picked up speed.
‘Are you coming to bed, Hair?’
Connie turned round.
‘Do you have to call me, Hair?’
‘What should I call you?’
She thought about it for a moment and smiled shyly.
‘Well, you could call me “my love”.’
‘My love.’ He tried it out on his tongue. ‘My love.’
She looked down, blushing.
‘Well, you know, if you like.’
Their eyes met.
‘I do like,’ he said. ‘Come to bed, my love.’
‘Soon,’ she promised. She wasn’t the least bit sleepy. And she refused to miss a second with him. She wanted to soak it up, everything she could see, everything they experienced, every single minute they spent together, even if it was simply sitting in companionable silence.
There was so much she wanted to ask him. So much about him she wanted to know, and so much she wanted to tell him, even though sometimes she felt that he already knew her inside out, had turned her inside out, that there was nothing she could ever say to him that would be a surprise.
And she would not ask him right now. She gazed out of the window again, at Europe rolling past under a heavy dusk. She wanted to believe – had to believe – that they had time ahead, so much time stretching out in front of them, where they could lie together, and chat and share everything about their strange, strange lives in a conversation that would never end.
She found the last piece of chocolate in her pocket, and threw it over her shoulder at him. He caught it without even glancing at it and, without turning round, she knew he was smiling at her, and in her reflection in the window glass she smiled back.
She refocused her eyes and stared out of the window at the shadowy passing landscape. What were the odds, she thought. What were the chances of this happening? It was so mad and strange.
On the other hand, she thought, so was love. She had thought she had been in love before; had known bright crushes that would not let her sleep; been treated badly by men she had desperately wanted, and well by men she didn’t; and had occasionally prolonged relationships that were comfortable and pleasant, but were nothing, she realised. Nothing compared to this, all-consuming, all-blinding sensation; this extraordinary excitement.
She glanced at Luke, his long form stretched out on the tidily-made bunk with its scuffed aluminium sides and small, neatly situated reading light. He had found a copy of what looked like Practical Mechanic in Russian, and was flipping through it, a smile playing about his lips. She wished beyond anything that she had her phone for no other reason than to take a photograph. She was conscious, suddenly, that she didn’t have a photograph. She wanted one desperately, even though she told herself not to be silly. She would always be able to see him.
They had left the big city now, with its huge, ranging housing estates on the edge, its ragged factories stretching out into the countryside. It was late – 10 p.m. – but the sky was still full of light. At this latitude, she thought to herself, smiling, it wouldn’t really get that dark, or at least not for long at this time of year. She stared at the cosy little farms and villages that passed by the window of the noisy, old-fashioned train, its rickety movement soothing. The view became gradually emptier and emptier, until the moon rose and they were making their way through a deepening green landscape, endless, fertile farmlands, cornfields, hops and ploughed fields and long meadows.
Suddenly, they came upon a large lake. The dipping sun was reflected on it, making it smooth and glassy as if it were frozen solid. There was a single hut on the side of the lake and, outside it, a single figure sitting, quietly and contentedly fishing. He glanced up momentarily at the train passing – perhaps disturbing his fish – then bent his head again, crouched on the edge of the little pontoon that led out from his home.
In a flash Connie saw it. She saw both of them. Somewhere far, far north, where it was always cold – Archangel? Higher? Did people even live higher? Somewhere way, way up in the Arctic circle, where nobody lived, and the peop
le who did minded their own business. A little hut somewhere, brightly painted in red and white, with a little pontoon. And she would live in the house and Luke could live in the house if he wanted, but also live totally free, out in the water. And she could join him there – she smiled happily at the thought – and he could join her indoors. And they would live out their lives like that, in one element or another, perfectly happy with each other, and Arnold could send them maths work he was too lazy to do, and they wouldn’t need so much to get by after all – some fish, some gardening, maybe. She could learn to sew. A little fuel. They’d deal with the spawn issue as and when.
Excitement shot through her; the vision was so strong she could practically see it.
‘Luke,’ she said softly from the depths of her reverie as the beautiful lake flickered past. ‘If you can talk your people into letting you stay – and you can, I know you can, I know you can. I know you can make them see.’
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