Alias

by Tracy Alexander

  I’d been to the storage unit twice – once to offload the contents of my overflowing cabinet and a range of flattened cardboard boxes from the depot, and the second time, in a taxi, with four quadcopters.

  There’d been two drone strikes, one in Pakistan, one in Yemen. Death toll – fifteen.

  Liam and I had been out twice – the cinema and the pub.

  I’d shouted out in my sleep. According to Liam it sounded like, ‘Don’t shoot.’

  I’d had my first appraisal with the team leader and been offered a permanent contract. (And cried in the loos afterwards – which I’d put down to tiredness.)

  I’d like to have left the office early and had a long soak before getting ready, but I had stuff under my desk and one last job to tick off before the weekend. So I went to Alan’s storage facility again in a taxi again.

  I arrived at twenty to six.

  ‘I owe the owner next month’s money,’ I said to the driver, ‘but I won’t have it until Monday and he can be a bit nasty, so do you mind if we wait till he comes out?’

  ‘I hope you’ve got enough for the cab,’ he said, deadpan, so I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

  ‘I have if you make it a fiver,’ I said.

  He turned round with a smile on his big red face.

  ‘The price is the price, cheeky madam.’

  Just then Alan walked out of the door, got into his pick-up and drove away. All clear.

  I paid the proper price, six quid, and asked the cabbie to pick me up in an hour. He gave me his card.

  Inside my rucksack and three opaque plastic bags, I had twenty-seven cold packs, a large granite mortar and pestle and a mini quadcopter, which I stacked on top of the others. It was time to start grinding. Once I knew how long it took to turn the beads from the cold packs into powder, I could plan when to filch the controlled substances from the university. I didn’t want to take them too early in case someone noticed they were missing and raised the alarm. Keeping the spotlight off Leeds until I got away was critical.

  I sat on the pressure-cooker box with the mortar on my lap and filled it with beads. At first, the pestle kept slipping, but I soon developed a better technique. Even then, it took a while to achieve a nice powder. To make a mixture that easily ignited I needed uniformity, and I didn’t need impurities. I worked at it for nearly an hour, grinding up four separate batches that I tipped into two pristine Kilner jars. My elbow felt like I’d been returning Nadal’s serves, so I shut up shop. After all, there was a driver waiting, and I had a party to go to.

  Freddie was in the kitchen with a mate.

  ‘Hey, Saff! I’m making risotto – want some?’

  I peered into the saucepan. It looked like porridge.

  ‘I’d rather try my luck in the bins,’ I said, because Freddie expected banter. His mate laughed.

  ‘We’re going to the Brudenell —’

  ‘Social Club. No, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Saff thinks a good night out is the Hyde Park Picture House,’ Freddie said to his sidekick.

  ‘Actually, I’m going to a party in Chapel Allerton.’

  ‘With your sugar daddy?’ asked Freddie.

  I made a pained expression.

  ‘He’s my boss, not my pimp.’

  For no particular reason I stayed chatting, rather than disappearing up the stairs like normal.

  ‘So whose party is it?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘No one you know.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Elisa Sullivan – she’s like me but more senior.’

  They wanted to know all about her, so I made up a load of rubbish to amuse them.

  ‘She celebrates her cat’s birthday.’

  ‘She has vodka and orange on her muesli.’

  Actually, that one wasn’t so far from the truth.

  ‘I think you should come with us instead,’ said Freddie, dishing out his stomach-lining rice dish. ‘She sounds like a bad influence.’

  ‘I’ll pass,’ I said. ‘Have a good evening.’

  I heard them go out about an hour later. Polly was with her boyfriend in Birmingham as usual, so I had the place to myself. Nice. I had a bath, sprayed with Dettol first, and then slipped on the sleeveless bodycon dress I’d bought especially. Ten minutes later, slap on my face and perfume everywhere else, I was on my way to meet Liam.

  He was waiting on the corner of Hyde Park.

  ‘You look fantastic,’ he said.

  ‘So do you,’ I said.

  He tried to take a photo of us on his phone, but I put my hand over my face.

  ‘I’m taking a stand against vanity,’ I said. ‘On behalf of all ugly people.’

  He laughed.

  We got the bus, arriving suitably late. The house was jam-packed. Someone shoved a bottle in my hand. We pressed our way through the crowded hall and found a few people from work in the sitting room. The music was deafening. Good deafening. We danced. We drank. We danced. Being a chameleon was a strain. Humans can only take so much. I’d had enough. For once, I was letting go. I emptied my head, and filled it with alcohol.

  And then Freddie arrived with his mate.

  ‘Hey, Saff!’

  I was an idiot. It never occurred to me, despite the questioning, that he’d gatecrash. My drunken brain ran through the many downsides of Freddie meeting Liam – by which time they’d already met.

  ‘I’m the flatmate. I assume you’re the —’

  ‘Boyfriend,’ I said, to avoid Freddie saying pimp.

  ‘Great. Let’s swap notes,’ said Freddie. ‘The Saffron I know has no past. What’s that all about?’

  51

  Liam and Freddie were having a great time, playing with the idea that I had a shady background. It was excruciating, but I had to pretend it was a lark.

  ‘I’m going for a Saudi Arabian princess, loaded, but determined to experience the life of a pauper,’ said Freddie.

  ‘No. Found in a basket, hidden in the bulrushes – raised by moorhens,’ said Liam, a bit slurred.

  ‘Like Thumbelina?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘I was thinking Moses,’ said Liam.

  They laughed some more.

  Elisa, who’d been hovering behind Freddie, joined in.

  ‘She’s an avatar.’

  ‘Genetically modified,’ added Freddie, slinging an arm around her.

  It was all going horribly wrong. Not only was it a matter of time before someone suggested something near the truth, but Freddie and Elisa were looking altogether too interested in each other. I really didn’t want my work life and my home life to merge. Freddie would pounce on the tiniest inconsistency.

  ‘Or in witness protection,’ said Freddie.

  It was Weird, capital W, hearing Freddie say the same words I’d said to Hugo.

  Things were getting out of control and I wasn’t doing anything about it.

  ‘Or a secret agent,’ said Liam.

  I pulled his sleeve, swaying slightly.

  ‘Liam, let’s get some fresh air. I don’t feel well.’

  He followed me out into the back garden.

  ‘Freddie’s a laugh,’ he said.

  ‘He’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘Why don’t we ever go to yours?’

  ‘Because it’s not mine. It’s Freddie’s.’ My tone was uncharacteristically stern.

  A couple of other people from work spilled out of the back door and came to join us.

  ‘I didn’t know you two were an item,’ said the girl from reception.

  ‘Everyone knows,’ said the bloke from accounts.

  ‘Well, I didn’t,’ she said.

  ‘That’s because keeping secrets is Saff’s speciality,’ said Freddie, lurching out of the door towards us, his hand in Elisa’s.

  He was like a dog with a bone. I knew why. It was being estranged from my family – he wanted the story. He had no idea who I really was, but I still needed him to shut up. If anyone looked too closely beneath the sophistication, they might just spot a poss
ibly half-Yemeni girl of anything between eighteen and twenty-five, and where might that thought go?

  You have to take control of a situation.

  Come on, Saffron.

  ‘Not everyone has the perfect family, Freddie,’ I said, my voice deliberately shaky to show I was being made to say something. ‘It was my choice to leave mine behind. And my choice not to share the reasons with you.’

  As I hoped, that took the wind out of his sails.

  ‘See you on Monday,’ I said to Elisa as I grabbed Liam’s hand and headed for the little alley that ran down the side of the house.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything, Saff,’ said Freddie, talking to my back. ‘It was just a bit of fun.’

  I was reminded of Hugo again, and his bit of fun in the common room.

  Liam stopped, turned round and said, ‘Leave it, Freddie. It’s gone too far.’

  I carried on through the side gate and waited by the smelly wheelie bin.

  ‘OK, OK,’ I heard Freddie say. ‘There’s no need to overreact. I wasn’t suggesting she was a terrorist or anything.’

  There was the unmistakable sound of a fist hitting a face, and then Liam strode out of the alley rubbing his knuckles.

  ‘Please can we go,’ I said, desperate for the evening to be over. It was a mistake to have got involved with Liam, a mistake to have dropped my guard with Freddie, a mistake to have even gone to the party.

  No more mistakes.

  52

  We got home at about two and went straight to sleep, but I woke a couple of hours later. Alcohol alters your brain chemistry – in my case it made me paranoid. Afraid that I was leaving clues without realising. Afraid that another Dan Langley might trip me up. Afraid that I wasn’t sure what to be afraid of.

  I slipped out of bed, got dressed and let myself out of Liam’s flat.

  The walk home took half an hour. I passed drunks, couples snogging, townies, students, several cats and a fox. Realising the sun was about to rise, I carried on into Hyde Park and sat for a while on the slide – Mack’s favourite spot. It was the beginning of July. I’d been in Leeds since the beginning of April. Three months of procrastinating. You can lie to other people, but you must never lie to yourself. If I’d wanted to, I could have had the whole thing done and dusted, but I’d chosen to drag my heels. There was no law against enjoying yourself, but I hadn’t sacrificed my chance of an education, my family, the right to live without fear, the possibility of ever being loved by someone who knew who I really was, to live as Saffron Anderson. I hadn’t left Samiya behind just to be someone else.

  There was no going back, which meant the only way was forward.

  I went home, showered away the toxins of the night before, got dressed and left Freddie a note.

  Really sorry Liam took a swing at you.

  Please don’t make me homeless.

  Saff

  I bought a coffee in town and walked to the storage unit. It was a lovely day, but that didn’t lift my mood. I ground the rest of the beads, making three Kilner jars in all. Time to decorate the quadcopters. I glued a photo onto each one and wrote the name of the innocent victim, and the date they were killed.

  I put them in six plain cardboard boxes, following the guidelines for packing devices with batteries.

  At twelve-thirty, aching from being hunched over, I left the unit and went to find some food. I bought falafel with some mix of tahini, beetroot, salad and salsa. Thought about how I asked Mum to stop giving me falafel in my lunchbox because Lucy had cheese sandwiches. What a waste of a childhood, to be so concerned with fitting in.

  I reluctantly went back to the sequence of tasks written on a list inside my head.

  Letters.

  I read the words I’d crafted, hoping they did the job.

  … American drones carrying Hellfire missiles kill indiscriminately. The victims are denied the right to defend themselves, denied justice, denied a voice. Their families are denied any acknowledgement, explanation, apology or compensation.

  The human right to live without fear applies to all, but today the fear has switched from tribal areas of Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen to somewhere near you. Sleep tight. Because tomorrow there’ll be an act of retribution that will make America think twice about the unlawful war it continues to wage on innocents of all ages.

  The international community had the power to stop the drone wars, they just needed to be given a reason. I had my reason. I wanted the little girl with the big brown eyes, whose face haunted me, to play outside on sunny days before her childhood disappeared.

  I signed each letter ‘Dronejacker’, folded the six sheets and put them in envelopes before placing them on top of the bubble-wrapped quadcopters.

  I checked my phone. I had four missed calls from Liam and one from Elisa. I didn’t listen to my messages, or return any of them. I sat on my pressure-cooker box and tried, not for the first time, to think about what came next. I had money, and I had another dead girl’s name (although training myself to answer to Georgia was a big ask), but I couldn’t make it real. The idea of a winter hidden away in the Scottish Highlands felt like make-believe.

  I stood up suddenly and had that funny dizzy feeling. This time next week, Saffron Anderson would be back where she belonged – in the ground. Once I’d got what I needed from the chemistry lab on Monday, there was nothing to stop me sending all the parcels on Tuesday – with the quadcopters scheduled to arrive on Wednesday and the bomb scheduled to arrive on Thursday. My eyes prickled with tears, but I didn’t cry.

  53

  My messages were – Liam wanting to know where I was, and Elisa wanting to tell me that Freddie was currently pressure-washing vomit off her drive and that he was marvellous and they were going to have a night in with a takeaway and she was deliriously happy, all without a breath.

  I called Liam on the way home, fake jolly.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but my head has only just stopped thumping,’ I said.

  ‘I was worried, Saffron.’ Liam sounded a bit out of breath. ‘You could have left a note.’

  ‘I left in a hurry. Didn’t want to throw up in your flat.’

  ‘You can throw up in my flat any day. What you can’t do is disappear without a trace.’

  Gulp.

  ‘Isn’t that a line from CSI?’

  ‘No, it’s a line from me, your lovely boyfriend.’

  I stopped walking, momentarily lost for words. Two joggers nearly ran into me.

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Where are you?’ he said.

  ‘In the park,’ I said. ‘About to get mown down by joggers.’

  Another over-keen runner was coming up behind me, so I stepped onto the grass to let him pass.

  Two arms, hot and bare, grabbed me, nearly knocking me off balance.

  I screamed. Loud.

  ‘Shhh!!’ said Liam, ‘I’ll get arrested.’

  ‘Idiot!’ I said, burying my head in his chest. His running vest was wet. The tears I’d been storing up took advantage of the shock and mingled with his sweat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked the top of my head.

  There was no answer to that, so I stayed where I was while he kissed my hair, his breath as humid as the wind that met me in Yemen.

  ‘Saffron, what’s up?’

  He stepped away an inch so he could tip my chin up and see me, but I couldn’t look at him. He’d done nothing wrong, yet he was going to be collateral damage.

  I managed to squeeze out the words, ‘Tired and emotional’.

  He took my hand and walked me home.

  ‘Coming in?’ I asked at the door. Where was the harm? After all, our time was nearly up.

  ‘I don’t smell too lovely,’ he said.

  I ran him a bath, but it went cold.

  Tomorrow never comes. There’s only ever now. I made Liam’s now as nice as I possibly could.

  54

  For me, Monday started at two-thirty in the morning. I was glad
to be awake, because my dreams were exhausting. Knowing that sleep would only bring more scenes of carnage, punctuated by episodes from my past and present that had never happened but seemed real, I got up and made a mug of tea. It was raining. A steady drizzle by the sound of it. Matched my mood.

  I thought about writing a letter to Liam, but what would I say?

  No one writes letters any more. They write emails and cards and texts. Mum kept a box of old letters. They were dead boring, but she loved reading them out loud to me. Some of them were from her to her mum, sent when she went to Southend-on-Sea with her aunty.

  We went swimming in the sea. It was freezing. We had a hot chocolate afterwards. Aunty said I had a cocoa moustache.

  I guess she just liked having something from her past.

  I left my mug in the sink and went back upstairs. The only thing I had from my past was the photo. I took it out of my purse.

  If only …

  Don’t go there, Samiya.

  I was at my desk by eight o’clock, keen to busy my mind. The team leader arrived twenty minutes later.

  ‘You don’t have to work any harder now you’re permanent,’ she said. ‘Elisa’ll be calling you names again.’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ I said.

  She disappeared over to the other side of the office.

  Liam arrived next. Freshly shaven, tanned face, pale-blue shirt – the sort of guy who should have a sweet, innocent girlfriend.

  ‘Hi, early bird.’

  ‘Who are you calling a bird?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry. Good morning, Ms Anderson.’

  ‘That’s more like it.’

  He, after a quick glance round the office, pecked me on the cheek.

  ‘Come with me to get Luke from Cubs tonight, will you?’

  ‘I can’t —’

  ‘Dad won’t be home.’

  ‘I’m not avoiding your dad, Liam. I need to do some washing and —’