As I step up to the car, I see Raymond barreling down the drive. He must have come through behind me and he’s been sniffing around by the fence all this time.
“Go back, Raymond! Sit! Wait!” I call.
Raymond skids up to the closing gate, but instead of sitting, he rushes through it and storms toward me, barking and snarling, mouth open in a crocodile gape of teeth.
The barking hammers in my head. One moment he’s there, Raymond, my old friend, and the next his teeth clamp around my wrist. I jerk my hand away and fumble for the door handle.
“Get in the car! Get in the car, K!”
Somehow I get the door open and fall onto the seat and pull the door shut behind me. The window glass slides smoothly up, shutting out the raging face of fangs and staring eyes. Oskar must have closed the window. I haven’t moved since I got in.
In the wing mirror I see Raymond barking and leaping at the back of the car and Mr. East running up the drive.
Oskar starts the engine.
“Don’t run him over!” I cry.
“Are you OK?” Oskar pulls into a U-turn with a screech of tires. “Did it hurt you?”
“I’m fine.” But my arm throbs sickeningly. I slide my hand up my wrist, under my coat sleeve. “It’s not bleeding.” It must be the pressure of Raymond’s teeth that hurts so much. “It’s just a bruise.”
I look at Oskar. I’m not the only one who’s shaking. His fingers have left damp smears on the steering wheel, and his knuckles are yellow. Maybe he’s afraid of dogs.
I look back. Raymond is standing by the gate, his head thrown back. What has happened to my friend, nose tuned to the ground and tail thumping to see me? Maybe he’s sick.
Thanks for coming to save me, Oskar, I don’t say.
I’ll tell him I’m going to stop working for him when I’ve calmed down. After we get out of the car, while we’re walking, before we meet Ril. Somewhere where there are lots of other people.
Of course, I don’t know where he’s taking me. I glance sideways at the door. It’s not locked, so if I had to I could jump out. This is a new car. It smells of leather as it glides sleekly down the hill. We don’t talk. I look at Oskar. His forehead is dotted with drops of sweat.
He drives into the Old City and turns into the service road that leads to the canal and the shopping center, even though there’s a NO ENTRY sign there today. He pulls over almost immediately. Maybe it doesn’t apply to the police. On the right, the side of a multistory parking garage looms over the road, black and featureless. It’s very dark and empty here.
Oskar gestures toward it. “Ril’s waiting in a bar around the corner.” His hand is already on the handle. “I’ll go and get her. Can you drive around to the front of the Meeting Hall? There’s a place you can park outside it. We’ll get a ticket here.” He’s opening the door. “OK?”
“But Oskar?” I say. “I haven’t driven for years. And never a car like this.”
He turns back to me. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. It’s like riding a bike: you can’t forget. Come on.” He smiles at me with his usual warm smile, but his voice is firm and cold. A stranger’s voice.
Then he’s out of the car before I have time to reply. I don’t want to make him angry before I’ve told him, so I shuffle across, taking care not to dislodge the hand brake, and I sit in the driver’s seat. The rear mirror fills with the open trunk lid. Oskar’s face appears around the side, in the side mirror. He waves his jacket at me. I slide down the window so that I can hear him.
“Got it!” He’s barely audible. He almost drops the jacket, sucking in his breath. Then he gently closes the trunk. He’s so careful you’d think it was his own car.
I start up the engine, still watching him in the mirror. Now I’ve lost the chance to tell him I’m leaving before Ril gets here. Oskar stops by the driver’s door, pulling on his jacket. It’s a khaki one, not his usual leather.
“I won’t be long,” he says, backing away, only his mouth visible beneath the cap. “Call me if there’s a problem. I’ll see you in a minute.”
“Oskar . . .” Maybe I should tell him now. But he’s already out of earshot. He jogs toward the corner behind us and disappears.
I drive slowly down the service road, past the lane that leads to the canal, and make a sharp right toward the back of the shopping center. The Meeting Hall is lit up with glittering lights, the scaffolding all removed now. I feel a pang of sorrow. If I was still friends with them, I’d be there with Celestina, Greg, and Emanuel now. I’m sure even Serafina has gone. There is a parking place outside the Meeting Hall. Oskar has made a mistake, though, because the sign next to it says, Taxis Only. I pull in anyway and turn off the engine.
He said he wouldn’t be long. I become aware of the security camera trained on the car. It’s like the ones in the Institute drive, except that this one doesn’t swivel. Its single blank eye is fixed on me. Under my coat sleeve, my wrist throbs and burns where Raymond’s teeth closed on it.
Why is Oskar taking so long? Two security guards open the doors of the Meeting Hall and come down one side of the steps. A camera crew follow them, setting up their equipment to the right of the entrance. The guards pull a barrier out of the way and all of a sudden the pavement is full of young people, spilling into the road and up the steps. They must have been lining up along the side of the building. Some are dressed in Brotherhood clothes, many just as citizens. With quite a few, you can’t tell. I wish I was there, as myself, with Greg and the others.
Movement catches my eye in the rear mirror. The trunk lid is slowly rising, silently and gently, until it fills the whole space of the glass. Oskar should have closed it more firmly. I reach for the door handle.
Several things blast into my mind:
Oskar running away around the corner. Backing away from the car. Stooped over the trunk, his hands busy inside while I was sliding into the driver’s seat. Oskar shaking and sweating. Not from fear of the dog.
Raymond flying in a frenzy toward me, catching hold of my arm. Not biting; trying to pull me away. Raymond the police dog. Barking frantically at the back of the car.
Sniffer dog.
Me, driving the car. Under the camera, placed with such care. A Brotherhood girl, the child of bombers, here on the screen, waiting.
Waiting for a spark.
A spark that Oskar will send.
Oh, God.
CHAPTER 40
TIME IS LIKE water now, held in a bowl full to the brim, waiting for the drop that will send it over the edge.
People mill around the car, some giving me grumpy looks for being in their way as they try to cross the road. A detail that shouldn’t matter latches on to my brain. There’s a girl stepping in front of the car, right in front of it, and she’s wearing a sequined silver top, and she’s huddling into herself because the top is way too cold for this frosty evening, and now it doesn’t even look as pretty as it did before because her arms are going all goose-pimply and gray. She’s much younger than me. She looks anxiously around, maybe searching for a friend, but that’s all she’s worried about, not the real thing she should be worried about, the thing right here beside her in the car that she’s almost leaning against.
Or have I got it wrong? When did I become so nervous and paranoid? Ready to imagine that Oskar, the man who saved me in a bomb attack, would be capable of mass murder? And many of these people are citizens. Why was he at the station that day? Pull yourself together, K. But I can’t stop seeing Raymond as we drove away, barking and barking, no need for words.
Who to listen to? What to do? My hands are on the steering wheel of the still car. The stitching feels like braid under my thumbs. A whorled pattern crosses the leather, like waves churning.
Waves churning below the harbor wall at Yoremouth. Oskar’s hand on my back. The water swirling in inky coils below. I think of my own words. Don’t freeze, K. Don’t freeze.
Still I am motionless, while blood pounds around my head. I become aware of the
key fob moving gently in a tiny current of air, as if it’s waiting. Like me. Waiting to see what Oskar will do. Waiting until it’s too late.
A big NO roars in my head. Not this time.
There are people everywhere, like ants hurrying around the car. They are laughing and jostling. There’s no way I could make them move away in time.
My mind soars over the Old City, making a street plan of the whole area. Shopping center. Meeting Hall. Bridge, main road, service roads. The lane to the canal basin. The towpath and the houseboats are on the other side of the dam. That’s it.
I close my eyes and reach for the key. My teeth are chattering. My hand is shaking. Somehow I make myself take hold of it. It’s not the key, K; you know that. You already started the car to get here. It must be Oskar’s cell phone. He said to call him; to trigger the device. Still, I close my eyes as I turn the key.
Foot on clutch. Gear into reverse. Back up slowly until I am around the corner. Then forward, down the lane that leads to the canal. Not too fast, in case there is someone on the grass verge. There isn’t.
I drive the car up the shallow curb and onto the grass. Engine off. Hand brake off. Gear into neutral. Get out. Every part of my body is humming with the need to run. But I make myself go around to the back. I place my hands on the body of the car, above which the open trunk lid bumps softly up and down, and start to push. I don’t want it to teeter and sway like the Trembling Rock, going nowhere.
At first it doesn’t move. I see Emanuel with his hands on the rock. One person can’t move it on their own. But then the wheels begin to turn. The car rolls toward the water, and it tips smoothly into the canal basin. I don’t wait for the splash.
CHAPTER 41
I DON’T EVEN know I’m running. I’m not out of breath and I’m not thinking.
I’m in the shopping center. I see phone booths next to the parking garage ticket machines. I duck into one and dial the emergency number with fingers that won’t work.
I hold the receiver to my ear. “Bomb,” I say. “Bomb . . . in the car . . . canal . . .”
“Can you give me your name?”
I open my mouth to speak, and sounds, but not words, are stumbling over my tongue.
“I’m sorry? Could you repeat that?”
Jeremiah’s haunted eyes. Tina’s look of disbelief. Of course they won’t believe me.
The voice crackles from the receiver as it falls and swings from the cord, shattering the glass wall of the phone booth into a cloudy cobweb.
I crouch down on the floor, where the door is metal, not glass, in case Oskar walks past. I can hear a voice twittering from the receiver as it hangs on its wire. I wait for the explosion. Can a bomb go off under water? If I stay here, someone will find me. And then I can tell them everything: no lies, just truth.
I lift my head. I think how readily people believe lies, and how easily the truth can look like a lie. I see myself in an interview room with two police officers, a woman and a man. “And how did you know there was a bomb in the car?” “Because of the dog.” “The dog?”
I think of the girl who was cremated as K Child.
Jeremiah, and Tranquility Sound.
Greg, and Celestina, and Emanuel and Serafina.
A fire alarm shrieks through the air.
“LEAVE THE BUILDING. LEAVE THE BUILDING BY THE NEAREST EXIT.”
Yes.
I’m not frozen anymore. I slide out of the cracked phone booth and join the surge of people. Police are hurrying down the corridor that leads from the parking garage.
There’s no way they will believe me. Why should they? My life is one big lie.
I need to get away before the police get here. I melt into the crowd.
Nobody will believe me.
CHAPTER 42
AND NOW I feel oddly calm. I only have to do one thing. Hide. Get out of here. There are too many people pounding along this corridor. But that’s good. I’m lost in the crowd. In my Brotherhood clothes.
My cheek is pressed up against a shop window, flattened against the glass so that all the clothes inside blur into colors. I edge toward the door to avoid the crush, and as the force of the crowd is suddenly gone, I fall into the sale racks by the shop entrance. I’m lucky that these shops stay open late at the weekend. It’s easy to crouch under the rail and pull down a pair of pants, and a jacket. They’re men’s clothes, but they’ll do. I put them on inside the tunnel of clothes. I yank off my skirt and stuff it into my wool bag on top of the few things I always carry with me.
When I rejoin the crowd of people, I look like a citizen again.
I’m just one of the crowd now, hurrying toward the exit of the shopping center, my eyes sweeping the faces for Oskar.
I reach the way out and see cash machines on the wall to the left. I take out as much money as I can. It doesn’t matter now if I locate myself here because Oskar has already ensured that I’m on the shopping center security camera. Maybe they are checking the cameras already.
Then I walk through the back streets to the bridge and across the square to Central Station. I’m not afraid of the station now. I’m not afraid of the Brotherhood. I know I have to hurry, in case they cordon it off, looking for the bomber. Maybe they already have. I hear sirens all around. The station looks normal as I walk in.
Where can you hide if you have nowhere else to go?
I want to run as far away from Oskar as I can, but I’m not going to. I’m going to face the danger I couldn’t see before. I’m tired of hiding. I’m going to make myself go to Yoremouth, where his house is. There must be something there that will help me find out why he did this. I’ll just have to be very careful.
I stand in the line for the ticket office. There’s a group of young men hanging about, but this evening I’m one of them, not one of Them. It doesn’t take long for me to reach the window.
“Single to Yoremouth.” How clear and calm my voice sounds.
I drop the cash into the metal dish Then I go down to the platform to wait for my train. I make my body very still while I wait. I breathe on tiptoes, in and out, in and out. When the train pulls in, I get into a car in the middle. It’s empty. My breath hisses out in a long sigh.
The train pulls out slowly, leaving Gatesbrooke behind. But I don’t follow the thought of all I’m leaving. I stare at the window, while the train takes me away.
There are lights but no heating. I huddle into the jacket I stole from the shopping center and pull the hood over Greg’s cap, which I found in my bag. Maybe, if I get out of this, I’ll go back and pay for them. My mouth is so dry. I wish I’d remembered to buy—or loot—some water.
I rest my cheek against the cold glass, watching as the train slows down to pass through Limbourne. In the black glass of the opposite window my face appears, thin and pale, like a child waking from a nightmare.
The train rollicks from side to side. You’ve taken everything, Oskar. My barge, my job, my sunflower print, the new life I’ve been slowly building: all lost. The only thing I have left is my freedom. But for how long? A week? A few days? Hours?
My breath starts to flutter, and to calm myself I turn and stare back at the Limbourne waiting room as it gets smaller and smaller, until it’s a tiny yellow cube, then a dot, then nothing. But that’s a mistake, because I can’t keep the memory of Greg away any longer. The pain thuds inside my ribs, like an actual blow, and I have to push it from me. If I start to cry now, I know I’ll never stop.
I face forward again. In the darkness of my closed eyes I see a tiny oval picture, like a little frame with a film inside it. It’s as clear as an image on a screen. It’s the road outside the Meeting Hall. There’s the girl in the sequined silver top. She’s glaring at me, shivering in her thin clothes. She has no idea of the danger she’s in. But she isn’t in any danger, because I’m carefully reversing it away. I’m doing that, Oskar.
I did that.
Unless I’m slowly going mad. Perhaps she was in no danger at all; perhaps there was no b
omb. What if there’s no need to run? How would I know? There’s no one to say, “Don’t be daft, K, you’re letting your imagination run away with you.” My only confidant is a dog! I pushed Oskar’s car into the canal because of a feeling, but what if that feeling was wrong? I didn’t hear an explosion. All the people rushing out of the shopping center seemed unaware of a bomb. Nobody at the station was panicking.
I open my eyes and sit up. I’m not so cold now that the heating’s come on. This jacket is all right. It’s a padded parka, so I’ll be able to zip it right up to my chin and put the fur-lined hood up. I look at my wool bag. There’s nothing much in it now, just my wallet, the paintbrush Greg gave me, my cell phone, my father’s paintbox, and my mother’s folding scissors and the skirt I was wearing. Tina would think it’s bugged.
Tina told me to watch myself. Maybe I was right. I’m not just being paranoid.
I take everything out and put the things in the jacket pockets, except for Serafina’s dear old pink cardigan and my coat, skirt, and hat. I put them all back in the bag, along with the phone Oskar gave me. Then I go into the space between the cars. I wait until the train slows down alongside a freight train, and I open the window and toss my bag into one of the carts. I watch it disappear. I can almost see Tina nodding approvingly.
Now it’s just me and the clothes I’m standing in. I go back into the car and curl up on the seats.
Tomorrow I am going to hunt for Oskar. I will find out why he’s done this.
I start to feel warm. I hold tight the thought that I stopped Oskar’s bomb, and I say good night in my head to the girl in the silver top, who is still on this planet, and then I let myself fall asleep.
CHAPTER 43
WHEN I WAKE up, the train is still. Outside, I see the Yoremouth platform. Everything surges back and I feel absolutely certain that I made a mistake. Of course there was no bomb. The sky is lightening to gray. I must have slept here all night. My legs shake when I step down from the train.
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