AMBROSE NEKTON, SUICIDE BOMBER
KIT NEKTON, TERRORIST
How could they have done this?
Grandma must have taken me secretly, changed my name, and hidden me. That’s why I never went to school. She was ashamed of me.
I represented everything she hated.
And if I’m the child of terrorists, I represent everything I hate.
CHAPTER 46
I SIT FROZEN for a long time, my head against the knee of my uninjured leg. Gradually I start to hear the ticking sound of the pipes cooling down, and the wind gusting around the building in a shriek. Then I become aware of the crushing exhaustion that pins me down.
I lift my head and the sudden brightness makes my vision explode into dots. Scattered all around me on the floor is the evidence of Oskar’s plans for me, the way he took my buried history and twisted it into a new atrocity, so easy to believe. Like parents, like child.
My mother and my father. How could they have thrown their lives away in an act of murder? How could they have left me behind?
It’s over. Nothing matters anymore. A great stillness has gripped me, and I can’t move at all, not even my eyes, which have locked themselves onto the thin copper pipe at the bottom of the radiator. It’s a relief now. That’s all I have to do: stare at the pipe while the room grows steadily colder, because none of it matters. It wouldn’t matter if I walked outside now and waited for Oskar to find me. I could even go back to Col’s house. I could do that. It’s just on the other side of the square, minutes away. I know too much. Oskar wanted to kill me, and he’ll get me in the end. I could get it over with. It would be a relief.
But first I have to get up.
I turn onto my good leg, trying to kneel. The first movement of my other foot sends pain searing through my body, rocking me so that I lose my balance and fall back against the wall. My good knee crunches onto something thin and round in a burst of sickening pain. Greg’s paintbrush rolls toward the newspaper cutting.
AMBROSE NEKTON, SUICIDE BOMBER
KIT NEKTON, TERRORIST
That’s not me. I pushed Oskar’s bomb into the canal. Everyone who was outside the Old City Meeting Hall last night is still alive.
I pick up Greg’s paintbrush and close my eyes, and faces appear on the dark screen of my eyelids.
First Mr. Williams. He’s whistling an old tune while he writes Verity carefully on the side of a box for the anxious Brotherhood girl who talks to herself while she cuts into her woodblock. For me.
Celestina, floating motionless, upright in the pool, her head tipped back against the water, smiling at her own buoyancy.
Emanuel, so sweet and smiling, looking for me to share his happiness.
Serafina, flung against a tree after her bicycle crash, and the gladness I felt when I heard someone coming to help.
Greg.
And what I see is his uncertain brown eyes, and I hear his voice as he says, “What’s so wrong that we can’t fix it?”
That’s when I know I have to see him again. I have to tell them all what really happened.
I open my eyes and let them adjust to the fluorescent light in the quiet bathroom. There is a reason why people should believe me. Because it’s the truth.
I won’t feel sad. I won’t feel angry. I’m going to let myself feel something I’ve only allowed a little glimpse at until now. Hope. It’s a dangerous feeling, I know that.
For the first time in months, everything is here in my own hands. Carefully I put all of it, my whole life, back in the envelope, and I tuck that into my backpack.
I know what I have to do. I must prove who I am and what really happened. I have to stop Oskar from using me for propaganda. But I’m too tired to do anything tonight.
I brace myself, and clamber to my feet, pulling myself up on the radiator. I turn off the light once I’m holding the door handle. Nothing happens. Too late I see that there are two switches. I must have turned on the light in the hall outside. I snap it off, my heart racing. Surely nobody will have seen that momentary flash?
I watch and listen, with the door ajar. There’s no sound from the lobby outside. It’s dark in the hallway as I edge out, holding on to the wall. I stand and wait in the darkness. When I can make out the staircase in the faint shimmer of moonlight, I creak my way up to the gallery, one step at a time. The pain isn’t so bad now. My ankle feels numb.
I only need one more day. Just enough time to call Tina from a pay phone and go to Limbourne. And over the horizon is the thought that if I can clear my name, I can see Greg and explain everything. I have to believe he’ll still want to know me. I know it’s a big “if.” Maybe bigger now than before.
So I pull a long cushion off a bench onto the floor, wrap myself up in my coat with my hood up, and lie down. My ankle throbs against the side of my boot. I don’t think I’ll be able to get it off now, so I leave it, and shut my eyes.
The second I close them I hear something. It’s not the creaks of wood contracting at night. It’s not the scurrying of mice.
It’s the sound of a person, creeping up, step by step. I can even hear them breathing.
Moonlight shafts through the skylight onto the landing at the top of the stairs. A shadow creeps across the floorboards. I see him.
Oskar.
Just for one moment I think he hasn’t seen me. Then I’m blinded, as the beam of his flashlight shines into my eyes.
CHAPTER 47
I SHUT MY eyes. I can’t bear to watch him coming closer, toward my trap between the wall and the bench.
Then he speaks.
“Verity?” he says. “Verity? It’s me.”
He shines the flashlight on his own face, lighting it up from underneath like a mask.
I leap up, forgetting about my ankle, until the searing pain makes it give way and sends me tumbling toward him. He catches me by my arms.
“Greg! What are you doing here?” I stop, breathless.
Greg lets go of my arms. “I’m sorry.” His voice is cold. “I know you don’t want to see me. I just came to check you’re OK. That’s all.”
“How did you find me?”
“I followed you from the beach,” says Greg. “I knew you were somewhere near the square, so I waited. Then I saw a light go on in here.”
He turns off his flashlight. But I can see him in the thin moonlight if I don’t look directly at him.
“You look like a citizen,” he says. “But that’s not surprising, is it, K?”
I feel the blood rush to my head. “What did you call me?”
“K,” says Greg. “K.”
I’m dizzy. I sit down, suddenly, on the cushions. I try to keep the tears out of my voice. “You know?”
“I know.” His voice is cold. He’s still standing.
“Why are you here, Greg?”
“Serafina told me you’d disappeared. She said you made up a story about losing your wallet so you could go into the city early and then you didn’t come home all night. So she was worried.” He half-shrugs. “Celestina called Ms. Cobana—Tina. Celestina told her you broke up with me, and Tina said she knew—because of Jeremiah.”
I nod. He’s come a long way to be so cold. “Do you want to sit down?” I say. I wipe my face with the back of my hand.
Greg sits down, at the other end of the cushion. Then he punches it. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he says. “About you and Jeremiah?”
“Me and Jeremiah? . . . Greg, what did Tina say about Jeremiah?”
“She just said that’s why you broke up with me. You don’t have to explain. I don’t want to hear about it. It’s not as if we were . . .”
I start laughing. I can’t help it, and once I’ve started, I can’t stop.
“Shut up, Verity. K. Whatever your name is.”
I crawl over to where Greg is sitting. He knows I’m K, and he still came. I put my hand on his arm, but he pulls away.
“Greg. Listen to me. I thought Jeremiah was arrested because of me. He a
sked me to meet him, after the BSF meeting. He looked upset, so I said I would. And because he was from the Institute and he was your and Emanuel’s friend.”
“Not really my friend,” mutters Greg.
“I was sure he’d been arrested because of me. So I was afraid the same thing would happen to you. That’s why I ended it.”
He turns to me. “So you and Jeremiah aren’t—”
“No! I didn’t even like Jeremiah, really.”
Neither of us speaks for a moment.
“But it’s still dangerous for you to be friends with me,” I say. “More dangerous than it was before. Oskar, the guy who set me up, he knows I’m in Yoremouth. Maybe if you go now—”
“Verity,” says Greg. “I know who Oskar is, but I’m not going anywhere without you. You were wrong not to tell me the truth.”
“I tried to tell you, all the time. It’s you who wouldn’t let me.”
“I mean after Jeremiah was arrested.”
“I was so scared I’d hurt you,” I whisper.
“You did hurt me.” He moves closer. I reach up to feel the shape of his face. His hair has grown longer.
“Greg,” I say. “Greg.” I kneel up so that I can kiss him.
He puts his arms around me, so tightly that we fall onto the cushions. It’s a hard, angry kiss. Neither of us will let it end. Finally I lean away.
“Greg? I want to tell you everything now.” I pull myself up to make him listen.
“OK.” He sits up too and holds me close.
“How did you know my name? K?”
“Tina told Celestina,” says Greg. “I knew about Oskar before, from Brer Magnus.” He pauses. “I told you before, I knew who you were. You should have trusted me.”
I tell him about Oskar’s bomb and the letters I found today.
Greg waits until I stop talking. Then he says, “You didn’t know you really were Verity Nekton?”
Now he will despise me. I shake my head.
“You didn’t know your father was Brotherhood?”
“No. Did you know? And did you know my mother wasn’t?”
“Yes. I told you, I know who you are. I don’t care.”
There’s a silence. I start to move away, but Greg’s hand tightens on my arm. “There’s something you need to know about me too,” he says. “It’s the reason why I didn’t want you to say who you were. Because I knew that then I’d have to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” It must be something quite bad after all.
Greg holds on to me like I might try to move away once I know. “At the Institute,” he says. “When you were new? Brer Magnus asked me to watch you. So I was a spy. I spied on you.”
“Oh, that,” I say. “Yeah, I know.”
“You know?”
“I think I always did,” I say.
Greg gives a little laugh. “That’s why, after Limbourne, I stopped speaking to you.” He pulls me closer. “I couldn’t do it anymore. I went to tell Brer Magnus.”
“I overheard you.”
“I couldn’t stand it once I got to know you,” Greg murmurs. “No, before that. The first time you spoke to me. I was terrified you’d find out I was spying on you.”
Now I laugh. “How did you find me tonight?” I ask him.
“I looked through your things in the Art room,” says Greg. “I found your sketches of the beach huts. And you seemed to know your way in Yoremouth last spring. Celestina thought you’d come here. So I came in my car. I saw you go into the beach hut. By the way”—his voice sounds much more like it used to, at the Institute—“that was a pretty stupid place to hide, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“I know that now.”
“Not Yoremouth. Oskar wouldn’t expect you to come back to his safe house. That was quite a clever choice.”
“Now I’m clever?” I pause. “But he does know; Col saw me in the house.”
“OK. Not really clever. Slightly less dumb.”
I feel better now that Greg’s stopped being nice.
WE’RE LYING ON the cushion. Greg puts his arm around me so that my head is on his chest. My cheek is next to the soft cotton of his shirt.
“I’ve never seen you without long hair,” says Greg. His fingers brush through my fringe.
I run my fingers down the side of his face, so familiar and so new, from his close-trimmed hair to his earlobe. It feels like silk. I rest my hand in the little hollow where his collarbone starts. I’m warm now. Sleep is taking me down.
“Greg?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you think . . . do you think we’re going to make it?”
Greg kisses the top of my head. “We are.” He pauses. “I bolted the door on the inside.”
We lie there for a few minutes.
“Verity?” Greg finds my hand and laces his fingers through mine. His palm is warm against mine. “I like this,” he says.
“Like this,” I murmur.
“Whatever happens,” Greg whispers. “We have this.”
“I can hear your heartbeat,” I say.
“I can feel yours.”
I think of all the lonely nights under my duvet, pretending to be asleep so that nobody would speak to me, trying not to think of Greg. And now here he is.
“You’re here,” I say.
I feel his lips touch my head. “I’m here.”
I want to stay awake. I want to feel his arms around me, and listen to his heart beating, and feel his breath on my head. But sleep is pulling me down to an absent place where I won’t remember that I’m lying in Greg’s arms. I try to fight it off, in case this is our only night together, in case something comes between us again. I try to hold on to wakefulness, the way I’m holding on to Greg’s hand and his shoulder, but I can’t.
CHAPTER 48
IT ONLY FEELS like a second later when I wake up.
“Verity? Verity!”
Greg’s voice hums through his shirt. It’s true. He’s here. My head is on his chest.
He gives my shoulder a little tug. “Verity? We’ve got to go. While it’s still dark.”
He’s right. He’s in enough danger just being with me.
But when I stand up, the pain in my ankle almost makes me pass out. I collapse onto the bench and pull up my trouser leg before unlacing my boot.
Greg crouches in front of me. “Shall I try and take it off?” He shines his flashlight on my ankle. Above my boot the skin is puffed and shiny.
I shake my head. “I’ll just hobble.”
I get down the stairs on my bottom, but I know I will be too slow if I try to walk to the car. And too conspicuous.
We reach the doorway at last. The pane next to the door handle is broken. I look at Greg.
“Someone might be outside.” He’s whispering now. “I had to get in quickly.” He nudges the glass into the corner of the door frame with one foot.
“Wow.” I smile at him, whispering too. Then I realize something. “I don’t think I’ll be able to share the driving.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Greg eases back the bolts at the top and bottom of the door, and looks around at me with his familiar raised eyebrow. “I don’t want my car to end up in the sea.”
“Best place for it.” I smile. “Except it would cause an oil slick.”
“I’ll go and get it.” Greg opens the door a little and peers out. “It’ll only take me five minutes, if I run. Here.” He pulls a pair of gloves out of his pocket and gives them to me. “Your hands are always so cold.”
“OK.” I reach up and touch his face, and he turns back to kiss me, with his hand on the door. I hold it open a little so that I can watch him run across the road and into the castle gardens.
Now that he’s gone panic gnaws at me. We should have stayed together. But it’s OK; it’s just that anxiety has become my default setting. Greg’s safer on his own. Oskar won’t recognize him without me.
Maybe I should get myself down the steps so that we can leave as soon as Greg comes. I pull
on the gloves and steady myself on the door frame, because as soon as I open the door the wind tears around the corner of the building. I can’t put weight on my foot, so I bump down to the bottom step, waiting with my eyes fixed on where the road from the promenade emerges into the square.
He should be here by now.
I shouldn’t have let him go alone.
I strain my ears into the air, trying to hear past the wind and the sea’s roar. Maybe the car won’t start.
But now I hear the sound I’ve been listening for: the whine of an engine revving to get up a hill. I feel myself smile. I stand up, to be ready. It’s going to be OK.
There’s a gust of slashing rain, but through it I see the car’s lights. Rain washes down the windshield because he hasn’t got the wipers on. That’s not like Greg.
There he is, hunched over the wheel.
He should be slowing down.
There’s someone else in the car. Behind Greg, leaning forward. It’s Oskar. Oskar is in the car with Greg.
I take a step forward.
Greg winds down his window. “Run, Verity!” he shouts.
Then he speeds up, and the car shoots past me, out of the square.
“No, no, no!” But in the second it takes for me to shout, I see in my mind the one-way system that takes the road past the steps that lead up from the square. Adrenaline surges through me, and I run across the square and up the steps, ignoring my ankle. I haul myself up with the handrail. Come on, come on!
I hear Greg’s car growling up the hill, and that gives me hope for one last burst. And now I’m on the road and I can see the lights blinking through the rain.
I stand in the middle of the road, legs apart, arms out. There’s no way past me.
I wave my arms. “Greg! Stop!” I yell. But the wind sucks my voice away.
I don’t think he’s seen me.
But the car screeches to a stop and stalls. I get in before Greg has time to start the engine again.
I’m swamped by sensations as I fall onto the passenger seat.
Gladness, to be with Greg again.
Relief to be sitting down.
The searing pain that rips back, sending waves of nausea over me.
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