Transferral

by Kate Blair

  I put down the makeup brush. “I said I’m fine like a billion times. Treat me like an adult.”

  “Alison, just because you and Malcolm ….” Piers stops. Alison’s face is red.

  My stomach lurches. “What?”

  Piers shakes his head. “Just don’t think you know him best, Alison, is all I’m saying.”

  I breathe in deeply through my nose. He can’t mean … Dad isn’t like that. And Alison is, like, twenty years younger than him.

  But I remember the outfit she was wearing two days in a row at our flat.

  “The interview should be a cake-walk,” Piers says. “Marcus Sharpe is getting too old for celebrity interviews and wants to move into politics. We’ve offered him an exclusive with your father the night before the election if your interview goes well. So we’re expecting easy questions.”

  I’m glad of the change of subject. Of course Dad arranged this. He’s protecting me. He always does. I swallow, and try to push the thought of Alison out of my head.

  “So, what’s the special message you need me to deliver? Do you have something for me to memorize?” I’ve seen them training Dad on talking points. It’s pretty straightforward. You practise until it sounds natural.

  “Special message?” Alison asks.

  Piers sighs. I probably shouldn’t have said that in front of Alison.

  “I can’t write it for you,” Piers says as I pick up the blusher brush and select a subtle pink. “But our polling has shown that people see your father as too harsh, unsympathetic to the underprivileged.”

  Alison jumps in again. “But they think he’s trustworthy,” she says. “They believe he’ll do what he says.”

  I don’t want to hear her talking about my dad right now. I grab a lipstick brush and jab it into a healthy reddish tone.

  Piers continues. “They think he’s cold and distant. But you’re in a unique position to counterbalance that.”

  I laugh. “Cold and distant? Dad?”

  “We need you to talk about your father’s support after the attack: his visits in hospital, when you were there for so long. I know it was hard for you.”

  Piers pauses, and I wonder if he’s thinking about his own time in hospital. He was there for three months. That’s why he needs a walking stick. He was beaten and left for dead by some thug who wanted his wallet. His attacker was sentenced to tuberculosis, but turned out to have natural immunity and was out of Quarantine in two weeks.

  Piers shakes his head, continues. “Personal stories, make him seem warmer, more like the dad you know. Can you do that?”

  I pause in outlining my lips, and meet Piers’s eyes. This isn’t just how I should play the interview. This is how I can make myself indispensable to the campaign, get them to take me on the road after Parliament is dissolved. I’m the only person who can let the voters know what my dad is like. That’s a lot of responsibility. But an opportunity too.

  “No problem,” I say.

  Piers squeezes my shoulder encouragingly. “You’ll be brilliant, Talia. Now get out there and change the world.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Alison and Piers offer to wait with me in the wings of the Sharpe studio. But I don’t want Alison around right now, so I tell them I’ll be fine.

  Standing alone, the weight of the interview settles on my shoulders. This could be key to the campaign, and it’s all up to me. I’d be more comfortable with some kind of practised script to rely on. And I can’t get Alison out of my head. Gross thoughts seep in as I try to focus on the show.

  I’m the last guest and Marcus has been building up to my interview for half an hour, teasing the viewers with hints about the exclusive CCTV footage.

  Finally, the floor manager leads me to the edge of the set, and I have a moment to take in the scene. The audience is barely visible behind the blinding lights, but I can make out several rows of filled seats rising in a semicircle around the stage, like an amphitheater.

  Marcus is standing in the middle of the studio floor. I can’t make out what he’s saying, until his voice goes up triumphantly at the end.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Talia Hale!” He points toward the wings, right at me.

  I pause for too long, so the floor manager gives me a little push. A whooping, thumping wall of sound rolls in from the audience. Squinting past the lights I can see they’re on their feet. People are whistling and clapping their hands above their heads. I push my shoulders back and suck in my stomach as I walk in, smiling at the cameras.

  Marcus strides over to greet me. He takes my hand in both of his and shakes it, then gestures to one of the two gray chairs at the heart of the lights, the cameras, the action. I thank him and lower myself into it, smoothing down my red cashmere dress. I wish I’d worn something lighter. It’s hot under these lights.

  Marcus tries to speak a couple of times, but has to wait for the audience’s cheers to fade before he can make himself heard.

  It’s a little overwhelming. I guess they read the papers, and it’s nice, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do while they cheer. My chair is angled slightly toward the cameras and the audience beyond. Time stretches out as I clutch my hands together in my lap.

  “They like you,” Marcus says, gesturing at the crowd. This gets them going again, and Marcus laughs, showing his famous white teeth. We wait until the applause dies down enough for the interview to begin properly.

  “So, Talia, what’s it like being the daughter of a potential prime minister?”

  “It’s … it’s nice,” I stutter. Oh, great start, Talia.

  “Nice? In what way?”

  “He’s nice. He’s a good dad.” I can hear the words coming out of my mouth, but for some reason I can’t stop them, or change them to something less moronic. I try to focus on what Piers told me to say. What only I can say. I swallow, and try again.

  “He’s always been there for me. Especially four years ago, after the … the attack. He came to visit me in hospital every day.”

  Marcus is silent, so I continue. My voice grows stronger.

  “He’s got a great sense of humor.”

  Marcus’s eyebrows rise. I turn to the cameras, speak straight to them.

  “You wouldn’t know it to see him on TV, but he does. I could barely move, after the attack. But he’d squish up next to me on the hospital bed, his arms warm around me, his beard tickling the top of my head, and watch DVDs.”

  I swallow. It’s still painful to remember those days. “He’d watch my favorites ten times over and never complain. Sometimes, afterwards, he’d stick his socks on his hands like this …,” I demonstrate, pinching my fingers against my thumb, making a mouth, “… and re-enact the best parts in funny voices with his sock puppets.”

  Laughter flows in from the audience. I bet they never imagined him doing that. This is what Piers wanted: a new, friendly view of my father, even if it makes me seem a bit childish.

  “He’d spend every moment he wasn’t in the Commons with me. He was so tired all the time because of it.” I swallow. My mouth is dry, but Marcus smiles, encouragingly.

  “One day he dozed off in a committee meeting. The Home Secretary woke him by poking him in the arm with her pen. She broke the skin. Dad has a permanent blue spot on his arm now, a tattoo. You should ask to see it.”

  A wave of laughter rolls in from the audience, matched by Marcus’s loud guffaw. It’s a bit too loud, to be honest. He must be desperate for that pre-election interview with Dad.

  “And it’s good to see that you are just as committed to your father’s ‘tough on crime’ agenda, Talia,” Marcus says. “In a more practical way.” He turns to the audience. “Shall I show you our exclusive CCTV footage?”

  The cheers are so loud Marcus pretends they’ve pushed him backwards. He holds his hands up, a fake shield. “Okay, okay! Roll the video!”

  The lights in the studio dim, the back wall lights up as they run the footage. It’s only slightly better than it was on my comput
er. You still can’t tell what the girl looks like, but I hardly hesitate before I rush in to save her.

  The lights go up, and I’m still blinking when the cheering starts.

  They’ve put up a freeze-frame of me with the chair, about to hit the man as he advances on the girl, cleaver clutched in his hand. Only the side of my face is visible, but I look way calmer than I felt at the time. I look determined, and strong.

  “That, to me, is what true bravery looks like. What were you thinking?”

  Wow, he’s sucking up a bit too much now. But this is my chance to use Piers’s advice.

  “She was about Rebecca’s age. I wasn’t going to let criminals destroy her family the way they destroyed mine.”

  “And he was quite the criminal too,” Marcus says. “He must have been twice your size. He had a long rap sheet. The police have been looking for him for ages.”

  This is news to me.

  “The prosecution is seeking a sentence of bacterial meningitis, as well as a Level 4 Recall. What do you think of that?”

  The question blindsides me, even though I know what it means. Almost certain death, and if he survives and there is a pandemic of a serious disease within a year, he’ll be recalled to the hospital for a second Transfer. I pause, and try to get my thoughts in order. I don’t want to get this one wrong.

  “I am sorry for him,” I say. “I wish he had made better choices in life. But there was a boy at my school who had meningitis, and might have died if it weren’t for the Transfer. In the end, that man,” I point at the screen, “may save someone’s life. It’s a chance to redeem himself. He could have killed the girl.”

  “It looks like he would have, if you hadn’t intervened. She’s safe because of you.”

  “She’s not,” I say. “She’s still missing.”

  There’s a collective “oh” from the audience.

  “Missing?” Marcus says.

  “I’ve been trying to find her. It’s a dangerous area. She was scared and ran away. But no one’s seen her.”

  “I’m sure someone has seen her. Perhaps she doesn’t know people are looking for her. Steve,” he says. I squint to try to see who he’s talking to, but the lights are too bright. “Do we still have the other footage?”

  Marcus presses a finger to the mic in his ear and listens. After a pause, he speaks again. “Great.” He puts a hand on my knee. “We have another angle of the attack. You’re not in it, but it’s a good view of the girl. With your permission, we could screen it now.”

  What can I say? He should have run this past our people, but he means well, and if I refuse, it’ll disappoint the viewers. And how am I going to put out an appeal if the audience don’t know what the girl looks like? So I nod, feeling as if my tongue has swollen in my mouth.

  A few seconds later, another video flickers up on the screen. The picture is much clearer. It must be the café’s footage, as the view is across the foyer. The camera points down slightly, capturing the girl and the crack she stood on, the one that connected her to me. But I’m off-screen, as is the man with the cleaver. It’s obvious why they didn’t use this footage earlier; none of the action will be on it. But the girl is there, and she’s speaking, pleading, waving.

  But not to me.

  A shiver of sweat tickles its way down my spine. What is going on? Her gaze doesn’t follow the line of the crack to where I stood. It falls a little to the right, to where the man was.

  Is she waving at him? Why? She freezes, then her hand goes to her mouth. Her eyes are wide now, fearful. She’s looking at me for the first time. Then she turns and runs, out of the shot, out of the hospital.

  The lights go up in the studio, catching me by surprise. There’s more applause and I smile at the audience. The crack wasn’t visible in the other, low-quality video. They couldn’t have known she wasn’t waving to me.

  I hope my grin looks genuine. It’s about to peel off my face.

  “Well, there you go. That’s the missing girl.”

  I nod mechanically. Why was she trying to get the man’s attention? Why did she look so frightened after I knocked him out?

  “What did you think when you saw her waving at you like that?”

  Silence fills the studio as his question hangs in the air. I need to order my thoughts. People in the audience lean forward, the pale ovals of their faces appearing out of the shadows. There are so many of them, waiting for me to speak.

  She wasn’t waving at me. She was waving at the man.

  “I acted on instinct,” I manage, but my voice trembles. “She must have been scared.”

  Could that be it? Perhaps she was focused on him in her panic.

  “I’m sure she was terrified,” Marcus says. “Who knows what might have happened if you hadn’t been there.”

  I’m losing this. I need to keep it together. The freeze-frame on the screen behind me draws my attention. I sit there, staring at the shock in the girl’s face after I knocked out the man.

  Marcus comes to my rescue. He addresses the cameras directly. “If you know the girl, please get in touch with us, or the police.”

  He pats my knee again. “Over four million viewers watch this show. We’ll find her.” He turns back to the viewers. “Well, sadly that’s all we have time for today. But I think you’ll agree, whatever party you support, that Talia Hale is an exceptional young woman.”

  He shakes my hand as the audience rises to a standing ovation. Was that enough? Someone must know her. Someone will find her. And even if they don’t, I remember what I saw in her expression, who she was facing.

  I know where to start looking for her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PENTHOUSE FLAT, BANKSIDE, LONDON

  TWENTY DAYS LEFT

  THE CLOUDS ARE LOW over London: gray blobs that look as heavy as the concrete-colored Thames below. From the window of our penthouse, it’s as if I could reach up and touch them. I imagine how they would feel: like cold sponges.

  Rain will soon fall on the city. Fall on the traffic snarled up on Southwark Bridge, fall on Bankside Pier, fall and disappear into the Thames.

  I miss our old home, in Notting Hill, the people I knew there. But we couldn’t stay in that house. Couldn’t sleep in a space haunted by such violence, such regret. I’d find myself back in Mum and Dad’s bathroom, wishing I’d moved faster. Remembering how I’d let my sister die.

  On afternoons like this I drift around like a ghost myself. I try to read a book, try to do some online coursework for my A-levels, but can’t concentrate. The floor-to-ceiling windows mean our home reflects the weather, capturing and amplifying its mood. The cream furniture is cast in gray, the white walls darkened.

  The buzz of the lock signals my father’s return home. I head for the door as a voice erupts into the flat. Piers’s. I can tell by the outrage in his tone, and the clack of his cane.

  “Conway has been bandying about that old crap about harsh sentencing and unnecessary Recalls to cut waiting lists. But some criminals are immune to virtually everything, so we need to provide more of a deterrent …”

  And behind Piers is …

  “Dad!” I say as he enters.

  “Darling.” Dad drops his briefcase and runs to hug me.

  Alison enters behind him and I stiffen. She gives me a patronizing grin as she picks up his stuff. I turn away from her and bury my head in my father’s shoulder.

  “I missed you,” I say, quietly, so the others won’t hear.

  Dad squeezes me and whispers in my ear, “Missed you too.” Then he pulls away, unbuttons his long black coat, and hangs it up.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks. “We should order sushi. It’s still your favorite, right? We’re celebrating.”

  Excitement jolts through me. “You found her?”

  Dad tilts his head. “Who? Oh, the girl.” He walks to his office; an alcove separated from the main room by a large bookcase. “No, sorry.” Alison catches my eye, but I look away, quickly. She follows Dad in like a puppy, thu
mps his briefcase down on the desk, clicks it open and pulls out some papers with colored bar graphs on them.

  “Look, Talia. These are the latest poll numbers.” She spreads the papers on his desk. Dad walks around them, straightening the sheets. That’s his version of uncontrollable excitement.

  I glance down. All the big names are there. Ipsos MORI, Angus Reid, YouGov. And they’re all saying the same thing. I look up, and into my father’s beaming face.

  “We’re neck-and-neck with Sebastian Conway,” Alison says.

  I ignore her and give Dad another hug, squeezing his skinny frame. This is what he wants more than anything.

  “You’re finally getting through to people!”

  When I release him, he ruffles my hair. “I have you to thank for this. Your heroics have got a lot of attention.”

  There’s a swell in my chest. “We’re a team,” I say.

  Piers starts tidying the papers. “It’s only neck and neck. There are margins for error. And we shouldn’t be jinxing it by celebrating.”

  “Oh, take the stick out of your arse, Piers,” Alison says. “Let us have this one.”

  I trail a finger along the edge of the desk. I need to talk to Dad alone, but these days I never get the chance.

  He catches my expression. “And what do you want?”

  “You said you’d help me find the girl.”

  “Talia, I’ve tried. And you’ve tried. On national TV, no less.”

  “But we haven’t found her.”

  “That means she probably doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Remember on the news when that child was kidnapped right outside the Barbican by that pedophile ring? What if she’s in danger?”

  Piers sniffs. “I don’t get why this is so important to you. She’s probably a criminal.”

  “She’s a child! She can’t be more than ten!”

  “Talia.” Dad sinks into his seat, and I notice the dark circles under his eyes.

  Piers keeps talking. “She was there alone. We’d have found her by now if she was there innocently. She was probably picking pockets. She may be under a Recall, and trying to go off grid in case of a pandemic. When your father and I were lawyers, we saw a lot of children her age come through the courts.”