by Rebecca Ward
Bodi sits at the desk and looks around being careful not to leave any finger prints on the pristine glass surface. She gently nudges things around with her fingers wrapped in the end of her sweatshirt. He has the same cold, posed photograph of him and Rose that Bodi saw in the drawing room. A copy of the London Herald lay flat, ironed, on the desk. No one believes a word it says. It has been the president’s propaganda rag for years so people don’t even read it despite it being free and the only ‘news’ paper available to them. The headline reads – Peace restored in city – and shows a line-up of guards in full riot gear, styled like a Roman legion. Bodi sticks her tongue out at it.
There is some kind of antiquated computer on the table. Bodi has no idea how to work one. She presses a button and the screen flashes on making her jump. Below the corporate logo for TrueSec she is asked for a password. Worrying that any activity on this might alert her uncle, or worse his golf cart thugs outside, she backs away from the box.
Bodi runs her fingers along the wall of cupboards looking for a way to open them. She leans on one by mistake and it pops open. She leans on another, pop! After a few seconds of closing and re-popping the doors for fun Bodi starts to rifle through the contents of the drawers inside. Row upon row of hanging files stare back at her. This is as bad as the room at the TrueSec HQ, only this doesn’t seem to have a coherent system. Letters and memos are jammed in every way possible.
‘Not such a neat freak after all, uncle,’ Bodi mutters.
It would take all day, maybe two to go through all this and she doesn’t really know what she is looking for. Obviously the whereabouts of her mum, but she has only just been moved so she doubts even Thomas has that information here. She could look for information on Populus, but what would she do with that? She has walked away from them now. They are better off without her help.
She hears movement above her, a bath is being run. Her aunt’s day is topsy turvy. And while the city is rising up about her she is luxuriating in a bubble bath. How can two sisters be so different? Jasmeet will be up soon to clear Rose’s tray and so she has little time to shut all the doors and get out. At the final one she comes to she stops. Peaking out of the top of one of the files is something familiar, it is a photograph of her leaning against the Boudicca statue on Westminster Bridge. Her eyes widen and she pulls the file out of the cupboard. She sits on the floor and spreads out its contents. Photographs of St James’s and Frank’s Gym, of her entering the TrueSec offices, transcripts of the conversation she had had with Reed in the café, with Sam on the bus, CCTV images from Kenwood House, of her arriving at this house... Bodi curls up her knees into her chest. This isn’t happening. She goes back through the file, there is a gap of a few years, but there are some images of her mum from when Bodi was around ten and back earlier and earlier, surveillance that spanned a dozen years. Bodi guesses there are more files where this came from.
‘I actually thought that I’d lost you both, but then some helpful chap gave up your location so we were able to, how might one put it, re-connect.’ Thomas’s voice breaks the silence like a smashed windowpane. Bodi begins scrabbling all the photographs together and then stops, realising there is little point. She isn’t in hiding anymore, and as it turns out she never was. Before her is a file proving that her uncle had known about her and Ruby’s location pretty much most of her life. She stands up to face him. She looks round her for something, anything that she can hurl at him and make a run for it, but it is futile. He is a burly man and he has henchmen just seconds away.
He gestures for her to sit on one of the padded leather chairs by the window. Bodi walks slowly across the room. He closes the door to his study behind him and comes to sit opposite her. The family portrait definitely captured his softer side because in real life he is a brute of a man. His shaved head is red and veiny, his cheeks pockmarked, his bushy moustache flecked with grey to match his TrueSec military garb. When he sits his huge arms and legs spread so he appears almost spherical, his short, thick neck barely visible behind his shirt collar laden with stars and honours. His belt carries a handgun, a sheathed knife and a baton.
‘He’s not taking any chances,’ Bodi thinks.
He leans back and puts his hands behind his head. An alpha gorilla gesture that doesn’t go unnoticed by Bodi. She sits forward in her chair, her hands grip the edges and she tries to front him out.
‘I’d introduce myself but it seems we’re already acquainted.’ She smiles her most disingenuous smile. ‘We didn’t need to creep around and hide at all.’
Thomas strokes his moustache with his stubby fingers. ‘No, you did need to do that. We couldn’t have the face of Populus and her daughter out and about bold as brass. We just needed to keep an eye on you. Firstly, my mother-in-law wanted me to keep an eye on Ruby to ensure she didn’t start anything up again and then you decided to take on the family business so we could hardly let that go unnoticed.’
‘I’d hardly say I’ve taken on the family business. What choice did I have? I had nowhere else to go once you’d taken Mum away. Why did you do that if you didn’t need to?’
‘It was processed before I could stop it. And, well, let’s just say I was intrigued by the identity of the snitch. Very interesting. Thought I’d wait and see how all this would pan out. And it’s turned out to be a very useful move in the end. Now all the rats are scurrying out of their holes. It’s only a matter of time before we have them all and we can put an end to this sorry little annoyance once and for all.’
Bodi stares back at him; she feels a mixture of anger and anxiety. Between Balt and her uncle she has had no control over her own destiny. As much as she has lived a limited life, she has always felt that she was in charge of what little life she had. Up until this point. How dare they? How dare they remove what little free will she had? And now all her new friends, Sam, Reed, Evan, are all in danger because she and Ruby have unknowingly led the Head Sick Boy to their door.
It dawns on her there is no way he is letting her sit there and not carting her off without something in return. ‘What do you want from me?’ she asks.
Thomas smiles. His shiny white veneers jar with his rugged features. ‘Well I have to commend you. You’ve done stellar work for me already. I have Balthazar’s son and those wretches still in hiding will show their faces at this march on Tuesday.’
‘Evan’s alive?!’ Bodi lets out a deep breath, which she has been holding for days.
‘Yes the boy is alive. The guards only fired a warning shot but it was enough to startle the little lamb into submission.’ Bodi knows her uncle is full of it, there is no way Evan will have given in so easily. She has to get word to Balt somehow, so Populus knows she hadn’t got Evan killed. ‘I see you’re pleased he is alive. Perhaps you’ve formed some attachments along the way? I wouldn’t advise it my dear. They are rabid sewer rats and as much as your mother liked to play the people’s revolutionary, you hail from much better stock than that.’
As if on cue, her aunt walks in, her face flushed from her bath. ‘I heard talking Thomas and, oh…’ she stands frozen, open mouthed at the doorway. She looks across to her husband, fearful of his reaction.
‘I was just having a little catch up with young Boudicca here. Why don’t you join us Rose?’ His icy tone discloses his protracted grudge about her betrayal. He is visibly enjoying this, like a chess master finally getting all his pieces in prime position, ready to make his final move and wipe out everything in his way.
Rose moves across the room, starting to protest. ‘I had to help her Thomas, she had nowhere…’ He holds his hand up, she is not going to get out of it that easily. He bends his hand down slowly and she follows his gesture to be seated. And silent.
‘So it would seem dear niece that I have something that you want…’ he raises his eyebrows expecting her to answer.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, well done. And you have something I want…’
‘Balthazar?’ she ventures.
‘Very goo
d. Quick learner this one. So I think we can come to some kind of arrangement, don’t you?’ His voice is so smug Bodi reconsiders not throwing something at him. ‘I need you to save me a lot of time and bother and get me that King Rat, preferably tomorrow before this march turns into a proper headache for me, so I can scoop him up and put him in a cage. And then you get to go skipping off into the sunset hand in hand with your mummy. Now wouldn’t that be nice?’ He rubs his hands together, pleased with his own plan.
Bodi is raging that she has been played so easily. What a hideous choice to make? She stares at him with all the venom she can muster. ‘You bastard.’ He brushes her insults off like dust from a jacket. He is far too happy revelling in his master manoeuvres. ‘No way. No way am I doing that,’ she protests.
‘Then it’s ta-ta to Mummy for good.’ He pulls a sad face, mocking her from across the room. ‘To be frank she’s not doing so well. I wouldn’t give her that long anyway…’
Bodi is horrified, her anger propelling her across the room to lash out at Thomas but Rose gets between them, protecting her from Thomas’s raised fist.
‘Thomas, please, she’s just a girl. She doesn’t deserve this. It was Ruby that started this, Ruby who joined Populus. Boudicca’s just trying to survive.’
‘Sit down woman!’ Thomas commands his wife. ‘Haven’t you done enough, bringing this to our door? Into our home. Both of you, sit down.’ He looms over Bodi. ‘You’re acting as if you have a choice young Boudicca. You don’t. I will round up all those Populus vermin eventually so either it happens slowly and your mother rots in prison or we do it quickly and you get her back before something irreversible happens.’
‘I can’t. I can’t do it.’ Bodi’s voice is barely a whisper. As much as she has contempt for Balt, her heart is heavy with her fondness for the other members of Populus that took her in when she had no one else. She feels bound by the debt she owes Evan. Did Evan save her life, just for her to go and hand over his father? How can she face any of them again if she betrays them? But leaving her mum to die in prison is unbearable. She looks Thomas right in the eye.
‘I hate you!’ she spits.
‘Well that’s just a cross I’ll have to bear,’ he chuckles.
‘His exterior is not even half as brutal as his interior,’ Bodi thinks.
‘I suggest you return to your ‘best friends’ asap and get this moving. There’s little time and I need that march ended. And then, well, we’ll see about getting you reunited with mummy dearest. You,’ he points to Rose. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ He banishes her from the room like a naughty child. She leaves, turning over her shoulder to mouth ‘sorry’ to Bodi, her face fearful of the rage she will face later. Bodi looks down at the floor.
‘How can I trust you?’ Bodi asks.
‘Look. I don’t need your mum. She’s no good to me now. She’s inactive. Plus it gets the mother-in-law off my case. And that woman is a bloody viper. She’s not happy at all about the situation. You’ll get your mum and maybe a nice little place you can scurry away to. A long way from here. A long way from Rose.’
‘And I want Evan back too. He’s also no use to you, as soon as you have his dad.’ Bodi chances her luck, such as it is.
‘Quite the negotiator,’ he says, a little impressed.
‘And I need a guarantee. How do I even know Mum’s still alive?’
Thomas walks over to the window and lifts the blind and points. There in the street at the end of the drive sits a black limo with blacked out windows. The driver returns Thomas’s nod and the back window lowers. Ruby looks out, disoriented.
‘Mum! Mummy!’ Bodi wails, banging on the window. Her mum turns to her, tears streaming down her sallow face. Bodi runs for the door but Thomas grabs her round her waist. She kicks and screams but he isn’t letting her go. She is like a chew toy in a terrier’s mouth.
‘I hate you. I hate you.’ Bodi screeches in his ear.
‘This is getting to be very tedious. Try using some of your other ‘feeling’ words.’ He laughs at his own joke and puts her back down. Bodi watches the car pull away, her hands and face pressed flat on the window. Bodi slumps to the floor. ‘Okay. I’ll do it.’ The words feel like splinters on her tongue.
‘That’s my girl.’ And he walked out of the room whistling, leaving her sobbing.
All the way back to Sam’s house Bodi frets over what she is going to tell them. She might go with a little girl lost approach and hope they fall for it. But how is she going to tell Balt about Evan without telling him the rest of the story? Any mention of Rose, let alone Thomas, will have her back out on the streets. First things first, she has to see Reed and assure him that she is fine. Perhaps it is something they can work out together? Her brain is fried after seeing her mum but there is no way she is going to let Thomas win.
The streets are shrouded in an ominous quiet. People scuttle home while others wait behind closed doors for it to turn dark. TrueSec’s brutality has added fuel to the fire and there will be no escaping more unrest tonight. Black vans patrol the streets, their tannoy systems threatening harsh punishment for any wrongdoers and Bodi joins those scurrying along, keen to get indoors before getting caught in the crossfire. Balthazar‘s timing is spot on. The disheartened citizens are more than ready to challenge the authority of the President.
Sam is out; no doubt Balt has the elder Populus members working on the march at the bank. Or he is off somewhere drowning his sorrows. Bodi finds Reed sitting on his bedroom floor cutting out newspaper clippings for his wall.
‘Is there even room?’ She makes him jump. He stands up and smiles at her.
‘I think there’s like a square behind the cabinet.’
She can tell he is fighting the urge to come over to her so she walks to him and puts her hand out. He squeezes it.
‘That’s quite a poor attempt at leaving B.’ He looks at the clock. ‘Like eleven hours tops.’
She laughs. ‘Yeah, well once you realise you have absolutely nowhere to go… And the rioting seems like a great party and all but I think it’s a little too pyro for my tastes.’
‘And you missed Sam,’ he jokes.
‘And Sam. Can’t leave Sam.’
Reed pulls her to him and she rests her head on his shoulder.
‘Where’d you get to little B?’ he whispers in her ear. She feels safe and happy. The guilt and the happiness all mixed up again. She steps back from him, saying nothing.
‘How about tea? Seriously, I know what people mean now when they say that tea is good in a crisis. Plus I think Sam’s drunk all the booze!’
They walk downstairs. ‘Why so dark?’ Bodi asks.
‘Sam wants us to keep a low profile and the electricity’s been a bit on-off. Next door mustn’t have paid their bill. We’ll have to reconnect to someone else’s supply. Gas is still on though.’
Reed fills the kettle and Bodi turns up a camping lamp. It is like they have stepped back in time to an Old Masters’ still life. Overripe fruit and old wine bottles take on a nostalgic hue. The piles of washing up and dirty clothes disappear in the gloom. Bodi grabs a blanket from the library and wraps it round her shoulders.
‘Did this house relocate to the Arctic while I was away? I swear it’s getting worse…’ She makes tense small talk with Reed while she deliberates in her head what to tell him about her day. She knows that he isn’t entirely trusting of Balt but recent events mean that Populus have been brought closer together. He might not be that ready to work with her, who he has known all of a week, against Balt who he has known all his life. But she has to tell him about Evan.
They sit down next to each other; hands wrapped round mugs of hot steaming tea. ‘I’d offer you a sandwich, but oh yeah, we don’t have any food. Again.’ Reed looks at her. ‘So, the worst runaway in history, what’s the story?’
‘Right, erm…Evan isn’t dead, in fact he’s not even wounded. The shot they fired was a warning shot. They just have him in custody.’ She avoids eye contact wit
h him.
‘Okaaaay. And you know this because…?’ Reed has learned Bodi is full of surprises but this is next level.
‘I went to see Rose.’ Reed’s eyes widen. ‘And I may have inadvertently met my uncle...’
‘Oh no Bodi. Are you insane? I mean amazing about Ev and everything, you know like a total bleeding miracle, but what the hell. Thomas Cleaver!’ And then the penny drops. ‘And yet you’re back here? How does one get back here after meeting Thomas Cleaver?’
‘Err, right, so don’t go insane, but I may have made a pact with the devil.’
Reed ducks down. ‘Are they outside? Am I getting taken away?’
‘Nothing like that. You’re quite safe.’ She pats his hand and he sits up to his full height again, flushed with embarrassment.
‘Then what? What have you done B?’ his voice sounds so sad, disappointed. Like his whole world has come crashing down. Bodi isn’t sure what to say. How can she tell him the whole truth? But how can she not?
So she tells him everything, from the very beginning, and he sits listening to the deal she has made with Thomas. When she tells him she has agreed to hand over Balt to TrueSec he looks at her as if she is the worst person alive. And then he looks at her broken hearted when she tells him about her mum being dangled as bait. She tells him about Balt and Thomas having her followed and how she feels like the pawn in two grown men’s game of war. She tells him about how she is struggling with what is being asked of her, but what is she supposed to do? All the while he says nothing and when Bodi finally finishes they sit together in silence, him with his head in his hands.
‘There must be a way to turn this round. If we put our minds to it we can come up with something,’ he says, finally.
‘Oh god, thank you. I thought you might chuck me out again.’