by Karen Guyler
“It’s not safe for us to be out here.”
He hurried away from her and Lily.
Eva held Lily to her, pulling her close, rubbing her back to make her warmer. It took about ten strides before Charles stopped, hesitated, then returned to them. “Eva, you don’t understand—”
“Damn straight I don’t because you won’t talk to me. An explanation right now otherwise we’re going home.”
“I told you it’s not—”
Eva stepped closer to him. “That man just tried to kill me and it wasn’t the first time.” He looked shocked, but she silenced him. “You owe me an explanation. If you’re so worried about who’s after us, we can fly to Sweden, Per’s invited us.” Charles shook his head. Of course he wouldn’t want to see Per now, after his failed nomination. “We can go to India, I can check on the installation at Tirupudur—”
“No, we can’t.”
“I’ve got our passports with me, why not?” Eva hugged Lily closer, small comfort while her parents hissed their argument at each other. How damaging was that for her, knowing they were in danger, that men, faceless, nameless, were after them?
“They’ll have flagged our names at airports, ports. Our passports are useless. We’re going to see CJ, a contact of mine. He can help. He’s our only way out. The longer you stand there, the closer these men get.”
“Does this have anything to do with why you trashed our house?”
“I was looking for something, I thought Lily had it. Turns out I was right.”
“You should have told me they were important.” Lily said, proving she’d been listening all along. “I’m not psychic.”
“Locked away, Lily, in a hidden safe, I shouldn’t have had to tell you not to break into it.”
Eva looked from Charles, “We have a hidden safe?” to Lily, “You broke into a safe?”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
“You’re eleven, how did you know—”
“Does that matter?” Lily sighed. My parents, the Gestapo, her current favourite insult. “I just recorded the bleeps when Dad was opening it once. I’ve got an app that tells me what keys are the likely ones. Can we go now, it’s cold.”
“You have a safe-cracking app?” Eva dialled back her reaction, focussed on the important thing. “What was in it, this safe I don’t know about?”
“A chess set Dad doesn’t even play with.” Lily, trying to justify herself.
Eva couldn’t hold back her almost shriek. “This is about a chess set?”
“No,” he jumped in. “It’s about what’s in one of the pieces, information that’s been keeping us safe.”
“From this Society?”
Charles shook his head. “Now’s not the time.”
“Now’s exactly the time.” Eva snapped.
“It’s complicated.”
“I think I can keep up.”
Charles looked at Lily, shook his head again. He was right, Eva could have screamed. Lily shouldn’t hear whatever this was, she already understood too much. Eva pulled it back to more general ground.
“The piece is lost, you can’t get it back?”
“It was my wish stone,” Lily said. “The whole point is to lose it. It was Anya’s idea. You take a token, something little that you can carry around with you, you make a wish and, when you lose it, you wish’ll come true. I didn’t know.”
“Charles, something so important you couldn’t have put it in a safe deposit box?”
“No, they’re not safe.” That word again. “We have to get off the street. I’ll explain, I will, but later.”
“Come on, sweetheart.” Eva took Lily’s hand, and they followed Charles into a street the mirror image of the one they’d just left, more two storey flat fronted, square houses, yellow brick with dark painted wooden window frames and doors.
Eva’s coat smelt of the man burning. Every waft from the cutting wind blew his death throes at her, a punishment for what she’d done.
At least wherever they were walking seemed to be a nice area. At the last house at the far end of the cul-de-sac, Charles didn’t knock on the front door but took a couple of steps onto the short front path and looked up.
He waited.
This was his plan?
“Mum, I want to go home.”
“I know, sweetheart. We just have to wait while Dad does whatever he’s here to do.”
“Eva, Lily, come here.”
They joined him on the path and he pointed at her and then his left hand, at Lily and mimed a pregnancy bump.
“Playing charades, that’s what we’ve walked all this way for?”
Exactly what Eva was thinking.
Apparently Charles’ charade was too difficult for the person in the house to guess. The front door remained closed.
Charles pointed at his watch and gestured an oval around his face. Eva had no clue. Some kind of code?
“We’re freezing, Charles.” She tried to hurry it along.
He strode up to the door and knocked.
“Is this CJ even home?”
He nodded.
No handy letterbox to shout through, so Eva took her growing anger out on the door.
“Eva,” Charles chided, “you’ll just make things worse.”
“Will getting in there make us safer?” When he nodded, Eva banged harder, yelling. “Open the door.”
She nearly hit the man who did. He was around her age, immaculately groomed, in a white linen shirt over white linen trousers, small rimless glasses. She’d have said he was a yoga guru, apart from his socks, brown with smiling pumpkins lined up in neat rows on them.
“My husband said you can help us, can we come in?”
Charles cut off his retort. “I’ll forget about the extra you took in fees. But because you did that, know I’m in deep.” Charles looked at Lily, began again. “I was counting on the right amount for something serious. Now I’m short, I’m on the hook for it. I don’t have an issue with your higher fee, but you should have told me. As of now, I’m overlooking it.” His cryptic comments were the open sesame they needed. The man stood back to let them into the narrow hallway. “CJ, my wife Eva and daughter Lily. We need your skills, of course I’ll pay.”
“Follow me.” CJ led them into the warmth of what was probably the master bedroom in the surrounding houses, but in his was like something out of a sci-fi movie. Banks of hi-tech computer stuff took up racks along two of the walls and an enormous desk with four different size monitors straddled the other side of the room.
“What do you need?” he asked Charles.
Charles looked at Lily, back at CJ. “We need new passports, ours are broken.”
CJ stared at Eva, his gaze roving over her bruises and grazes and the not so white dressing now. “Hers will be extra.”
Charles nodded. “That’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, we’re not using our savings—”
“No, we’re not, this is my money.”
Another of the ties that bound her and Charles together as a couple, as Lily’s parents, snapped.
“Your money? When did we become that couple with his and hers? What did you do, Charles? Is this why The Society’s after us?”
“The Society’s after you and you came here?” CJ’s voice was low, his words measured into a threat.
“I can explain.” Charles said.
“I wish you would.” Eva couldn’t help her sarcasm. She saw Lily’s face. “It’s okay, sweetheart, no one’s after us. The Society is Daddy’s new bank, and he didn’t pay a bill. Isn’t that right, Charles?”
“Yes.” He nodded confirmation. “That’s all this is. My friend, CJ here, didn’t pay me everything I thought he owed me and I was supposed to give it to The Society so now they want the rest that I owe.”
“But I don’t owe you, do I, Professor?”
“No, it’s a misunderstanding, that’s all.”
Lily looked from one to the other of the lying adults. She was far more astute than they gave he
r credit for, but maybe this time she just wanted things to be normal, to feel safe. She nodded. “Okay.”
“And you’re going to sort things out so your bank doesn’t come after me.” CJ added.
“I am.” Charles’ promise didn’t sound sure of itself.
CJ got busy at the keyboard, typing in a cryptic conversation between him and a machine, network, someone. He pulled down what Eva had thought was a projector screen but was a curtain of two halves, bright green, bright blue.
“We’re not doing this.”
“Eva.” Charles hissed-whispered, a parent telling their naughty child to behave themselves. “You want to go to India,” he challenged her, “this is the only way.”
“We’re not using,” she mouthed the words, “fake passports.” She could sense her retaliation cracking open a distance between them she’d never wanted to feel again.
“I need your passports.” CJ intruded into her sadness, alarm.
Charles held his hand out, but Eva shook her head.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Eva pulled Lily into a hug, reassuring, calming. Tired and confused already, she and Charles were adding to it. And neither could budge without—
She felt rummaging in her backpack, and CJ was catching the three things Charles threw at him. Snip, snip, snip and CJ had cut right through the covers of their passports before she could even protest.
“Now we’ve got the histrionics out of the way, stand in front of the green.”
Eva looked at Charles. Charles did as directed, and CJ took his photo.
“Next.”
“How can we pay for this?”
“I’m using an emergency fund.” Charles said it like it was obvious.
“An emergency fund of thousands? How many is this blowing?”
“Lady, there’s no blowing here, I’m the best.”
“It doesn’t matter how good you are, there’s no way you can fool biometric scanners. No offence.”
“Then you have no idea what you’re talking about. If your husband’s using me, there’s a very good reason why. I’m not cheap.”
“You have to trust me, Eva.” The more Charles said it, the less she did.
“Trust that we’re breaking the law?”
“It’s the same thing as you in the lab.”
“What’s going on?” Lily’s looking from one to the other of them sped up.
“I’m not using a—”
“Let me explain something to you.” CJ pointed at Lily and shook his head, gesturing that Eva should follow him into the hallway. Eva closed the door behind her, catching him up downstairs beside the front door.
He moved so quickly she had no idea it was coming. Grabbing her hair, he pulled her head back. She felt something cold, hard against her taut throat.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he hissed. “You don’t come in here throwing around names that get people killed. Worse than that, you don’t insult my work. I don’t need to beg people to come to me, it’s the other way around. Right now that’s your husband, but no matter how hard he begs, he can’t say anything that would make me help you.” His threat was loud against her skin, making goosebumps rise at the back of her neck, her stomach churn. “I know people, you say anything about where I live, they’ll visit you but they won’t be as nice as me. And with that lovely daughter. . .”
Eva tried nodding, but he had her tight against his shoulder. “Glad you understand. You’re leaving, don’t come back, don’t knock on my door, do not dare disturb my neighbours again. Your husband and daughter are still in here with me, remember that.”
With a wrenching, he yanked his hand out of her hair and propelled her outside onto the street. The front door closed with her on the wrong side of it.
26
Eva held the back of her head where it felt as though CJ had pulled out a huge chunk of her hair. She stared at his closed front door. Charles would follow, he’d bring Lily, they’d come right out.
She crossed the road to stand behind a parked car, far enough away she hoped she wasn’t an ongoing threat to that, that—who the hell did he think he was? She pulled in a breath that didn’t have enough oxygen in it, let it shudder away.
They’d come out.
But the door stayed closed. One minute, two, three, four. Eva lightly stamped her feet, stepping side to side. A weight pressed at her chest. Charles wouldn’t leave her out there. They were a team. Eva shrugged herself deeper into her down coat, but the hug she needed from it wasn’t warm enough, wasn’t reassuring at all.
The door opened. Eva stood still. They were coming. A single figure closed the door, the sight of her bright red bobble hat catching at Eva’s throat. Lily ran over to her.
Eva gathered her into a hug. “You okay, sweetheart?”
“No, what’s going on? He’s a horrible man. What’s Dad talking about?”
“I have no idea.”
How long should they stand there waiting?
With every second that passed and Charles stayed on the other side of the closed door, Eva could feel an unravelling of them, as though an integral thread of their relationship was fraying away to nothing. Then, unanchored, they’d be adrift, the scaffolding on which they’d built their marriage collapsed in a heap of unknowing and mistrust. They were supposed to be forever, their reunion seven years ago had promised it, their wedding vows underlined it.
Frost had begun icing patterns on car roofs and windscreens when she allowed herself to acknowledge the unwanted truth and took Lily home, arguing with herself all the way. But there was nowhere, no one else. Eva’s mother would put up with them for a couple of days, maybe even be pleased to see them, for the first hour anyway. Charles would understand where they’d gone.
But she didn’t have to stay there. The relief made her legs feel weak. She could take Gordon up on his offer now, with no Every Drop work she could help him. Gordon could protect her, he’d said. They’d be okay, they just had to get through tonight.
It took until they’d turned into their road before Lily agreed to stay with their neighbour for a few minutes.
Eva rang Hugo’s doorbell. “So sorry to knock so late.”
“Eva, Lily, sweetness, it’s no trouble, Cynthia is being quite the diva, aren’t you, pet?” Hugo rubbed the ears of the dog he clutched in his arms. “So am I. It’s far too cold to be standing out there waiting for her to do her thing.”
“Hey, Cynthia,” Lily ruffled the tiny dog’s chest.
“Is it okay if Lily sits with you for a little while, I just have to run a quick errand and it’s a bit late to drag her around.”
As if on cue, Lily yawned.
“Of course, she can help me with the diva dog. I’ve got some flapjack I made earlier, all vegan, not so naughty.” He winked at Lily. “Take as long as you need, we’ll be good but can’t promise there’ll be any flapjack left if you’re too long.”
Lily smiled at Hugo, but her gaze at Eva tightened.
“I’ll be quick, promise.” Eva hugged her. “Thanks so much, Hugo.”
When he’d closed his door Eva prayed the distance of bricks between his house and theirs would be enough to keep Lily safe, just for the few minutes it’d take her to pack.
Trying to be fast, silent, wanting to be far away from there already, she fumbled at the front door lock, let herself in.
Their house felt as it always did, if anyone was in there she couldn’t tell from the hallway. She peeked in the lounge, a quick in out. Ridiculous, what would she do if she saw someone?
Still, she checked the kitchen diner and every room upstairs. All empty. Eva sank onto her bed, lay on her side, laid her hand on Charles’ pillow. How different things were now than the last time she’d woken up there.
How did Charles know CJ? What work did he do for him? How could there be a part of Charles’ life she knew nothing about? And then, in the replaying of his cryptic conversation with CJ, it hit her what he’d said, what it meant. He’d said he owed money to The
Society. Charles, her stolid husband, obsessed only with his work, had paid a group of assassins. Her mind floundered to make sense of it. Who had he wanted killed? Charles, who have you become? She closed her eyes against the sadness.
Charles’ urgent voice reached for her. Eva sat up, 2:00 am the alarm clock told her, she’d slept for—Lily!
Eva got up to go downstairs but from where he was pacing in the kitchen, something about it—his tone?—made her cautious, on edge, before she’d got halfway along the landing.
“Tell him he will speak to me if he knows what’s good for him. I realise that you’re an exceptional gatekeeper, but this is a life-and-death matter. Why else would I be calling. . .Get him out of it, he’ll want to speak to me. . .He’ll be more angry if you don’t.”
Who was Charles not happy with? Who was she now, eavesdropping on her husband?
Eva glanced at the front door, superseded by the remembered image of the green one she’d grown up with. Her and Daddy creeping into the house like cartoon characters trying to be quiet, fingers on lips, exaggerated tiptoeing. His eyes crinkled from his smile at her, “you can learn more from listening than talking.” But it had only been Mummy in the lounge, on the phone, having a conversation Eva didn’t understand. Daddy didn’t want to go in and surprise her, so they waited in their half-frozen crouch, while his face changed until she reached for him. He swept her up into his arms, taking her back to the front door, opening it quietly, closing it loudly, calling out to her mother that they were home.
Eva understood as little now from Charles’ end of the conversation as she had her mother’s then. He stalked through the hallway out of the front door, closing it behind him.
Eva picked up the landline and pressed redial on the last number. When it was answered, she slammed it down.
Charles, what have you done?
27
“You know what time it is?” Nancy had never woken well in the middle of the night.
The sound of her grumpiness reached right into the heart of him, made him smile. “It’s Charles.”
Her gasp made him hope, she hadn’t slammed the phone down.