Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(49)

The idea of visiting the prison is in Rachel’s head when she wakes on Monday. It obsesses her more as the morning goes on, but of course when she makes the phone call, she’s told she needs to do things the official way. So Rachel has no choice but to lie. Tells them she’s Noor LeBrac’s new barrister and that a request to see her client will be faxed through on her chamber’s letterhead.

“Just for the record, I’m not happy,” David says when he drops her off out front. “Nor will he be.”

“He” is Bish, but what her ex-husband doesn’t know won’t kill him.

Inside Holloway she makes it through three entry points before she hits a roadblock.

“Her barrister?” the bland guy behind the window asks, studying the request, then staring down at her belly.

Rachel isn’t sure how accustomed those at Holloway Prison are to legal representation turning up with a belly as big as hers, but she hopes that the last thing Her Majesty’s prison guards are going to do is stop a pregnant woman from supposedly doing her job.

“You’re going to have to wait.”

“Will do,” she says, feigning cheerfulness. “But if my water breaks in that chair over there, you’re delivering this baby.”

After a patdown and a surrendering of everything but her notebook and a locker key, she’s warned that she has only fifteen minutes. Moments later she finds herself in a room facing Noor LeBrac. There’s a sharp intelligence in the woman’s eyes, which Rachel recalls from photographs of her pre-Brackenham. She had a fierce life force. Some of it has survived, but not the humor or light.

“My name’s Rachel Ballyntine,” she says, sitting down. “I’m a QC, and I think it’s about time people heard from a Sarraf, Noor,” she says with so much conviction that she almost persuades herself it’s why she has come today. “I’m here to help.”

Noor LeBrac’s wordless study of her is uncompromising. She leans back in her seat, as if enjoying the way Rachel is running herself into a bit of a babble.

“I didn’t ask for help,” Noor says after a time, and when Rachel goes to speak, she holds up a hand to stop her. “I wanted your help years ago. When I was handcuffed to a hospital bed and told by a kind doctor that Rachel Ballyntine was one of the best human rights lawyers in London. But you didn’t respond to my letter. Since then I’ve had to put up with every idealistic idiot legal intern searching me out and promising me justice will be done.”

“Look, I know how you—”

“Do you?” Noor LeBrac is not a babbler. Her pauses are weapons. “Have you woken up every single morning since that bus bomb went off and pictured a maniac stomping your child to death out of revenge for something the media says she’s responsible for? Or imagined the police arresting and keeping her in one of those underground cells at Paddington Green for as long as they like, because if she’s a Sarraf and a LeBrac she’s obviously a terrorist? We’re clichés like that.” Rachel goes to speak, but Noor LeBrac holds up a hand, again. “Don’t dare to presume how I feel.”

Lying has made Rachel weak. It makes her voice quiver and it stops her from looking this woman straight in the face. And she’s getting mighty sick and tired of Noor LeBrac’s hand. So Rachel stops lying. “Okay, I’m not here about your case,” she says bluntly. “Saying I’m your barrister was the only way they’d let me in at short notice.” She flicks quickly through her notebook and slides one of Bee’s photographs across the table.

It has the desired effect. Noor LeBrac isn’t going to walk away from a recent photo of her child.

Rachel points to Bee. “That’s my daughter.”

Noor stares at the photograph greedily. “She was on the trip with them?”

“Bee Ballyntine-Ortley,” Rachel says, spreading out the rest of the photos. “She shared a room with Violette.”

There’s a question in Noor’s eyes, a tilt to her head as she studies her. “You’re married to the copper Ortley.”

“Was.”

Noor looks down at Rachel’s belly.

“Not his. Our marriage didn’t survive the death of a child. We’re clichés like that.”

Noor LeBrac makes a sound of dismay, as if she can’t help herself. “I should have seen it,” she murmurs.

Suddenly Rachel feels she can’t breathe. She wants to cry and has to get out of here before she does. She tries to stand.

“Stay,” Noor says.

Rachel shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have come here.”

And then a hand reaches out and takes hers. “Stay. Please.”

Rachel can only stare at the hand. After a moment, Noor lets go. “Your daughter doesn’t have either of your coloring but she looks like your husband.”

“Ex. Bish’s grandfather was Egyptian. Bashir.”

“Of course.” As if Bish has been a puzzle this woman has just solved. “Was it a son or daughter?” she asks quietly.

“Son. He drowned.” Rachel points to the image of Eddie Conlon. “Stevie would have been thirteen this year.”

It is Noor LeBrac’s look of soul-wrenching empathy that finally breaks Rachel, and she bawls. In front of this stranger, supposedly responsible for such devastation. And it makes Rachel speak until she’s hoarse. About David and Bee and the baby, and Bish, and the fact that, regardless of how their marriage turned out, her greatest fear these days is someone knocking on her door to tell her he’s dead. She blames herself. It’s her pregnancy that seems to have begun his spiral into something truly frightening.