The Passengers(38)
The following year, she was introduced to Vihaan. He was a decade her senior, and had flown from England to meet her. And on the first of their three chaperoned meetings before their arranged ceremony, Shabana convinced herself that perhaps, given time, she could make herself fall in love with him. But as the final day of their marriage celebrations drew to a close, and the attention heaped upon them by their friends and family began to ebb, so too did his interest in her as anything other than an attainable object to penetrate.
For years after, as Vihaan lay on top of her, reeking of cigarettes, sweat and beer, he was unconcerned with the degree of pain he was causing. Her only means of escape was to let her mind drift back to Arjun. She’d recall sneaking out of school to join him on his moped for long, lazy afternoons in the countryside. There and away from prying eyes, they would lie under the shade of the tall trees by a lake and watch as the farmers in the distance harvested their golden crops under the clearest of blue skies. She had never felt more at peace in her life than she did there.
Today, albeit briefly, Shabana’s freedom had been returned to her. But as she struggled to comprehend what she had been caught up in, she closed her eyes and thought about Arjun again. And if she were able to escape this vehicle, she made a vow to find the money to take her children back to her village so they could find the same beauty in the peace she once had there.
Shabana looked at the mobile phone in her hand again and willed it to start ringing. She wished she knew how to use it but her husband had never allowed it. Besides, who would she have called? She had very few friends and she didn’t know anyone’s numbers. All she wanted was to press the green button as her son Reyansh had instructed and talk to him. Then she could tell him that something was happening that didn’t feel right and that she was scared.
Suddenly Shabana remembered a number Reyansh had called once when his baby sister Aditya started choking on a grape. Try as she might, Shabana couldn’t get her fingers far enough down the tot’s throat to reach it, so Reyansh typed three nines into the phone and minutes later, a man in a green and yellow car came and saved her daughter’s life. Vihann gave her two beatings that weekend – one for putting his daughter’s life at risk, and the second for catching her tearfully hugging the paramedic who saved the child’s life.
Perhaps whoever answered that number might know her son? Nervously, she typed the numbers into the phone, pressed the green button, and held it to her ear. No voice answered, it was just a monotonous tone. She tried twice more but with the same result.
Reyansh’s words that morning came back to mind. ‘The world is beautiful beyond these walls if you give it a chance.’
She must keep her faith in her boy. He was a good son and she knew that whatever was happening on that television screen, he would never put his mother in harm’s way.
Chapter 28
Libby’s throat was dry. She made her way to the corner of the room and reached for a bottle of carbonated water from the fridge next to the tea and coffee urns. It fizzed as she unscrewed the top and took a large mouthful. She felt every pair of eyes upon her.
She knew what they wanted from her, but she was reluctant to do it. The Hacker had left another of his silences hanging ominously in the air, waiting for her to question what he meant by Jude ‘needing her support’.
Libby was making no headway in trying to persuade the Hacker his course of action was abhorrent, and it was frustrating the hell out of her. She was also disturbed by how much he knew about her life outside of that room and why he felt the necessity to show the jurors and the world what had happened that day in Monroe Street. Back then, watching that family die had brought back memories of her own family’s darkness, which in turn manifested itself in the return of her panic attacks and, later, her PTSD diagnosis.
For a mental health nurse, she had suffered almost as much as some of her patients. Much of the time she was able to split herself in two – one was an empathetic, compassionate and professional nurse, the other, a sensitive and sometimes fragile woman too often haunted by her failings of the past. While such personal traumas gave her a deeper understanding of her patients’ suffering, she feared eventually her employers might insist she was not strong enough for the job and sideline her into something more administrational or supportive. Making her watch and relive that day on Monroe Street so publicly would not help how she was perceived. Her hatred towards the Hacker’s cruelty intensified.
‘I’m done playing his games,’ she said. ‘Someone else can ask what he means.’
‘But he responds better to you,’ urged Fiona.
‘Yes,’ added Jack. ‘Perhaps it’s your flirtatious nature.’
‘Shut up, Jack,’ Libby snapped. ‘Just shut up.’
His response was a wry smile.
Libby drank more water and left the bottle on top of the fridge. Then she made her way into the centre of the room and looked up at the twelve screens. Her face was framed by the largest of them, plus five smaller screens that also contained her image via the BBC, CNN, Sky News, MSNBC and NHK-World Japan news channels. The rest consisted of the Passengers. The unwelcome burden of discovering what the Hacker planned next lay squarely upon her shoulders.
‘If it makes any difference, someone has shot up the popularity ranks,’ said Cadman, breaking the room’s uneasiness. ‘Since that trip down memory lane, or as he calls it, Monroe Street, social media is going nuts for Miss Thing over there.’