Northern Spy(61)

“Will you be the ones interviewing me?”

“No.”

“Who will?” I ask, and the passenger taps his fingers on the door. “Can I trust them?”

The farms are smaller now, broken by dense stands of trees. We’re farther in the countryside. A track appears ahead, and the driver downshifts. He follows the track through the woods until it ends at a farmhouse in a clearing. A river runs behind the house.

When the car door opens, there’s this smell in the air, of snow and pines, and I can’t get enough of it, I can’t breathe it in fast enough. We walk across the clearing toward the farmhouse, the men on either side of me. I’m not shaking, it’s more continuous than that, like water shimmering. I try to force one of them to look me in the eye. They haven’t cuffed my hands, which is interesting. They aren’t expecting me to fight.

The farmhouse has stone walls and a split red door. Something about it feels familiar, like I’ve been here before. Inside, a few waxed jackets hang from hooks by the door. They lead me across the house to an ordinary, old-fashioned kitchen, with a hanging basket of wrinkled apples, and a tea tin, and a row of chipped yellow mugs. The driver fills a glass with water from the tap for me.

“Thank you.” I look him full in the face, and realize that I recognize him. He’s a bouncer at Sweet Afton, in the Linen Quarter, where our office sometimes goes for drinks after work. I can’t decide whether to mention that. It might help for him to remember me in a different scenario, or it might make him feel cornered.

“Why did you join?” I ask.

“Freedom,” he says.

I nod. He’s younger than me. His eyes are hazel, with long lashes. “Not for this, though,” I say. “You didn’t sign up for this.”

Before he can answer, the other man appears in the doorway. He’s older, and has one deep groove across his forehead, like it’s been scored in half. “Come on,” he says. I look at the bouncer, but he’s turning away from me, placing my empty water glass in the sink.

“Please. Please don’t do this. Please let me go home.”

They bring me to a room upstairs and lock the door from outside. The room is empty except for two single mattresses on the floor.

I should have mentioned Sweet Afton, I should have described seeing him there, that might have made me more real to him. We’ve spoken before, though I can’t remember the specifics, if I asked him for a light, if we chatted about the weather. It seems impossible for me to have forgotten, that those encounters hadn’t seemed particularly significant at the time, when this man might be the difference between returning to my son or never seeing him again.

I lie down on a mattress in the quiet. I’d rather have them threatening me, hurling abuse at me. It’s worse in here, the quiet is worse. In the silence, I think about how I might never hear my son say his own name. I might not find out his likes or interests, and I have some guesses, but I need to know what he chooses for himself. I might never have a conversation with him over dinner or on the phone. I might not introduce him to Roald Dahl or C. S. Lewis. I might not know him as a boy, or a teenager. He might never introduce me to someone he loves.

Tom and Briony would do their best, and maybe that would be enough, or maybe he would always feel the gap of not having his mam.

He cries sometimes when I leave his line of vision. He’s one year old. How could I leave behind a one-year-old? It’s not possible. Even if they shoot me, that can’t be the end. I’ll have to find a way to reach him. I’m his mam.





39


THE DOOR OPENS AND Marian appears with the two men at her back. She startles when she sees me. “Why is Tessa here?” she asks the men.

When they don’t answer, she flies at them. They manage to step back into the hall in time, and she shouts, then starts to throw herself against the door. She is, I realize, trying to break it down. Eventually she turns to me, panting. “Tessa—”

“It’s all right, Marian. It’s not your fault.”

“Where’s Finn?”

“He’s safe.”

She sits on the mattress facing mine. She has on her wool jumper, and her hair is held back in a gold clasp. “Are you hurt?” she asks. “Did they hurt you?”

“No. Who are they? Do you know them?”

“Not well,” she says. The bouncer’s name is Aidan, and the older one is Donal. “They’re waiting for someone to interview us. I don’t know how long that will be, it could be a few days.”

“Have you signaled for help?” I ask, nodding at the tracker in her filling.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s fine. Eamonn will send in a team.”

“They should have come by now,” she says.

Maybe they’re already here. Officers might be in the woods at this moment, they might have the house surrounded.

Marian moves around the room, studying the baseboards, the ceiling, the window, and the metal grate soldered to its frame. On the ceiling is a brass fixture, but they’ve removed the light bulb.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“I told you about this place,” she says. “This is the farmhouse.”

The wooden table in the kitchen is where she built bombs. The tiled counter is where she stood, after being hunched over a device for hours, and stretched her back, and made tea.