Three Hours(89)
She goes to the open door, needing the icy air and physical separation to think. She’s still troubled by the language Victor used in the announcement about the bloodbath in Old School. Because why would Victor Deakin use words from a teenage attacker at Columbine, with no obvious motive beyond world fame, and a Kansas white supremacist terrorist with a hatred for Muslims? Maybe he couldn’t be bothered to come up with his own words; taking the piss out of the organization he’s supposedly killing for because he’s superior to them; superior even to a supremacist group – only a narcissistic psychopath could go that far.
But there might be something important here: perhaps Victor Deakin thought they might decode his announcement about Old School – it wasn’t as difficult as the Jamie Alton one – and left them a clue, as if this is a game; but she can’t yet figure out what it is.
*
Rafi hardly has any strength left, his right leg barely able to support him, but he pushes himself on towards the car park and Basi in the boatshed.
I love you. Just three words that are the spoken soul of you, that make the unseen spine of who you are in the world. I hate you is only three words too but isn’t enough; you can’t say I hate you and leave it at that, you have to say why, but I love you are three words complete in themselves.
He checks behind, but cannot see anyone following him in the driving snow.
In the Dunkirk camp, he worried every time he returned to their shed with food that he’d lead men back to Basi. He’d told Basi only to answer the door to their knocking code but didn’t tell him the reason he couldn’t call out that it was him; that his fourteen-year-old’s voice would also mark him out to the paedophiles. In the camp, he always had his hood pulled forward to hide how young he was.
He tries to run, but the snow is too deep and his right leg keeps giving way, so hobbling is the best he can manage; a fast fucking hobble but he will get to Basi.
*
In the theatre, Hannah’s phone is charging in a floor socket next to her seat. They’re all watching the dress rehearsal. Some of the audience don’t really know what’s going on, apart from people like her doing English A level, but they didn’t want their friends to start over.
Her phone buzzes and she sees she’s got an Instagram message from someone called Aryan Knight: a photo of the front page of the Sun newspaper.
1 IN 5 BRIT MUSLIMS’ SYMPATHY FOR JIHADIS
It buzzes again with another photo of a newspaper front page.
MUSLIMS TELL BRITISH: GO TO HELL!!
Hannah shows her phone to Benny and Frank. More photos of front pages ping on to her phone.
MUSLIMS ‘SILENT ON TERROR’
JIHADIST KILLERS ON OUR STREETS
HUNDREDS MORE UK MUSLIMS CHOOSE JIHAD THAN ARMY
Daphne sees kids around Hannah and goes over. She looks at the Instagram photos on Hannah’s phone and puts her arm around the girl’s shoulders as more and more of them come on to her screen. Other kids are gathering around Hannah.
‘Why are they sending us this bullshit?’ Frank asks.
Daphne starts to say something then stops. But they are all looking at her, and this is the kind of school where the kids are included, treated as independent and responsible.
‘We are being told why our school is being punished,’ Daphne says.
Daphne has felt the kids’ camaraderie as an almost tangible thing; the kids in the theatre pouring their energy and love into their friends from Old School, bonding them tightly together. But with these headlines something different is happening; the kids from Old School no longer look vulnerable but angry, all the kids now enraged that white supremacists are doing this to their school; to Rafi and Basi and Anna and Davy and Mr Marr; and she feels this fury as energy, a wild thing, that has nowhere to go.
*
Rafi is nearing the car park. The pain from his leg and the cold are making him shudder uncontrollably. He sees that blood has soaked through his jeans and is falling on to the snow. He has told Hannah Syrian folk tales and she’s told him her fairy tales, part of their childhoods so part of themselves. He thinks of Little Red Riding Hood being followed by a wolf; Snow White being taken into the woods to be murdered; red and white, blood on snow, a breadcrumb trail.
He’s so cold and tired that he finds it hard to lift his arms to take off his hoody. He manages to take off the hoody and then his shirt, his bare arms trembling. He wraps his shirt around his injured right leg, tightly despite pressing at the shrapnel, to absorb his blood so he won’t lead anyone to Basi. He puts the hoody back on again but it is covered in snow, freezing against his bare skin.
He walks a few more paces towards the car park, but is too cold and exhausted to walk any further. He sinks down on to his knees and then he crawls through the thick snow towards his brother. His legs are becoming numb, his hands aching with cold as he crawls.
‘You should be Young Seward, you know that, don’t you?’ Hannah said to him.
She knows that he admires Young Seward the most of all the characters, because he doesn’t run away. ‘Had he his hurts before?’ his father asks, when he’s told his son is dead. ‘Ay, on the front,’ the man replies. He died facing evil, not running away. He wants Baba to be proud.
His mobile buzzes and he thinks it’s Hannah but it’s an Instagram photo of segments of a newspaper, with the name Katie Hopkins.