The Hacker began to speak. ‘I think someone might disagree with you on that point.’
‘Who?’
‘Jude Harrison. Because in the next hour his life will depend on Libby’s inclusion in this process.’
Chapter 27
SHABANA KHARTRI
Shabana craned her neck to look out from the car’s window to get her bearings. But the roads were as unfamiliar to her now as the day she had first arrived in the country.
For almost half her life, her entire world had been limited to where she could walk. Even the hospital where she had given birth to her last child was within walking distance of her home. She knew this because when the maternity ward released them, her husband Vihaan had driven the baby home by car and ordered her to make her own way back on foot.
Now, all that Shabana knew for certain was that wherever this taxi was taking her, she was not going alone. But the longer everyone travelled, the more frightened they were becoming. Not long earlier, a loud noise inside the car distracted her. It was like a banging followed by screams. Her head turned to see where it was coming from before she realised it was happening on the television. The screen once filled by the woman wearing a hijab now contained a blazing object and other people in their cars were crying. They were making her anxious.
The last time Shabana had taken a journey into the unknown was when her plane left Mumbai’s ChhatrapatiShivaji Maharaj International Airport and landed at London’s Heathrow just a week after her wedding. It was a day of firsts – the first time she had left her village, the first time she had been away from her family, the first time she had flown, and the first time her new husband had punched her.
Her first impression of Britain had been how grey it was. Everything was colourless and made of concrete, from the bridges over the motorways to the paving slabs that made up the driveway to Vihaan’s home. It also felt so much more orderly than India. The houses in the estate were of equal size, had the same proportioned gardens containing the same dull palette of flowers. And while it was less cramped, tidier and smelled fresh, it lacked complexion. So soon after her arrival, she was already craving colour and chaos. And when she expressed her homesickness to her new husband, he responded with his fist.
It was during the third day of her lavish Indian wedding to Vihaan when Shabana began to suspect he wasn’t all her family had assured her he was. She knew how it had felt to love and to be loved. And this was not it. She had fallen for Arjun, a waiter in a hotel restaurant in her hometown of Kailashahar a year earlier. Her family despised him – his only sin was to have been born into a different caste, thus rendering him unsuitable for her parents’ high expectations. Marrying him was out of the question, her father warned, but when his threats fell on deaf ears, her brothers beat the boy half to death and she never saw him again. Even now, she missed being loved by him.
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 couldmake 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 reachit, 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 wasframed 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.
