Previous Name:
Age: 33
Previous Occupation: Space debris coordinator/office worker
Dependents: None
Strengths: Appraises all scenarios well; methodical; organised
Weaknesses: Compassionate; prone to guilt and introspection
It took Sinéad around twenty minutes to reach the summit of Sunderland’s Tunstall hills.
She had last completed the walk with college friends Imani and Cally some two decades earlier. They had accompanied her on the 288-mile journey from her home town of Bristol to offer their support as she carried the small mahogany caskets containing her parents’ ashes. Today she held only a small bouquet of red and white carnations.
Sunderland had been the first place her parents relocated to after emigrating from Ireland, so it seemed fitting that following their deaths during the Mumbai tsunami thatclaimed 2,000 lives, their ashes were cast to the breeze atop of a high hill overlooking the north-eastern city. Sinéad was one of very few people who knew the truth of what really happened that morning in the Indian city. And of everything she’d learned, it gnawed at her the most intensely and most frequently.
The wind brushed her cheeks and caught her new shoulder-length hair extensions. It was the first alteration she had requested from the programme’s image-enhancement team after years of keeping it short to please Daniel. It was also no longer a nondescript mousey colour, but a rich brown with subtle lowlights. And she couldn’t stop running her fingers through it. It was one of a handful of alterations made to her appearance. Laser eye surgery meant she had no more use for her glasses, and the combat techniques and Pilates had made her physically fitter. She gently ran a fingertip against the edges of her eyelids, tugging ever so gently at the recently implanted lashes, as if challenging them to come loose. Once, she would have pulled at them until they detached in their twos and threes by the root, only ceasing when her eyes watered. But not any longer.
If only Daniel could see me now, she thought, then reminded herself that he’d still probably find fault with something.
Amongst the many techniques Sinéad had learned throughout her training was how to breathe again. Instead of the short, shallow bursts she now drew in deep breaths, pushing her stomach out as she inhaled and drawing it in as she let the air out. It was a simple exercise but one that she had come to rely upon to keep her gathered.
There had been little time to dwell on anything other than the programme during her training. But now that Sinéad was completely on her own for the first time, she wasn’t sure how she should be reacting. She couldn’t remember the last time she had so much control of her life; it was going to take time to acclimatise.
As would never seeing Daniel again. She had long cast him aside, but she’d yet to completely forgive herself for allowing him to gaslight her for so long.
Why did I keep giving in to him?she regularly asked herself.If I’d stood my ground earlier might we have had a better marriage?Her therapists had suggested not, agreeing that her relationship was doomed from the start. Without her parents, Sinéad’s desperate need to be loved and taken care of and Daniel’s desire for coercive control meant that together, they forged a co-dependency, not a relationship. And it would likely have remained that way indefinitely, had it not been for Joanna’s intervention.
Her handler Karczewski had already informed Sinéad that Daniel reported her missing to the police five days after she abandoned her marriage. She wondered what had taken him so long, and assumed it was because he was expecting her to return with her tail between her legs. But now she was out from under his spell, hell would freeze over before Sinéad returned.
‘What will happen if Daniel tries to find me?’
‘He won’t succeed,’ said Karczewski.
‘I know my husband. He won’t give up without a fight.’
‘We are maintaining surveillance on his activities and we will continue to thwart all his efforts. We have led a private investigator he’s hired to believe you may now be living somewhere in Europe. That, of course, will be a wild-goose chase and once you are released from training, if we can’t locate you, then neither can he. The only way you will see him again is if you choose to.’
Joanna had likely heard on the grapevine that the couple were no longer together. It was doubtful that Daniel would publicly admit his wife had left him. He had probably spun a lie about her disappearance. ‘He can tell everyone I was a whore who slept with half of Bristol if he wants to,’ she told one of the counsellors. ‘I’d actually prefer them tothink I have a will of my own than be remembered as the pushover I really was.’
On her departure from the facility that morning, Sinéad had purchased a non-autonomous car and filled the boot with supplies for the long journey ahead. But first she had posted a thank-you card to Joanna. She left the inside blank, hoping Joanna might guess its sender.
Like the pieces of the online puzzle she’d solved the afternoon she escaped from her marriage, everything was slotting into place. It was that same afternoon when she had plucked up the courage to dial the number contained in the message inviting her to attend an interview for the chance to start a new life. An hour later, she found herself picking up a ticket that had been reserved in her name at Bristol Temple Meads train station to London. She checked into a hotel room that had been organised for her and the following morning, she nervously awaited an interview with a panel. The timing couldn’t have been better. She had nothing – and no one – to lose and after a series of scans, tests and medicals, she passed through to the next round. The rest of the day was a blur.
Sinéad placed the bouquet of carnations on Tunstall’s grassy hillside, propping them up against a rock. Then she took in one last view of the city landscape. It would be a few more hours before she reached Scotland and her reinvention could begin in earnest.
She vowed not to take the past with her. There was no room for ghosts in her present. She would no longer punish herself over her failings, only learn from them. She’d forgive those like Daniel who had taken from her and put to rest those she had lost, with one exception. Sinéad would never want to forgether.
Chapter 14
EMILIA
‘What do I know about myself?’ Emilia said aloud.
She typed her name using capital letters into the tablet Ted had left her with. She couldn’t even spell the surname they shared. Then her fingers hovered above the virtual keyboard as she came to an abrupt halt. A week after waking up in a south London hospital and following a barrage of tests and procedures, she was still no closer to learning the truth about who she was.
There were a handful of things she’d learned. She had next to no interest in film and television but enjoyed listening to classical music. She preferred clothes that covered her, not attire that left little to the imagination. She understood how the machines in her hospital room operated. And she was married to a man she didn’t recognise.
