I can’t drive. I can barely see, the picture of Noah’s terrified face burned onto my retinas. I pull over into a bus stop and sit for a moment, trying to control my breathing and the galloping, crashing of my heart.
My godson. My best friend’s son, her firstborn, a child I have known since the day he came into the world. Not my blood, but as close as I’ll probably ever get. Tara’s sweet, serious six-year-old, who somehow finds himself weighed in the scales with the baby now dozing in the car seat behind me. A stranger’s baby, an infant I promised to protect. Another innocent, a child I have saved from mortal danger. Can I really give her up now? Can I make that choice?
There is no right answer to this. No good outcome. I send a reply, the only words I can summon to mind.
Don’t hurt Noah
What happens to him is entirely up to you, Ellen
I put my head back against the headrest and take one last look at Mia. Her eyelids are heavy as she drowses in and out of sleep, her little cheeks pink and rounded like summer apples. Finally, I tear my eyes away from her and send a reply.
On my way
Hurry. You call the police, he dies
I put the new address into the satnav on the dashboard and pull out into traffic again, hands clenched tight around the steering wheel. The satnav says the studio complex is 2.2 miles away, a mile further than the police station. I follow the directions on autopilot but my mind is elsewhere, scrambling, racing, trying to think of a third solution to this impossible equation. But I can only see two: Noah or Mia. Mia or Noah. It’s that simple.
And by the time I’m pulling into the deserted car park, driving through drifts of leaves and rubbish, I know what has to be done.
My phone rings in my lap.
‘What’s happened?’ Stuart says before I can speak. ‘Why are you not at the station? You should be here by now.’
‘I can’t talk at the moment.’
‘Just park up in the visitors’ area, I’m going down there now, I’ll wait for you.’
‘I can’t, Stuart. Not anymore.’
‘What? I don’t understand, Ellen, what’s going on?’
I glance at the shotgun in the passenger footwell beside me. ‘I’m sorry, Stuart. There’s something else I have to do first.’
‘Tell me what’s—’
I press end and put the phone on silent, driving to the far end of the car park, to the rear doors that I ran out of five days ago. I kill the engine, sitting for a moment in the silence. Preparing myself. Running through it all in my mind.
Mia is dozing again, the motion of driving has lulled her into a contented sleep. I wish more than anything that we could be driving into the police station right now, into safety. For both children to be out of harm’s reach. But it can’t be.
No. This is the only way.
I make one more call, then spread out the big white blanket on the back seat, to get ready for what I have to do.
‘I’m sorry, Mia.’ I brush away a tear and reach for the straps of her car seat. ‘I’m sorry.’
*
The studio complex is just as I remembered it. A cavernous empty shell, the windows milky and crusted with dirt, long wide corridors rich with the smell of mildew and decay. Stacks of plastic chairs, abandoned. Open doors to offices still full of furniture like aMarie Celestebeached on land, an oversized relic of an earlier age, waiting too long for new tenants who will never arrive.
With the baby swaddled loosely in a blanket against my right shoulder, I hurry down corridors, deeper into the complex, following faded signs to studio seven. Turning first left, then right, then left again. I’m greeted by a hint of smoke in the air from the fire set by Dominic Church the last time I was here. Finally I reach a heavy double door with the number seven stencilled on it in faded grey type. I pull the door open, heaving against its weight, and peer inside.
Darkness. I wait for my eyes to adjust, slowly making out shapes on the far side of the big room. A stage set, maybe? A man? Noah? I step into the room and the big door swings shut behind me with athumpas almost total darkness returns.
The air is cooler in here but it’s stale, fetid, as if it has been trapped in here for years. A coldness creeps over my skin, sweat clammy against the fabric of my top.
‘Hello?’
The word echoes up and away from me, bouncing off a high ceiling before fading to nothing. I use the torch on my phone to cut into the dark. The studio is huge, at least a hundred feet square, everything painted black. A low catwalk runs into the centre, linking to a stage on the far side. I walk slowly towards it, my shoes clicking on the hard black floor.
