Richard looks around, fearful they will be overheard. But the crowd has thinned. There are only a couple of customers left, sitting in the corner, too far away to listen in.
‘You don’t need to know what motivates me,’ Martin continues. ‘You need to know what motivates you. Do you really want someone who did this to his own sister running the country? He protected Jarvis because he needs his money. They always have each other’s backs and they always will.’
Martin pauses, then adds: ‘You know Fliss left a suicide note?’
Richard shakes his head.
‘She did. In Bali. That’s in the folder too. She killed herself. It wasn’t an accident, like the Fitzmaurices say. She killed herself because of what they did to her.’
‘God, how awful,’ Richard says.
‘And that’s not all,’ Martin continues. ‘When we were at university, Ben killed a woman. He was drunk at the wheel of a car. I took the blame and they paid me off and hushed it up with the police like they always do. But that’s not going to happen again, Richard. I’m just … not going to let it happen again.’
Martin breaks off. He re-adjusts his pocket square, pulling it half a millimetre to the right. He takes one long breath in through the nose before he speaks again. When he does so, his voice is low and urgent.
‘Fliss was the only one of them who was kind to me,’ he says. His face softens for the briefest instant before switching back to its lacquered neutrality. But Richard notices it. There is real feeling there. He reaches across the table and takes the folder.
He walks into the afternoon swathe of Piccadilly traffic with the folder tucked into his briefcase. There are grey clouds in the sky and a light drizzle settles across his face like a veil. He buttons up his Nehru jacket and asks himself, for at least the fifth time that day: what would Hannah do?
XV.
Cosima
THE BRITISH MUSEUM ACTION HADbeen a disaster. Cosima hadn’t known her parents were going to be there. She’d clocked them as soon as the group stormed the exhibition, the two of them standing by a glass cabinet, her father with one hand resting lightly in the dip of her mother’s silken back. She had grabbed Meadow’s arm.
‘Shit.’
‘What is it?’ Meadow hissed, shaking her off.
‘My parents,’ Cosima said. ‘My fucking parents are here.’
Through the balaclava slit, she could see the surprise register in Meadow’s eyes.
‘That guy?’ Meadow said. ‘The politician?’ Her voice rose. ‘Your dad’s the fucking Energy Secretary? What the fuck, Pineapple?’
Cosima had no time to explain. Peatbog was now standing at the front, about to give his usual rousing speech. Cosima glanced around her. She was standing to the left of an emergency exit. She calculated that it would take three steps to reach it and if she waited until they set the fire extinguisher off, she’d be able to press down on the bar to push the door open and make her escape without anyone noticing. She took one sideways step, just to try it out. Then another. Then Meadow gripped her wrist. Cosima felt the pressure of her fingers like a handcuff.
‘Don’t you even think about it,’ Meadow said. She was angrier; angrier than Cosima had ever seen her. After River had been unmasked as an undercover police officer, the group had been jittery. They’d hadlengthy conversations about the betrayal and ‘how best to process their resentment’. Cosima had stayed put during these impromptu group therapy sessions. She, alone, didn’t feel let down by River, not after what he’d risked for her. The files he’d passed on to her, containing all the terrible details of her aunt’s rape and subsequent suicide are safely saved in the drafts folder of a Gmail account to which only she, River and now Martin Gilmour have access. Reading the details of Fliss’s last weeks had been difficult and, at several points, Cosima had to take a break, fearing she might faint or throw up or punch a wall or all three at once. But she forced herself to read every single word, and when she was done, instead of the fury she expected, she experienced razor-sharp focus. She knew exactly what to do in order to stop Andrew Jarvis abusing any other women. And if it blew open the truth of her father’s collusion, then so be it. She was disgusted with them all. If her dad could betray his own sister to protect his reputation, and if he could place loyalty to Jarvis above love of his family, then he was capable of anything. It was kill or be killed, she thought darkly. That’s when she’d remembered Martin Gilmour.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Meadow said. ‘You’re doing this with us. OK?’
Cosima stayed silent. Around them, the crowd was becoming restless. Their initial fear had turned into irritation at the inconvenience. This often happened with posher people who treated protesters like obstinate members of staff rather than just calling them cunts.
‘OK?’ Meadow said again, her nails pressing into Cosima’s skin.
‘Yes.’
She’d stayed. Her father had spotted her before they’d even sprayed the orange paint. She could see the disappointed set of his face and although she tried to hate him, she found her eyes were wet. She wiped the tears away, hoping no one else had seen. Her father tried to lead her mother out, pushing other museum-goers out of the way. But then her mum had turned back, just for a moment, and Cosima could see the recognition hit her face like a slap.
Was it absurd that, in the middle of the chaos, Cosima had hadtime to register that, despite the balaclava and the anonymising black clothes she was wearing, her parents had still known it was her? Was it stupid to admit that this was the closest she had come in many years to understanding they did actually love her? That they cared?
After they’d sprayed the orange paint, there was commotion. Broccoli and Peatbog handcuffed themselves to the bronze statue. Meadow was pushed aside by a security guard. In the kerfuffle of shouting and shoving that followed, Cosima was able to run out of the emergency exit unnoticed. No member of the group was ever meant to leave an action without prior planning. The group moved as one or not at all. It was one of their key principles. She knew that by running away now, she was also leaving them forever. But, in that moment, she was more scared of her parents than of her fellow activists. Her dad would be raging and her mum wouldn’t stand up to him. Not in the way Cosima would need.
She sprinted down the stairs, removing her balaclava as she went. She unzipped her black hoodie to reveal a faded red T-shirt, unlaced her boots and slid out of her tracksuit bottoms as quickly as she could. She retrieved a pair of blue jeans from her backpack and put them on. Then she bundled up the black, paint-spattered clothes, stuffed them into the backpack and pushed through another fire safety door into the vast, soaring calm of the Great Court, with its webbed glass ceiling panels. She walked as naturally as she could towards the exit. She wondered if her parents were waiting for her outside and what she would do if they were. But they weren’t there – of course they weren’t, she thought bitterly – and when she emerged into the early-evening light of Great Russell Street, her only thought was to get away from London as quickly as possible. She went to King’s Cross station and bought a train ticket to Cambridge.
When she gets to Cambridge, it’s still light. She has nowhere to stay and doesn’t know the city, other than from a weekend trip with her parents when she was seven and was dragged around the various sites of her father’s student glory. She remembers the name of hiscollege – Queens’ (‘Apostrophe after the s,’ her father said, ‘because there were two of them’) – and because she has no other plans she begins to make her way there by following the Maps app on her phone. She walks down a busy stretch of road towards a war memorial, depicting a soldier striding out towards the horizon. The soldier is young and bare-headed. He holds his helmet in one arm, which swings forward, leading the way. His other hand rests on the butt of his rifle, which is slung over his shoulder. A wreath hangs from the barrel. He has a backpack the same size as Cosima’s but squarer in shape with a rolled-up blanket on top. She is struck by the lifelike nature of the statue: the creases in the soldier’s uniform depict the exact angle of his movement. He seems – there is no other word for it – hopeful.
The inscription on the plinth pays tribute to the men of Cambridge and of the university who served in the Great War. All that hope, Cosima thinks, and they died anyway.
