‘Ha.’
And then, together, away from the house, we compose the ransom. Not dissimilar to the one that started it all.
I have your daughter, I write to her on the burner phone, obscuring the number so it simply readsCALLER UNKNOWN, just like hers did.Your instructions are clear. Confess in the arraignment of The State vs Simone Seaborn, Jeff Davis County Courthouse, your exact involvement in Lucy Seaborn’s kidnap together with your associates’. So long as you do this, your daughter will be freed.
A sigh escapes my body as I watch for several seconds, waiting to hear from her.
And then she replies, like the pro she is:Send me proof of life.
So we send the video we already made, of Andrea bound and gagged, while we sit out in the desert, together, both of us free. She, like me, is an excellent actor, and I knew from the first take that her mother would do it, just like mine did.
I’m outside the courthouse, later, when I see a woman arrive. I’m right by two security guards in the shadows of the building, standing on some steps that lead to basement rooms. I’m unseen. Feeling safe but ready.
As she breezes past me, I smell them. Lemons from her car air freshener: it’s her.
She’s wearing a cowboy hat and loose linen clothes. Under the brim, her eyebrows flicker and rise in stress. She looksdown at her phone again. She hasn’t seen me. And, finally, I hold the cards. I have the thing most precious to her. Or, rather, she thinks I do.
But then, as she looks at her phone, I see such a familiar expression cross her features, it stops me right there and has me unable to look away. It’s the same expression I’ve seen on Mum’s face a hundred thousand times. Love and concern, comingled, their ingredients combined so well you can’t distinguish them from one another. I stare at her for just a few seconds, this parent who loves her child so much.
She doesn’t turn to me. She hasn’t seen me. And, anyway, I’m safe. There are people all around. Law enforcement. Police. Judges. Lawyers. Even though, in the end, it took a vigilante to sort it.
She ascends the steps, this ordinary woman who is prepared to do violent and amoral things, who I may dream about for the rest of my life, and heads inside.
I watch her go and, do you know what? She seems like nothing to me. A woman who loves her daughter, like all parents – the bare minimum – but is much less than that. A criminal, a woman driven by greed. Somebody without morals or scruples. Somebody so sad and insignificant, I don’t want her impact on my life any more. I take a breath. Maybe I can stop that. Maybe this is healing.
‘Where’s Courtroom One?’ I hear her ask somebody, just in the foyer. I can hardly stand to listen, my breath held as she goes inside. Instead, I walk a slow lap of the building. It’s both stately and somehow false, too, the outside too white, the sky so vivid; a felt-tip blue. I keep walking, around to the side, then the back, the panicked and purposeful strides reminding me of the desert, of the journey we started in Texas and ended here, still in Texas but someplace different, too. On the right side of the law, then the wrong, then the right again.
Halfway around, towards the back, I catch a glimpse of a window. It’s mullioned, old-style, stands out in the modern architecture, and something in me knows it’s the right window before I can really check it, before I see the crest and the judge and the jury. I take ten steps back, twenty, on to the neat lawns separated off by little swinging ropes that I have to step over, and then I can see inside.
And – I swear it – I see the exact second it happens. Michaela, in the witness box, hat off, her expression full of regret. I stare and stare at her.
And then – just across – there’s Mum in the dock, looking straight ahead, her shoulders braced, ready to serve life or near life in prison for me.
The moment comes. I see the precise second it happens. Michaela stops speaking, and Mum’s head hits her chest in both relief and disbelief. The instant she learns it: that she is free.
My gaze goes back to Michaela.
Fuck you, I think.
Fuck. You.
Part VI
HOME
CHAPTER 77
Simone
Four o’clock in the morning, and Simone does not dream, because she is awake, and everything is a novelty to her.
They have flown into Birmingham because it was the first flight available once the paperwork was cleared and their passports were taken off the watch lists.
There are so many things Simone hadn’t thought about – that her car was in Heathrow all this time, and that it was taken off and pulverized after her arrest. Clamped and then destroyed. The restaurant, run by their staff and not them. Their house, left empty for much longer than planned. How strange it is, the way the justice system catches you, like a grabber toy in an arcade, then releases you once more, too.
The baggage claim is no longer humdrum. They have the freedom to walk wherever they want, without being fugitives, and without being incarcerated. To get a coffee while they wait for their cases – late, again! – full-fat milk, smoky-bitter espresso. The knowledge that they aren’t being watched, that they will get through passport control.
Outside, once they have their cases, there it is: that cold English air. It’s October, the breeze sugar-frosted. It stings her cheeks; she can feel it turning them red and tight. She doesn’t have a coat, doesn’t have anything useful.
