And, finally, she can turn and look directly at the sadness. Damien thinks they are never going home again. In fact, he intends it.
England comes to her in flashes. Hanging washing on the line and dashing out to get it in during summer mizzle, soft rain like pine needles on skin. Cobbled streets and fish and chip shops and the way nobody speaks to anybody on the Tube. Can it really be true that she may never again see Heathrow Airport or the white cliffs of Dover or hand over a five-pound note in a tiny corner shop selling Tunnock’s Teacakes? But what’s the alternative? Isn’t this –allthis – about making the best of a bad situation?
‘We can vanish with new identities. And foreign police won’t be looking for us as much. If we can be together … we can start over,’ he says. ‘We can get a boat. We just need to get the passports first.’
‘Starting over,’ she echoes, her tone maudlin.
‘A rescue boat.’ He spreads his arms wide, then lets them fall, the gesture meaning,I’m here. I came.
She thinks of those English rains, her restaurant, that corridor with the pink door out back where she used to sit and think.Well, she tells herself,there will be rain in the Bahamas. There will be other restaurants.She’d have to be a pot washer, blend into the background. Couldn’t be a chef.
But, first, they have to try one thing.
‘Let’s see if Moody finds the man. If not,’ she says, then leaves the rest unsaid.
Damien nods, saying nothing too, and Simone thinks only of Lucy, that most high profile of careers planned. Dashed, for now, at the start of her life, the very end of her childhood.What should be a beginning is turning into something else, some kind of grief.
Later, Lucy emerges from the bathroom. Her hair steams as she steps outside in pyjamas. ‘What’s going on?’ she asks. She gestures to a DVD she’s holding. ‘Moody ownsTaxi Driver. Never seen it. What are you guys talking about?’ She smells of synthetic coconuts, hair in a dark blonde wet knot on the top of her head.
Simone meets Damien’s eyes, and Lucy’s voice gets louder: ‘No, no – no exchanging glances. What are you discussing?’
‘The future,’ Damien says, slightly lamely.
‘What of it?’
Another glance, and Lucy explodes. ‘There are actually three adults here, not two adults and a child.’
Simone goes to guffaw at this, but thinks better of it, not wanting to anger her daughter but also experiencing the curious cognitive dissonance of your child being correct in an argument.
Damien looks at Lucy, takes a breath, and Simone knows that he is going to explain. It’s the best course of action – Lucy is usually nothing if not straightforward – but Simone still winces. Damien is too open, and sometimes at the cost of diplomacy. They’ve agreed to try Moody first.
‘I thought …’ he begins, and Simone is glad of the singular pronoun, ‘we would try and buy identities,’ he tells Lucy. ‘Try and settle somewhere.’
Lucy stops, second cup of tea half drunk, saying nothing. Her entire body has gone slow and watchful, and Simone knows precisely what this means. ‘Huh?’ she says to Damien.
‘If Moody can’t come up with the British man,’ Simone says, the notion of involving Moody a vital step. It’s impossible for her to communicate to her husband that their daughter has not yet understood the magnitude of their situation, not in the full, complete way that adults do. They haven’t hadenough time together for Damien to realize the nuance of this. To him, it’s obvious: they can’t hand themselves in, finding the man and proving the kidnap is a long shot, they can’t fly home, therefore they must stay here, but it is very much not obvious to Lucy. She’s been half in denial, half on a wing and a prayer that something might change.
Simone studies her pyjama-clad daughter, wondering if she knows that they can never fly again, that their passports will be marked forever. That, even once their faces fade from the news, their names will be on watch lists for good.
‘We think it’s the best solution of a bad bunch, if Moody doesn’t find anything.’
‘What is?’ Lucy says, and her tone is careful, but Simone knows that, actually, it’s careful in the same way you handle a grenade that you intend on throwing.
‘We haven’t been talking much about the future,’ Simone tells Damien, a warning tone in her own voice.
‘What?’
‘We’ve been just getting through the days actually,’ Lucy throws at him, not unfairly. ‘You know, running from violent men, surviving in forty-degree heat.’ She pauses. She looks out of breath, her cheeks red. ‘Trying not to remember the various horrendous moments of being taken from my bed, shoved in car boots. Do you know that, on the first night, I actually prayed to fucking God? On my knees and everything.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Simone says to her daughter, who she knows has always been an ardent atheist.
‘Do you know that I worry I conjured something with my monologues that led to the killing?Out, damned spot.Out!’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Simone replies. Lucy’s a perfect Lady Macbeth, even in that singular line. An accessory to murder.
‘What do you mean, buy identities? And then what?’ Lucy continues. It’s a tirade of angry questions.
‘The best solution if everything else fails seems to me to try and settle somewhere. Now that we’re all together,’ Damien replies calmly.
