The port is industrial, huge ships everywhere, slow-moving triangles that throw around light and shade as they block the sun with their mass. A port is a port, and Simone could almost pretend she’s in England; gone is the sandstone of the desert, replaced with blue and white and grey. There’s moisture in the air. Not rain, only sea, but still. And suddenly, it’s no longer just the three of them, a little pink house and the brown and red of the desert. They’re here. Between them and freedom stand just documents and one official.
‘The identities are in lockers in that storage unit,’ Damien says, pointing to a large prefab building a little way from the other units at the port that has a sign above it sayingSTORAGE4U. He lopes off without saying anything further, leaving Simone and Lucy, teeth chattering with nerves, waiting.
Five minutes go by, then ten. Simone and Lucy stay where they are, their hair enmeshing in the strong breeze, saying nothing, merely watching the door to the storage unitssteadfastly remain closed, hoping that the illegal service they have purchased is – ironically – not a scam.
‘How can someone exist online selling things that are justsoillegal?’ Lucy says simply. ‘He was easy to find.’
‘I know.’
Simone, watching nothing happen at the automatic doors, agrees entirely. How could they trust a stranger on the internet? How could they take such an enormous risk?
How did they run so easily out of options?
But then, as unceremoniously as he went in, Damien emerges, carrying a brown envelope. He is seemingly safe and free.
He gestures for them to cross the road to reach him and they head into a sheltered alleyway.
‘All fine,’ he says tightly, looking around him for CCTV, then handing out the documents. They can’t be the only people buying identities here, but it feels so. Damien wordlessly hands Simone hers. As she checks it, she remembers reading somewhere that this is a federal offence, but the fear doesn’t seem to hit like it once would have. Sometimes, you’ve just done too much to care any more about the collateral.
‘How did you pay him?’ she asks him, once she’s looked at her identity. An anodyne name, Sarah, against Simone’s own face. She could never be a Sarah, she finds herself thinking; she’s had a name unusual enough that she’s never met another her entire adult life. ‘A man met me by the locker. Was expecting me. Said nothing except the price.’
Simone nods, glad her husband dealt with it and not her. She shudders there in the cold shade of the buildings with the ocean salt in her hair. She turns and looks over her shoulder, just once, imagining tens of police gathering to arrest threefools, but there’s no one. There is nobody except the bustle of tourists. Nothing out of the ordinary.
And, just like that, for a fee, Simone, Damien and Lucy have become different people.
‘The passport check is in that building over there, before the ship,’ Damien tells them, his tone wooden, and Simone wonders if he’s optimistic, if he’s nervous, or if he’s just pretending, too.
CHAPTER 64
The border office is maybe five hundred yards away. A large brown building with two arching doorways. There’s something ersatz about it, like they’re in a theme park or a miniature village. It’s made to look official but somehow is not. Maybe Simone’s brain is simply playing tricks on her; wishful thinking.
They lug their belongings with them, and walk across the sweeping, expansive port. Tourists dash here and there, shuttle buses, people dragging luggage. It’s similar to but different from Simone’s trip to Mexico, and she winces as she remembers that. Before she became a killer, and before she became a fugitive, too.
That was their beginning and maybe this is their end, or maybe this is their new beginning. Simone doesn’t know. Her entire body is fizzing with adrenaline as she walks. How has nobody arrested them? The breeze is cooler here, briny and fresh, and she thinks that if these are their final moments, then at least they’ve seen the sea.
They’re almost at the entrance. There are two officers standing outside it, each holding what looks like a machine gun. Lucy gives Simone a sidelong glance and it’s full of fear. Simone reaches for her hand but says nothing, thinking how identifiable they are, how slim they have become, two rangy women forced to flee. Simone suddenly experiences real rage at the kidnapper, at the entitlement of taking a sleeping formfrom her bed, gloved hand to her mouth. Lucy as object, to bait Simone with.
They split up, walk in and join separate queues.
Green swirled carpets, burgundy rope queue dividers, the smell of polish in the air. It’s quiet, the officials’ voices muted, everyone being checked and stamped through, nobody impatient, generally respectful.
There are four people ahead of Simone, and the wait time on a black and red electronic display board says six minutes, the longest of her life.
CHAPTER 65
‘ID,’ the man behind the counter says. A thick glass screen separates them, with a letter-box-sized gap at the bottom.
She slides the passport under that she’s only owned for fifteen minutes, and sees, two queues away, Lucy doing the same with the other guy, Damien waiting in another one, and everything slows down and speeds up all at once. The official has a name badge on which saysPETER M. He has a dimple in his chin and smart eyes that won’t miss anything.
He flicks his gaze to her, and Simone wishes she could read minds. Is he thinking that she’s a fugitive and they’re about to be arrested? Or is he thinking that this is nothing, just yet another person who is crossing the border? She can’t tell, and maybe she will never know. Does their entire future depend on how much this guy watches the national news?
‘Reason for visit?’ he asks her.
‘Vacation,’ she drawls, thinking,Midwest woeful, and then – maybe it’s her imagination – but she hears Lucy say the exact same thing to her official, too.
‘Perfect,’ he says, stress on the last syllable, one last glance at her, but she doesn’t read any suspicion.
And then he slides the identity back to her, and he hasn’t even done anything with it, and don’t they have digital holograms these days? And then Lucy’s through too, and then they’re going through the building and out the back, waiting for a boat calledSunshine One. Damien is spat out only secondslater, and they stand there on the tarmac, still hot from the sun, and think that this surely can’t be it.
