“Anyway—”
A man’s voice cuts her off. He’s not whispering:“Agatha? Are you ready?”
“Braden.”Agatha isn’t whispering anymore.“Just a second.…”
There’s a noise like rubbing fabric. And then the man sounds muffled.“Were you on your phone?”
“No. Of course not.”
“You know the rules.”His voice is moving farther away.“No distractions.”
Agatha is farther away, too:“I just needed a moment to myself.”
“I thought I heard you talking—”
“I was practising my mantras.”
A door opens and closes, and then there’s silence.
“That’s it,” Penny says. “The message goes on like that for five minutes—I think Agatha’s in trouble. Really!”
“It sounds like she’s at some expensive yoga retreat,” Baz says. He’s gone back to looking at his suitcase. His apparently empty suitcase.
Penelope frowns. “Where she can’t have her phone?”
“It’s called a social-media cleanse.”
“No.” Penny’s firm. “I know Agatha. She’d rather kiss a troll than call and talk to me on the phone.”
“Then why do you ever call her, Bunce?” Baz is shaking out his suitcase.
“Because I worry! Because she’s like a lamb who’s wandered away from the flock.”
“Is the flock England?” I ask.
“The flock ismagic!” she says. “If one of you wandered away from magic, I wouldn’t just let you go.”
“I’m not a magician anymore, Penelope.”
“You’re still a magician, Simon. Aeroplanes don’t stop being aeroplanes when they’re on the ground.”
Baz throws his suitcase down, in disgust.
“Agatha wouldn’t call me just to talk,” Penny says. “She wouldn’t call me unless she wasscared.”
There’s a noise from Penny’s phone. The voicemail must still be playing. It sounds like there’s a door opening.
“She was talking on the phone.”It’s the man’s voice again. He still sounds faraway, but his voice has a harder edge.“Find it.”
There are more noises.“Do we have her phone number?”a different man asks.“We could call it.”
“Find it and bring it to me. We’ll have to move up the extraction.”
There’s a rustling sound. A hand on the phone. A third man, unmuffled:“Found it—fuck, she’s still on a call.”A scuffle. The voicemail ends.
None of us move. We’re all staring at Penelope’s mobile.
Then Penelope jabs her hand out and powers the phone down. She looks up at me. “Agatha is in trouble.”
