“I’m fine,” I said with more emphasis, though it was true that I was far colder than the overheated winter carriage really justified. I forced a smile I hoped was convincing. “Thanks.”
I stood up and began packing away the phone, then I prepared to swing my bag up onto my shoulder, wincing preemptively at the wrench of pain that I knew the sharp movement would cause. When it came, it was worse than I had even imagined, and for a minute I couldn’t do anything except stand, breathless with the pain, holding on to my side and the strap of my bag and trying not to vomit. There was a ringing in my ears and I could hear the woman opposite me chattering with concern, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Sit down, I heard, and … call someone for you?
“I’m fine, will you please just leave me alone,” I gritted out, ignoring her shocked, hurt expression, and then as the train began to slow, I moved away down the carriage, feeling my face flame with the aftermath of the shocking pain and the shame at the person I had turned into—a person who spat into the face of concerned strangers, who couldn’t trust the smallest kindness. Who was I becoming? I was no longer sure.
By five to seven I was in position—on the upper floor of one of the stores overlooking Piccadilly Circus. From there I could see down to the fountain in the center, topped with the familiar cherub with his bow and arrow.
It’s not actually Eros, you know, I heard Gabe’s voice in my head, as clear and punchingly unexpected as if he’d just whispered the words in my ear. It’s his twin.
The memory made my throat close with unshed tears. I had forgotten, when I chose this spot, that it had been where Gabe and I had met on one of our earliest dates. Eros, I had said, nodding up at the statue that Gabe had picked for our meeting point. God of love, huh. Are you trying to tell me something? And that was when he had explained. Not Eros, but Anteros—the god of requited love.
From someone else it would have come over as a dick move—a mansplaining I think you’ll find of the worst order. But from Gabe… maybe it was his smile, or the fact that I already fancied the arse off him. Or maybe it was just that he so transparently didn’t mean it that way, that he was just someone who liked sharing cool snippets of knowledge.
Whatever the reason, it was a mark of how comfortable I’d felt with him, right from our first meeting at a security conference, that I’d felt able to joke about something that for a while I had thought I would never trust again: love. What I’d felt for Jeff… well, I had called it love, once. And I was still reeling from how unbelievably wrong I had been. It had taken me a long time to trust again, longer still to use the L-word to anyone but Hel. But Gabe… somehow within a few weeks of knowing him, I had found myself thinking that word in the secret moments when I was alone, and my thoughts were filled with him and his body and the touch of his hands. I had found myself daring to hope. Love. It could happen. And this time it could be real.
Eros was lonely, that was the legend, or so Gabe had recounted it to me. And so the gods created him a twin—Anteros, counterlove. Because what does love need, except someone to love back?
It had seemed almost too perfect, that day. A meeting under the god of requited love. Was there any sweeter omen? And now I was here alone. Waiting for Jeff.
That’s when I saw him—almost exactly as the clock struck seven—walking nonchalantly across the traffic in front of a speeding taxi with a swagger that still made my jaw clench involuntarily. The taxi beeped angrily; Jeff grinned at the driver and put up two fingers, and then made his way over to the fountain, where he lounged, for all the world like he was waiting for a date, the way Gabe had once waited for me. I glanced around the circus. There were no police officers—or none that I could see. There were people, of course, dozens of them, leaning against the Tube railings, waiting for friends, standing at the pedestrian crossing. I had no way of knowing if any of them were plainclothes officers. But Jeff himself looked to be alone.
“I guess it’s go time,” I said, very quietly, and I began to move, hurrying down the stairs of the shop, my heart thumping in my chest.
As I walked, I tried to imagine the scene as he would see it—the small figure crossing the stream of traffic, hood up, face in shadow. I saw his head go up, that shit-eating grin I hated so much spreading across his face.
“All right, Jack,” I heard, and then a slow, almost amused, “Well, well, well, what do we have here.”
I saw the cuffs too late—but there was nothing I could have done anyway, nothing I could have shouted, no movement I could have made to stop it happening. Jeff was a professional, with a professional’s training, even though he was unnecessarily rough as he went through the steps. He’d done this a hundred times before; subduing and cuffing a woman half his size was child’s play. The cuffs were on almost before I had realized what was happening—and far before I had the wit to cry out or try to prevent it. In any case, to do so would have been pointless—more than pointless—and I knew it, but I still couldn’t stop myself wailing internally at what was unfolding. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. And yet I’d still hoped against hope.
“I am arresting you on suspicion of aiding and abetting…” I heard above the ringing in my ears, which was back, and louder than ever. People were turning and staring now, looking at the woman facedown on the grubby Piccadilly pavement and the man kneeling on her spine, but, typical Londoners, they weren’t interfering, just backing away from the scene unfolding in front of them.
“… have the right to remain silent,” Jeff was saying, “but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned—”
The words were hazing in and out, drowned beneath the sound of angry panting breaths.
“Fuck you, Jeff!” I heard, as though from very far away, the words muffled by the pavement. It’s hard to speak with someone’s knee in your back and your face shoved into the ground. And I heard Jeff’s laugh, goading and irritable.
“You want me to add using obscene and profane language in a public place to your rap sheet, Cross? Because I will.”
“Oh seriously screw you,” I heard, and a part of me wanted to cheer. “And by the way, please do split my bottom lip as well as the top, because I’ll be adding that to my official complaint. I want you to call my solicitor.”
Jeff laughed again.
“You can call whoever you like. It’s going to be a long night for you, Hel.”
And I stood and watched as Jeff hauled my sister ignominiously to her feet and led her away in handcuffs, the rubber earpiece still dangling from her ear.
* * *
I HAD KNOWN I COULDN’T trust Jeff. But I had also known that I had no choice. If there was even a chance that he was going to give me what I so desperately needed, I had to try. But to turn up myself, in person, was too stupid even for me.
And so I had called Hel, and asked her something I couldn’t ask anyone else.
“You do know he’s probably going to just arrest me?” she’d said resignedly, when we’d met up just before six, and I’d nodded.
“I know. But I don’t know what other option I have. I have to get this number. Are you okay with that?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve booked the girls into afterschool club in case I end up with a night in the cells, but Rols doesn’t think they’ll charge me with anything much. I mean what, you sent me a message to go and meet your police officer ex in Piccadilly Circus, it’s not exactly the Great Train Robbery, is it? For all I knew, you were planning to turn yourself in. That’ll be my story anyway.”
We had agreed, I would scope out the scene, and if Jeff looked to be alone, I would give Hel the green light via a Bluetooth headset she had bought from a phone shop en route. Hel, meanwhile, would come out of the Tube wearing a black hoodie similar to mine, so as not to spook Jeff too soon. I would be just inside the store, watching, a safe distance away, ready for Hel to read the code aloud if Jeff handed it over. We couldn’t afford to meet up again afterwards. There was a very strong chance that Jeff would give Hel the code and then see if she led him straight back to me.
As soon as I had the code, I would drop the Bluetooth earpiece into a display and walk out through the store’s other exit, the opposite direction from Hel. No contact and, hopefully, zero risk to me if Jeff had someone tailing Hel.