The car park is punctuated with grey concrete pillars. Fluorescent lights flicker beneath dirty plastic casing, throwing twin shadows of each pillar onto the ground between them. Disorientating me. I focus on the square of freedom directly ahead of me; the square that – even as I watch – is changing dimensions, as though someone has tipped the rectangle of the open door on its side.
Separating the rows of parking bays are half-height walls I had thought I would hurdle. They’re higher than I remember – wider, too – so I scramble over the first one, skinning my knee through the rip in my jeans, and almost dropping Ella in the process. I clutch her tight to my breast and she opens her mouth and lets out an air-raid siren of a scream that bounces off the car park walls and comes back to me ten-fold.
I glance over my shoulder but I can’t see my mother. The absence makes me check my pace. Has she given up? But I hear a sound and look to my left. She’s veered off to the side. It doesn’t make sense, until I realise there are no walls that way, no columns to dodge. Her path is longer than mine, but it is clear. She will get to me before I reach the door. Unless …
I sprint faster. There are two walls between me and the door, and no time to stop and climb over them. I shift Ella to under one arm, which increases her screams but frees my torso to lean into my run. The first wall looms in front of me. When did I last hurdle something? A decade ago?
Three paces.
Two.
I lift my right leg, extending it forward as I push off with the left, tucking it up behind me to clear the wall. My foot clips the concrete but I’m over the wall and sprinting, sprinting.
The door mechanism grinds. Metal against metal. The bottom of the door is a metre from the ground, the shaft of night air shrinking back from the darkness of the garage, as though it’s as afraid as I am.
The final wall.
Three.
Two.
One.
I take off too early.
The wall sends me hurtling forward and to the left, and I only just manage to twist Ella to one side as I smash onto the bonnet of a Mercedes.
The air leaves my body in one sharp breath.
‘Don’t make this hard, Anna.’
I’m light-headed with lack of air; with the pain in my stomach and chest. I lift my head – my body still sprawled across the bonnet – and see her standing there. Between me and the exit.
I give up.
The garage door is still closing. The thick metal bar across its bottom is lower than my waist, but higher than my knees. The lights call to me. There is time.
But she’s standing right there.
And although her hand shakes, and although she swore she wouldn’t know how to use it, I can’t bring myself to ignore the shiny black barrel of the gun.
SIXTY-ONE
I wish you were here. That’s ironic, isn’t it?
You’d know what to do.
You’d put your hand over mine, and you’d lower my arm until the gun was pointing at the floor. You’d take it out of my hand and even though I’d yell at you to leave me alone, like I yelled when you tried to take the vodka, like I yelled when you told me I’d had enough, I would let you. I would let you take this gun.
I don’t want it in my hand. I never wanted it.
He came around with it. Shifty. Chased me for that week’s rent, then put it on the table and said he thought I might want this. Two grand.
He knew money was tight. Knew that cleaning toilets – even at a posh girls’ school – didn’t earn that kind of cash, and that everything I’d brought with me I’d given to him in rent.
But he knew I was scared, too. He offered me a loan, with interest rates that made my chest tighten, but what choice did I have? I needed protection.
I took the loan. Bought the gun.
I felt better knowing it was there, even though I never thought I’d use it. I used to imagine what would happen if I was found; imagined diving for the drawer where I kept the gun. Aiming. Firing.
My hand’s shaking.
She’s your daughter. That’s your granddaughter!
What am I doing?
I hear the faint strains of a siren and half hope it will get louder, but it drifts away. I need someone to stop me.
I wish you were here.
But I suppose, if you were still here, I wouldn’t need you now.
SIXTY-TWO
ANNA
I want to look at her – to see if her trembling hand means she’s as scared as I am – but I can’t take my eyes off the gun. I wrap my arms around Ella, as though they could stop a bullet, and I wonder if this is it: if these are the last few seconds I will spend with my daughter.
I wish now I’d banged on the car window. Shouted to the woman in the Fiat 500. Tried to kick out the glass. Something. Anything. What kind of mother doesn’t even try to save her baby?
Years ago, when I was walking back from a friend’s house, someone tried to pull me into a car. I fought like an animal. I fought so hard I made him swear.
‘You fucking bitch,’ he said, before he drove off.
I didn’t even have to think about it. I just fought.
Why aren’t I fighting now?
She jerks the barrel of the gun towards the corner of the car park. Once. Twice.
I move.
It isn’t just the gun. It’s because of who she is, because of how I’m programmed to be with her. Like a best friend who suddenly turns on you, or a lover who throws an unexpected punch, I can’t reconcile what’s happening now with the person I thought I knew. It is easier to fight a stranger. It is easier to hate a stranger than your own flesh and blood.
From outside I hear a noise like a distant machine gun, drumming on the sky. Fireworks. It’s still an hour till midnight – someone’s celebrating early. The car park is deserted; all the residents either out for the night, or settled at home.
The lift opens onto a carpeted landing. Mark’s flat is at the end of the corridor and as we walk past his immediate neighbour, there are raucous screams. Chart music blares from inside the apartment. If the door is on the latch – for people to come and go from the party – I could open the door and be inside in a second. Safety in numbers.
I’m not aware that I’ve checked my pace, that my entire body is gearing up for this final attempt to save my life – to save Ella’s life – but I must have done because there’s a hard jab against my spine and I don’t need to be told that she’s holding the gun to my back.
I keep walking.
Mark’s apartment is a far cry from the way I remember it. The leather sofa is scratched and torn – the stuffing exploding from a rip on one arm – and there are cigarette burns all over the wooden floor. The kitchen has been cleared of the garbage left by the previous tenants, but the smell has been slower to leave. It catches the back of my throat.
There are two armchairs facing the sofa. Both are filthy. One is covered in what could be paint. The soft woollen throws Mark used to keep folded over the back of each one are scrunched into a heap on the other.
We stand in the centre of the room. I wait for her to give me an instruction, to say something – anything – but she just stands there.
She doesn’t know what to do.
She doesn’t have a clue what she’s going to do with us, now she has us here. Somehow, I find that more frightening than knowing this is all part of a grand plan. Anything could happen.
She could do anything.
‘Give me the baby.’ The gun is in both hands now, clasped together in a parody of prayer.
I shake my head. ‘No.’ I hold Ella so tight she lets out a cry. ‘You’re not having her.’
‘Give her to me!’ She’s hysterical. I want to think someone will hear her, knock on the door and ask if everything’s okay, but next-door’s party is throbbing through the walls, and I think even if I screamed no one would come.
‘Put her on the chair, then get over to the other side of the room.’
If she shoots me, Ella will have no one to save her from this situation. I have to stay alive.
Slowly, I move towards one of the armchairs and lower Ella onto the pile of soft throws. She blinks at me and I make myself smile, even though it hurts so much to let her go.
‘Now move.’ Another jerk of the gun.
I comply, never taking my eyes off Ella as my mother picks her up and cradles her against her chest. She makes shushing noises, bounces up and down on the balls of her feet. She could be any devoted grandmother, were it not for the gun dangling from one hand.