“Can you breathe?”
I nod. “Won’t Agatha see all the police cars and the helicopter?”
“I can’t risk putting people in danger.”
“What if she runs?”
“We’re sealing off the area.”
A man approaches. Dressed in black overalls, he’s so laden with body armor that I doubt he can swing his arms. Through an open doorway, I notice at least eight more men in identical clothes. They are moving out, some taking the stairs, which zigzag back and forth as they climb to the higher levels of the museum. Others take up positions behind pillars or against walls.
The SWAT leader briefs MacAteer.
“I have one team covering the main doors from the cloakroom. Another is covering the foyer and main hall.”
“What about outside?”
“We have firearms officers on the roof and others deployed in the grounds, dressed as gardeners and council workers. Their default aiming position is the upper torso—center of mass—but we can go for a head shot if she’s carrying the baby across her chest.”
Without thinking, I cry, “Please don’t shoot anyone!”
The men turn. “Go back to your husband, Mrs. Shaughnessy,” says MacAteer.
“Let me talk to her,” I plead. “Nobody has to get hurt.”
“We have this under control.”
Lisa-Jayne is told to escort me back to the anteroom office, where I argue with Jack. He doesn’t seem to care what happens to Agatha.
Before any of this happened, before Ben was taken and the harsh media spotlight lit up our small corner of the world, my life had been comfortable and untroubled; a well-worn middle-class progression that felt like a dream run but could have been a rut. How dare I complain. I was born in the right time and right place to the right family. I met a man and we built a life together. Yet sometimes even the most charmed existence can change in the blink of an eye, or turn on the length of an eyelash. One moment of indecision. A cancer cell. A rogue gene. A wrong turn. A red light. A drunk driver. A cruel piece of misfortune.
Each time I close my eyes, I picture Agatha walking towards the museum, aware that she’s being watched. She is carrying my baby in a sling across her chest. The foyer is empty. She sees a woman who looks a little like me from a distance but soon becomes someone else. They argue. My surrogate tells Agatha to calm down. Agatha calls my name. She wraps her arms tightly around Ben. A red dot appears on her cheek and moves up her nose and onto her forehead.
In a fleeting puff of blood and vapor she spins and falls, carried down by gravity, striking her head on the marble floor. I see the blood covering Ben’s face. I don’t hear him crying.
My eyes open. The clock doesn’t seem to have moved. I am sweating beneath the bulletproof vest. Lisa-Jayne brings me a glass of water, but I cannot swallow.
Minutes pass slowly: 11:04 . . . 11:05 . . . 11:06. Where is she? There have been no sightings of Agatha from the officers outside.
MacAteer has spoken twice to the police commissioner, who wants to know how long the operation is going to last. He takes another call. I only hear one side of the conversation, which involves a lot of cursing and threats.
“What’s happened?” asks Jack when the call ends.
“Hayden Cole jumped out of the police car on Fulham Palace Road forty-five minutes ago.”
AGATHA
* * *
The carriage is full of men in suits and women in dark overcoats and winter boots. Day shifts and night shifts are blended together. Fresh faces and tired faces. The showered and the soiled. A boy opposite me is wearing an England shirt and paint-speckled jeans. He slouches lower with man-spread knees, his head rocking from side to side as he gently snores.
I look out the window, aware of how drab the world has become, how gray and turgid and run-of-the-mill. It carries on blithely ignoring my plight because I have no weight or consequence. How do people do it—keep going—why do they make the effort?
I hold Rory on my lap, letting him sleep in the crook of my left arm. My right hand is in the pocket of my coat, where I’ve put the gun. I’m sweating in the overheated carriage but I will not take off my coat because I do not trust the police to do as I’ve asked.
The creature is awake.
Foolish girl, foolish girl, foolish girl.
I’m doing the right thing.
By giving up.
I’m not his mother.
You’re the only mother he’s ever known.
He’s not mine.
He could be. Turn around. Run.
Where?
Most of the commuters get off at Canary Wharf and Heron Quays. Only the tourists and sightseers remain by the time we cross under the Thames. The train slows again. Stops. I loop the colorful cotton sling around my neck and hold Rory close to my chest as I step onto a crowded platform and ride the long escalator up into the daylight.
Rain is falling. I don’t have an umbrella. Tilting my face, I feel a thousand tiny spines of raindrops melting on my cheeks, clinging to my hair and eyelashes. I wrap one side of my overcoat around Rory and keep moving, weaving between shoulders, head down, hood up.
As I walk along the avenue of trees, I notice how the branches almost meet in the middle of the road. Across the gravel forecourt, I glimpse the Maritime Museum through the railing fence. The cream-and-pink stucco fa?ade has been darkened by the day, looking gloomy rather than grand. Just visible through the colonnades, the Royal Observatory is etched sharply against the gray. Hayden once took a photograph of me straddling the Prime Meridian line, the meeting point of east and west. He told me I was standing at the center of time.
Where are the police, I wonder. I expected them to be waiting. Maybe they’re hiding. I imagine SWAT teams behind the darkened windows and sharpshooters on the rooftops.
Shortly after eleven I walk through the main doors, past the information desk and the cloakroom. There are parties of schoolchildren queuing up, dressed in blazers and boater hats and brightly polished shoes. Heads must be counted. Names must be crossed off. The officious-looking head teacher is a sour-faced woman in a black flared skirt and thick stockings. She treats them like prisoners instead of students.
I stop and look around me. Nobody seems to be watching me. I glance at Rory, who is sucking his thumb.
“Why am I giving you back?” I whisper. “They’re not even here.”
Exhausted, I take a seat on one of the island benches and turn on my phone, calling Meghan’s number.
She answers nervously.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Waiting.”
“So am I.”
There is a pause. She asks me to hold on. I can hear her walking and opening a door. Closing it. Whispering.
“Are you at the Imperial War Museum?”
“No. I’m in Greenwich . . . at the National Maritime Museum.”
Meghan is flustered now. “We thought . . . you were supposed . . . we’ve been waiting . . .”
Why would Hayden send them to the wrong place?
“I’ve been here all along,” I tell her.