At first I don’t recognise him. Though I saw him that one time since he stopped shaving his head, my muscle memory defaults to seeking out a bald man. Alice is standing beside him, holding his hand as they wait for me near the entrance to the park.
Her hair is loose, and almost to her shoulders. She is radiant, in a white dress printed with ink-blue roses. There is a faint bloom in her cheeks. The bruises are gone.
I say hello to Zac, but my smile is for her, so wide it makes my face ache. ‘Happy birthday, Alice!’
She starts to hum the birthday song, and I sing along, which puts her in fits of giggles. When we are finished, she comes closer to me, shyly putting out her hand to touch the bulky orthopaedic boot that goes from below my knee to the tips of my toes.
‘This,’ she says, opening her mouth wide. ‘Ouch.’
When the surgeon first sewed the two pieces of my ruptured Achilles Tendon into one, I had to keep my foot entirely off the ground. Now, I am allowed to put a little weight on it, with some of the burden taken by the crutches. I demonstrate this for Alice’s benefit. ‘It doesn’t hurt. See?’ I move her attention away from the subject. ‘Let’s go have fun. Would you like to draw a picture for me later?’
‘Yes! Yes, yes.’ She clasps a handful of my dress in her small fist. The fabric is black, and covered in tiny flowers of vibrant green. ‘Pretty. Pretty, pretty.’
‘Thank you! Thank you, Thank you.’ This makes her laugh. I look ahead of us, along the path that curls through the park. ‘Shall we find the swings?’
She nods slowly and decisively, her eyes huge and startling as she looks at me. She toddles along in the sunshine, still holding onto my dress as if it were my hand. Then she chooses a bench inside the children’s play area, in the half-shade of an apple tree whose pinky-white blossom scents the air. She carefully props my crutches before running to the swings, chased by Zac. He lifts her on and pushes while she wiggles her legs in a charmingly inept attempt at pumping.
I elevate my leg onto the bench to stop it from swelling. As Zac plays a counting game with Alice, I think of Jane. Alice marked her in every way. Even Jane’s body was changed by her. Maxine let me see the forensic pathologist’s report. The examination of Jane’s pelvis showed she had given birth.
Zac soon settles Alice close by, in the sand pit. He approaches the bench, but pauses a metre away. ‘May I?’
The orthopaedic boot will be a kind of wall between us. ‘Of course.’
He lowers himself at the opposite end. Together, we watch Alice with her bucket and spade and moulds. She is shaping mermaids and seahorses and starfish. She is entirely absorbed, despite the fact that her figurines keep disintegrating.
‘She looks so much better,’ I say.
‘She’s had several sessions of intravenous iron therapy – like you did, after …’ He trails off. ‘It seems to be working.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘If I believed in God, I’d thank him for helping you to find her. How did you do it?’
Even now, he doesn’t imagine that I discovered the address of the Yorkshire house by breaking into his steamer trunk over two years ago. It is a secret, along with many others, that I intend to keep. I say something true, though it isn’t what he is after. ‘I just tried to see the world as Alice does.’
He nods. ‘You understand her so well. There’s something special between the two of you.’ Then he presses the question he really wants answered. ‘But how did you find the Yorkshire house?’
I knew he wouldn’t let it go. I still need to test his responses by pushing on those coloured shapes. There are fewer of them than there used to be, but gravity is still gravity.
I tell a plausible lie. ‘Eliza mentioned it.’
He hesitates. ‘You won’t tell anyone who Alice’s birth mother is?’
‘Never.’
‘Thank you.’ He ruffles his grey-white hair, as if he still isn’t used to finding it there. ‘They aren’t blaming you for what happened? You had good legal advice?’ He looks so worried.
Martin sent a lawyer to my hospital bed, along with firm instructions that I wasn’t to speak to anyone without her there.
‘Excellent legal advice. I told the truth. It must have been consistent with the evidence of what Eliza did to Jane.’ My voice is low, to ensure Alice cannot overhear. ‘I said she was jealous of Jane because of your affair with her, and jealous of me when she figured out I was your supposedly dead ex-girlfriend.’
‘Wasn’t that a problem for you? Their knowing about your pretend death?’
‘I told them all of that. They took their notes, but they were only interested in Eliza and Jane. I’m not the first woman to run away from an abusive relationship.’
He looks down. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says to the ground.
‘I said I threw the stone in self-defence because she was going to push me off the cliff, but that I didn’t anticipate it would result in her death.’
‘We both know your aim is deadly.’ He is picturing the two of us skimming stones across the water. ‘Do you remember how we laughed, Holly? How we’d always end up soaked? Then, afterwards, how we couldn’t wait to get home …’
‘Yes.’ I stare at my lap while he stares at me. At last, I continue. ‘I told them I was anxious to get medical treatment for her little girl – that was the only mention I made of Alice.’
‘You spoke to Al last night, didn’t you?’
‘Briefly.’
I had wanted to check – hypothetically – if a child born on non-US soil to somebody like Jane would be a US citizen. Apparently not, since Jane hadn’t lived the qualifying years in the US. ‘But,’ Albert said, ‘the IRS problems get passed to the heirs, whatever their nationality. The IRS always follows the money.’ So that was another thing Jane was shielding Alice from.
Was Frederick with Jane, somehow, after Eliza left Montenegro with Alice, so that Jane wasn’t alone? I hope so. Perhaps he spirited Jane to wherever he was, probably Russia, so he could try to comfort her. Jane’s milk would have come in, like mine did. Her arms would have been empty, like mine were. A mother with no baby, like I was.
‘Al likes you a lot,’ Zac says. Again, the note of jealousy, this time of his old friend, a man who lives five thousand miles away. ‘What did the two of you talk about?’
I tell him, though I omit the baby sea lion Albert zoomed in on as he walked along the beach in Malibu, a world away and talking to me by encrypted video link on his phone. The sea lion was black and shiny, flattened and face down as if it were embracing the world.
Zac swallows hard. ‘I wish I could do everything again, Holly. Do it all differently.’
Alice is holding up her arms. ‘Daddy,’ she says, and Zac gets up to retrieve her. The two of them smooth a red tartan blanket on the grass in front of the bench, then arrange an assortment of drinks and cakes and napkins and paper plates decorated with unicorns. Alice offers me a cinnamon bun.
‘I remembered you liked them,’ Zac says.
‘I do. Thank you.’ I take a bite. ‘This is delicious, Alice.’ I fumble in my tote bag for her present. The wrapping paper is a forest of trees. Little girls in bright dresses are climbing the branches. ‘Do you like the paper? The little girls remind me of you.’
Again, I am rewarded with that big-eyed serious nod. She bursts into giggles and points to one with red hair. ‘Me!’
‘Yes!’ I say.
Zac offers to help her unwrap the present, but she shakes her head and tears it open herself. ‘Dollies,’ she cries, delighted.
‘Those are wonderful,’ Zac says.
They look like paper dolls, but they are made of smooth wood instead. There is a boy and a girl, with an assortment of vividly coloured felt dresses and skirts and trousers and tops that stick to both figures. Alice spreads them out, and is immediately, deeply fascinated. I am elated that she seems to love them so much.
‘Tuesday was another important birthday. I never forget – I have to live with what I did to you. To her.’
I am not a saint. I think, So do I, but I don’t say it.
Beside him is the large jute bag he’d carried the picnic in. ‘I have something for you.’ He pulls out a familiar box. My baby’s memory box. ‘I’ve been adding to it, since you left. It’s all been for you, but it helped me, too, to do it. I’ll understand if you don’t want it, but I brought it along just in case.’
‘Can I look?’
He passes the box over and I settle it on my lap. Slowly, I lift the lid.
The teddy bear is still there, but there are other things too. At the top is a birth certificate. I take it out. Charlotte Alexandra Mary.
‘You were right about Charlotte.’ He clears his throat.
There is a pale green envelope. I pick that up next.
‘I wish I’d known about that before you ran away,’ he says. ‘One of the nurses took it. I wasn’t in the room, when you were with her. You didn’t want me anywhere near you. The hospital got in touch a couple months after you were gone, to see if I wanted it.’
I start to lift the flap.
‘Wait, Holly – shall I tell you what it is, first, so you can decide? You might need to prepare yourself. I’ve been in counselling – she told me to make you aware—’
‘No. Thank you.’
I slip my fingers into the envelope and pull out a photograph. I bite my bottom lip as I look at it. The photograph does not bring the memory back, but it proves it happened. They weren’t lying to me.
I am in that tight white hospital bed, propped with pillows and clearly not able to sit up unaided. I am almost as white as the sheets. My hair is long, and tangled, and mixes with hers, which is the same shade of amber, but for the white forelock. She is wrapped in Milly’s blanket and propped on pillows, because I am visibly too weak to hold a baby even as light as she was, and the tubes are snaking out of my hands and into the bags of fluid attached to the metal sticks above me. My head is bent, to study her. My eyes are filled with tears. I am bathing her face with them. She is so beautiful, but her lids are closed. Her lids were always closed. If she’d inherited Zac’s dual-coloured eye, would it have showed so early? Whatever colours her eyes were, she took that secret with her. My heart swells with love and grief, so big I can feel them pressing against the inside of my chest.
I blink hard, as Alice climbs onto my lap. She smells of baby shampoo.
Zac moves her shoe away from my unwieldy boot. ‘Careful of Holly’s foot, Alice.’
She looks confused, and I realise it is because of my real name. She is used to my being Helen. But I decide it is easier not to explain. She is so clever and flexible. She will catch on. ‘It’s okay. My foot is well protected.’
Zac gently takes the photo from my hand, to avoid it getting bent or damaged. ‘It’s for you to keep.’ I can see how expert Alice has made him at doing multiple things at once. He puts the photo safely away, then moves the box to the end of the bench, so she can’t accidentally knock it. ‘I have copies of everything. I hope you don’t mind.’
I shake my head.
‘Picture,’ Alice says. ‘Draw,’ she says. ‘Promise,’ she says.
‘Oh yes.’ I pull a sketch pad and some crayons from my bag, and Alice gets to work.
While she is distracted, Zac reaches into the box again. This time, he pulls out the Liberty journal, covered in the Far Away Tree fabric. Two years ago, I refused to touch it.
‘Don’t say anything. Please. I’m ashamed of what we talked about when I first tried to give this to you. But I kept it. I thought you might tell her story. Tell yours. Tell any story you like.’ He holds it out. When I don’t take it, he says, ‘I understand,’ and returns it to the box.
I think about the Liberty book, and that it might be empowering for me to write in it someday. At first, I tell myself that this is pure fantasy, because what I plan to do is not something I could ever commit to paper. But then I wonder. Neither confirm nor deny. That is the only comment they’d ever make, the only action they’d ever take. They’d treat it as they would any other spy novel. I could change names and places, alter events and timelines, and make up a few things too. Isn’t that what fiction is? Lying? And haven’t I always been good at doing that? Besides, I have never been a proper employee of the Security Service. There is no signed contract. Nobody ever notified me that I was bound by the Official Secrets Act. I could even use a penname, like the Brontës.
For the first time since Zac found my orange journal, and since Charlotte’s death, I am feeling that urge to pick up my pen. Already, the thought of telling this story is gripping me. Unlike the stories I stole for the orange journal, this one is mine to tell.
Alice is engrossed in her art. There is a great deal of scribble, but there are also three wobbly circles, one small, one medium, and one large, that I think are meant to be a mother, father, and child, with a wobbly yellow sun above them.
‘Finished, Alice?’ Zac says.
‘Yes, Daddy.’ She opens her mouth in a huge yawn.
‘It’s beautiful, Alice,’ I say. ‘Thank you. I will feel happy every time I look at it.’
She and I make a game of putting the sketch pad and crayons away, then Zac scoops her into his arms. She is so delicate and light. She rests her head on his shoulder and snuggles against him, sticking her thumb in her mouth and closing her eyes.
‘There’s one other thing.’ He balances Alice with one hand and rummages in the box with the other. He holds out a pouch of quilted ivory silk, tied with a matching ribbon. ‘Please.’
Inside is a charm bracelet, made of some kind of white metal. The charms alternate between white and yellow gold. One bead is engraved with a tiny angel, another with a butterfly, and still another with a miniature pair of footprints. There are hearts too, near solid but for a small tunnel that the bracelet passes through.
‘The hearts each have a tiny chamber in them. I put some of her ashes inside. The one with her initials has a strand of her hair.’ He hesitates. ‘If you don’t want it, I’ll understand.’
It makes me think of eighteenth-century novels, and the endless list of funeral jewellery and rings made of hair that dead characters bequeath to those who survive them.
‘That is so macabre,’ Milly used to say, whenever I went on about how sad it was that we no longer do this.
I never told Zac how I felt about this lost tradition. In some ways he truly knows me. But in others … well, there are others he has never come close to imagining.
I slip the bracelet on my wrist. ‘I do want it.’
‘The rest of her ashes are with Peggy. I thought you might want to bury them with your parents, or scatter them near there, maybe in the sea. It’s for you to decide.’
‘What about you?’
‘I didn’t just hurt the two of you, Holly. I hurt myself too.’ He pushes up the sleeve of his shirt. Around his wrist is a narrow band of white metal, with a large oval capsule. ‘There’s a chamber in the bead like the ones in the charms. It binds me to her.’ He lowers his voice. ‘It also binds me to you. I hope you don’t mind. If you do, you can have this one too.’
‘No. You keep it, Zac.’ I meet his gaze and he flushes.
‘I’m so glad you came.’
‘Me too.’ I touch Alice’s hair, and she opens her eyes. ‘I don’t want to say goodbye to you, little birthday girl.’ I slide my booted foot from the bench.
‘Big.’ Alice is fully awake again. ‘Big, big, big.’
I laugh. ‘You’re right. Big birthday girl.’
‘Don’t,’ says Zac.
‘Don’t what?’ I say, though I know exactly what he means.
‘Don’t say goodbye.’
Alice pulls herself from Zac and throws herself at me, presses her face into my chest. ‘No. No go.’ She dissolves into tears, clinging like a koala bear as I soothe her. At last, she relaxes across my lap, though her arms are tight round my waist.
Zac says softly, ‘I’m with Alice. Don’t go, Holly. You and I belong together. We can get it right this time. I’m different. I’ll do anything to make it work, to make it up to you. We can get married. You can adopt Alice. You only have to say yes and I’ll put the legalities in motion.’ He moves closer, draping Alice’s legs over his thighs, while her upper body continues to rest across my lap, her head in the crook of my arm. ‘It’s what I’ve dreamed of since you ran away. Getting you back.’
No better way to get a man to love you forever than to run away from him. That was what Eliza said. She knew the truth of that. Maxine, who is an expert at identifying human desires, and understanding precisely how to use them in order to purchase information, knows this too.
I cannot fathom how long Maxine has been planning this. When did she foresee the circumstances that would allow her to put it in play, given the innumerable contingencies? She can envisage the impossible, figuring out the solution to a complex puzzle made of constantly moving pieces. And Martin, too, letting me walk away with Alice’s identity documents. And George, helping me find that medical data. At every point, they knew what to do with me. I couldn’t give them Jane, but I can still give them Zac, who they always wanted just as much. Because Zac remains their best chance at getting Frederick Veliko.
I have looked at it all. I have considered everything, aided by the clear-thinking Maxine. She spent a lot of time by my hospital bed, before I was well enough to leave Yorkshire. Explaining how it can work, spelling out how she and I can each grant the other a very fond wish.
As things stand, I have no legal rights to Alice. She will be alone with Zac and I won’t be able to protect her. Would Jane have wanted that, after everything she sacrificed to keep Alice safe? It is inconceivable that social services would take Alice from him. If by some miracle they did, she’d end up in foster care.
Even if I were to complain to the police about the things he did to me, there is no way I could prove them. MI5 and GCHQ would never admit the evidence I needed even existed, and his films have been consigned to Maxine’s dark caverns, where they belong.
Three different women ended up without a child, yet he is the one who gets to walk away with a little girl in his arms. The intelligence agencies of two countries, bolstered by the life-destroying might of the IRS, couldn’t find Jane, couldn’t catch her. It was love that did that. Love that made her vulnerable. Love that killed her. That love was more powerful than any of those relentless institutions.
I can hear Maxine’s voice, echoing over the glass table and across time. Asking how far I would push it. Asking where the line comes. Asking if I would sleep with someone for the role, to save my country, to save my own life, to save the lives of hundreds of others. I said then what I thought she wanted to hear.
But what I know now – and know deep in my bones – is this. Whatever anyone says to that interview question will be a lie. You have to be in the situation before you can know the true answer. And when it comes to my child, and Jane’s child, the true answer is that I will push it as far as I humanly can. The true answer is that there is no line. The true answer is yes. Because I cannot abandon this child. I could never walk away. I will climb back into Zac’s bed, deliberately and with full intent, in order to claim her and keep her. I will move on with Alice, move on with my life, but keep her sister with me always, inside us both, so she moves on with us. I will not leave her behind.
Zac’s hand is in my hair, on my face. He murmurs my name as he presses against me, whispering, ‘Is that a yes?’ and I say, ‘Yes.’ He kisses me, a lover’s kiss, and I kiss him back, with Alice warm in my lap. His eyes are half-closed, and I see a crescent of blue in the left and one of brown in the right, because mine are wide open.