They live on a new-build estate of large executive houses. With the welcome pack – probably devised by the person who decorated and furnished their new home – Mia has learned that there is a large park in the centre of the estate. Placing Freya in her pram, Mia goes out for a walk to explore the area. Even though she’s nervous to go out, Ben has reassured her they are safe where they are: no one knows they are here. She forces herself out, trying to establish some normality she can live with.
Where she and Ben lived before, Mia had an acre of land to potter around on. She enjoyed gardening when she hadn’t been working. But her new smaller garden didn’t interest her as much as the larger one she’d had. She’d loved the wild flowers and mossy grass – less than perfect but as nature intended – much more than she cared for the immaculate lawns here.
On this estate every house is picture perfect, every garden is neat. They are also all the same. The normality doesn’t feel real. Just like the sunny day. It’s all too flawless.
Mia craves her lost life and former innocence. She looks back on it with new eyes – how was she so unaware? Mia recalls her parents with a feeling of distance. Hadn’t she always known the cookie-cutter life they’d created wasn’t real at all? It is clear now how detached they were. Their mother’s perpetual baking. The smudge of flour always on her cheek as though part of her daily beauty regime. It was so ridiculously 1950s that it should have been obvious.
She found herself wondering if her parents were even lovers. Or what they actually did when Michael and Mia weren’t home. She tried to imagine them doing anything other than what she’d witnessed and couldn’t. They were too good at appearing normal. And in a way, Mia and Michael had taken them at face value. Like most children, they had paid very little real attention to the lives their parents had, accepting that they were just a normal boring couple when really nothing could be further from the truth.
They are dead now and she can’t ask them any questions. Michael didn’t tell her how it happened, instead he said they were missing. But Mia suspects what really went down.
As she pushes the pram closer to the playground, she finds herself thinking about a TV series she once dipped into. A perfect family, all assassins. All robots. She can almost imagine now that her parents hadn’t even been human.
Where was the genuine affection? she thinks. She and Michael became detached from them as soon as they both left for university. And it hadn’t been difficult. There was little interaction between Mia and her parents during those years, and Mia and Michael moved out, never going home again after they graduated, except for one time when her parents moved to Cambridge.
It was odd, but Mia can’t even remember the regular phone calls she had with her mother. Unlike her university friends, her parents weren’t desperate to hold onto her. They never made her feel guilty for not visiting. But there were calls, and the occasional meet-ups with Uncle Andrew. She just can’t remember what they talked about.
Huh! Beech… their real father! What a total mindfuck!
Mia’s mind skirts around the whole idea of it. She can’t focus on the important questions and so skitters away to think instead about the grass or the sunlight. The truth – when you look at it – isn’t all it is cracked up to be when it destroys your peace of mind.
How much does it matter anyway?
Mia glances down and smiles at Freya. The little girl is slowly drifting off to sleep with the movement of the pram.
She pauses at a road crossing. The playground is just ahead and Mia can see a few mothers with toddlers using the swings and slides. Being outside makes her feel better and she pushes aside the looping study of her past life interspersed with random and distracting thoughts of other things as she crosses the road.
There are no crazy drivers speeding through the estate. Even so, there is an iron fence all around the play area and Mia passes through the gate, closing it behind her. She wheels Freya towards a bench and she takes a seat, watching the other children running and playing over on the park.
Freya makes a tiny sound, as though objecting to the sudden stillness of the pram. Mia looks at her, but the little girl is merely mewling in her sleep.
‘Sleep my little one…’
Mia freezes.
Her mind whirs and stalls. She has heard that before. Where has she heard that before? Her mother. It must have been. But no matter how hard she tries to remember she can’t recall her mother ever saying this to her or Michael. It’s not her voice she can vaguely hear in her head. It’s someone else… but who? She’s distracted by a child on the swings. Back and forth they go. Back and forth. Mia forgets what she was trying to think about.
Freya whimpers again.
‘You’re safe,’ Mia says.
She looks around at the other mothers and children in the park. Over by the swings, two women cast her a casual glance. By the slide, as a little boy of three climbs the ladder and slides down, another woman – possibly the boy’s grandmother – looks long and hard in Mia’s direction. Mia casts her eyes around the playground. She feels exposed and observed. It’s the oddest experience she’s ever had. Is it just curiosity that a new family have moved onto the estate? Or are they all spying on her? Reporting back.
She finds herself looking around, beyond the park, over to the other houses beyond the railings and across the road. Was that a glint of glass catching the sunlight from a top bedroom of the house directly opposite? Perhaps binoculars. She squints at the window, but the anomaly doesn’t happen again.
I’m paranoid, she thinks. No one knows we’re here. This is just silly.
But the sensation of being observed won’t dissipate and Mia stands up, and releases the brake on Freya’s pram. She walks out of the playground and heads back to the safety of her new house.
Halfway home she finds herself looking over her shoulder. The street is empty, no one is following and yet she doesn’t feel alone.
A car passes, and Mia watches as it heads away. Was it driving too slowly?
As she reaches her cul-de-sac, she sees Jack Harman mowing her next-door neighbour’s lawn. Happy to see a familiar face, she waves to him as she passes. He smiles back at her.
There’s a sense of relief as she reaches the front door of the house. This new build might, after all, be a haven of sorts.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Charter?’ Jack says, wheeling his father’s mower past her front gate.
She looks back at the young man, his eyes show concern for her and Mia realizes she had been hurrying up the driveway to the front door as though something was chasing her.
‘I’m fine, thank you, Jack,’ she says.
Jack nods. ‘Okay, but I’m around if you need anything.’
Mia thanks him again and goes inside the house. Once the door is shut behind her she gives into a terrible trembling. Despite Jack’s offer she feels even more concerned. It was as though he were waiting for her to return and the mowing of the lawn next door was just his cover… He could be a spy. He could work for the Network. Anyone could.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ she says.
She rests her back on the door as though barricading the world out. She takes a deep breath in and tries to regulate her breathing. She feels vulnerable, not an experience she’s ever had before. She looks back at the sleeping baby and an intense fear clutches at her chest. Is Freya safe?
Afraid to let the baby out of her sight, she pushes the pram into the kitchen. Then she runs the cold water tap and fills a glass. Still shaking, she sits down at the breakfast bar and sips the water. Her hand shudders and she sloshes water onto the worktop.
She can’t rid herself of the thought that Freya might be in danger. She reflects on this concern – a very real apprehension after all, hadn’t they been put into witness protection for this very reason? She decides that she needs to speak to Ben when he returns later. She’s sure he’s hiding the full facts from her. Without the full story, Mia grasps at shadows and fears unknown phantoms.
I have to know what’s really going on, she thinks. Only then can she truly deal with the change her life has taken. Only then will she know what to do if someone comes after them.