The men don’t move. They might have been standing there for a long time. Above them, a few leaves twist on the winter trees. My entire body is given over to sheer panic.
The bowl of porridge I am carrying over to Finn crashes to the floor, splashing my feet and shins. He watches me from his high chair beside the sliding door. The men will be able to see him from their position. And they know I’ve noticed them. I can’t see their faces under the masks, but their eyes are fixed on me.
I won’t be able to free the baby from the high chair straps and reach the front of the house in time. They will beat me to the road.
Blood roars in my ears. The men are coming over the wall now. It’s happening too quickly. Already they’re dropping onto my lawn, in their boots and canvas army jackets. They aren’t holding guns, but both of them are taller than me, and bulkier.
Finn starts to whine with hunger, pointing at the bowl. I cross to the sliding door without knowing what I’m about to do, if I’m going to turn the bolt, but then I’m grappling with the handle and wrenching it open. I step out into the cold air and shut the door behind me.
Through the glass, Finn lets out a wail. The men are already halfway up the lawn. I hold my hands in the air, and they stop walking.
“Come on, Tessa,” says one. “Time to go.”
They wait for me to move toward them. “I can’t leave my son in there. It’s not safe.”
The men consider me, the holes in their ski masks stretched tight around their eyes and mouths. The shorter man’s lips are a dark color, like he hasn’t had enough water.
Behind us, Finn screams, fighting against the straps. If I were to lift him, he’d stop crying right away, he’d blink, his wide eyes looking around him with relief, and curl into me.
“I’m going to come with you,” I say, “but first I’m going to drop my son at my neighbor’s. She lives right up the road, we do it all the time. I’ll tell her my aunt’s ill.”
“You have one minute,” says the shorter man. “If you tell her to call the police or if you try to run, we’ll kill you and your baby. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He stays outside, and the other man follows me into the house. My hands shake as I open the buckles on the high chair. Finn twists, reaching his arms toward me. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, you’re okay, mam’s here.”
He breathes in shakily, clutching my hair, looking over my shoulder at the man. I grab his nappy bag and blanket and open the front door.
“Stop,” says the man, and I wonder if this was a game, if he was only pretending to let me leave. I cradle Finn to me, one hand shielding his head. The man points at my feet. “Put on shoes.”
I look down. My bare feet are livid and red from the snow. I push them into a pair of fleece-lined boots and hurry down the path before he can change his mind.
Finn clasps his arms around my neck. I cover the side of his face in kisses as we walk, murmuring to him, breathing in his smell.
When Sophie opens her door, I say, “My aunt’s ill. I need to go to the hospital. Can you mind Finn?”
“Oh, of course.” Sophie holds out her arms, and my throat aches as I hand him to her. Finn’s still right here. I can see him, I can hear him. We haven’t been separated yet. He’s listening to my voice, with his eyes on my face. If I were to lean forward just a few inches, he’d clamber back into my arms.
“Is there anyone behind me?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light.
Sophie’s eyes flare. She glances past me, then gives a small shake of her head.
“I need you to call DI Fenton at Musgrave station and ask him to take Finn somewhere safe.”
Sophie’s face doesn’t change, but she says, “Get inside.”
“Please do it.”
I lean forward to kiss Finn, then turn down the path. After a few paces, I hear her front door close behind me, and the deadbolt shut. She’ll be lifting her phone any second now and dialing the police.
When I step back into my house, the man in my living room has his gun out. He raises it, and I look past the barrel into his eyes.
“It’s fine. She thinks I’m going to see my aunt.” My voice is flat, almost disappointed. I sound like I’m telling the truth. He stares at me for a moment, then tucks the gun into the waistband of his jeans.
As soon as we’re over the garden wall, both men lift their hoods. From the row of houses, we will look like three people out for a walk. No one is ahead of us to see that their faces are covered by ski masks. The field is empty, quiet except for the snow under our boots. The men move the same way, with their shoulders down, their backs straight. They’ve been trained.
On the hill, the dizziness makes it hard to keep my balance. I’m desperate to turn around, to look toward Finn, though Sophie won’t have him anywhere near the window. Fenton will have told her what to do until the police arrive. To act normal, maybe. Or to lock herself in the bathroom with Poppy and Finn. I wince, thinking of how scared she must be.
The branches of the oak tree on top of the hill creak in the wind. We’re in clear sight of all the houses, and then we’re on the far side of the hill, in shade now, and the change in temperature is like dropping into water. I’m alone with the two men, near enough to smell the wool of their masks, and their sweat.
A red Renault Corso is parked in the lane behind the field. The shorter man opens the back door. “Lie down,” he says. I lie across the backseat and he covers me with a blanket.
The two of them sit in front, and the automatic locks close with a metallic thud. The blanket is orange tartan wool, and it smells like a basement, the way sleeping bags often do. I can’t see through the fabric, though I can feel bars of sun and shade as they fall across the backseat.
When we come to a stop, we must be at Ballywalter Road, and now we’re turning right, driving south down the peninsula. In the front, the men will have taken off their masks. No other drivers will notice anything wrong. People will be able to see us, a red car on a country road. My chest starts to convulse, like I’m laughing.
Under the blanket, I reach my hand overhead to the door and find the lock. I try, slowly, to slide it back, my heart beating against my ribs, wondering if it will be this simple, if I’ll be able to open the door and drop to the road and run. Nothing happens, the lock won’t move, it’s on a childproof setting. I pull my knees into my chest, close my eyes and try to follow the turns. We’re still traveling south. After a few more turns, I lose track of our direction. It feels like we’re driving into a tunnel, farther and farther down, with the quiet and the pressure, but when I open my eyes, a few inches from my face, the wool fibers of the blanket are burning with sun.
I remember Finn last week, turning his hand in a beam of sunlight filled with dust motes, watching them slowly revolve.
I can see him very clearly, and calm comes over me. I know that I’m going to keep myself alive until the security service or the police find me. I’m going to talk my way out of this. Last week, Finn moved his hand, so the dust motes orbited away, and looked at me, his own hair bright. I’m going to come home for him.
One of the men clears his throat. “You can sit up,” he says.
We’re racing down a road between wide farm tracts. They must not be worried about traffic cameras out here. Through the back windscreen, I can see the Mournes. They take up most of the sky behind us. We’re somewhere in Armagh, then, southwest of Greyabbey.
“What’re your names?” I ask. Neither of them answers. “My name’s Tessa.” Past the window, frozen wheat bristles through the snow. “Thank you for not hurting my son. Do you have children?”
The passenger shifts in his seat. They’re listening, at least. “Do your children love their mam? That’s how it is in the beginning, right? In a few years I’ll probably have to tackle him for a hug.”
The driver’s eyes lift to meet mine in the mirror. “Why is this happening?” I ask.
Neither of them speaks. They don’t tell me not to worry, that everything will be fine, which is good. That would scare me more, if they were comfortable lying to me. They’re not sociopaths. Because of them, Finn will be with Fenton now, in a police convoy, being driven someplace safe.
“Has someone told you to kill me?” I ask.
The driver clears his throat. “No.”
I look out the window, and the silence thickens in the car, growing uncomfortable. I force myself to wait, and finally the passenger says, “We’re bringing you to an interview.”
“Will you be the ones interviewing me?”
“No.”
“Who will?” I ask, and the passenger taps his fingers on the door. “Can I trust them?”
The farms are smaller now, broken by dense stands of trees. We’re farther in the countryside. A track appears ahead, and the driver downshifts. He follows the track through the woods until it ends at a farmhouse in a clearing. A river runs behind the house.
When the car door opens, there’s this smell in the air, of snow and pines, and I can’t get enough of it, I can’t breathe it in fast enough. We walk across the clearing toward the farmhouse, the men on either side of me. I’m not shaking, it’s more continuous than that, like water shimmering. I try to force one of them to look me in the eye. They haven’t cuffed my hands, which is interesting. They aren’t expecting me to fight.
The farmhouse has stone walls and a split red door. Something about it feels familiar, like I’ve been here before. Inside, a few waxed jackets hang from hooks by the door. They lead me across the house to an ordinary, old-fashioned kitchen, with a hanging basket of wrinkled apples, and a tea tin, and a row of chipped yellow mugs. The driver fills a glass with water from the tap for me.
“Thank you.” I look him full in the face, and realize that I recognize him. He’s a bouncer at Sweet Afton, in the Linen Quarter, where our office sometimes goes for drinks after work. I can’t decide whether to mention that. It might help for him to remember me in a different scenario, or it might make him feel cornered.
“Why did you join?” I ask.
“Freedom,” he says.
I nod. He’s younger than me. His eyes are hazel, with long lashes. “Not for this, though,” I say. “You didn’t sign up for this.”
Before he can answer, the other man appears in the doorway. He’s older, and has one deep groove across his forehead, like it’s been scored in half. “Come on,” he says. I look at the bouncer, but he’s turning away from me, placing my empty water glass in the sink.
“Please. Please don’t do this. Please let me go home.”
They bring me to a room upstairs and lock the door from outside. The room is empty except for two single mattresses on the floor.
I should have mentioned Sweet Afton, I should have described seeing him there, that might have made me more real to him. We’ve spoken before, though I can’t remember the specifics, if I asked him for a light, if we chatted about the weather. It seems impossible for me to have forgotten, that those encounters hadn’t seemed particularly significant at the time, when this man might be the difference between returning to my son or never seeing him again.
I lie down on a mattress in the quiet. I’d rather have them threatening me, hurling abuse at me. It’s worse in here, the quiet is worse. In the silence, I think about how I might never hear my son say his own name. I might not find out his likes or interests, and I have some guesses, but I need to know what he chooses for himself. I might never have a conversation with him over dinner or on the phone. I might not introduce him to Roald Dahl or C. S. Lewis. I might not know him as a boy, or a teenager. He might never introduce me to someone he loves.
Tom and Briony would do their best, and maybe that would be enough, or maybe he would always feel the gap of not having his mam.
He cries sometimes when I leave his line of vision. He’s one year old. How could I leave behind a one-year-old? It’s not possible. Even if they shoot me, that can’t be the end. I’ll have to find a way to reach him. I’m his mam.