A knock. Two on the dot. The children look at each other. Soli revs her hand in circles, trying to think of something but can’t, can’t; the doorknob turns. Opens. Opens.
Pin is standing there, before them, with a sheepish grin and an apologetic box of chocolates and some chewing gum and it all comes crashing to the ground. As he sees the new man. They don’t even have time to throw a blanket over Motl smiling away in his enormous relief of sleep.
But Pin’s face. Like a cloud racing over sunlight. He steps back. ‘Who is this?’ Like a thick glass wall in a bank has suddenly shot up.
‘Wait,’ Tidge cries, but Pin holds up his hands, all changed.
‘You’re not who I think you are, are you?’ He glances to the door, wants away, wants help.
Your mouth is dry, you feel sick. Everything is unravelling. Mouse lunges. Grabs the key, locks the door, trapping Pin inside. Oh, little man, brave man, finally waking up.
‘What are you doing? Pin yells.
Mouse holds out his hand as to a dog about to bite, trying to calm him, to get him to sit. ‘You’re our friend,’ he says carefully.
But Pin doesn’t want to know, he’s gripping his watch with the alarm that pinpoints his location; he hasn’t pressed it yet.
‘No one gets left behind,’ your daughter pleads, ‘we’re the Getters, we’re in this together.’
‘You’re our friend’, Tidge yells with disbelieving shock, at being betrayed, at being so wrong, standing tall on the bed. ‘You’re my mate.’
Pin presses the alarm. ‘My father can sort this out.’
Tidge’s knees sink to the mattress. Mouse slumps against the wall. You shut your eyes on everything ahead, that Motl and you have feared so much. G’s plan was such a risk but you both had to accept it, there was no one else, no safe house left. And now this. Your lovely sparky vivid-hearted babies sizzly with life will be separated and your boys, all three of them, will be taken to that place where men go on the edge of the city and your daughter will never find out what happened and for the rest of her life she’ll be wondering, crazed by uncertainty, wondering about trembling pits and being broken and what on earth happened next.
In the darkness … the sound of a man Breathing, testing his faith On emptiness, nailing his questions One by one to an untenanted cross.