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I cracked open the cubicle door and said, cautiously, “Hel?”
Hel swung round and her face flickered through a gamut of different emotions in the space of a few seconds—from fear, to shock, to utter relief.
“Jack! Oh for Christ’s sake.” She flung her arms around me, her voice muffled in my hair. “I thought I’d missed you. I’m sorry we took so long.”
“Oh God, Hel, no, don’t apologize. I’m the one who should be apologizing. Are you okay? Was everything all right, you know, getting here?”
Were you followed was what I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to say it in front of the kids. No point in making this situation sound scarier than it already was.
“So-so,” Hel said, making a rocking motion with her hand. “I’m pretty sure there was a plainclothes guy outside the house, but they peeled off when I went inside the school gates. We came via the playground, just to make sure. Quite hard for single blokes to hang around there unnoticed. But that’s what held us up; once we were there I couldn’t exactly get away without ten minutes on the swings. Thank God Kitty needed the loo.”
“Mummy,” I heard from inside the cubicle, “I’ve done a poo. Can you wipe my bum?”
Hel gave a sigh.
“Yes, okay, I’m coming. But you manage at school, Kitty, so I don’t know why you need my help at home. You’re a big girl now.”
“I can wipe my own bum,” Millie said virtuously from the stall next door. “I did it at break.”
“Jesus wept,” Hel muttered.
“Look, I should get out of here,” I said. “Did you bring everything?”
“Yes. It’s all in here.” Hel pulled a Tesco carrier bag out of her capacious Cath Kidston mum tote—the tote that usually held spare T-shirts for the girls, snacks, and school reading logs. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring more; I thought carrying a suitcase to school would raise alarm bells. But there’s clothes, a sleeping bag, hair bleach, a pay-as-you-go phone I got from Tesco, and two hundred and fifty pounds. I’m sorry I couldn’t get more money—I hit the daily withdrawal limit for my card.”
“Seriously, do not apologize.” I was rummaging through the bag, relief pulsing through me as I saw what Hel had managed to cram in. Underneath the sleeping bag was a navy sweatshirt and a gray beanie, and I pulled off my jacket and baseball cap and swapped them for the jumper and knitted hat. Carefully, I tucked the stray strands of red underneath the edges of the beanie, hoping I didn’t look too obviously like someone hiding their hair, and then stuffed everything else into the go bag.
With my face uncovered but my hair hidden, I looked sufficiently unlike the figure who had walked into the shopping center side of the loos that I thought I would pass muster on CCTV as a different person.
“Did you pay cash for the phone?” I asked as I slung my arms into the straps of the rucksack, wincing a little at the pain the action provoked.
“Yes, I paid cash. And for the SIM too; I got it from one of those dodgy shops on the high street and it’s prepaid up to a hundred pounds of credit. Listen, Jack—” She had taken hold of my hands, and now she looked down at the blood still grimed under my nails. “Wait, is that blood? Are you okay?”
“It’s nothing, honestly. Just a cut. You’re an absolute fucking legend, Hel.”
“Mummy, my bum is still pooey,” came from inside the cubicle, in the chidingly imperious tones that only a four-year-old could manage. “Are you ever going to stop talking?”
“I said I’m coming,” Hel growled.
“Go.” I put my arms around her again, hugging her more fiercely now, conscious of the fact that this might be the last time we saw each other for… well, I didn’t want to think about that, about what might happen if I didn’t manage to fix this. “Sort out Kitty. I love you, Hel.”
“I love you too.” Hel’s voice cracked.
“Mummy, I’m going to count to three,” I heard as I swung the door open, “and if you’re not wiping my bum by the time I finish, then I’m going to be very, very angry. One, two—”
I stepped out into the bustling shopping center.
I was surrounded by a hundred people—shoppers, staff security guards. And yet I had never felt more alone.
I left the shopping center through a different entrance from the one I had come in by, and then stood outside in the street, trying to work out what to do.
What could I do? The gravity of my situation, the enormity of what I’d done when I stood up and walked out of the police station, was only just starting to strike home, and if I thought about it too much, the weight of the realization threatened to crush me. I was a fugitive. I was on the run. It was almost impossible to believe.
I was, I suddenly realized, extremely tired. And I also had probably only limited time to get out of London. The police would likely still be searching my neighborhood, then fanning out towards Hel’s, hoping for me to pop up on their radar, making contact with a friend or going to familiar ground. But sooner or later they would figure out that I had made a break for it. And at that point the net would widen, and they might start contacting other forces.
I had to get out of London and go somewhere… unexpected. And then I could take some time to figure out my next move.
The problem was, where to go? Cities were expensive, and full of surveillance equipment and police. But remote communities were small and noticed strangers, particularly lone women popping up in the middle of winter.
