‘Hannah has been evacuated,’ he says to Rafi, who thanks him, sounding so happy, and then he hangs up; 2% charge left now.
Though clearly Rafi was already heroic because he brought his little brother from Syria to England when he was only fourteen, all those awful things that they had to escape, which he hardly ever talks about but they all know it was bad. He’s crying now, for Rafi, because putting his nasty jealousy to one side, Rafi is really great and he’s had a terrible time and he does things like put everybody’s phone numbers into his contacts, because he’s friendly to everyone, and then some arsehole shit-face gunman is probably going to kill the girl he loves, who he’s come back for, is probably going to kill all of them, has already badly wounded Mr Marr who was the person who rescued Rafi in the first place.
He didn’t tell Rafi about Mr Marr, just couldn’t. Crying too because he’s afraid and isn’t a hero and because he can never make Hannah glow like that and if he dies today then he’ll never have the chance to become braver and better and meet a girl a bit like Hannah and make her look like she’s got rocket fuel burning inside her.
* * *
The wild relief is energizing and Rafi is standing, wanting to run, shout – She’s alive! Safe! He’ll go to the theatre and be with his friends – Fuck! Join in the rehearsal! He remembers when all he and Basi had in the world, which was basically his pocket, was fifty euros, a laser pointer and his dad’s battered copy of Macbeth, treasured because it belonged to Baba and because it was where they were going, the land of Shakespeare, so it was a double talisman.
She’s safe, she’s safe, she’s safe!
There’s a direct route from here to the theatre, but even forgetting his phantom PTSD pursuer, the psychotic illusion in his head who snaps invisible twigs, he might be spotted by the real gunman in Old School.
The woods aren’t far from here and there’s a small winding path through the trees which comes out at the back of the theatre. There’s a fire-exit door and his friends will let him in.
He hears the sound of a helicopter and he sprints to the woods, hoping that the helicopter will be a distraction if the gunman looks outside. Glancing up through the snow, he sees the yellow POLICE flash on the helicopter. Snow eddies and whirls around the helicopter, and for a moment it twists round and round in the sky as if it’s losing control, and then it rights itself.
He reaches the woods and the trees feel safe to him, hiding him. His phone buzzes – a text from Detective Inspector Rose Polstein.
Junior school safely evacuated on boats. Where you should be. When this over expect bollocking.
Find somewhere to hide and stay there till we can get to you. For that bollocking.
He loves this police officer, this Rose Polstein, for telling him, for keeping her word, as if it’s her doing that Basi is now safe.
He tries to ring Basi but it goes straight through to message. Maybe there’s no reception on the boat or he’s run out of charge because he’s been feeding all the animals that live inside his phone. For once he agrees with Mr Lorrimer that Basi should only use his phone for emergencies, but for Basi his animals are an emergency.
He sends him a text:
I love u
This evening, when everything is safe – because this is England and things will be safe again, safe is the normal everyday here – he’ll read Basi a story as usual. He imagines Basi sitting on his lap, the comfortable warmth and weight of him, and he’ll tell him that he knew Miss Price would look after him, and the other teachers and the coastguards, the police, everyone. People to fear in other countries, who’d set dogs on them and beaten them and stopped their boat from landing, weren’t like that in England. He knew people would take care of Basi; that’s why they’d risked so much to try and get to England; that’s why Rafi could leave him.
He’ll text Rose Polstein when he gets to the theatre, tell her that he’s okay.
Snow is falling more heavily, covering everything white, and the woods look beautiful to Rafi. Even when he imagined his phantom pursuer earlier he felt safe in the woods, the trees protecting him, but Hannah is afraid of them.
‘Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood – all English people are scared of woods.’
‘What about when you got older? “Lord of the Rings”?’ he’d said. ‘Cool trees.’
‘Not trees, Ents who speak Entish.’
‘“Game of Thrones”?’
‘Fucking weird trees with faces.’
‘Shakespeare’s comedies. You can be a different gender in the woods.’
He remembers Hannah’s eyes as she smiled and nodded, her long shining hair falling in front of her face. He’s told her Syrian folk tales and she’s told him her fairy tales, and they sound completely crazy, both sets, when told to the other, and no wonder she’s afraid of woods – little children being abandoned and following breadcrumbs, a cannibal witch with children in a cage, a wolf waiting on the path.
This morning they’d met up before school started, like every other morning, to go for a walk in the woods, because they wanted to be alone together, although Hannah says alone together is an oxymoron, and they’d lost track of time and had to run and then it had started to snow.
He hasn’t tried phoning Hannah again because he just wants to be happy that she’s safe; because that is enough.
* * *
In the leisure centre cafeteria, Beth Alton has one hand holding on to the edge of the Formica table, as if she needs to keep hold of something, everything physically precarious, her other hand holding her phone that Jamie doesn’t ring.
The large room around her has come more into focus. On the far side, at the tables of junior school parents, a mother tries to rock a baby to sleep, her movements jerky; a father has a toddler on his lap who’s watching cartoons on an iPad, headphones much too big for him. It’s only when she sees how young the junior school mothers and fathers are that she realizes how long ago it was since Jamie and Theo were that age; since she was. It goes in a blink, she wants to say to them, warn them, all of it, just a blink.
The older male police officer asks a group of junior school parents to go with him. Beth watches them leave the room, footsteps springy with relief. She assumes that these elect parents have children who are now safely evacuated, what other reason could there be for them to leave? Elect, why did she think that? As if there was some kind of Calvinist salvation and the cafeteria is purgatory. Do Calvinists believe in purgatory? Or is that just a Catholic thing? She absolutely believes in purgatory now, knows first-hand all about purgatory, and it has a linoleum floor and Formica tables and no windows and a phone that doesn’t ring. Doesn’t ring.
Calvin, Mum? Really?
His voice is smiling and it feels so real that for a moment he’s here in this terrible place.
At the table next to Beth there are two mothers who are clearly friends, clutching at each other’s hands, both manicured, so that their long shiny nails in different bright colours interweave, their faces pale. She can’t hear what the dark-haired woman is saying, but she catches ‘Antonella’ a few times; so, she is Antonella’s mother. She feels fury, hot and urgent, with this manicured woman as if it’s her fault her daughter broke up with Jamie. Wrong. Wrong. She just wishes Jamie was still in love and happy, so that he’d have that to hold on to while this terrible thing is happening.