CHAPTER 77 Simone
Simone
Four o’clock in the morning, and Simone does not dream, because she is awake, and everything is a novelty to her.
They have flown into Birmingham because it was the first flight available once the paperwork was cleared and their passports were taken off the watch lists.
There are so many things Simone hadn’t thought about – that her car was in Heathrow all this time, and that it was taken off and pulverized after her arrest. Clamped and then destroyed.
The restaurant, run by their staff and not them.
Their house, left empty for much longer than planned.
How strange it is, the way the justice system catches you, like a grabber toy in an arcade, then releases you once more, too.
The baggage claim is no longer humdrum. They have the freedom to walk wherever they want, without being fugitives, and without being incarcerated.
To get a coffee while they wait for their cases – late, again!
– full-fat milk, smoky-bitter espresso. The knowledge that they aren’t being watched, that they will get through passport control.
Outside, once they have their cases, there it is: that cold English air. It’s October, the breeze sugar-frosted. It stings her cheeks; she can feel it turning them red and tight. She doesn’t have a coat, doesn’t have anything useful.
As they step out, it begins to rain, sudden and fast. Damien tries to hail a taxi with one hand, pulling the back of his coat over his head with the other. Nevertheless, it drives off, probably already taken.
‘Nice to be back in England,’ Lucy calls through the shower, which has quickly become torrential.
‘What a nice holiday,’ Simone replies, and Lucy throws her head back and laughs as they wait for the taxi, water splashing around their ankles.
And, right here, in the autumn air, Simone could freeze time.
Her daughter, the genius. She had no idea she was so clever.
That she knew more about Michaela’s daughter than she let on, that she knew she was in Terlingua.
As soon as it became clear they were running, Lucy formulated the plan that ended in Terlingua: she would find the daughter herself, and take her.
She’d been right not to tell Simone. She would’ve talked her out of taking a criminal’s child, but what does she know?
She didn’t even have to do it in the end.
They shelter in a shuttle bus stop, the three of them in a short-stay car park in the rain, lights of traffic red and white in the distance. Simone doesn’t think she’s ever been anywhere more beautiful.
‘Let me call one,’ Damien says, raising his phone to his ear. ‘It’s stupid there aren’t any circulating, even at night.’
He walks off and dials. The rain hammers on the top of the shelter, but they’re still getting wet from it being carried in on the wind.
Simone watches him for just a moment. The second she was released, in the foyer of the courtroom, he said something to her, holding her hands.
Something surprising, and something true.
‘I think you were right,’ he said.
Simone knew immediately what he meant, but pressed him for more information anyway. ‘Yes?’
‘What you said about men and women, and their children,’ he explained, still holding her hands, their fingers interlaced. ‘I watched you walk into a sea of lights, for her. And I thought, Simone loves Lucy in a different way to me. The same way I felt after I watched you give birth to her.’
‘The thing is,’ Simone said, having been thinking about this too, ‘is that it is different. Lucy’s pain is my pain, and all that hormonal stuff. But, actually, my love for her stifled her, too.’
‘No.’
‘It did,’ Simone says, withdrawing a hand and putting it on her chest. The giddiness of her release has given her clarity; she would never worry about anything again now that she was free.
Normal life had been taken from her, and here it was again, passed back.
A near miss. ‘The thing is, children need different kinds of love. Mine and yours. Together, they are potent.’
‘Did you know it was going to work?’ Simone asks Lucy now.
‘No. Not at all,’ Lucy answers, though they have talked about this all night, all day, and for all their flight, too. ‘I was trying everything. I just kept this one solution to myself.’
‘Well,’ Simone says, ‘you did, in fact, do it all by yourself. You didn’t need me.’
And Lucy darts her a little glance then, under the glare of the car park lights. ‘Huh,’ she says, smiling slightly.
‘… What?’ Simone prompts.
‘Well, I did,’ Lucy says. She lets a clouded breath out. Beyond them, Damien tells a taxi driver their location. ‘But only your daughter would do that.’
Lucy leans back against the glass, smiling, and Simone says nothing, doesn’t need to, a huge bubble of joy in her chest. This is parenthood, too.
Setting them up to leave, but setting them up well, with the best pieces of you.
She’s just caught the end of her childhood, her babyhood, right here, a butterfly ensconced in her palm that she is too afraid to grasp too tightly, else she will crush it.
In the taxi that eventually arrives, Radio 4 is on low and the heaters high.
Simone could weep at the British voices, and what her daughter just told her.
She leaves the window open and Birmingham whips its cold, dark winds around them.
Simone doesn’t think she’s ever felt something so delicious as they speed through the night.
Crisp air and curries and exhaust fumes and England.
When they get out, to their house in London, it’s still raining, but it is Lucy, not Simone, who tilts her head back and lets the droplets fall on her face.