Chapter 35
The twenty-four-hour garage sells lighter fluid in lurid yellow tins on a shelf behind the cashier.
As she rings it up, Jamie picks up a cheap balaclava from a basket by the till, and drops it on the counter with a casualness he doesn’t feel.
‘I’ll take one of those too.’ Too late, he realizes he should have bought the two items separately.
Idiot! Why not add a kitchen knife, a roll of duct tape and six packs of paracetamol to your order while you’re at it?
But the cashier either doesn’t make the connection, or doesn’t care, and soon Jamie is walking out of the garage with a plastic bag clutched in one hand.
He is, he knows – having extensively researched it – now committing the criminal offence of Going Equipped.
Assuming he’s going to go through with this.
Which he isn’t.
He can’t.
And yet, if he doesn’t, he won’t be granted access to the list; won’t be able to see if Echelon is a target.
Jamie removes the plastic safety seal from the lid of the yellow tin. The balaclava fires sparks of electricity when he pulls it over his head. He has rolled up the bottom half and is wearing it like a hat, but his fingers itch to tug down the wool and hide his face.
The corner shop is double-fronted, with two full-height windows obscured with vinyl stickers sporting images of fruit and veg.
The floor above, where Surinder lives with his wife and their twin sons, is in darkness.
The boys go to the same school as Maya and Nish; Jamie has seen them at the school gate when he’s done the drop-off with Nadeeka.
They’re a boisterous pair, their parents frequently chastising them for running too far ahead or kicking a football too near the road.
Jamie passes the shop on the opposite side of the road, his eyes flicking from house to house, checking for lights, for movement, for cameras.
The street is in darkness, but he keeps walking, his quickening steps keeping pace with his racing heart.
His breath’s coming too fast, his head filling with a pressure so intense he feels it could crack open his skull.
How could he have put Nadeeka and her daughters in danger like this?
If Jamie doesn’t complete his ‘initiation task’, who knows what New Dawn will do?
An eye for an eye? Jamie pictures a New Dawn ‘brother’ sauntering up Cedar Walk at three in the morning, pouring petrol through Nadeeka’s letterbox.
He stumbles against a wheelie bin, leaning on the filthy plastic as his knees buckle under him.
Think, Jamie!
There has to be a way to satisfy New Dawn and keep Nadeeka out of it without risking the lives of Surinder and his family. There has to be another way to get hold of the list.
A drop of water hits the wheelie bin with a dull splat. As Jamie looks up, another falls, then another and another. Splat, splat, splat.
Rain!
Within seconds the heavens have opened, and Jamie is soaked through, his balaclava so waterlogged he has to slide it off his head and wring it out.
I couldn’t light it, he’ll tell Carrie. The matches got damp.
It feels like a miracle. He holds out the box – opens it and lets the rain soak into the red-tipped matches – so he can look Carrie in the eye and say he tried.
‘Not hard enough,’ Carrie says, the following day. ‘You realize it’s me who’ll get it in the neck for this?’ They’re in her office, the sign on her door flipped over to Meeting.
‘You?’ Jamie’s head is thick from lack of sleep. ‘How would the police know you—’
‘Not from the police!’ Carrie snaps. ‘From the boss. I’m your sponsor – it’s my responsibility to make sure you go through with it.’
Jamie doesn’t know what to say. ‘I’ll try again,’ he manages eventually, but Carrie is only partly mollified.
‘I think I should come with you.’
‘No, you don’t have to—’
‘It’ll keep the boss off our backs if he knows I’m on the case. Cedar Walk, right?’
The reminder that, as his Human Resources manager, Carrie has access to his personal data renders Jamie incapable of speech.
‘I’ll meet you at the end of the road. Three a.m.’
All he can do is nod.
He goes to the library after work. Carrie has given him a reading list, warning him that the boss likes to pick on group members to finish key quotes from his favourite texts. Jamie reddens as he asks the librarian to order a copy of Mein Kampf from another branch, but she doesn’t bat an eyelid.
Logging on to a library computer, Jamie searches for buzzwords he can use in conversation with other New Dawn members.
He falls down a rabbit warren of Reddit threads on the woke agenda, and reads a terrifyingly academic article claiming to prove the genetic superiority of white people.
He lifts whole sentences and practises them in his head.
He may have convinced Carrie, but what about the others? What about the boss?
Jamie Googles how to conceal your identity, but it’s all blogposts about going off grid and buying fake passports on the dark web.
He searches How do you make people like you?
instead and wonders how much he’ll remember when he’s in a New Dawn meeting trying not to throw up.
Ask questions about the other person’s interests, he reads.
Mirror the other person’s body language to foster a sense of empathy.
That evening, when Nadeeka yawns and suggests they call it a night, Jamie says he’ll stay downstairs for a while.
‘I’m not feeling great,’ he tells her, and it feels like the first truth he’s spoken for weeks.
‘I’ll take some painkillers. Wait for them to kick in before I come up.
I’ll only disturb you otherwise.’ He slides his gaze away from hers, avoiding the uncertainty he knows he’d see there.
She’s scared he’s going off her, when the reality is that he loves her too much to let her get hurt.
He listens to her footsteps upstairs; hears the loo flushing and the floorboards creaking as she gets into bed. He pictures her lying awake worrying, before giving in to the fatigue of a long day. And, as the clock ticks closer to three a.m., his desperation grows.
He can’t go on like this. If he doesn’t do New Dawn’s bidding, he’s a dead man walking. The police won’t protect him; Jamie will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
Unless he disappears.
It takes him an hour to write the note, the nib of his pen hovering on the borders of clichés Nadeeka doesn’t deserve. It’s not you, it’s me. He doesn’t want to hurt her any more than he has to.
You deserve more, he writes eventually. I thought I could be enough for you, but I’m not the man you think I am.
She’ll come after him, he thinks. Try to win him back.
He doesn’t kid himself he’s any great catch, but what the two of them have together is special.
What they had together. Jamie stops writing, screwing his eyes shut until the threat of tears has passed.
There’s only one thing he can write that will stop Nadeeka in her tracks, but once he sets down the words, there’s no going back. She has too much self-respect for that.
Jamie picks up the pen.
I’m so sorry, Nadeeka. Please believe me, I never meant to hurt you. I love you, but I think it’s best if I move out. J x.
He exhales. Underlines I’m so sorry, as though those three words could ever soften the brutality of his blow.
He sets the letter on the coffee table. That’s that, then.
The grenade that will destroy the first good thing to happen to him in years.
A stunning, intelligent, funny woman. Two equally clever and funny kids, just when Jamie had given up hope of having a family of his own.
He stares at the note until the words swim. He’ll have to quit his job, of course. Start again somewhere else; homeless, jobless. Forever running from New Dawn.
Will they try to find him? Ask Nadeeka where he is? Jamie pictures Alan, Chris, Carrie, ‘the boss’ . . . closing in on Nadeeka. Will they follow her to work? Fall into step with her as she leaves her car, a firm grip to each elbow?
Or will they come to the house? Jamie imagines Maya running to the door – expecting her dad, perhaps; her grandmother – and instead finding . . .
No. Jamie swallows. He can’t do it. What kind of coward leaves his family to face the consequences of his own actions?
He screws up the note. Tomorrow, he’ll tell Carrie he’s sorry he stood her up, but he’s changed his mind about the initiation.
Perhaps if he makes out he’s still committed to the cause but is scared of getting caught, they won’t come after him.
Jamie waits another fifteen minutes, until he’s certain Carrie will have given up, then he gets up and stretches, stiff from the hours spent tensed on the sofa.
He turns off the light. He has a sudden longing to be with Nadeeka, to wrap himself around her warm body and feel her sink into him in her sleep.
Moonlight sends a strip of pale white through a gap in the curtains, and Jamie goes to close them.
He freezes. Carrie is standing at the end of the cul-de-sac, a long puffa coat zipped from ankles to neck.
She’s looking directly at No. 10. Jamie’s pulse quickens.
She can’t see you, he tells himself. The house is in darkness; he’ll be nothing more than a shadow in the window. She’ll leave soon. Give up.
But Carrie doesn’t leave; she starts walking towards the house.
No, no, no! Jamie’s panic stops his brain working.
All he can think about is Carrie ringing the bell; Nadeeka stumbling bleary-eyed down the stairs, wondering who would call at such an ungodly hour.
Carrie seeing Nadeeka, knowing Jamie lied to her, realizing that New Dawn’s rhetoric is against everything he truly believes in.
He grabs his coat and opens the front door.