14
Mr Younge is all I see.
Not the back of Serena’s head, or the kitchen, not the lounge and the dining table, or the door that hangs off the hinges.
My gaze is hooked onto Mr Younge.
The panic in me is soft. Cold, but gentle, like a stream of water gliding through me.
I should be surging with urgency—but I’m not.
The breath ribbons out of me and, slowly, I reach for the phone. Finger pointed, I press the little camera button on the screen.
I turn off the video, then press the microphone button.
On their side, the screen should go dark.
Serena can’t see or hear me.
Mr Younge can’t see or hear me.
Still, my breath is pinned to my throat as though if I breathe too loud, it will give me away.
The same tension has Serena rooted to the spot. Hands fisted at her sides, she is utterly still.
Mr Younge considers her in the silence that thickens the air between them. Then his sharp gaze swerves around the squared room.
And I know he’s looking for me.
My hand tightens on the steering wheel. The leather creaks in my grip, my knuckles turning white.
Mr Younge takes two steps in. His brogues thud softly on the runner rug. Then he steps aside, clearing the path to the door.
Stare locked onto Serena, he backs into the spine of the couch.
This time, I do hear it.
Steps coming up the corridor.
Through the phone call, it’s a distant sound that starts faint but grows into creaking floorboards.
Serena is utterly unmoving. Like all the years we’ve managed to run and escape and evade are flashing in her eyes—and it all comes crashing down around her.
There is no escape.
Not this time.
I don’t think she’s even breathed since Mr Younge kicked in the door.
I can’t see her face. I can’t see the terror on it, if she’s washed out and pale or green with sick, if she weeps or stands strong.
The final groan of the floorboard comes before a tall, suited man moves into the doorway.
My heart drops to my worming gut.
My hands slip off the steering wheel and I sink into the driver’s seat.
Father comes through the doorway.
He only looks at Serena for a second before he’s stepping into the loft. He moves for the barred window, the one without a fire escape, that looks down into the lane.
Father scans the apartment.
With his back to the corner, he glances out the window, then looks around the loft.
It’s only a video call, so I can’t make out the details of his face, no matter how much I try, how sharply I focus.
I lean forward, closer to the screen.
Father is wearing a suit, but I can’t make out what kind, if the material is cashmere or Vicuna, if the cut is Savile Row or Italian.
But it is my father—and the sight of him sends waves of emotion rolling through me.
I swipe at the thick, quiet tears wetting my cheeks. And, as I do, another silhouette comes into the frame.
I blink the watery film of my eyes away—
And I see Oliver.
He wanders into the apartment, hands in his pockets… as though he’s relaxed, as though his heart isn’t thrashing against his ribs like mine is.
He looks utterly calm.
I strain against the breaths jutting in my chest, on the verge of sobs, the guilt rising up in me with too much violence.
And my twin is the opposite.
Too relaxed, too casual, his gaze sweeps the room as he wanders further in. But he brushes right over Serena like she’s not even there.
No acknowledgement, no greeting.
As though she doesn’t exist, never has and never will, he strolls towards the partition in the bedroom and considers the room for a moment before turning around to face the others.
Oliver is at the edge of the frame. I can only make out a sliver of him, his shoulder leaning against the partition.
And I understand what they are doing.
Father by a window that looks down on the lane between the street and the carpark.
Oliver by the bedroom—his back to the window that leads down to the fire escape.
Mr Younge just a few backsteps away from the door.
They are covering every exit.
Serena can’t flee.
She’s trapped in there.
She’s caught.
I know what I’m supposed to do.
This is a scenario we’ve gone over a hundred times, if not more.
If one is caught, the other grabs Sal—and gets the hell out of town.
Sal is the priority.
Not us.
But I don’t move from the driver’s seat.
I don’t hang up the call or stumble out of the car and barge into Ms Brown’s house.
I stay stuck to the seat.
Serena moves for the first time. Her neck cranes and she looks over her shoulder.
She looks right at Oliver.
Her grey eyes are clouded by tears, turning them silvery. But her tears don’t fall. Her cheeks are dry.
She holds them back, her mouth a stroke across her face.
But something grows in her as she stares at my brother, something a lot like old, awakened hatred.
Mr Younge clears his throat. “Miss Serena.”
Her jaw tightens for a beat, then slowly, she turns her cheek to Oliver and looks at Mr Younge.
He clasps his hands at his front. “You might be feeling some apprehension at our unannounced arrival, but I insist that you do your best to focus. This interaction has only one outcome. Whether or not it is delayed is entirely your decision. But I do ask that you acknowledge the ramifications of such delays.”
The wobble of my damp lips comes with shuddered breaths.
I watch Father in the video.
He is angled to face the kitchen, but his chin is tucked to the shoulder of his suit jacket.
I can’t make out more than that, but I’m certain he looks down the side of the building to the lane.
Serena’s voice wavers, “I’m not going with you.” Guttural, she repeats, “I’m not going.”
There’s a rustle behind her.
I know it came from Oliver because she whips around, eyes wild, like that of prey realising the predator is lunging.
But he isn’t.
He doesn’t move into the scope of the camera.
He moves out of it.
I don’t see him anymore, not even the sliver of his shoulder leaning against the partition.
But the rustle continues.
Serena’s eyes narrow into restrained storms.
I wonder if he’s rummaging through our things. Maybe digging around the shelves, or the dresser or the bed-side table.
“Olivia isn’t here.” Serena turns her back on him. “It’s just me.”
Mr Younge’s face is unchanging. His gaze steady. Piercing. Sharp brown eyes, like mahogany chiselled into stakes.
I can’t make out the colour of his eyes through the video call, but I don’t need to. I know that look well.
It’s that same look he would give me when he caught me in lies—and would stare, wait for me to crack, to break.
But Serena is sharper than I am.
Stronger.
She’s a sword.
Polished, even in the krum world with constant fatigue and lassitude limit and living in household chores, the stare she returns to Mr Younge is probably the fierce stare of a woman born into the highest families in the Videralli looking at a mere gentry servant.
The dull drone of Oliver’s answer comes from out of view, “Suddenly taken an interest in sheet music, have you?”
My teeth grit together.
The sheet music is too obviously mine. Even without a piano, I just love to read the music and listen to the melody in my mind.
Serena doesn’t play.
She doesn’t yearn for the smell of the paper or sometimes even parchment, or the glide of the keys beneath her fingertips.
Oliver is looking for something that proves I live in that loft.
And he found it.
Serena is smoother than I would be.
Her shrug is silk. “It must have gotten mixed in with my things when we packed—and separated.”
I can hear the humour in Oliver’s voice as he echoes, “Oh, you separated?”
“You got too close to us once.”
For a heartbeat, Serena holds his stare—and there’s a message in that look.
‘I know you let Olivia go. I know you gave her the watch. And I will tell everyone here what you did.’
Then she turns her stare to my father. “I’m alone.”
Father hasn’t budged from the window, hasn’t torn his steady gaze from the lane below. But he’s furthest away from the phone camera, so the image of him shifts every other moment into a blurry-grainy picture.
For a second there, it looked like he did move, maybe nodded his head at someone down in the lane, but then the image clears, and he’s still just a statue sprouted in the corner of the room.
He doesn’t acknowledge that Serena spoke to him, doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge her existence at all.
Mr Younge is the one who speaks, “We have reason to believe Olivia is with you, and that you have a child in your care.”
Serena is quiet for a moment—and it’s a weighted moment.
I can almost feel the cold panic spreading through her chest.
But her voice comes practiced, smooth, and she lies, “There is no child, and Olivia went her own way. I don’t know where she is—”
A crash crinkles the speakers.
Serena whirls around, her slippers scuffing over the floorboards.
She backs up two steps—until her spine digs into the hard benchtop of the kitchen trolley.
Oliver steps into view.
I watch my brother advance on her, as slowly as all the times Dray would corner me.
I watch a man who should be so familiar to my eyes—but seems so much like a stranger instead.
He stops an arm’s reach away from her. “We are not here for you. It is in your best interest to give her up, Serena.”
“I don’t know where she is—”
Mr Younge cuts her off, stern, “Let us save time, Miss Vasile. I have a letter from your father.”
She shifts her watery gaze to him.
Mr Younge lures the letter out from an inner pocket of his suit jacket. Then he expertly frisbees the envelope through the room.
It skids onto the benchtop—and Oliver smacks his hand down on it before it can fly off the counter.
Serena uses the opportunity to worm away from Oliver. She slides the envelope with her retreating steps, until she’s at the edge of the camera.
Oliver casually leans against the bench, watching as she slips out the letter and unfolds it.
A patience blankets over the room.
But I don’t feel that patience with me in the car.
My leg bobs, up and down, up and down; my fingers twist and tug and weave on my lap; my breaths tremble, slick with tears.