She snuggled against me; happier, I hoped. I loved her incredibly. The transplant had a fifty-fifty chance of success. Rachel would run again. She had to.
Linda and Pegotty came back laughing from their walk and Linda built towers of bright plastic building blocks for Pegotty to knock down, a game of endless enjoyment for the baby. Rachel and I sat on the floor, playing checkers.
‘You always let me be white,’ Rachel complained, ‘and then you sneak up with the black counters when I’m not looking.’
‘You can play black, then.’
‘It’s disgusting,’ she said, five minutes later. ‘You’re cheating.’
Linda looked up and said, astounded, ‘Are you two quarrelling?’
‘He always wins,’ Rachel objected.
‘Then don’t play with him,’ Linda said reasonably.
Rachel set up the white pieces as her own. I neglected to take one of them halfway through the game, and with glee she huffed me, and won.
‘Did you let me win?’ she demanded.
‘Winning’s more fun.’
‘I hate you.’ She swept all the pieces petulantly from the board and Pegotty put two of them in his mouth.
Rachel, laughing, picked them out again and dried them and set up the board again, with herself again as white, and peacefully we achieved a couple of close finishes until, suddenly as usual, she tired.
Linda produced tiny chocolate cakes for tea and talked happily of the Swiss donor and how everything was going to be all right. Rachel was convinced, I was convinced, Pegotty smeared chocolate all over his face. Whatever the next week might bring to all of us, I thought, that afternoon of hope and ordinariness was an anchor in reality, an affirmation that small lives mattered.
It wasn’t until after she’d fastened both children into the back of her car to drive to the hospital that Linda mentioned Ellis Quint.
‘That trial is on again tomorrow, isn’t it?’ she asked.
We stood in the chilly air a few paces from her car. I nodded. ‘Don’t let Rachel know.’
‘She doesn’t. It hasn’t been hard to keep it all away from her. She never talks about Silverboy anymore. Being so ill… she hasn’t much interest in anything else.’
‘She’s terrific.’
‘Will Ellis Quint go to prison?’
How could I say ‘I hope so’? And did I hope so? Yet I had to stop him, to goad him, to make him fundamentally wake up.
I said, dodging it, ‘It will be for the judge to decide.’
Linda hugged me. No tears. ‘Come and see Rachel in her bubble?’
‘You couldn’t keep me away.’
‘God… I hope…’
‘She’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘So will you.’
Patient TeleDrive took me back to London and, because of the fixed hour of Linda’s departure to the hospital, I again had time to spare before meeting India for dinner.
I again ducked being dropped in Pont Square in the dark evening, and damned Gordon for his vigilance. He had to sleep sometime… but when?
The restaurant called Kensington Place was near the northern end of Church Street, the famous road of endless antique shops, stretching from Kensington High Street, in the south, up to Notting Hill Gate, north. Teledrive left me and my overnight bag on the northwest corner of Church Street, where I dawdled awhile looking in the brightly lit windows of Waterstone’s bookshop, wondering if Rachel would be able to hear the store’s advertised children’s audio tapes in her bubble. She enjoyed the subversive Just William stories. Pegotty, she thought, would grow up to be like him.
A large number of young Japanese people were milling around on the comer, all armed with cameras, taking flash pictures of one another. I paid not much attention beyond noticing that they all had straight black hair, short padded jackets, and jeans. As far as one could tell, they were happy. They also surged between me and Waterstone’s windows.
They bowed to me politely, I bowed unenthusiastically in return.
They seemed to be waiting, as I was, for some prearranged event to occur. I gradually realized from their quiet chatter, of which I understood not a word, that half of them were men, and half young women.
We all waited. They bowed some more. At length, one of the young women shyly produced a photograph that she held out to me. I took it politely and found I was looking at a wedding. At a mass wedding of about ten happy couples wearing formal suits and Western bridal gowns. Raising my head from the photo, I was met by twenty smiles.
I smiled back. The shy young woman retrieved her photo, nodded her head towards her companions and clearly told me that they were all on their honeymoon. More smiles all around. More bows. One of the men held out his camera to me and asked — I gathered — if I would photograph them all as a group.
I took the camera and put my bag at my feet, and they arranged themselves in pairs neatly, as if they were used to it.
Click. Flash. The film wound on, quietly whirring.
All the newlyweds beamed.
I was presented, one by one, with nine more cameras. Nine more bows. I took nine more photos. Flash. Flash. Group euphoria.
What was it about me, I wondered, that encouraged such trust? Even without language there seemed to be no doubt on their part of my willingness to give pleasure. I mentally shrugged. I had the time, so what the hell. I took their pictures and bowed, and waited for eight o’clock.
I left the happy couples on Waterstone’s corner and, carrying my bag, walked fifty yards down Church Street towards the restaurant. There was a narrow side street beside it, and opposite, on the other side of Church Street, one of those quirks of London life, a small recessed area of sidewalk with a patch of scrubby grass and a park bench, installed by philanthropists for the comfort of footsore shoppers and other vagrants. I would sit there, I decided, and watch for India. The restaurant doors were straight opposite the bench. A green-painted bench made of horizontal slats.
I crossed Church Street to reach it. The traffic on Sunday evening was sporadic to nonexistent. I could see a brass plate on the back of the bench: the name of the benefactor who’d paid for it.
I was turning to sit when at the same time I heard a bang and felt a searing flash of pain across my back and into my right upper arm. The impact knocked me over and around so that I ended sprawling on the bench, half lying, half sitting, facing the road.
I thought incredulously, I’ve been shot.
I’d been shot once before. I couldn’t mistake the thud. Also I couldn’t mistake the shudder of outrage that my invaded body produced. Also… there was a great deal of blood.
I’d been shot by Gordon Quint.
He walked out of the shadows of the side street opposite and came towards me across Church Street. He carried a hand-gun with its black, round mouth pointing my way. He was coming inexorably to finish what he’d started, and he appeared not to care if anyone saw him.
I didn’t seem to have the strength to get up and run away.
There was nowhere to run to.
Gordon looked like a farmer from Berkshire, not an obsessed murderer. He wore a checked shirt and a tie and a tweed jacket. He was a middle-aged pillar of the community, a judge and jury and a hangman… a raw, primitive walking act of revenge.
There was none of the screaming out-of-control obscenity with which he’d attacked me the previous Monday. This killer was cold and determined and reckless.
He stopped in front of me and aimed at my chest.
‘This is for Ginnie,’ he said.
I don’t know what he expected. He seemed to be waiting for something. For me to protest, perhaps. To plead.