London—Hertfordshire—
Crocker Family Residence
18 February, 0910 Hours GMT
“Dad!”
“No,” Crocker said flatly, in much the same tone and with much the same malevolence he employed on personnel in the Ops Room. In the Ops Room, it was quite effective, and had the desired result of instantly and entirely closing down any further debate.
Here at home was another story and if anything, seemed to have the opposite effect, as his elder daughter, Sabrina, was about to demonstrate. It didn’t help matters that he was at the kitchen stove, still in his dressing gown, a skillet in his hand, and more concerned with not breaking the yolks on the eggs he was frying up for the family breakfast than in exerting his authority. It was a position that, he concluded, lacked the appropriate authority.
“I’ve had the tickets for weeks!”
“I’m sure you can find a friend who wants them.”
“That’s not the point, Dad! Everyone’s going! Everyone!”
“You’re not everyone.”
Sabrina slammed her hand on the kitchen counter in frustration, then played her trump card. “Mom!”
From the kitchen table, Jennie didn’t look up from her newspaper. “Paul, it’s Saturday. She’s had the tickets for weeks.”
“She also performed abysmally on her mock exams,” Crocker countered. “She has lessons, she has that tutor coming, and she’s looking at her A-levels come summer. She needs to study.”
“I have been studying!” Sabrina complained. “Just because you’re never here to see it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, Dad!”
I am going to lose this argument, Crocker realized.
“Please don’t raise your voice at me,” he said.
Sabrina sulked, glowering at him. “I apologize.”
“Has she been studying?” Crocker asked his wife.
At the table, his younger daughter, Ariel, in imitation of her mother, didn’t look up from her book. “When she’s not online chatting with her mates.”
“Die,” Sabrina instructed her sister.
“She has been studying, Paul,” Jennie confirmed. “I already told her she could go. She’ll do fine on her exams. Making her miserable every weekend between now and when she takes them won’t improve that performance.”
“I thought we wanted better than fine.”
Jennie glanced up, warning him with her eyes. “I told her she can go.”
“Who is she going with?” Crocker tried. “Who are you going with?”
“Friends from school,” his daughter answered.
“I’d like names, if you don’t mind.”
“Are you going to check them?”
Crocker shot her a look. In the Ops Room, it would have sent its target running for cover, or at its best, dropped them in their tracks. Here, it reinforced Sabrina’s defiance, and she raised her chin slightly, her mouth tight, daring him to admit that, yes, he kept his family under surveillance. She might not have understood exactly what her father did for a living, but she knew enough to know it was for the Government. He never discussed his work in front of the children, and very rarely with Jennie, but Sabrina was old enough and smart enough to understand what that omission meant. If she thought of her father as James Bond, though, she remained unimpressed. He doubted she actually believed that he would go so far as to keep his wife and children under watch.
Crocker moved the skillet off the burner, began sliding portions of breakfast onto the waiting plates beside the stove. “Is that boy going to be there? Lancelot or whatever his name is?”
At the table, Ariel giggled, then stifled the sound and studiously turned the page in her book. She was reading Brian Jacques’ latest, Crocker noted, yet another in a long sequence of novels about noble medieval mice.
“Tristan,” Sabrina corrected tightly. “No, I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“Who are you seeing?”
“Paul,” Jennie warned.
“I’m going with Trinnie, Dad. I’ll be spending the night at her place after the concert.”
“Trinnie’s the one with the spots?”
“It’s a mole, and she had it removed.”
“When will you be back?”
Sabrina smiled in quiet triumph, sensing the moment of capitulation. “Tomorrow morning.”
Crocker finished fixing the plates, moving them to the table. He had to clear his throat twice, loudly, before Ariel and Jennie would lower their respective reading materials to make room for the breakfasts. He set their food in front of them, and watched as each woman set about eating, without so much as the slightest acknowledgment of his culinary efforts.
“I have no authority in this house,” Crocker declared.
As if to confirm the statement, he got no response from any of them.
“Right,” he told his eldest. “Go. But you’re back by noon tomorrow.”
Sabrina kissed his cheek lightly, happy once more, and then was out of the room, a “thank you” drifting back toward him in her wake. He heard her feet thumping up the stairs, rushing back to her room. Apparently she had a wardrobe to plan.
Crocker poured himself a fresh cup of tea, then took his seat at the table. Jennie lowered her copy of the Guardian, smiling at him. Sometimes he thought his wife read the liberal paper just to annoy him.
From behind her book, Ariel asked, “So I’m supposed to have a broken leg, am I?”
Both Jennie and Crocker looked at her.
Ariel took her bookmark from where it rested beside her plate, set it between the pages, closed the book, and then looked at her parents. Her glasses, Crocker noticed, were smudged. Unlike Sabrina, Ariel went to great lengths not to care how she looked.
“Heard that, did you?” Jennie asked.
Ariel nodded. “I crashed my bicycle?”
“Tuesday,” Jennie said. “Yes, you narrowly avoided being hit by a car.”
“On Valentine’s Day?”
“You were distracted, obviously.”
Ariel made a face, disgusted by the thought of the kind of people who cared about things like boys and Valentine’s Day.
Crocker looked at Jennie. “Barclay called?”
“One of his assistants,” Jennie confirmed. “Last evening, before you got home.” She cast a glance to Ariel, then back to Crocker. “Little jugs have big ears.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”
“You did get home rather late, Paul. It slipped my mind.”
“Did he say why he was calling?”
“The assistant? He wanted to know if Ariel was all right. Said that Sir Frances was quite concerned.”
Ariel asked, “Who’s Sir Frances?”
“Daddy’s boss,” Jennie said.
“You lied to your boss? You told him I’d broken my leg?” Ariel asked Crocker.
“Yes.”
“Do I get a set of crutches, at least?”
Crocker didn’t respond, thinking. Jennie was looking at him, now mildly concerned.
Barclay’s checking the story, Crocker thought. Three days late, but he’s checking the story. Why now?
Crocker rose from the table, finishing his tea, leaving his breakfast half eaten. “I’m going to have to go into the office.”
Jennie nodded, which was bearable, but Ariel’s look of disappointment was bitter, and not.
“I’m sorry,” he told his younger daughter.
“You promised we’d go to the show at the Old Town Hall,” Ariel said softly. Like her mother, when Ariel was upset, she wouldn’t raise her voice. Rather, she lowered it until it was almost impossible to hear. “You promised we’d see the puppets, the ones from Japan.”
“I know. I am sorry, Ariel.”