A rush of movement behind her.
She whirled to see Suzy racing out of the back door and across the garden. Hannah threw the ring down and took up the chase.
‘Marcel!’ she yelled.
She dashed outside but could see that Suzy had already reached the fence and was pulling a couple of the panels aside to duck through. Hannah sprinted through the tall weeds, hurdled over a broken lawnmower. When she reached the dilapidated fence, she looked back to see that Marcel had been tackled to the ground by Shane, and was now wrestling with him. She debated whether to go back and help, decided against it. She had confidence that Marcel could handle himself.
She pushed through the hole in the fence, then barged through dense shrubbery that seemed intent on clawing her back. She was unprepared for the steep slope that met her on the other side. She lost her footing, rolled down the bank, slammed hard onto a pathway and felt sharp-edged stones cutting into her knees and shins.
‘Shit!’
She clambered to her feet. Saw the blood oozing from the puncture wounds on her legs. She fought through the pain and started running again. Ahead, Suzy was widening the gap, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere she could go. To her left were the steep, slippery, grassy banks bordering the rear of a long row of houses, and to her right was a tall wire fence closing off access to a railway line. Another section of fencing ran perpendicular to it in the distance, terminating the path.
Jesus, Hannah thought. For a chain-smoker in her late thirties, that woman can move!
As she picked up the pace, her mind began to make sense of the situation. She realised that Tommy had been visiting Suzy via this route to her rear fence, and that was why he had never been picked up by surveillance officers stationed on the road at the front. Perhaps Suzy was heading towards him now, to warn him off. Or perhaps she knew that she was in deep shit herself. Was it Tommy’s idea to bring his fiancée’s ring to Suzy, or had she insisted that he do it to prove his devotion?
And then Hannah realised something else. A short distance in front of Suzy was an opening in the fence – a pedestrian level crossing to the other side of the tracks. Hannah could see the bright warning lights flashing.
And she could hear the train.
It was coming up behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. Still at some distance, but it was probably going at a hell of a speed. She looked again at Suzy and the crossing, performed some crude mental calculations. Decided that it wasn’t worth the risk.
Don’t do it, Suzy. You won’t make it.
She found some acceleration. Her heart was pounding, her lungs were ready to burst, her legs were burning, but still she ran.
Suzy looked back. Saw Hannah and the train. Carried out her own instant risk assessment.
No, Suzy. Please. It’s too dangerous.
Hannah heard the train roaring up behind her, the sudden ear-splitting two-tone blare of its horn, and she kept her eyes focused on Suzy, kept willing her not to attempt it because No Suzy, you won’t make in time, you’re too late, and then there was a rush of wind and thunderous noise and the sight of Suzy jinking to her right, onto the level crossing, and all that Hannah could do was collapse against the fence, her fingers clutching the wire as she stared at the blur of darkness rocketing past her, praying with all her might that Suzy had made it across that track, that she would soon be seen running in the distance and flipping two fingers up to her pursuer, because that would be so much better than the alternative.
But then the train was gone.
And so was Suzy. What remained of her was now scattered far and wide.
Hannah slid down the fence. She threw her head back and let out a howl of anguish. When she dropped her chin again and blinked away the mist of tears, she yearned to be proved wrong, to be shown that Suzy had evaded both capture and death.
Suzy wasn’t there.
Somebody else was, though.
Standing to attention atop a small hillock, stiff and proud in her new school uniform.
1
The hiss of the bus doors made Daniel Timpson look up from his comic. He peered through the grimy window to check where he was. The journey home took in a total of ten bus stops. This was number eight. He had to be careful about his count, because sometimes drivers skipped a stop if nobody wanted to get on or off.
‘I thought you’d gone to sleep.’
Daniel turned to the woman sitting next to him. He thought she looked very old. Maybe more than a hundred. She’d probably die soon. He hoped she didn’t die on the bus.
‘I don’t sleep on the bus,’ he told her. ‘I might miss my stop if I do that.’
She smiled. She had a nice smile, but it made him wonder if her teeth were real.
‘Very wise,’ she said. ‘I only mention it because you haven’t moved an inch for the past few minutes. You seem very engrossed in your comic.’
This puzzled Daniel. He didn’t know what engrossed meant, but he knew that a thing was horrible if it was gross, so why would he be reading something horrible?
‘It’s about Adam-9,’ he told her.
‘Adam-9? Is he a superhero?’
‘Not really. He’s a secret agent. That’s him.’ He pointed to a figure in his comic.
‘What’s so secret about him?’
‘Well, nobody knows what he looks like.’
‘Oh. Now I’m confused.’ She touched a withered finger to his comic, and he hoped that she didn’t put old-person germs on it. ‘Doesn’t he look like that?’
Daniel wasn’t surprised she was confused. Old people could get very muddled.
‘No. He puts on rubber masks that make him look like other people. He can look like anyone. Maybe even you if he had a really wrinkly mask.’
She laughed, and he didn’t know why.
