Greenwich Park, Katherine Faulkner [ereader android .txt] 📗

for the stairs. When they see my tear-stained face, they avert their gaze, quicken their step. I feel the colour rising to my cheeks. Rachel places a hand on my arm. ‘You sure you don’t want me to spike that drink?’ I laugh, wiping my eyes. It’s been a while since I really laughed.

Rachel smiles. ‘Come on,’ she says, gesturing to the stairs at the back of the pub. ‘We’ll miss all the fun.’

The class starts. Sonia tells us to prepare for a ‘breathing exercise’ with our partner, and I am surprised to find myself intensely relieved that Rachel is here. The exercise involves me kneeling on all fours on the wooden floor, one of Sonia’s grubby tie-dye cushions under my knees. Meanwhile Rachel has to rub my back and encourage me to inhale and exhale through the ‘surges’ – the word Sonia uses when she is talking about the agonising pains for which we all know we are destined.

Sonia is weaving between us, hands splayed, wrists rotating, spinning some tale about waves on a shore, something about a ribbon around our uterus unravelling. The other women on all fours crane their necks to hear. Her voice is mostly drowned out by Rachel’s commentary.

‘You are smashing it, Helen!’ Rachel cries. She slaps her hands down on her thighs. ‘You’ve got this. You’re all over it. Push, Helen! Push! Oh God, I can see the head!’ She roars with laughter. One of the other women actually tuts.

By the time the class concludes – with a surreal Playmobil demonstration of a Caesarean section – it occurs to me how grateful I have been for Rachel’s companionship. I find myself admiring her. She is so upbeat about it all. Would I be so cheerful, in her situation? Although she hasn’t said so explicitly, it’s clear there is no father in the picture. And she is so young. I wouldn’t have the strength to do all this on my own. I mean, he might have been a bit useless lately, but I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have Daniel.

Rachel is standing up, pulling a jacket on over her bump. ‘Pub?’ she says brightly. ‘I mean, I know we’re already at the pub so … drink downstairs?’ She giggles. ‘We can go crazy and have another juice. Our vitamin levels will be through the roof!’

I glance at the clock. It’s 8 p.m. Daniel will be home soon. But I look at Rachel’s face, and somehow it seems a bit unfriendly to say so. Especially for someone who, presumably, has no one waiting for her at home.

I shrug, return her smile. ‘Why not?’

GREENWICH PARK

Under the shade of the plane tree, the girl pulls the envelope from her bag, inspects the contents.

He keeps watching, through the glass. He wants to keep watching until he is sure she is gone, until she is nothing more than a speck, a tiny pixel, drowned in the canvas of his view. Only then will his fists unclench, his pulse slow down.

He feels better when he is outside, on the Thames path. There is a breeze from the river. A briny smell, the grey-green swell, the black eyes of seabirds, floating lumps of foam and rubbish. The railings on the Thames wall are hot to the touch.

He turns away from the water, heads towards the park. He hears the gulls scream behind him as they fight over scraps.

That had better be it, he thinks to himself. That had better be the end of it. Somehow, though, he knows it is not. That it is just the beginning.

28 WEEKS

KATIE

The grey floors of the entrance hall at Cambridge Crown Court are streaked with rain. There are three people in front of me in the queue for security checks. As I stand waiting, I feel the water soaking through my cheap flat shoes.

The metal detectors sound when I walk through them.

‘I think that’s my watch, sorry,’ I say. ‘Here, look. Could I just –’

A full-chested woman in a Courts Service jumper ignores me and steps forward. ‘Arms out, please.’

She takes a hand-held black metal detector, waves it over my outstretched arms, my chest, my legs. Then she comes closer. We avert our eyes from one another while she searches my body with her hands, feeling along my collar, my waist, around the pockets of my trousers.

I see reporters I recognise from other papers overtaking me, piling into the lift, the doors behind them closing. I should be in there with them. The press gallery will be full. I shift my weight from one foot to another. Another security guard has unzipped my backpack and plucked out my make-up bag.

‘Can you open this purse for me, please?’

He does not look up as he says it. I smile, unzip the bag, try to look helpful. As he starts rooting around inside it with his two meaty fingers, I glance at my watch. A mascara topples to the floor, followed by a blister pack of headache tablets.

When I finally reach courtroom three, the press benches are packed. I’m lucky to get a seat. The barristers, in their black gowns and white collars, are already in place, and the defendants are in the dock. I examine them carefully. Both are wearing sombre, expensive-looking suits. Dark ties, combed hair and straight spines. They are flanked by bored-looking G4S security guards. One looks like he is about to fall asleep.

In the public gallery, one of the mothers is already clutching a squashed tissue, her eyes bloodshot. The fingers curled around the tissue are trembling. The father next to her is grim-faced, his hand clamped onto her knee. I think he must be the Earl, rather than the former agriculture minister. He stares at the press benches with barely concealed fury.

‘All rise.’

The judge enters in a long red gown, thick white fur at the sleeves, her wig yellowed, her spectacles black-rimmed. The clerk speaks. The walls all around us