Billy’s fingers dragged hairs from the back of my neck as they were wrenched away. His broken fingernails scratched stinging claw marks along the length of my chin. Sea salt blew into the wounds. Joni tried to wrestle him into a hug, but he wriggled away. He leapt into my arms again, a soft body that fit mine like a jigsaw puzzle. My missing piece. I put my hand to the back of his head and slid my thumb to the place behind his ear. He gripped me even tighter and shuddered.
“When are you coming back, Mummy?” Charlie asked, twisting his trousers into knots. “How many sleeps?”
“Quite a few sleeps, Charlie,” I told him. “Can you look after the others for me? Stay together. Joni will be with you. You’re safe now, okay? That’s better, isn’t it, now that you’re safe? That’s better.” I stopped and took a calming breath. Charlie clung to my hip, wide-eyed.
“We will keep them safe,” said Dr. Larsen.
“Until I get back.”
Not a single muscle shifted on the man’s face. “Of course.”
Maggie sat on the bench seat, arms wrapped around herself like a straitjacket.
“Maggie?”
She ignored me, staring hard at the rocks that were emerging from the water and growing up around the boat.
“Maggie, I have to go now.” I tried to move Billy so I could hug her, but he clamped on. I shifted him onto one leg to crouch down. “Maggie?”
“Why are you going?”
“To bring Lola home. She’s all alone. And it’s dangerous.”
“But you promised.”
I had. I had promised never to leave her again. My mother’s voice in my head: Never make promises you can’t keep. It reminded me of something. I worked my fingers into my jeans pocket and drew out a velvet pouch.
“I want you to take this, Maggie. Look after it for me.” I opened the string and drew out my mother’s huge brooch.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, turning the jade in her hands. She struggled with the pin, and I helped her fix it in place, holding the blanket closed across her chest. She looked like a tiny Celt, a warrior child raised under Boudicca.
“Mummy?” she said. “What if you die?”
Billy’s arms tightened around my throat.
“Then one day, Maggie, you will give that brooch to your own daughter. Even though you love it, and it’s hard to let it go, you will give it to her. And you will understand—because you will be a mummy by then—you will understand that what you want doesn’t matter. You don’t even have a choice. You will tell her that someone gave you a precious thing, but with it came the responsibility to protect it—”
“You’re trying to say that Lola is the precious thing, aren’t you? And the other children.”
“Yes, Maggie. That’s right.”
“But they’re not your children. We’re your children.”
“I know, I know. It’s hard to explain, but—” The jumble that I was trying to define coiled up inside me. I tugged at a few frayed edges in my mind—I can’t let them die: couldn’t live with myself; after all that Joni has done for me; I owe Woody; I’d never leave you if I thought you were in danger; you’re safe but they’re not—only the knot just got tighter. “Maggie, I’m—I’m just trying to do my best.”
Once again, I saw myself reflected in her eyes: her train jumping the tracks, a pause while she gathered herself up and carried on.
“We’ll be stuck on these rocks if you don’t go soon,” she said.
I kissed her scraggly hair. “I love you, Maggie.”
Now Charlie. I turned to him. “Do you understand? I don’t want to leave you. I love you. But—”
“I get it.”
“Really?”
“It’s like Peter when he slept by the gate that time. He said he wasn’t scared, but”—he raised his arms and let them fall against his sides—“he was scared.”
“But he did it anyway.”
“Can I come with you?” he asked.
“No.”
“I could help—”
“You’d be brilliant, but no. The only way I can go back in there, Charlie, is knowing that you are safe. Do you see?”
“Yes.”
I hugged him for a long time, until Larsen put his huge hand on my shoulder and drew Charlie over to a seat.
Like all toddlers, Billy sensed my need to leave and gripped me tighter than ever. The boat rocked as he flailed in my arms.
“Billy,” I said. At least I didn’t need words for him. I crushed him to me, as though I could press his soft body into my own, as though our separation weren’t yet complete, and we could go back to one flesh. His forehead pressed hot against mine, and I thought fervently about how much I loved him, hoping that the strength of feeling would burn through our skin and deep into his mind, leaving him branded with it. Whatever happens, you will remember this, I told him silently, you will remember that there was this much love. His tears were hot salt on my raw skin. His kissy lips one more time. Then Larsen pulled him away. I slid over the side of the boat into ankle-deep water.
“It is time to go,” he said. He called out to the driver, and the engine raged.
I took a step away.
“Don’t let them see you,” he said.
The slipway hid me from the helicopters, but I crouched down anyway, one hand against its slimed wall.
“When will you be back?” I pushed my tears away into the sea.
“It is not my remit to come back.”
“You like having a remit, do you? Lots of lovely paperwork?”
The doctor smiled into Billy’s golden hair.
“If you get bored again,” I said, “feel free to come and rescue me.”
The driver pushed off. The dinghy rotated slowly, so that Joni drifted past me. She reached out and made sounds of gratitude and promise, but her words were lost in the roar of the engine. The boat edged into deeper water, and then the outboard motor dropped, and it surged forward. Larsen gathered Billy into a bear hug, and the motor roared again, the dinghy rearing up into the waves.
I watched them and they watched me; I would never turn away; I would always look back. By the time the small figures of my children were out of sight, my feet stood on sand, the tide cutting me off, stranded and alone.
The sea breeze carried the voices of the Cleaners from the beach. They sounded closer than they were, but I kept myself low as I scrambled over a rocky breakwater to reach the cover of the houses that faced the sea. I clambered into a back garden, looking for somewhere to hide in case the helicopter took off again.