One of Us (40 page)

I hold his face in my hands and kiss it again and again; his lips, his eyebrows.

Greg lies still.

“Greg?” I stand up. My head spins. “Can you not move?”

“My hands.”

I look down. I can't believe I didn't notice before. Greg's wrists are handcuffed to the bed. I stare at him in horror. He shrugs.

I climb onto the bed and lie down carefully beside him.

We're both thinking of the handcuffs and what they mean.

There are voices outside. They are going to take Greg away, after all this, like Jeremiah. I hold on to his shoulders as tightly as I can. The curtain is yanked aside and now the room fills with people: the green nurse, the young policeman, another much older policeman, and the doctor in his white coat. They all freeze when they see us lying together on the bed.

The policeman at the back has a gun, pointing at us. I cover Greg with my body.

“Let her go!” shouts the policeman.

“Verity, do what he says,” says Greg.

I hold on to him more tightly. “Leave him alone!” I shout. “Go away!”

The green nurse plows into the middle of the room. She stands in front of Greg and me with her arms stretched wide. “Get. Out. Of. My. Ward!” she shouts. “With that
thing
.” She's quivering with anger.

There's a frozen moment, but then the policeman with the gun steps forward anyway.

Someone is pushing her way into the room. Tina. She flips open an ID badge as she passes the policemen in the doorway.

“I think we can clear this up, gentlemen. Verity. Greg.” She nods in our direction. Her eyes fall on Greg's hand. She turns back to the policemen. “You need to get rid of those,” she says, pointing.

I wait for them to slap some cuffs on her too. But the young policeman comes over to Greg and unlocks his wrists. Greg doesn't move. Neither do I. I'm not letting go of him now, no way, in case it's a trap.

“There's no further use here for armed response,” says Tina. And they leave, just like that.

“Not before time,” snorts the green nurse. She points sternly at me. “You should be in cubicle three. But you can stay here for now.”

That's good, because I'm not going anywhere.

“Verity?” says Greg's muffled voice. “I can't breathe.”

I sit up. Greg does too. He puts his arm around me heavily, because he hasn't been able to move for some time.

“Tina?” he says.

She slips the ID badge into the top pocket of her jacket. “What can I say?” She smiles and gives a little shrug. “I have two jobs.”

“Does Brer Magnus know?” Greg's voice sounds slightly outraged.

“Well,” says Tina. “I think he will now, don't you?” She sits down on the chair beside the bed.

“I thought they were going to take Greg to Tranquility Sound,” I say. “Like Jeremiah.”

“I came as soon as Celestina phoned me,” says Tina. She turns to Greg. “Unfortunately you'd already left.”

“Why did they want to arrest Greg? They called him the assailant.”

“The gun was in the car with Greg,” says Tina.

“Oskar threw it into the car,” I say.

“He fell onto the steps and drowned,” she adds. “So he seemed to be the victim. You fell and hit your head on the sea wall.”

“Typical,” says Greg.

“It was your fault,” I say. “Your stupid oily car. And your door locks are broken too.”

Tina looks at me. “Now. Jeremiah,” she says. “He wasn't arrested because of you, Verity. It was because of his cousin.”

Jeremiah was with his cousin, that very first night at the Institute, after the Spring Meeting. The conversation I overheard between them and Brer Magnus was the reason I suspected him in the first place.

“His cousin really is in a militant cell,” says Tina. “Jeremiah didn't know. But he helped his cousin put some bags of fertilizer in a lock-up. Jeremiah believed they were for his cousin's gardening business.”

Greg gives a little snort.

Tina half-smiles at him. “It was an easy mistake,” she said. “Most people don't use it as an explosive. Jeremiah's been released now.”

She looks at me. “I feel I let you down, Verity,” she says. “I didn't understand that you didn't know who you
were. When Brer Magnus told me about the bugs, I suspected that Oskar was involved with an extremist group. I just didn't know which one until after you came to see me. And both Brer Magnus and I underestimated Oskar's group. Neither of us realized that Oskar was in the CPP.”

“The CPP?” I manage.

“The Citizens' Protectorate Party.” She takes off her glasses and balances them in her curls. “Unbelievable as it seems, they're a political party. They want to fight the next election, but you know their real agenda, K. Nothing Oskar told you was true. He wasn't a policeman. He was recruited by the CPP when he was a student and he's been with them ever since. So he knew how to manipulate you.”

She hesitates. “You asked me about the girl who drowned, K. I'm sorry, but she was someone who got involved with the CPP and then tried to leave. You don't get out of the CPP alive. She was Oskar's girlfriend, Mona Talbot. That's why he was so desperate to get back in their good graces.”

“Are you a citizen?” I ask her, because she looks like one today.

Tina looks at me. “Maybe it doesn't matter who's a citizen and who's Brotherhood,” she says. “Maybe I'm like you, Verity,” she adds. “K.”

“I don't think so,” I say. “Your parents weren't . . .” I tail off, because I don't want to say it.

But Greg pulls me closer. “That's not who you are, Verity,” he says.

Tina puts her glasses back on. “Actually, K,” she says. “Verity?”

“Just call me Verity.”

Tina takes her glasses off again so that she can rub her eyes. “It's by no means certain who planted the bomb that killed your parents. It could have been either side. It could have been them. Or it could have been someone who targeted them for being in an illegal mixed marriage.”

“But the newspaper cuttings . . .”

“Yes.” Tina smiles a tired smile. “You haven't seen some of today's papers, have you?” she says, “with your picture all over them? As a failed bomber?”

I don't know why I'm shocked.

“So that's why I have to ask you,” she says. “Today the Reconciliation Agreement was signed. But things would have been very different if that bomb had gone off, with you as another Brotherhood bomber.” She hesitates again. Her face is clouded with doubt, making her suddenly look much younger. “Would you give an interview? Tell your story to a newspaper reporter?”

I feel sick at the thought.

“You don't have to do that,” says Greg quickly.

Tina leans closer to me. “If people know what the CPP really stands for, K,” she says, “they'll know what they would be voting for. And their political party status will be revoked if they can be proved to have committed terrorist offenses.” She waits for my answer.

But I made my decision when I saw the girl in the silver sequined top, who didn't deserve to die, outside the Old City Meeting Hall.

“I'll do it,” I say.

CHAPTER 54

I
CLOSE THE
door of the wood burner. I've got the hang of it now, and the cabin is warming up. Greg is in the galley, cooking chicken and rice. He has his back to me, frying onions. I put my arms around him and he half-turns. He has a smudge of tomato puree on his nose. He turns back to the sizzling chicken and starts humming again. Greg always hums when he's cooking.

I have another look around the cabin. The table has six plates in a pile next to the glasses and the mats. Greg brought four of them from the Institute. Everything's ready, everyone's coming. It's late, but there's no curfew now. The rice is on the table already, in a pot, with oven gloves on top to keep it warm.

Greg comes into the cabin. “That's done,” he says. He sits on the green bench and pulls me down beside him. “I've got something for you.” He slides his backpack toward him and takes out a flat package. “Open it.”

I rip off the paper to reveal the back of a picture frame. When I turn it over, my sunflower print leaps up at me, gold flashes of light shining against the green and brown of the faded petals and the midnight blue of the sky.

“Mr. Williams gave me one,” says Greg. “Is the frame all right?” He looks at me, a little unsure. “You like it?”

I put my arms around him and kiss him. And then there's a clatter of shoes on the deck outside and a loud knocking on the door. But it doesn't matter, because we have all the time in the world now.

“They're here.” I stand up. “I'll let them in.”

Celestina comes in first, shrugging the cold off her shoulders. She gives me a quick hug and then calls behind her, “This is Verity's palace, Jo.”

Her friend Jo steps down into the galley. “Nice,” she says. “It's very cozy.” She puts a box of chocolates on the draining board.

The cabin looks much smaller once Emanuel and Serafina have come in too.

Celestina opens the door into my bedroom. “I see you're keeping it shipshape, Verity,” she says. “It looks a lot better now it's clean, thanks to me.”

“You can all sit down now,” calls Greg. “Food's nearly ready.”

I take the coats over to the pegs by the door and hang up Serafina's purple jacket, still cold and smelling of the freezing fog that drifts over the canal basin.

But when I turn back to face the cabin, everything is suffused with the yellow light from the lamps, warmer because of the black squares of the curtainless windowpanes. If I was going to paint it, I would use watercolors, so that I could bathe the paper first in the same amber shade as the withered sunflower petals.

Emanuel is stooping to climb onto the bench without hitting his head on the glass lampshade, and Serafina is arranging the pink flowers she brought in a jam jar on the table. Celestina is still showing Jo around, and they're laughing at how small the bathroom is. Celestina looks over at me suddenly and smiles as if she knows what I'm thinking. She gives an enigmatic little Celestina nod.

I look at Greg in his red-checked shirt, and I remember the first time I saw him, in the station before the bomb. I don't think the Strife will return now, because the tide has turned. Greg is unaware of me gazing at him because he's stirring cream into the pan, but then he glances up and our eyes meet before he gives me his raised-eyebrow look.

This moment is perfect. I don't have to pretend anything. We know the best and the worst of each other, and here we are.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank:

Lisa Cheng, my editor at Running Press.

Allison Hellegers of Rights People.

Barry Cunningham, my editors Imogen Cooper and Rachel Leyshon, Rachel Hickman, and all at Chicken House.

My critique groups: Katherine Barnby, Mike Thexton and Catherine Randall, and online group YACritique: Nicky Schmidt, Kathryn Evans, Jackie Marchant, Pat Walsh, Carmel Waldron, Ellen Renner, and Vanessa Harbour.

Amanda Swift, for her mentoring support before I sent the book out and Olivia Phelan, for her generous feedback.

SCBWI, and the interesting writers and illustrators I meet through it. Everyone who kindly read the manuscript.

My family for all their love and support: Pete, Rory, Kirsten, and Cara. My parents, Alan and Rena, who filled our childhood with stories, and my sisters, Mairi and Alison.

Dougal, for the walks that helped me plan the story.