in past Martha. ‘Mum? Mum, it’s me.’
There was a faint spear of light coming in through a tiny cracked window, clogged with bird feathers, at the top of the wall. Not much light, but enough that Leona could see her eyes remained locked on the scuffed and peeling wall opposite. Leona knelt down beside her.
‘Mum?’
At her daughter’s touch her trance broke and she turned to look at her, a momentary look of confusion on her scarred face.
‘Mum? It’s me!’
‘Leona?’
‘Yes!’
‘I thought . . . it was. Like your father . . . just a dream . . .’ Then the hazy look of bewilderment was gone, replaced as her eyebrows suddenly arched and her face crumbled. She wrapped her arms tightly around Leona and began to sob uncontrollably into her shoulder.
‘It’s okay, Mum, I’m back. I’m back.’ She said I not We. Right now wasn’t the time to tell her about Jacob. Not now. If Mum asked she decided some white lie would do for the moment. Jenny sobbed a stream of tear-soaked words into her neck, none of which Leona could untangle or make much sense of. She recognised Walter’s name in there somewhere, however.
Adam stepped past Martha into the store room. ‘Leona, we should make sure we find that fella. You know? Before he decides to rally his fan club and give us any more grief.’
He’s right.
Leona loosened her mother’s arms and pulled back slightly. ‘Mum, we just need to go and straighten things out, all right? Then I’ll be back and we’ll talk.’
‘Lee, don’t go again . . . please . . .’ she whispered.
‘I’m not leaving you, Mum. I promise. I’m home now.’
She got up slowly, easing her mum’s lean arms from her, and started to follow Brooks out of the room.
She stopped and turned to Tami. ‘Dr Gupta?’ Formal - she didn’t feel like indulging in first names with either of them right now. ‘See to her, will you? Clean her up. Take her back to her quarters?’
‘Of course, Leona. Of course.’
Outside in the passage, Adam turned to her. ‘That was your mum?’
She knew what he was asking by the tone in his voice. That’s the tough woman you warned me about?
‘Yeah, that’s my mum.’ She wanted to add, you’re not exactly catching her at her best. But she decided not to.
Adam seemed to understand. ‘So, let’s go find that fucking bastard, shall we?’
She nodded. ‘Let’s.’
Leona looked at the far end of the walkway: the primary compression platform, a crowd of people on the main deck just beyond the walkway’s wire cage.
Not such a big crowd of fans now, though, is it?
Whilst she’d been looking up from the tugboat at the safety rails lined with once-familiar faces, Leona had assumed the whole community was in thrall to Mr Latoc. However, as soon as they’d managed to scale that rope ladder, as soon as his loyal followers had digested the sight of four soldiers bearing firearms . . . and Leona, looking like she was ready to cut herself a scalp or two, his support had quickly begun to fall away.
Funny, that.
And now they were staring down the walkway at his more loyal acolytes, those who had run back across onto ‘Valérie’s platform’. Her lips pressed out a hard smile. Little more than fifteen minutes ago that manipulative bastard had considered all five platforms to be his own personal fiefdom. It was now him and fifty or sixty of his followers over there and, having checked Walter’s gun locker, there was a solitary gun somewhere amongst them.
She caught the glint of gun-metal, and saw it was Howard who was holding it shakily. Aiming it down the walkway at her. Right behind him, her head poking over his rounded shoulder, was Alice Harton.
‘You fucking well stay back!’ she screamed at them. ‘Or he’ll shoot you!’
Despite the warning, Leona stepped forward onto the walkway and into the wire cage. ‘Where is that bastard?’
Alice angrily jabbed a finger over Howard’s shoulder. ‘You stay right there!’
Leona advanced calmly, unarmed, fortified not so much by any notion of courage as an unshakeable desire to wrap her hands around the bitch’s throat. She’d never been a big fan of Alice Harton. Certainly much less so now.
‘Where is he, Alice?’
The woman said nothing.
Leona felt the walkway grille under her feet vibrate and turned to see Martha joining her.
‘Lee,’ she said, her strong voice catching with emotion. ‘I . . . I was as guilty as them. I listened to him. I believed in him.