I go. Oil-sharp and acrid. Dangerous. The stink of petrol.
A sick, metallic taste blooms on my tongue. Fear.
With the shotgun raised to my shoulder, I go to the first door on the right, the nursery, saying a silent prayer. Please. Just this. This one life. I will never ask anything again, but please let Mia be spared. Using the muzzle of the shotgun, I nudge the door open.
Angela is lying just inside the doorway.
She is on her side, curled into herself. The side of her blouse torn by a shotgun blast, the carpet beneath her stained dark crimson red.
Oh no.
Oh no.
Panic is rising in me, heat flowing up to my face. I kneel by Angela’s side, touching my fingers to her neck in search of a pulse. It feels intimate, almost intrusive, to be touching her as she lies here when we had not even shaken hands yesterday. There is a pulse, weak and thready, but still there. Unconscious but still breathing, her airway clear. There’s still a chance.
I ball up a bedsheet and press it to her wound.
‘Hold on, Angela. I’m here and help’s coming.’
I pull out my phone and dial 999, covering her with a blanket as I wait for the call to connect. A part of me had known I’d find Angela here in this room as soon as I saw her husband’s body in the hall. I knew she would fight to defend her granddaughter, guarding the entrance to the nursery. And so she has. The stink of petrol is stronger here, almost overpowering, the floor and furniture stained dark with it. It is splashed everywhere, up the walls and curtains. The smell transports me back to that day in Libya, seeing the corpses scattered in groups, in ragged lines, in ones and twos, dark blood soaked into the dust beneath them. Civilians, all. Men, women. Children.
The call connects and I ask for an ambulance, giving the details as fast as I can.
‘Is the attacker still in the house?’ the operator is saying. ‘Are you in immediate danger?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How many victims?’
‘Two. One dead, one injured. Both gunshot wounds.’
I realise as I say it that they won’t send paramedics in now until armed police have cleared the house and neutralised any threat.
‘Anyone else hurt?’ the operator says.
‘Not sure.’
I step over Angela’s prone form and move further into the room but it is a wreck, everything turned over, drawers emptied, baby clothes and sheets and bottles of formula milk strewn across the floor. My eyes search out the wooden crib in the corner. It is on its side, broken in on itself, the wooden bars snapped, the mattress upended and laying beneath the frame. Something else. Small. Delicate. Pinned beneath the cot, motionless. Lifeless.
The 999 operator is still talking but I can’t hear him anymore.
No. No. No.
A sob rises in my throat as I realise what it is.
A tiny arm sticking out from under the bedding.
63
I stumble to the overturned cot, my eyes blurring with tears.
A drumbeat hammers in my head, Kathryn’s unspoken plea and my own promise. Please protect Mia. Please protect Mia. I knew there was danger, and I’ve failed her. We’ve all failed her. So many wasted lives. Kathryn, who sacrificed herself to protect this child, all that she had left of her sister. Angela and Gerald, shot by the man who almost killed their daughter a year ago. Zoe, locked in an endless sleep in the white room two floors below.
Less than twenty-four hours ago I was here with Mia while she giggled and smiled, Angela cuddling her granddaughter, talking to her, feeding her. I held Mia myself, felt the warmth of her little body, the touch of her tiny fingers on my cheek.
Now she’s gone. All gone.
I let my phone fall to the floor, pulling the frame of the upturned cot away as gently as I can to reach the tiny body beneath. Moving the broken slats and shifting the frame of the cot to the side so I can lift the mattress away. Touching her arm as gently as I can, I feel for a pulse at her wrist but there’s nothing, the skin waxy and smooth, the fingers already stiffening in death. I push the mattress away to move more of the weight off her. This most innocent victim, the only innocent one among all of us.
I wipe more tears away with my sleeve and reach under the bedding with one hand to pull carefully on her arm with the