Omega

This went on for some time. What did I look like to her? A zombie? A drooling idiot? What was she trying to tell me? Something about Lyneth and the girls? She didn’t exactly look devastated, more concerned. This encouraged me. I was certain I’d seen only the front of the building collapsing in the explosion. Lyneth and the girls might have been at the back of the store. Possibly they had been injured by flying debris.

Suddenly I had an image of myself standing on sodden grass, watching as a coffin was lowered into a hole in the ground that had been cut square to accommodate more than one. I had no idea whether or not this was a true memory since I couldn’t actually remember anything else apart from Tanya’s previous visit to my bedside. But if Lyneth and the girls were dead they would probably have been buried by now.

No. It didn’t make sense. How could I have attended a funeral when I was still hospitalised and couldn’t even get out of bed without help? Tanya didn’t look pained enough. I had the impression she was more worried about me.

What had caused the explosion? Possibly she was telling me, but I was quite unable to comprehend anything. The idea that anyone would deliberately target a toy store was so repulsive it beggared belief.

I felt such a confusion of emotions. In embarrassment I managed to turn my head and look out the window again. The lawn below became a road, the redbrick hospital the metal-ribbed flanks of a bridge across which I was driving, my knuckles oozing lymph. Then I was back in the wheelchair again.

Tanya leaned forward to wipe my cheeks with a handkerchief that smelt of her perfume. She’d worn it as long as I’d known her, though I couldn’t recall its name. She scrutinised me in silence. This was unreal. Somehow I had to get a grip on things.

Tanya dragged her chair closer and took hold of my hands. She was talking again, and I could tell from her expression that she was insisting that I concentrate. Nothing she said made any sense. The sound of her voice grew higher pitched, became a buzzing that I thought was going to make my head explode.

At this point she did something astonishing. She leaned forward and planted a kiss on my lips.

It was a gentle but unreserved kiss. She hadn’t kissed me like that in years, since our salad days at university when everything had been new and we couldn’t keep our hands off one another.

She drew back and looked closely at me. I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking.

SIX

Owain had produced a torch and was climbing a stairway that zigzagged up the outside of the building.

He emerged on to a broad balcony with a view to the west. The building lay on the south bank near Westminster Bridge, itself an unfamiliar utilitarian structure of girders and thick wooden beams. In the darkness across the frozen river I could see the huddled fortresses of the state. They looked like a latter-day version of an ancient temple complex, but dedicated to their own hermetic ceremonies rather than the lofty aspirations of worship. A deserted park of sinuous walkways and barren trees occupied the site of the Houses of Parliament.

I tried to wrench myself free of him, to hurl myself back to my own world. It was another unwilled and unanticipated transition, a seamless shift from the warm aftermath of Tanya’s kiss to the bitter-cold outside air. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted my own life, as fraught with confusion and uncertainty as it was. How else was I going to find out what had actually happened?

But in this other world I was little more than a phantom in Owain’s mind. I had no physical leverage and couldn’t budge myself. Owain wasn’t aware of my strivings—indeed he still gave no sign of being aware of my presence at all. And I found that I couldn’t in this instance influence his actions in the slightest: he was firmly in command of himself.

Owain had parked the Land Rover in the bays below ground. There was a dent in the wing on the passenger side from the collision with the wall. No one had witnessed the accident, and his only injury was skinned knuckles. Somehow he had managed to drive home without further incident.

His door was painted an anonymous military green. The building, popularly known as the Brass Barracks, had been erected in the nineteen eighties, purpose-built for visiting diplomats and dignitaries. But the effective collapse of civilian politics meant that it had become quarters for administrative officers based in central London. Each apartment suite had its own balcony and was generally arranged to maximise privacy. Which suited Owain perfectly.

The door was double locked, the keys hidden in a niche above the lintel. From the outside the place looked drearily functional, but when he stepped inside and turned the lights on I saw a carpeted corridor that gave out into a spacious kitchen. Doors on either side hung ajar, showing a bedroom, bathroom and lounge. It was big enough to house a small family.