The Chosen One (2009) by Sam Bourne

Author:Sam Bourne [Bourne, Sam]
Format: epub
Tags: Sam Bourne
ISBN: 9780007352548
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

The light was fluorescent, the smell stale. Upon rows and rows of metal shelves, mounted on Meccano-style uprights, were hundreds of cardboard boxes. Each one was labelled in the thick but fading ink of a marker pen. She began reading off the years. 2001-2, 2000-1…

The secretary had just asked the difficult question Maggie had been hoping to avoid – whose file is it you’re looking for? – when she was called away to deal with a fourteen-year-old boy with a nosebleed. She nudged Maggie through a pair of double-doors, then unlocked another dark green door before rushing upstairs with a pack of tissues, calling back over her shoulder, ‘I’ll be back shortly!’

Maggie was left alone, accompanied only by the gurgling of hot water pipes. She didn’t have much time. With her head angled, she read quickly along the sides of these old brown boxes. 1979-80, 1978-79, 1977-78…

Turning the corner, she found at last the right year. She pulled the box down and, with no table to rest on, set it on the ground and knelt beside it, coughing as the dust of the floor rose to her throat.

Inside were two parallel rails on which hung a series of dark green files. She did a quick flick through the Bs: the Baker file was gone, no doubt removed during last year’s campaign, when journalists kept asking for it. A few Cs, a large number of Ds, a handful of Es; on and on until, at last, there it was.

Jackson, Robert Andrew

There was a home address, which Maggie swiftly scribbled in a notebook. There was a mother, Catherine Jackson, but by the word ‘father’ only a blank.

Copies of his school report, including praise for his leadership of the debate team. High scores for history and for Spanish, decent in maths. Not what she needed. She turned the pages fast, hoping something would pop out, something that—

What was that?

A sound, close by. Metallic, but not the banging of a pipe. It came from further away and yet it was definitely down here, in the bowels of this building. It sounded somehow deliberate. Man-made.

She scoured the file, speed-reading. There was another reference to the debate team, written by a Mr Schilling. The date was three years after the first one: Jackson would have been seventeen.

…Robert’s contribution to the debate team has not been quite as enthusiastic as it was previously. I suspect the loss of the captaincy of the team made him a little sore. If he is to pursue a political career, he needs to learn that every career includes its defeats!

A political career. Maggie kept going. A letter to Mrs Jackson from the Principal, suggesting a meeting at the school to resolve the ‘disciplinary matter we discussed on the phone’. A reference accompanying an application to Harvard. A rejection letter from Harvard.

Finally, at the back of the file, a photocopied page from the high school yearbook. In the photograph Jackson wore the same expression Maggie had seen on his CIA file: smiling and hopeful, but with a hint of something else, too.

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