The Liberation's Child by Lucy Cruickshanks

Author:Lucy Cruickshanks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

16

The rush-hour tube carriage was full to capacity. Bodies were pressed against Dom, radiating heat, the smell of them stale and unpleasant. He gripped the greasy hand-hold tighter, planting his feet and bracing against the train’s lurch, wishing for a glass of water to help the heat and the ache in his head. Thea was sitting a few feet away with her friend, Jemima, and through the crush of people he could see that their hands were clasped together. They each stared ahead, not talking and not moving, lost in thoughts the other seemingly already knew.

Can we trust them?

At the hotel, Tess had hissed a whisper into his ear as he’d snatched up his bag and yanked on his shoes. Thea and Jemima had been waiting in the corridor, but the door was open, and he could see that they were also in deep, hushed discussions. Jemima had said that the records at the British Museum might help with the letter, but she was coy with the details, and he didn’t see how. The train jolted, and he bumped into the woman beside him, who looked up from her watch to throw him a scowl. He wanted to trust, but the word felt thinner and more slippery than it had done before. Two days spent reevaluating the limits of what he dared to believe was even conceivable, let alone truthful, was testing him. He no longer trusted what he’d ask himself to do, either. He and Tess had taken Maya from BlueSkies on an impulse so unlike them, giving little thought to what came next and having no concept of precisely what actions they could possibly take to unearth the truth, if indeed there was a truth that needed to be unearthed. What followed this afternoon only compounded Dom’s anxiety. The letter had fired a bullet right through him. Though he wouldn’t tell Tess, the threat that something terrible might happen again to his family, might be inflicted upon them, left him feeling like he was thirteen again, running blindly along smoke-filled corridors, panicked beyond panic, feeling his muscles weaken to putty and his vocal cords fail. Inside, he could feel himself collapsing. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to hold out. He glanced along the carriage. Were Thea and Jemima behind the letter? If they were, it didn’t follow that they’d lie about a baby. All he knew for certain was that he couldn’t look away.

He took his screen from his satchel and pulled up Maya’s application on the Ministry of Children’s portal, tapping in their personal passcode. Grey sand ran through the image of a timer, and then FINAL APPROVAL PENDING appeared in block print. Dom knew that their status wouldn’t have changed in the hours since they left Catherine, but he felt time was passing too quickly, as though, grain by grain, that sand was mounting and threatening to swamp him. He needed to know what he couldn’t ignore. He minimised the application and stared at the icon for Professor Garber’s report instead.

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