Page 68 of 59 Minutes
FRANKIE
‘Ashley,’ Janet says, as Frankie instinctively puts her hands up and backs away from him, her back against the front door, her hip brushing envelopes off a little shelf nearby.
If she could think properly, if she could follow a thought, Frankie might reach behind and open the door, take her chances and run.
But she cannot think, her brain is a white-out.
‘What are you doing?’ Janet is saying, her voice drifting through Frankie’s mind like flotsam, nothing taking root.
‘No missiles?’ he says.
‘That’s right, we’re saved, we’re okay.’
‘My brothers aren’t saved,’ he says, quietly. He stares be- tween them both, eyes glazing. He wipes his nascent tears roughly with the heal of one hand, the gun still gripped on his shoulder with the other. His forehead is streaked with blood but it folds with thought. Calculation.
‘Ah shit,’ he says. ‘Now I’m really fucked. It would have been better if the bomb had landed. Now everything we did looks really bad. Everything they did, it’s all on me.’
‘No,’ Frankie says, her brain snapping alert. ‘We can say it was just them or I can say I got in willingly, that it was all a misunderstanding.’
‘A misunderstanding?’ His voice is so low now that it rumbles through her body. ‘So you’ll just … you’ll lie for me?’
‘I will,’ she says, holding out her hands in an offering of peace. ‘I will. And I’ll tell Otis that I thought he’d gone off and left me and you guys just offered me a lift.’
‘You’d do that?’
‘I would. I just want an end to this. I just want to go and help Otis, that’s all.’
‘Bollocks,’ he says and adjusts the gun on his shoulder. ‘I will never trust another woman, you’re all liars.’
‘If you shoot me, they’ll know it was all on purpose, because why else—’
‘Ashley, for your mum’s sake,’ Janet says, softly. ‘Think about what you’re doing.’
‘My mother turned her back on us.’
‘There must be someone, someone you’re—’
‘I’ve got no one left, and I’m not having this bitch telling tales about my brothers, twisting things, getting that girl to back her up too. Shit, I’ll have to deal with—’
‘You do have someone,’ Janet says. Her voice is unsteady, infused with something that Frankie can’t decipher. Fear, but maybe guilt, too.
‘What are you talking about?’ He turns so the gun is now trained on Janet’s forehead. She recoils, scrunching her eyes in fear but then opens them, wide and deliberate.
‘You … you have a child.’
‘No,’ he snorts, almost amused. ‘I don’t.’
‘You do, you have a daughter.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t have a kid.’
‘You have a little girl. And if you do this, you’ll never stand a chance of seeing her. But if you surrender, they’ll understand this was an extreme situation and they’ll make allowances. I promise.’
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t have a daughter, woman. You’ve lost your marbles.’
‘Her name is Clementine, she’s three years old and she has your eyes.’
‘A Clementine is a fucking orange.’
Janet flinches and slowly reaches towards a framed photograph on the wall of the hallway.
Two smiling women a bit younger than Frankie, one small and blonde, one tall and redheaded, and a dark-haired girl in a pushchair, holding a rabbit teddy, on holiday somewhere white and blue.
Frankie gives what she thinks is a passing glance, too frightened to take anything in, but she will never forget their faces.
‘A woman called Carrie?’ Janet says, her voice breaking slightly.
‘Carrie Spencer from primary school?’
‘That’s my daughter. She came to visit me, about four years ago now. She was having a hard time and we had a bit of a tiff about it so she went out for the night.’ Now Janet adopts a brisk tone. A nurse’s tone. ‘You met up in a pub and you had sex.’
Something changes. He has softened, his face, his stance. Even his voice. ‘We … maybe. But—’
He holds the gun loosely in his right hand, and reaches for the photo with his left. A loud bang comes on the front door.
The photograph falls to the floor, the gun slips from Ashley’s grasp and as he snatches it again, pulls it back to his shoulder, curls his finger through—
BANG.