There’s a siren ringing in my head. It’s a red flashing twirling sound and it’s burrowing its way into my brain. The accelerator is pressed flat to the floor and the two men fall silent, all held-breath anticipation. The man beside me leans across and pushes the back door open, and Taxi Joe screams like a woman as the man pushes me at full speed, full tilt, onto the hard pavement. My head whacks against the concrete and I hear the car reverse back towards me. Is he going to drive over me? It’s as if I’m watching this play out on a screen, except the pain is real, the pain is a climbing plant, like poison ivy, choking me. The car jolts to a stop and a figure gets out, the car spewing fumes into my eyes, my mouth, my nose. Something hot and vital is flowing out of me, something I can’t push back inside. A pair of hands picks me up and pulls my mask away. Joe is looking down at me with terrified eyes, shiny and huge; he looks for a moment like he did that time he dropped Nico and I to our first job – like a concerned dad – until he remembers what I am, what I’ve done, what I could cost him.

A switch is flicked in him and he steels himself: his gaze visibly hardens, his teeth clamp, a muscle in his jaw twitches, and he sets himself to the task at hand. He hoists my body over a wall and lets it, me, fall into the water below.

I close my eyes and allow my body to go limp; for once in my life I’m not fighting, no kung fu in the old girl left, no laughter, no fizz, no champagne bubbles, no voices, no song, just flat black water like molasses sucking me down. It’s velvet down here, beautiful, all shades of beautiful, and I drink it in.

It’s Nico I think of as I go under: I hope she gets her swim in the icy sea, I hope the clouds above are bursting their skin and clean her with their sweet tears, I hope the waves are high and she gets tumbled, head over heel, water flushing through her, making its way inside every crevice until there is nothing left from any of those men and she is clean, squeaky-clean clean and she can be free.

45. Nico

45

Nico

A cooling breeze blows on my hot cheeks as I climb to the highest branch of the highest tree in the forest. God’s breath floats all around. The smells of leather and Papa’s tobacco linger in the air. I look upwards and notice that I can’t see any shapes in the clouds. They are just streaks of dirt across a hard, polished blue surface. Luca climbs up behind me and starts to shake the branch I’m straddling.