They straightened out the rest of the plan. After the handover, Ruby and Leonie would get on a train with a ticket to Scotland but get off somewhere else and hide out for a few days, just in case Gregor had somehow managed to track them that far. After that, Ruby would make her way to a secluded beach on a tiny island in the Hebrides, by any means possible and without being detected. Constance would meet them there, having persuaded the elders to take Leonie in. Then, Constance and Leonie would start their new life together on the old skerry, where they belonged.

“What will you do, though?” asked Constance. “Once we’re gone?”

Ruby thought of her broken family, the increasingly desperate missed calls and messages from Marianne every Sunday night; the last, brief phone call she’d allowed herself with Joanna. Once she was done with this, perhaps she’d be strong enough to deal with all of that.

“I’ll be free of him. We both will. I can start my life again.”

“How will you? He won’t stop searching for me and Leonie. My family will protect me from him. But you? You won’t be free of him until he’s dead.”

Ruby hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Gregor was away, not expected back until the evening of the next day. By then they’d be long gone and impossible to track.

CHAPTER

36

NOW

Joanna

Monday, December 24

“THERE’S BEEN NO change in his condition,” said Dr. Locke. “To be honest, I’m surprised there hasn’t been a deterioration.”

“But you said on the phone that you needed me to attend. If there’s been no change, did I really have to come all the way down here?”

Joanna had been expecting to find Gregor awake. She’d wanted to ask him so many questions.

“I need your help to proceed. You may be interested to learn that a colleague of mine has selected Mr. Franks for a medical trial involving a functional MRI scan.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Essentially, it’s a scan where you can view the brain in real-time and see different parts lighting up in response to different stimuli.”

“Like, you poke him with a needle and see if he feels pain?”

“That’s among the things they may do, yes. Another is to ask him questions.”

“But if he’s a vegetable …”

“Well, that’s kind of the point of the trial. To find out if he has any brain function, any consciousness remaining.”

“I can ask him questions?”

The doctor’s eyebrows shot up. “You?”

“I can sit in on the scan, right? Isn’t that why you asked me to attend?”

“I suppose you could. But the reason I needed to see you was because we would need to obtain permissions to go ahead. There’s an ethical procedure we have to follow.”