Lockhart reached into his pocket and brought out the pinecone. He was dreaming now, surely he was, as he ran up to her, shouting her name. And she looked up, as if she had been summoned by some presence that had stepped out of a void, stepped out of a time that had been forgotten, brushed away. He watched her eyes, rendered dull by years of captivity, light up in the way that they always had done. It was her, and he could tell from her face that she knew it was him, her John, her darling husband.

He was only feet away now, and she had lifted her hands up to her mouth. They were going to hold each other, be together again. They would get out of here, and they would get back to Amy, and they would live as a little family once again, grow old together, and always hold each other, never let each other go.

The first bullet entered him at the top of his right leg, causing him to fall backward. No, he didn’t believe it. That guard hadn’t fired at him, that couldn’t have happened. He tried shooting the guard, pulling the trigger, but the gun had jammed. All he could hear was a scream, but he didn’t know if it was his. He looked at her, could see her mouth stretched wide, could see her face shaking, going red.

He kept his eyes fixed on her, waiting for the next round to hit him. Please don’t cry, he wanted to say, I’m here, I’m here for you, I’ve come all this way, please don’t cry. He clutched his stomach—it was on fire, something must have hit him there too, but he didn’t know where from, because his eyes never left her. He tried smiling, because he was happy, so very happy that he was back with his wife. That was really all he had ever wanted.

Epilogue

JUNE 1986

At least she could see the field. Usually it was the orange foam armchairs horseshoed around the wood-paneled television. Or it was the dining room with its light green walls and strip lighting. Or at twilight the tired ceiling from the discomfort of her small bed, the mattress of which was as dead as its last three inhabitants. But at least she could see the field. If she brought her chair to the window, and looked across the kitchen roof and over the car park, there, through a gap in the firs, lay the prettiest field of linseed, its blue flowers so subtle she sometimes thought they were a trick of the light. After lunch, she would stare at the field, longing to walk through it, but her legs weren’t so good, and besides, there was nobody here who would take her.