“What happens next?” asked Jessica.
“The boy is about to open his only present, when an army truck comes to a screeching halt outside the house, and a dozen soldiers break down the door, drag the father out onto the street, and shoot him in front of his wife and child.”
“You kill the hero in the first chapter?” said Emma in disbelief.
“This is going to be a story about the child,” said Grace, “not the father.”
“And the mother,” said Harry, “because she’s an intelligent, resourceful woman, who’s already worked out that if they don’t escape from the country, it won’t be long before her rebellious son will seek revenge, and inevitably end up suffering the same fate as his father.”
“So where do they escape to?” demanded Jessica.
“The mother can’t decide between America and England.”
“How do they decide?” asked Karin.
“On the toss of a coin.”
The rest of the family continued to stare at the storyteller.
“And what’s the twist?” asked Seb.
“We follow what happens to the mother and child, chapter by chapter. In chapter one, they escape to America. In chapter two, England. So you have two parallel and very different stories taking place at the same time.”
“Wow,” said Jessica. “Then what happens?”
“I wish I knew,” said Harry. “But it’s my New Year’s resolution to find out.”
29
“TEN MINUTES TO GO,” said a voice over the loudspeaker. Karin kept jogging on the spot, attempting to get into what the seasoned runners called “the zone.” She’d put in hours of training, even run a half marathon, but suddenly she felt very alone on the starting line.
“Five minutes,” said the voice of doom.
Karin checked her stopwatch, a recent gift from Giles. 0:00. Get as close to the front as you can, Freddie had told her. Why add unnecessary time or distance to the race? Karin had never considered the marathon to be a race, she just hoped to finish in under four hours. Right now, she just hoped to finish.
“One minute,” boomed the starter’s voice.
Karin was about eleven rows back, but as there were over eight thousand runners, she considered that was near enough to the front.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!” the runners all shouted in unison, before a klaxon blared ominously. Karin pressed the button on her stopwatch and set off, swept along by an enthusiastic tide of runners.
Each mile was marked with a thick blue line stretching across the road, and Karin completed the first mile in under eight minutes. As she settled into a st
eady rhythm, she became more aware of the crowds lining both sides of the course, some cheering, some clapping, while others just stared in disbelief at the mass of human flesh, of all shapes and sizes, which was passing them at different speeds.
Her mind began to drift. She thought about Giles, who’d driven her to the little village of tents earlier that morning to register, and who would now be out there somewhere standing in the cold, waiting for her to appear among the also-rans. Her thoughts turned next to her recent visit to the House of Lords to hear the health minister answering questions from the dispatch box. Emma had coped well, and in Giles’s opinion had quickly gotten into her stride. As Karin passed the halfway mark, she hoped she was also in her stride, although she accepted the winner would already be crossing the finishing line.
* * *
Giles had warned them that Karin was unlikely to complete the course in under four hours, so the family had all risen early that morning to make sure they could find a spot where she was certain to see them. The previous evening Freddie had been on his knees preparing a placard that he hoped would make Karin laugh as she staggered past them.
Once Giles had returned to Smith Square after dropping his wife off at the A–D registration tent in Greenwich Park, he led her little band of supporters to the back of the Treasury building and found a front-row place behind the barriers on Parliament Square, opposite the statue of Winston Churchill.
* * *
Karin was now approaching what was known by all marathon runners as the wall. It usually came at around seventeen to twenty miles, and she’d heard so often about the temptation to try and convince yourself that if you dropped out, no one would notice. Everyone would notice. They might not say anything, but Sebastian had made it clear that he wouldn’t be parting with a penny unless she crossed the finishing line. A deal’s a deal, he’d reminded her. But she seemed to be going slower and slower, and it didn’t help when she spotted a thirty miles per hour road sign ahead of her.
But something, possibly the fear of failure, kept her going, and she pretended not to notice when she was overtaken by a letter box, and a few minutes later by a camel. Go, go, go, she told herself. Stop, stop, stop, her legs insisted. As she passed the twenty-mile mark, the crowd cheered loudly, not for her, but for a caterpillar who strolled past her.