The Girl Who Ran - Nikki Owen

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finish our coffee. Chris taps on his computer the whole time and, ten minutes to go until our flight is boarding, he excuses himself to attend the lavatory. I use the spare time to carry out a reassuring check of the contents of my rucksack. One by one, I place them on the table in a neat line: three pay-as-you-go cell phones, two fake passports, money in several denominations, one wash bag, two packets of energy tablets and the other essential items I require to be on the run and hide, all itemised on a list in my head. But it is the last three things that I unpack, that now amid the din and the cappuccino milk steam and the idle chatter around tea-stained tables, that give me the most sense of calm and reassurance: my notebook and two old photographs.

      I rest my hand on the worn notebook cover, flick a finger over the dog-eared pages, pages that have housed my thoughts and calculations and mathematical probabilities for years, each spare section crammed with drawings and codes scribbled feverishly after awaking from dreams and nightmares that would jolt some distant, drug induced memory.

      Patricia leans in, looks at a page filled with algorithms and coding. ‘I may as well be seeing spots as to understand what on earth all that means.’ She inhales. ‘It’s been hard for you, hasn’t it, Doc? Everything that’s happened.’

      I touch the page with my fingertips, let them skim the curve of the equations before me, the lines, the sketches of pencilled memories forgotten and only sometimes remembered. ‘Ines killed Balthus,’ I say, sticking to the facts, unable to express the sorrow I truly feel inside.

      ‘Yes, Doc, she did.’ Her voice is a soft pillow, a floating feather.

      I blink, turn my attention to the two photographs from my bag.

      ‘Is that your dad with you when you were young? He has the same dark hair and eyes as your brother.’

      ‘Yes. Except they were never my biological father or brother.’

      ‘No,’ Patricia says. ‘No, I know. Balthus was your biological father, and that’s hard – you watched him die when you’d only just found out who he really was.’

      I swallow. My eyes are a little blurred. ‘Yes.’

      Patricia touches the second photograph, this one more sepia-toned and worn. ‘You were a cute baby.’

      I take the second image between my fingers and stare. In it stands a woman, my biological mother, long hair falling in wisps around her face, two grainy, willowed hands on the ends of ribbon-thin arms cradling me – her new swaddled baby. I map the skirt that skims the ground where ten toes on bare feet rest on a bed of gravel surrounding a sprawling, stone hospital-come-nunnery with a crucifix on the door. I blink at the photograph and battle with a feeling inside me, strange and unwelcome. Anger and sadness, a tumbleweed of sorrow that, try as I might, will not go, but instead rolls along the barren land of my heart and mind, leaving behind trails in the sand that vanish with one whip of the wind. Isabella Bidarte – my real mother. I try the phrase out in my head, wear it like a new pair of shoes, walk it up and down the corridors of my mind, but it feels odd, stiff, as if using it for too long would create a blister filled with pus that would burst and seep and hurt.

      I turn the photograph in my hands. On the back is scribbled an address and the geolocation coordinates of a hospital – Weisshorn Psychiatric Hospital, the place Isabella was last kept in Geneva, and next to it the date of her death, all etched out by my Papa and hidden from Ines before he died.

      Patricia stares at it. ‘He knew she was kept there, didn’t he, your dad? He’d found out about what Ines was doing – getting the cancer drugs to keep her alive in exchange for you.’

      Too sad to speak, I trace the address and date with my fingertips as, to the right of the café, a television repeats a news feed detailing the killings at Mama’s apartment.

      ‘A triple homicide was reported in Madrid, in what is being cited as a cartel crime. Spanish lawyer and member of parliament Ines Villanueva; her lawyer son, Ramon Martinez; and a British prison chief, Balthus Ochoa, have all been implicated in what sources are saying is a decade-long fraud ring stretching into millions of dollars and which includes trafficking in illegal medical drugs. The bodies of the three were found at Villanueva’s central Madrid house this afternoon. Villanueva, who was a likely pick to become the next leader of the right wing, and prime minister …’

      Tilting her head so I can see her eye-creased smile, Patricia nods to the television. ‘Same story they’re telling like before, same bullshit.’

      ‘It is all lies. The deaths did not happen in that way.’

      She sighs as the television screen flashes across the faces of Ines, Balthus and Ramon.

      We finish our coffees. I carry out a final check of my belongings, secure the photographs in an inside pocket near my notebook and, acknowledging the presence of my passport one more time, in my head I begin to carry out a run-through of the airport journey when Chris runs up to the table, breathless.

      ‘Jesus,’ Patricia says, ‘what’s with you?’

      He swallows, pointing behind him. ‘People…’ He gulps air, slaps two palms to the table and hauls in some oxygen. ‘C-coming…’

      ‘What d’you mean?’ Patricia says, frowning. ‘You’re not making any sense and we’ve got to—’

      ‘Shush!’

      Patricia opens her mouth on the verge of speaking when Chris raises a hand and finally spits out the words he wants to say.

      ‘The Project – they’ve found us!’

      Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain.

       Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 31 hours and 30 minutes

      I turn, stand, focus. ‘Tell me.’

      He swallows. ‘So, I was just walking back and looking in the duty-free bit, and they have the mirrors and stuff there and I’m sure there were two guys watching me.’

      ‘This is ridiculous,’ Patricia says.

      ‘What? No. I was followed.’ He looks straight to me. ‘I’m telling you – they were different, these guys.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘Just, well, I guess they were, like, rigid, you know. Kind of robotic and—’

      ‘Christ,’ Patricia says, ‘this is the last thing we need, you freaking out on us like this.’

      ‘I’m not freaking out.’

      ‘You are, and you’re going to upset—’

      ‘No!’ His voice is raised. I flinch. The people at the next table stop eating mid-sandwich bite and narrow their eyes.

      Chris lowers his head. ‘No. Please,’ he whispers, ‘you have to listen to me. I know they have to be different because I recognise them, from when I was locked up for hacking, okay. One of the two guys who investigated me via the UK, well they were MI5. The other one, I’m not sure…’

      ‘You have to be sure,’ I say. ‘Now.’ My eyes scan ahead, quick fire.

      ‘I’m sorry. I recognise both of them, just can’t place the second one.’

      ‘One of them is definitely MI5?’

      ‘Yes.’

      The cogs in my head, as if tripped by a switch, begin to turn at such a rate, for a second I feel dizzy.

      ‘Shit,’ Patricia says. ‘Doc, MI5 wanted you dead. If they’re here, this is not good.’

      ‘Oh fuck.’ Chris rubs his head. ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck.’

      As my friends swear repeatedly, I scan the crowds.

      ‘Maria,’

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