Sylvie pours a little oil into the frying pan and turns on the gas. She lifts the pan for a second to check the flame is right: medium-high, crispy but not burnt. Breaks an egg into the flat lid of a casserole dish, the rim just deep enough to quickly whisk without spilling, and dunks a slice.
The eggy bread crackles slightly as it meets the hot oil, setting and then browning.
“Brekkie’s out, babe,” yells Sylvie up the stairs and prepares another slice.
Jak, bleary anxious eyes, her pale tightly drawn face just about twitching to life, forces herself to eat. And drink coffee. Although her jittery stomach feels ready to heave at any minute.
“Are you going in?” asks Sylvie gently.
Jak stares at the remaining slice of French toast, “suppose so. Got to.”
“You don’t, babe, you really don’t.”
“I won’t get paid. They’ll sack me…”
“Let them, babe. We’ll survive. You don’t owe them anything…”
“I should go.”
—
Jak’s bus is diverted via Iffley Road. Apparently, according to the driver, Cowley Road is blocked. He stops the bus well short of the Plain to let the passengers off.
The faux-medieval facade has gone. There are no square crenulations nor twisted gargoyles. The wall is back to being a building site as if nothing had happened: no ceremony took place, no awards were given out, nothing out of the ordinary occurred. There’s just a sign attached to a firmly locked gate saying, ‘Please use alternative access to Oxford City. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.’
Two queues extend from the workers’ entrances round both sides of the Plain, and into St Clements and Iffley Road. The bottom of Cowley Road is cordoned off by police vans.
Jak joins the Iffley Road queue at 8.54 am and things are moving slowly. She’s going to be late. They won’t dock her pay, surely? With all the security delays?
The consensus among those near her in the queue is that they probably will. Anything to save the billionaire Messina a bit of money, the bastard!
9.07 am, she brings up her ID on her phone as she reaches the front of the queue. A sullen security guard scans it and waves her forward to another who demands she open her bag and show the contents.
Eventually the second guard is satisfied and waves her forward to yet another guard, standing between her and the entrance.
“Phone!” he barks.
“What?” sighs Jak, “you’re joking me. Why?”
“Phone. Now!”
“I need it. My dad’s in hospital…”
“Irrelevant. Phone now!” The guard is young, clean faced apart from his acne, and says what he’s been told to say in the ‘firm and decisive manner’ he has been instructed to say it – just following orders, just doing his job for an hourly rate higher than he or any of his mates have known before.
“No!” insists Jak, “I need my phone in case there’s news of my dad.”
“Phone!” the guard screams in her face, “Now!”
“No!” shouts Jak, glaring into his eyes, “it’s mine. I need it. You can’t have it.”
“Now! Or disciplinary!”
“Fuck you!” Jak turns, pushes her way back past the first two security guards who are busy frisking another worker, and runs across the Plain.
She pushes over a temporary fence blocking off the road and keeps running up St Clements, past where her mum works, past the road leading to Moonies, which has a police car blocking the entrance, and left onto Marston Road for the first time since her abduction.
And she keeps running until she can’t breathe fast enough to feed her aching calves. And then she continues at walking pace, on unsteady legs, to a bus stop. The screen says, ‘13 to Marston, Northway and JR – due’.
For a while, Jak knows roughly where she is. The bus goes along Marston Road for a mile before turning left onto residential, grass banked Oxford Road and, where turning left would go to Marston Gate, right onto Cherwell Drive. It heads pasts the edge of the red light district, a mix of small shops with metal shutters and suburban houses hidden by overgrown hedges, bleakly quiet in the daylight.
But then, instead of heading up the hill towards the JR, it turns left along another residential street and then left again past a tower block rising over huddled houses.
Jak leans forward to ask the passenger in front, an older man in a cloth cap and zipped up jacket, “does this bus go to the JR?”
The man turns round, “yes, my dear, it goes through Northway first, past our tower – it’s the oldest tower block in Oxford, not many people know that – and then up by the back way to the hospital. Are you visiting someone?”
“Yes, my dad.”
“Ah,” the man smiles, “well, I hope he’s alright. He’s lucky to have such a caring daughter. These days it seems like people just get put into hospitals and homes and then you get forgotten about. Once you get to my age, it’s like you don’t exist anymore.”
“Thank you. I’m certainly not going to forget my own dad!”
“Good girl,” he reaches round to pat Jak’s hand, “if only there were more like you.”
—
The Blackbird Leys towers, Windrush and Evenlode, along with Forester Tower in the Wood Farm estate, were built shortly after Northway’s Plowman Tower in the 1960s. All four contain fifteen floors of flats constructed to accommodate, among others, slum clearance tenants from St Ebbe’s in the city centre.
At the time, these towers were the future, with views across green fields and the old woods of Shotover Hill, and the low-rise suburbs of East Oxford at their feet like toy towns.
Philip Rumbelowe and Big Dave wait at the entrance to Evenlode Tower, watching Tudor stroll, hands in pockets, towards them.
“Morning, gentlemen,” he greets them, “up early this fine morning I see.”
Big Dave grunts, “you’re late.”
“I think you’ll find, gentlemen, that time is a relative concept. Some eminent thinkers are even of the opinion that it is an illusion,” grins Tudor, “especially before midday.”
“Shut the fuck up,” hisses Mr Rumbelowe, “you’re here for your own good.”
“Oh yes,” laughs Tudor, “how’s that then?”
“I’d clear off if I was you, which thank fuck I’m not.”
“Clear off?” Tudor continues laughing, “I only just got here!”
“Clear off from Oxford. Get away from your master’s manor…”
“Whoa!” Tudor shakes his head in disbelief, “you’re saying I should desert?”
“I’m saying you should break from Mr Miles and get the fuck away. You’re a marked man, Tudor. If you’re not careful, reporters’ll say ‘you were a troubled young man’.”
“What the actual fuck are you on about, Rumbelowe?”
“Listen to me. The trouble with gentleman gangsters like Kissy Crissy is, having too much money, they wallow in it like fat pigs and get careless with their people. Coz they can always pay for more.
“They’re like fucking Chelsea. I’m poor old Oxford United. More like Oxford fucking City these days. Part-time. I took care of my players coz I couldn’t afford no replacements. And now they’ve gone except for good old Dave, warhorse.
“But Chelsea just stick you on the fucking bench and only give you one chance if you’re lucky. You miss it…” Philip makes a cutting gesture across his throat and laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and wipes his rheumy eyes, “and now Kissy Crissy has gone all political and meetings with real Lords and Ladies down in London, so don’t want the likes of you hanging around. Does he? Eh?
“An embarrassing reminder of that time he snorted charlie off your bony arse and got a nosebleed? And hanging round his old school, you flashing your dick at him? Ah, who said romance is dead? Eh? Well it is now.
“Take it from me, a man of the world, there ain’t no happy fucking ending for you here. So fuck off now, young man, as quick as you can. And don’t look back.”
Tudor laughs again but looks hard in Philip Rumbelowe’s eyes as he does so. He one hundred percent means it. Is the old man finally losing his mind? Maybe. Hopefully, for Tudor’s sake.
—
There are security guards stationed at either side of the main entrance to the John Radcliffe Hospital. Jak walks quickly past them, her eyes to the ground – why do they have such heavy boots on and those big, long guns, muzzles pointing down by their boots, why? – and through a set of large automatic doors.
The foyer is quiet. Jak shivers, although it is warm with the morning sun streaming through the clear roof. She approaches the main reception desk, “um, I’m here to visit a family member?”
“Ward?” asks the receptionist brusquely.
“Um, not sure. He was brought in yesterday. Might’ve been A&E…”
“Well, he shouldn’t still be at A&E now. They’re not that slow down there. What’s his name?”
“Um, well,” Jak is unsure whether we should say that it is her dad, but how will she know where he is if she doesn’t? “Paul Robertson. He’s my dad.”
“Paul Robertson,” repeats the receptionist, typing at his computer, “Paul. Robertson. Now, let me see. Oh. Okay. He’s not seeing visitors today. Sorry.”
“What ward is he in? You know, for future, if he is seeing…”
“He’s in a special ward. But I’m afraid I’m not allowed to say which one. He will most likely be moved to another ward before he’s allowed visitors. I’d recommend you phone in advance to check.”
“Okay.”
Jak turns, heads towards the exit. But, before she gets there, glances back. The receptionist is scrolling on his phone. Jak looks up at a large sign with directions in various different colours – red, yellow, green, orange, purple… ‘Special wards and theatres’.
She keeps her head down and follows the purple route.
The Special Wards reception desk is empty. But as she walks past, down the corridor, two security guards emerge from side doors.
“Stop!”
Jak pretends not to hear.
“Stop!”
She hears their footsteps quickening behind her until their breath is on the back of her neck.
“All visitor access to special wards is revoked. Miss Churchwell, ma’am, you can’t come in here today. Go home.”
—
Jak unlocks the front door of 28 Green Leys Road and shoves it open. It feels an effort just to push it, the brush draught excluder scraping reluctantly over the hall floor. Her mum has gone to work. Itchycoo is asleep somewhere. She feels the emptiness surround her.
‘God, I wish I could just curl up and sleep.’
She trudges upstairs, slumps onto her bed and stares out the window at the magnolia tree. Its leaves quiver in a light breeze. All its flowers are gone.
Jak rolls onto her side and into a ball with her arms crossed in front of her chest.
‘They’re all the same, Tabs, ain’t they? You always knew that. Donny and Jazz knew that. Just me didn’t know it, I guess.
‘People we work for, people that rule over us. Security guards, police, people that can boss us about. Men with guns, men with money.
‘Women too but mostly men, that’s what your uncle said. But not poor old dad. And not mum neither. I mean she tries to shut it all out and just get on with her life, fair enough, but she don’t like it.
‘And what we got, Tabs? Love, dreams and freedom? Well not so much of the dreams any more. And freedom? Never had it in the first place.
‘But love. We still got love, Tabs. We still got love ain’t we?’
Itchycoo, as if instinctively responding to some unuttered cry, walks purposefully into the room. He pauses for a second then hops onto the bed alongside Jak’s back and rubs his head against her shoulder blades, purring softly.