The Minders Read online

  As would never seeing Daniel again. She had long cast him aside, but she’d yet to completely forgive herself for allowing him to gaslight her for so long.

  Why did I keep giving in to him? she regularly asked herself. If I’d stood my ground earlier, might we have had a better marriage? Her therapists had suggested not, agreeing that her relationship was doomed from the start. Without her parents, Sinéad’s desperate need to be loved and taken care of and Daniel’s desire for coercive control meant that together, they forged a co-dependency, not a relationship. And it would likely have remained that way indefinitely, had it not been for Joanna’s intervention.

  Her handler, Karczewski, had already informed Sinéad that Daniel reported her missing to the police five days after she abandoned her marriage. She wondered what had taken him so long, and assumed it was because he was expecting her to return with her tail between her legs. But now that she was out from under his spell, hell would freeze over before Sinéad returned.

  “What will happen if Daniel tries to find me?”

  “He won’t succeed,” said Karczewski.

  “I know my husband. He won’t give up without a fight.”

  “We are maintaining surveillance on his activities and we will continue to thwart all his efforts. We have led a private investigator he’s hired to believe you may now be living somewhere in Europe. That, of course, will be a wild-goose chase, and once you are released from training, if we can’t locate you, then neither can he. The only way you will see him again is if you choose to.”

  Joanna had likely heard on the grapevine that the couple were no longer together. It was doubtful that Daniel would publicly admit his wife had left him. He had probably spun a lie about her disappearance. “He can tell everyone I was a whore who slept with half of Bristol if he wants to,” she told one of the counsellors. “I’d actually prefer them to think I have a will of my own than be remembered as the pushover I really was.”

  On her departure from the facility that morning, Sinéad had purchased a non-autonomous car and filled the boot with supplies for the long journey ahead. But first she had posted a thank-you card to Joanna. She left the inside blank, hoping Joanna might guess its sender.

  Like the pieces of the online puzzle she’d solved the afternoon she escaped from her marriage, everything was slotting into place. It was that same afternoon when she had plucked up the courage to dial the number contained in the email inviting her to attend an interview for the chance to start a new life. An hour later, she found herself picking up a ticket that had been reserved in her name at Bristol Temple Meads train station to London. She checked into a hotel room that had been organised for her, and the following morning, she nervously awaited an interview with a panel. The timing couldn’t have been better. She had nothing—and no one—to lose, and after a series of scans, tests, and medicals, she passed through to the next round. The rest of the day was a blur.

  Sinéad placed the bouquet of carnations on Tunstall’s grassy hillside, propping them up against a rock. Then she took in one last view of the city landscape. It would be a few more hours before she reached Scotland and her reinvention could begin in earnest.

  She vowed not to take the past with her. There was no room for ghosts in her present. She would no longer punish herself over her failings, only learn from them. She’d forgive those like Daniel who had taken from her, and put to rest those she had lost, with one exception. Sinéad would never want to forget her.

  CHAPTER 14

  EMILIA

  What do I know about myself?” Emilia said aloud.

  She typed her name using capital letters into the tablet Ted had left her with. She couldn’t even spell the surname they shared. Then her fingers hovered above the virtual keyboard as she came to an abrupt halt. A week after waking up in a South London hospital and following a barrage of tests and procedures, she was still no closer to learning the truth about who she was.

  There were a handful of things she’d learned. She had next to no interest in film and television but enjoyed listening to classical music. She preferred clothes that covered her, not attire that left little to the imagination. She understood how the machines in her hospital room operated. And she was married to a man she didn’t recognise.

  Emilia used the tablet to see if the internet could shed a sliver of light upon her identity. But as far as she could tell, she had no social media presence. There was no Amazon account in her name, no LinkedIn profile, no subscriptions to online publications, and no match when she took a selfie and tried to image-search it.

  Through the open door to her hospital room, she spotted her husband and two broad-shouldered men approaching. Yesterday, Ted had explained they were part of his security detail, but when she’d questioned him further, he changed the subject. She’d Googled his name too but that also drew a blank.

  Being married should have reassured Emilia that there was at least one person in the world who knew her as well as she had once known herself. Yet she felt as attached to him as she might a stranger. She did not find him physically appealing; his constant asking of questions irritated her, especially when he offered little in the way of answers. She could only assume that at some point in her life, he had ticked her boxes. Because now, they were blank.

  When Ted had returned from lunch yesterday, she had pretended to be asleep but overheard him in the corridor discussing her progress with Dr. Choudary. Emilia was uncomfortable at the thought of being released into the care of a man she didn’t remember, even if he was her husband. In the hospital she felt safe, much more so than at the first building she’d woken up in. She glanced out the window across the rooftops and into the hospital grounds. The unknown of the outside world scared her.

  “Have you remembered anything else?” asked Ted, greeting her with an encouraging smile.

  She shook her head and felt unexpectedly guilty for disappointing him. “No, sorry.”

  “Don’t apologise.” He rubbed her forearm as if to reassure her that it didn’t matter. But it did matter to her; it was the only thing that mattered.

  * * *

  —

  TED RETURNED TO their table from the self-service section of the hospital cafe carrying a tray of toast, a blueberry muffin, and a black coffee for Emilia—her favourites, he said—and a banana and fresh orange juice for himself. He moved his hands to hold hers. Yesterday, he’d caught her out with the same level of intimacy. This morning, she was prepared and withdrew them before contact was made. They rested on her thighs.

  “What’s your first memory?” he began.

  “As I told you before, it’s of waking up in that other place.”

  “And you don’t know how you got there?”

  “No. I only remember feeling that I had to get away, but not why. And something’s been bothering me. I must have some kind of link to it because I knew the codes to the electronic door locks.” Emilia’s chest tightened when she thought about it again. “Ted, I need your help. I need you to tell me what you know about me.”

  “Darling, your consultant warned us not to bombard you with information as it might be too much to grasp immediately . . . you need time to get used to being around me so that hopefully, your memories return naturally and not by being prompted.”

  “Put yourself in my shoes. Imagine what it’s like not having the first clue who you are, being told you’re married to someone you don’t recognise, and that one person who is supposed to be fighting in your corner is refusing to tell you anything. How do you think that might make you feel?”

  “I understand, I really do.”

  “Do you? Because sometimes it doesn’t seem like that.”

  “It’s not easy for me either, seeing my wife like this. But Dr. Choudary told us . . .”

  “No, I only have your word that he told ‘us’ because I was asleep when you had that conversation. He told you.”

>   “What do I have to gain by lying to you? Don’t you think I want you to get better?”

  Emilia let out a long, exhausted breath. Her head drooped as she cupped her coffee mug. “Of course you do. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. But we’ve been going around in circles for days and my memory isn’t improving. I just don’t remember anything.”

  Swallowing hard didn’t dislodge the lump in her throat and she started to cry. She didn’t want to be this vulnerable in front of a stranger, but holding back was proving impossible. This time, Emilia didn’t recoil when Ted’s hands went to reach for hers. They were soft and warm and strangely reassuring. She wondered if they’d been a close couple.

  “Have you considered this might be for the best?” he asked gently. “There are some people who would kill for the opportunity to start their lives again, baggage free. At this juncture, you have a unique opportunity, to be whoever you want to be. Isn’t it even a little tempting?”

  It was a peculiar question as her answer could have backfired on him. If she were to hit the restart button, what was to say she’d want him as part of her new life? Emilia gave his suggestion little thought before she answered with a firm “No.”

  Ted’s shoulders slumped and he withdrew his hands from hers. He appeared thoughtful, as if searching for the right words, before finally continuing. “Okay, if you are sure this is what you really want, then let’s start.” Emilia held her breath.

  “You were born in St. Neots, Cambridge, and you will be thirty-seven years old on November the fourth. Your parents were Alison and Richard, both of whom passed away within two years of one another when you were in your late twenties. Your dad died from pancreatic cancer, your mum from complications following heart surgery. You and I met through friends on a blind date twelve years ago, and as corny as it sounds, it was as if we were drawn together like magnets. We married two years later at a private ceremony in City Hall, New York. Our only witness was our photographer. We don’t have children as we mutually decided that parenthood wasn’t for us. My work often takes me to Europe while you worked in London in banking for Barnett-Vincent Brothers. We live with our dogs Riley Blue and Peggy in a house we designed and built ourselves.”

  Emilia sat upright in her seat, hanging on to his every word. But it was as if Ted was talking about a stranger because none of it resonated with her. He must have recognised it in her expression because he removed a phone from his pocket and unfolded it. His cloud contained images of their wedding, reportage-style photographs taken against colourful murals in Brooklyn, along with other pictures and videos of them together and apart over the years. They included her university graduation celebrations, her as a child with her parents, and pictures taken on beaches around the world. It was clear she had lived an exciting, adventurous life. Only she didn’t remember a single second of it.

  It unexpectedly all became too much for Emilia. She pushed Ted’s phone to one side and hurried towards a sign for the unisex bathrooms. Inside, she splashed cold tap water to cool her flushed face and patted it dry with a paper towel before catching sight of herself in the mirror. Her long, uncombed blond hair resembled a bird’s nest piled upon her crown and was held in place with a pencil and a rubber band. She was wearing jogging bottoms and a loose-fitting baggy sweatshirt that Ted had brought with him from home along with underwear and toiletries. She felt uncomfortable being this scruffy but didn’t know why. Is this how I always dress? The question was innocuous but represented all she didn’t know.

  “You said that you often work in Europe but you used the past tense to describe my job,” she began when she returned to Ted’s table. He appeared relieved to see her, as if he’d been half expecting her to disappear again. “You said ‘worked.’ Why?”

  She noted a hesitancy before he replied; his gaze left hers for the briefest of moments as if he was unsure how to answer. “You decided that you wanted a change, so you were on a career break.” Ted’s pupils were dilated. He wasn’t being honest with her.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said, and he shuffled in his seat.

  “Let’s leave it for today, shall we?”

  As he folded up his phone and slipped it into his pocket, this time it was Emilia’s turn to grasp her husband’s hand.

  “What happened?” she asked. Only when Ted winced did she realise the strength of her grip. She let go. “Please, I have to know.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You were working horrendous, horrendous hours, sometimes nineteen, twenty a day. It was unsustainable. You weren’t sleeping, you weren’t eating properly, and the pressure you were putting upon yourself and your team was intolerable. It’s no surprise that something had to give.”

  “And that something was me?”

  “Yes, you suffered a mental breakdown.”

  “Was there are a specific trigger that pushed me?”

  Again, Ted glared at her as if begging her not to ask him to expand. But Emilia wasn’t ready to back down. “I can take it,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “One of your team members was driven to the breaking point. She arrived at your offices one morning and stabbed four of your colleagues to death before she tried to kill you.”

  CHAPTER 15

  FLICK, ALDEBURGH, SUFFOLK

  Flick examined her mobile phone from all angles: she vaguely recalled playing with an old clamshell like this belonging to her father back when she was a child. The case of the clunky, ugly, obsolete silver gadget was reflecting light from the sea ahead and that was the most interesting thing about it. It had no working camera, games to play, text message facility, emails, cloud access, voice mail, or GPS. She couldn’t download apps or maps, and internet access was restricted to only the ReadWell website. It wasn’t associated with any network and piggybacked other people’s mobile phone hotspots or Wi-Fi to make a connection. The phone was completely incognito and left no digital footprint attributable to her.

  “Every Minder will get this exact same model,” Karczewski had advised.

  “I thought the idea was to blend in? This’ll make us stand out.”

  “You’ll simply tell people you’re part of that ever-expanding neo-Luddite movement that rejects intrusive technology like the kind found on phones.”

  “But won’t it seem hypocritical if I then use a credit card?”

  “Since the abolition of cash as a valid payment form, you don’t have a choice.”

  Flick soon found it liberating to be living off-grid and not beholden to any form of technology. The programme strictly forbade Minders from using anything that might lead to their identification. That meant no email address, social media accounts, online shopping, or banking. Everything was to be paid for in person via the credit card she had been issued, and that was funded by dozens of untraceable foreign shell accounts. Only Karczewski had any idea of where she was.

  From her bench by Aldeburgh’s Crag Path boating pond, she watched a dad with two young children pushing paper sailboats. Flick hoped to make new friends while she was here, but it wasn’t going to be an easy process. What she knew had to be protected at all costs. She had been trained to trust no one, and because friendships were a two-way street, connections were going to be hard to make for someone who travelled only in one direction.

  As she relaxed, her brain began casually decoding random fragments of implanted data. It was against the rules but not always possible to control. Today, she saw the face of a much-loved politician who had been caught in a hushed-up, potentially career-destroying sex scandal. Next came a once-redacted but now readable report of secret military operations and coded maps of British weapons bases hidden worldwide. Then she learned the truth behind the closure of the nearby Sizewell nuclear power station and its hidden catastrophic environmental impact. The ruthlessness and power her country’s leaders had over the truth was frightening.

  It was days after the implant pr
ocedure when similar details began seeping into her conscious mind. It was as if she were recalling someone else’s memories and it fascinated her. Karczewski advised her it was all perfectly normal and part of the healing process for knowledge to occasionally leak, like it was today.

  To harness it, Flick put into practice a range of mindfulness routines. She closed her eyes and concentrated only on what she could hear in the present: the animated voices of the children in front of her, the gentle thud of boules landing with a thump on crushed stone, and seagulls squawking as they circled wooden fishing shacks. Soon, the insight she was a party to migrated back into the box from which it’d escaped.

  She took a leisurely walk along the seafront and in the direction of the neighbouring village of Thorpeness. Her brother Theo’s dog Rupert would have loved this hike, and she briefly considered adopting a pet of her own to keep her company. No dependents, she reminded herself. If she needed to beat a hasty retreat, she couldn’t allow anything to slow her down, not even a canine companion.

  It was still the week of her arrival and it wasn’t the first time she’d walked this five-mile round trip. Again, she made mental notes of the landscape, focusing on bridleways, roads that went somewhere and others that led nowhere, fields with locked gates and low hedgerows, and those surrounded by streams or marshland. She knew the area off by heart and had mentally mapped out a dozen potential escape routes. She hoped she’d never have call to use one.

  Later, on her return, Flick chose to walk along a decommissioned railway track that had been converted into a public walkway. She passed ramblers and dog walkers, all making a point of either smiling at her or saying hello. She was learning to ignore her natural instinct as a Londoner to be suspicious of friendly types. There were many aspects of this new life that would take time to become accustomed to.