Like This, for Ever

was covered in Dad’s blood, but there was nothing to wash it off with. Then I think there was a plane. That’s all I can remember. Can we stop now? I want to go back to sleep.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Evi. ‘We’ll talk some more tomorrow.’
    Jorge got up and limped to the door. The leg he’d broken the night he’d been caught was healing, but wouldn’t be sound for a few more weeks yet. In the open doorway he turned back to Evi.
    ‘I never wanted to hurt anyone, you know,’ he told her. ‘Not really. It was always just about the blood.’

67
    ‘VERY APPROPRIATE,’ SAID Dana, sitting down beside Helen in the Peace Pagoda and looking out over the river.
    ‘How did it go?’ asked Helen.
    Dana pulled the collar of her jacket up a little higher and moved closer to Helen. Since the rain had stopped, a cold front had hit London. The forecasters were even talking about snow.
    ‘I apologized; she said, Don’t mention it,’ replied Dana. ‘We talked about the weather for five minutes and then she got up to leave.’
    Helen reached out and put a hand on her arm. ‘It’s a start,’ she said. ‘Lacey’s hardly the kiss-and-make-up type. Did you ask her whether she’s coming back to work?’
    Helen could never bear the idea of someone bright and young leaving the service.
    ‘She’s put in a request for redeployment,’ Dana told her. ‘She’s going back into uniform.’
    Helen was watching a flock of geese make their way upstream, flying low, almost skimming the water. ‘Wow,’ she said.
    ‘Says she needs an easy life for a while,’ said Dana. ‘As if Lacey Flint will be able to stay out of trouble for long.’
    A young family were walking along the path towards them. Mum, dad, newborn twins in a double buggy, so wrapped up againstthe cold that only their noses could be seen. Dana sat up a little taller, her eyes fixed on the buggy. Babies. When had they become so completely fascinating?
    Helen had spotted what she was up to. She took hold of Dana’s gloved hand. She did it slowly, as though half expecting it to be pulled away. ‘I wish you’d told me,’ she said.
    ‘I hardly knew myself,’ said Dana.
    Silence.
    ‘But really, Mark Joesbury as a sperm donor? I can’t see it.’
    For a second, her own body’s shaking scared her. Then Dana realized she was laughing, and it felt like a long time since she’d done that.
    ‘There are things we can do, you know,’ said Helen, after a moment.
    Dana turned to face her. ‘There are?’
    Her partner nodded. ‘Lots of women in our position have children. Where there’s a will.’
    A couple of hundred yards away from them, the geese had landed on the riverbank. They were strutting, over-confident, noisy creatures.
    ‘Is there?’ said Dana, when she’d plucked up the courage. ‘Is there a will?’
    Helen rocked her head, shrugged, pulled her face in a couple of different ways. She was thinking about it. Dana held her breath.
    ‘You’d have to do the pregnant thing,’ said Helen at last. ‘Not sure I’d be up to that.’
    Dana’s hands shot to her face. She gulped. Tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Pregnant?’
    Helen leaned back against the bench, hands laced behind her head. ‘It’s the usual prerequisite, from what I understand.’
    ‘Pregnant? Me?’ Dana was staring down at her stomach, as though just talking about it might have made it happen.
    Helen shook her head. ‘And already it’s addling her brain. Come on. Let’s go and look at some websites.’
    The two women got up. Arm in arm, they followed the newborn twins and their parents out of the park.
    ‘OK.’ The older of the two Joesburys looked at his watch as they crossed the narrow canal that ran through Regent’s Park zoo. ‘We’ve got an hour. So I suggest penguins, otters, meerkats, and I suppose you could talk me into the insect house. But not the butterflies. Butterflies scare me.’
    Huck was looking at the map in the zoo guide they’d bought on their way in. ‘African hunting dogs, Komodo dragons, lions and tigers,’ he announced before looking up at his dad. ‘And finish with the gorillas. Did you know they ripped a woman’s head off last year?’
    Joesbury shook his head. ‘Where do you hear such rubbish?’
    ‘Alex Welsh told me. She broke in at night and went into the gorilla cage and they ripped her head off and the keepers found them next morning using it as a football.’
    ‘What was the score?’
    Huck gave him that
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