Read Online Fifty-First State by Hilary Bailey - Free Book Online

the sound of the bombers overhead – and long before Mark Moreno died. Before we learned shame, the shame of those who have allowed their country to be betrayed from within, and the shame of defeat.
    That picture of Rory was like a prophecy. From that moment on the poster of Rory at the soldier’s feet was used on demonstrations – when demonstrations were allowed – and is still stuck up on bedroom walls and in small committee rooms throughout the land. ‘Kim Durham’ is no longer just the name of a woman. It is the name of a state of affairs.
    Young Rory Durham will be seven years old now. After the bruising encounters with the media and the sordid battles with the diplomats, the advisers and the intelligence services of two National Governments, all attempting to get some ‘right’ answers and statements from them, Rory and his maternal grandparents sharpened up and managed to disappear. I don’t know if anyone helped them or if they ever claimed any of the money shoved at them with both hands by Britain and the USA. They’re lost to us now, and to history, or so it seems. But, you never know, Rory Durham, one way or another, may resurface. In real life, as opposed to fiction, there’s always another chapter, another act, another reel, just when you thought the story was finished. But for the time being, they’re gone. Perhaps they changed their name; perhapsthey emigrated. The only people who could easily find them are precisely those who want them out of the way, because of what they represent.
    So, wishing Kim Durham’s family some peace, temporarily at least, I’ll go back to the way the world changed after Kim’s death. Muldoon was finished by then. Whatever spin his friends and supporters tried to put on it, he was the man who’d agreed to the Marine landings at Hamscott Common and was held indirectly responsible for the death of an innocent bystander. Not only that, he’d sanctioned foreign soldiers firing on British protesters. There are times when spin is not enough, and this was one of them.
    What Muldoon did next helped the plans of those working against us. We think the plans were already laid, but Muldoon, acting purely out of pride, egotism and malice, really sped them up. He could not have done more to help the plotters’ cause if they’d been paying him. Of course, it’s been rumoured that they were, but serious people don’t believe it. Even now, when we know so much more about how a man is turned into a renegade, only conspiracy theorists believe Muldoon acted out of anything other than personal motives. But they were enough.
    Hamscott Common, Kent. June 3rd, 2015. 11 a.m.
    Rory Durham was taken to the hospital and passively endured washing, and being put into other clothes. As the doctor began to talk to his grandparents, Rory, standing beside his grandmother’s knee and holding her hand, began to cry helplessly and insist on going back to his house. This was the last thing Matt and Katherine Arthur wanted, but Rory was unpersuadable. He wept, he demanded to go back to his house; he could not, or would not, explain why. Slender young Dr Mehmet, concerned for the little boy, hesitated and then agreed he would drive them back to Kim Durham’s house in his own car. He suggested that, as the press was camped at the front of the hospital, looking for pictures of the bereaved family, they leave by a back entrance. With Rory holding his grandmother’s hand and crying, the quartet went out into the reception area outside Dr Mehmet’s consulting room to find it empty except for a tall man in American officer’s uniform. He stepped forward respectfully and said, ‘Mr and Mrs Arthur, please accept my sympathy for your loss. A great tragedy – a terrible accident. Our hearts are with you in your bereavement. Now, I apologize for this and I don’t want it to look like I’m rushing you, at this