Read Online Red Joan by Jennie Rooney - Free Book Online Page A

furiously and her hands shake as he takes hold of them and squeezes them tightly together.
    â€˜Mum,’ he says. ‘They think it’s you.’
    There is a silence. For a brief moment, Joan is reminded of Nick as a seven-year-old boy, marching home from school to announce the incredible piece of information he had heard that day of where babies came from. She remembers the look of horror on his face as Joan verified that yes, this was indeed true, and she also remembers the terrible feeling this revelation aroused in her because it meant that the time had come. They had agreed that they would never lie to him about where he came from, that they would tell him as soon as he asked. So when Nick pressed his finger against Joan’s stomach and asked if he came from in there, Joan had known that she would have to take her little boy onto her knee and hug him tightly, and tell him that there was another mummy out there who loved him very much, but that other mummy had been too young to keep him, and so they had chosen him, chosen him above all others, because as soon as they had seen him they had known he was the most perfect thing they had ever seen.
    Joan remembers Nick’s small face, open-mouthed and furrowed, as he took in this piece of information. And she remembers the phone call from school the following morning requesting her to come and collect him because he had punched a boy in the face and would not say sorry. She had held Nick while he cried, until finally he confessed that he had punched the boy for laughing at him because he didn’t have a real mother.
    Joan had regretted telling him then, thinking that perhaps they should have waited until he was eighteen as advised by the adoption agency, although this had seemed deceitful somehow. She had wondered if there might have been a gentler way of phrasing it, if her husband would have done it better. She does not know. Perhaps. But whenever she does think of this moment, there is always one aspect of it she remembers with absolute clarity: that last gasp of innocence as Nick’s finger was pressed into her stomach, his face questioning, and the breath of time just before she answered the question, when it was still possible that she could have told her cherished little boy something different, something easy; that yes, he was all theirs, and yes, he had come from in there.
    She looks at him now. ‘I know,’ she whispers.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜They were here yesterday. They’ll be here again today.’
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜MI5.’
    Nick’s mouth drops open.
    â€˜I’ve been put under a Control Order. Technically, you shouldn’t be here without permission.’
    â€˜You’re under a Control Order? Why? They’re for terrorists about to be deported, not for you.’ He puts his arms around her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
    Joan cannot speak. Her body seems to melt with sorrow and she clings to her son, pressing her face into his shoulder so that she doesn’t have to look at him when she speaks. ‘I didn’t want to bother you.’
    Nick sighs, exasperated, but he keeps hold of her, shaking his head and stroking her back as Joan had done so many times for him when he was a boy, and which he now does for his own sons. ‘Oh Mum, what is it with your generation that you all think it’s some sort of favour not to bother people?’ He stops. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t ask for help. It’s what I do. It’s my job. You must have been so scared.’
    Joan nods.
    â€˜Right then.’ Nick releases her gently, and takes his BlackBerry out of his coat pocket, as if he intends to sort it all out there and then on that odd little contraption. ‘We need to make a plan. First of all, we need to see evidence. They can’t keep you effectively imprisoned here without providing at least a sufficient amount of evidence for you to