She walks past Dave, who has his hands over his ears. Poking her head into the meeting room, she tells Ben, “I’ll take her to my place.”
“That’s not a solution,” Ben warns.
“I know,” she agrees. “But it’ll do for now. When Pamela gets here, can you get her to call me?”
Jasmine ducks back out and goes to collect her handbag. She realises they will have to walk to the apartment she is renting. Even if Jasmine had taken her car that morning, she doesn’t have a car seat or any of the paraphernalia you need for children. She doesn’t even know what a sippy cup is, let alone know where to find one. She searches through her mental list of Hayburn acquaintances and can only come up with one name.
She calls Sean. He doesn’t pick up, but she leaves a short voice message summarising the situation. When Georg’s sister, Agnes, had been doing her hair, Jasmine is sure she’d mentioned picking up her eldest boy from school. The younger child must therefore be about the right age to have some of this stuff lying around.
As she and Natasha leave the campaign headquarters, the little boy slips his hand into hers and the effect is extraordinary. Out of principle, Jasmine would have been prepared to fight to the death to defend this woman and her family, but with that tiny hand in hers, she feels the need to protect with every fibre of Natasha’s being.
Jasmine’s poky little apartment seems overfull with three extra people in it, even if two of them are tiny. She turns on the television and switches to a children’s channel, leaving the little boy mesmerised by some cloth creatures, his treasured stuffed lion beside him. The baby, who had quietened on the walk, has begun to grizzle again. His mother is raiding the kitchen cupboards, eventually filling a glass with water and attempting to help the baby drink from it. Despite the best efforts of a tea towel, both mother and baby are soon soaked but it seems to satisfy the infant. Natasha appears exhausted and sits on the sofa, almost comatose until she does actually fall asleep, the baby nestled against her.
Jasmine waits. Courtesy of her own erratic eating habits, she has a cupboard full of melt-in-the-mouth snacks of lurid colours and she keeps the toddler quiet by feeding him them. She figures while a diet of snacks everyday may be problematic, this one-off surfeit probably won’t matter. She does cut up a stray apple she finds in the fridge and adds that to the toddler’s bowl in an attempt to rebalance the nutrient deficit.
Essentially alone with her thoughts, Jasmine considers Ben’s words. She has to admit he is right. She is blundering around. She knows nothing about supporting a woman like Natasha, nothing about caring for children, and nothing about protecting them all. But she also knows she could not have turned her away. From the moment she saw those bruises, she had to act. It is not in her soul to do nothing, to walk away as if she hadn’t noticed. Her mother has often complained about her father’s tendency to interfere in random people’s lives. It is often portrayed as self-importance. But Jasmine suspects they share the same trait and it is deeper than that. It is a fundamental inability to walk away from injustice. In this moment, she understands her father better than she has ever done before.
But Lord Larkford was born the eldest male, into a role that conferred leadership on him. Jasmine has none of those resources and, truly, she is feeling overwhelmed. She looks across at Natasha, lying on the sofa with her eyes closed and realises her feelings are nothing to the scale of Natasha’s. The courage it must have taken the woman to risk everything, to try for safety, was immense. Jasmine feels dwarfed by her strength.
A message from Sean buzzes on her phone:Sorted.
And then, moments later, a call from the office.
“Ben?” Jasmine answers.
“Pamela.”
“Oh, thank God!” Jasmine says, although she doesn’t believe in God. “Did Ben tell you everything?”
“Yes. I’m trying to get them into a refuge tonight. Are you okay to keep them at yours until then?”
Jasmine assures her and then rings off. An hour later, Sean turns up, dragging a suitcase full of kiddie clutter: clothes, toys, formula, and a sippy cup.
But while his bounty is welcome, his news is not.
“What does your ex look like?” he asks Natasha.
“Average height, average build, short dark hair, good-looking. Why?”
“I think he may be outside.”
Natasha’s eyes widen and she looks on the verge of collapse. “How did he find me?” she gasps. “I did what you said. I left my phone behind. I left it all behind!” She turns to Jasmine, frantic.
Jasmine turns to Sean. “Are you sure?”
“No, but there’s a guy stood watching the building. He’s not even attempting to hide. I think he wants Natasha to see him.”
“But how does he know where we are?” Natasha is crying now, but Jasmine ignores it. Her brain is working.
“There must be a tracker,” she says. “Otherwise, why this one place in the whole of Hayburn?”
Jasmine checks Natasha over, even running her fingers through the woman’s hair, but comes up with nothing. Natasha isn’t even wearing a watch. She momentarily considers prising apart the woman’s shoes to see if anything is hidden in the heel, but she is interrupted by Sean.
“Found it!” he says, and he holds up the stuffed lion. He points to a small tag around the neck which reads, “My name is Fred.” The toddler is looking worried and Natasha moves to comfort him. Sean unclips the tag and returns the lion to the child after squashing it thoroughly to ensure there are no unexpected hard parts concealed inside.
“This is coming with me,” he says, holding up the suspected tracker. “Jasmine, where are your car keys? I’m going for a little drive.”
In the end, they gather everything in a black bin liner. All the clothes and the shoes, anything the family was wearing when they left the house that morning. Just in case. Natasha is now drowning in some of Jasmine’s clothes and a pair of her trainers, laced tight. The kids are in some of the outfits Agnes had supplied but barefoot. Jasmine gives Natasha all the cash she has on her, but it isn’t much. She wishes it was more.
