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Sir Edward asked Teddy, “When are you headed back to Boston? You’re still on holiday, aren’t you?”
“On and off. I’m flying back tonight actually. I want to get back to Alexia. Things are still tricky at home with our daughter and I don’t like to leave her on her own.”
For the second time in an hour, Sir Edward Manning hid his surprise. He’d understood that the bad blood between Mrs. De Vere and her daughter, Roxanne, was a taboo subject, but Teddy had just brought it up quite openly.
“Well, do give my best to the home secretary,” he said politely. “We’re looking forward to having her back.”
“I will,” said Teddy. “And many thanks for lunch. Oh, one last thing,” he added casually.
“Yes?”
“I don’t suppose I can persuade you to give me this chap’s name, can I?”
The man came to the pub every day for the next week. Always sat at the bar, always nursed two beers, no more, and never spoke to a soul other than Simon Butler.
Simon Butler and the voice in his head.
Simon now knew a little about him. He was in London visiting a friend. He loved cars. He had a daughter. Someone had been going to marry him, but they had changed their mind. This much Simon thought was true. But a lot of what the man said was pure paranoia.
The British government was on his tail.
The home secretary was trying to silence him.
A trained killer wanted him dead and was picking off his loved ones one by one.
Every night the man told Simon Butler about “the voice.” On the telephone. In his head. In his dreams. Telling him what to do. Terrorizing him. No one believed him. But the voice was real.
He didn’t want to tell Simon his name. That was part of the paranoid delusions. No one could be trusted. But he did mention a daughter, Jennifer, over and over again.
One night after work, Simon told his landlady, “I’d like to try and find her. She’s obviously his only family and the guy needs help. She’s probably worried sick.”
The landlady looked at the young barman with affection. He was a good boy, Simon Butler. Kind. Not like her own son, Arthur. It pained her to say it but Arthur and his mates were delinquents. “It’s a nice idea, Si. But you’ve only a first name to go on. That’s not going to get you very far, is it?”
Simon shrugged.
“If you’re really worried you’d be better off calling Social Services. Maybe they could help him.”
“Maybe,” said Simon. “I’d need an address, though.”
It wasn’t a hospital. It was a prison.
Yes, there were doctors, the proverbial men in white coats. But they didn’t want to help him. They wanted to control him. To trap him. All Billy Hamlin remembered was being locked in, strapped down, and doped up to the eyeballs with God knows what. Things to make him forget, to make him relax, to keep him in a permanent state of inertia.
The voice was gone. The doctors called that progress.
But Billy’s panic grew.
Time was running out.
As much as it terrified him, Billy needed the voice. He needed it to tell him what to do next. To give him another chance. Jenny’s life depended on it.
Ironically, it was Jenny who saved him. She was still safe—so far—and once she tracked him down, she came to visit every day. Billy couldn’t tell his daughter the whole truth about the voice. The truth would terrify her, and he didn’t want that. But he talked to Jenny about the drugs, about the cotton-wool clouds in his head, numbing every sense and emotion. About his longing to be free. Eventually, Jenny had convinced the doctors that she could care for him, that he would be safe at home with her. Little did she know that it was really he, Billy, keeping her safe, watching her night after night while she slept, on constant vigil at her modest Queens apartment.
He hadn’t wanted to leave. To sneak out like a thief in the night, without explanation, without saying good-bye. But the voice had called and left him instructions. And the voice must be obeyed.
Balling his hands into fists, Billy pressed them to his eyes, willing himself not to cry. He had to stay focused. And positive. Focused and positive, that was the key.
He was here, after all, in London. He’d made it. That in itself was no mean feat. But the first thing he learned when he arrived on British soil was that Alexia De Vere was not here. Parliament was on its long summer recess, and the home secretary was on a three-week break in Martha’s Vineyard of all places, less than a hundred miles from the hospital where Billy had been locked up. He could have stayed where he was! The irony was so bitter it choked him, a cold hand of fate closing around his throat.
