The man leaned forward, suddenly animated. ‘The organization I represent is a secret but powerful group. We work as a force for justice around the globe.’
Ella stifled the urge to laugh. What was this, a comic book? Next he’d be telling her that they all wore capes and lived in Bat-caves. But when he spoke again he sounded deadly serious.
‘There are things I can explain to you today. Other things will become clear over time. Once you start your training.’
Training? For the first time it occurred to Ella that perhaps this good-looking stranger was actually unhinged. Some sort of paranoid schizophrenic who’d seen her on the street or in the coffee shop and decided to stalk her. First to Mimi’s funeral and now here, at her home. Perhaps she ought to be concerned for her safety?
‘Listen, I’m sorry,’ she said, getting up and walking, calmly, to the front door of the apartment. ‘I’m sure you mean well, but I think you must have me confused with someone else. I’m not going to be doing any “training” or joining any group. I have an ordinary life. I work in an office.’
‘I thought you said you were fired?’
Wow, thought Ella, frowning. He has even worse social skills than I do.
‘Well, yes. I was fired. But that’s not the point. The point is I need you to leave now.’
She held open the door. The man didn’t move.
‘Please go.’ Nothing.
‘I’m serious.’ Ella’s tone hardened. ‘If you don’t leave, I’ll—’
‘Your parents, William and Rachel Praeger, were both important members of The Group,’ the man said, without looking up from the table. ‘They devoted their lives to the cause.’
Ella froze. ‘You knew my parents?’
‘Not personally,’ the man said. ‘I knew of them, naturally. They were legendary in their time. Everyone in The Group knows about the Praegers.’
Ella closed the door. Her heart was beating so fast it was hard to breathe.
She looked at the man. ‘You used the past tense. They “were” legendary.’
‘Yes.’
‘So … my parents are dead?’
‘Yes.’
There was no soft-soaping. No ‘I’m so sorry’ or ‘I thought you knew’. He answered her as bluntly as if she’d asked him the time, or some trivia question. Tactless. Like me, Ella thought again. Not that their similarities eased the blow.
Leaning back against the wall, she fought to steady her breathing. All her life, up until ten days ago, she’d believed her parents were dead, killed in a car crash when she was very young. But since finding the stack of letters hidden in Mimi’s ceiling, she’d been living on hope. Angry hope. Confused hope. But hope nonetheless. That perhaps, miraculously, it wasn’t too late. That one day she would see her mother and father again and they would explain everything. Make everything all right.
But now, with a single word, this stranger, this bizarre, arrogant, handsome man had extinguished that hope, like a priest at the end of Mass, casually snuffing out a candle.
‘Are you sure they’re dead?’ Ella whispered.
‘Quite sure,’ said the man. ‘They died on a mission for us in 2001.’
Two thousand and one. That was the year the letters had stopped.
‘I believe you were eight years old at the time,’ the man said.
‘What sort of “mission”?’ asked Ella. It didn’t occur to her to wonder how he knew her age, or indeed anything about her. ‘Are you trying to tell me that my parents were spies?’
He shrugged. ‘We prefer the term “agents”.’
‘How did they die?’ demanded Ella, who didn’t give a damn what terms the man preferred.
He hesitated for the briefest of moments, then said, ‘They were murdered.’
Ella swallowed hard.
Murdered.
For a few seconds she was left mute. ‘How?’
The man held up a hand. ‘I can’t say any more, I’m afraid. Not yet. But you should know that your parents were both tremendously brave people, Ella. They did their best to protect you, to allow you to enjoy a safe and happy childhood.’
Safe and happy? thought Ella, bitterly. Those were hardly the words she would have chosen to describe life up at the cabin with Mimi.
‘I want to know how they were killed, and why.’
‘And you will,’ said the man. ‘When you’re ready. It was always your parents’ wish that one day you would join us. Carry on their legacy.’
The man continued talking, about ‘The Group’ and ‘missions’ and ‘training’, but Ella had tuned out. She didn’t care about whatever cult it was that he was trying to persuade her to join. All she cared about was that this man knew things about her mother and father. Real things. Specific things. For the first time in Ella’s life, someone was offering her answers – actual, factual answers, not the stream of lies and half-truths and platitudes she’d been fed by her grandmother, well intentioned or not.
‘What else do you know about my parents?’ she interrupted him, reclaiming her place opposite him at the table. ‘You said you never met them.’
‘No.’
‘But other people in your group did?’
‘There are people still in The Group who would have known them, yes,’ the man answered cautiously.
‘Who? Can I talk to them?’
‘I can’t give you names at this stage, I’m afraid.’
‘What do you mean “at this stage”?’ said Ella, growing more strident. ‘And why can’t you? They were my parents. I have a right to know.’
‘As I explained, once you start training for your first mission, you’ll be briefed more fully,’ the man said calmly.
Ella rubbed her temples. This entire conversation had been surreal from the beginning, but all this talk of ‘training’ and ‘missions’ was going too far. She wasn’t about to join this weirdo’s cult, still less volunteer for any sort of ‘special ops’. Whatever number these people had pulled on her parents’ back in the day wasn’t going to work on her. She wasn’t Lara Croft. She was an unemployed statistician with questionable social skills and some sort of undiagnosed mental disorder that made her feel as if hundreds of little men with pickaxes were permanently mining the inside of her cranium, day in, day out. Most of the time it was a ‘mission’ for Ella just to get through the day.
