The hush, p.1
The Hush, page 1
Praise for
The Hush
“Brilliantly imagined and superbly told, this story reaches out and grabs you right from the outset…This is the novel everyone will be talking about this year.”
—Natasha Lester,
New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Secret
“Smart and considered, this is the book I wish I had written. Sara Foster is one of my favorite writers.”
—Dervla McTiernan
“Highly original and thought-provoking, The Hush is a compelling page-turner whose questions and ideas capture a cultural and political zeitgeist.”
—Anna Downes,
bestselling author of The Safe Place
“Terrifyingly plausible—and utterly compelling.”
—Wendy James
“Magnificent. Writer envy. Foster is changing the game.”
—Nikki Gemmell
Books by Sara Foster
Come Back to Me
Beneath the Shadows
Shallow Breath
All That Is Lost between Us
The Hidden Hours
You Don’t Know Me
The Hush
Copyright © 2021 by Sara Foster
E-book published in 2021 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Darren Holt, HarperCollins Design Studio
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced
or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-6651-0687-0
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-6651-0686-3
Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
For Marian
And in loving memory of Dorothy and Jill
When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced, and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Robert Browning,
The Pied Piper of Hamelin: A Child’s Story
PART I
first stage
[CLASSIFIED DOC]
SENT THROUGH PRIVATE SERVER,
FROM MI5 TO THE PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE AT 10 DOWNING STREET
URGENT
The YouTube site hosted by PreacherGirl has been permanently taken down.
Total views: 4,065,341.
Police task force Delta will continue to look for the person behind the “PreacherGirl” pseudonym.
As agreed, all media inquiries will be dealt with by the Press Secretary’s office.
Out of the twelve girls originally mentioned as missing, three have been located at home.
Out of the twenty-six girls mentioned in the comments by site viewers, eleven have been located at home.
This leaves a total of twenty-four girls, names appended, whose whereabouts are still unknown.
Possible link to Project 9.
We need to talk.
1.
FRIDAY, 6:30 a.m.
A distant siren merges into the staccato shriek of an alarm clock, and Lainey’s dream slips away. She comes to in her own bed, her body heavy on the sagging mattress, the weight of the blanket pressing her down. Rolling over, she gives the alarm clock a whack, hoping it hasn’t woken her mother. From his basket nearby, Fergus lets out a low grunt. Beside the bed, there’s fluttering and rustling.
She sits up and rubs her eyes. Her room is still dark, full of shadowy cubist shapes. Although the autumn temps have dropped already, she hasn’t turned on her heater yet, and the morning air is chilly. It’s raining outside, and the rush of water is a million murmuring voices, cajoling, soothing, warning, impatient. Get moving, they say. Get this done.
Lainey hesitates, thinking of her plans this morning. There’s an icy lump in her belly. And she hasn’t accounted for rain.
She tiptoes to the bathroom, alert for any other sound. All is quiet. She sits on the toilet with her head in her hands, staring at the scrappy fabric of her knickers caught at her knees. If she stays here and prays hard enough, something might change. Except she doesn’t believe in miracles.
Finally, she gets up to wash her face and brush her teeth. Her hands shake as she gulps water from the tap, and she sighs. If this is going to work, she needs to stay calm.
Back in her room, she moves stealthily, gathering what she needs. She gives Fergus a few treats then unclips her watch, attaching it to his front right paw. Fergus looks mournfully at it, then his trusting brown eyes turn toward hers.
“Sorry, buddy,” she tells him, stroking the spaniel’s ears and kissing the soft swatch of fur between his eyes. “I need you to cover for me. I won’t be long.” She still feels paranoid doing this, but now the watches are compulsory, day and night, and she can’t risk being tracked for the next hour or so.
Before leaving, she pulls the pillowcase off a large container by her bedside. Three fluffy-feathered baby starlings begin to chirp, tiny beaks bursting open like bright-yellow petals. She’s only had them for fourteen days, but they’ve changed so much already from the half-feathered scruffs she’d rescued from a nest, shielding them from the sight of their dead mother, who’d lain at the base of the sycamore tree, decapitated by a passing predator. It had been fortunate Lainey had seen the hollow and checked it, but then she is always looking out for animals in need.
She grabs the tub of mealworms and presoaked dry cat food, pulls off the cellophane, then dips tweezers into the gunk before offering tiny portions to each waiting mouth. The last two weeks of her holidays had been taken up by their feeding demands: every half an hour at first, then gradually eking out the time and encouraging them to start eating independently. They can manage for a few hours now, but still prefer being hand-fed.
After a few rounds of this, they settle. “I’ll be back soon,” she reassures them, and replaces the cover. “Take care of them, Fergus.”
Fergus whines softly and rests his chin on his front paws, head leaning leftward, avoiding the watch.
Lainey surveys the room for a moment, checking all is okay, then hoists her bag over her shoulder. Time is ticking. She creeps down the dimly lit stairs, wincing at every creak. If she can just get outside, then her mother mightn’t even realize she’s gone.
At the bottom of the stairs, she unlatches the door. It opens to a gloom-struck scene: dark, dismal, wet. Beyond the low gate, ten paces away, a truck drives past the terraced houses, wheels spinning and whooshing in the puddles. Lainey turns and slowly, cautiously, closes the door behind her. There’s the faintest of clicks. Seconds later, she is beyond the safe confines of home, head bowed, sprinting toward town.
6:55 a.m.
Emma listens to Lainey’s slight footsteps; hears the soft shutting of the door. She jumps out of bed and hurries to the window, watching the silhouette of her daughter disappearing into the gloaming beyond the streetlamps. Where the hell is she going? It’s not even seven, for Christ’s sake.
But there’s no time to speculate. She grabs the thermometer by the bedside and holds it close to her forehead until it beeps, indicating the wireless transfer of data to the hospital. Next she takes a swab from a packet in her top drawer and pops it into her mouth, sucking on it for a few seconds, trying to ignore its gritty dryness against her tongue. She removes it and sees the color is blue. Neutral. Next, she runs her watch over the tiny barcode at its base, until another beep tells her this data has also been delivered. After ten seconds, her watch lights up with one small word on the screen: Negative.
In other words: no virus detected. Time for work.
The day looms before her, its endless demands exhausting her before she’s even moved. There’s a ten-hour shift on the ward to contend with, and she’s promised to meet Cathy for lunch. Cathy will be full of crises and concern, but Emma doesn’t blame her, because all anyone can think about is the growing catastrophe at the hospital. At some point during the past few months, the days had turned into minefields. Every hour at work is uncharted territory that must be tiptoed through, hyperalert, preparing for the next inevitable explosion. And once a day is conquered, it doesn’t drift away from Emma like it used to. It turns to stone and settles inside her. There’s a cairn in the pit of her belly.
No doubt, as hospital management, Cathy is getting it in the neck from the powers that be. Of course everyone wants answers. And because Emma is in the trenches, down on the wards, Cathy often questions her for small details, grilling her for anything they might have missed. “I don’t know,” Emma has insisted, over and over, trying not to picture the row of tight little faces in the morgue, those tiny stubborn mouths that had refused to open, to breathe. “I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m frightened too.”
This time last year, a stillbirth had been an event. Rare and tragic. Usuall y, with answers delivered via an autopsy. Then rumors began five months ago—disturbing reports from hospitals in the north of England about births going wrong—but they were nothing compared to the shock of delivering a little girl, plump and perfect, who came easily into the world but refused to take a breath. Emma won’t ever forget the stunned silence. The steady panting of the mother turning to howls of confusion; the father staggering and vomiting on the floor. The hasty efforts at resuscitation. The swift removal of the child for assessment. The parents’ never-ending, agonizing questions, which no one could answer.
Emma had gone home that evening, taken a long, hot bath, and prayed to every god she could think of that she would never experience a day like that again. It hadn’t worked. Instead, her days have become a lottery, the live births interspersed with the Intrapartum X babies—or the “doll babies,” as the media calls them—the ones who twist and wiggle in the womb, showing no signs of anything amiss; who are perfectly alive during delivery, their steady heartbeats tracked as they descend into the birth canal, but who, once born, refuse to take a breath or open their eyes. No matter how much resuscitation they’re given. No matter how much the adults implore them.
Within a few nightmarish months, almost every hospital across the country had experienced such an event. At first it was one in every ten births, then one in eight. Now the ratio is creeping closer to one in five. Cesareans don’t help. It doesn’t matter how rapidly a neonate is plucked from the womb—if it’s an Intrapartum X baby, it will go limp the moment it’s touched. The babies demonstrate no signs of pain and no will to stay in the world. They are pristine human specimens.
They just won’t breathe.
In the beginning, Emma spent long hours awake at night going over each birth, searching for an answer to this nightmare. She’d read the latest research, obsessed about numerous theories and quizzed weary obstetricians and frazzled nurses. The only result was a week off work with sleeping tablets, and after that she’d taught herself not to dwell on her more disturbing thoughts. Now, as she heads to the kitchen to make a drink, she forces her thoughts away from work for a few minutes, her mind turning to Lainey’s sudden flit. Her heart contracts. When was the last time she checked in with her daughter?
When Lainey was small, they’d talked about everything. Craig had left before Lainey could even walk, and in a family of two, all focus was on each other. Emma was the sun, and Lainey the flower in bud, leaning and unfolding toward her mother’s light. But, as Lainey had blossomed, the shadow between them had grown too. Lately, they’d been little more than tenants sharing the same house, thanks to Emma’s erratic shift pattern. Between the all-encompassing nightmares at the hospital and Lainey’s unpredictable social life, it is hard enough to find themselves in the same place, never mind with enough energy to talk. And Lainey doesn’t confide much in Emma anymore, which makes Emma want to weep, even though she knows it’s to be expected. “We knew we’d have to let them go one day,” Cathy had said on a recent night out, raising her glass of wine as if toasting their losses at a living wake. “It’s just happened so bloody fast.”
But no matter how sympathetic her friends are, Emma still hasn’t completely got the hang of stepping back. Otherwise, she’d dismiss this horrible urge to run after Lainey to check she’s all right. And she wouldn’t have shrugged off all her better judgments about prying, and walked upstairs into Lainey’s room to find Fergus fast asleep, wearing Lainey’s watch.
7:10 a.m.
On Frederick Street, a shadowy figure emerges from a driveway and joins Lainey, their footsteps instantly in time with one another.
“I hope I don’t look as knackered as you do,” Sereena says. “Did you even brush your hair?”
Lainey laughs. “You look pretty average, I’m sorry to say. Did you get out okay?”
“No sweat.” Sereena combs her fingers through her damp hair. “Mum’s snoring like a walrus in there.”
“What did you do with your watch?”
“Moodle’s wearing it as a collar. She isn’t happy, but I think she’ll settle down. I hope she does, anyway, otherwise the government spies will think I’m a loony turning circles in my bedroom.”
Lainey pictures Sereena’s obese tabby prowling around with her new choker. She smiles, then remembers the reason they’re here. “Do you think we’re being too paranoid—about the watches, I mean?”
Sereena shrugs. “After what happened to Ellis and PreacherGirl, I think it’d be weird if we weren’t paranoid. Why else is it illegal to remove them for more than five minutes?” She trails off, and Lainey knows she’ll be stewing about the new rules. The watches have only been compulsory for the last twelve weeks; before that people could at least sleep without them. But these new waterproof versions are supposed to serve a whole host of functions: ID, credit payments, and making a continual record of health data. All under the auspices of keeping them safe, but Sereena’s convinced it’s really about surveillance and tracking. She’d suggested using their pets as decoys a few weeks ago, and Lainey had heard it was being copied all over school.
She thinks over Sereena’s words. “Have you found out anything more . . . about Ellis?” she asks nervously.
“Nothing.” Sereena bites her lip, and the space between them is filled with unspoken worries. Ellis Scott was the same age as them, and Sereena had gotten to know her at a camp a couple of years ago. Lainey had been jealous of their friendship at first, but that hadn’t lasted long, because Ellis was so easy to warm to. Tall and willowy with long, dark hair, she was always sharing jelly sweets and talked incessantly about being a fashion designer. Her hobby was scouring charity shops and buying mismatched pieces of clothing that she’d turn into art pieces, cutting them up and splicing them back together, sewing on beads, buttons, and tassels. After she’d finished she would give them away to her friends.
To start with, only Sereena had known that Ellis had walked into a pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test, expecting them just to take her ID. Instead, she’d had to take the test inside the shop—with a security guard called to stand outside the toilet door. The pharmacist had insisted on seeing the sodden stick and recording the results. Soon after, Ellis had disappeared, along with her family, and no one had seen them since.
The girls had been confused and concerned when Ellis didn’t pick up their calls, but the panic hadn’t hit until a couple of weeks ago, when PreacherGirl dropped her song about twelve pregnant girls who’d purportedly vanished, accompanied by a scrolling video of their names and photos. Ellis wasn’t listed, but the stories were all too familiar, and Sereena had added her friend’s name to the missing in the comments. It had meant betraying Ellis’s confidence, but she wasn’t sure what else to do.
Since then, Ellis’s absence has felt increasingly sinister. To begin with, the whole town was talking about it, but once PreacherGirl’s site was taken down, many people felt it was too dangerous to continue whispering conspiracy theories in case their watches were recording all conversations. Nevertheless, a few of Lainey and Sereena’s friends are still determined to find Ellis, so far with no success.
Lainey had watched this all unfold with growing horror. Four days ago, she’d broken down and told Sereena she feared she might be pregnant, too.
“So,” Sereena says, interrupting Lainey’s thoughts, “d’you reckon we’ll pull this off? I keep wondering if we’ve missed anything, but it seems pretty easy to me.”
Lainey shrugs. “Glad you’re confident. The rain’s making me nervous. Wet footsteps are a giveaway.”
“Rain’s good. Gives us more reason to keep our hoods up. Just wipe your feet when you get inside, and you’ll be fine.” She rubs her arms. “I wish it wasn’t so bloody cold, though. The seasons are stuffed, aren’t they? September’s practically winter now.”
Lainey eyes the dimly lit street ahead of them. She’s shivering too, but she’s not sure it’s from the cold. “Thanks for coming.”
“It’s no problem—I should be thanking you. Any chance to mess with this screwed-up system, and you know I’m there. And depending on what happens, I’ll help you decide what to do next.”
