Red Notice

8

In a side street in West Hampstead, an area that had little more than its name in common with the upmarket Village it bordered, a woman was pressing shirts in the back room of a dingy dry-cleaner’s, its windows so fogged with dirt and steam that they were almost opaque.

While she worked, her ten-year-old daughter sat on the floor at her feet, playing with a car-boot-sale Game Boy. Although she could not have been much older than thirty-five, the woman’s hair was already streaked with grey and her face was lined and worn. She put down her iron as the phone began to ring.

She picked it up, reached for a notepad, listened in silence for a few moments, then hung up without a word. Was something wrong? Had she made a mistake? She’d been told to expect the call some time on Monday… ‘Go and put your coat on,’ she said, in Russian, to her daughter. ‘Hurry!’

As the child disappeared, the woman pulled a folding wheelchair from behind the door. She manhandled it through the shop and onto the pavement outside. Keeping an anxious eye on it, she took a piece of battered cardboard from under the counter and wrote on it in awkward capital letters: ‘BACK IN 20 MINUTES. SORRY IF PROBLEM.’

She taped the message to the window, hurried her daughter, still clutching her Game Boy, out of the shop, and locked the door behind them. The little girl ran alongside her, struggling to keep up, and pestered without success to be allowed to ride in the chair.