OK. I’m happy with that. I’ll print pictures and leave them at reception. You can get tokens from the machine.
She rehouses the transducer and hands a wad of paper towels over. Rachel sits up, wipes the gel from her belly, and buttons her jeans.
Are you going for bloods?
Yes.
Down the hall, left and left again. Follow signs for Phlebotomy. The toilet is right outside.
She thanks the woman and goes into the bathroom next door. Then she navigates the hospital corridors to the blood station, takes a numbered ticket from a dispenser, and sits in another waiting area. Beside her are men and women of all ages, being tested, she assumes, for everything. Cancer. Anaemia. Diabetes. She looks down at the vein on the inside of her right arm, which is bluish-green and rises easily. She puts a hand on her stomach. A baby. With bones. And a face. The sonographer made it move, almost dance. She is called through, sits in a plump chair, and the vial is taken.
You look happy, the phlebotomist says.
Do I?
Yeah. Nice to have a smiler.
She makes her way back to the antenatal clinic with a pad of cotton wool taped in the crook of her elbow and collects her maternity notes.
There’s minor confusion on the way out of the department. The receptionist comes towards her holding a small envelope containing a printed copy of the scan.
Miss Caine? You forgot this. There’s a cash machine one level down if you don’t have pound coins for the tokens. We can’t take actual money.
I don’t need a copy, Rachel says. Thanks anyway.
The woman scowls.
Are you sure? There’s a cash machine downstairs.
Her tone borders on suspicious, as if Rachel is simply trying to get out of paying, or is somehow not understanding the system. Perhaps there is even some dereliction of motherhood going on. Not everything meaningful happens on camera, Rachel wants to say. Very little does.
That’s OK. Really. I don’t need a picture.
You’ll want one, the receptionist tells her.
No, thanks.
In the end, irritated and sure that it is simply a ploy, the woman capitulates, thrusting the envelope into Rachel’s hand, turning and stalking back towards her desk. Rachel looks at the picture, framed in a white paper mount. The skull is lit like a strange moon, eye sockets, nose, a chubby chest. She puts the picture in her bag.
Outside the hospital, the city of Lancaster glints in the rainy light. Slate roofs and windows refract, like a hundred lenses. There are dense, anvil-shaped clouds banking to the north. Another batch of rain is coming. She gets in the car, puts her bag on the passenger seat, and starts the engine, but she leaves it idling in neutral for a moment. She takes the envelope out of her bag and looks at the picture again — at the little being, mindless, its cells forming rapidly — which in some places would be used as evidence. She still does not know what she thinks about it all, though she feels herself smiling again.
*
By the end of the month they are fit to travel and everything is ready for their arrival. Rachel drives to the airport to meet the cargo flight. She breaks the journey overnight, stays in an industrial Travelodge. She cannot sleep. She checks the weather app on her phone. Sunny. 15 degrees. She is restless, not tired. A mania has arrived, a combined excitement. In her belly, when she lies flat, there is faint movement, or the boding of movement. Flutters. At 4 a.m. she turns the light on and tries to read but can’t concentrate on her book. She looks at the list of contacts in her phone, thinks about calling Kyle; he will still be up. Should she now tell him? Shouldn’t he know? For courtesy’s sake, if nothing else? She switches the phone off and turns out the light.
In the morning the sky is mackerel-dappled and serene. She checks the airport website — there are no delays. She receives a text message from the transport company — Vargis — the driver has been dispatched and is on his way to the airport. She showers, dresses. She leaves the top button of her jeans undone.
The coffee in the breakfast room gives her heartburn as usual. At the buffet she selects oily eggs from a metal tin, and larvic tomatoes, which scald the inside of her mouth. She eats as much toast and jam as she can. The wonders of a returning appetite. She checks out, puts her bag in the back of the Saab. In the boot is a kit with extra sedative darts, though only a delay or extreme stress will warrant using them, and the transport company is also equipped. At 7.30 she calls Stephan in Romania. He shouts into the hands-free.
Bună ziua? Bună ziua?
She can hear the engine of his truck, and the radio blaring; he is already driving back to the centre, through the alpine meadows.
I wonder if you can help me, she says, I’m looking for two missing wolves.
Rachel, he shouts. I have sent them to you with my greatest love!
Are they OK?
Yes, yes, he says. Being rocked in arms of Morpheus. Let me tell you — next time I’m flying wolf-class too. They’ve got it the best. Like celebrities. They’re going to be a great pair.
I know. I can’t wait to see them.
You have to come visit us soon, he says. You won’t recognise the place — we’re getting very high-tech now! It was a generous donation your employer made to us.
Good — he can afford to be generous. And you must come and see them here.
Of course!
They finish speaking and hang up. She texts Huib with an update, sets the GPS, and drives the rest of the way to the airport. Rush-hour traffic eases. She follows signs for British Airways World Cargo. She is early, but the flight is also scheduled to arrive early. On the link road an Airbus roars overhead, tilting and straightening, its wheels locked, its undercarriage close enough to see scratches in the paint. If everything goes to plan they will be back in Annerdale by the early afternoon. The sedation is strong enough that they will not have been disturbed by the flight and the transit north, but she does not want them under for too long.
It does not seem long ago she was arriving at the same airport: her inglorious return home. She parks at the side of the cargo terminal. There are various haulers and transport companies. The Vargis men are waiting in reception, dressed formally in company jackets, carrying cases in which are plastic suits and masks. She too is equipped with a quarantine suit. She greets them and they exchange a few words. They are polite, professional — ex-military, she suspects. She spends twenty minutes with the airport officials. The paperwork is all in order — waybill, licences, CITES, and veterinary documentation. Payment is made. The crates, IATA standard, have been inspected in Romania, but will be inspected again by UK staff, for correct ventilation, bedding; the wolves are not harnessed inside: if they woke under restraint, they would damage themselves trying to get free. While the flight’s cargo is being cleared, she waits in a small lounge. Other consignees are waiting too, for what freight, it is impossible to guess. Mammals, plants, alien matter. Or the prosaic family pet.
Soon she is called through. She changes into the suit and goes into the disinfected unloading zone. The crates are brought in, the two Vargis men wheeling them slowly, unfazed by the contents of the covered structures. In bold print the labels read: LIVE ANIMALS — DO NOT TIP. The blue transport van is being reversed into the secondary loading bay, the back doors opened. Rachel gently lifts the overlay on the first crate and opens the small viewing hatch. She shines a torch. The female. Darkness, portions of a hind leg, long, crescent-shaped claws. Her breath sounds are even. Thomas has suggested not naming them until they arrive, almost superstitiously, like a father with newborns. Let’s see what their personalities are. But Rachel has already christened her, after seeing the photographs sent by Stephan and noticing an uncanny resemblance to a particular starlet. The thin nose, tilted eyes, and lupine brows; a face from Hollywood past — Merle Oberon. Merle. She pulls the cover back down. She moves to the second crate and checks the male. He is big — bigger than she anticipated — pale fur, with long black guard hairs. He was lucky to make it out of the trap alive, lucky there was no infection in the bone. She listens, then briefly shines the torch inside. The glimmer of a slit eye, atypical blue. The Rayleigh effect. Somehow it is harder, even than with humans, to remember there is no real colour. He is not alert. There’s enough meat and water. She takes the docket out of the waterproof shield, scans and signs it.