Chapter 7: The Prague Itinerary

The kitchen, late morning: second-hand light smears the glass, draining the colour from the vinyl tablecloth. Katie has made no effort at breakfast; the twins self-served Weetabix, leaving behind a wasteland of damp crumbs and a slow brown ooze where milk pooled, then evaporated. Brian is nowhere, probably shut in his “workshop” with the noise-cancelling headphones that double as a marital blindfold. The only sound now is the periodic, off-beat hum of the fridge, a machine out of step with the rest of the house.

Katie sits, staring at her phone as if it’s an unfamiliar animal that might bite. Her hands are still red from scouring the bathtub; there’s a crescent of blue cleaner etched in one thumbnail. She’s been refreshing Telegram compulsively, even though every new message is a curse. Maybe a part of her hopes the next notification will be an apology, an “all just a misunderstanding, please disregard.”

The next notification is not an apology.

It comes at 12:13—a single vibration, as polite as a knock.

“Ready for next stage?”

She swallows. It’s from the same Turkish number, profile photo now replaced with a pixelated wolf’s head in profile. No chaser, no buildup. She wants to ignore it, but the silence that follows is worse. At 12:19, a new message pings in.

“The boss likes red. Prepare for trip. Luton to Prague, 2 weeks from Friday. You will be told when to go to airport. Book ticket yourself, under your name. Take under seat bag, pack red outfit only. Everything else provided. Check-in online and send proof (boarding pass and invoice) by 6 PM today, London time. If you do not, your mother will have a bad accident. Understood?”

Her first, idiotic instinct is to laugh, a hoarse bark that dies in her throat. It’s the logistics that get her—the bureaucratic precision, the total lack of drama. She reads the message again, brain parsing and rejecting, like a body refusing a bad organ transplant.