Awareness dribbled back into Laura’s mind.  At first it was noise. The whine of a cheap fluorescent light, strangely pushing itself to the fore before the drone of a vehicle engine called for attention.  The rough blanket vibrating against the back of her skull.  The dull pain in her back.  Then the wool evaporated from her mind and consciousness came flooding back.
 
“Andrew!”  She sat up.  There was a nasty metallic taste in her mouth.  She needed a glass of water.  Then a glass of wine.  Make that a bottle.
 
“Steady.”  The grandpa security guy put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her back.  “Let the shot do its work.”
 
She was in a truck.  No, an ambulance, lying on the gurney.  The two security men stood before her, hanging onto ceiling straps as the vehicle sped to whichever hospital would declare Andrew dead.
 
“Andrew?” she repeated.
 
“Hi, sweetheart.”
 
Grandpa stood aside and she saw him, lying on the gurney on the opposite side of the ambulance.  Blood covered Andrew’s once-white shirt.  He screwed his eyes up and shook his head.
 
“God, it’s been a while since I had a hangover like this.”  He rubbed his chest and winced.
 
“Oh my God!”  Laura sat up again and swung her legs over the side of the stretcher.  “Andrew!  Help him!”
 
“Relax,” said Grandpa.  “He’s fine.”
 
“Fine?  Fine?  He’s been shot!”
 
“I have, I have,” moaned Andrew.  “I just have one request before I die.  Don’t let me die a virgin.”
 
The wrestler sniggered.
 
“What?”  Laura looked from guard to guard to Andrew.  “What?”
 
“It was a stun round,” said Grandpa.  “Non-lethal, high voltage to put you down and a tranq to keep you there.  That and a corn syrup blood capsule.  He’s fine.  You too.”
 
“Me?”
 
Grandpa shrugged.  “Sorry.  We decided not to tell you.  We wanted it to look authentic.  If it’s any consolation, I felt bad about it. I was convinced you’d read my mind and spoil it.”
 
“Don’t be stupid,” said the wrestler.  “They can’t read your mind unless you let them.”  He frowned.  “Right?” he asked, looking at Laura.
 
“Something like that.  You’re not dead?” she asked, turning to Andrew.
 
“Um, no?  I guess not.”
 
“And you planned all this?”
 
“Well, me and the boys.”
 
“You bastard!”  Laura launched herself across the narrow gap between them, swinging her fists at his face.  Andrew raised his arms instinctively.  The wrestler wrapped an arm around her waist and tried to drag her off.  She jabbed elbows at his stomach and face and glared at Grandpa, who raised his hands.
 
“Divorced, remember? I know when to back off.”
 
Laura swung at Andrew again, but the wrestler held her out of reach. She struggled for a moment, then held her arms up.
 
“Okay, okay.  I give in.  I’ve stopped, okay?”
 
Andrew nodded at the wrestler, who slowly released his grip on her waist.
 
“I thought you were dead!”  said Laura, trying to get as much ice into it as she could, but painfully aware of the tremble in her voice.  “I saw you shot, you bastard.  You utter bastard!”
 
“We had to make it believable,” said Andrew.  “Sorry, but it was the best way.  You were believable, by the way.  Genuine beyond suspicion.”
 
“That’s because I didn’t know you and Laurel and Hardy here were playing cops and robbers.  I saw you shot!”
 
“Sorry.”  Andrew looked contrite.  “They could shoot me for real, if you want.”
 
“Arsehole!  But why?”
 
“Why?”
 
“Why this charade?  Why the shooting?  Why the bloody hell have your new best friend shoot me in the back?”
 
He shrugged.  “It seemed a good idea at the time.”  He raised his hands in surrender as Laura clenched her fists and stepped forward.
 
“What I mean to say is, we have shit in an awful lot of people’s cornflakes.  The guild, the police, the security agencies.  And not just in this country.  Laura, you have no idea the number of people we have pissed off.  Important people.  Violent people.  People with long memories and no morals.”
 
“I knew what I was getting into.”
 
“No.  With respect, no you didn’t.  You still don’t.  All the time we’re breathing there will be any number of people who will try and rectify that.  If I didn’t have you killed you’d be dead before dinner.”
 
“Excuse me?”
 
“You know what I mean.”  He sat up slowly, wincing.  “God, those things hurt.”  He rubbed his chest then looked at the fake blood on his hand.  He glanced around, then failing to find anything better he wiped it on a relatively clean portion of his jacket.  “Listen.  Just listen for a minute. You saw me on TV? The little speech I gave?  It was all bullshit.  They don’t care.  If there was a cache of dirty secrets they’d be able to extract it in a minute, despite what you say about Listeners high moral pathway. Even the old-fashioned way, eventually.  This is the only way.  Trust me, it’s tried and tested.”
 
“What do you mean?”
 
“I mean not everyone who’s been reported dead actually dies.”
 
“But how?  I mean, they’ll expect bodies.”  Laura’s hand flew to her mouth.  “Oh God.  You killed someone?”
 
“No.  Leastways, not today.  Besides, DNA, dental, bone structure.  The days of dressing up some homeless corpse in a suit are long gone.  But it’ll take a while. The Senator has a legal team you wouldn’t believe.  It’ll be a few days, two at worst, before anyone can prove any two bodies we might point them at aren’t us.  And in two days we can be anywhere.  Well, relatively.  And if it’s a country that hasn’t signed up to the Guild’s inoculation program…”
 
“You’re telling me we’re going to some backwater third-world country for the rest of our lives?”
 
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”  Andrew laughed at her look of fury.  He raised his hands in surrender.  “Well, you could retire to Zimbabwe if you want.  Me, I was thinking of maybe retiring to a little island somewhere.”
 
Laura frowned.  “Haiti?  Really?”
 
“Well, I was thinking further south.”
 
Laura screwed her face up in concentration as she tried to picture the Caribbean.  Then she saw his smirk and the penny dropped.
 
“The Falklands?  Seriously?  Penguins and icebergs?”
 
Andrew shrugged.  “Trust me.  After all, I think in the near future we’re all going to have to trust each other the old-fashioned way.  You might as well start now.”
 
Laura stared at him, trying to work through options as though she had any experience with a covert life on the run.  And then she sighed.  He was right.  Every country in the world would now reconsider its Tridenazol programme.  It might not be the end for Listeners, but it was certainly going to see many more Andrew Christmases arrive in the world. Maybe it was the right time to retire.  Maybe she should start to learn body language and all the other tiny inaccurate ways Normals learned to divine what other human beings were thinking.
 
She leant forward until her face was inches from Christmas.  “Do you trust me?” she asked.
 
“Yes.”  The answer came without hesitation.
 
“Then trust me on this.  You ever scare me like this again, you ever lie to my face, and I will make your life a misery.”
 
“And if I don’t?”
 
She closed the remaining gap and kissed him.
 
“Oh God,” said thrice-divorced Grandpa, behind her.  “She’s going to make his life a misery anyway.”