Chapter 14
the little boy is running towards her laughing the sun shining and the sky blue overhead follow me follow me he says and he leads her through the trees down the shore to the sea and he’s running through the surf spray making rainbows in the air and she’s laughing too until a bigger wave knocks him off his feet pulls him in and fast as she tries to catch him he slips through her fingers falling falling into the depths of the sea—
This is when she always wakes up, heart pounding, slick with sweat, tears sliding down her face. Anna lies still for a moment, trying to collect herself, work out where she is.
The scent of coffee and toast in the air, the clink of cutlery on china. A faint murmur of voices from a radio. Anna rolls over in bed, only half-awake. The bed is comfy – she stretches, cat-like, calming down as the effects of the nightmare wear off.
She has no idea what the time is, but it’s light outside, a grey sky apparent above the rows of houses opposite.
Memory returns. She’s in Tom’s house. But she can’t keep lazing here, smelling the coffee.
She needs to get on. She’ll have to go into London to keep her probation appointment – that’s a necessary chore.
But after that . . . she swallows a lump in her throat. One thing at a time.
Getting out of bed, Anna looks out over the gardens from which she heard the fox yowl the night before. Suburbs.
Once upon a time, this would have been her idea of hell, obsessed as she was with the bright lights of the big city, working every hour she could, slipping into a taxi in the small hours through London’s deserted streets to her Shoreditch flat, surrounded by concrete and glass.
Now she’s transfixed by what she can see out of the window, trees bursting into blossom, the April sky a vibrant blue dotted with ragged white clouds.
The past is a different country, but sometimes Anna looks back on the person she was and feels like she was living in a completely different world, its customs alien to her now.
All she cared about was advancement through the ranks, her professional success.
She cancelled on her friends, her family, and saw her colleagues more in a day than she’d see those dearest to her in a year, maybe two.
If only she’d known. If only she’d had any idea what was to come, who she would become.
She’d have turned her back on the training contract in an instant.
All those hours spent in pursuit of her career, time robbed from her family, from everything that really mattered.
Sometimes, she’d look out of the window of her newly developed apartment, floors above the ground, and her head would swim.
Not just because of the height of it. The vertigo came from a sense of unmooring, nothing connecting her to reality.
She’d thought this was the way to guarantee her rise through the corporate ranks, nothing to hold her back.
What it meant was that there was no one there to catch her when she fell.
Not like here. There’s a breeze coming in from the open sash window. It carries a scent of earth, greenery, overlaid by the coffee coming from downstairs. The house where she grew up used to back on to a garden just like this, the cherry tree at the bottom of the lawn opening out its snowy blossom.
The quiet, the birdsong, the green leaves and white flowers and the smell of the earth.
It’s dangerous, she realises. She can’t afford to forget her reality, no matter how tempting the surroundings she’s in seem.
She doesn’t even know where she is – it could be any suburb, any town.
She wasn’t paying enough attention the night before – so stupid of her, so risky. It’s a trap, too good to be true.
It’s time to get out, before it’s too late.
She knows how people operate. Even if Tom is one of the good guys, she doesn’t want him involved anymore.
She’s got a job to do, before her one-way trip to the sea.
Throwing her clothes back on, pushing her feet back into her trainers, she picks up her bag, ready to sneak out of the house before he can stop her.
She’s about to creep down the stairs when she catches sight of the bathroom door, which is standing slightly ajar.
She should leave, but it’s the last bathroom she’ll see for hours.
The room acts further to allay her fears, a clean, soothing space with a scent of sandalwood in the air.
Homely, reassuring – there’s a fern on the windowsill, a soap shaped like a fish hanging from a rope in the shower.
Checking the cabinet above the sink, she finds some moisturising cream and smooths it on to her right hand with relief, the itching soothed for once.
Then she brushes her teeth with her finger and a squeeze of toothpaste she takes from the tube on the basin.
Her eyes leer back at her in the mirror, the furrow between her brows seemingly permanent now.
Only thirty but she feels about fifty. Looks it, too.
Now she’s just wasting time. Who cares what she looks like? Such things ceased to matter a long time ago. She needs to get out of here. She shuts the bathroom door noiselessly behind her.
One step down, the next. A creak on the third and she holds her breath, unsure if the noise will travel through the muttered chatter she can hear coming from the radio in the kitchen.
She could take Tom on in a fight, but everything is hurting, all the bruises and scrapes from the day before, the place where she hit her head on the wall still throbbing.
It would be so easy to sink back into that comfortable bed, to go back to sleep. But she can’t risk it. She’s got to keep moving.
Next step down, then the next. She’s nearly there. Bottom step, on to the hall carpet, moving as quietly as possible. Her hand grasps the latch of the front door, freedom a second away—
Barking, a drawn-out burst of it, and something warm and furry throws itself at her.
‘Anna,’ Tom says, following behind the small dog. ‘You OK?’
Anna is frozen in place, hand still up to the latch of the door. She smiles, a tide of red surging up her neck into her cheeks. ‘I was just . . .’
‘Why do you need to leave? It’s all under control.’
She turns the latch to pull the door open but Tom blocks it, his hand firm above hers.
‘I want to go,’ she says.
‘You haven’t had any breakfast.’
‘I don’t want breakfast. I want to leave.’
‘What’s so important?’
She turns her head, looks up at him, still with her hand on the latch. He couldn’t begin to understand. She wants to push him out of the way, make a run for it.
‘Come on, I’m going to make you an omelette. Then I’ll take you to the station.’
‘I don’t want an omelette.’ Her fist clenches at her side, the other hand still on the latch. Her breath’s coming so fast she’s soon light-headed. Why the hell is he bothering with her? Why can’t he leave her alone?
‘There’s coffee,’ he says, smiling. The dog is now sitting at his feet – it’s fluffy and brown, a pink tongue hanging out the side of its mouth.
Totally unthreatening. Flight diminishes in her.
Fight, too. The smell of coffee returns, and she hasn’t got the strength to resist anymore.
She lowers her hand from the door, smiles.
‘Yes, please,’ she says. ‘But I can’t stay long. I don’t even know where I am. I really appreciate your hospitality last night, but I need to get to London. I don’t know how long it’s going to take.’
Tom starts to laugh. ‘Didn’t you see where we were going last night? We’re in Oxford.’
‘I didn’t see, no,’ Anna says. The sense of security engendered by the dog, the coffee – it’s disappeared now, a cold chill in its place. She’s not where she thought she was. She swore she would never set foot here again.
‘Are you sure we’re in Oxford?’ she says, conscious immediately that it’s the stupidest question, hoping still that he’ll tell her it’s a sick joke. Her mouth is drying out, her heart rate rising. There is drumming in her ears, sweat breaking out on her neck, the back of her hands.
‘Yes, Oxford. I’m sorry – I assumed you realised. It’s the nearest city to the prison, after all.’
‘I wasn’t thinking . . . I’ve got to get out of here. Before anyone sees me . . .’
‘We’re quite far from the station,’ he says. ‘You can’t just walk.’ He’s still laughing.
‘This isn’t funny. I promised I’d never come here again. I promised her. I can’t be here.’ She’s trying to control it, but the panic’s got full hold of her now, her hands shaking as she tries to make him understand.
The dog gets to its feet and walks over to her, its head by her hand, leaning against her knee. She’s about to push it off, but the warm weight gives her pause. She puts her hand into its fur, taking in a deep breath, another.
‘I was asleep all the way here,’ she says. ‘I guess I should have realised, but I just wasn’t thinking.’
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry for laughing. Please, have some coffee, and let’s work out what you need to do together. I’m not your enemy, Anna. I’m your friend.’
A friend. It’s been a long time since she had one of those.
One she could really trust, at least. She never let anyone get close inside, tried to keep it safely transactional, however good the intentions of those around her might have been.
You scratch my back, I’ll watch yours – though she only ever pissed off one inmate enough to need protection, the woman furious at the legal advice she’d forced Anna to give her.
It wasn’t like a defence could be magicked out of nowhere, however hard Anna scoured her basic criminal law knowledge to find one.
Hard to explain away a kilo of cocaine in your coat pocket.
‘You can’t tell me you don’t need a friend,’ he says. It’s as if he’s read her mind, her lonely thoughts laid out bare in front of him. She rubs the dog’s head, speechless, before she walks into the kitchen and sits down at the table.