9
It’s been a week.
Crane gave me two clean refusals, no explanation, and I still kept rehearsing the moment I’d tell him the only thing that mattered: Conall had taken the case.
I couldn’t decide which sin had done us in – the kiss, or the row – so my mind kept shuffling blame. Either way, I told myself we’d talk it out. Or, at least, write it out.
Then he didn’t respond to the letter I sent the day after I’d last seen him.
Then, Stonebrook sent the next one back unopened.
And yesterday, the programme coordinator gave me the dreaded call.
Elias Crane had withdrawn from the programme.
A clean cut. By a man who had once cautioned me not to keep knocking at locked doors and I still did.
Conall had approached me during Anna’s birthday dinner yesterday and told me to stop trying to reach his client.
Though the Irishman divulged that Elias had accepted his services, he wouldn’t tell me anything about the case.
Something about client confidentiality, but there had been something too guarded in the way he said it.
Almost grim. He told me to stop with the letters and stop trying to see Elias, and not to even mention his name outside my own house until he was either convicted or released.
I don’t know what Conall had said that convinced him to accept his help, but I was glad he had.
Surprisingly, I hadn’t immediately fallen back into the old rituals since that day: the Riesling, the spiral, the purposeful wreckage. But still, it sits heavy on my chest: he’d cut the tether. I could already feel the drift starting up.
The seasons shake hands and autumn barrels in early. The forecasts are already warning of the coldest and earliest winter in years.
Normally I’d love that – snow and fog are obedient subjects to my lens. But the world feels too blunt. Tea goes cold and I drink it anyway. I work too much, even take Marina’s wedding gigs. Anything that makes me stop waiting for the post or Conall’s updates.
For weeks now, I’ve kept writing away. Stonebrook sent each letter back unopened.
And today, I sit in my car with my heart between my teeth and two envelopes in my hands.
One addressed to HMP Stonebrook, plain and wretchedly final.
It holds his pictures, his notes, every little scrap my mind had turned into evidence that this was…
something. My final written goodbye on a piece of paper, too.
I wrote that I’m leaving for Norway in October, that the grant finally came through, that I don’t know when I’ll be back.
That I’m grateful for our conversations.
I fill the page with every safe truth I can think of and leave out the only dangerous one: that some part of me still wants him to ask me not to go. It weighs too heavy to be put on paper. And sits even heavier on my heart.
The other envelope is thicker; stamped and ready for Norway, carrying the future I have claimed to want for years. The grant had come with everything I needed – paperwork approved, permission secured, a life there suddenly frighteningly legal and real.
A grant for a new life. A country of beauty, snow and distance. A place I might actually survive.
One envelope buries the ghosts.
The other opens a new door.
I stare at them until the ink blurs, and the postbox across the road becomes a verdict rather than an object I’m aiming towards.
Yesterday afternoon, Rebecca assured me she’d get this letter delivered to Elias, but I have no guarantees.
I should get out of the car. Feed Norway into the red mouth first, then let Elias fall next, because that should be the sensible order of things.
Freedom before farewell.
But…
I let the big envelope slide carefully onto the passenger seat.
Just one more day won’t hurt, I tell myself.
One more day for a letter that probably won’t come.
One more day before I choose the future over the past and the tattered present.
The pavement is wet enough to mirror the postbox in warped red smears. I cross towards it before I can talk myself out of it, Elias’ letter pinched so tightly between my fingers that the corner bends.
I hold it over the slot. My pulse batters against my eardrums until the rest of the street falls away.
And I release my hold on it one finger at a time.
It’s that feeling of letting go that pulls me apart.
Beside me, laughter scrapes against brick.
I turn, glancing just enough to see two men huddled by the wall near the corner shop. Smoke rolls around their faces, leather jackets dulled with grime and rain. One has his shoulder pressed to the bricks. The other lifts his cigarette, but his eyes—
They’re on me.
I catch his gaze.
He doesn’t look away.
My lungs stall.
A car beeps beside me, and the blare punches the air back into my chest. The postbox gives one last metallic tremor around what I’ve just surrendered.
My keys are already in my hand before I remember reaching for them, each edge biting into my palm as my shoes slap the pavement quickly towards the car.
The men’s voices drop behind me. I don’t turn, but I don’t need to. I can hear their footsteps just fine.
Another laugh trails after me, and I slide behind the wheel and lock the doors so quickly the sound cracks through the car.
I just sit there at first, breathing through my nose, my fingers still clenched around the keys I’ve jammed into the ignition.
It’s nothing.
My imagination has a bite today, that’s all.
I am not hearing Conall’s warnings in my head. I am not thinking about Elias telling me to stay away. I am not wondering about the common denominator of both.
Pressing my palm to my chest, I try to will the frantic thing inside it to slow. But then movement catches in the rear-view mirror.
The two men peel away from the pavement and climb into a dented grey car parked two spaces behind mine.
Rain descends suddenly, like a punishment, lashing across the windscreen hard enough to blur the street into streaks of silver, but not enough to hide the shape of them still sitting there.
Their engine doesn’t start.
My throat narrows until breath is scarce. I snatch my phone from my pocket, my thumb jabbing at Conall’s name hard enough to hear the echo of the tap.
It rings and rings.
The car behind me remains dark.
And motionless.
He doesn’t answer.
I try Anna. She answers on the second ring.
‘Is Conall there?’ I rush without the pleasantries.
‘Uh, yes.’ An awkward pause. ‘Why?’
‘I think… I’m being followed.’
It sounds absurd the second it leaves me, but my eyes stay fixed on the rear-view mirror. Rain beats harder against the glass, breaking the grey into warped fragments.
‘Oh God!’ she breathes. ‘Who?!’
There’s a rustle on the other end. Anna’s voice lowers, suddenly stripped of sleep and softness.
‘Two men. They were watching me outside the post office. Now they’re sitting in a car behind mine.’
Another rustle. A muffled exchange. Then I hear Conall’s voice, level enough to make me feel worse.
‘Leah, where are you?’
‘Outside the Brimsbury Lane Post Office.’
‘Keep the doors locked.’
‘I am.’
‘Can you see their plates?’
I twist carefully, pretending I’m only checking the road, but the rain twists the back window, and the angle gives me nothing but the dull shape of the dented bonnet. ‘No. I can’t see anything.’
‘Stay there,’ he says. ‘If either of them gets out or comes towards you, call the police. I’m sending someone over.’
Just as I open my mouth, the grey car coughs to life.
My heart stutters as the headlights flare in the mirror. The car pulls out slowly, passes mine, then turns at the end of the street and vanishes into the rain.
I stare after them as my breath shudders out.
‘They’re gone,’ I whisper. ‘I’m so sorry, it was probably nothing. I’m just wound up.’
Conall is very quiet for a breath or two. Though his voice is calm, there is something reluctant in it when he speaks again. ‘Leah, maybe it’s time you seriously considered that Norway thing you keep talking about.’
I bite my own tongue as my gaze glides across the steering wheel and drops to the thick envelope on the passenger seat.
My throat works around a swallow as I stare at the address. But I already know I won’t send it. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Just in case he responds.
‘Yes,’ I lie. ‘Thank you for coming to the phone. Sorry again.’
‘I’m not joking.’ His tone hardens. My fingers tighten around the phone. ‘Start packing.’
I straighten my back as if that might dislodge the unease crawling between the discs. ‘Packing?’
He hesitates for a breath too long. ‘The trial is listed for next week. If there are people watching you, and I am not saying there are, then this is exactly when things might start… happening.’
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
After all this time, Elias is finally getting the chance he deserves; a moment for the truth to breathe.
Happiness rises in me so quickly it almost feels like physical pain.
But reality pushes it right back down.
Everything realigns: the men in the grey vehicle.
Arthur Crane’s legacy and the people who wanted to keep Elias behind bars.
Elias chained to a table asking me not to poke at this.
Me, standing too close to all of it with my stupid camera and my stupid belief that truth only needed enough light for things to be set straight.
Knot after knot, my stomach tightens.
My fingers press harder against the phone.
This is not a tragedy. Not just a broken man in a prison room. Not just a case with missing pieces.
Whatever circles the Crane name is dangerous, and I have been treating it like a love letter.
‘Okay,’ I say, though the word feels as if it doesn’t belong here and now.
Conall exhales quietly, reminds me to keep my phone on me, and we hang up.
I sit there a little while longer. Staring at the envelope beside me.
I should really post it. I should just get out, walk back to the box, and choose the only thing that can get me away from here.