‘Nothing,’ says Nick. ‘That’s the only thing you need to remember. Nothing has happened. I need you to trust me. I really, really need you to do that.’
‘No one says that before anything anyone wants to hear.’
‘No.’ His face is rigid with control. ‘I know.’
My phone pings.
‘Ignore that,’ says Nick.
Another ping.
Then another.
I reach into my pocket, my fingers brushing his note, closing around my phone, at once desperate, and terrified, to pull it out and look at what’s happening on the screen.
It buzzes again.
Then, it starts ringing.
‘Claude, silence it,’ says Nick. ‘You’ve always got it on silent for me. Silence it now, please.’
‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ I say, not silencing anything.
‘It was that night I took your sister and her friends out,’ he begins.
And, thinking of Hannah, realising where this is going, I want to silence him.
But since I can’t, I do my best to tune his words out.
I watch his lips move, feel his hands take a hold of my arms, but don’t listen to what he says.
Not properly.
I can’t.
Because it’s worse than a nightmare.
It’sreal.
Very, very real, and happening to us.
It’s happening to me.
But I really have had enough.
I can’t take any more.
So, I close my eyes, breathe deep, and will myself into being somewhere else.
Somewhere not here.
Somewhere not now.
Somewhere, then.
Into the silver light of a late summer’s dawn. A fading moon above me.
A friend by my side.
