Once she’s at the stop, she drops her bags, and leans against the bus shelter. Looks like she’s still in time, according to the timetable. She fishes a note, hopes the driver will give change.
Dusk is falling, the spring sky fading to dark blue. The cars have their lights on, streaking bright through the twilight. She looks further along the carriageway in the hope that she might see the bus. The urge to jump out has subsided, a tired resignation in its place. It all seems so fast. She guesses she’ll get used to it, but for now—
Lights are coming towards her, straight for the bus stop. She bends to pick up her bag before stopping, frozen – this isn’t a bus. It’s not slowing down, either. She waits, transfixed, and then they’re upon her, the car on the pavement, heading straight for her. The lights are blinding. She holds up her hands in supplication – it roars and it bangs and it hurts like it’s happening to someone else, and she’s in the air and—
CCTV
Charybdis is turning a bottle of whisky over and over in her hands, a manic smile on her face. Scylla shakes her head and reaches over to take the bottle from Charybdis’s hands, but she pushes back at her so aggressively that Scylla falls from her chair. Her companion might be thin but she’s very strong. She opens the bottle and takes a swig, another, holding it out to Scylla with a mocking expression. Scylla turns away with disgust on her face, but Charybdis doesn’t stop, waving it under the other’s nose until she gets up and walks away from the table. Charybdis opens her mouth, laughing, then drinks until the bottle is half empty.
She puts the bottle down and gets up, picking up a glass from the table and throwing it at the wall, followed by another glass, another glass. Next, she takes the chair and smashes it against the table until a leg breaks off. All the way through this, her mouth is open. If there were sound, you would hear her scream.
Scylla reappears. The women wrestle over the chair leg before Charybdis hits Scylla with it, as Scylla shields her head with her arms.
Suddenly, Charybdis throws the chair leg away from her. She’s crying. Scylla turns away, walks off screen.
12
‘Are you all right? Wake up! What the hell just happened?’
There’s a man yelling in Anna’s face, and she wants it to stop so she can go back to sleep. But he keeps screaming, shouting, pulling at her.
More noise, more shouting. Anna is becoming increasingly aware of her surroundings, the sensations that slam into her body as she comes round. Judging by the pain in her head, she must have been knocked out. She’s lying on hard ground, her leg at an awkward angle, torso twisted. Everything hurts. Slowly, she moves her hand out, turning it from one side to the other.
The man jumps back, catching his breath. ‘You’re alive.’
‘Sort of,’ Anna says, every word an effort. She shifts her head round to face him, blinking.
‘Are you OK?’ he asks.
Now that she knows her hand works, her neck too, Anna thinks she should risk trying to sit up. She pushes herself up very slowly and carefully so that she’s in a sitting position, pleased to find her back isn’t broken.
‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ the man says.
Anna blinks again, too distracted to concentrate. ‘Three,’ she says, without bothering to check.
‘That’s it, you’ve got concussion. We need to get you to a hospital immediately. I’m going to call an ambulance.’
Anna still hasn’t looked at him properly, too concerned with working out what the hell just happened to her, but at this she does. It’s Tom, the solicitor.
‘Please don’t,’ she says. She catches the glint of his mobile phone and lurches forward towards it, but not fast enough. He slips it back in his pocket.
‘You’ve just been hit by a car,’ he says. ‘You need to go to hospital.’
As he says it, her confusion fades. She hears the roar of the car echoing in her ears, so real she flinches. It might have been an accident. But it might not . . . She squints up at Tom.
‘I don’t want to go to hospital. How do you know I was hit by a car?’
‘You don’t remember?’
Anna shakes her head. She’s checked her toes, her ankles and knees. The children’s rhyme runs through her mind – she puts her fingers up to her face.Eyes and ears and mouth and nose. She’s still in one piece. Just about.
‘I walked out of the gate to wait for the bus,’ she says. ‘I was standing on the pavement . . .’ Her voice trails off. She thinks back: the dark, the lights, the crash. Was the car coming straight at her?
I WANT TO KILL YOU.The letters of the note dance across her mind. Only words, though. Surely?
‘That could have been really nasty,’ Tom says. He reaches his hand out to her and she takes it, allowing him to pull her up to her feet. She lets go of his hand once she’s upright, seeing if she can balance on her own. Wobbly, but not terrible. One step, two. She can walk, the shaking of her legs as much down to shock as anything else.
Tom’s wandering round the area close to the bus stop, looking at the ground. ‘Tyre tracks. Where the car mounted the pavement,’ he says, pointing at the edge of the kerb, a short distance away, ‘and hit you there.’ He turns around, Anna following his gaze. ‘You must have been thrown clear. I came out of the gate just after it happened. If you’d hit the bus stop, you might have been a goner. Do you really not remember anything?’
