17
‘I told you it would be OK,’ Tom says on the way out.
‘How the fuck would you know?’ Anna says, but the hostility isn’t real. She’s flooded with relief, the grey street in front of them more like an oasis of green trees and glittering water than its reality, the bleak brick facade of a bingo hall, concrete-coated in the miasma of a north London afternoon.
‘She was more understanding than she might have been, given the circumstances yesterday,’ he says. ‘But look, the important thing is that the terms of the licence are varied, you can work at the office, you can stay at the house . . .’
‘I’m going to sort something else out,’ Anna says. ‘I mean that.’
He turns to look at her, the smile fading as their eyes meet. ‘Whatever you want.’
He’s close, so close she can smell the scent of his soap, the same she washed her hands with only this morning. It yanks her back to reality, reminding her of what she was washing from her hands, the way the dried blood itched her skin. The grey sinks back into the street in front of her, the graffiti glaringly obvious, scrawled swear words and a collection of random tags. She can’t keep running; she needs to get back now, find somewhere to live that’s within her own control, rather than being beholden to this strange man with his compulsive generosity.
‘You must be a crap solicitor,’ she says, turning away from him and striding towards the tube. He trots to keep up with her.
‘Why do you say that?’
She stops, so suddenly that he crashes into her. She pushes him away. ‘That’s what I mean. I insult you and instead of telling me to fuck off, you ask me why. You’re so soft. You treat me like a charity case when I’m still a murder suspect. An ex-con.’
‘I don’t think you killed her, I said that. Neither do they, otherwise they wouldn’t have let you go.’
‘They don’t give a shit. What does another dead junkie matter to them?’
He holds his hand up but before he can tell her to hush, she’s crying, raw sobs sagging out of her, snot streaming from her nose. She leans her head against the wall, the bricks rough, a stench of piss creeping up from the pavement beneath her, but she doesn’t care. She’s beyond all that now, blood in her head and on her hands.
After a while, she gets her breath back under control. He hasn’t said anything, done anything, moved forward to comfort her or to tell her it’s all going to be all right. She’s grateful for that, at least. None of this should have happened like this; she should already be dead, not being handed a lifeline by a solicitor who looks like he’s barely old enough to drink, let alone sort out all her problems.
She resents him for it, the ease with which he’s negotiated the system, smoothed her passage, all the privileges that others would kill for. She should walk away now, go back in and tell them that it’s not happening, she’s not going to work for him, she’s not going to let him rescue her. She’s going to do it on her own.
But she can’t. He’s got her trapped, dependent on his help. Help she hasn’t asked for. Help she doesn’t deserve. It doesn’t make any sense to her, why he’d be going out of his way like this. She looks up to see him watching her, his eyes fixed on her.
That must be it. He’s not being selfless. He wants something from her. There’s only one thing for it. At least she can give it to him, pay him back with the only coin she has. She takes one step towards him, another, reaches her hand out to his shoulder, ready to take hold of him, kiss him, her face tilted towards him. But he steps away.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Isn’t this what you want? Isn’t this why you’re doing all this, because you want to fuck me?’
He looks at her with such pity in his eyes that she nearly vomits. She knows he’s going to speak, and she can’t bear it. Spinning round in humiliation, she walks into the station, only to be reminded again of her helplessness as she comes up against the barrier. She goes back to the ticket machines but the only one that’s working doesn’t take cash; the grubby notes in her bra, the only thing of value she has left, won’t help her.
Tom stands behind her, and when she turns to him, he hands her a ticket without saying a word. They get on to the tube together, the train, the bus, and it’s not until they get back to his house that she’s recovered enough to speak to him.
‘Do you have a computer I could use?’ she asks when they’re back inside.
‘Sure,’ he says. Without another word, he leads her into the front room and switches on the computer that’s sitting on a desk in the corner. She waits until he’s left, opens a private browsing window and enters the wordsKelly Greeninto Google.
Immediately, she’s confronted with a sea of green colour samples. She stares at it with confusion before registering. Kelly Green. Obviously. God, the poor woman’s parents must have had a dismal sense of humour. She scrolls past all the useless colours, finding little of note.Kelly Green deadelicits nothing but an obituary for a woman in the US and various items of clothing in garish hues with the word DEAD stencilled on them.
It’s hopeless. No way will she be able to find something on the poor woman. Most people don’t produce more than a couple of Google hits, especially ones whose names are tiresome puns. She’s going to have to try another way, though she has no idea where to start.
All of a sudden, Tom swoops in behind her and turns off the screen.
‘I told you to leave this alone.’
Her shoulder smarts where he’s pushed her aside. ‘You can’t just manhandle me like that.’
‘It’s not your business. I’m serious. Don’t go poking into what doesn’t concern you.’
Alarm bells. ‘You can’t tell me what to do.’
