‘That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m telling you to stop digging into this. You’ll only get yourself in trouble.’
Her eyes narrow. ‘What are you trying to hide, Tom? Do you have something to do with this?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. As your legal representative, I am telling you that you must not get involved any further with this. It is not your fight.’
‘And I’m not your pity project.’
They face off.
‘I’m warning you, Anna.’
With that, she hits her limit. She can’t do this anymore. Straight upstairs, and she rams her remaining belongings back into the holdall. Enough time wasted. She needs to get out. She hauls her bag up on to her shoulder and runs back downstairs.
‘I’m going,’ she says to Tom. He’s standing in the front hall, his brows knitting together in confusion.
‘What?’
‘I’m going to find somewhere else to stay. This isn’t working out.’
‘But what about the job?’
‘I’ll see you there on Monday morning. What’s the address?’
‘Jesus, OK. It’s 501 Banbury Road. But you can’t leave now. What about the conditions?’
‘Fuck the conditions. I’ll deal with it. I need to get out of here. Nine o’clock on Monday?’
He nods, out of words. Anna’s not surprised. It’s the most decisiveness she’s shown since she’s met him. But she can’t sit around helplessly anymore. She needs to do this on her own.
‘Where are you going to go? It’s nearly dark.’
‘I’ll find somewhere. Don’t worry. I’ll see you on Monday morning.’
‘What about your family? You said you’d promised never to come back.’
She looks at him, doused in acid, the words cutting down to her bone.
‘You’re putting on this brave act,’ he carries on, ‘but you’re a coward. Holding on to those threatening letters, wallowing in self-pity. Digging around in someone else’s business instead of dealing with the most important matter at hand. If it were me, I’d be straight over to my sister’s house. I’d want to find out exactly what I’d done, what their lives look like now. Killing yourself, that’s just running away. Totally selfish.’
She opens her mouth, shuts it. There is nothing she can possibly say to counter that. She pushes past him in the narrow hall, opens the door and slams it shut behind her, before walking away down the path, her heart pounding with unexpected speed. It’s only once she’s around the corner, well out of sight of the house, that she allows herself to slow down, take in some deep breaths. She’s still on high alert, waiting for his footsteps behind her, but the longer it’s quiet, the calmer she gets, her conviction still burning, anger and shame equally so.
A bus is approaching. She fishes the cash out of her bra before climbing on. The driver makes a face when she hands him a note but gives her the change she’s owed before they trundle into Oxford city centre.
It’s so familiar to Anna, yet completely unknown, the years she spent there as a student so far away now that they could have happened to someone else. It wasn’t this Anna who paced under the dreaming spires, this sad, guilty woman. It was a girl, still full of optimism, dreams for the future – a ghost now, a girl who ceased to exist a long time ago. It would have been better if she’d never attended, if she’d failed the exams and the law course, failed the interviews and the training, failed to impress the solicitors at her firm – until the day she didn’t, the day she could never impress anyone ever again.
Wallowing in self-pity. Tom’s words ring in her ears. She’s full of it. But it’s all she’s got.
The if onlys take her all the way to St Aldate’s, where she comes back into the real world enough to remember to get off the bus. She’s kicking herself for not looking up where the Jericho hostel is that Kelly mentioned, but she’ll find out. Oxford isn’t a big place – someone will be able to direct her. They’ll know who Kelly is, where she came from. If she believes she can sort it out, it’ll happen. She’s not going to consider any other possibility. She’s in control.
With a deep breath, she steps off the bus into the evening air. Now it begins.
18
The last time Anna walked round Oxford city centre she was a student, high on life at the end of her finals. She tries not to imagine herself among the packs of young women who are out for the night, skirts too short for the chill that’s biting into the early spring air. No one looks at Anna as they pass her, swerving to avoid the bag she’s holding as close to her as possible. She might feel like everyone is staring, seeing ‘PRISON’ tattooed across her face in bright red letters, but of course they’re not; they’re just getting on with their own lives, eyes sliding over a frumpy woman in her early thirties in a smelly Puffa with a tired holdall on her arm.
Anna finally spots two people in high-vis jackets, a man and a woman, outreach workers for the homeless. They’re speaking to a man huddled in blankets in the doorway of a boarded-up shop. Anna hovers until they’ve finished and then waves hesitantly for their attention.
‘You OK?’ the man says.
