She bumped up against something, realized it was a bar stool, and slid onto it.
No, this was not happening again.
Damn that man for waking her up, for changing her from a sleepwalker into… this. This person who could think andfeel, who had so much more to lose than a semi-conscious zombie. It was all his fault.
For a moment, she managed to cobble just enough anger together to justify her actions. But only for a moment. After that, it all began to slide, down and down into a vast black pit that was opening up inside her.
Anna only knew one way to deal with these kinds of feelings. She needed to return to that state, that place – calm and blank and peaceful. But since there were no soft white sheets here, no duvets to be seen, Anna picked up her gin and began to drink.
BRODY CLOSED THE bathroom door, walked over to the toilet and put the lid down. He sat on top of it, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.Oh, God. That had been humiliating and embarrassing and terrifying. Basically, his worst fears about a panic attack come to life.
All those people looking at him… And he’d had no way to get away from them, paralysed by his own mind and body.
Thankfully, he’d managed to convince the paramedics he was fine, quietly outlining to them his history as the lift attendant had shooed the gathering crowd back around the corner and out of view. After a few tests and checks, the medical professionals had reluctantly agreed. They’d been really nice about it, actually. Which had only made him feel even more stupid and helpless.
But whatever he’d felt in that moment, it was nothing compared to the stabbing in his chest when he thought of the look in Anna’s eyes as the lift doors had closed.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and rang her number. And then he rang it again, and again, and again. When that failed, he resorted to texting.
Where are you?
Are you okay?
I’m worried about you.
Please call back.
He was behaving like a clingy teenage girl. Also humiliating. But he didn’t care. He had to know she was all right. What he felt didn’t matter.
He growled with frustration at his blank and silent phone, and was almost tempted to hurl it across the room, but he didn’t want to be charged for the fancy TV hidden inside the bathroom mirror, so he stuffed it back in his pocket and strode into his suite.
He kept walking until he reached the corner of the dining area that looked over both the Thames and the City of London. She was out there somewhere amid all those winking lights, possibly ill, possibly… something. He couldn’t get his head around it.
Why, after being so insistent that they meet, had she turned tail the moment she’d set eyes on him? It didn’t make any sense.
He had to go and find her.
Brody turned and headed across the living area to the glitzy hallway, but the closer he got to the door of his hotel suite, the more the tingling in his fingers and feet got worse. Ibrahim had warned him not to put himself in a panic-inducing situation when his symptoms were already threatening to tip him over the edge.
He made it as far as the door, laid his palm against the polished wood, and his heart hiccupped, skipping a beat then doubling up. The air around him began to get fuzzy.
He’d do it, if it were just a case of getting through these symptoms and sensations, if it were just a case of walking through the terror and letting it engulf him. He’d walk a thousand miles in that state to find her, but that was the problem – he didn’t think he’d make it a thousand miles. He didn’t even think he’d make it fifty feet before his traitorous body hijacked him.
He was useless. Weak.
He dropped his hand and his shoulder sagged as he turned and walked back towards the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up almost half the walls of his suite. He rested his forehead against the glass.
A muffled bang came from somewhere upriver, and from behind the buildings to the west, fireworks began to explode. He could just about make out the curve of the top of the London Eye, lighting up with blasts of colour. The river below glowed with the reflection of rockets shooting skywards, marking the passage of one year into the next. The city began to celebrate.
Brody didn’t think he’d ever felt more lonely.
THE GINS KEPT on coming, causing the bar to grow pleasantly hazy around Anna. Everyone got noisy at some point, counting loudly then cheering and hugging and kissing each other. Anna ignored them all, too intent on shoehorning herself into a state of oblivion. Someone shoved a pint of water her way – possibly the bartender – which she drank enthusiastically, and after that the gins didn’t come quite so frequently. And when they did come in the goldfish-bowl glass, they tasted suspiciously like tap water.
The nice bartender with the beard tried to ask her what her name was and if she was all right once or twice, but she rested her forehead on the bar so she didn’t have to look at him and waved him away with her hand. That made her giggle. She felt like the Queen. All she needed was a pair of white gloves and she’d be golden.
‘Do you have any gloves?’ she said, lifting her head and squinting at Mr Nice Beard.
He shrugged, but then he crouched behind the bar and returned a moment later with a pair. Anna put them on. They weren’t quite the long,white, satin ones she’d been expecting, more a kind of knitted mulberry, but they certainly were gloves, so she couldn’t complain too much. Why had she wanted them again? Had her hands been cold? She laid her head back down on the bar and tried to remember.
