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If she keeps repeating the words to herself, perhaps she can make herself believe them.
“Understood, hen,” the driver says sympathetically. “Aye, it’s a tough one. Where can I take you? Your mammy? Or maybe not, by your accent?”
Hannah thinks of her mother, far away in Dodsworth, several hundred miles south, and tears spring into her eyes. If only she could go back there, fall into her mum’s arms, sob out her troubles.
But she can’t. It’s a good eight hours on the train, more on a Sunday. She has no coat, no shoes. She doesn’t even have any money, apart from Google Pay on her phone. She can hardly take a taxi to southern England. Where can she go?
And then it comes to her.
Hugh.
Hugh will shelter her. Hugh will loan her money and she can buy herself a jacket and some warm boots and figure out her next move.
“Do you know Great King Street?” she asks the driver, who nods.
“Aye.”
“Thanks.” She sinks back onto the seat, feeling her heart slow and her numb feet begin to thaw. “Thanks, I’d like to go there.”
AFTER
As the taxi draws up outside Hugh’s flat, Hannah gets her phone out to pay. To her dismay, the inky shadow inching across the screen has spread. It’s now covering almost the whole screen, leaving only a small triangle at the top left.
However, she holds it against the card reader, mentally crosses her fingers, and sighs with relief as it beeps obediently.
“Good luck, hen,” the taxi driver says gently. “You need a lift anywhere, you give me a call, ken?” He pushes a business card through the hole in the plexiglass screen, and Hannah takes it, trying to smile. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off she feels almost unbearably shaky; her hands are trembling and cold. “And dinna you be in too much of a hurry to go back tae him. Leave him to stew in his own juices a wee while.”
Hannah nods.
“Thank you,” she says, and then she takes a deep breath and slides out of the back seat.
Standing in front of Hugh’s intimidating brass bell plate, she reflects that she should have called ahead. If Hugh is out, she will be in a fix. But it’s… She glances at her phone, and then realizes that it’s pointless, the clock is no longer visible. It must be before nine, though. It’s not likely a single, childless man like Hugh would be up and out so early on a Sunday. Saturday he sometimes does clinics, she knows that. Hugh’s wealthy clients don’t expect to have to stick to weekdays for their appointments. But not Sundays. Sundays are his days off.
She presses the brass button beside the engraved H. BLAND and waits.
After what feels like an agonizingly long time, her feet getting slowly colder and more numb on the black-and-white tiles of the porch, the intercom crackles and Hugh’s very English voice comes over the speaker.
“Hello?”
“Hugh?” Her teeth are chattering now. “It’s m-me, Hannah. C-can I c-c-come in?”
“Hannah?” Hugh sounds astonished. “I mean—yes, of course. But what—”
“I’ll t-tell you ups-s-stairs,” Hannah says. She can hardly get the words out. Somehow the brief interlude of warmth in the taxi has only made the shock of the outside feel worse now that she is stuck here. A chill wind whips down the road, swirling dead leaves in the porch and making her shudder afresh.
“Oh, yes, sure. I mean of course. I’ll buzz you in. Fifth floor, yes?”
“I remember,” Hannah says. She has her arms wrapped around herself, her teeth clenched to stop the chattering.
There is a drawn-out bzzzzzzz and Hannah shoves the door with a force that sends it swinging inwards to bang against a backstop, and hurries into the hallway of Hugh’s building.
Inside it’s not exactly warm, but it’s a hell of a lot warmer than the street, and she presses the button for the tiny old-fashioned lift with its folding screen door, and waits while it clanks down the stairwell. As it rises up to Hugh’s flat she has to fight the urge to sink to her knees, cradling her bump, howling with the awfulness of what has just happened—an awfulness she is only now beginning to comprehend. And Hugh—Hugh tried to tell her. That’s the worst of it. He tried to warn her what would happen if she kept pushing and digging and refusing to accept the version of events they had all learned to live with. He tried to tell her and she ignored him, and now she is paying the price.
When the lift stops with a clang at the fifth floor, Hugh is standing outside, wearing a paisley silk dressing gown and holding a cup of coffee. He isn’t wearing his glasses, which gives his face an oddly unfinished, vulnerable look. But as Hannah pulls back the folding brass grille, his expression changes from one of puzzled welcome to a kind of confused dismay.
“What the—Hannah old bean, what happened? Where are your shoes? And is that… is that blood?”
Hannah looks down. It’s true. Her feet are bleeding and she hadn’t even noticed. She has no idea whether she’s picked up a piece of glass or just stubbed her toe on the rough asphalt, but there are smears of red on the checkerboard tiled floor of the lift.
