He stopped. I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the threat of the ever-hovering tears that never seemed to actually come. Because that was the worst thing—he was right. Gabe wouldn’t have wanted any of this. He wouldn’t want me to be doing this, to be throwing myself into some twisted fantasy of revenge. But guess what—Gabe wasn’t fucking here. He had gone and got himself killed, and left me here alone. So there was nobody but me to sort this out—nobody but me to decide what to do.
For the moment, I had the briefest, strangest hallucination—of the rubbery warmth of a Bluetooth headpiece in my ear, of Gabe’s voice, low, intimate, keeping me company as he always did on a job.
You got this, babe.
I squeezed my fists tight, until my nails dug into the soft skin of my palms, hating him for the liar he was.
And then Cole’s arms were around me again, and I was grinding my face into his shoulder, wishing, wishing more than ever that I could cry, that the tears would come, that I could lose myself in the release of sobbing.
“How could he leave me?” I was saying, my voice breaking on the last syllable. “How could he, Cole? Why didn’t he fight them? Why did he let this happen?”
Cole didn’t answer, he just stroked my back, but I knew the truth. Gabe left me because he didn’t have a choice. Just like I hadn’t had a choice when I’d run from that police station. I had seen no other option.
And I had no other options now—but to keep going, and to try to find out who had done this to Gabe. And after that? But I couldn’t think that far ahead.
Solve the next problem. And then the next one after that.
Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Until you can’t walk any further.
Braving Charing Cross train station felt… well, it felt insane, if I was being honest. Walking across the concourse, in front of the very eyes of the British Transport Police officer standing lazily with his back to a pillar, it felt like I was walking into a giant public-transport-shaped trap.
But I looked, I knew it, very different from the woman who had bolted from the police station yesterday morning. My red hair was gone, and with Cole’s help and a pair of scissors from his desk, I had cut the rest short, into a pretty good approximation of a white-blonde crop. I had also borrowed a pair of Cole’s sunglasses and a coat that Noemie had left in his office—a beautiful, long, camel-colored trench that must have cost an unthinkable amount of money, I could tell from the softness of the wool as I pulled it on. But Cole was adamant: I had to take it. I could leave it at the cottage if I really wanted to, he said, but Noemie wouldn’t care either way—she hadn’t even noticed that it had been hanging behind his office door for six months. Beneath my jumper, I had rolled up the fleece and taped it around my belly in the semblance of a baby bump—a pretty good one, as long as you didn’t touch it. The only thing slightly out of place was the bag on my back—it hinted at gap-year traveler more than yummy mummy, but I hoped I could style it out.
As I passed a darkened shop window at the entrance to the station, I glanced at my reflection. The police were looking for a red-headed fugitive in a cheap rain jacket. The woman gazing back at me was a well-dressed pregnant blonde in D&G shades and a coat that probably cost north of two grand. The effect was… well, it was pretty impressive, I had to hand it to Cole. I looked nothing like the frightened girl who had ambushed him outside his office just a few hours ago. Even so, walking directly past the police officer in the entrance was a bad moment.
At the ticket machine I paid cash, my fingers shaking as I tried to navigate the fiddly touch screen and feed the crumpled notes into the slot. As the tickets printed with agonizing slowness, I glanced up at the board to make sure I had the time and platform right. I didn’t want to board too early and risk being trapped on the train if something happened. But I couldn’t leave it too late either. I had five minutes to spare, which was about perfect.
The final receipt spat out into the tray, and I scooped everything up and swiped my way through the ticket barrier. The temptation to lower my head as I walked below the CCTV camera facing the barrier was almost irresistible, but I knew it was only one of many. Besides, hiding my face would attract all the wrong kind of attention. Instead, I reached into the pocket of the trench coat and drew out my phone, pretending to study the screen. A woman shading her face as she passes below a camera—massive red flag. A woman engrossed in Twitter as she crosses the platform—two a penny.
Still, I was sweating beneath the wool coat by the time I picked a carriage and tried to figure out the best seat to take. One by the door, for easy getaway if the police boarded the train? Or one further down the carriage, where they would take longer to find me? On the whole I preferred the entrance—the chances of them getting on at my exact carriage seemed low—but the seats there were all full.
I was still dithering when a young man in one of the priority seats stood up.
“Here you go, love.”
For a moment I blinked, unable to work out what he was saying. Then I looked down and realized. My bump. The priority seats were for the elderly, disabled, and… pregnant.
I felt a flush of shame wash up my chest and reach my cheeks—even though part of me was laughing at myself. I was a fugitive, on the run from the police, wanted for murder, and it was the fake bump I had chosen to feel guilty about?
“I’m fine,” I said, hoping that the blush wasn’t too painfully obvious. “Honestly. I’ll walk down.”
“Nah, you’re all good, love,” the boy said. He had that weird mix of swagger and self-consciousness that seemed unique to males in their late teens. He ducked his head, picked up his bag, and began heading down the aisle, leaving the empty seat to me. “I don’t like sitting near the bogs anyhow,” he said as the carriage door slid shut behind him, which made me laugh.
It was two minutes until the train left, and as I slid into the vacant seat, my bag on my lap, I couldn’t help peering out of the window, back up the platform. I was listening for pounding feet, shouts of Police! Stop the train!
But none came. The minutes ticked down until at last we reached 12:40—the time the train was supposed to leave. Nothing happened. I swallowed, aware that my neck and jaw were aching with tension. Why? Why weren’t we going?
Then the train speaker crackled, and I felt a lurch in my stomach, a rush of nerves so strong I thought I might vomit. Was the train canceled? Were they holding us here for a “routine inspection”?
But then, after what felt like a pause of a thousand years, the conductor’s voice came on.
“This is the twelve forty train for Ashford International, calling at Waterloo East, London Bridge…”
The familiar litany of stations droned on, and beneath the conductor’s voice I could hear the beep beep beep warning as the train doors slid closed, and the engines began to fire.
“… Headcorn, and Pluckley, arriving Ashford International at fourteen hundred hours. We apologize for the late departure of this train, which was due to staff shortages, and we hope to make up time on the journey. Our next stop is—”
The train was picking up speed. We were moving away from the platform. And then we were out, into the bright crisp air of a sunny winter afternoon.
I let my head fall back against the seat, feeling myself exhale as if someone had pressed a release button.
I had done it. I was out of London.
* * *
“YOU CAN STOP HERE,” I said to the taxi driver. He pulled in where I’d indicated and looked around the deserted car park doubtfully. In summer it was probably a sweet place, with a kiosk selling ice creams and plastic buckets and spades. On a cold February afternoon it was little short of desolate.
“You sure?”
I nodded. Taking a taxi had been a gamble—it was exactly these kinds of questions that I had wanted to avoid—but the alternative, walking five miles from Rye station along country lanes in the gathering dark, hadn’t exactly appealed either.
“Yes, I’m sure. I’m meeting a friend.”
The driver shrugged. “Eight pounds twenty pence.”
I leaned over, counting out the change from the train ticket pound coin by pound coin and adding a tip so small I felt instantly guilty—but my supply of cash was dwindling painfully fast, and I didn’t know when I would be able to get more. The driver didn’t seem to bear any resentment, though, and got out cheerfully, in spite of the wind whipping across the tarmac, to unlatch the boot and remove my rucksack.
“There you go, love. Good luck with it.”
He nodded at my bump, and I felt instantly even more guilty.
I waited until he got back in the car and completed a gear-grinding three-point turn to rejoin the main road, and then I turned and began to walk along the beach to where I very much hoped Noemie’s cottage must be.
It was very cold. The wind had picked up the sand and was blowing it at knee height along the flat beach, so hard that even through my jeans I could feel the stinging particles hitting my skin like tiny needles.