Twenty minutes later I skidded, panting, into Milton Keynes station, my hand pressed to my aching side, not even trying to hide my scarlet face and heaving chest. Partly because there was no way I could—I was too exhausted to even attempt to look fine—and partly because a train station is about the only place you can look like you’re fleeing police without raising suspicion.
At the ticket barrier I stood, wheezing, one hand braced against the machine as I searched with the other in my pockets for the return half of my ticket. Thank God it was still there. I was trembling so much that it took three tries to feed it into the narrow slot, and then the barrier opened and I passed through, and sank down onto a bench at the side of platform 1, trying to look like someone who had just missed their train. In reality I had no idea what I was going to do next.
Every part of my body was shaking with adrenaline, and my side was throbbing with a hot white pain so intense that it was all I could do not to lean over the side of the bench and throw up—if I’d had anything in my stomach since the toasted teacake, I probably would have done. But it wasn’t just the pain in my side making me feel sick—I was in even deeper shit than I could possibly have known, and not only that, but somehow the police were keeping tabs on me. They had traced me first to Cole’s, and now to Sunsmile, and I had no idea how.
I had returned to the station more on instinct than anything else—the urge to get out of Milton Keynes stronger than almost any other. But now I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do. I couldn’t go back to Cole’s. I definitely couldn’t go to Helena’s. What I really wanted was to go home. To have a hot shower, to lie in a soft bed, and to sleep. I wasn’t sure how much sleep I’d had last night, but it couldn’t have been more than a few hours, and since then I’d not had more than snatched moments to rest. Now, as the pain in my side ebbed back to a more manageable but still fairly worrying throb, I felt weak and shivery with exhaustion—my own bed the most seductive thing I could imagine. There was no use longing for it, though. Going home was impossible—even more impossible than going back to Hel’s. I might as well sit here longing for Gabe—both he and my normal, everyday existence were gone, far beyond reach.
I was still sitting there, trying to control my breathing, when I heard a commotion behind me in the ticket hall. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw two uniformed officers at the barrier, flashing their warrant cards at the guard on duty.
My heart sped up to an almost sickening pace, and I looked around the platform, trying to figure out my options. Far up ahead I could see a train coming—but to which platform?
Moving casually, trying not to attract attention, I walked quickly down the platform to the overpass, my head down as if checking my phone. In reality every ounce of my attention was focused on the main station entrance behind me. The police officers had passed through now and were spreading out, one moving up the platform towards me, the other talking to some students near the entrance.
My heart racing, I slipped into the shadow of the overpass and began climbing the stairs. As soon as I was out of sight on the covered bridge above the platform, I yanked off the glasses, fumbled in my rucksack for the fleece hoodie, and dragged it over my head. With the hood up I looked, I hoped, completely different from the smart office worker who had blagged her way into the Sunsmile offices—more like a teenage boy than a grown woman.
The train was nearer now, close enough for me to see which line, and glancing up at the board I saw that it was headed for Birmingham, eight minutes behind schedule, and coming in at platform 6. It didn’t match my ticket—but that was the least of my worries right now, because unfortunately the train wasn’t the only thing getting closer. Peering back over my shoulder down the stairs, I could see that the officer who had followed me had stopped to talk to a woman in a white top and dark jacket and was now heading for the overpass.
I gulped, pulled the hood closer around my face, and jogged across the bridge towards the sign pointing down to platform 6.
“Hey!” I heard behind me, but I didn’t stop. I had no idea if the officer was talking to me or someone else, but I wasn’t going to wait around to find out. “Hey, son!”
His footsteps were speeding up. Below me the train drew into the station.
Oh God, oh God. Not now—please not now.
My side was throbbing, and I felt like I was going to throw up—but I made my legs work just a little harder as I ran down the steps towards the platform.
“Police!” I heard from behind me. But platform 6 was blessedly crowded, and as I flung myself around the corner at the bottom of the stairs, I found myself face-to-face with a gaggle of teens, all similar heights to me, two also wearing black fleeces with the hood up. I sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the god of teenage boys as the train doors opened, and I shoved my way through, with scant regard for good manners.
Close the doors, close the doors.
Inside, I pushed my way down the crowded aisle and into the next carriage.
As I did, the announcement came over the speaker.
“This is the delayed fifteen thirty-one service to Birmingham New Street, this train is now departing, please stand clear of the doors.”
I held my breath, ducking my head to peer out through the window, at the platform. The police officer was standing there, looking irritated, speaking into his walkie-talkie.
And then there was a jolt that made me stagger and press my hand to my side, and we were moving. We were away. But that had been entirely too close for comfort.
As the train drew out of Milton Keynes, I felt the tension go out of my body with a rush that left me weak and trembling, and desperate to sit down. When I had picked up the go bag back in Salisbury Lane I’d congratulated myself on how light it was. Now, even though I’d eaten most of my provisions, it felt like a lead weight on my shoulder. I let it slide to the floor and looked around for a seat. I was trying to decide whether I was better off moving down another carriage or asking the woman opposite to remove her shopping bags from the seat next to her when I felt a trickle of something hot down the side of my stomach. When I slipped my hand up underneath the fleece, my fingertips came out red. The dressing must have come loose with all the running. I was bleeding again.
Shit. The fleece was black, so the bloodstains wouldn’t show, but I couldn’t afford to bleed onto the train seats or anywhere people might see. If there was one thing that would attract attention, it would be that.
There was a toilet sign over the doorway to the next carriage, so with an effort I pulled the rucksack back onto my shoulder and began squeezing along the aisle, desperately hoping as I pushed past a woman with her baby that I wasn’t leaving smears of blood on her pram.
The toilet was the old type with a slam door and a lime-scaled loo which I wouldn’t have been surprised to find emptied onto the track. But as I closed the door behind me and slid the bolt across, I wouldn’t have cared if it was the toilet out of Trainspotting, I was just so thankful that it had a lock that worked, and a tap.
Hooking the rucksack over the back of the door, I pulled off first the hoodie and then my ruined white top, now adorned with a dark red poppy of blood that bloomed across one side.
My first thought, when I examined the dressing, was that it didn’t look too bad—the running had just pulled the cut open again, and the blood had soaked through the gauze. Probably all I needed to do was stick on a new one.
But when I peeled off the corner of the soggy square, what I saw underneath made me blench.
The underside of the dressing looked even worse than the one Cole had helped me remove yesterday, soaked with a mixture of blood and what looked worryingly like pus. The wound itself was angry and swollen in a way that even I, someone with zero medical training, could tell wasn’t good.
An infection would explain why I was feeling so strange—my legs so weak and jelly-like, my skin running hot and cold—and reluctant as I was to admit that Cole was right, I was starting to think he might be correct; I did need antibiotics. But that was a risk I couldn’t take.
In the end I splashed warm water over the skin, flushing away as much of the gunk as I could and trying to ignore the queasy smell that came up from the sink along with the steam. The water stung, but not as much as I would have thought, and the sharp sensation was almost a relief from the constant low-level throbbing which had been gnawing at my side all day.