Authors: Jane Hill
There I was, running away again. I had hardly any
luggage. I had crammed a few pairs of knickers
and some T-shirts into the courier-style bag I
used for school, and I added my toothbrush, my make-up
bag and some anti-perspirant. That way, he wouldn't
know what I had planned. He – whoever he was –
wouldn't realise that I was going away. I slung the bag
across my chest and took one last long look around my
empty white flat. Then I walked out, locking the door
behind me, trying to hide the trembling in my hands.
I had spent the night wondering what to do. I had
closed all the windows and made sure the door was locked
and bolted, and I had curled up in a little ball under my
duvet and I had nearly gone out of my mind. Stay or go?
Stay in the flat where he knew I lived, waiting for him to
do whatever he was planning? Or run away, and always
wonder? Even by the morning I hadn't made up my mind.
I checked the doormat as soon as I woke up. I was
expecting to see another white envelope but there wasn't
one. I made coffee and toast and turned the T V on. The
first thing I saw was a news report on the Edinburgh
Festival. It seemed as if fate was telling me what to do.
I didn't know if I was coming back home. I didn't know
if I would dare to come back. My home had been invaded.
It was no longer safe. I thought that maybe, then and
there, I was walking out for ever. Walking away. Leaving
it all behind me. Again.
But there was no need to think about that right now. I
had to concentrate on looking natural. I took the stairs
down from my flat because that way it was easier to tell if
I was being followed, from the sound of the footsteps. I
didn't think that there was anyone behind me. All I could
hear was the sound of my sandals flip-flopping down the
stairs. I was escaping in broad daylight, hoping to
disappear into the crowd.
All I had to do was walk across the road to King's
Cross, carrying my bag, like I did almost every day of my
life. I didn't need to think about the future yet. I had a plan
for that day, for the next couple of days. I was going to
catch a train to Edinburgh and lose myself in the festival,
and I was going to try to get my head straight. Zoey had
invited me. She had flown up there early that morning.
She was probably there already. There was a bed waiting
for me in the flat that she was renting. I hadn't told her I
was coming; I hadn't officially accepted her invitation yet.
No one knew where I was going. I hadn't told Danny,
Jem, Sarah, my parents. This was an escape. My task was
to get on the train without him – the stalker, the letter writer,
Rivers Carillo back from the dead – noticing what
I'd done.
It was still hot. The air felt stagnant. The dust from the
building work they were doing to make King's Cross a
desirable location hung in the air and stuck to my sweaty
skin. I entered the station concourse. As usual at that time
of day – coming up to eleven in the morning – King's
Cross was heaving with people: plump Yorkshire
businessmen arriving for meetings in the city; gaggles of
slightly too showily dressed women down from Leeds or
Doncaster or York for a day of shopping and a show. I
wormed my way through the crowds, feeling as though I
had eyes or sensors all over my body – in the back of my
head and down my bare arms. I didn't know exactly who
I was looking out for – Rivers Carillo, or someone who
looked like him, or someone who looked like they might
have known him back in the day – but that day I felt
hyper-alert, super-sensitive to everything around me.
I deliberately ignored the giant departures board at the
mainline station. I headed straight for the stairs down to
the Tube station, my head down, looking like my usual
preoccupied self. But as I reached the top of the stairs I
swerved suddenly and darted into the ticket office as
quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. I had my credit
card in my hand and I found an available ticket machine.
I tapped the screen quickly, selected my destination,
hesitated slightly between open return and single, chose
single, then thrust my credit card into the slot and tapped
my fingers impatiently. The ticket spewed out and I
remembered to wait for the receipt. As I did, I thought
that maybe I should have paid cash, untraceable cash. But
that would have been beyond paranoid.
Finally I allowed myself to look up at the departures
board, but casually, as if I was simply looking around me,
taking care not to fix my stare on any particular
destination. My train was due to leave in fifteen minutes
but there was no platform number announced yet. I stood
there for a moment to catch my breath but I felt very
exposed. I kept getting bumped and jostled. A station
employee with a cart walked past, collecting litter. He
narrowly avoided rolling the cart over my feet.
I threaded my way back across the concourse towards
the branch of W.H. Smith. People were browsing the
bookshelves, killing time. I picked up a couple of paperbacks
more or less at random from the 'Buy one, get
another half-price' display. No one was watching me, as
far as I could tell. I added a glossy magazine to my haul,
and then a chicken-salad sandwich and a bottle of water
from the chiller cabinet. I joined the queue to the till.
Everyone around me seemed intent on their own business.
I started to breathe more easily. Soon I would be on the
train bound for Edinburgh and I was pretty sure I hadn't
been followed. I was nearly home and dry. Until suddenly
I felt a hand on my shoulder and I jolted so violently that
I dropped all my shopping.
It was a man in a suit, standing behind me. Just a man
in a suit: a middle-aged businessman, slightly fat, slightly
sweaty, nice smile. He got down on his knees to help me
to pick up my stuff. 'Sorry, love,' he said. 'I was trying to
tell you there was a till free.'
People pushed past us, tutting, as we gathered up my
purchases. I wanted to leave them there, to run off, but
that would have looked suspicious. I was flustered,
nervous. I thanked the man in the suit. As I got up from
the floor with my hands full, I thought I could sense
someone staring at me. I looked up, across at the book
section. There was a young guy there. T-shirt, combats,
dark curly hair. He was grinning at me, and when I met his
eye he winked at me. I went cold for a moment. The
cashier cleared his throat, waiting for me to pay for my
goods. Still flustered, I dug in my shoulder bag for my
purse. As I left the shop I looked around me, but the
young guy was nowhere in sight. As far as I could tell, he
hadn't followed me.
The train pulled out of the station. I settled into my
corner seat, surrounded by three elderly women, and I
told myself off for my stupidity. Why did I go into W.H.
Smith? Why did I buy two books and a magazine? I might
as well have stuck a Post-It note on my forehead saying 'I
am going on a long train journey in just a few minutes.'
Past York the train started to get less crowded. I was
trying to lose myself in the books I'd bought but
without success. One of them featured three old school
friends, all beautiful and successful in their own way, falling
in and out of love with various inappropriate men. It
annoyed me. The other one seemed to be a period thriller
set in a number of European cities. People kept writing
letters to each other to tell them things that they should
already have known. My head was aching from the strain of
working out who all the people were, and my mind kept
wandering back to San Francisco. The characters in the
book that I was reading kept turning into faces that I
vaguely remembered from that summer, and they started
jostling me and looming up in front of me and calling to me
and trying to get me to acknowledge them . . .
. . . And I woke with a start and the train had stopped at
Newcastle. The old women had gone and there was a
young man, ginger hair, a rucksack, asking me if the seats
were taken.
He wouldn't shut up. He told me he was a student and
that he was studying in Newcastle, but he was clearly not
from there because his accent was pure Home Counties.
He was staying there – Newcastle – for the summer
because 'It's a cool town,' but now he was on his way to
Edinburgh for the Fringe because some friends of his from
Oxford were putting on a play and he was just going to
'hang . . . you know, chill.'
He seemed like a nice enough guy but he had obviously
never learned to read body language. He seemed unable
to interpret my polite little nods and shrugs and convert
them into 'Please go away because I don't want to talk to
anyone.'
I needed to ring Zoey, but I didn't want to make a phone
call that my ginger friend could hear. I didn't want anyone
to hear me make arrangements. I didn't want any stranger
to know where I was going or who I would be staying
with. I made my way down the aisle with my bag, squeezed
into the smelly toilet, locked the door and put the loo seat
down. I perched on it and dialled Zoey's number. She
answered straight away. 'Beth!' It was almost a scream. She
sounded like she was somewhere noisy, with a whole
bunch of noisy people. 'Where are you, hon?'
'I'm on a train. I'm on my way to Edinburgh. Short
notice, I know. Sorry. Listen, you said I could kip at your
flat. Did you mean it?'
'Oh my God, yes. This is so cool.' There was a pause.
I started to say something. Zoey butted in. 'So, when are
you arriving?'
I told her.
'Cool. I'll give you the address. Just pick up a cab at the
station. Can't wait to see you.'
When I got back to my seat I saw that the ginger kid
had picked up my historical thriller and was reading it.
'Keep it,' I said, and curled up into the corner and closed
my eyes.
The Edinburgh Fringe hit me like a punch in the
stomach the minute I arrived. I walked up to Princes
Street from Waverley Station and was immediately
accosted by people who wanted to thrust their leaflets into
my hands. I had never seen such a mass of people on the
street just hanging around. Not moving, not heading
anywhere, just standing and watching what was going on.
I needed to fight my way through them to get anywhere.
There was the obligatory bagpipe player on one corner, a
bunch of pan-pipers across the road and a group of
youngsters in togas wandering along the street handing
out leaflets and bunches of grapes. I pushed through the
crowds, clutching my bag and the map I had bought at the
station. The queue at the taxi rank had stretched back for
hundreds of yards so I'd decided to walk. It didn't look
that far on the map.
The crowds started to thin as I trudged uphill eastwards
from Waverley Station, across a busy road, past the
entrance to a cemetery, past what looked like a ruined
Greek temple, and past a colossal 1930s edifice – local
government offices, by the look of it, perched high on a hill
overlooking the city. I was on a broad crescent with
Regency houses to my left, and a long row of empty
parked coaches. I stopped for a while to get my breath
back. It was much cooler than in London but still, even late
afternoon, very humid. The sky was off-white. I leaned on
some railings and looked at the view beyond. Grey streets
and railway lines, tiny, far below me. Steps winding down
the side of the hill. A green expanse of open land over to
my left, a rugged, stepped hill emerging from it.
'Arthur's Seat.' It was a man's voice, behind me. I stood
where I was and for a split second my heart sank. I hadn't
heard any footsteps behind me. Then my mind managed
to process the information. The voice was Scottish. I
turned and saw one of the coach drivers, cigarette in hand.
He stepped closer to me and pointed at the hill. 'It's an
extinct volcano. Magnificent, isn't it? This your first time
in Edinburgh?'
I nodded. 'What's that?' I pointed at a building
crouched near the foot of the hill. From where I stood, the
outline looked like a doodle on a phone pad, as if the
architect had taken a shape, like the outline of a leaf or a
petal or a boat – and crammed as many of them together
as the space would allow, all different sizes. 'That is four
hundred million pounds of our money,' the coach driver
said.
'The Scottish Parliament?'
'Aye.' He stubbed out his cigarette on the pavement.
'You can tell it wasn't built by a Scotsman.'
At the end of the crescent there was a main road and it
was bustling with buses and chippies and kebab
shops. I checked the map, crossed over, looked behind me
to check that the coast was clear, and started counting the
streets on the left. The one I wanted was a narrow cul-de-sac
crammed with parked cars, blocked at the end to
traffic but accessible via a steep flight of stone steps. Either
side of the street, tall terraced grey houses and tenements
nestled together. But for all that, it was cheery – window
frames were painted in bright blues and greens, and every
house had a front garden blooming with summer flowers.
I found the house I wanted and I rang the bell. There
was no answer from the entry phone system, but I noticed
the street door was open. I pushed it and went inside. The
hallway was dark, the walls painted a dark glossy
institutional green. Up three flights of stairs, round to the
right, and there was the right door. Stuck to the door was
a white envelope.
All this way, I thought. All this way, for this. How the
hell did he find me?
And then I looked again and realised that the envelope
was a different size and shape – smaller and squarer than
the ones I'd learned to fear. My name was written on it in
right-slanting loopy handwriting that had the indefinably
foreign look that I associated with letters from childhood
penfriends.
Beth,
it said; not
The murdering bitch.
I pulled
the envelope from the door and it felt heavy. Inside there
was a note and key. 'I had to go check out the venue,' it
said. 'Make yourself at home. Zoey XOX.'