Page 106 of Dead to Me

And Seaton embarrassed himself entirely by starting to cry.

43.Anna

Anna called her father the first moment she was able to.Which was a full two hours after she’d first demanded to make a call.

The delay had been largely her own fault.Well, her fault, with the mitigating factor of having been drugged out of her mind at the time of the bad decisions she’d made.

It had been her idea to go to a hospital in London, and James had obliged, perhaps because he’d believed his mother might find her, but maybe also to stop her freaking out completely.She’d felt almost able to cope with her fear as he’d helped her into the Uber, but then had descended into a shivering pit of terror.

That terror had only got worse.The cab had seemed to grow inwards at her and passing cars had seemed like monsters.She’d been convinced that everyone was trying to kill her and, midway through the cab ride, she’d opened the window and hurled her phone out of it, to the distress of the driver.

Luckily, the payment for the trip was being made through James’s account.More luckily still, the driver had been a decent human being.Having arrived at North Middlesex Hospital and realised Anna had slid into unconsciousness he had run for help and had her stretchered inside.He’d also handed them the note James had given him: a note explaining she’d taken some kind of injectable drug and was overdosing.The note had, she’d discovered later, even helpfully listed her symptoms of hallucination and rapid heart rate.

Anna hadn’t known any of this until much later, obviously.In fact, she’d only begun to understand anything at nine something this morning when she’d finally woken up out of the comatose state she’d been left in.And even then her attempts at interrogating one of the health-care assistants had been largely unsuccessful.She hadn’t even remembered that she’daskedto come here for a good hour.

It hadn’t helped her confusion that everyone had kept calling her Alice, which had been the name James had written on his note.She’d then recalled, with a rush of embarrassment, telling him to write a pseudonym.She’d leaned in to hiss to him that her enemies were everywhere and she had to go undercover.

By the time she’d eventually been shown the note and fed both fluids and food she’d felt not only a lot more on top of the situation but also crushingly aware that her dad would be freaking out right now.She’d been unconscious for almost thirty-six hours.She’dmissed lunch.

She was in so much trouble.

But when she’d demanded to get in touch with him she’d hit a major snag.She had zero idea what his phone number was, and when she’d asked them to look him up they’d drawn a blank.Dad was clearly either ex-directory or no longer had a landline.Assuming, of course, the long-suffering staff had actually bothered trying to find him and hadn’t decided to do the more urgent work of dealing with patients.

So it was gone twelve by the time she was at long last discharged and could make her shaky way out of Ward T5.She’d followed the maze of corridors until she reached the ground-floor shops.A WHSmith supplied her with a mobile phone and SIM card, but after she’d made it out front and into a cab back to Cambridge, she’d collapsed in a dizzy heap for a good while.

She was still at a loss to understand how her body couldbe affected so badly.She’d assumed that with no more drugs in her system for thirty-six hours she ought to be functioning just fine.But the serious overdose of scopolamine she’d apparently been spiked with hadn’t miraculously cleared from her system after she’d woken up.It was still making itself known.

She’d started the fiddly process of putting the SIM in the moment she’d felt like she could stay conscious doing it, her coordination frustratingly bad.It didn’t help that she kept catching sight of her sheeny dress and now appallingly messy hair in reflections from the window and wincing.She was still wearing her ballgown, the Jimmy Choos swapped for her pink flats and with the beautiful hair and make-up turned to ruin.

The frequent flashbacks to the night of the ball weren’t helping, either.With them came all the abject terror that had hit her as they’d assembled for the fireworks.Moments when she’d been convinced that James was made of shadow.Others when he’d been a monster with a gaping maw about to swallow her.

But he’d been none of those things.He’d been trying to save her from his family in the only way he could think of.

‘I didn’t know,’ he’d whispered to her before turning to her with those huge, sad eyes.‘I didn’t know about Holly until what you told me.They… I’m not going to let them hurt you, too, I promise.’

And he’d made good on that promise: paying for the cab, and presumably not telling anyone where to find her.

Should probably have told him to tell Dad, actually,she thought now.

At least she had all her contacts saved into the Outlook app.Now that she had a phone she was able to sign into it.

The moment the app opened it began downloading emails,and she sat back to watch them come in.New ones popped up as notifications and, of course, in spite of the urgency of everything, Anna found herself reading each banner alert.Emails from Imogen about the drugs James had been given, because Anna had forgotten to stand her down.One from Gael calledFinancesthat made her heart squeeze with worry.A bunch of spam.

But then there was one that wiped everything away.It was titled ‘Re: Help’– and it was from Reid.

She felt like she was barely breathing as she opened it.

She read that he was sorry.That he was going to find her.

And then she had to stop and wipe tears out of her eyes as she said under her breath, ‘Reid, for fuck’s sake.What have you been doing?’

Lacking any immediate way of getting in touch with him, owing to him having changed his number, she realised she still had to call her dad.And so she did, bracing herself for a lacerating earful about disappearing without warning.

But when she got through, Dad instead made her emotional situation that much worse by crying audibly down the phone.

‘It’s OK, Dad,’ she said, hushing him.‘The fuckers tried to drug me with scopolamine, but I’m all right, and I’ve worked it all out.’

‘Reid went to arrest them,’ Seaton said, a note of worry in his voice even through the tears.‘Philip and James.Though I’m not sure they’re at home.Philip’s just messaged me.’

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