Page 18 of Dead to Me

Reid felt a surge of adrenaline so strong it was almost like electricity.It drove him up onto his feet, his running shoe falling to the floor with an unheeded thud.

Seaton.What the fuck?

Fast on the heels of that jolt of adrenaline came a feeling of nausea.He couldn’t get himself together enough to answer.Couldn’t even think.It was shameful how much it affected him: both the voice and the sound of Anna’s name.

He tried to walk away from it, unconsciously gravitating towards the kitchen.The shrapnel of his hurried lunch was still on the worktop and he found himself tidying the plate away and reaching for a cloth to sweep up the crumbs while his mouth failed to form words.

‘Ah… I hope you don’t mind me calling?’Seaton said into the silence.

‘Right,’ Reid said in the end, pausing with the cloth in his hand and realising that it was shaking.‘Nice to hear from you.’

Which wasn’t true.Wasn’t true at all.

He wanted to ask why the hell Seaton was getting in touch, but he also didn’t want to form the words.He wanted to shout, instead,Why now?Why, when things are just about normal again, and I don’t think about Anna every bloody half-hour any more?

‘Good to speak to you, too,’ Seaton said, as awkwardly as ever.‘Look, I know it’s in many ways unfair to be calling, but I’m… I’m worried about Anna.She’s gone missing.I know that… I know that things didn’t end well between the two of you, but you were the one person she still trusted, believe it or not.’

‘She’s… missing?’Reid asked, his eyes still roving over the counter, looking for something to clean.A stray crumb to wipe away.He couldn’t quite identify what the feeling tumbling through him was, but it was messy and painful and unpleasant.‘For how long?’

‘Since last night,’ Seaton said.‘She was looking into something.A murder, actually.And I think she might need your help.’

Reid found himself leaning against the counter, the cloth balled up in his hand and a tight feeling in his stomach.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

9.Anna

I set out to write everything down, and not just the stuff you might have wanted to hear.But I’ve still found myself shying away from admitting to some things.

So here’s the full truth.I didn’t spend my first weeks in Cambridge looking solely at Kit Frankland, Ryan Jaffett, Esther Thomas and James Sedgewick.

I also started looking at Tanya’s death again.

And I know– Iknow–that you told me to stop.But how am I supposed to do that when I still don’t believe it was an accident?

It didn’t necessarily start as a conscious thing.I’d be looking over photographs of Kit’s group at events and find my eyes drifting to the background, almost willing one of the girls in dresses to be a slim, strong sportswoman with ruddy cheeks and short-cut blonde hair.A young woman who never stopped moving, and organising, and helping everyone.

It would make me burn with a need to see the places Tanya had been.On one occasion I packed my laptop up and headed over to Selwyn College instead of Jesus, where I found a café and homed in on a chatty-looking pair of undergrads in their third year.I asked if they’d known any of my friends in the year above, and then I dropped in names of a few of the other students who’d done geography alongside Tanya.

‘Oh, I kind of knew Pete,’ one of them said.‘I think he’s out in Chile now, isn’t he?’

‘Is he?’I asked with a laugh.‘That’s so bad that I don’t know.I am not a good friend.’While inside I wanted to yellat them for not remembering the one important person.The only one who mattered.

On my way home I felt a sense of terrible anxiety at the danger I was running.Admitting to other people that I’d known Tanya’s friends could so easily get me found out.I lacerated myself for it.Promised myself I’d stick to online research from then on.

But as I dug further into Holly’s life and found images of her at a few athletics events, I was painfully reminded of all those photos Tanya would send over of her matches, and of the couple of games you and I actually went to watch together.And somehow after a few days I was looking up the university hockey club to find out whether they had any friendly matches on now that the main season was over, and when I found that there was one– over on the fields beyond Newnham– I got on my bike and cycled over, filled with an urgency to meet some of these girls and find out more.

It felt strange to see the same stands and banners and kit on a warm summer’s day that I’d seen at Tanya’s matches in the driving rain of winter.Stranger still to realise that she would never be at another of these matches.

I took myself over to where the Cambridge supporters and subs were standing and spent forty-five minutes cheering the Cambridge side on before I eventually got up the courage to talk to one of the students watching.He was a young guy in a polo shirt and shorts, and he seemed to be alone.

‘Which one are you supporting?’I asked him as he gave a roar of triumph at a goal.

‘Oh.Min,’ he said, clapping and giving me a fleeting smile.‘She’s the… Black headband?Tall?’

‘Oh, she’s great,’ I said.

‘How about you?’he asked me.

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