Page 28 of Dead to Me

He messaged back.

Good idea.How about the Blacklock Inn?Give me an hour.

He looked back up at the buzzer for number fifty-two, and the word ‘SOUSA’ next to it.Nothing was happening.He’d pressed it twice now, for a lengthy time.She wasn’t there– or if she was, she wasn’t replying.

He let out a very long breath, wondering what to do next.How far to go.

He knew that Anna had hidden a spare key, including a key fob for the front door of the flats, under an ornamental stonea little way along the wall from the door.It was a necessary move for someone who frequently forgot her keys and also came and went at strange times of night.She’d told him she had to be very careful not to get seen using it or her building management would give her hell.

‘So unfair of them,’ Reid had commented.‘It’s not like you’re leaving easy access to the entire building out for anyone to use.’But although the idea of doing this had made him itch, he’d said it with a grin.He’d understood pretty quickly that a lot of Anna’s life was about coping mechanisms.

Reid was confident that the key would still be there.Anna was not someone to have become magically organised over a matter of months.

He peered through the glass entrance door into the empty hallway and then checked over his shoulder before he moved along the wall with his eyes on the ground.It didn’t take him long to find a recognisable sparkly grey stone.It lifted easily, revealing a muddy key with a grey and yellow disc fob.

He smiled to himself.A simple victory for once.And then he went to open the door.

The experience of letting himself into Anna’s flat was as painfully disconcerting as he’d expected.A distinct voice was telling him that he shouldn’t be here.This was her space, which he had no right to be in any more.

Another voice was trying to hurl at him every painful memory of that last terrible argument they’d had here: the scathing way she’d spoken to him after he’d begged her to just stop, and let him mourn Tanya properly at last.

‘You’re the one who asked me to look into this.’

‘And now I’m asking you to stop looking,’ he’d snapped back.‘Can’t you just respect my opinion as a detective and accept that you don’t know more than I do about this?’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry for not immediately bowing to your superior intellect.’

He found himself pausing in the doorway, fists clenched as though he was readying himself to fight her again, his eyes very firmly closed.He could picture the rage rising up in him.What he’d felt as he’d spat his response at her.

‘Jesus.You don’t care about anyone, do you?You’re just a cold, career-hungry bitch.’

He swore that he’d see her there when he opened his eyes.The absolute implacability of her expression.The total lack of empathy as he drowned in grief.

But instead, he saw a hallway full of mess.The few square feet of floor around the door was full of shoes, reusable shopping bags with unknown contents, empty cardboard boxes, letters that had clearly never been opened and assorted sports gear.There were also a fair few coats that for some reason weren’t on the coat rack he’d painstakingly installed for her but were instead flung onto the floor with their sleeves inside out.

He felt ambushed.Wrongfooted by a rush of strange, infuriated affection.It was disarming to be reminded of the chaotic, flawed woman he’d fallen for instead of the hard, unassailable figure he’d broken up with.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on why it made him feel so uncomfortable.Was it because her erratic personality had appealed to him in some strange way?Or was it that he’d so thoroughly pushed that side of her from his mind that he was only now facing the full picture?

He’d asked her once if she’d ever had an ADHD assessment.It had seemed bizarre that she hadn’t mentioned it, considering that she was probably the most categorically ADHD person he’d ever met.From her scatty brain to her lack of awareness of time; from her fits of energetic talkingand activity to her sudden quiet as she became hyper-focused on something; from her profound inability to sit still without fidgeting combined with the way she would forget entirely what she’d just been doing and wander off– all bundled up with the incredibly fast and unique connections she made.

‘Oh, I was convinced for, like, a year that I was ADHD when I was seventeen,’ she’d told him.‘But my mom told me not to be stupid, and then when I asked my schoolteacher he said probably not.’

Reid blinked.‘Did he… actually assess you?Or put you forward for a proper assessment?’

‘Well, no,’ Anna had said.‘But he pointed out that I was probably overinterpreting things that everyone was talking about a lot at the time, and he had a point.Neurodiversity had become this big hot topic.He said we’re all disorganised or fidgety or a bit random sometimes, but that didn’t mean it needed a label.He said he’d taught ADHD kids, and they threw chairs across the room and picked fights.’

‘Er,’ Reid had said, thinking of one of the boys in his class.‘That sounds a bit of an exaggeration.One of the ADHD boys I knew was incredibly people-pleasing.He sat and doodled and talked nineteen to the dozen but missed half of what we were supposed to be doing and could never, ever find his homework.’

Anna had laughed, and shrugged.‘Well, if Iam, then it doesn’t matter now, I guess.’

Except, Reid had thought,that it might help people not to blame you for things that you can’t help.The wandering off.The failure to remember life events.The sudden hyper-focus that makes you forget that other things matter.

A small voice in his head raised a counterthought now:But you blamed her anyway…

And he silenced it, brutally.What he had done– what hehad judged her for– it hadn’t been the same.He’dacceptedall her scattiness and eccentricity.He’d loved it, truth be told.It had been the cold, hard, selfish actions at the end he’d been so hurt by.

Just find her,he thought, exasperated with himself as he realised he was standing still again.Everything else can wait.

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