Page 52 of Dead to Me

‘OK, I think I see the point.’

‘It’s awesome, isn’t it?’he said, his expression full of delight.

When he took my blade and pushed me back out into the river it was a whole new me who began rowing again.A me who was able to zone in on the feel of the water and theconnection of the catch and wasn’t worried about the pain in my leg or whether I was about to get fired.

Kit ended up running back alongside the boat, beaming at my enjoyment.And I think, also, enjoying that I was grateful to him.

It was some great sports psychology, Reid, and a genuinely enjoyable row home.But after I’d got back and Kit had watched me lifting my boat out and onto the racks he said something else.Something that made it all… less good.

It was as I was sliding the rack away, and he’d been telling me to come to King’s Bar again that night to keep him and Ryan company.

‘Esther’ll be locked away working for her second exam,’ he added.

‘Oh,’ I said, walking to pick my blades up from the hard.‘I could maybe come.I mean, I probably should be working… but…’

Kit gave me a grin, trailing alongside me.‘You definitely need to come.Guilt-free living starts here.’

I laughed at him.‘I think some of the guilt is probably reasonable.’

‘I honestly think guilt is one of the least healthy emotions in the world,’ Kit said, more seriously.‘All those parents who use it all the time… It’s honestly abusive.I mean, sure.Learn from your mistakes.Think “I could have done that better”.But don’t torture yourself.It doesn’t help anyone.’

It was so compelling, the way he said it.For a moment, I actually believed he might be right.Whywasguilt necessary?All it meant was making yourself miserable instead of learning and moving on.

It was only after he’d gone that I started to remember that there were things people genuinely should feel guilty about and try to make amends for.Really terrible things.

And I wondered whether Kit would be able to do the worst things and just put them behind him.Because it sounded to me like he would.

20.Reid

The train was pulling into Cambridge and Reid had to put the phone away and stop reading.And although it felt jarring to stop, he knew he should.

He needed to walk out into the breezy evening air.To stop reading about Anna.About the weird student life she’d been living.

About Kit Frankland.

About Tanya.

And about how they’d failed each other.

He’d meant to skip ahead after the beginning.It made no sense to follow the story through and not go straight to the conclusion.

But somehow he’d found himself unable to stop reading, despite how painful some of it had been.Maybebecauseof how painful it had been.And because every word of it had been so warmly, unmistakably, infuriatingly Anna.

He wanted to be angry with her about Tanya.It had taken him such a lot to come to terms with his sister’s overdose, and it hurt badly to have Anna unpick his work on that.

And yet he understood, now, why she hadn’t been able to leave it.That she’d been grieving, just as he had.That this was how she had coped: by refusing to back down until she’d disproved, beyond all certainty, that Tanya had died as a result of violence.

It had never been about her career.He’d been so, so wrong.Anna had genuinely risked her career to try to find out the truth.

She wasn’t a cold-hearted careerist.She was a driven, emotional, caring but also obsessive woman who would sometimes get so consumed by something that she stopped noticing the collateral damage.

What had gone wrong between them had been an enormous clash between her grief and his.And he’d been the one who’d been too blind to see it.

He realised that he was standing outside the station now, unmoving.It was gone 9 p.m.and he needed to rush if he was going to make it to see James Sedgewick and get back before the trains got extremely sporadic.Assuming, that was, that he could actually find James.

At least there were six taxis waiting in the rank nearby, and nobody piling into them.He walked as purposefully as he could to the first one and told the driver to take him to St John’s College.

And then, as soon as he was in the back, he opened the phone up again and scrolled to the end of Anna’s account.

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