Page 67 of Dead to Me

‘OK, thanks.’

She gave directions to a room on Nevile’s Court further towards the back of the college.He tried to slow his heart to the point where he could listen and then stepped out into the twilit college proper.He was caught briefly in a moment of startled surprise at the huge scale of the open front court.It was much larger than he’d realised from the CCTV.Acres of space.And in what was now almost total darkness the lights of the central fountain and the windows around it made it seem like some immense fortification.

You could build a village in here,he thought.

He hadn’t got any further than that thought before rapid steps behind made him swing round.He was still night blind from the lights in the porters’ lodge and could do nothing to protect himself against an oncoming rush.

His assailant hit hard and didn’t just drive him backwards but diagonally, so that his back struck the wall of the nearest tower with crushing force.Above the thoughts ofWhat the hell?Reid felt a few rusty instincts kick in.He hadn’t had to out-and-out fight for years, but his body still knew how to go for his attacker’s weak points.

He raised his knee sharply into the assailant’s bent torso and then immediately brought his foot down hard onto where he guessed an instep must be.He got it just about right by the feel of it.

The form flinched backwards, and he tried to make out the face even in the backlighting from the courtyard, but it was near impossible.And then the guy– he was at least sure of that– straightened slightly and produced a swift, vicious roundhouse that connected squarely with Reid’s chin.

Reid felt his head snap back and into the stone wall,and it was all he could do to keep his legs from collapsing.Momentarily afterwards, pain exploded in a line between his jaw and the back of his head.

Breathe, he thought, as his vision became a pattern of diamonds.

He tried to straighten.To get ready for another attack.But nothing came.There was only the sound of running footsteps and then the quiet of the great empty space.

25.Anna

I’m back writing to you, even though I’m not sure why.

I think maybe this is more about having somewhere to put it all down than anything else.You– or an imaginary version of you– have just become the person I’m addressing it to.

After what I learned about Tanya, I felt a lot like giving up.On Holly and Cambridge and all of this.Realising I’d been just so, so wrongabout Tanya was… it kind of unravelled me.

I don’t know if believing she was murdered had kept me from feeling that she was dead, but suddenly I felt like she was really gone.Never coming back.

I didn’t know what to do after Cordelia and Anthony left.The Jesus Green house felt so wrong and empty and stifling.

I walked out of the front door at eleven with no real plan and found myself wandering until I arrived on Dad’s doorstep.

It was a weird impulse, you know.It wasn’t like Dad had ever been the one to comfort me– except maybe, in dim memory, when I’d grazed a knee as a very small child.He isn’t, as you know, wired for comfort.

But after you and I broke up he wasn’t so bad.I refused to leave my flat for a full week, so he eventually just came and picked me up and drove me to his house without talking.In his own, weird way, he was there for me.And it was that quiet, awkward looking-after that I was craving just then.

Though when he opened the door and saw my expression I genuinely wondered whether he was going to close it again.I was clearly freaking the hell out of him.

But after he’d nodded a few times he let me in, and said, ‘I’ll run you a bath.Come and sit by the fire.’

He even, to my almost amusement, asked me if I wanted to talk about it.He waited until I’d emerged from the bath and been fed seafood linguine and champagne (of course).And then he forced the words out, looking so uncomfortable that I shook my head, and said, ‘I’d rather just… watch a Bond movie and get quietly drunk.’

It was gone midnight by this point, and it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for him to just go to bed.But Dad cleared away, set up the TV and sat with me to watch.

And I did feel better by the time I crawled into bed.But I don’t know how easy it would have been to pick myself up again if Cordelia hadn’t refused to let me ignore her.

She messaged first thing asking me to talk, but I didn’t even open it.I ignored every other message, too.I’d WhatsApped Kit saying I’d got a horrible bug and was stuck in London festering, then turned both my phones off entirely and spent the next two days lying in bed watching crap on Dad’s guest television.

But Cordelia was not going to let me get away with that.At four on Thursday, she rang on the doorbell of Dad’s house.It became clear that she’d called him in advance, because I heard him asking how the journey had been.

Traitor,I thought.And then I dragged myself out of bed, feeling like a worse traitor for ignoring all her calls and messages.I owed her more than that.

She was still in the hall when I turned the corner of the stairs, and she looked up at me with what I thought was probably anger.I couldn’t help flinching.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I told her.

I saw her look me over– pyjamas, unbrushed hair and inevitably horrible skin– but the bright, hard energy in her expression stayed.And I realised it wasn’t actually anger.

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