Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
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First published by HarperElement 2017
FIRST EDITION
© Alice Keale and Jane Smith 2017
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Cover photograph © Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images (posed by model)
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Source ISBN: 9780008205256
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008214920
Version: 2016-12-20
For my family and friends, who never gave up on me. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their continued love and support.
Contents
I glanced down at the luminous hands of the large watch that made my wrist look as thin as a child’s. Surely that couldn’t be the right time. It couldn’t possibly have taken me as long as that just to get this far. Then I remembered that he’d set the watch before I left, so I knew it was accurate. Which meant that I would have to run even faster if I was going to reach the pub, take a photograph on his mobile phone and get back to the house in the few minutes that remained before time ran out.
Quickening my pace, I scanned the darkness of every side street and every shop doorway I passed. And I listened too, for the sound of approaching footsteps or distant voices.
As I ran past the café where we had sat together just a few hours earlier, I thought I saw a flicker of movement, and the ever-present knot of fear tightened inside me. It was almost 1 a.m. on a Wednesday night and I’d been certain I was the only person out on the street. But, suddenly, a man stepped out of the shadows directly in front of me.
I had to swerve off the pavement and on to the road to avoid being caught in his outstretched arms, and as I did so I was engulfed in the alcohol-laden breath he exhaled when he lunged towards me. I gasped in shocked surprise, but kept on running, ignoring the sharp objects I could feel cutting into the flesh of my bare, bruised feet and the incoherent shouts of the man who stumbled after me down the dimly lit street.
I couldn’t really blame him for pursuing me – a woman running naked through the streets of London in the middle of the night. Perhaps he thought I was playing some salacious game. It was certainly an explanation that would have made more sense than the real reason, which I didn’t understand myself – and I was completely sober.
I was frightened of the drunk man, and of what he might do if he caught up with me. But I was even more frightened of what would happen if I didn’t get home within the next three minutes. ‘Maybe this time it will be enough,’ I thought, as I ran, sobbing, through the darkness.
‘Please, God,’ I whispered into the night, ‘let it be this time.’
Although my love life was pretty much a disaster, things were going well at work and I’d managed to save enough money for a deposit on a flat of my own. So when my flatmate, Connie, went to live with her boyfriend, I arranged to rent the spare room in my friend Cara’s flat until I could find somewhere to buy.
It was August 2011 and I was alone on what would be my last night in the rented flat Connie and I had shared. I’d already taken almost everything I was going to need in the short term to Cara’s place and stored the rest in the garage at my parents’ house in Devon. So all I had to do that evening was pack a small suitcase to take with me the next day. I was looking forward to buying a place of my own and starting the next phase of my life, and after having