I tried to hide my relief.
‘Still it’s better than a real job, I suppose. For now, at least.’ She moved towards the door.
My nails pressed into my palms as the familiar panic rose in my chest, fingers searching for a ledge to break the fall.
For now? The thought of how much I had already spent on the month-long train ticket from Guildford to the Docklands – almost all of the little money I had saved while working double shifts at the bakery in town – all that I had already done, on the basis that there would be a paid job at the end of this, a career, a chance to get away, made my gut twist.
‘You don’t really think that?’ I tried to sound calmer than I felt. Despite three years of friendship, I still could not let Meg see the true extent of my need. Had she spotted it, the day we left our shared flat in Brighton, she heading to London to chase the career she had always known was rightfully hers, while I returned to Surrey, my face burning with the loss of a life that had always felt borrowed?
I pictured it now, the flat we shared at the top of a crumbling Regency town house, wedged beneath two more of its kind on a thin strip of side-street leading from St James’s Street down to the sea. I loved that flat, with its slanting floorboards and faded magnolia walls; I loved my bedroom, which overlooked the back of the house and a tiny courtyard below – more of a pit than a garden, a dry rectangle well speckled with cigarette butts and seagull feathers. I loved the way I could look out of the window from our battered Chipperfield sofa, onto Kemptown with its bars and pubs which throbbed with noise no matter what time of day or night, and not recognise a soul.
If the worst came to the worst, Meg had told me one night not long after we arrived in London, then she would simply go back to Newcastle. She would take bar work there and stay with her parents while she worked on the book she was destined to write. Though we both knew it would never come to that. Meg was one of those people who appeared to create the existence they wanted, without effort.
I imagined her mother, a shorter, squatter version of my friend – the same ready smile, fiery red hair. I thought of my own mother, thin with worry, her loss etched into the corners of her eyes. The years of silent dinners behind neatly pruned privets, hedging me in together with the memory of what I had done, or, rather, what I had not.
The smile had been pulled tighter than ever across my mother’s lips the day I returned home, the day university – and its promise of escape – came to a crushing end. It clawed at the corners of her eyes as she watched me placing the box of my possessions onto my bed, the room having been stripped of any trace of me the moment I had left. Just as she had purged any trace of Thomas from the house within days of him leaving us.
My breath sharpened as I thought of my parents. Them, the only alternative to this. An invisible tightening around my neck reminded me that I could not let this opportunity slip through my grasp.
Meg’s voice cut through my thoughts, steadying my heartbeat as we stepped into the foyer where a TV screen was playing the BBC News channel on the wall above the reception desk.
‘Here you go.’ The receptionist handed back to us the security passes we were made to collect daily and wear around our necks at all times. Looking down at the hollow outline of my face on the paper print-out, my eyes moved instinctively to the word ‘Temporary’.
We stepped into the lift and Meg moved her fingers to press the button for Floor 1, the newsroom, before changing her mind and pressing Floor 2 instead.
‘We’re at least having a quick fag before we go in,’ she said, stepping out of the lift.
The smell of stale smoke hit us before the doors had finished opening. Turning left into the smoking room, there were plastic chairs edging the walls, rectangular metal tubs strategically placed across the blue carpeted floor.
Meg leaned down to grab a copy of the morning’s paper from a pile by the door, before crossing the room towards a seat by the window.
The room was airless, years of nicotine clinging to every surface.
Silver bangles jarring against one another on her wrists, Meg pulled out a ten-box of Marlboro Lights, drawing one out for herself and another for me. The cigarette was thick between my fingers as I leaned into the flame, holding back my hair, which had recently been cut from waist to shoulder length in an attempt at sophistication.
‘That’s a fucking scoop,’ she said, pressing the fag between her teeth as she pulled her phone out of her pocket.
My eyes moved over the front page of the paper. Below the headline ‘Exclusive: Leading Charity in Cahoots With Arms Dealer’, my attention was drawn by a small black-and-white headshot of a young man with thick, dark hair grazing his neckline. Next to his face, there was the name of the reporter on the piece – Harry Dwyer.
Beside me, Meg’s phone beeped again, but I was distracted by the man’s face, the arch of his nose, the full curve of his lips.
‘It’s David. He’s started his job at that bank in Canary Wharf … wants to know if we’re up for a drink after work … Oi, are you listening?’
It took a moment for Meg’s words to register and when they did I felt the familiar dull ache in my chest.
There was nothing more daunting than the prospect of going out and spending even more money I didn’t have, before running to catch the last train home. Nothing apart from the prospect of home itself – the deafening silence a constant reminder of the person who wasn’t there.
‘You know David will be throwing cash around,’ Meg laughed, reading my mind. ‘Why don’t you stay with me at my cousin’s flat after? She’s not going to be there. Save you going all the way back to your aunt’s house?’
I smiled, flushing at the memory of my lie.
‘Sweet.’ The silver ring in Meg’s nose rose up as she smiled, typing furiously into her phone.
Pressing ‘send’, she stood. ‘Right, I’m going to have a piss before we start. You coming?’
‘Yeah, I’m just going to finish reading this. I’ll see you up there.’
Something about the story, the man’s face, wouldn’t let me go.
Following an extensive year-long investigation, this newspaper can exclusively reveal that members of a leading social justice charity accepted a series of bribes from arguably the world’s most prolific warmongers …
After a moment, I stood and pulled the front two pages of the paper, Harry Dwyer’s piece in its totality, from the rest and folded it neatly, careful not to make an impression along the image of his face, as I placed it in my bag. Unaware of the chain of events I had, without the slightest comprehension, just set in motion; the wheels that were gaining traction, preparing to spin dangerously out of control.
David was waiting for us outside the pub, when we arrived later that evening.
‘Jesus, man, what are you like? Couple of weeks in the City and this happens?’ Meg ruffled his hair, where the undercut from just a few weeks earlier had been replaced by an expensive barber’s take on short back and sides. ‘Still haven’t lost the leather bracelet though, I’m glad to see …’
‘What? I thought you’d be into it?’ David raised his eyes as he pulled her into a bear hug, the flame of the outside heater licking against night air. He paused before moving to me, his expression shifting into something softer.
‘Anna.’ He took my hand, gently, pulling me towards him, holding me as if I was something that might otherwise break.
‘Right – drink, bar!’ Meg slipped her arms through mine and David’s, squeezing gently, the three of us falling into rhythm as we moved through the pub door, and I squeezed back, grateful that we were simply there, all three of us. Knowing, in my bones, even then, that it was