new beginnings.”
Tegan rolls her eyes. “Next you’ll be saying we’re on a journey.”
“Sorry.” Amber blushes into her salad and chips.
Tegan sighs. “I suppose I could look for a business enterprise group.”
Amber can’t think how to reply and feels uncomfortable again. Nothing in common with this girl. She shivers. Nothing in common with anyone. Her gullet heaves at the memory of what she did.
She puts down her fork and tells another lie. “I can’t eat this. I’m allergic to tomatoes. It’s the alpha solanine.”
Tegan rolls her eyes again. “Is alpha whatsit not present in upside-down pizza then?” She waits for Amber to look at her. “Remember the party in Flat 7? You tucked in good and proper.”
Amber hunches her shoulders and returns to picking tomato slices out of her salad. Found out again.
“By the way,” she says eventually, in another try at faking it. “I forgot to mention they’ve moved into the last room in our flat.”
“They?” Tegan asks. “Is it a couple?”
Amber shakes her head, puts on her persona. “One individual. I designate all humans as they; gender is a social construct.”
“Okay,” Tegan says slowly. “For those of us who are less enlightened, can you give me a clue which bits of they’s anatomy dangle?”
Amber struggles to keep a straight face. “The less enlightened would call them male.”
“A guy?” Tegan says, laughing.
“I think he, they, is from Thailand,” Amber says between chuckles.
Tegan’s laughter freezes. “Thailand?” Her knuckles whiten as she grips the edge of the table.
“They don’t speak English so I couldn’t find out their name. Don’t suppose you speak any Thai?”
“No.”
The force of the word silences Amber. The good-humoured conversation has evaporated as inexplicably as it materialized. She burns her mouth as she hurries to finish her drink.
“Thanks for the lift.” She stands up and heads out of the hall. Trying to befriend Tegan was a mistake. Imo is a better friend – and Lauren, the girl she bumped into on arrivals day. That’s a friendship Amber hopes to cultivate.
Tuesday 27 September
Imogen
Moonlight finds the gap in Imo’s curtain, but the room passes for dark. No thudding bass invading through the floor from another flat, no doors slamming, no traffic outside. But it’s the quiet of dread not peace. When she lies awake at home, every car she hears is the police with news, or Sophia coming home without her keys. In this silent space, her brain won’t switch off, spooling through the what-if scenarios of what might have happened and the white-hot anger of why it happened to them.
Still feeling rough from the Sunday night’s drinking, her throat’s killing her. The soreness in her mouth will be a cough by morning. Getting sick can be added to her other failure: so hungover she turned up late to the library and couldn’t find the induction talk. She walked past rolling stacks of journals, bays of textbooks, miles of computer screens. No one to ask. Sweat beading on her brow, she forced herself to take the lift to the upper library floors. Tried not to think about the broken body, how it must have fallen through the air, how it must have landed. No sign of a talk when she peered in, although she didn’t complete a full sweep; too scared of seeing the drop out of a window.
Pulling the duvet up, she turns over. Tomorrow will be no better. The Business Studies introduction clashes with the German welcome talk. Two lectures will be missed in as many days. She’s unravelling, not good enough for uni, can’t manage like the others. Maybe it’s too soon. But would another year make her stop seeing kidnappers behind every parked car? Stalkers under the trees outside her window? Will the familiar face she seeks have become so much less familiar that she’ll no longer search? And will that what-if nightmare of the dark and the cellar have faded?
She looks at the red-canister alarm on her bedside table and imagines the disappointment vying with relief on her mother’s face when she drops out. On the days when her mother still functions, she works as a nurse. The first thing she does when she gets home, after she’s checked for messages from Inspector Hare, is read the obituaries in the evening paper, to see which former patients have died. “That didn’t take long,” she says. She’ll say the same when Imo quits.
An idea about the timetable clash tomorrow comes to her, something her mum – the old version of Mum – might suggest. She fires off a text to Tegan, asking her to collect the handouts from the Business Studies talk. Lies back on her pillow, feeling lighter in her chest. Things will work out. Her first problem solved on her own. She’s a student now, not a school kid.
Ten minutes later she’s still awake. Her throat hurts and coughing threatens no matter how she turns her body.
There’s a knock at the door. She freezes. Tegan come to tell her off for texting her at this hour?
“Imo, it’s me.” Amber’s voice. “I need painkillers.”
Imo unlocks the door and Amber stumbles in, doubled over. She falls on Imo’s bed and clutches the pillow to her stomach. Her short, bleached hair has crinkled, no doubt suffering the dual effects of bed head and natural wave. She wears fluffy grey slippers and a tartan dressing gown. Without the make-up and weird quilt coat she wore yesterday, she looks younger, vulnerable. Imo lets out a gasp; she reminds her of Sophia.
“What is it?” Amber asks.
“I might have a paracetamol in my purse.” Imo recovers and reaches for her bag, feeling light-headed at the comparison she’s made.
“I’m allergic to those. There’s an all-night petrol garage outside campus.” Amber sits up, wrapping the edges of the Groovy Chick duvet over her legs. “They’ll sell ibuprofen. Our taxi will be here in three minutes.”
Imo suppresses a sigh, no desire to go out in the night and irked that Amber has given her no choice. But Amber’s anguished face makes her feel guilty, especially as Amber stayed with her when she was throwing up the night before.
“Let’s wait here for the driver’s text.” Amber curls up. “I can’t stand for long.”
After the taxi arrives, it takes them an age to get outside. Amber stops several times on the stairs to hug her belly. Imo pictures the meter ticking.
The driver, a young guy with thick, black curls, pulls a face when she tells him their destination, no doubt disappointed at the meagre fare. They travel in silence, Imo shivering in her jacket and jeans. She should have put on a sweatshirt. The faint smell of alcohol in the back of the taxi makes her nauseous and she looks out of the window to settle her stomach. The campus is deserted. A few lights on in the other halls, but no one out walking – or staggering – and no other cars. Eerily quiet. Imo imagines someone watching them drive past, someone lurking outside the flats waiting for their chance. She thinks of Sophia running for her life through dark streets.
Even out on the main road, they are alone. When they reach the floodlit forecourt of the filling station she notices Amber’s grey face, screwed up in a wince of pain. She tells her to wait in the taxi while she gets the tablets.
“Three packets, please,” Amber says softly. “I’ll pay you back.”
But when Imo gets to the counter, the woman won’t sell her three boxes of ibuprofen. “Maximum of two per customer. It’s the law.”
Back in the taxi, Amber takes the tablets and swallows four down without water. “People should be allowed to buy as much medication