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by Penny Parkes

  Saying goodbye was never easy, in fact Anna had been dreading it, but apparently Callie was choosing to say goodbye her own way, on her own terms, by cutting off contact altogether.

  Anna’s newly packed notebooks suddenly felt hollow, her fresh determination to get words down on paper a little self-indulgent.

  Fiddling while Rome burned.

  Yet, however Callie’s plight spoke to her, Anna knew that she owed herself something too: an opportunity to follow her dream, her ambition, her own silent roar onto the page.

  * * *

  With the Mini left somewhat forlornly at the long-stay car park and Eleanor and Richard delightedly installed back in their West Country lives, tanned and happy after their Roman holiday, Anna found herself taking shallow, jerky breaths as she walked across the concourse at St Pancras. Her small bag thumped against her thigh with each step and she looked down, rather than be overwhelmed by the crowds surging around her.

  The contrast to the golden hues and calm serenity of Bath was not the only issue.

  Even treating herself to a beautiful new polished silver pen with which to begin her ‘fresh approach’ hadn’t given her the rush of serotonin she’d expected. Instead, she heard Callie’s disparaging comments in her head about needing the ‘perfect set-up’ before she could write: ‘That’s bollocks and you know it.’

  Of course she knew it.

  Yet old habits died hard and somehow it was vital that if she was going to take this giant leap of faith, then the setting was almost as important as the inspiration. She wasn’t doing this lightly; in fact, she was slightly terrified that, after all these years of procrastination and prevarication, she might still fail. It might have been more efficient to discover years ago that ambition did not eclipse a lack of talent.

  The fear was real, but the drive was compelling.

  Something about the last few weeks, the people she’d met and the stories she’d heard, had fired up the dormant part of her brain that had bundled itself into a protective coma for all these years.

  And Callie was at the forefront of that. Her insouciant determination that she could make a better life for herself, despite so much blocking her path, had been like a jolt of caffeine to the system.

  It was just a shame they weren’t in this together.

  Anna sighed deeply, closing her eyes for a moment, convinced she’d made the right decision about Callie, yet regretting it nevertheless.

  A hard shove from behind jolted her forward, her bag slipping from her shoulder onto the concourse with a dull thud; the new pen jerked from her hand, rolling away across the polished marble floor as a crowd surged around her towards the platform. The suited man cast her an annoyed glare and carried on striding forward, as though it were her fault for simply existing in his day. Bending to retrieve the pen, she was knocked nearly sideways by the corner of a leather suit carrier and another sigh of exasperation.

  She watched as the silver barrel rolled further out of reach, her own small bag now another hurdle for the passengers to step over – never around, she noticed. Their haste, their pent-up irritation and rage drove them forward. A platform had been announced. Ten minutes until departure, yet still they drove forward; time was money, perhaps?

  ‘Just get out of the way,’ someone hissed at her as she looked around, her breath coming ever shorter and unshed tears clogging her throat. She instinctively checked her possessions: wallet, watch, passport, phone, wallet, watch, passport, phone, wallet, watch, passport, phone. In lieu of anything else, her old rituals gave her a perverse kind of comfort.

  The surge had passed.

  Anna scrambled to pick up her new pen, the barrel scuffed and crushed. She felt disproportionately broken by its mangled silver remains, ink leaking out onto her palms as she cradled them. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine herself trampled underfoot, disposable, useless, nothing more than an impediment to the ordered flow of their ordered lives.

  Glancing up at the information board overhead, she forced herself to drag oxygen into her lungs and blink away the tears. She wasn’t some country yokel overwhelmed by the big city, she reminded herself. She was simply overwhelmed by life, and those people who seemed to know instinctively how to live it.

  Wiping her ink-stained hands on a tissue, she wrapped the pen up with a certain reverence for its aborted role in her life and placed it in one of the bins. Even as she did it, she could feel her sense of reality warping slightly.

  What was she even doing here?

  Wallet, watch, passport, phone.

  She hefted her bag back onto her shoulder, the hordes already jostling to board the train, despite the assigned seating printed on their tickets.

  It was times like this when Anna knew for certain that her brain functioned in a different way. And it wasn’t the age-old introvert, extrovert chestnut. This was about how all it took to change a life – hell, to save a life sometimes – was a little kindness. A little consideration.

  She felt nauseated by the very thought that she herself might have missed that opportunity with Callie.

  She clambered aboard the train, each table already bristling with laptops and righteous indignation, should she dare to take the empty seat opposite.

  Her phone rang out loudly, demanding her attention. Perching on an armrest, she took the call.

  ‘Are you on the Eurostar already?’ said Emily curtly.

  ‘Well, hello to you too—’

  ‘If you’re on the train, get off. Get off now. The booking’s been cancelled.’

  Anna’s heart rate ratcheted up and she grabbed at the handle of her bag, snagging on each and every headrest she stumbled past. She heard the sound of the whistle just as she reached the door and leapt out, just as the guard stepped forward to wave her back on board.

  She felt her ankle give, and the bag swung forward, striking the side of her face. The impact was so unexpected that it took her breath away, even as the guard yelled at her for her lack of consideration.

  The irony was not lost on her at all.

  Crumpled in a heap of mixed emotions, Anna held the phone to her other cheek.

  ‘Well, I’m not on the train anymore.’

  ‘Jesus, Anna! Are you alright? That all sounded – well – are you alright?’

  Anna took a shuddering breath, her ankle throbbing, her hands ink-stained and now raw from her awkward landing. Her cheek felt wet, possibly with tears, or possibly blood.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’ll be fine.’ She made no move to stand up, merely sitting crumpled like a baby giraffe as the train sped away from the platform and the tannoy announcements echoed overhead.

  The guard gave her a filthy look and walked away, no offer of help forthcoming.

  ‘Look,’ said Emily. ‘I’ll sort all of this out and come back to you, but the booking’s been cancelled. Last minute. Like, literally a minute ago, so I didn’t get any details – I just wanted to make sure you didn’t get on that train. I’ll call you back in a minute.’

  It hadn’t even occurred to her that Anna now had nowhere to stay. That she might as well have had nowhere to stay in Paris, as in London. That she could have walked along the Seine and sipped café au lait and scribbled in her notebooks or journals in a pavement café. That she might have wanted to be given a say…

  She quietly gathered her things together and walked out into the grey mizzle of a London afternoon.

  The rust-red façade of the St Pancras Hotel filled her eyeline.

  Somewhere she’d always wanted to stay. Somewhere she’d always thought was beyond her budget. Hobbling along, her ankle screaming in protest, she wiped her hands clean and tucked her hair smoothly back behind her ears.

  Something good had to come out of this.

  It had to.

  The thought that leaving Bath, leaving Callie, missing out on steak frites on the Left Bank had all been for nothing, was more than she could bear. She had to find some method in all of this madness.

  ‘Hi,’ she sai
d, an unusual calm and confidence filling her voice as she approached the gilded and ornate reception desk. ‘I’m unexpectedly in London for the night,’ she shrugged with an unknown Gallic charm, ‘when I should be in Paris.’ A gentle smile. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve a last-minute rate for a single room?’

  Chapter 39

  St Pancras, 2019

  The fronds of indoor palm trees brushed against Anna’s shoulders as she lingered for a moment in the grand foyer, its plush decadence almost overwhelming. It was certainly a far cry from the Premier Inn across the road where she often made base for early Eurostar departures. And yet…

  The same towering façade and indulgent décor that had captivated her imagination for so many years hardly offered comfort. There were small groups of guests, immaculately attired, polished and pristine taking sips of cocktails and champagne even at this hour. Their conversation and laughter seemed to buzz with energy and only served to highlight that Anna was here alone.

  In a beautiful room for an absolute steal.

  But alone.

  She slipped into the Art Deco elevator and closed her eyes, as the swooping vertigo told her that she was up in the gods. Alighting on her floor, where the imposing corridors swept away on either side, punctuated with mirrors and foliage and the odd chaise longue should the endless walk prove too taxing, she began to feel like Alice in Wonderland.

  Indeed, she would not have been surprised if a white rabbit bearing a pocket watch had rushed by.

  Her phone rang in her pocket, and she pulled it out to stare indecisively at the screen.

  Emily. Again.

  So many missed calls, yet she was still unable to formulate an appropriate response. She knew perfectly well that Emily had her best interests at heart in pulling her off the train, but – house-sit or not – she could also have been on the banks of the Seine right now.

  Still, the Renaissance was hardly sloppy seconds.

  She limped the few yards to her door, the phone ringing impotently in her hand, denied attention as she juggled with the electronic key. The small bag from the pharmacy at the station rustled on her wrist and she tried to keep her focus.

  Rest, ice, compression, elevation.

  Her ankle positively thrummed with inflamed heat. She couldn’t begin to tackle a rational conversation without first taking care of herself. Washing back two ibuprofen, she sat down in the winged armchair by the window and began the painful but necessary job of removing her Converse hightops. Biting her lip and breathing through the nauseating waves of agony she half wondered whether she should have skipped the five-star hotel and gone straight to A&E. She flexed her foot gingerly and winced. Surely she wouldn’t be able to do even that if it were broken?

  With the ice from the mini bar wrapped in a soft monogrammed napkin and her foot balanced on a stack of silken cushions on the coffee table to get height, she leaned her head back and looked out at the view, at the birds swooping across the rooftops.

  Forcing herself to breathe slowly and her taut limbs to soften, she felt as though she’d been fleeing some invisible aggressor from the moment she’d fallen to the floor. As she began to shiver now, her teeth chattering against one another, she recognised that, yes, she probably was in shock a little. Even scrambling through the crowds to rescue her belongings had shaken her up, but her expedited exit from the Eurostar had given her no time to think, only act.

  Staring blindly out of the window, Anna was forced to admit that today’s events alone were probably not the issue; they were simply compounding something she’d staunchly denied, even to herself.

  Andrew Fraser had done a real number on her at Gravesend Manor and then she’d simply carried on. Unwilling, or perhaps unable to admit that the actions of one man were enough to derail her fragile détente with her own psyche.

  Fight. Flight. Freeze.

  Those three words summed up decades of Anna’s life and, however much she liked to assert her own independence, her freedom, her very flexibility, she was also hemmed in. Limited by fear in general, yes, but also the very specific anxiety about ‘getting it wrong’. Setting up a life, a career, maybe even a home, only to then realise that she’d made the wrong choice.

  Keeping moving kept that spectre at bay.

  Even if only as a temporary measure; a measure it seemed that had now outlived its usefulness.

  Her phone rang again, Henry this time, and yet still she ignored it.

  And that was okay. Jackie of the awful perms and Shalimar obsession had taught her that. And, whilst as a teenager she had been slow to learn the lesson – the dread of being thought selfish far outweighing any personal benefit – as an adult she had valued that nugget of advice enormously. You could not pour from an empty cup and Anna had been running on empty, on adrenaline, for weeks now.

  Instead, she opened her email and began to type. Survival came in many forms.

  * * *

  Ordering an omelette and frites from room service, with a chilled chubby bottle of Orangina to wash it down, was Anna’s last concession to the lost dream of the Sixth Arrondissement. Yet it still felt like a necessary closure to attain.

  Paris was to have been the catalyst, the inspiration to kick off her writing. The end, in fact, to nearly a decade of self-doubt and procrastination.

  And no matter that Callie’s words still echoed, knowing that she did in fact have everything she needed right there between her ears, it still felt like a wrench to let go.

  She listened to Emily’s increasingly worried voicemails and hit ‘call’.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘It’s me.’

  And then she simply listened, sipping her Orangina, as Emily furiously made it clear how concerned she’d been. In rather more detail than was strictly necessary, in Anna’s opinion.

  ‘Em – Em! Look, you’re very sweet, but I’m fine. I sprained my ankle leaping off the train, but I’m checked in to a nice hotel for the night and it’ll be fine. I just needed time to sort everything out. I was supposed to be Paris, you know, not limping around King’s Cross looking for a bed.’

  ‘Shit, Anna. I’m so sorry. That client was such a flake from the outset, changing his dates and his plans – I should have known.’ She paused. ‘Anna, when did all this start unravelling? Did you break a mirror or something?’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Seriously? I mean, for years, your diary has run like clockwork and all of a sudden – well—’ She sighed. ‘I’m starting to think you’re jinxed.’

  ‘I’m tempted to agree, actually,’ Anna said. ‘Maybe it’s time to take a hint.’

  There was a long silence at the end of the phone, then, ‘Are you saying that you’re done?’ Emily sounded completely choked up at the very suggestion.

  ‘Maybe?’ Anna replied. ‘I really don’t know. But I do know that you were right and I needed more time to get over the Oxford debacle.’ For a moment her mind split focus, between that hideous night of Kate’s wedding and Max Howard’s complete and utter betrayal a decade earlier.

  Oxford, it seemed, was destined to be the venue for both the best and the worst moments of her life so far. Or maybe that was just ‘life’ – she was beginning to wonder whether the location actually played any part at all in the existential rollercoaster.

  ‘But Bath went well, you said? You had a break – made a few friends?’ Emily’s doubt was almost voluble, as she clearly revisited every conversation they’d had over the last few weeks.

  ‘It did, I did. Actually it was mostly pretty wonderful. I just think maybe that I’m still off balance a bit.’

  ‘Do you think that’s why you hurt your ankle?’ Emily asked seriously.

  ‘I think it had more to do with leaping from a train seconds before departure while a crazy person shouted “Get off the train!” over and over in my ear.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Emily said guiltily. ‘I was just in such a panic that you’d be halfway through the Chunnel before I could tell you there was no place to stay at the other end.’

 
; ‘Ah, yes, Paris – renowned for its total lack of pensions and hotels,’ Anna replied, a smile creeping into her voice and replacing the annoyance that had buzzed around in her head for the last few hours. ‘I know you were thinking of me. I just didn’t have time to think about where I wanted to be.’

  ‘You know,’ Emily said, ‘I think that applies more often than just today. I’ve lost track of when you last asked me to send you somewhere specific. Do you remember, when you started out, you had that list of all the places you wanted to go and see? And you used to check off each country, each city, like you’d “done” it? Now you just go where the nice houses are…’

  Anna blinked away the wave of memories as they crashed over her.

  The List.

  How on God’s green earth could she have forgotten about The List?

  All those hours with Kate in pub gardens that last summer, writing out all the destinations she’d longed to see with her own two eyes, not via the Discovery Channel. All the cities, coastlines, countryside vistas, mountains, fjords… The List had been nothing if not comprehensive.

  And where was it now?

  Was it tucked inside an old journal, not yet completed but already obsolete?

  She sipped the Orangina again, her lips puckering against the pithy tartness. So much hope, ambition and thought had gone into making that list: a genuine reward for all her hard work and resilience and a little celebration that she’d made it through to twenty-one unscathed. Or so she’d genuinely thought at the time. Back when psychological scars were not only invisible, but also denied and disregarded.

  The List was to have been the gateway to her new, independent, adult life. It was not supposed to have been a way for her to play ostrich and put her life on hold.

  ‘Do you need me to sort somewhere for the next few days? I mean, it sounds like you’d be better off clearing your head, but I know you like to be busy…’ Emily sounded completely wrong-footed, as though she were walking on eggshells.