500 Miles from You

by Jenny Colgan

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But the car was going quickly,” said the defense lawyer, when it came time for questions. “You can’t have gotten more than a glimpse.”

  “He stared straight at me,” said Lissa. “I remember everything about it. I’m a trained A&E nurse. We see a lot of potentially dangerous situations. Sir—he grimaced at me. Just like that. It was him. He drove round the corner, he sped up, and he drove straight toward . . . Kai. He knocked his phone out of his hand, then his body went straight up in the air and landed on the concrete. Then he sped off.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “That’s what happened.”

  The defense lawyer looked at her. A young nurse, calm, clearly telling the truth, who had absolutely no reason to lie and absolutely no reason to be here except for justice. He could sense the waves off the jury of how much they approved of her. He looked at Lissa one last time, glanced at the jury, cast his client a slightly apologetic shrug, and stood back.

  “No further questions.”

  Chapter 69

  Unable to quite believe she was free, Lissa walked slowly down the aisle to leave the courtroom. At the end she caught sight of a face she recognized. Quickly and without ceremony, Mrs. Mitchell, Kai’s mother, nodded briskly.

  Lissa felt relieved but chastened: glad that she had managed to do what she needed to do and overwhelmingly guilty because she was feeling happy now, like she was in a position to get on with her life. And Mrs. Mitchell never, ever could. She gave a half smile of apology and regret; but she had to leave, and the court had to carry on with its work, as human misery spilled out from courtroom after courtroom, in town after town.

  It felt like a breath of liberty as Lissa pushed through the doors of the sour-smelling courtroom. The security guards were wired and buzzy after the fight that morning, everyone twitchy and tired and stressed.

  She headed into the normal bathrooms this time, to reapply a whole face of makeup, and curled her eyelashes right out, something she almost never did. Her eyebrows were a mess, her not trusting Ginty on this issue, but she’d done the best she could, and she added a pretty rose-colored lipstick to her lips and a little blush to her cheeks and let down her hair, then laughed at herself for being so over the top. Then she squirted on some more perfume just in case.

  Still nothing on her phone from Cormac. She frowned. Well, it wasn’t far to Borough Market. Maybe he thought court would run later. She’d been surprised how quick it had been, in the end. She’d been a good witness, Roisin had told her, which had felt so good.

  Or perhaps he’d be waiting there . . . sitting in the sun. She reminded herself that he might be five feet tall and three feet wide, then wondered how much that would really—really—matter, as much as she looked forward to talking to him, how his messages were the highlight of her day.

  The sunshine hit her full in the face, dazzling her. She practically bounced along the south bank, cutting through side streets to avoid the crowds, walking straight past the police station Cormac was currently being held in.

  Chapter 70

  Cormac sat in the holding cell with two other kids from the courthouse, both of them cursing and swearing.

  “We were just there to support Kai,” complained one, whose name was Tim. “Just to show him he isn’t forgotten.”

  “By kicking the lumps out of some guy,” said Cormac. “Come on, lads. You must know that isn’t helpful.”

  “Are you Scottish?” said Tim. “I thought Scotch folk love kicking lumps out of people.”

  “He was doing a good job with Big Al,” pointed out the other boy, who presumably had a name that wasn’t Nobbo, but Nobbo seemed to do.

  “So you were,” said Tim.

  “I was trying to stop him accidentally really hurting someone. And ending up in prison,” said Cormac.

  “We’re in prison now,” said Tim.

  “I realize that,” said Cormac.

  BOROUGH MARKET WAS absolutely heaving, every stall was rammed. And Lissa didn’t know what he looked like. She glanced around. What kind of thing would Cormac like? She didn’t even know, she realized. She knew so little about him.

  Finally, right at the back, she spied an empty table at a little hole-in-the-wall tapas bar. That looked absolutely perfect. She slipped into the bar, smiling at the man serving, who showed her to the table with a wave of his hand.

  “For one?”

  “Two,” said Lissa, beaming nervously. “I’m waiting on someone.”

  The man smiled. “Lovely. Can I bring you a negroni?”

  Lissa looked around, still feeling excited and nervous and so pleased with the fact that she’d managed to do the right thing. It wouldn’t bring Kai back, but she’d been able to look Mrs. Mitchell in the eye as she’d left.

  “Yes, please!” she said. Then she took a picture of the bar sign and texted it to Cormac.

  She also sent Anita a Skype message to say she had done it and to say thank you: the woman had been right all along. Anita responded by sending her a picture of an ice-cream cone and Lissa smiled to herself.

  SHE FINISHED HER drink and immediately declined another, the idea of being drunk when Cormac arrived too hideous to contemplate. She considered a coffee, then worried her breath would smell and settled for a fizzy water. The waiter looked a tiny bit concerned. A cloud passed across the sun.

  She thought whenever Ezra hadn’t been in the mood to see her, he’d just not answer any of her messages or texts. It happened to Kim-Ange all the time, when she met guys and then they got cold feet. Ghosting was awful.

  But that wasn’t going to happen here. Not with Cormac. He’d asked her to lunch, after all. They’d arranged to meet.

  Although they hadn’t picked anywhere specific, had they? They hadn’t actually said, “This restaurant in this place.” Just Borough Market. It was fairly nonspecific after all when you thought about it.

  She shook herself. Come on. She was catastrophizing, overthinking, everything a therapist would say was unhelpful. She’d gotten through one thing today. She was going to manage. She was.

  She tried not to drink all her water too quickly. Her battery was running a little low. Still no message.

  Chapter 71

  “So you came to meet some bird,” said Tim scornfully. “That you’ve never even met.”

  They had been in the cell together for some time and were trading stories.

  “Yeah,” said Cormac.

  “What if she’s, like, a fuckbeast,” said Nobbo.

  “I’m sure she’s not a fuckbeast,” said Cormac carefully.

  “Well, did she send you pictures? Of her tits and that?”

  “No, of course not! Women don’t do that.”

  “Fuckbeasts don’t.”

  “Could you stop using that term? It’s really unpleasant.”

  Tim sniffed a bunch of phlegm up his nose and, with one finger closing a nostril, hocked it into the seatless metal toilet at the side of the room. Cormac didn’t necessarily feel this was an improvement. He paced up and down, feeling worse and worse—she must be there; or had she left by now? Stormed off, furious with him? Maybe she’d never speak to him again. Maybe that was his chance and he’d muffed it. After all, there was only another couple of weeks to go . . .

  And he’d be back home, which was . . . well, it was fine of course.

  But the cottage could feel a little empty on those long, dark evenings that came in the wintertime.

  “MacPherson?” came the guard at the door, unlocking it. “You can make your phone call now.”

  “Are you charging me?”

  “We’re going to have a word, so hold your horses.”

  “He was just pulling off Big Al!” shouted Tim, and Nobbo agreed vociferously, while laughing like an eighteen-year-old at the same time.

  Cormac sighed as he followed the officer down the hallway. Who on earth was he going to call?

  Chapter 72

&
nbsp; Kim-Ange shook her phone crossly. “Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

  There was a blubbering noise.

  “Stop crying,” she said, as Lissa tried and failed to stop crying down the telephone. “Come home immediately. You know I didn’t have him pegged as a loser. Mind you, he treated Yazzie pretty shabbily. And I never saw his ‘friend’ again.”

  “I mean . . . I keep thinking maybe he’s here, but nearly everyone’s gone and all the stalls are closed up and the vans have driven off, and I’ve drunk a liter of mineral water . . .”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Kim-Ange encouragingly.

  “. . . so I keep thinking I’ll miss him every time I go to the toilet and . . .”

  “Are you freaking out?”

  “It’s been a very long day.”

  “Take deep breaths.”

  “I’ve been trying that. The waiter is looking at me funny. He was friendly three hours ago.”

  “Don’t tell me you waited for him for three hours.”

  There was a pause. “I can’t not tell you that.”

  “Would Beyoncé wait for Jay-Z for three hours?”

  “No,” said Lissa in a quiet voice. “Although Kim probably has to wait for Kanye for three hours all the time.”

  “Three hours?!” said Kim-Ange again.

  “I . . . I really thought I liked him,” said Lissa.

  Kim-Ange bit her lip. “Come over,” she said. Then: “Hang on, let me just make sure he’s not here.”

  “Oh God,” said Lissa. Then, more hopefully, as if the thought had just occurred to her: “Maybe he’s fallen asleep or something, just lost track of time!”

  Kim-Ange couldn’t bear to hear the forced casualness in her voice. “Mm-hmm, give me a minute.”

  She banged loudly on her side of the wall, their normal method of communication.

  “Nope,” she said finally. “That always works. He’s not here. You’re safe, come over.”

  Lissa felt her heart plunge. That was her last hope. Well, that or him being wounded with something painful, but not aesthetically disfiguring, in the hospital somewhere where she could tenderly nurse him back to health, but she didn’t really want to say that one out loud.

  “But then he’ll find me sitting there when he gets back like some kind of mega stalker! He’s already in hiding from me!”

  Kim-Ange sighed. “I am taking you to the gin bar. That is the only way out of this situation.”

  “Can we talk about him?”

  “No. Just gin.”

  “Can I cry a little bit?”

  “Gin only.”

  “ENGAGED,” SAID CORMAC ruefully, hanging up the phone. Kim-Ange would almost certainly be talking to her parents again, something that took place, on and off, quite a lot of the day.

  “Mm-hmm,” said the policeman, uninterested. Cormac was still worried about whether they were going to charge him.

  “Want a solicitor?”

  On a list of things Cormac wanted, a solicitor was so far from being something he wanted he nearly cried. Instead he said, clearly, no, he didn’t and hoped he’d made the right decision.

  The interview room was horrible, small, with a tiny cracked reinforced glass window set high above their heads and a revolting stale odor made no better by the heat of the day. What was lovely outside in London was very muggy and unpleasant in a basement near the River Thames. Feet were just visible above his head, walking back and forth in freedom. He watched them pass, feeling defeated, which he imagined was the point of the place, after all.

  “I WAS TRYING to stop the big lad hurting anyone,” said Cormac for the fourth time to the two police officers opposite him. “I was using army defense methods to restrain him, nothing more. They went slightly wrong. But you know the trouble these big lads get themselves into. We were already there because of a horrible accident. Really wasn’t in the mood for another one.”

  He sniffed.

  “Also, sorry to point this out, but we were in a courtroom facility crawling with police officers and security guards. Why was I the only person in there trying to sort something out to stop them killing each other?”

  The police officers looked at each other for a moment.

  “Okay,” said the policeman finally. “Well, Big Al said to say thanks. He could have killed that guy and he did feel very bad about that.”

  He was reading from a piece of paper.

  “He’s pleaded guilty to brawling. Shouldn’t get him into too much trouble—slap on the wrist if he’s lucky.”

  “Anger management? He needs it.”

  “I hope so,” said the female officer. “Perhaps a medical professional could write a letter of recommendation.”

  “Happy to,” said Cormac.

  They all looked at one another. Cormac tried desperately not to glance at the clock.

  “Ex-army, huh?” said the police officer, checking the files on her computer. “Says here you served in Fallujah?”

  Cormac nodded.

  “But you’ve never been in trouble?” She smiled rather wryly. “My brother was out there.”

  She gave him a shrewd look.

  “He found it quite tricky coming home.”

  Cormac found himself swallowing suddenly. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, in a quiet tone of voice.

  “But you’re doing well.”

  “Apart from being in prison,” said Cormac, thinking of everything that had happened, everything he’d learned and seen in the last few months.

  “I’d say . . . nae bad.” The officer stood up. “Right. Off you go. Stay out of trouble.”

  Cormac ventured to say his piece. “They’re just lads, you know. And they’ve been through a lot.”

  “They have,” said the woman. “So have a lot of people who don’t start punch-ups in public places.”

  “They started . . .”

  Cormac realized quickly he was going to get himself into trouble again as a frown crossed the other officer’s face. He stood up fast.

  “Thank you so much.”

  THE SARCASTIC POLICE officer looked practically disappointed to see Cormac ready to walk out. “Leaving so soon?” he said.

  “Aye,” said Cormac. He was handed back an envelope containing his wallet, watch, and phone. The battery was completely drained. Shit. He winced when he saw it. Then he realized he didn’t have a lot of time to lose. The other lads had already been released; he was the last one.

  “Good luck with the fuckbeast!” shouted Nobbo as he ran out of the police station at top speed. They had found a pub next door to the police station, which seemed to Cormac unwise, to say the very least, but he didn’t have time to do much but wave quickly.

  Chapter 73

  “I have been ghosted,” said Kim-Ange dramatically—she had quickly put on a large black head scarf to chime with the somber feel of the occasion—“twenty-seven times. It has been terrible every single one of those times.”

  “Perhaps he’s dead,” said Lissa hopefully.

  Kim-Ange had bought four massive balloon glasses full of a gin concoction, to save time, and she was drinking it, Lissa realized, rather like she’d drink beer, just because the glasses were so big. This was unwise. On the other hand, screw absolutely everything.

  “To death,” said Kim-Ange, and they chinked glasses.

  Lissa sighed. “Was he really tiny, though? Did he look like a mole? Did his nose come straight out of his neck?”

  Kim-Ange sighed in turn. Shook her head. “I had no idea you liked him so much.”

  “Neither did I!” burst out Lissa. “Until I literally found myself right here, saying this. I think I just . . . I needed a little crush.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t his house you like?”

  “I do like his house,” said Lissa, thinking of the cozy fire and the little wooden staircase.

  “That’s what you’ve done,” said Kim-Ange comfortingly. “Projected the idea of home ownership onto some bloke. It’s the idea of owning your own house y
ou are in love with.”

  “Maybe,” said Lissa a little dreamily. “So, he’s a loser, then?”

  “He has,” said Kim-Ange, crossing her fingers to try to save her friend from more pain, “seven toes on each foot and ears bigger than his head. He comes up to my waist and sheds hair like a pony. And oh my God, the smell.”

  “Really?” said Lissa, approaching the bottom of the vat glass. The house didn’t smell at all. Nice, if anything—that little scent of almond shampoo, the same type she’d started using.

  “Yup,” said Kim-Ange. “Lucky escape if you ask me. Another?”

  Chapter 74

  “Kim-Ange?!”

  But nobody was answering the door. Cormac slumped in the doorframe, sweating. He had run all the way there, and even though it was later, the heat was still dense and humid, unpleasant, as if all the buildings were holding it in, storing it all day like a battery, then giving it back into the evening. Cars had honked and people had yelled as he tore past, his lungs ragged with what felt absurdly like freedom. She had to be at the nurses’ home, she had to be. Where else would she go but to see her best friend?

  There were a million places she could go, of course, but he couldn’t think of that right now, only that she’d be there; he had charged through Borough Market, but the stalls were closed and the bars full of couples and groups, and as if—as if—she’d have waited all day! It wasn’t even possibly or remotely likely. Nobody noticed him as he ran past, tension on his face, except for one waiter, clocking on to his second shift, who looked at him and wondered . . . just wondered. And hoped it would be okay for the sweet girl with the sad face.

  AND HERE HE was. Stav the doorman had smiled happily at him—it had taken a quarter of the year, but Cormac had worn him down eventually with a very expensive pain au raisin habit—as he’d hopped up, sweaty and disheveled, and banged on Kim-Ange’s door, even thinking he really ought to take a shower but unable to wait, completely unable to wait even one second more to see her.