Let Me Lie(97)

And it was then, when I was sitting there covered in your blood and crying in fear of what they’d do to me, that the door opened.





SIXTY


ANNA


Carrying Ella throws me off balance. I lurch from side to side as I run, like a drunk chasing the last bus. Behind me Mum moans as she picks herself up. She’s hurt.

I hear her shoes – comfortable flats to suit the frumpy persona she acquired as Angela – slapping against the floor as she breaks into a run.

The car park is punctuated with grey concrete pillars. Fluorescent lights flicker beneath dirty plastic casing, throwing twin shadows of each pillar onto the ground between them. Disorientating me. I focus on the square of freedom directly ahead of me; the square that – even as I watch – is changing dimensions, as though someone has tipped the rectangle of the open door on its side.

Separating the rows of parking bays are half-height walls I had thought I would hurdle. They’re higher than I remember – wider, too – so I scramble over the first one, skinning my knee through the rip in my jeans, and almost dropping Ella in the process. I clutch her tight to my breast and she opens her mouth and lets out an air-raid siren of a scream that bounces off the car park walls and comes back to me ten-fold.

I glance over my shoulder but I can’t see my mother. The absence makes me check my pace. Has she given up? But I hear a sound and look to my left. She’s veered off to the side. It doesn’t make sense, until I realise there are no walls that way, no columns to dodge. Her path is longer than mine, but it is clear. She will get to me before I reach the door. Unless …

I sprint faster. There are two walls between me and the door, and no time to stop and climb over them. I shift Ella to under one arm, which increases her screams but frees my torso to lean into my run. The first wall looms in front of me. When did I last hurdle something? A decade ago?

Three paces.

Two.

I lift my right leg, extending it forward as I push off with the left, tucking it up behind me to clear the wall. My foot clips the concrete but I’m over the wall and sprinting, sprinting.

The door mechanism grinds. Metal against metal. The bottom of the door is a metre from the ground, the shaft of night air shrinking back from the darkness of the garage, as though it’s as afraid as I am.

The final wall.

Three.

Two.

One.

I take off too early.

The wall sends me hurtling forward and to the left, and I only just manage to twist Ella to one side as I smash onto the bonnet of a Mercedes.

The air leaves my body in one sharp breath.

‘Don’t make this hard, Anna.’

I’m light-headed with lack of air; with the pain in my stomach and chest. I lift my head – my body still sprawled across the bonnet – and see her standing there. Between me and the exit.

I give up.

The garage door is still closing. The thick metal bar across its bottom is lower than my waist, but higher than my knees. The lights call to me. There is time.

But she’s standing right there.

And although her hand shakes, and although she swore she wouldn’t know how to use it, I can’t bring myself to ignore the shiny black barrel of the gun.





SIXTY-ONE


I wish you were here. That’s ironic, isn’t it?

You’d know what to do.

You’d put your hand over mine, and you’d lower my arm until the gun was pointing at the floor. You’d take it out of my hand and even though I’d yell at you to leave me alone, like I yelled when you tried to take the vodka, like I yelled when you told me I’d had enough, I would let you. I would let you take this gun.

I don’t want it in my hand. I never wanted it.

He came around with it. Shifty. Chased me for that week’s rent, then put it on the table and said he thought I might want this. Two grand.

He knew money was tight. Knew that cleaning toilets – even at a posh girls’ school – didn’t earn that kind of cash, and that everything I’d brought with me I’d given to him in rent.

But he knew I was scared, too. He offered me a loan, with interest rates that made my chest tighten, but what choice did I have? I needed protection.

I took the loan. Bought the gun.

I felt better knowing it was there, even though I never thought I’d use it. I used to imagine what would happen if I was found; imagined diving for the drawer where I kept the gun. Aiming. Firing.

My hand’s shaking.

She’s your daughter. That’s your granddaughter!

What am I doing?

I hear the faint strains of a siren and half hope it will get louder, but it drifts away. I need someone to stop me.

I wish you were here.

But I suppose, if you were still here, I wouldn’t need you now.





SIXTY-TWO


ANNA


I want to look at her – to see if her trembling hand means she’s as scared as I am – but I can’t take my eyes off the gun. I wrap my arms around Ella, as though they could stop a bullet, and I wonder if this is it: if these are the last few seconds I will spend with my daughter.

I wish now I’d banged on the car window. Shouted to the woman in the Fiat 500. Tried to kick out the glass. Something. Anything. What kind of mother doesn’t even try to save her baby?