Later that morning, Mags came to visit. She saw him, and burst into tears. They embraced, as tight and close as when he untied her from a bed in a cottage in the Eaglesham moors.
“We made it,” she said.
“Yes, we did. I reckon you owe me big style.”
“I reckon I do.”
“Free cappuccino for a year.”
She laughed. “Deal. But you’re still buying the pastries.”
They talked, and didn’t stop talking. But not once about what had happened. That would come later, he knew. When the need was real, and the nightmares came, and the trauma surfaced, and talking it through was the only antidote.
“It’s over,” she said.
But it wasn’t over. He had lied to her from the beginning. He hadn’t written to a million law firms looking for a job. He had only applied to one. To SJPS. And not to train as a lawyer.
To find the truth.
It wasn’t over.
The worst, perhaps, was still to come.