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 gray concrete pillars. Fluorescent lights flicker behind dirty plastic casings, throwing twin shadows of each pillar onto the ground between them. Disorienting 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 tenfold.
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 realize 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 there’s no time to stop and climb over them. I shift Ella 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 and tuck 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 meter 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 hood 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 hood—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 light calls 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.