She reached the path and a shape erupted out of the gloom and barreled into her shoulder, a bag flying through the air, spilling its contents. A woman’s cracked voice. Nancy could feel a distress like a scratching on her skin. The woman was very young, almost a girl. Her face was pale in the dusk and framed by a matted tangle of curls, her mouth drawn back in a grimace and her huge grey eyes glittering. Streaks of mascara ran like tears down her cheeks. She smelt of drink, weed, sweat, fear.
‘It’s all right,’ Nancy said in a whisper.
She was talking to herself. She was talking to the woman. Perhaps there was no difference. All she knew was that the distraught woman was asking her for something or telling her something. The whole unsettled day had been leading her to this one moment of connection.
The woman gave a hoarse laugh that sounded like fabric tearing, and that turned into a sob. ‘It’s not all right. But please.’ Her voice crumbled. Nancy couldn’t make out the words properly. ‘No more,’ she heard the woman said. ‘Get away,’ she said. ‘No.’
‘Let me help,’ said Nancy.
To help the woman, even in the smallest way, was a way of helping herself: to lay a healing hand on chaos. There was a thread out of the labyrinth, she thought. She just had to follow it, carefully feeling her way out of the darkness and violence towards the light.
She knelt to pick up the things that lay scattered on the path with clumsy fingers. A toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, a few pieces of underwear. The woman was wearing dark green leather boots with bright yellow laces.
‘Take care,’ she said.
The woman stared at her.
‘You too.’
Nancy stumbled up the stairs, fumbled open the door to the flat and slammed the door behind her. She leaned against it, breathing heavily. She pressed her hands against her face, which felt rubbery and unnatural. Gradually her heart stopped beating so fast. She listened. The flat was silent, just the uneven drip of the tap from the kitchen.
‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Felix? I’m back.’
There was no reply. She was glad he wasn’t here to see her like this. She headed straight for the bedroom, which was full of opened packing boxes, bin bags of towels and jumpers, a knot of cables on the floor, pictures leaning against the wall. At least there was a made-up bed. Nancy pulled off her jacket and let it slide to the floor, kicked off her boots, hauled herself onto the bed, and pulled the covers over her head. Silent, dark, warm, like the lair of a wounded animal. Wait it out.
In the flat beneath her, Kira Mullan was dying.
She tried to shout, but the rope round her neck was too tight. She tried to lift her hands to her throat, but they were held pinioned; to thrash but her body wouldn’t budge under the weight. She tried to fight, she tried to beg for mercy, but a small crackle of distress came from her.
A train rumbled past outside.
She was too young, Kira thought. It wasn’t fair. A black tide was sweeping over her. Her body was a scream of fear and pain.
A memory, bright as a jewel, came to her: she was eleven or twelve, on the brink of adolescence, her body changing, and she was wearing a new denim skirt and a blouse with little green sprigs on a white background, her nails were painted a pearly pink, and she was delighted with herself. She could feel the sun on her face. Life flowed through her, abundant. She could almost fly with the pleasure of it. What a fragile gift life is. How had she not understood? She could see her feet kicking in the green boots with yellow laces, but less frantically now. The blood-dark mist was rising all round her. The rope creaked. She wanted her mother. She wanted.