Melissa was on the phone, the receiver cradled beneath her chin while she furiously scribbled notes and nodded. ‘Yes, of course, Your Honour.’

Anna grinned at her. She was really laying it on thick. They exchanged a brief knowing look as Anna strode past.

Work had been a lifeline for Anna over the past four months. She’d really thrown herself into her job, determined to keep herself occupied and give herself as little opportunity as possible to dwell on thoughts of Ned and what might have been. It wasn’t always easy, though. On a couple of occasions she’d left work and had found herself making her way to Jack and Sylvie’s house, envisioning a cup of tea and a bowlful of fruit crumble and custard, before reality caught up with her tired mind and she remembered that she was no longer part of that world. No longer Ned’s bird, as they used to affectionately refer to her. And she had to admit that while she didn’t necessarily long for Ned any more, she dearly missed being part of his family.

Anna stepped inside the walk-in stationery cupboard and scanned the upper shelves, trying to locate the lever-arch box files she needed. She searched the floor, looking for the small rubber-footed stool she usually stood on.

‘Well, this is cosy.’

‘Oh! Hello.’ She gasped at the sound of Mr Knowles’s voice. He’d caught her unawares and was now blocking the door. She felt her cheeks redden and her heart race, partly due to being in such close proximity to a man of Mr Knowles’s status, a partner no less, but also because he seemed to take up all the air and as ever she hated being in a small, dark space with no window.

‘Need some assistance?’ he asked jovially.

‘I’m just looking for the... the little stool thing so I can reach the top shelf.’ She pointed at the files lest there be any doubt about the spot she was referring to.

‘I can help you there.’ He smiled at her and took a step closer.

Anna’s pulse quickened. She was very uncomfortable with the lack of space between them and with his unfamiliar, slightly lecherous tone. She tried to move backwards and cursed the metal racking immediately behind her. There was no escape.

Don’t be ridiculous, Anna! She tried to calm her flustered thoughts. You’re imagining things. Mr Knowles is old and married. He’s only being helpful.

Mr Knowles lifted his hands and placed them on the shelf above her head, either side of her shoulders, almost pinning her there.

She tried to speak but couldn’t find her voice. Fear had rendered her mute.

‘Actually, Anna, I think you’ll find that, like most chaps, the top shelf is one of my favourites.’ His left eyebrow lifted in suggestion.

Anna’s stomach bunched with fear as he slid against her, pushed his arms up and reached for two of the files she needed. Slowly he drew away and she felt... She felt... his body against hers.

‘There we go.’ He breathed out slowly and she could smell something spicy on his breath. ‘And be in no doubt,’ he continued, ‘that I am on hand for whenever you need something.’ He ran the tips of his fingers over her neck. ‘You only have to shout. Or ring.’

She shuddered with revulsion and hoped he didn’t misconstrue that for anything else.

He left the cupboard and closed the door quietly behind him.

Anna thought she might be sick. She quickly walked back to her desk, wary of drawing attention to her distress and not wanting to engage with Melissa, not until she had figured out what to do. But mainly she wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and Mr Knowles.

Grabbing her handbag from the back of her chair, she tried to make it seem casual as she dashed across the office, down the stairs and out of the building. It was then that her tears came. She placed a shaking hand over her mouth and swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

‘Anna?’

She whipped her head around and there was Nitz, in his overalls splashed with plaster.

‘What’s the matter?’ He put a hand on her arm.

She shook her head and wondered where to begin. ‘Nothing. I’m okay.’

‘You’re clearly not okay, girl. Let’s get you a cup of tea.’

Grateful that someone had taken control, she let herself be guided around the corner to the café she knew the lads liked to frequent. She was instantly relieved that Ned wasn’t in it. She stared at the grimy surroundings, focusing on the ketchup splats on the wall and the grease-encrusted glass pot of salt with rice grains nestling in the bottom, placed in the centre of the table next to a wipe-clean menu that essentially listed egg, bacon, fried bread and sausage in any number of combinations.

Nitz arrived back at the table with two mugs of strong tea and sat down opposite her. ‘Get that down you.’ He nodded at her drink and sipped at his own.

‘Thank you.’ She felt her breathing calm a little.

‘Are you upset about Ned? Is this what it’s about? We was all really shocked, you know. Thought you and him were going all the way.’

She smiled, embarrassed to have been the one to dump his mate and just as flattered that he thought her worthy of him.

‘It’s not that. I, er... got into a bit of a situation at work.’

‘Situation how? Have you nicked something, got caught?’

‘No!’ She laughed as best she could through her distress. ‘As if I’d nick something!’

He winked. The diversion had done the trick, her voice had found its natural rhythm and she was, on the outside at least, a little calmer.

‘I’ve worked for this man for a while now – Mr Knowles. He’s one of the partners. I even buy his daughter’s textbooks and his wife’s birthday cards.’ She shook her head. ‘And just now, he... He cornered me in a cupboard. Urgh!’ She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

‘Did he hurt you?’ All humour had disappeared from Nitz’s voice and his eyes glinted with fury.

‘Not really. He just...’ She looked at the pine wall cladding, avoiding his stare, not knowing how to express what had happened without using words that might mortify them both. ‘He sort of...’ Again she faltered. ‘He rubbed himself against me and made it very clear that he wanted more.’ Her face burned and the words were sour on her tongue.

‘Dirty fucking bastard!’ Nitz snorted angrily.

‘I thought I was going to be sick. He’s a big bloke, Mr Knowles, old, really. Oh God.’ She again fought the desire to vomit.

‘That’s so out of order. Want me to ’ave a word?’ Nitz looked her in the eye, his voice low, a thick vein on his neck standing proud.

‘No! No, definitely not. I can handle it.’ She wasn’t sure this was true, but above all else, she needed her job. ‘Promise me you won’t tell Ned!’

‘I’m on my way to his house now, as it ’appens.’

‘Please, Nitz.’

‘You can’t let blokes like him get away with pulling stunts like that!’

‘I need this job! I need it.’ Her lip trembled.

He seemed to be weighing this up. ‘All right, Anna, ’ave it your way. I promise I won’t tell Ned.’

‘Thank you.’ She took a sip of tea and felt sad at the thought that Ned might not even care.

*

That night she hardly slept, kept replaying the event in her head, wondering if she was in any way responsible – had she given Mr Knowles the wrong impression, however inadvertently? She worried about seeing him at the office, not that she had any choice in the matter. He’d turned her place of work, a refuge of sorts, into something quite different. She doubted he’d have the faintest idea about the effect his behaviour had had on her.

With sleep proving evasive, Anna lay in bed thinking about a night not long after Shania had arrived at Mead House. It was a Thursday and as she dozed fitfully through the early hours she became aware of a hand under her duvet, stroking her skin. She kept very still, hoping it was a dream, before opening her eyes to see an agency night warden, a stranger, looming over the bed with his finger on his lips, as if instructing her to be quiet. She had let out a small scream, which woke Shania.

‘Get the fuck off her and get the fuck out of here!’ Shania had yelled, loud enough to wake the whole floor.

The man had left, thankfully, and was dismissed by Junior the next day. Junior had been concerned and apologetic, but they had no idea how many others the creep had taken advantage of. It was vile and it made her aware of her vulnerability, her lack of protection. She thought about her evening at Waterloo station and the man with the briefcase who’d made a beeline for her. This incident with Mr Knowles had made her realise that though she was now twenty-four, in some ways not much had changed.

Anna showered and chose her most demure skirt and blouse. She even omitted to put on the little make-up she usually wore and tied her shoulder-length hair into a ponytail. A different person might have called in sick, but Anna was a woman who had lived one step away from homelessness and knew that compared with having no roof over her head, being cornered by Mr Knowles in the stationery cupboard was a snip.

She arrived early, hoping to be busy and distracted by the time everyone else turned up. Her heart sank when she saw that Mr Knowles was already at his desk. She looked round at the door and it was in that second, as she debated whether to go back outside and wait for Melissa to arrive or whether to front it out, that the phone on her desk buzzed. She walked forward and could see it was his internal line. Her stomach churned. Mr Pope wasn’t in yet and other colleagues wouldn’t make an appearance for at least twenty minutes.

‘Yes, Mr Knowles?’ She tried to hide the shake to her voice, still ridiculously conscious of needing to be polite to this man who paid her wages.

‘Might I have a word?’ He coughed to clear his throat.

‘Yes.’ She put the phone down and walked to his office, calculating how loud she would have to yell if it came to it and what she might be able to grab in self-defence if necessary.

She knocked and entered, as was customary, but she left the door wide open. The moment she saw him, sitting behind the desk in his grand leather chair, her heart skipped a beat. Mr Knowles, esteemed partner, was sporting a nasty black eye. His cheekbone was yellow and blue and his eye a little bloodshot.

Anna opened her mouth to speak but didn’t know what to say or where to start.

Mr Knowles coughed again. ‘As you can see, I had a rather unfortunate incident when I left the office last night.’ He avoided her gaze.

Nitz! You promised me!

‘Over twenty years in the legal profession has taught me not to believe in coincidences and so I am quite sure this is something to do with our little tête-à-tête yesterday. Would I be correct in that assumption?’ He lifted his chin, as she’d seen him do when interviewing clients.

‘I...’ Anna swallowed. ‘I don’t...’

‘Let me help you out.’ The lawyer knitted his fingers in front of him on the shiny desktop. ‘I would of course have much preferred a sharp word from you than this.’ He winced a little, seemingly in pain. ‘As it is, we shall chalk it up to experience on both our parts. And I think it best we say nothing more about it.’ He picked up his glasses and popped them on, then selected a sheaf of papers to study, as if that was that.

Anna straightened her shoulders and found her voice. ‘Actually, I would like to say one more thing about it.’ She spoke through lips dry with nerves. ‘You did make me feel very uncomfortable. Scared, even, and it was horrible.’

He glanced up. ‘I...’

‘And I did confide in someone that it had unsettled... that it upset me.’ Her voice cracked.

He blinked, rapidly.

‘But I don’t know who did this to you and I didn’t ask anyone to do this to you. Quite the opposite, in fact. But... But,’ she continued, ‘my ex has a hot head and I guess—’

‘Your ex?’ He interrupted her. ‘No, Anna, this was not done by your ex. I was assaulted by a woman in her mid sixties with a foul mouth and wearing slippers.’

Anna bit her lip, unable to hide the smile that lifted her cheeks. She let out a small, nervous laugh. Sylvie... Oh, Sylvie! Someone was looking out for me! You!

He lowered his papers and sniffed. ‘Well, I’m glad you can find an element of humour in this whole debacle.’

‘I really don’t,’ she replied soberly.

‘You have always been...’ He scrutinised her, as if searching for the right word. ‘...agreeable, friendly, and I guess I thought you might...’ He paused again. Apparently twenty years in the legal profession wasn’t helping with his vocabulary right now.

Anna held her ground, standing tall. ‘Please don’t assume you know me, Mr Knowles. You don’t. You don’t know the first thing about me or where I have come from or where I am going.’

There was a second when he held her gaze and seemed to shrink a little beneath it.

‘That’ll be all.’ He nodded towards the door.

She stared at him, knowing she would indeed keep the secret. But she also knew that her time at Asquith, Barker and Knowles had come to an end. She needed a new job. A new start.

*

That evening, Melissa insisted they go into town and see a film at the Odeon Leicester Square. It was a good call. The Bodyguard, proved to be exactly the distraction Anna needed, she bundled up her coat and left the theatre in good spirits, despite having bawled into a tissue for the last twenty minutes of the movie. It made her think of Jordan. After Chinese noodles in Soho, Melissa jumped in a cab back to her boyfriend Gerard’s house, singing the title song loudly out of the cab window, as she left. Anna laughed to herself, as she walked down to Embankment Tube station.

She had politely refused her friend’s offer to share a cab, not willing to go into the reasons at the end of a such a fun night. The truth was she hadn’t wanted to risk opening old wounds. It had been a month now since she’d conclusively decided to give up her desperate search for her elusive cabbie dad. After Ned had walked out, she’d had a bit of a blitz, going to different parts of the city of an evening, walking, and thinking that if only she could find Michael, he might be the key to what lay ahead, a sort of model perhaps for the man who might replace Ned. Someone who might make it seem sunny, even in the rain. She began finding herself in unsavoury places at unwise times – at 1 a.m. at the back of King’s Cross station, at midnight on a dark side street off the Old Kent Road. It was when she got followed one night and had to run for it, she made a pact with herself: she would stop searching, it was pointless, too hard and failure in the task only made her feel low. She decided that she wouldn’t so much as look at a black cab for the foreseeable future.

As she made her way towards the Tube, past the entrance to the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, a voice called from a nearby shop door. ‘Can you spare some change, please?’ The request was familiar, but there was something about the woman’s voice that made Anna look twice.

‘Can you spare some change, please?’ the woman asked again.

Anna stopped and stared at the figure huddled on an open sleeping bag spread out on the shallow step of a vacant shop. The shadowy figure was wrapped in a grey blanket, with her hand hanging limply down and clumps of an unkempt Afro sticking out at all angles from the top of her head.

Noticing that Anna had stopped, the woman reached towards her, her expression blank. ‘Spare some change for a cup of tea, please? Please?’

Anna bent down and stared into the woman’s gaunt face. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin looked scarred and her teeth were brown. But beneath the grime and the vacant expression, it was unmistakeably the face of her old roommate, Shania.

‘Oh!’ Anna felt the swell of tears in her throat and something close to panic in her chest. ‘Oh no!’ She spoke slowly, studying the face that was now just inches from her own. ‘Shania! Hello. It’s me. It’s Anna.’

‘Could you spare me some change, please, and a fag if you’ve got one?’ she asked, seemingly unable to recognise Anna.

‘Do you remember me? It’s me, Anna. We shared a room.’ She spoke gently, trying to coax her into remembrance, but Shania stared right past her.

‘Canyousparesomechangeplease...’ she mumbled as her head lolled on her neck. Her pupils disappeared momentarily as her eyes rolled back in her head.

‘Hang on a minute.’ Anna stood and opened her bag. Fishing for her purse, she pulled out all of her cash, a little over forty pounds. ‘Here you go.’ She bent down again and rolled the notes into her friend’s outstretched hand. Then she slipped a piece of paper with her name and telephone number into Shania’s pocket, hoping she might find it when she was more with it.

‘Thank you,’ Shania managed, her head tipped back, her mouth now slack.

‘Let me... Let me get you to a hotel, let me get you some help!’ Anna held her arm, trying to think of what to do.

‘Don’t touch me!’ Shania barked, recoiling and shifting into defence mode.

Several passers-by slowed and stared. Not that Anna cared. She wanted to do something for her friend, her friend who had promised she would stay off drugs.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t touch you.’ She took a step backwards with her palms raised. ‘I just want to help get you somewhere to stay tonight. Shania, please.’

‘I got somewhere to stay tonight. Fuck off! Don’t touch me!’ Shania was shrieking now and kicking out.

Anna stood up and glanced up the street, unsure whether to stay or go. She didn’t want to draw any more unwanted attention to Shania, but...

‘Go on! Fuck off!’ Shania yelled loudly as she shifted backwards on her filthy sleeping bag.

‘Okay. Okay, my darling.’ Anna blew her a kiss and walked away, sobbing.

As she sat on the Tube back to her flat, her mind whirred through memories of the days they’d had together at Mead House, the dressing-up, the blue glass earrings she’d left her, the flagging down of dozens of cabs in the search for Michael, the fruitless waiting for Shania’s dad to come and rescue his daughter. She cried noiselessly into her hankie, sad for the life her friend now found herself living, so far from what either of them had hoped for. Anna ground her teeth. You deserve so much more, Shania. My funny, kind, friend. That could have been me. It could have been me and I promised you I’d have a party, but I never did. I never did. And I’m sorry.