Then – 15th February
Ella hugged her folded towel to her chest and tried to tune out the sound of her flatmate’s boyfriend singing in the shower. She’d been waiting in the hallway for pushing fifteen minutes and the longer it went on the more tempted she was to go back to her room and have a quick wash in the kitchen sink.
At this rate all the hot water would be gone anyway.
He had a good voice, to be fair to him, but she’d heard enough of it last night, when he’d drunkenly serenaded his girlfriend from the street.
Ella had spent her Valentine’s night curled up under a blanket, watching Roman Holiday, thinking about how it reinforced shitty gender stereotypes and promulgated the lie of noblesse oblige, as she wished she was riding down winding Italian streets on the back of a scooter with some tall, dark smartarse.
She’d received one card, from her mother, who still sent them every year to her and her brother, just as she had since they were teenagers. It had annoyed Ella back then, but now it made her smile, especially since it came in a care package with good espresso and the marmalade she couldn’t afford to buy herself, plus a Tupperware container of homemade cinnamon biscuits.
Sometimes she did miss being at home.
Finally the shower shut off and the bathroom door opened, her neighbour’s boyfriend coming out in her polka-dot dressing gown, his skin scalded red, hair plastered to his skull.
‘Sorry, didn’t know you were waiting,’ he mumbled.
Ella told him it was fine through gritted teeth, and went in to find the floor wet and the air steamy. She switched on the extractor fan and brushed her teeth while it wheezed and clattered, slowly clearing the fug, washed her face and decided her hair would be fine for another day. When she stepped into the shower she found the water lukewarm and cursed her inconsiderate flatmates and the cheapskate landlord who had made it clear that he knew the boiler wasn’t powerful enough for a three-storey house carved into seven studios but would be doing absolutely nothing about it.
Not unless they were prepared to accept a significant rent rise.
Prices were going up here just like everywhere and Ella was sure the landlord would love to get them out, turn the building back into a single house he could sell for seven figures to a family who would appreciate the high ceilings and sash windows.
She dried off in her room and dressed in jeans and a chunky jumper, ate a slice of toast smeared with butter that was starting to go rancid, the news playing on her laptop until she closed it and slipped it in her bag.
The British Library Reading Room was waiting for her, but before that she was supposed to meet Dylan. Her PhD pulled her in one direction and him in the other, the work she was doing at Castle Rise pushing everything else to the sidelines, leaving no room to breathe.
In her quieter moments she could admit to herself that she wasn’t up to this. The nights she was too tired to sleep were becoming more frequent, plans and actions chasing each other around as she lost a grip on which conversations she’d actually had and which she’d only imagined. When she finally dropped off she would dream of empty flats and endless corridors lined with doors that opened impossibly on to rooms in other buildings: her parents’ kitchen, where the range would be ticking away, welcoming her back, reminding her she didn’t have to live this life; classrooms she had sat in, always at the front, always the first to put her hand up; hotel bedrooms in disarray and half-remembered offices and the police interview room she kept returning to, her arm in a cast, her mouth sealed shut, staring at her reflection in the two-way mirror and seeing a face she didn’t recognise.
Maybe Dylan was right, maybe all this was becoming too much for her.
He’d told her not to get involved. Right from the start he pegged Castle Rise as a lost cause and she’d agreed with him privately, but his attitude rankled, how fiercely he’d told her not to waste her time on ‘those people’, as if they were worthless.
And when she tried to explain that she was doing it for Molly, because she’d been good to her and she didn’t want Molly to lose her home and have to leave London and all her friends, he said,
‘You don’t need Molly.’
If he’d never said that, Ella might have walked away. But now she would stick with it until the last resident was forcibly removed, just to make him understand that he couldn’t dictate to her.
Not always.
Not on this.
She did need Molly and if he couldn’t understand that, or at least pretend to respect it, then maybe he wasn’t the right man for her.
Outside it was one of those crisp winter mornings that felt almost like spring: cloudless, chilly and so bright that she regretted leaving her sunglasses inside. Mornings like this made Ella long for the countryside. She found she was thinking of home more often lately and wasn’t sure why. Was it just that she’d been away for so long? Did the place where you were born really tug at you? She’d never believed that, but she felt something, an impulse to escape she immediately stamped on.
Ella rearranged her bag, setting it straighter across her body, and started towards the canal, passing the chaotic roar of morning break time at Our Lady’s, which was swiftly drowned out by the sound of brickwork being cut through inside a house caged by scaffolding and shrouded in opaque plastic from roof to basement. At the pub on the corner she saw just how dusty the house must have been inside, three men powdered white sitting outside on a wooden bench with pints of lager, just their mouths wet.
She wondered if her landlord owned the house they were working on. He was an old Greek guy, started buying around here in the early sixties when everywhere was cheap but here even more so, liking the proximity to the Orthodox church and his own house at the top of the street. He kept a close eye on his properties, she’d been told by an elderly neighbour who had known him for decades and who seemed to believe he was a real gentleman. He kept the area ‘nice’. He didn’t allow ‘undesirables’.
The woman complained that her own children couldn’t afford to rent, let alone buy here, but she didn’t seem to understand how her hero was creating the problem.
All the wealth, trickling up into the hands of the old, Ella thought. Not even trickling any more. Rushing. Her parents had given her brother and his wife a deposit to buy their first home – she wasn’t supposed to know about that, but he’d let it slip after too many beers, suggesting she try to get them to do the same for her. ‘Best getting it now, Ella. We’ll be clobbered on the inheritance tax otherwise.’
Maybe he was right but it was a sick and ghoulish thing to say all the same, she thought.
Then again, he had his own home now and she had nothing.
She crossed Regent’s Canal at St Pancras Way and cut down on to the towpath.
Dylan had said half past ten, but she wasn’t going to jump because he clicked his fingers. Almost eleven now and she knew he’d be getting impatient, already thinking about whatever he would be busy with this afternoon once she left again.
It was coming to an end.
They both knew that, but neither was quite ready to make the break.
A shrill bell sounded behind her and Ella glanced over her shoulder as a woman on a Brompton bike approached, riding perilously close to the water’s edge as she passed, putting her hand up in thanks, although Ella didn’t know what for. Maybe just because she hadn’t got in her way. There were a couple of joggers running two abreast ahead of her and they parted reluctantly at the third sound of the woman’s bell, shouted after her in voices too hard for the sunny morning and calm water.
Her mobile rang as she was going under a bridge, the screen pulsing with an unknown number she almost rejected out of habit but didn’t, because she gave her own out so freely now it might be important.
‘Ella?’
The reception was crackling.
‘Hold on, give me a second.’ She hurried through the tunnel and out into the sunshine again. ‘Who’s this?’
‘That Ella?’
A man’s voice, thick with cold.
‘Yes, hi. Who’s this?’
‘You can’t tell?’ He sniffed hard and she heard the mucus roll into the back of his throat. ‘Be this cold I’ve got. Bad living conditions, you know?’
She knew.
Knew exactly who it was now. Instinctively she turned, feeling like he was watching her even though she knew it was impossible. Dozens of blank windows looked down on her, but he wasn’t behind any of them.
The only windows Quinn looked out of lately were high up, reinforced and barred.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, starting up the brick steps.
‘I just wanted you to know I’ve not forgotten about you.’
Ella stopped midway up the stairs, gripped the handrail tighter, feeling the corroded metal against her skin and the paint flakes sticking to her palm. She told herself to tough this out. Don’t show weakness or guilt because it would only encourage him.
‘Are you seriously going to do this?’ she asked, making her voice hard and contemptuous. ‘You’re pathetic, you know that, right?’
He laughed, half-grunt half-snort. ‘Me? You’re the one who ran off like a little bitch.’
‘Keep telling yourself that’s what happened,’ Ella said, feeling her pulse thudding where she held on to the rail, blood rushing into her ears so loud she was sure he must be able to hear it too. ‘You’re a fantasist.’
‘Oh, no, Ella. If anyone here’s a fraud, it’s you.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Is that it?’
‘Nobody can see what you are—’
‘And what am I?’
‘You’re a careerist. You don’t believe in anything, you just get off on the adulation.’
Ella laughed, tipped her head back to the sky. ‘Wow, you are the first person ever to say that to me. How very original of you. I’m not told that like fifty times a day online at all.’
‘I’m going to expose you,’ he snarled.
The laughter caught in her throat. It was as if he was there in front of her, face contorted with rage, body blown up and pumped for the fight.
‘I know what you did, Ella.’
A man ran up the stairs, clipping her shoulder as he passed but she hardly noticed.
‘And I know how you did it,’ Quinn said.