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  She knew she shouldn’t really refer to Erin and Rob’s place as home. It was temporary. A temporary shelter. Which was exactly what she needed at the moment. She felt guilty about imposing on her pregnant friend for so long, but Erin insisted it was fine.

  ‘You were there for me when Rob and I went through our sticky patch,’ Erin had said, referring to a period a couple of years ago when she had discovered Rob had come close to having an affair. Thankfully, they had worked it out. ‘Besides, it will be handy to have a live-in babysitter when the little one arrives!’

  Everybody was being helpful. Her manager, Simone, was letting her work from home. Simone had confided in Laura that she used to suffer from agoraphobia too, believing what Laura had told her, the day she’d found herself crying at her computer while her colleagues gawped at her. ‘Take your time,’ she had said in that soothing voice that made Laura want to cry again, from gratitude.

  So, thanks to Erin and Simone, Laura had a place to hole up during this period. Her ‘tarantula period’, as she secretly thought of it.

  Last week she had watched a documentary about these spiders. The tarantula sheds her skin once a year, the narrator explained, then seals herself away behind a wall of silk until her new skin has hardened. Only then can she re-emerge and start to feed again.

  Laura never thought she would compare herself to a big, scary spider. But that was exactly how she felt. She was waiting for her new skin to grow, to harden.

  Since Romania, the shell around her heart, like the spider’s skin, had been ripped away, leaving it exposed. She was in constant pain, unable to bear the sight of others suffering. And she had realised that she was never going to heal here. That was why she had to get away.

  She was dreading having to tell Daniel about her plans the next day, but knew she had to do it. She hadn’t spoken to him for several weeks. Maybe he had a new girlfriend by now. He had never struggled to attract women. There was a certain type of girl, like her, who was attracted to the sexy geek type, who liked Clark Kent more when he was wearing his glasses than when he transformed into Superman. And Daniel hated being on his own, had barely spent a night alone in his life. There were times when she’d gone away on business and he’d told her he’d spent the week pacing the apartment, talking to himself and going bonkers. So no, she couldn’t see him staying single for long.

  It didn’t matter that the thought of him with another woman was like a knife in her gut. She couldn’t keep him trapped, hanging on waiting to see if she came back. That would be cruel. She wanted him to be happy, and the best way for him to heal was to find someone new, to throw himself into a new relationship. If she was his doctor, that’s what she would prescribe. By moving to the other side of the world, she would make it easier for him.

  She bit down on the urge to cry.

  Moments later, she arrived at Charing Cross station. She stopped. All those people. It was even busier now than it had been earlier, when she’d taken the Tube from Camden. She tried not to look at anyone. Maybe she should get a cab. But she needed to hang on to every penny she could at the moment, would need it for her big move. As long as she didn’t look at anybody, she should be OK. Plus it was stupid for her to be scared of crowds. It was the empty places that ought to scare her.

  She descended the steps into the station, clinging to the handrail like an elderly lady. The people below her shuffled about like zombies. She had a flash of one of them twisting towards her, vacant eyes rolling, teeth bared, grabbing her and ripping her throat out . . . She shook the image away and counted to five beneath her breath.

  Come on, she urged herself. You can do this.

  She followed the signs to the platform, heading towards the far end. The display board showed there was a train due in four minutes. In that four minutes, more and more people entered the platform, many of them heading to where Laura stood. She was surrounded, bodies too close to her, the smell of the McDonalds fries the woman next to her clutched in her fist making Laura want to be sick.

  For fuck’s sake, she muttered, squinting at the board. Then she heard the rumbling of an approaching train, thank God, and looked down at the track. A tiny, malformed mouse darted between the rails.

  She jerked her head up. It wasn’t only the people that scared her about train travel. It was the sight of the track. The rails.

  An image appeared in her mind: she and Daniel running along the tracks towards the town, stumbling and tripping but staying upright, the sun rising, her throat raw from screaming. And Daniel had caught hold of her arm and—

  She lurched towards the edge of the platform, arms windmilling. She could see the mouse, frozen between the rails, and she was falling, falling, and a roaring noise came from the tunnel, air blasting along the platform, the train rocketing into the light . . .

  Someone grabbed her from behind, almost went over with her, but fought them both back from the edge. A tall man, wearing a suit. He held her.

  She couldn’t catch her breath. The man held onto her, murmuring in her ear, telling her to calm down, it’s OK, calm down, it’s all OK . . .

  She pulled free of his grip and looked around. Everyone was staring at her, but the Tube train was at the platform now and the doors were opening, so their attention quickly wandered.

  ‘What happened?’ the man who had caught her asked. ‘Did you trip?’

  She couldn’t remember tripping, but said, ‘I must have. I’m always tripping over my own feet.’

  She thanked him and tried to give him money from her purse, which made him laugh. He got onto the train and she could feel him watching her as the doors beeped and slid shut.

  Had she tripped—or had somebody pushed her? She was sure she could feel the imprint of hands on her spine.

  She looked around. More people emerging into the station. If someone had pushed her, they were long gone by now. She closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. She must have tripped. Lost in her reverie, she had walked into someone, probably stumbled over one of those annoying wheelie suitcases. That was all. It was ridiculous to think that anyone here might want to kill her.

  She’d boarded the next train and found a seat, a memory coming back to her. As she’d clung to the man who saved her, she’d seen a figure pushing hurriedly through the crowd away from her. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. She couldn’t . . .

  She killed the thought, reminded herself that it was stupid to think like this.

  By the time she’d reached her stop, she had convinced herself that she had imagined it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dr Claudia Sauvage’s office was on the top floor of her huge red-brick Victorian terrace in Crouch End. Sometimes, on my way up the stairs to the room at the back of the house where we had our weekly sessions, I would catch glimpses of her life outside the therapy room. The smell of soup wafting from the kitchen, photos of Dr Sauvage and her husband framed and hung in the hallway, a couple of pugs poking their squashed faces out of the living room. But I wasn’t allowed to ask Claudia about herself: our sessions were dedicated wholly to talking about me.

  The first session had been dedicated to filling Claudia in on my background. I wasn’t sure how pertinent it was but Claudia said it was important to get as much detail as possible so she could understand and help me. So I told her that I grew up in Beckenham, on the outskirts of south London, and was an only child. My parents were divorced and we weren’t particularly close. Claudia wanted to know a lot more about this but I was reluctant to talk about it. I didn’t think it was important. But she scribbled notes as I told her that I only saw them now at Christmas and on the odd special occasion. They had both remarried and thrown themselves into new lives with new partners. They usually wanted to talk about what the other one was up to, as if they were competing to be happier. I didn’t want to get drawn into it.

  I spent much of my adolescence in my bedroom playing vi
deo games and learning how to code. I was a geek, until I discovered music and met Jake, who showed me that life outside my bedroom was a lot more interesting. From that point I spent a lot of time trying to work out who I was. I was naturally mathematical, scientific, but I yearned to be artistic, bohemian. I studied computer science at university but went out drinking a lot and had a series of short-term girlfriends, all of whom were studying one of the arts. I stopped reading science fiction and read the books these girls pressed on me: Donna Tartt, Douglas Coupland, lots of Penguin Classics. I experimented with soft drugs. I watched a lot of films with subtitles.

  After college I moved to North London and worked for an internet start-up for a few years before getting into app development in my spare time. I met Laura, via Jake, and fell in love for the first and only time. Laura was everything I’d ever wanted: well-read, arty, passionate and principled. She encouraged me to embrace my true nature, to do the things I enjoyed without worrying about the image I projected. She helped me figure out who I am. I filled our flat with gadgets and she made it come to life with clutter and candles and bright colours.

  ‘It’s interesting,’ Dr Sauvage said, ‘how when I ask you to talk about yourself, you quickly start telling me about your girlfriend.’

  I shrugged. ‘My life is unremarkable.’

  She smiled. ‘No life is unremarkable.’

  Dr Sauvage was in her mid-forties, thin and elegant, with slender wrists and legs that I found it hard not to stare at. She wore fashionable glasses and a dark grey jersey dress. During our sessions, she puffed on an electronic cigarette, sending clouds of water vapour into the air. She’d asked me if I minded, which I didn’t at all. ‘I’m more addicted to this than I ever was to real cigarettes,’ she confided.

  ‘So,’ she said now. ‘How are you feeling, Daniel?’

  When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘How about your sleep? Any better?’

  I adjusted my position in the armchair. ‘No. I only got two hours last night, maybe three.’

  She waited for me to continue.

  ‘I’ve got something new to worry about,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Laura, my girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend . . .’ I sighed. ‘She’s leaving the country. Going to Australia. Fucking Australia. Sorry.’

  A tiny smile at my apology. ‘You can swear if you need to, Daniel. And how do you feel about this?’

  ‘How do I feel? I’m devastated. I don’t want her to go. I can’t let her go. She’s just trying to run away, after what happened. It’s insane. I really won’t be able to bear it if she goes away.’

  She raised a hand, seeing how agitated I was becoming. I took five deep, slow breaths, closed my eyes, tried to visualise something pleasant. But all I could see was Laura, and then worse . . . I wrenched my eyelids open.

  ‘Do you think that Laura would be interested in coming to a session with you? It might be helpful to both of you. When a family experiences a trauma together, it’s common to treat them as a unit. The same with couples.’

  ‘She won’t do it. I tried to talk to her about it but she’s not interested. She won’t even speak with me about what happened. She certainly won’t talk to you.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she asked, her voice gentle. ‘Will you speak with me about it?’

  So far, all I had managed to talk about was what had happened leading up to the walk along the rail tracks. I had spent the first couple of sessions telling her about the good stuff: our first weeks travelling around Europe, the fun times. I had also told her about our plans, our reasons for going. All the things that had been lost. And last week, I had told her what happened on the train, about finding ourselves at the deserted station with the feral dogs.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s what the NHS psychologist had diagnosed me with, something that I associated with war vets or the firefighters who had tried to save people from the World Trade Center. But when they described the symptoms, I ticked pretty much every box. Intense, intrusive memories of the traumatic event. Nightmares. Loss of interest in life. Lack of motivation. Insomnia. A feeling of being on constant red alert. Being easily startled. Substance abuse—alcohol, in my case. The list went on for pages.

  Dr Sauvage had told me that she wanted to try what she called ‘trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy’.

  ‘When you suffer from PTSD,’ she had said during our first session, telling me she agreed with the NHS psychologist’s assessment, ‘you want to block out memories of the trauma. You will do anything to avoid confronting it, or anything that reminds you of it. PTSD is where your brain remains in psychological shock, unable to shake off or move on from what happened to you.’

  ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘To get better, to move on, you need to face the memories, deal with them, which will allow you to regain control and feel able to face the future. To do that, we need to carefully expose you to those memories, to peel away the barriers.’

  I had shuddered visibly.

  ‘The key word being “carefully”, Daniel. You have nothing to be frightened of.’

  ‘You don’t get it. I do.’

  She had cocked her head. ‘Do?’

  ‘Have something to be frightened of.’

  Now, I looked over at her, sitting on her designer chair with her notepad on her lap, e-cigarette in her hand, and wondered if I’d ever be able to tell her everything.

  ‘I can tell you what happened afterwards,’ I said. ‘That’s all part of it, anyway.’

  ‘All right,’ she responded. ‘That would be good. Take your time, go slowly. And if you start to feel distressed, stop talking, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  I sat back and closed my eyes.

  ‘I can’t really remember much of the walk into town. We started off running but our backpacks were so heavy we had to slow down. I know we didn’t talk much. I kept opening my mouth to speak but all I could think of to say were stupid questions like “Are you OK?” When of course I knew she was a very long way from OK. And all I could think about was getting as far away as possible.’ I glanced up at Dr Sauvage. ‘I was in shock. We both were. But I remember the same words looping through my head. We need to get home.’

  I paused. ‘Actually, I don’t think it was that coherent, if there were fully formed words in my head. It was more like screaming. Like white noise. Also, Laura said afterwards that she remembered screaming as we ran out of the forest, but I don’t remember that. In my memory, she didn’t make a sound.’

  It was quiet in the office, like it had been back in the forest. A fly crawled up the window and I thought I could hear its footsteps.

  ‘The town at the end of the tracks was called Breva. When we got there it was just getting light, but nothing was open yet. Though walking through the town, it didn’t seem like there was much of anything anyway. There was nobody around. We saw a man walking a dog, a huge thing, like a wolf, which made Laura grip my hand so hard I thought she’d break my fingers. We saw a young guy walking along with a baseball cap on, head down. A few cars went past. After everything that had happened, what we wanted to see was a city. Lights, life. Not this. The whole place had this bleak feel, full of boarded-up windows and cars that looked like they should be in a scrapyard. Lots of signs of a place that used to be prosperous and lively but that was now dying. I don’t know . . . It just had this atmosphere. It felt like a ghost town.’

  She waited for me to continue.

  ‘After we’d walked for ten minutes or so we saw an old lady scrubbing the front step of her house. I said to her, “Police?” and she looked us up and down before coming over and giving us directions, pointing this way and that and babbling away like we could understand every word. But we got the gist anyway.’

  I pictured the old lady now, her milky eyes, her strong arms clutching the wooden brush she’d been using to clean
the step. ‘Just before we walked off, she reached up and touched Laura’s face, whispered something in Romanian. I thought Laura was going to start screaming and I had to pull her away.’

  I left out a detail. The woman had also touched Laura’s belly, laying the flat of her hand on my girlfriend’s stomach and nodding to herself. Laura had jerked away like the woman had stabbed her.

  ‘This is good,’ Dr Sauvage said. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Able to go on?’

  ‘Yes. I . . . I want to get to the end.’

  I also wanted a strong drink.

  I told the rest of the story.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Laura and I found the police station about ten minutes after our encounter with the elderly woman, a little building with Poliția written above the door. I took a deep breath before trying the door.

  A police officer sat at the desk in the tiny reception area, a smartphone in one hand, a mug in the other. He looked up at us and frowned at me, then smiled at Laura.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ I asked.

  He shrugged apologetically.

  I immediately switched into Englishman Abroad mode, speaking slowly and turning up the volume. ‘Anyone here speak English?’

  He eyed me before drifting to the back of the reception area and vanishing through a door. He returned a minute later with a large man with red cheeks and broken veins on his nose. He took in Laura’s messy hair, the dirt and scratches on our skin. I hadn’t looked in a mirror at this point so had no idea how beaten-up I looked, how the dash through the forest had marked me, how wild my eyes were.