‘Shush,’ muttered Anna. She leant against the wall and closed her eyes. She wanted the world to stop.
‘Get security immediately,’ ordered the doctor as he moved to push the room alarm on the wall panel behind the bed.
‘Shush,’ Anna tried again, but her legs buckled under her and she slid to the floor at the bottom of the bed. She was trying to quieten her screaming heart, but it was too late: the noose had strangled it. She allowed her head to fall back and she let out the loudest howl she’d ever heard.
The Journey Home
Quiet Isaac’s car pulled out of the gloomy, fumey car park and into the bright light of a nippy yet sunny 1 January day. Not just the start of a new year, but the start of a new millennium and the start of a bold new life for Hope, unbeknownst to him.
London was untidy. The detritus of the celebrations from the night before littered the streets and blew about in the chilly gusts, messy souvenirs of a party city.
Quiet Isaac loved his car; he had bought it from a departing Nigerian student who’d graduated the year before. Quiet Isaac paid two hundred pounds for it. The previous owner had paid three hundred pounds for it, and so on back through many students. Somewhere twenty years before, the car must’ve been worth it, but now it was an ugly but reliably functioning rust bucket. Luckily Isaac’s father taught him well about cars, and in particular Japanese ones, which he admired so much for the ease of replacement parts and for the longevity. This vaguely silver Civic was an example of how hard it is to kill a Honda. It just would not die, however ancient, and Isaac already had a clutch of first years nipping at his heels to buy it for a measly hundred quid, when the time came that he was through with it.
Quiet Isaac looked across at Hope. He had spent his waiting time in the car thinking about how he might possibly be able to comfort and support her, wondering if he would find the right words to use. As he glanced at her, he imagined her beautiful wide-open face might be a bit crumpled, but that wasn’t what he saw. Hope’s eyes were sparkling; she was bolt upright and fresh as air. Isaac hoped she wasn’t in some kind of shocked trance. She was looking straight ahead, clasping her bag close to her, balancing it on her knee.
‘You OK, Bubs?’ He squeezed her hand. She didn’t take his, which was unusual, but she did let him touch hers, which she kept firmly clamped to the bag. She was holding on to it as a teenager hugs a cushion when they watch a horror film.
‘Yeah yeah,’ she replied, a bit too distracted.
‘D’you wanna go find some breakfast …?’ he offered, in the hope that it could be a treat for her. He wasn’t sure if she would be up for it, was almost certain that she wouldn’t, but he still wanted to offer, in the belief that there could still be some joy in their lives after this shattering tragedy.
‘No, no. Home. Please.’ Hope sounded urgent. He could see that she was breathing deeply. Had she been running? That couldn’t have been wise after all she’d been through. He wished he was a rich man who could whisk her away somewhere on holiday to recover, instead of a poor third-year engineering student without two farthings to rub together.
No matter, he would do whatever was in his power to make sure Hope was all right. ’Twas ever thus. That’s who Isaac truly always was, and now, as he was driving, he felt reflective. It might have been the case that the pregnancy was a surprise to both of them, totally unplanned, but in all the months leading up to the birth, he had been in no doubt that they were a strong couple. Their endless chats about how they would somehow manage to be good parents had really focused his mind on their relationship. However much Quiet Isaac was falling for Hope, the pregnancy clinched it; he fell right in, the moment she told him.
He remembered what had happened: he had been due to go over to her flat in Kensal Rise to see her on that day. He let himself in with the keys she had given him months before. He was chuffed that she’d had a set cut for him, that she trusted him enough to let him come and go as he pleased in ‘her yard’. On that day, he struggled to get the wretched rusty Yale lock to move with the key. It was old and stubborn. He made a mental note to fix that for her with some WD40. Once inside, he awkwardly manoeuvred past the bike belonging to the hermit bloke in the downstairs flat, which was forever illegally parked against the wall. Hope rarely saw him, he rarely used his bike, but always left it there, exactly where it was the most inconvenient. Hope had guessed that it was a prized possession, so she didn’t want to confront him about it. Plus, the small communal hallway which serviced both flats often smelled of weed. It seeped from under his door. Hope knew that smell well, and she consciously stayed away from him, leaving him to what she imagined was his mellow stoned state. He was no bother to her, or she to him, but she decided not to seek him out, or provoke him.
Quiet Isaac had carefully shuffled past the prized bike, and up the narrow, cheaply built and therefore very hollow-sounding stairs to her flat door at the top. The carpet on the steps was threadbare, and non-existent in some parts, so the sound must’ve been major in the flat below, and definitely heralded any arrival in Hope’s flat. There
