“How dare he show his face here? ”
I should have known better than to call Dylan, but I did it anyway. I thought if he came to see Betsy, maybe he could explain himself, maybe they could work things out. That was my mistake.
“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t have,” she shot back, and I could see the anger in her eyes. Everyone kept telling me I’d made a mess of things by getting involved. I was starting to believe them. The speech therapist was on her way to see Betsy, so I had to wrap up the visit.
As I was leaving, Auntie Betsy pulled me aside with that serious look she gets. “That Dylan’s no good for you, you know. Need to keep him away, okay? ”
I nodded, but my head was elsewhere.
I’d been carrying something around for the last day, something that happened with a friend, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t tell anyone either, not even Chrissy when she noticed I wasn’t listening to her story. “What’s rattling through that head of yours? ” she asked, and I almost told her.
But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t say it out loud. “Can’t tell you. Can’t tell anyone,” I said.
She gave me that knowing look and told me to go see this friend of mine, talk to them about what I couldn’t talk to anybody else about. She even offered to look after the cafe while I was gone. I wasn’t expecting that, but Chrissy was a diamond like that. The cafe was quiet when I left her there, and I stepped out into the cold.
I called Nina to see if she could help out, and I trusted Chrissy to hold the fort. At least the coffee was still hot. When I got to my friend’s, Michael and Glory were there. The orders were simple: fish finger butties with ketchup, cheese on toast, and jacket potatoes with cheese and beans.
Nina texted through exactly what they wanted, and I tried my best to keep up. I’d never worked a counter like that before, but I managed, sort of. But my mind kept drifting back to Deborah. She’d told me something yesterday that I couldn’t shake, and it had to do with her thinking about going to Switzerland.
I’d promised not to tell anyone. But keeping that secret from Ronnie felt like a betrayal he didn’t deserve. He was her husband. He loved her.
In sickness and in health, she’d made that commitment, and so had he. “You can’t keep something like this from Ronnie,” I told her when I finally got the chance. “He’s wandering around oblivious to what you’re planning. He needs to know.
He loves you. ”
“And I love him,” she replied, her voice small. “Which is why you’ve got to tell him. ”
I could see the fear in her eyes.
She didn’t want him to try and talk her out of it. She didn’t want to hurt him. But there was no way around it. And then there was Dylan.
He’d been lurking around the precinct, causing trouble. When I saw him, I called him out. “Looking for your next victim? Some poor girl to string along?
To death? ”
He told me to leave him alone, but I wouldn’t. “Why? And you won’t leave Betsy alone, going around there like a predator?
”
“You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” he snapped. “Oh, is that right, big man? ” Ronnie’s voice cut through the air, and suddenly hands were on him. It all happened so fast.
Ronnie grabbed Dylan, squared up to him, and men were shouting and shoving. Dylan kept saying he hadn’t hurt anyone, that Betsy wanted him to do it, but nobody was listening. Ronnie told him he was a nobody, a puffed-up chest strutting around like he was Big Man when he was nothing. “Leave Betsy alone,” Ronnie snarled.
“You stay away from her, you hear? ”
Dylan was screaming back, calling Ronnie a thug, and then the whole thing dissolved into chaos. I saw Dylan’s face just before it split open. A punch had landed.
Then another. And then Dylan went down hard, his body hitting the pavement with a sickening thud. “Dylan! Dylan, get up!
” I screamed, but he wouldn’t move. His eyes were closed, and there was blood. Sean came running, panting and out of breath. He couldn’t get a cab, the taxi driver took him to the wrong entrance, and by the time he reached us, they were already doing a CT scan.
“What have they said? ” he asked, panicked. “Nothing yet. ”
“What happened to him?
”
“Found him on the pavement at the precinct. ”
“He must have been attacked. One of those vigilantes has done him. Which one?
Which one did this to my Dylan? ”
I didn’t have an answer for him. I just watched as they wheeled Dylan into the scanner, and prayed he was still alive. Later, at the hospital, Debbie came in and sat beside me.
She’d been quiet for a while, staring at the wall. I checked in on her a couple of times, and she said she was fine, but something was going on behind those eyes. I just didn’t know what. When Dylan woke up, I was there.
He looked pale and scared. “They say he’s just got concussion. He’ll be okay, but they want to keep him in overnight,” I told Sean. “What happened?
” I asked Dylan. “Did someone attack you? ”
“No, I just tripped. ”
“You tripped?
”
“Yeah. I’m a fool. Not looking where I was going. ”
The bruises on his face said otherwise, but I couldn’t push him.
Not yet. He was still shaken. I promised to call his mom and keep her updated, then I stepped out of the room. When I came back, Dylan was sitting up, staring at his hands.
“It wasn’t Brody,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t him. ”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I let it lie. The next morning, I went to see Debbie.
She’d taken my advice, she said, but her face was hollow. She’d told Ronnie about her plans for Switzerland, or at least, about looking into assisted dying. “How did he take it? ” I asked, already dreading the answer.
“Not too well. ”
The words hung in the air. Then she sighed. “And now we’ve decided we’re just going to carry on.
Carry on sticking our heads in the sand, pretending everything’s all right. ”
I didn’t know what to say to that. There was nothing I could say. She was scared, and Ronnie was scared, and they were both doing what they always did: ignoring the hard things until they became impossible to ignore.
Meanwhile, the flat I’d been looking at had turned out to be a dump. Old pub turned into flats, small bedrooms, communal kitchen, no privacy. But I had to take it until I found somewhere proper. Kevin offered to help, but I wasn’t signing all my worldly goods over to anyone.
The evening at the pub got messy fast. I called Cassie, but she wasn’t answering. I saw her getting into a taxi earlier, and I asked the driver where he’d dropped her off. “I didn’t drop her anywhere,” he said, confused.
“I saw her getting in your car. ”
“Oh, yeah, I dropped her at Piccadilly. I think maybe she was going to the airport. I’m sorry, mate.
”
Cassie had gone. She’d left right after the fight, and I had no idea where she was heading. It felt like she was running from everything, and there was no way to reach her. Later that night, I got a call from Dylan’s mom.
She was frantic. “He’s gone,” she said, her voice breaking. “He just left the hospital. ”
I raced over to the ward, but Dylan’s bed was empty.
He’d told the nurses he was fine, that he just wanted some air. They let him go. I stood there, staring at the empty bed, and I knew something was deeply, horribly wrong. The next day, I found Dylan sitting in Auntie Betsy’s cafe.
He looked like he hadn’t slept, and there was something different about him, a coldness I’d never seen before. “What are you doing here? ” I asked. “I just wanted to see if you were all right,” he said.
“Clearly not. But yeah, lucky for you. ”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen, for you to end up in here. ”
“Didn’t mean for this to happen?
You slapped me and pushed me over. ”
“Yeah, I know I did, and I’m sorry, okay? I saw Betsy, and then I saw you, and I lost me rag, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. ”
I stared at him, at the man who had ruined everything, who had hurt me and lied to everyone, and I felt nothing but an empty, hollow ache.
“Just get out. ”
“Dylan, please don’t say that. ”
“Get out. ”
And he did.
He turned and walked out of the cafe, and for a long moment, I just stood there, my hands shaking. Then I went to the office, opened the drawer where I kept the letter from the solicitors, and started reading it again. I didn’t know what I was going to do yet, but I knew I couldn’t just sit back and let it all happen. There had to be a way to take control of my own life again.
There had to be something I could do. I just needed to figure out what that was before it was too late.
