says, shuffling closer on her knees. We’re completely hidden from view behind the skip but she keeps glancing nervously back towards the street as though she’s scared that someone will discover us. ‘I worked at the Residential Reform Academy. I was Mason’s psychologist. He gave me something to give to you.’
She lets go of me and reaches into the pocket of her jeans. There’s a loud bang from the street, like a car backfiring, and all the blood seems to drain from her face. I’ve never seen anyone look so scared. For several seconds she does nothing, she just listens, then she pulls her hand out of her pocket.
‘Here,’ she says in a low voice, as she thrusts a folded piece of paper at me. ‘I’ve got to go. I can’t talk. It was a risk just trying to find you.’ She scrabbles to her feet and pushes a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She glances towards the street then back at me. ‘I would have got him out if I could. I would have got them all out.’ The word catches in her throat and she presses a hand to her mouth. ‘I’ve said too much. I’m sorry.’
She darts out from behind the skip, sprints down the alley towards the street and turns right, disappearing from view.
I sit in stunned silence for one second, maybe two, surrounded by split bin bags and the smell of roasted coffee beans and then I launch myself up and onto my feet.
‘Wait!’ I shove the piece of paper into my pocket. ‘Doctor Cobey, wait!’
***
I can see her long, dark ponytail bobbing above her khaki jacket as she speeds down the street ahead of me, weaving her way through shoppers, briefly stepping into the road when there are too many people to overtake on the pavement.
‘Doctor Cobey!’ I shout as the distance between us decreases and a stitch gnaws at my side. ‘Wait!’
I am vaguely aware of people staring at me, of toddlers in buggies gesturing, of car drivers slowing to gawp, of cold air rushing against my face and my heart thudding in my ears. I don’t know why I’m chasing the woman who just grabbed me, smothered me and terrified me. I was lucky she didn’t hurt me, but I can’t shake the feeling that if I let her get away I’ll never see her again. She knows something about Mason. Something she was too afraid to tell me.
I see the car before she does. I hear the engine rev and the black flash of the bonnet as the lights change from green to amber at the crossing and Dr Cobey steps into the road. One second the car is a hundred metres away, the next it’s at the crossing. The engine roars and there is a sickening thump as Dr Cobey’s body flies into the air.
‘He didn’t stop. I can’t believe he didn’t stop.’
‘Did anyone get the registration number?’
‘Don’t move her! She might have broken her back.’
Within seconds a crowd gathers around Dr Cobey’s body and I am shoved and pushed further and further away. I don’t push back. I don’t shout, cry or explain. Instead I stare at the back of the man standing in front of me. But it’s not his black woolly jumper I see. Imprinted on the back of my eyelids is Dr Cobey’s broken body; half on the pavement, half on the road, her legs twisted beneath her, her neck lolling to one side, her blue eyes wide and staring, a single line of blood reaching from the corner of her mouth to her jaw.
‘She’s not breathing.’
‘I can’t find a pulse.’
‘Can anyone do CPR?’
The driver of the car aimed straight for her. He revved the engine. He wanted to hit her.
‘She was scared. She thought someone was after her.’
‘What was that, love?’ A heavy-set woman in her fifties with wiry bleach-blonde hair and bright pink lipstick nudges me.
I glance at her in surprise. Did I just say that out loud?
The woman continues to stare at me but my lips feel as though they have been glued shut. She loses interest when the man on the other side of her starts shouting into his mobile phone.
‘The High Street. Near M&S. Road traffic accident. It was bad. I don’t know if she’s breathing or not. Someone’s doing CPR. He said he was a doctor.’
The crowd presses against me on all sides, gawping, commenting and speculating.
‘There’s still no pulse!’ shouts someone near the road. ‘Where’s that ambulance?’
As I take a step to the side to try to force my way through the crowd someone grabs hold of my left hand. An elderly woman gazes up at me as I twist round. She’s so short I can see the pink scalp beneath her fine white hair.
‘My boy,’ she says, squeezing my hand tightly, ‘my boy was killed the same way. She will be OK, won’t she?’
I’m torn. I want to check on Dr Cobey but people have started to shout the word ‘dead’ and the old lady holding my hand is quivering like a leaf. She looks like she’s about to faint.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask.
She doesn’t shake her head. She doesn’t answer. She just keeps staring hopefully up at me, tears filling her milky eyes.
‘Is there someone I could call for you? A relative, or a friend?’
She continues to look at me blankly.
I don’t know how to deal with this. I glance to my right, to where the woman with the bleach-blonde hair and pink lipstick was standing but she’s disappeared, replaced by a couple of scary-looking builder types. What do adults do in this situation?
‘Would you … would you like to sit down somewhere and have a cup of tea?’
The old woman nods. Tea, the magic word.
***
I hear the wail of the ambulance sirens as the owner leads us to a table at the back of the café. The old lady is resting her weight on my elbow, telling me that I’m ‘kind, so kind’. I want to tell her that I’m not kind. That I’m selfish and ungrateful and lazy and all the other things Tony and Mum accuse me of being. I want to tell her that someone deliberately ran over Dr Cobey but I can’t, not when there’s a bit of colour in her cheeks and she’s stopped staring at me with that weird freaked-out expression.
I wait for her to drink half a cup of tea, my feet tap-tap-tapping on the wooden flooring, as she sips, rests, sips, rests and then, when she reaches for the slice of carrot cake the café owner brought her and takes the tiniest of nibbles, I excuse myself, saying I need to use the ladies’.
I slip into the single stall toilet at the back of the café. I hold it together long enough to close the door and lock it and then I rest my arms on the wall and burst into tears. I’m still crying when I sit down on the closed toilet lid and reach into my pocket. Tears roll down my cheeks as I pull out the note that Dr Cobey thrust into my hands. They plop onto the paper as I carefully unfold it. I read the words Mason has scribbled in blue biro. I read them once, twice, three times and the tears dry in my eyes.
I’m
