He busied himself now putting away the gun. She watched as he closed the safe, running his fingertips lightly over the keypad as if to remove any trace of dust. When he stood up again, she reached out and touched his forearm.

‘I’m glad I came here,’ she said softly, and he nodded.

‘Me too.’

Something had passed between them. Something profound though neither of them could name it.

‘I’ll watch out for you,’ she told him as she stood on the doorstep, her denim jacket a little less damp now although her shoes still squelched.

She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that, but he nodded as if he understood.

Standing there in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, he watched as she walked away. And all the time, she had the feeling that she had not only saved Callum from himself, but that he, somehow, had restored her. She had toppled momentarily, but he had set her back on her feet again, dusted her down, and pushed her back out safely into the night.

28

Eva was in a tutorial when her phone buzzed with an incoming call. Seeing Ross’s name light up the screen, her instinct was to answer. But at that moment, the tutor looked up and said drily:

‘Would it be so much to ask for you to drag your attention away from your phone for the half-hour remaining to us?’

She felt the gaze of the row of students in front of her, most of whom she hardly knew. In the weeks since term began, she’d been absent so often that she’d barely exchanged a half-dozen words with most of her classmates.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, stuffing the phone deep into her bag, trying to focus her attention on the tutor.

It was halfway through the semester and she was completely lost, having skipped so many lectures. Ross found it easier to get to the house during the day while Becca was at work. He worried about her missing lectures, so she lied to him about it, making it sound like her timetable was not that full. She told herself that there was plenty of time to catch up on her coursework, whereas what she shared with Ross was too urgent and important to put on hold.

The tutorial ended, the class filing out into the corridor, immediately breaking up into smaller groups. Eva looked around but there was no obvious cluster for her to join. Distantly, she caught sight of Orla, one of the few people she knew in the class, and went to join her at the lockers.