‘My boyfriend left me,’ Alison began, her voice thick, the pain clearly still sharp. ‘Luke and I got chatting on the stairs one day. Then I got locked out of my flat and he invited me in for a beer.’ She glanced up at Clara. ‘You were out.’

Clara sighed. ‘Go on,’ she said.

‘He was so nice to me, and I thought …’ she coloured now, ‘he told me I was pretty, that I’d find someone else.’ She wiped her nose with the cuff of her jumper and gave a loud sniff. ‘After that he’d stop and chat if he saw me. I gave him my phone number and he’d text me. Nice stuff, you know? Telling me I was … Well, anyway, it started to mean a lot to me, the attention, you know … he’d pop up to see me sometimes when you weren’t in.’

Clara nodded. ‘And did something happen between you?’

Alison met her gaze and shook her head. ‘No.’

There was another silence, and Clara wondered if the younger girl would clam up again, but it seemed instead that she wanted to unburden herself now that she’d started. ‘I wanted it to,’ she admitted. ‘I told him that I was falling for him.’ She shook her head, a flash of anger in her eyes now. ‘I thought he felt the same way. But then he changed, started being funny with me, acting like it had all been in my head, he didn’t think of me like that. And I was so fucking angry with him …’

‘So that was what all the loud music was about, the dirty looks on the stairs,’ Clara said.

Alison glanced away. ‘He made me feel good about myself for the first time in ages, then there you’d be, the two of you, so happy together, rubbing my face in it. I wanted to make him see how bad I felt. And I guess I thought that him and I could be together if it wasn’t for you.’

As Clara listened she felt the creeping heat of anger inside her. Stupid, stupid Luke. What had probably meant nothing more to him than a bit of harmless flirting had clearly meant much more to this silly girl.

A silence fell as Alison crossed her arms defensively in front of her, her pale face closed and truculent once more.

‘Look,’ Clara said. ‘You helped save my life, I’m not about to give you a hard time for flirting with my boyfriend. Trust me, Alison, whatever went on between you and Luke is the least of my problems.’

Alison nodded.

‘Will you be all right?’ Clara asked.

She got up. ‘Yeah,’ she shrugged, ‘course I will.’ She made towards the door, but once there said stiffly, reluctantly, ‘I’m sorry, all right?’

Clara nodded, and she and Mac watched as Alison closed the door behind her.

22

Cambridgeshire, 1997