I thought of all the things that had happened to us, not with my usual cold and maudlin detachment, but with the new vigour I had inherited from the previous night. I thought of the parties and the fights, the gambling and drinking and glory and disaster. All this time, I had been mourning not Francis, but the idea of Francis, and the death of the search for a good life. The happiness we had felt together had been like the happiness of a cult, based on exclusion and the promise of final rewards. Francis had never recovered from his disappointment. It had destroyed him. I was stronger. It had taken me nearly a decade, but I was ready to let it go. All my adult choices had been made by default; I had flowed down the path of least resistance, waiting for some obstacle to present itself, a dam against which I could collect my resolve. Now I felt the strength to make a choice for myself. Happiness was so close to me, I thought my heart would break if I was denied.

When she finally spoke, she startled me as if from a dream.

‘OK,’ she said, smiling down at me. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Then let’s run!’ I shouted, scrambling to my feet in delight, gripping her wrist before she could change her mind. ‘We must go quickly. Don’t stop to pack. Let’s get out of here before it’s too late.’

She picked up her handbag and threw a jumper on over the T-shirt; I took my wallet and passport from my dresser. All the fear and sadness that I had borne for years I was leaving behind me in my dark little flat. It had been with me for so long, I had forgotten that it was not my natural state, and I was almost afraid to be without it. I felt like a lifelong cripple who had been cured by a miracle, so sweet and sudden was the lifting of the burden from my shoulders. When Jessica passed me in the flat, both of us running and bumping into the furniture, our hands would meet, and lag in slow parting behind our bodies, making our arms stretch out straight. We threw together the essential fragments of our belongings, and were ready to run. Already, I could hear the jingle and thump of the keys as I put them back through the letterbox. Then the intercom buzzed.

21

‘HELLO? JAMES WALKER?’ for a few seconds, I was able to entertain the fantasy that the courier had returned. Then the voice said, ‘Jessica Katz?’ and our infant happiness was dashed. There was only one person who could be looking for the two of us here.

The feeling that swept through me was like the calm that possessed my thoughts during our night climbs: the simplicity of survival. I looked through the slat blinds of the living-room window into the street below. There, sitting in the midst of the children’s snowfight, was a white Ford Transit van. I could see a piece of the man at the passenger’s side, a hairy forearm sporting a tattoo in blue ink too faded to make out the design, ending in a cigarette clasped in thick ringed fingers. The man pressing the buzzer was beyond my line of sight. The intercom buzzed again. ‘Look, mate, we need to have a chat. I know you’re in, I just watched you walk through the front door.’