A Change Of Scene

You’re about to walk out the door as if it’s a normal day. You’ve been wondering all night how you’ll manage this, going through different scenarios in your mind. Calm, you tell yourself. Keep calm.

You’ve packed your case. You packed it last night, then found you couldn’t lift it over – well. You had to unpack it again so that you could chuck the empty case down, then chucked your clothes and other stuff over separately and repacked everything downstairs. With all the clambering you’ve had to do, and with everything else, well, you were exhausted. But still you didn’t sleep, not that you wanted to sleep. Just in case.

You could have left last night, fled the scene, but where would you go? You couldn’t have found refuge next door, they’re away. And then there would have been the questions, more lies. He’s been good at lies over the years, good at persuading people what sort of man he is, when you know the truth of it, don’t you?

You checked the trains online and found that there were a number leaving between 7.00 and 10.00, destinations various. You could have bought a ticket then, but that would have meant keeping an appointment, leaving an electronic trail of where you were going. You had to be cleverer than that. You needed time to get your thoughts in order.

So now, you have your case, you have a vague plan and all you need do is keep calm.

You’re at the front door and you’re ready to leave. Your coat is an old one, grey, hooded, good for blending in. You try to ignore him, but it’s not easy. You breath deeply three times to calm yourself, but it’s not pleasant – the smell. Then you let yourself out, lock the door behind you. You’d prepared yourself to shout a cheery goodbye to him, but there’s no one around to witness it, so your departure is silent.

It’s a cold, wet autumn day, an excellent excuse to pull your hood over your head, to walk through the streets anonymously. You walk down the short path, out the front gate and on seeing the postman up the road to your right, you turn left. You can always double back down the next street. Your hearts hammering, your pulse racing as you walk down the street, the wheels of your case clattering on the pavement. You force yourself to slow down. It’s a Monday morning, so there won’t be a shortage of people making their way to the station for their weekly commute, cases in tow like so many obedient dogs, but still you’d prefer to be noticed by as few people as possible.

You pick up your case as you cross the road, and although it will slow you down, you continue to carry it for a while, disguising your passage along that particular street from early morning listeners.

You’re getting towards the town centre when you put it down again, and then you walk slowly to the bank. Still with your hood up, you slip the card into the machine and check the balance. There’s not a huge amount in there, but you’re able to take out £500, the maximum the card will allow. Enough for a few days. What you’ll do when you get to where you’re going you’re not sure, but you need cash for a train ticket that won’t be traced back to this bank account.

With the cash safely tucked away, you continue on your way to the station. The fresh air, wet and unforgiving as it is, smells sweet after that house. You feel lightheaded, aching, tired, but you know you cannot afford to relax yet. You’ll get some paracetamol at the station, you tell yourself, and a coffee. Only about half a mile, not far. You breath deeply again, to calm yourself, to give yourself strength. Just walk to the traffic lights, you tell yourself, then you’ll be 200 yards closer. You count your steps and it’s 279 steps before you get to the lights. Small steps, you tell yourself, because you’re tired. You cross the road and set your next target, a dentist’s surgery. Your friend Denny works there. You could do with a friend right now, but you hope you don’t see Denny. You wouldn’t like to have to ask her to lie for you. You pull your hood even closer round yourself as you pass, just in case. 

You don’t see Denny, but you do see Alice who works with you behind the bar sometimes. What’s she doing up this time in the morning?  You cannot be seen by her, but you cannot avoid her either. She’s busy talking on her phone, distracted. With what strength you have left, you walk right past her, wondering all the while if she’s seen you, wanting to look, willing yourself not to. She must not catch you recognising her. If she sees you, calls your name, you’ve got to ignore her. You cannot, must not, respond.

You pass within a couple of feet, you hear her laughter as she promises someone ‘later’, and you can hardly believe it when she doesn’t stop for a chat, to ask where you’re going with your case clattering along behind you. But then she wouldn’t associate you with an old coat like this. She associates you with the type of clothes needed for your job behind the bar, flashy, a bit revealing maybe, something to entice the punters to buy one more round of drinks. And her mind’s on ‘later’.

You focus on the next target – that bus stop – and the next – the church. Finally, you’re in sight of the station and you can see that it’s the normal Monday morning bustle. You crave the anonymity of a crowd and you slip into the stream of people, trying to keep up with the general flow while staying out of the way of those that are running, those that have a train leaving within the next five minutes.

You check the trains on the board. Leicester, London, Lincoln, all seem too obvious somehow. Norwich. There’s a train for Norwich that leaves in about 25 minutes. Who’d think to look for you there? Before you can change your mind, you go and buy yourself a ticket. Cash. Now you can get yourself paracetamol and coffee like you promised. But before that…

You go into the Ladies, get out your mobile and look for something to pull out that drawer that contains the SIM card. You could have ditched the phone, but it’s a decent one, and if only you can get the door open, you’ll just need to buy a SIM when you get to Norwich. Eventually the door pops out, you take the SIM and put in the bin with the rest of the rubbish, but not before you’ve snapped it. That done you now go to get your paracetamol and coffee.

As the train starts to pull out of the station, you start to relax. And you plan. Cheap hotel room for a couple of nights at least. A change of look, a pair of scissors and a bottle of hair colour for a start, and a trawl round the local charity shops for a cheap new look. Change of identity. Use your middle name and your surname from that so-brief marriage you had when you were seventeen. You’ve got the paperwork. And a new job. Hospitality is what you know, maybe bar work. No, that’s what you had been doing. But maybe a waitress in a restaurant or café? Some place they wouldn’t ask too many questions.

You wonder if he’s still alive. You’d grown tired of his unpredictability, his mood swings. Yesterday he’d been convinced that you’d been with someone else the previous night, as if there’d been time to do anything but serve drinks on a busy Saturday night in the pub. And when he’d grabbed for you, and missed, when he’d fallen back down the stairs because he was unsteady, having been drinking steadily for most of the day, you just stood there uncertain what to do. You should have called an ambulance. But he looked so crooked, so broken. If you’d done that, if you’d called for help and if he’d lived, if he’d been too mean to die, and let’s face it, he’s a pretty mean bastard, isn’t he, well, you’d be stuck with him for life, a cripple, who would blame you for his situation for the rest of his sorry days.

Too late now. You’ve made your choice. They’ll be able to tell from the bruises about what time he fell. They’re clever like that, scientists. Unless he’s dead. Unless he’s not found for a week. Or two.  Then you might be able to claim you left before he fell. It doesn’t look good though, does it. You might think you’ve escaped, but you’ll be looking over your shoulder for a long time, wondering.