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I wait in the sun-dappled lobby, the doors hanging open in my presence. I’m not sure what it is that I am waiting for. Is it for the security guard? Am I thinking he will stop me? I study him, his back turned to me now, can see the awkwardness of his movements, that arthritis is setting in, that in truth he isn’t stopping anyone. I stand there, a boulder in a stream of people, and I look for a feeling – any feeling. I’m not sure why. After all, lately my life has revolved around running from them. Yet now, here at the end, it seems to me that they have vanished. That the sea of emotions, always raging, always yanking at me, threatening to pull me under, has suddenly stilled, like it has frozen in an instant. I prod at it, a tongue into a cavity, but I can find nothing. Just the relief of the coming silence.

I turn, feet squeaking against the linoleum floor. Look to the signs. I don’t know why. I have, after all, been here before. I know my way to Ward 12.

I pull the gym bag higher up onto my shoulder. Or, at least, my hands do, although they feel like someone else’s hands. My feet begin to move, someone else’s feet. It occurs to me that nothing is yet set. I could always change my mind. But I won’t, I know I won’t. Because beneath the frozen sea the waves are still raging, and I know that I cannot survive them again.

I glance back, out into the car park, through the pall of smoke, my last glimpse of sunshine. I think it is because I want to say goodbye. But instead I see a figure, hurrying towards me. And she is not like the others. She sees me. Is looking straight at me.

Charlie pushes her way through the crowded smokers. And I hang there, like I am frozen. She knows. I don’t know how it is possible that she could know. But she knows. I see it in her face, eyes wide, frightened, jaw set, even in the movement of her hands, like she is reaching for me, like if she can just get to me in time, then she can stop me.

I turn, breaking into a run. I don’t know why. I could just shoot her. But for some reason the thought never occurs to me, and so instead I run, because there are things that I must do before the end.

They are all looking at me now. They stare at this crazy man running through the hospital. Suddenly they all see me, give me a wide berth, which suits me fine. I make for the stairs. Can hear Charlie’s voice at my back, calling me. Wonder what the hell she is thinking. That she thinks she is capable of stopping me on her own.

I am almost there, am reaching for the stair doors, when they swing open.

Imogen steps into my path. She doesn’t see me. Is looking down at a phone in her hand, is texting, sunlight catching on her red hair. I sway. Because she looks so much like the other one. The image of her dances in front of me, shifting like a hologram, so that now I see her, now I don’t. Then, all of a sudden, she stops shifting, the figure coalescing so that my brain can make sense of what my eyes are seeing, and I feel a breathtaking sense of familiarity. I realise then what it is that I have done.

Now everything I thought I knew is gone. Because I’ve already killed her once today.

My fingers move. They move without me, travel to the bag that is slung across my shoulder, reach in for the gun. Pull it free.

Time has stopped now.

I hear a voice behind me shout a warning, dimly recognise it as Charlie. Hear, from everywhere else it seems, a scream, an intake of breath that sucks all of the air from the room. And now the woman before me looks up, pulls her gaze from her phone. Sees me. Sees the gun. And I can see it – the moment of her death – reflected right there in her eyes, as she realises what I am about to do. She opens her mouth, like she thinks that it can make a difference.

‘I . . . your text. I didn’t see—’

But I have stopped listening. I know that I do not want to hear what she has to say.

I pull the trigger.

THEY MOVE WITH
care, black figures dipping in and out of the flashing blue disco-ball lights. The police cars are parked at odd angles, as if some giant wave has picked them up, thrown them there, so that now they lie prostrate like fish on the sand. I listen, straining against the distant thrum of traffic, the odd car still making its way down the eastbound carriageway, the lights looming, slowing as the drivers ease off the accelerator. It seems that I can see the drivers craning their necks, peering at the scene before them. Just a little something to break up a dark journey. I can just about pick up the distant thrum of conversation from the police officers on the ground, the outer edges of it, its rhythm. Then someone laughs, a high-frequency jab that shatters the quiet night air. The movement of the figures changes then, a flock of birds, heads turning in unison towards a source of alarm, and the laughter stops, the laugher swinging his head, looking up to where I stand, watching. He stares at me for a minute, then looks down, shaking his head.

I tuck my hands into my jacket pockets, lean back against the car. It’s cooler now, a breeze springing up across the sea, whipping my skirt around my bare legs, sweeping across Swansea Bay after another long, corpulently hot day. They are already calling this ‘The Year of the Heatwave’, are lining it up alongside the years of the more traditional British summer rain, proof positive of global warming, our fast-approaching doom. The temperatures began to climb more than a fortnight ago, at first sitting snug at a pleasing twenty-three degrees, before shooting upwards, and upwards. Yesterday it was thirty-two degrees, today thirty. The dense heat has settled over the city, a looming dome, pushing back the sea air until it seems that nothing is moving, that when one breathes, one pulls in nothing but hot dustiness. Tonight, for a change, the sea air is winning. I turn my face to the breeze, can taste the salt in it. It tugs at my hair, whipping it around my face, the strands dancing in front of my eyes. I brush my hair back impatiently, wish I had thought to bring a band. I’m rarely that organised, unfortunately.

The gathered police officers have carried on their conversation, albeit in a lower tone. It sounds like bees, buzzing just at the limits of my hearing. I should go home. I know I’m not supposed to be here. They know I’m not supposed to be here. But I stay, leaning against the car while my hair tangles in front of my face, because even standing here in the midsummer heat on the side of the M4 is better than going home. Especially tonight. I lean forward, peer down the bank. Can just about make out the rough shape of the body from here, a once-human form, roughly covered with a sheet. Spare a moment to wonder at the grotesqueness of my life; that this, with its death and its blue flashing lights, could come as a relief, a way to forget this day and this date.

One of the figures stands a little away from the others. I can’t see him properly, not well enough to make out his features. But I can see the way his back is curved, that there is a strange up–down motion in his shoulders, and I know that he is trying not to vomit. I wonder if he is new. If this is the first dead body that he has seen. Another figure detaches itself from the pack, walks along the grassy embankment that runs beside the now-closed motorway. Stands beside him. I strain to listen, wondering what he will say, if he will offer words of comfort or – I roll my eyes, even though there is no one there to see – if he will take the piss.

I’ve worked with the police for a long time. My money is on the latter.

They stand like that for a moment, then the second figure claps the newbie on the back, turns into the light. Looks up at me, his face briefly illuminated by the swirling lights. I wave. I swear I can hear the sigh from here. He turns, begins the long trek up the steep bank to see me.

I shouldn’t be here. Lydia, my editor at the
Swansea Times
, would like it, but I have learned over the years that the acceptabilities of human behaviour should rarely be judged based on the approval of one’s editor. Had I been a normal person, I would be at home now, surrounded by a loving family, a couple of . . . I don’t know – cats, maybe? I prefer cats to dogs. They are more self-sufficient. And I appreciate their disdain, the way they are able to look at people in a manner I have only dreamed of. Had I been a normal person, the last place I would want to be is standing above the motorway watching as the police peel a body from the tarmac. But then I have never pretended to be normal.

My mother wanted me to stay. I’d love to think that was because she had remembered, that she worried about me going home to an empty flat on today of all days, but that thought doesn’t sit easily, doesn’t gel with my stiff-upper-lip mother, who flits through life, never dwelling on its darkest passages. I had gone for our weekly dinner, just her, me and Ed – my old stepdad, as he keeps jokingly referring to himself. At least, I hope he’s joking. My mother had cooked a leg of lamb, some nice spring veg, which we ate in silence – distantly moored boats in a too-big harbour. She never mentioned the date, and so neither did I. Just ate my lamb and kept my mouth shut, like a good little girl.

‘I’ve made up the spare bed for you. Why don’t you stay? It would be like old times,’ my mother had said as I pulled my jacket on, collected my keys.

I didn’t answer for a minute, pretended to be struggling with the strap of my handbag. Wondered briefly which old times she was referring too, and why the hell she would think I would long for their return. ‘I should go home. I have to be in the newsroom early in the morning.’

She had nodded, grace in defeat. Has never really recovered from the shock of her daughter choosing journalism as a career, a high-flying job at the
Swansea Times
, instead of something stable, respectable. Accountancy perhaps. Sometimes I can hear her thinking the word ‘hack’, even though it is not something she would ever say. My mother is above such language. She leaned in, standing in their Anaglyptaed hallway, gave me the merest facsimile of a kiss, her cheek, doughy with pressed powder, lightly touching mine. Her perfume lapped against me, the same one that she has worn for ever, sweet and cloying, the smell of my childhood bedroom and stuffed animals and a funeral home with a bright mahogany coffin.

I had been driving along the A-road, still a good ten minutes from home. Was driving absurdly slowly, because better here, in this car, with the illusion of forward motion, than at home in my sparklingly empty flat where all life has ground to a halt, caught on the thorn of this day – the anniversary of my father’s death. Then I had seen the lights, had offered up a quick prayer to the gods of crime-reporting, had pulled in, movements clumsy in my haste.

The figure pulls himself up the last few steps with an effort. ‘Charlotte Solomon, do you ever sleep?’ Del has put on weight since we were in school together, has rounded out across the belly and the jowls. He is sweating with the climb, beads catching in the street light, rolling down the deep notches that have begun to form along the sides of his nose, down to his mouth. I think that if I listen hard enough I will hear the plop as they fall onto his fluorescent jacket.

‘Rarely. How are you, Del?’

His name isn’t Del. It’s Peter. But his father was a market trader and we went to a school more known for its television-viewing than its creativity. Hence, Del-boy.

He grins down at me, pulling at the collar of his shirt. ‘Fucking roasting. You see that climb?’

I glance down the bank towards the motorway and the body, back up at him. ‘Mmm. Steep.’ I move my stance slightly, tucking in behind him so that he blocks the breeze. There are often advantages to being five-foot-two. Wind cover not least amongst them. ‘So . . . wife okay?’

‘Yeah.’ He won’t look at me, because he figures that if he doesn’t look at me, then he won’t crack. ‘Due any day now. Like living with a bloody bear.’

‘I’m sure she feels so sorry for you, Del. I’m sure she’ll be telling you that, as she is giving birth to your child.’

‘Yeah, well . . . you know you’re not supposed to be here? Right?’

Yes.

‘No? I was just taking some air. Why shouldn’t I be here?’ I peer down the bank again. ‘Something going on? Besides, isn’t this Traffic’s patch? What’s a uniform sergeant like you doing here?’

Del looks at me, shakes his head. ‘You’re a pain in the arse, Charlie.’ Stuffs his hands in his pockets, hunching down low like he’s cold, even though I can still see the sweat coursing off him. ‘There’s a vacancy come up in Traffic. I’m thinking of transferring over. You know, fast cars and all that jazz. Of course, I pick tonight for my ride-along.’ He looks back down the bank, voice dropping. ‘Bloody typical. Look, you know I can’t talk.’

‘I know.’

‘The thing is . . . Fuck!’

That’s when I realise that there are tears mixed in with the sweat.

‘Shit, Del. I’m sorry.’ I reach out a hand, awkwardly pat him on his luminous arm, wish like hell I had just got in the damn car. ‘Ah . . . You, ah, you okay?’

Don’t tell me, don’t tell me.

He shakes his head, brushing a hand across his eyes, up over his forehead. ‘God, it’s hot.’

I nod, happy to pretend right along with him.

‘I . . .’ He glances around him. I feel absurdly like I’m in some low-budget film noir. ‘I’m not telling you this. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘I mean . . . I’m not – it’s not cos you’re a reporter. It’s just, y’know, cos you knew her an’ all.’

My stomach flips and suddenly I’m sixteen again, and the phone is ringing, cutting through the early-morning darkness, and I am trying not to fall down as I hear the words – Your father is dead – and my world unravels around me. I cough, clear my throat. ‘Who, Del?’

He looks down the bank, not at me, voice dropping to an almost-whisper. ‘It’s Emily. Emily Wilson?’

I stare up at him, take a step back, trying to reorient myself. ‘You’re kidding?’

Del shakes his head. ‘Wish I was.’

We grew up on a narrow street – Emily raised four doors down from me, the houses bunched together like they are sheltering from some incoming storm. In the summer, the trees that line one side take over, drooping heavy branches over the skinny road, so that it seems like you are running through a tunnel. In the winter, the leaves die back and you can see the sea. Just about. It is a street built for a different time, before every family had two cars, satellite TV and conservatories. Our childhood games revolved around the cars, the way they parked, tilted like a row of drunken men, half on the pavement, half off. We would play hide-and-seek behind them, would kick footballs, waiting to see how long before an irate owner came out to scold us. Emily wasn’t a huge fan of that game.