Installment number 2

I awoke early, before the sun had risen. Good, I thought. I dragged the suitcase down to the car and threw it in the boot. I ran back upstairs when I realised I had forgotten my laptop and ran into my neighbour.

“Hi Fiona. Going on a trip?” he asked.
“No!” I responded, “Why would you think that?”
“Um... the suitcase and the early hour. Sorry – just thought you were going somewhere. Didn't mean anything by it.”
“Sorry – yeah, I'm headed out of town. Family stuff. Just not awake yet.”
“Ok. Hope it works out for you.”
“Thanks.”

I opened the flat door and walked in, closing the door behind me. I hit my hand against my forehead and swore under my breath. Ok, ok, calm down, Fi, it's ok.

I picked up my laptop and headed back to the car. One thing was for sure – I could not go anywhere near family now. Too many people thought that I would. I mean, I guess that would have been the case anyway, but even more so now.

I set off with the thought that I'd go wherever my nose led me, then remembered that I needed money first. I decided to try a cash point and, if there was no trouble with that, I could safely go into the bank.

I pulled up near the alliance and leicester in stratford and walked to the cash point outside it. It let me withdraw £200 with no problem, so I walked in and queued up. There was only one teller working and the man in front of me was trying, in broken english, to send money to somewhere in the middle east. Eventually, he either managed this, or gave up. I couldn't tell. I walked up to the teller.

“Hello. How can I help you?”
“I'd like to withdraw £750 please.”
“Ok, do you have your card there?”

I handed over my card. The teller looked at something on their screen and frowned. She told me that she just needed to ask someone something and I started to feel my heart beat harder in my chest. I looked at the door, which had a sign next to it telling me that it had an automatic locking system in case of hold ups. I felt my breathing grow fast and shallow and the teller returned.

“Do you have any photo ID on you?”

I handed over my driving license, still eyeing the door, wondering how breakable the glass was. Perhaps if I threw myself at the window rather than trying the door, I could break right through and make it to my car before the police arrived.

“That's fine. It's just that there's been some suspicious activity on your account.”
“Sus- suspicious?”
“Yes, you've withdrawn a lot of cash in the last couple of days.”
“Guitar!” I shouted before I knew why, “I- I'm buying a guitar and I needed cash. Then realised it would be easier to come in.”

I knew my eyes were wide open and my speech was weird sounding at best but the teller just laughed.

“That's fine. We just like to check.”

She asked me to enter my pin code, gave me a form to sign, then handed me a stack of £20 notes with one £10 on top. I took deliberate steps toward my car, determined not to run but desperate to get as far away from there as I could.

Once I got in the car, I decided to head west. Going from Bethnal Green to Stratford implied I was headed east, so west made most sense. I drove round the north part of the city, avoiding the congestion charging zone not, as was usually the case, because of the cost, but because I didn't want my registration number, or more accurately, Kelly's registration number, coming up on any database where it didn't belong.

That was another worry in my mind. I was in Kelly's car. I didn't really know what I could do to switch cars. I guess I could steal one, but I wouldn't have a clue how to start with that, so that was probably out. Trading it in left a paper trail. I decided that, as soon as possible, I would try to steal some number plates and switch them over. Hopefully, I'd get them from someone who was as unaware as I was and didn't know their registration number, so wouldn't think too much about it if it were different.

I passed through King's Cross, annoyed by the slowness of the traffic despite the fact I had nowhere to be and no timetable on which to get there. I decided I'd head towards Oxford, for no reason other than the fact that I'd been there a couple of times and it was pretty. Well, and it was west.

I put into my GPS that I wanted to head to St Giles in Oxford. The reassuring, yet irritatingly chipper, voice on my GPS informed me that I wanted to go forward for 2 miles, then go straight on.

I hit the motorway a little over an hour later. It was strangely liberating being able to drive fast now. It was as if the more distance I could put between myself and Mile End hospital, the less the problem really existed. Like, if I could get far enough away before the sun set, she wouldn't be dead anymore. I knew this was ridiculous, but everything I felt was ridiculous. I didn't even know why I was running. I couldn't stay on the run for my whole life and running would just make it all look worse. I simply couldn't explain why I was running. I just knew I had to do it.

I arrived on the outskirts of Oxford at around 11:30am so reset the co-ordinates on the GPS to take me to the centre of Cardiff and carried on driving. By about 2pm, I realised I hadn't eaten at all since I left the hospital, so I pulled in at a motorway service station.

I've always liked motorway service stations. This, I am aware, is unusual to the point of odd, but I make no apology for it. I like the anonymity. I like the subtle differences that make them unique and the mass produced feel that makes them all the same too. I once heard that the quality of a service station could be judged entirely on its men's toilets and its egg and cress sandwich. I wasn't about to test out the former, but I picked up an egg and cress sandwich as I always did when I went to motorway service stations. It was almost like part of a ritual I performed. I would eat my sandwich and drink my hugely over-priced drink or, if it were a better planned trip, the drink I'd snuck in in my pocket, and I would stare out the window watching the cars pass on the motorway.

I once went to a service station with a friend who convinced me to take my egg and cress sandwich and my over-priced drink outside into the sunshine. It felt altogether wrong, but she was pretty and I was smitten. She ran around the outside area while I ate my sandwich and drank my drink and I watched her and smiled. Later, we went on with our journey and it ended outside her flat with her telling me that she'd never meant to lead me on and that she just didn't think of me that way. It was an all too familiar ending to an evening, but the trip was fun while it lasted. I don't even recall where we went that day.

So, I sat and I stared at the cars passing on the motorway and my thoughts turned to Kelly. To that day when I expected her to tell me that she'd never meant to lead me on and that she just didn't think of me that way, but instead had taken my hand and led me to her bedroom and slowly undressed me, kissing the newly exposed skin as she did and we had made love and I had awoken expecting her to be apalled at what she had done, but instead she was watching me as I woke, smiling.

And now she was lying on a slab in a cold morgue with no comfort and no-one to smile at her as she slept, and I had done that. Me.

I got back in the car and headed on my way.