Sarah 2

They put her coat on over her pyjamas and stuff her feet into trainers. Neil ties her laces for her, as if she’s a child being dressed for an outing. Then her feet start to work, one foot in front of the other, out of the front door, stepping over the tree roots that vein the pavement running down their little side street. The cracks and swells in the tarmac on display under the gloss of fresh rain.

There is rain in the air too, it washes against their faces and leaves them gasping. Sarah’s feet are still working; she marvels at their dogged progress. Lucy and Neil are talking to each other, huddled deep in their raincoats. Sarah catches snatches of their conversation: Lucy telling stories about her class and Neil laughing over some shared memory. Sarah feels like a lunatic, stumbling alongside them, borne onward by her marching feet. Her head is busy, but confused. The rain gets into her eyes so that she has to squint and cold leaches past her cuffs, her waistband and her neckline, penetrating her flesh in a deep shiver. Her mouth forms a word and drops it into the sharp wind that rattles their raincoats.

‘What did you say?’ Lucy pulls her hood to one side and steps closer to Sarah.

‘Cold. I’m cold.’

‘Yes, it is chilly and it was so lovely earlier on.’

‘You told me.’

‘What?’

They keep walking, taking the turn onto the main road. Sarah can no longer hear the other two; she concentrates on the cars ripping through the rain. Tear after tear. She doesn’t want to be seen. She digs her hands into her pockets and lowers her head so that the hood slips down over her face. There’s a piece of pencil in one of her pockets; she works it between her fingers. Here is the old defence. She scribbles onto her pocket’s lining. Unable to watch the pencil’s progress, the letters lurch and scrabble, words overlap to form nothing more than a muddy scrawl. But there is comfort in the action. She thinks of her other missives hidden in secret places around the rented house: the underside of the cutlery drawer became a canvas; she delivered scraps of paper through a tear in the dark green sofa and spent the past six days nesting on their familiar crunch; before she’d stopped going into work, she’d made use of the old till rolls, winding out the unspent paper and printing her words along the remaining length before tossing it into the bin; she’d even crept into Lucy’s room whilst she was away at work to vandalise the backs of her lesson plans. This was how her fear found its voice. This was Sarah’s therapy. It wasn’t helping much.

‘Sarah!’

They were talking to her. She was caught again.

‘Do you want anything?’ Lucy spelt the words out, stretching her mouth, as if Sarah was an idiot.

They were at the shops. Sarah was out of the house and standing on the high street. Her feet were still, heavy blocks holding her in place.

‘I need to go home.’

‘Jesus, Sarah, we just got here. It’ll only take a couple of minutes and I can wait with you if you want. Neil, you don’t mind going in by yourself, do you?’

‘It’s all right. I can wait by myself.’

Lucy and Neil duck into the shop, taking Sarah’s request for cigarettes with them. She has no money left to offer them, but they don’t mention it. Neil stopped just before he went in to lay a hand on Sarah’s arm and ask if she was sure that she would be OK. They are being kind. Sarah turns the pencil over in her pocket and digs the lead into the pad of her thumb; the blunt point offers nothing more than a dull irritation. They are being so kind. The rain grows more insistent, sizzling and spitting on the roofs of the parked cars. Sarah turns to the postcards tacked to the shop window, reading the lists of flatmates required, old furniture needing new homes and cats missing from theirs. She hides her face against the glass, her back to the road. She hopes that she will not be seen.