Next Friday Mrs MacReady still hasn’t come back to her flat, and I wonder if she ever will. I hope she doesn’t hate me for calling the police. I’ve been in that flat, with its bare floorboards and crumpled newspapers; I know all she had left was her independence.
I go to the gym as usual, and it does the trick, like it always does. I don’t know if it’s the exercise or the music videos on the TV screens, but when I’m in there it’s like another world: no worries, just thoughts. I think about Ellen, but it’s not a sad kind of longing like it has been all week, just a gentle happiness that I got to meet her.
And then I see her. She walks in like a dancer, all cool and sporty in her Nike pants and vest top, so slender they drape as much as they cling. She smiles when she sees me on the exerci
