Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [90]
There’d been another oversight too; she’d arrived in Bryn’s car and now she was cold, with no underwear and no jacket but, more importantly, he could still drive and she had no hope of reaching her flat first.
As the moon vanished behind a shifting cloud, she could only inch her way forward until it reappeared. She needed to run, but not wearing these shoes, and not in the pitch black.
She finally emerged on the path beside the river and then hurried towards the illuminated restaurants on Magdalene Bridge, wondering whether she should hail a taxi. But the lights were only on while staff cleaned up, and the customers were long gone. She glanced up and down the street in case a cab was parked up, waiting there for a job from its dispatcher. Nothing but an already occupied car, whose driver and passengers all stared at her as they rolled past.
She glanced down at her deliberately tarty skirt and mud-caked shoes, and imagined what they must be thinking. She hurried away from the kerb, realizing that any cab driver would be disgusted at taking her such a short distance and, anyway, the wait itself looked as if it would be longer than the journey.
As she moved away from the centre towards home, she kept to the inner side of the pavement, checking regularly over her shoulder and ducking into doorways as soon as she saw the beams of car headlights.
Victoria rented a small flat in the annexe of a large Edwardian house. The approach to it was therefore impressive, even if her flat itself wasn’t. A waist-high wall enclosed the gardens, like an immovable girdle keeping the conifers pinned up against the house. Movement sensors controlled security lighting, and she could now see its familiar glare from a hundred yards away. She kept low and close to the wall, peering over it between the low straggling branches.
Bryn’s old Ford waited in the driveway. Lights off. Engine silent.
Victoria hugged herself and waited. A passing taxi flashed its lights on to her, but then drove on. She wondered whether someone would think she was loitering and perhaps call the police.
Five minutes later, she heard the Zodiac’s engine start up. But it didn’t move and, several minutes on, she heard the fan running, kicking warm air into the interior and clearing the windows. Bryn was planning to wait.
She lit a cigarette, not a conscious decision, just one instinctively made by her agitated fingers. She drew a couple of quick breaths, with her eyes shut, and opened them again just as the taxi returned. This time he slowed to a stop and rolled down his electric window.
‘All right, miss?’
‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘Just waiting for someone.’
‘You don’t want a lift then?’
‘No.’ She shook her head firmly, and he pulled away. Before he’d travelled fifty yards, she wished she’d said yes. She watched the taxi’s tail lights shrink to dots. And she desperately wanted to be somewhere else.
She felt in her bag, to check for her purse and phone. Both there. What the hell, she had the money, and it made sense to spend the night in a hotel.
Fuck Bryn, she thought, and she pictured getting warm and clean in the bath, then sliding between smooth cotton hotel sheets and drifting off to sleep, while he was condemned to sleep upright in that aging piece of scrap.
She turned and strode back towards the city centre, intending to check in at the Doubletree Hotel. She’d stayed there once after being taken to Grantchester and back by punt. Before Bryn and Lorna, and all of this mess. She’d had a romantic night, they’d ordered dinner in their room and watched the last punts return just before sunset. Then they’d cuddled in bed and watched Sleepless in Seattle on the TV.
A night of escapism was what she needed now. Just