Chương 1: Chapter One: The Last Night of Cora A. Wright

The worst thing about being stabbed was the timing. Cora had counted, over the past eight months, a considerable number of things that were going to happen to her at the worst of times: like the defunding notice in January requiring her to move back across the pond, or that one Tuesday in March when she'd sat in a terribly expensive restaurant for forty minutes eating a sad sandwich and completely revising her understanding of how her life was going to end.

She had become, through extensive practice, extremely good at managing bad times. She had not expected, however, to be applying this skill at ten forty-seven on a November night with a paper bag of Malbec under her arm and four hours until her flight. The street was the kind London kept tucked between the lit ones, three streetlamps, a row of Victorian terraces with their curtains drawn against the cold, the smell of damp stone and exhaust. November had settled in properly now, wet and dark.

Somewhere a late night bus groaned on the main road and then was gone. The only sounds left should have been her own footsteps and the clean, slightly smug roll of her new suitcase wheels. He'd been outside the flat, Cora thought, tracking the man behind her without turning. I can't seem to lose him. He seems too familiar with the neighbourhood. The street was empty. She'd turned that way because it was well-lit and she had hopes of running into someone. Anyone. Bad luck. It was just her. And him.

Her phone was at forty-three percent. Could she risk putting things down and getting it out of her purse? It would take time calling the police. What if he noticed before she could and that spooked him? Cora really didn't want to break the wine bottle on a run.

It was, supposedly, French, a 2019, purchased from the liquor store near her former workplace, because booking a one-way ticket to Lisbon had felt like the kind of thing that deserved a ceremony, even if the ceremony was just her and a plastic cup and a window overlooking planes flying in and out. She had, for the first time in approximately eight months, a new plan. She didn't want it ruined. Not for this, not for some stranger. It was not, in the scheme of plans, a very complicated plan, however. Fly to Lisbon.

Find the yellow tram photograph she'd been meaning to see for three years and hadn't. Eat at the Michelin restaurant she'd booked weeks ago with an optimism that had surprised even her. Call the friend in the Algarve she kept meaning to call. See the quality of November light on the Atlantic that she'd read about once and pushed for later, never knowing that later needed to happen soon, if ever. Behind her, his footsteps adjusted. Right, she thought, a strange vacancy filling her body. This is happening.

Cora turned around because she'd rather face her fears than have them at her back. Up close, he seemed even more familiar. She'd seen this face before. It was something in the set of the jaw, or in the eyes spaced slightly too close together. She could almost remember noticing him outside her flat on a Thursday, again on a Monday, once more from the window at two in the morning and ignored it, because she had been busy managing bigger problems and had apparently miscalculated her chances of dying via stalker.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all.

"I think you dropped something." She had not dropped anything. Her hands were quite full. The pretence was so thin it was almost insulting, and something about the insult made her angry more than frightened.

"I don't think I did," she said, letting go of her luggage. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. He stepped forward. She stepped back. The paper bag crinkled under her arm. In hindsight, she should have screamed first. It could have woken people up in their flats. Then, she could have put into practice the teachings of a university self-defence seminar long ago: when you hit, you go for the eyes.

But she'd spent considerably more time in libraries than gyms and her actual response, when he grabbed her arm and she pulled away and he grabbed again with a grip that was wrong in a way she didn't want to name, was to swing the bottle. It connected with the side of his head. The sound was extremely satisfying. He went down. The Malbec went everywhere: wine across the pavement, glass in pieces, a sharp copper smell mixing with November air.

She stood panting and holding the broken neck of the bottle and thought, briefly: wow, that worked. He didn't stay down. That was the part the seminar hadn't covered. He came back up with his face dark with wine and blood, and the thing in his hand caught the street light and her brain said knife in a very quiet, very clear voice that should have been neither quiet, nor clear. She made to run, but she only managed a few steps as he was faster, and grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.

The pain arrived late, which she understood was shock. Once, twice, three times. She was already falling before she felt it, going down slowly as if she were in a dream, one hand catching the edge of the pavement and the other still holding the neck of the bottle as though it mattered. His footsteps receded quickly. He'd panicked. She'd been enough trouble that he ran. Good, she thought with a hysterical laugh. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt as much as she'd expected. Nothing seemed to hold a candle to chemo.

The pavement was cold through her clothes. The wine had spread across the stone in a dark pool and it mixed with blood from her wounded middle. She watched it for a long moment and thought: that's actually quite beautiful, which told her fairly clearly what state she was in. The warmth left faster than she expected. Cora had thought a lot about death and dying, ever since that accursed meeting with her oncologist in March.

She had walked out and taken the tube and sat in a so-called fancy restaurant and made plans: she had, the specialists had said, perhaps a year if things went well, fewer if they didn't. For eight months she had managed it alone. Had taken the defunding of her lab gracefully, stopped fighting it. Went home. Took care of herself. She had filled her prescriptions and lined them on the kitchen counter in a careful row. Made appointments and kept them.

Read everything she could find about what was coming, because she was a scientist and converting uncertainty into information felt, if not better, then at least like something she was doing rather than something being done to her. She had said fine when people asked, in a tone that invited no further questions, which was near enough true because she was still functional and still managing and still mostly fine. She was just dying.

The truth, which she had not said aloud to anyone, was that she had been lonely in a very specific way: she had arranged her life so efficiently there was no room in it for anyone else to help. She had been busy, then ill, then both at once, which left very little space for conversations that begin with I need to tell you something. And when she no longer could manage it alone? Booked a ticket to Lisbon. Stopped waiting for the right moment to do the things she wanted to do. The ticket had been a one-way.

The time was finite anyway, better spend it on the living part. Now here she was. Not in Lisbon. Not on the plane. But there on a cold pavement with her non-squeaky suitcase standing three feet away, her phone at forty-three percent but with no one to call, and a restaurant reservation on Friday she was no longer going to keep. The wine, she noted with some hilarity. I didn't even get to drink it. Bought for the occasion. Carried this far. Only to end up smashed against a man's skull.

All those plans for how she wanted to die and she didn't even get to drink to the occasion, let alone go on the actual vacation. The things she had wanted to do and see. That old friend she hadn't called yet but was going to, genuinely this time, first thing when she landed. How ironic. How hilarious. How mad. She wouldn't cry. She had promised, that when it ended, she wouldn't cry.

Long minutes passed and the darkish blue of the night sky shifted between colours until she could no longer tell the stars apart from the city lights. The cold left and the city left and the weight of everything left. Oh, she thought. And then there was nothing at all.