Page 126 of No Safe Place
Andy took a deep breath. ‘David said that was okay. People with hay fever are sensitive to dust and pollen, and I might always have a sensitivity to noise. It makes my chest go tight and my heart races, my palms sweat – I might not be able to control thatphysicalresponse. All I can control is how I react to it.
‘Do you know I used to pray that one day I’d go deaf?’ Andy’s eyes flew open, wet with tears. ‘How fucked up is that? How selfish?’
It chimed with something Callum had said. He’d called himself selfish, too.
‘What happened on the hill, Andrew?’ Field asked, gently.
‘Even all these years later …’ his voice was barely a whisper‘… I still do what David taught me. I was anxious that night – I can’t even remember why now – and I wanted to put my headphones on. Cancel the noise out. But I didn’t let myself. I sat with the anxiety. Let myself feel it.’
They were inching closer, Field felt. Riley was rapt.
She added a line to the timeline:Friday 00.00 a.m.
‘Sometimes you have to let yourself get anxious,’ he said. His shoulders were so hunched, so clenched, that he must be in physical pain. ‘You’ve got to prove to yourself that you canlistento the noise and not block it out, and even though you’ll be anxious, you’ll be okay.
‘So that’s what I was doing. And that’s why I heard them coming.’ A sob escaped him. ‘David saved my life. Again.’
Field gave him a second to wipe his eyes.
‘I need us to go through that again, Andy. Step by step, if you can.’
Chapter 89
Sunday | Evening
Andy
Andy tried to describe it to the detectives – that moment on the hill, before it all happened.
He’d almost convinced himself that he was imagining the footsteps, that it was anxiety playing tricks on him, that he was hearing his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.
But he’d got up off the bench and spun round and seen the slight figure, hood up, knife in hand.
‘I asked what they wanted,’ he said, looking up at Field. ‘I assumed they were going to mug me. Wanted my phone or something.’
He focused on Field’s stern face. The flecks of grey at her temples, the studious expression. If he listened, and he always listened, he could hear the rustle of her starched white shirt.
‘It was like something out of a film. She circled the bench, and I was edging away—’
‘She?’
He hesitated. ‘I think it was a girl. I mean, it could have been a small guy, but they moved like a woman.’
Field nodded for him to continue.
‘I kept my eyes on the knife and kept asking: “What do you want? What do you want?”, but she didn’t say anything, and then she … ran at me.’
It had happened quickly, and he was embarrassed. Someone his size shouldn’t be scared of someone so small. If he’d had his wits about him, if he hadn’t been so bloody anxious when it happened—
‘She lunged at me with the knife, and she must have cut my arm.’ He held it up, then felt stupid. ‘To be honest, I didn’t even feel it, I just kept stepping backwards and then I tripped and fell and—’
The male detective was taking notes without looking down at the paper.
He needed them to believe him. The story had seemed too strange to report to police, had happened too quickly, and now speaking it out loud it sounded ridiculous, made up.
‘Someone came round the corner, and she ran for it, sprinted past them. I got up and walked away and it was only when I got home that I realised I’d been—’
Stabbed.He couldn’t say the word – it sounded too melodramatic.
