Free One Minute to Midnight by Amy Silver

could meet you for lunch though. Really sorry to cancel at such late notice. Please give me a call when you get this message.’
    My heart lifts a little. It’s like hearing you have a snow day when you’re supposed to have a test at school. A temporary reprieve. With the traffic still stationary, I ring Annie back to say that lunch will be fine. Browns at one o’clock.
     
    By the time I actually get into Oxford and find somewhere to park the car, it’s after ten o’clock, so it’s a good thing Annie had that meeting. I have a few hours to kill before lunch, but the good news is that the sky over Oxford is clear; it’s a bright, crisp winter day, the perfect sort for wandering around one of England’s loveliest cities. All the more so out of term time: with no students and not too much traffic, Oxford is a joy.
    I park at the shopping centre near the station and wander along George Street into town. Past Balliol, past Trinity, the Sheldonian theatre and the Bodleian Library, I turn right at the King’s Arms and walk through the heart of the university. On every street, around every corner, there are ghosts. Alex and I, reeling along Holywell Street, singing at the tops of our voices, arms linked, kebabs in hand, after a long, boozy afternoon in the Turf Tavern. Alex, stripped of her ball gown, right down to bra and knickers, jumping off Magdalen Bridge – in clear defiance of University rules – on a freezing May morning in our second year. Despite myself, I can’t help but smile. I found myself wandering along, laughing out loud, occasional passing tourists shooting bemused glances in my direction.
    I turn back, ending up, inevitably, walking down Parks Road towards our old college. There we were again, Alex and I, sunbathing in the gardens of Rhodes House or drinking wine in the university parks that sweltering summer that Julian came to visit, watching the boys play cricket. I reach the solid, dark oak doors of the college and, butterflies quivering in my belly, step inside.
    ‘Can I help you?’ A porter emerges from the lodge, a frown fixed upon his face.
    ‘I just wanted to take a look …’
    ‘College is closed to visitors,’ he says abruptly, indicating the sign to that effect.
    ‘I used to go here. This is my old college.’
    ‘Closed to visitors,’ he repeats. ‘It’s open in term time.’
    ‘I just wanted …’
    ‘We’re closed,’ he snaps, virtually pushing me out of the door. The porters always were miserable old bastards. As I walk slowly around the college, back towards St Giles, I have another flashback, of Alex and I getting a bollocking from the head porter for making a racket when we came back to college one night, and of her, hoiking up her skirt, bending over and showing him her arse in reply. I start to giggle again. With everything that’s happened over the past couple of years, sometimes I forget how happy we were. Back then, it was impossible to be miserable when Alex was around.
    There’s a coffee cart on the corner of Keble Road and St Giles – a new innovation, that certainly hadn’t been there in my day. I buy myself a large latte and find myself a quiet spot to drink it on a bench in the graveyard of St Giles Church. Protected from the wind by a line of firs, and with the sun on my face, it feels quite warm. I lean back on the bench, close my eyes and try not to think about the day ahead. After a while, I couldn’t really say how long, a shadow looms over me. I open my eyes.
    ‘Are you all right there?’ It’s the vicar.
    ‘Sorry,’ I say getting to my feet. ‘I suppose you don’t encourage loitering.’
    He laughs. He has a broad, open face and dreadful teeth, yellow and gapped. ‘Not at all. Loiter all you like.’ He gestures for me to sit back down on the bench and takes a seat beside me. ‘Bit warmer today, isn’t it?’
    ‘Mmm-hmm.’
    ‘Are you visiting?’
    ‘Just here for the day.’
    ‘Have you seen the sights? It’s quite a climb, but