Free Try Not to Breathe by Holly Seddon Page A

break.”
    He’d been running late as it was but he didn’t say no. That was the part of the story she loved to hear again and again.
    They had paninis and bottles of beer in the Wetherspoons pub near the shop. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before, or since. It was like a cheesy film and he’d not stopped smiling for the rest of the day, partly in bewilderment.
    Fiona had listened to bands he’d never heard of, and would push CDs into his car stereo when he picked her up from work. Bands with complicated, ironic names that made him feel out of touch.
    “You’re such an old man,” she’d say, kissing him on the cheek.
    “How did a cool kid like you end up in a town like this?” he’d asked her on their first evening “date,” to the bowling alley, where teenagers were throwing chips at one another in the next lane.
    “Uni,” she said, sipping beer from the bottle as she sat back down after toppling three pins. “I did my bachelors degree at Rochester and then moved here for my shitty job. Don’t get me wrong, I’d hate to live here forever but Tunbridge Wells is all right. It’s quite arty, not that far from London, the rents are reasonable.”
    “You’re not as cool as you look,” he told her. Laughing, she’d acted mock-offended.
    “No, I’m definitely not.” She’d smiled and rested her head on his shoulder as she took another big gulp of Rolling Rock.
    She’d stopped acting quite so cool after that too. The flame-red hair that he loved was replaced by auburn hair with highlights and lowlights and other things he half listened to her talk about. She looked less like a teenager then, more sensible. He was disappointed and relieved.
    She moved into his one-bedroom flat and they spent the weekends and evenings in bed. She made him laugh from his gut. Almost nothing was off the table and they talked and laughed so late that he was often tardy for work despite living five minutes’ drive away.
    Actually, Fiona was late for work constantly, because she hated her job intensely. She’d made a mistake, she said, doing a marketing degree. She’d applied because it was a sensible thing to do, not because she wanted to do it. She had wanted to do graphic design, be a “proper designer,” but her parents had talked her out of it. So she ended up doing an approximation of the job she wanted, and it seemed to cause her a lot of bitterness.
    “I wish I had ambition, or a dream or something,” he told her one night as they quipped over cheap TV and drank even cheaper wine on the sofa. “I’m so jealous of you for knowing what you want to do.”
    She’d laughed sadly. “I don’t know,” she’d said, “I think it’s worse to know what you want and not be able to get it. I envy your crushing lack of ambition.”
    “What should I want to be when I grow up?” he’d asked her, mostly joking.
    “You’re fine as you are,” she’d said. And kissed him for a long time.
    A few months later, when he’d walked in on her crying in the bath, he’d offered to lend her the money for a post-graduate graphic design course.
    “I’ve been saving money for years for no real reason. I’d like to use it for something that matters so much to someone who matters so much to me.”
    She was speechless for several minutes. For the first time since he’d met her, she stopped talking.
    “I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay you back,” she’d said eventually.
    “Then you’ll have to stay with me for the long haul,” he’d said, smiling.
    —
    Jacob pulled into the car park near the old print shop with more force than he expected. He didn’t have long before his next appointment and he needed to buy a present for Fiona.

A thick, instant sweat coated her skin and Amy became slowly aware of her own hair—wet and sharp—digging into her skin and eyes. A pathetic discomfort compared to her broken ankle and smashed skull, but it was this scratching pain that made her the most desperate.
    She