Free One Minute to Midnight by Amy Silver Page A

I’d recommend you try the top of St Mary’s tower. There’s a marvellous view.’
    ‘Oh, I’ve been before. I actually studied here. A long, long time ago.’
    He smiles at me. ‘It can’t have been that long ago. You have good memories of the place?’
    ‘Wonderful,’ I say, and I can feel tears pricking my eyes. Ridiculous. I must be pre-menstrual. I grab a tissue from my bag. ‘Sorry,’ I say, embarrassed, ‘for some reason coming back to Oxford always makes me nostalgic – you know, lost youth, missed opportunities, all that.’
    ‘Lost youth?’ he laughs out loud. ‘I’m sixty-three.’
    ‘You know what I mean. It’s just … when you come here, when you’re that age – eighteen, nineteen, you know – you’re so convinced that you can do anything , that you will do something amazing, that you’re invincible. It’s ridiculous, obviously, but I just miss the way that felt.’
    ‘The way you feel before you learn to compromise,’ the vicar says with a wry smile. ‘Before real life gets you.’
    ‘Exactly. And I miss the friends I made here.’
    ‘You don’t see them any more?’
    ‘Some of them. Not all.’
    ‘Well, you should do something about that. You should never be careless about friendship. You will find, the older you get, that new friendships do not come around quite as often as they once did. You should treasure those you have, protect them fiercely.’ He nods sagely to himself. ‘Plus, these days you have all those social networking sites, don’t you? Spacebook, Myface, all that sort of thing. Makes it much easier to track people down.’
    We sit in silence for a moment, and then he gets up to leave.
    ‘My father has cancer,’ I blurt out all of a sudden, and he sits back down right away.
    ‘Oh my dear,’ he says, placing his hand on my arm, ‘I’m so very sorry. What’s his prognosis?’
    ‘I think it’s okay,’ I say. ‘I’m not really sure. We don’t talk. I haven’t seen him for years.’
     
    By the time I get to the restaurant, Annie Gardner is already there. A small, slight woman with a rather severe dark bob, she rises to her feet as I approach and holds out her hand for me to shake.
    ‘I’m sorry about this morning,’ she says, her voice so soft I can barely hear it, ‘it was unavoidable.’ She looks nervous and uncomfortable; she doesn’t quite meet my eye.
    ‘Not at all,’ I reply, beaming at her, ‘gave me a chance to wander around a bit. I haven’t been here for ages, so it was great to have the opportunity to see the sights again.’ Already, I’m a little too jovial, a little too eager to make her like me.
    We order lunch – a salad for her, fish and chips for me.
    ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ I ask her.
    ‘Oh no, I have to go back to work this afternoon, and I’m useless if I’ve had a drink at lunchtime.’
    ‘Oh go on,’ I say, cajoling, ‘just one?’ The more relaxed she is, the more likely I am to be able to talk her into this. Reluctantly, she agrees, and I launch into my pitch. I tell her how helpful the programme will be, how it will give her the opportunity to talk to qualified counsellors who can really help her to heal her family.
    She shakes her head sadly. ‘I just don’t know,’ she says, ‘I don’t know if it’s the right thing. You don’t understand …’
    ‘The thing is Annie,’ I jump in, interrupting her, ‘I do understand. I know how you feel.’
    She chuckles. She’s very pretty when she smiles. ‘I doubt that.’
    ‘No, I mean, I haven’t been in exactly your situation. But … my husband was unfaithful to me.’
    She looks up at me, quizzically. I can tell she isn’t quite sure whether to believe me or not. This was it, the critical point in my plan: the way to get Annie onside was to show her that she wasn’t alone. I knew what she was going through. I’d been there myself, and I’d survived. I knew how she could come out of it the other side, her marriage and dignity