There but for The Read Online Free Page B

said, soon as the market picks up sufficiently. Eric will be home at three. I know he’d like to talk to you.
    You mean, you want me to come back here again at three? Anna said on the doorstep.
    If you would be so kind, Genevieve Lee said. Just after would be ideal. Ten past.
    The thing is, Anna said, if I go now I can catch the less expensive train home, but if I stay it’ll cost me twice as much.
    We appreciate it, Genevieve Lee said. It’s very kind. Thanks very much indeed.
    She went to shut the door.
    Just one thing, Anna said.
    Genevieve Lee paused the half-closed door.
    It’s the Anna K thing, Anna said.
    I’m sorry? Genevieve Lee said.
    In the email. Dear Anna K. And again, up there, Anna said. You called me Anna K. It’s not my name. My name’s Anna H. Hardie.
    Genevieve held up her hand. She backed into the hall. She came back with a black jacket. She took a mobile phone out of its inside pocket and held it up.
    It’s in the memory, she said.
    Then she dropped the phone into the jacket pocket again and threw the jacket through the door straight at Anna so that Anna couldn’t not catch it. She spoke sweetly.
    You are now responsible, she said. When this is all over I do not want, and will not accept, I’m making it clear right now, any accusations about usage of any bank or credit cards which happen to have been left in a jacket which happened to be left in my house.
    Then she shut the door, click. Anna stood on the doorstep.
    Eric and Gen. Gen and Eric. Jesus. She’d invite them to her own special annual dinner party, the one she annually gave for generics. Who knew what was going on between Genevieve Lee and Miles Garth, or Eric Lee and Miles Garth, or their daughter, or whoever, and Miles Garth? Who cared? Who cared whether Miles Garth had invented the perfect rent-free way in a recession to be regularly fed, at least for a while? Who cared why he’d chosen to shut himself in a hateful room in a hateful place? She was going home. Well, to what passed, for her, for home right now.
    She turned on her heel on the pavement in the direction of the station.
    The child was at her side, skipping.
    Tunnel? the child said.
    Should you not be in school? Anna said.
    Nope, the child said. Closed early. Swine flu. You talk in a really funny accent.
    Thanks, Anna said.
    I like it, the child said. I don’t dislike it.
    A long time ago I was Scottish, Anna said.
    Been there, the child said. Done that. I mean, I liked it there, man. I didn’t dislike it. Therefore, I’d go again. There was a great number of trees in it.
    She handed Anna something. It was a piece of pencil, the pencil Genevieve Lee had broken in two, back in the lounge. The child held up the other piece.
    Thanks, Anna said. But you got the end with the point. That’s not fair.
    Yeah, but you are an adult and can afford to buy a sharpener at, like, a stationer’s, or in a supermarket, the child said skipping ahead and talking to the rhythm of her own skipping. Or just take, a sharpener, and put it in, your pocket if, you wanted it, and therefore then, you wouldn’t have, to pay at all, because you know, pencils should always, come with sharpeners, because what use, is pencils without, a sharpener? We should all, be able to, help ourselves to, free sharpeners.
    Now that’s what I call anarchy, Anna said.
    And that’s when she remembered.
    (Europe. Land of InterRail. Place known as Abroad. Visited by Cliff Richard and some boys and girls twenty years ago on their double decker bus, though right now, at the very start of the 1980s, Cliff Richard is singing about a girl who’s missing, has maybe been murdered, used to room on the second floor, left no forwarding address, left nothing but a name on a payphone wall.
    Europe. Place of the Grand Tour for fifty British teenagers from up and down the country—of which Anna is the one from furthest north and the only Scottish one—who’ve each won a place in a publicity event organized by a British bank