By about midnight Brenda was tired. The adrenaline was spent, the anticipation, the buzz of what was intended to be a shortlived life of crime was fading. A sodium orange glow was spreading out towards her, beckoning her on far and far away from the darkness. She needed a bed for the night, somewhere with a car park visible from the road, so that the police would see it. Brenda pulled into a petrol station to ponder what to do next and how to do it. It didn’t take long to work out that there was a whole handbag full of possibilities sitting right beside her. But no, rummaging through a stranger’s personal items was not part of the plan. And yet, Brenda reasoned, the plan wasn’t really working as intended, so perhaps it was time to come up with another one.

First she opened the wallet in search of cash for petrol, before someone in the shop started to notice her. She needn’t have worried. The spotty young man with greasy black hair straggled around his face was absorbed in Candy Crush, amazed as he approached level fifteen for the first time ever. He kept pushing back his hair, wiping his nose on the back of his grubby hand, swiping and swiping and swiping unaware of the customer on the forecourt.

In the handbag were many cards, most of them fairly new and all with the special wavey thing. But Brenda decided that filling up wasn’t a good idea, nor was spending the cash she had found in the purse. That would be stealing she reasoned. But putting just £30’s worth of fuel in the car with a wavey card, that would be alright. A little extra petrol would be enough to get her further away. It would be additional evidence of her crime, even though topping up petrol wasn’t really proper theft. This confusing logic made Brenda’s head ache, but she decided it made some sort of sense for someone clever enough to work it out, even if it wasn’t her. She put the cash back in the purse and buried it amongst the peppermints, minus one. She hadn’t realised how hungry she was. Some minutes later Brenda had broken the young man’s Candy Crush spell and, slightly dizzy with her victory, was driving away from the petrol station. Now she need a cheap hotel where she could do the wavey thing again.

The wavey thing was just the start. Brenda’s resistance was fast fading. She searched the car’s various pockets and storage cubbyholes. In one she found a universal phone charger, but having plugged it into her mobile had immediately unplugged it. She cut short a platoon of missed calls marching in from her other life. But she needed the phone to find a hotel that charged less than £30 a night. With ruthless impatience Brenda deleted all the messages and missed call notifications. Brutal and cold, she didn’t read them. They were for someone else. A Premier Inn wanted £29 a night and has free parking at Gatwick Airport. Surely they would find her there? At two in the morning the police had probably stopped looking for stolen cars. And she could get a reasonable night’s sleep before they came for her.

Checking into the hotel Brenda made sure to take in the little suitcase, proud of its gleaming black lines and four wheels. She had to practise a little to get it going in a straight line, but once she got the hang of it she swung into the Premier Inn reception bold and brave and with only minor entanglement with the revolving door. She waved a stranger’s wavey card, and listened patiently as the lady behind the desk explained something about hard or soft pillows. Deepa Chaudhary, on work experience as part of her hotel management course, noted the worn and tired clothes and their exhausted inhabitant. Was that blood on her cheek? But Deepa was trained not to judge by appearances and the credit card had gone through and she had a suitcase. Deepa pointed to where breakfast would be served later, and called “Have a good night”. She watched as Brenda’s suitcase turned neatly but unexpectedly in front of her, almost tripping her up and heading for the bar instead of going with Brenda to the lift.

As Brenda, still in her clothes, lay down on the tightly made bed, she looked at the black suitcase trying to imagine its contents. She mumbled and drooled slightly into crisp bright white pillow slips and fell into a deep and redeeming sleep. Eventually she wrenched the sheets and duvet out from under the mattress and still in her clothes wrapped herself in a fuzzy warm cocoon, ready for rebirth.

**********

When the ambulance arrived the pain in Audrey’s ankle was a screaming aria. Her face was itchy with dried tears, random hairs stuck along her cheeks, across her eyes. The paramedics were on the edge of her consciousness, clean and tidy in smart uniforms with mysterious pockets attached to their belts. Audrey couldn’t look at them. She mumbled answers to their questions, watched listlessly as they plied their various instruments and smiled encouragingly at her. Eventually they brought in a wheeled gurney, pristine clean, swathed in white too quickly stained with Audrey’s slow drying mud and soggy clothes. As they started wheeling her away Audrey was crying again. Stephen and Margaret standing at the front door holding hands tight with Deirdre were also crying for Audrey. It was probably the exhaustion. “You’ve all the experience too” said Deirdre sadly, inspecting what she had retrieved from her nose after many minutes’ burrowing effort. The paramedics reminded them “once we get her to the Victory, she’ll be in good hands, don’t you worry,” but no one laughed except Deirdre. Audrey was spent and wheezing and tears that had nothing to do with her ankle, pounding less now under the influence of cocodamol, were falling. But these were different tears, these tears had been bound up too tight for too long and would wait no more. They slid down her face, whittling in the dirt the lines of some other story, some other score. As the ambulance doors slammed shut, Audrey let out a little sob and then a long lonely wail. She couldn’t see a paramedic turn and raise her carefully shaped eyebrows at her companion behind the wheel. “More than an ankle I’d say,” he muttered before catching her eye and turning towards the main road, blue lights flashing indigo on falling rain and the puddles’ gleam.