The Day I Died. Polly Courtney

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       Chapter Five

      ‘Afternoon! Tickets, please…thank you…lovely…Tickets, please…’

      Jo’s heart fluttered up into her mouth as she offered her ticket up to the inspector, her palms sticky with sweat.

      ‘Errrr,’ he squinted for several seconds and then handed it back. ‘Lovely, thank you.’

      Jo pushed the ticket back into her pocket with a shaky hand, trying to steady her breathing. It was ridiculous, this anxiety. She had to get it under control. It wasn’t as though she’d done anything wrong; she had paid her three pounds, she was sitting in Standard Class, she wasn’t playing loud music…But that wasn’t the point.

      The point was, the inspector was in a position of authority. He wasn’t a policeman, but almost. He reminded her of the people she’d run away from two days before. His voice was like that of the paramedic’s: firm but kind, with the propensity to turn officious. Any small reminder of that scene outside the club was enough to make her skin crawl. She alighted from the train with relief.

      According to the map outside, Oxford station was a little way out of the city. Jo assessed the commotion by the bus stop–screaming brats and stressed mothers and pushchairs–and looked up at the near-cloudless sky. The walk would do her good, she thought.

      She had a vague plan: to wander round town, looking at people, seeing things, trying to remember something about her life. She had come into Oxford because she needed to see something that wasn’t a pensioner or a cat or a well-kept lawn, or an irate commuter on his way into London. If Jo was right about being a London girl–and she felt strangely sure she was–then the comings and goings in Radley village weren’t going to be enough to trigger any memories from her past.

      She knew she was being impatient, expecting things to come flooding back after only a few days. But, as she was beginning to realise, impatient was just the way she was. She hated queuing, she didn’t walk slowly and she wasn’t a fan of the slow pace of life. That was one of the reasons she felt so sure she’d been a Londoner before. Londoners didn’t stop at the checkout to talk about yellow lines or lampposts or letter box sizes like the ones she’d seen in Mrs Phillips’ shop that afternoon. Jo wanted to remember things now–or at least, she was pretty sure she did.

      Oxford city centre was a typical mix of old stonework, sixties breeze blocks and modern, all-glass storefronts. The pedestrian zone was teeming with Saturday afternoon dawdlers: ambling couples, spotty teenagers on skateboards, bored-looking fathers with boisterous children on reins, frazzled mothers laden down with a hundred plastic bags. Jo lapped it up, inhaling the smells–jacket potatoes and coffee and sun cream–and picking out fragments of conversation perforated with peals of laughter.

      Towards the edge of town, the streets turned into cobbled lanes that meandered between tall, sandstone buildings lined with bicycles and occasional students. It was August, so the undergraduates were on holiday, Jo guessed. She stopped in an archway and looked out at the vast, sun-lit courtyard that lay beyond. It was like looking through a secret door into another world: fountains, lawns, turrets and gargoyles…Jo watched as a pair of girls her own age wandered past, clutching folders and books, wondering whether she had seen this world before. Maybe she’d even lived in it.

      ‘Can I help you?’ A small man in a bowler hat stepped out of the shadows and smiled at her kindly.

      ‘Oh. Um, I was just…’

      The man continued to look at her, and from the corner of her eye Jo could see his eyebrows lift. But she didn’t reply. Something else had caught her attention. Along the street, propped up on the pavement, was a small black sign: ‘QUIET PLEASE. EXAMS IN PROGRESS.’

      Jo couldn’t breathe. She felt nervous and sick. Exams. It was something to do with exams, only she didn’t know what.

      ‘Are you a student, ma’am?’

      ‘Er…’

      ‘A prospective student?’

      ‘Um…No.’ Jo looked at the man. ‘No, sorry. I was just, um, waiting for someone. But I guess they’ve…gone.’

      ‘Right you are.’ The man dipped his head politely and disappeared back through the arch.

      Jo walked on, past the sign, trying to form a sensible explanation for her sudden twitchiness. She felt nervous at the idea of exams. So what? No one liked doing exams. They were horrible things. But…Jo tried to dig deeper, but the reasoning became flaky and brittle. She couldn’t draw any conclusions. Except perhaps that she had done badly in exams at some point, or cheated, or failed…

      Jo СКАЧАТЬ