She got closer to the station, passing the garish red-and-yellow zigzags of La Cantina, like a Mexican migraine, with a waiter inside taking chairs o๏ฌย tables. And Stringย ๎ขeory too, closed, with a handwritten notice on the door:
Alas, Stringย ๎ขeory is no longer able to trade in these premises. Due to an increase in rent we simply couldnโt a๏ฌord to go on.ย ๎ขanks to all our loyal customers. Donโtย ๎ขink Twice, Itโs All Right. You Can Go Your Own Way. God Only Knows What Weโll Be Without You.
It was the exact same note she had seen with Dylan. Judging by the date, written in small felt-tip letters from Neilโs hand, it was from nearly three months ago.
She felt sad, because Stringย ๎ขeory had meant a lot to people. Yet Nora hadnโt been working at Stringย ๎ขeory when it got into trouble.
Well.ย I suppose I did sell a lot of electric pianos. And some rather nice guitars too.
Growing up, she and Joe had always joked about their hometown, the way teenagers do, and used to say that HMP Bedford was the inner prison and the rest of the town was just the outer prison, and any chance you had to escape you should take it.
But the sun was out now, as she neared the station, and it seemed that she had been looking at the place wrong all these years. As she passed the statue of prison reformer John Howard in St Paulโs Square, with the trees all
around and the river just behind, refracting light, she marvelled at it as if she were seeing it for the ๏ฌrst time.ย Itโs not what you look at that matters, itโs what you see.
Driving back to Cambridge cocooned in her expensive Audi, smelling almost nauseatingly of vinyl and plastic and other synthetic materials, weaving through busy tra๏ฌc, the cars sliding by like forgotten lives, she was deeply wishing she had been able to see Mrs Elm, the real one, before she had died. It would have been good to have one last game of chess with her before she passed away. And she thought of poor Leo, sat in a small windowless cell at a Bedford police station, waiting for Doreen to come and collect him.
โ๎ขis is the best life,โ she told herself, a little desperately now. โ๎ขis is the best life. I am staying here.ย ๎ขis is the life for me.ย ๎ขis is the best life.ย ๎ปisย is the best life.โ
But she knew she didnโt have long.
