As he moves along the glass, the pressure grows from behind, wedging her arms to her sides. It is as if he is a magnet, drawing the crowd towards him like iron filings.
‘David, I love you,’ a woman calls, and, despite the crowd, she lifts her top and flattens her breasts against the glass.
‘Did you see that?’
‘Hard to know what the world is coming to. Are you ready to go? I know I’ve had enough.’
‘Let’s wait for it to pass.’
David sidles towards her corner, glaring over her head at the crowd behind. His lips peel back, exposing glistening canines.
‘Just see how arrogant and hostile it is,’ the man behind mutters. Lowering his voice, ‘Jesus… now it’s staring at me!’
‘It heard you,’ his companion whispers. ‘They can hear pins drop.’
David releases the man from his gaze and scans the crowd, searching between the heads.
The man’s breath fills her ear. ‘Phew! I tell you we’re lucky there’s a wall between us and that thing. It’d kill us and have absolutely no qualms.’
David drops his eyes and, to Evie’s astonishment, looks directly at her. Doing something he has not until now, he comes close to the glass and bends so that his face is level with hers. Evie feels the pressure on her shoulders lessen as the men behind her retreat.
‘What’s it doing?’
‘It’s taken a liking to that girl.’
David places his hand on the glass so only she can see his face and stares into her eyes. She can’t break away from his look.
‘Help me,’ he mouths.
Descending the stairs, Evie hears the same men behind her again.
‘Freakin’ Norman. You see the way it looked at me. I tell you, to them we’re just flies. They’ve got superhuman strength. That glass wall was for our protection, not its.’
‘Did you hear about the one in London?’
‘I thought this was the only one.’
‘They thought so too but they found a female the other day that some old guy had been harbouring for years. After slaughtering him in his bed, it went on to gut a policeman like a pig – no pun intended. Slit him from here to here. Been on the news all morning. But the really scary thing is the picture they have of it – timid looking, butter-wouldn’t-melt type, the sort you wouldn’t look twice at. Not a chance of guessing what was going on in its head.’
Evie walks more quickly and exits the building, pulling on her coat and lifting her hood. She scurries down the steps outside and, crossing the snow-covered lawn beside the river, cuts through a line of protestors, dodging under their banner threatening divine retribution on the creators of idolatrous forms.
She dashes along the gravel path. Her head, which had been full of poor David just minutes before, is now swamped by feelings of her total foolishness. She has exposed herself recklessly. She crosses a humpbacked stone bridge over the frozen Cam and from there follows a narrow icy lane between the high college walls.
It is only then that she realises she is being followed.
She enters a chemist and hurries through, breaking apart the queue at the pharmacy. She emerges the other side into a quiet backstreet with just a few second-hand shoe and clothes traders, their merchandise arrayed on trestle tables. A few doorways down, she tucks herself into the entrance of a coffee shop, hiding with her back to the grubby mock-Tudor window, too scared to look out from under her coat.
She hears rapid footsteps and, seeing shoes from under the fur trim of her hood, pelts out, avoiding an outstretched arm and, leaping from the kerb, hurtles straight into the road. An aerial delivery van, scooting along at shoulder height, veers sharply to avoid taking off her head, and clangs into a lamppost.
Everyone turns to watch. The van driver screams abuse from his window, eight feet up. A dozen Korean workmen stare through the steamed-up glass of the nearby arcade. A bearded violinist breaks off from scraping out the ballad Northern Lights (even in her distressed state, she recognises the heartbreaking melody, poor rendition though it is), and points at her with his bow.
Stunned temporarily by the near miss, Evie collects her wits and is quickly on the move again, weaving through the crowd. She steals a glance back at her pursuer, now alarmingly close behind.
She turns down a covered alley beside a supermarket and hides behind a refuse bin.
He appears at the end, out of breath. He walks slowly along, peering behind the heaps of discarded cardboard boxes.
Before he can reach her, she darts out, colliding with a woman on a bike, knocking her from her saddle and scattering the muddy potatoes in her handlebar basket over the cobbles.
She sprints past a row of humming motorised trolleys, chained together like a road gang, while he lopes after her, one hand stretched out, the other holding his side. With her speed, if this was a straight race, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
And she is strong, too. Taking the handle of the last trolley, she casts the whole set corkscrewing into the air and they crash on their sides.
He stumbles into them and with a grunt topples onto his hands.
Evie reaches the end and enters a pedestrianised street. She walks briskly along its centre, head down, knocking shoulders aside, getting stared at, muttered over and threatened.
The steel supports of the bus station with its polymer walls complete with bullet holes comes into sight. Relief that she has found her way back here, despite the disorientating chase, floods her, and she slows to better blend in.
And feels his hand on her shoulder.
She squeals, turning sharply, shrugging him off, but her hood slides back and everyone stops to gape.
The man has his hands in the air. He gazes pleadingly into her face, ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to scare you, there’s nothing to fear. I want to help.’ And to the crowd, which has formed a ring around her, ‘There’s nothing to see here. Please, there’s nothing to see.’
‘You all right, love?’ she hears a woman ask.
Evie revolves on the spot, feet slipping and sliding in the slush, staring about herself at the wall of peering curious faces, like a trapped animal.
She allows him to guide her down a passage into a courtyard and from there into a pub, a type of establishment she’s never been in before.
From the careful movement of her limbs and the composed expression on her face Evie appears perfectly calm, but inside her logic circuits are in turmoil. During the pursuit she’d assumed she’d been identified and that he was trying to capture her, but now she realises she is clueless as to what he wants.
He seats her at the back in a corner and she watches him order at the bar. It is the first chance she’s had to have a good look at him. In most respects he is nondescript – unthreatening, middle-aged with square-rimmed glasses, perhaps nearer forty than thirty, and of slightly below medium height. The only touch of incongruity is the stacked bright orange trainers which make him appear taller than he actually is.
He brings over two drinks, a self-satisfied smirk plastered to his face.
Evie looks awkwardly at her glass, brimming with a brownish yellow liquid streaming with bubbles. She knows it is beer from the smell, a smell she’s caught often enough on Daniels’s breath when he has been out for an evening.
‘Don’t worry, you can leave it,’ the man says. ‘I just thought it would appear more natural if you had something too.’
‘What do you want of me?’ Now that the immediate peril has passed, she realises just how furious she is over the terror he put her through. He’s acting all self-congratulatory as if he rescued her, but she hadn’t need rescuing, not until any of what he did.