The New Girl by Alison Stockham

Author:Alison Stockham [Stockham, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

17

Anna walked away from the pharmacy and into a local café. She’d not been able to face eating yet and suddenly she was absolutely ravenous. The only thing she wanted was a bacon sandwich. With lashings of brown sauce. And a huge mug of tea. She was surprised because she’d not eaten like that since she was a teenager. Thankfully there was no queue and soon enough, breakfast was in her hands. The saltiness of the bacon mingled with the melted butter on the soft white bread. Anna sighed with satisfaction. It was like she’d never eaten before and all her senses were on hyper mode. She relaxed and washed a big mouthful down with a glug of tea. She wasn’t going to be sick. She was grateful for that in more than one way.

She would take a moment, have this breakfast, steel herself and head into the office. She was sure that Grace wouldn’t tell Jon anything, at least not yet. That gave Anna time to work out what, if anything, she was going to tell him. Grace was withholding something from her, she was sure of that now. She didn’t know what. She was trying hard not to take two and two – Grace withholding something, and the scan and what Kate said – and make four hundred. She would need to wheedle it out of her, or Jon. Then she could decide what to do. The outright approach didn’t work for Anna, clearly. Each time she’d tried, she’d bailed. She needed another plan.

Walking into the office, Anna tried to feel braver than she actually did. She didn’t know for sure that Grace hadn’t gone straight there and told Jon everything, or even her own version of ‘everything’, and whether she might be walking into an ambush. Maybe Grace and Jon were in on whatever it was together – they’d certainly been talking in hushed whispers lately. Jon had said it was just Anna’s hearing, but she disagreed. Maybe it wasn’t something that Jon knew about. Was it a baby? It was such a mixing bowl of lies – everyone withholding a secret from each other, no one telling anyone the whole truth. She screwed her eyes up tight at the thought of it. All the deception, the layers, the hierarchy of who gets to know the truth. It was too like her past. She had thought she’d escaped all that, but had she merely formed another version of it here?

‘Hey, how are you feeling?’ Jon said when he saw her, getting up from his desk and coming to take her coat. ‘Did they help at all?’

Anna glanced at Grace, who was sat at her own desk. Grace looked down.

‘Um, yes, they were really helpful. Yes.’

‘Did they work out what the issue is?’

Was he playing with her? Had Grace told him? Was he stringing her along to see how she lied to him? Like all the other times she had lied?

Anna looked back up at Grace who shook her head almost imperceptibly.

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