Three days. Three whole days. Evey could hardly believe she made it this long without breaking down again. Her life had become a little circle of eating, sleeping and working. She supposed that that was the way things were for most people. She was living a normal life. And she HATED it.

She hadn't dared to go back down to the gallery. Evey couldn't even bring herself to think about him, how selfish he was, how heartless. She couldn't even bring herself to speak his name. It was about two in the morning and she hadn't slept all night. There was tea over boiling on the stove and blankets still dishevelled on the bed. She was sitting on the sofa, looking out the window into the blackness over London, curled up with a book that she wasn't reading and trying not to feel anything. She was numb all over and had been for days. Natalie, a girl from work, had sat in front of her waving her hand waiting to grab her attention for a good ten minutes before Evey had noticed.

"Something up?" she said.

"Oh," said Evey attempting to fake a smile and thinking about him at the action, "No, no just thinking."

"About..?" God! Why was this woman so persistent? "Man trouble?" spot on! Bloody hell! Evey's mind was far too dishevelled to come up with a lie. She tried to improvise but her words had came out as a brief mumble.

"Common, you can tell me…" Natalie smiled her warm and friendly smile. The kind of smile that got you a job in customer services like this. The kind of smile that made Evey's heart sink.

"I don't really want to talk about it," she said at last, "Its not really any of your business anyway." That last part was a little harsh, but Evey didn't want to encourage any questions in the future. Eventually Natalie backed down and hopped off her desk to go and answer the phone.

Evey's mind wandered aimlessly over the events of the day just to think about something other than him. him. Him! HIM! Anything at all would do. She found a nice bland memory of standing in the supermarket line at the store, wondering if the woman in front of her was a girl from work she used to know.

Evey had stood as the woman checked her items, her eyes buried in the customers bronzy-blonde hair trying to place her face. But then when the woman had turned Evey had found that her nose was all wrong. London was such a big place after all, there were people of all shapes and sizes.

She got herself a cup of tea and watched a rented video until the sun came up. All the ones she owned, she had gotten from him. It was something about a woman and, from what she could recall had lots of flashing colours and lights, plenty of good distracting things.

It had been a French film*. Since the revolution, foreign films, strange foods, bits of art and lost of other lost things had been dug up. Things that the government hadn't banned because they didn't know they existed. The man at the 24hour rental place, just down stares, had motioned how he had found a whole stash of them in an old crate in an alley near his house. Evey knew where they had come from, but she tried to convince herself that it had been a mere coincidence. Of coarse it wasn't.

Her stomach churned so she drank some more of her tea. It was ginger. Her mother had always given her chamomile when she was feeling down, but chamomile made her tired, and the very last thing she wanted to do right now was start dreaming again. He haunted her dreams like a ghost. Another twist of her guts brought the lips of the cup back to her mouth again. She didn't like ginger tea much, but she appreciated the fact she didn't like it, it gave her something to think about.

Eventually she started to get dozy, her eyelids drooping down blocking out the moonlight. She needed to stay awake but she didn't have another movie to put on so she got up and slouched over to the window. The bright lights of the London eye swirled in the distance** glowing their brilliant blues and greens out over the Thames. They were calming, lulling, warm. Warm. It was far too warm in here. Cool air would wake her up that was what she needed.

She threw on a pair of jeans over her pyjama shorts and stepped out onto the fire escape. The wind felt strange in her short hair but it certainly woke her up. She wrapped her long top more tightly around her slim frame.

All at once the streets were filled with music. V! she thought, and then wiped the thought from her mind, she suddenly grew cold and empty as the music grew louder. The van, once an "Ear" monitoring van, swung an illegal curve round the Regent St. junction and onto her block on Piccadilly, spraying the obnoxious sounds of American rap music into the still winter air. It was a strange sound, this music. Something she had never heard before. A fresh new feeling of youth and ecstasy that the government had hated. This was the sort of thing young people needed today. Something to keep them full of rage and passion again. 10 years of Norsfire rule had drained them of that.

As the van whirred past, Evey saw a bunch of drunk young men leaning out the door and windows jousting each other groggily, swerving this way and that. At any other time she might have laughed but not today. Happiness, chaos and rebellion rung in her ears. People started to shout off the balconies increasing the feeling, both egging the group on and complaining for peace and quiet.

Eventually the swerving car made it to the end of the block and turned the corner. Evey stared after it. The quiet was deafening. She sat for a little while trying to force his image back out of her head. She reminded herself of how cold it was and instinctively reached for the door. But cold was what she needed now, she was cold on the inside too. She bare feet found their way down the cold steps and ladders until she was at the street, not really sure what she was waiting for.

She would have to grow up and face it sometime. She was going to have to learn to live without… V. He could never love her, not the way that she loved him. He was too cold inside. To hard and empty. She should have learned that when she had tortured her. Why had she not learned that? Why was she so stupid as to even think he could love her? She was unaware of how hard she was suddenly breathing.

Because he had let her believe. He had told her he loved her just so that she would believe him, just so he could break her down again. She HATED him. And she hated herself for being so childish. Her thoughts were interrupted suddenly as the van came back around the block playing a different tune, another that she didn't recognise.

The wind was in her hair as she made her decision and her feet carried her towards it.

Up a few stories, still peaking out his apartment window, a man saw her running and thought she was going to jump in with the drivers. Probably a young girl chasing after her drunk boyfriend, he mused in his head. He too had been young once, in search of rebellion and daring and women. Since the revolution he had felt like that again, just a little. And he was proud that he could still feel that way. But all the feelings in his brain stopped their swirling as he came back to reality in a suddenly jolt. A few words of loud warning escaped his lips but he didn't hear them and neither did the girl in the street. Evey threw herself in front of the van.

* Jean-Pierre Junet's "Amilie"

** A huge bloody Ferris-Wheel that doesn't make an appearance in the movie.