"Hold on a minute."

Caroline shaded her eyes and winced at the low sunlight blaring through the windows and blacking out Melanie in front of her. It shone alternately in and out of the clouds, changing the texture and the quality of the light in the living room. She held up a finger and went to the front of the flat to lower the blinds. As the sun beat on her she felt flushed.

Across the street a man sat on the retaining wall edging the road. She squinted to make him out better. He was eating an ice cream cone. Taking his time about it. Deliberate, small bites. He was also taking his time about studying her, the same deliberate consumption.

He might as well be Brian Shadforth's older brother. A boulder of a man in jeans, a chambray work shirt, and a barn coat that could have wrapped Caroline twice. She took her time in drawing down the folding linen shades, though her heart slammed in her chest.

She spun to face Melanie. "There's a man. I know – well I don't know for sure. But I think – he's watching us."

"It's Mitch. He's a part of this. I noticed him as we were walking home. Thought he might keep moving." Without the blinding sun Caroline could clearly see the trepidation on Melanie's face. But pasted over with confidence, and again, that resolve as the situation shifted under their feet. "When will the Jeep be ready, Caroline?"

Noticed him? Caroline wouldn't have noticed if they'd stepped back in time during the walk home. Was she really so oblivious? Or was Melanie really so much more than she'd ever given her credit?

"Shouldn't we call the police?"

Melanie scowled, and shifted. "When will the Jeep be ready?"

"We don't have to tell them why we think the man is there. Only that he is, and we're uncomfortable." Caroline's heart continued to pound and she sought familiar solutions to her fear. This time external ones. She had never in her life been in a situation where police might make things worse. She felt resentment at Melanie try to work its way into her cacophony of emotions, and she didn't see a reason it couldn't be added to the mix.

The question on Melanie's face remained and her eyes widened imploring Caroline to answer.

She shook her head and waved her hand. "They said we can pick it up tomorrow morning."

"Can we get it tonight?" Melanie didn't stir from the couch, but spared another glance at the window. "We can call the police. But I'd like to have more options, when we do. And can I explain myself to you first? If Mitch hasn't come to us yet, he's not likely to. He's impulsive, direct. If he wanted to – talk – we'd be talking right now."

Caroline's blue eyes widened and she paused. "I see." Melanie's assurances did little to calm her. "Let me call the shop. About the Jeep."

She went to her bag and fished out the mobile. A text from from Lawrence and missed calls from Celia and Gillian. She dismissed the notifications and rang the shop. She exhaled when they picked up, not realizing she'd been holding her breath.

"Hullo. Yes – it's Caroline Dawson."

"Yes. Yes you have my Jeep. For tomorrow, I understand. I'm wondering if I can't pick it up tonight."

"I understand, yes I know you said the morning. I'm asking if it's possible to get it tonight."

"Two hours?"

She looked over to Melanie, who nodded.

"Yes okay. We'll be by to pick it up."

She clicked off and turned back to Melanie, who stood.

"Just for now, Caroline, will you trust me? Just for now. I – understand if your trust can't go beyond where we are right now, what's happening here." Melanie's green eyes began to shine. The situation itself didn't seem to affect her. But apparently the potential consequences on her relationship to Caroline brought her emotions to the surface.

"You need to understand that this is all new to me, Melanie. All of this. It's – it's so completely outside my world." Caroline perched on the edge of the couch and worried at a kleenex she'd dug out of her coat.

"I do, Caroline, I do. And I'm so sorry. I wanted to keep it outside your world. I thought I could. That this weekend I could be shut of it and try to move on, finally. That years from now I could tell you more, and it would all be a foggy, vague memory that couldn't touch us, affect us with any real substance. That it would be safe for both of us."

Years from now. Words Caroline would love to hear, under any other circumstance.

"But you see, Melanie, by then we'd have a life built on lies. And I've tried that already. Didn't end well." Caroline wrinkled her nose at the other woman.

"I've not lied to you. Everything I've told you – the facts of it all, my life – it's all true." Melanie crossed her arms and walked over to the window to look out.

"You've just conveniently left out some of the more – important aspects?" Caroline stood again. The appearance of the man outside the flat underscored her anxiety, why this deception made her so deeply angry.

But as Melanie's pleading patience continued, she quieted. "Alright. I'm not going to interrupt you every other sentence. Perhaps you should begin at the beginning and fill in the details."

"I think that would work well." Melanie looked grateful. She unwrapped her crimson red and gold patterned scarf and played with the fringe. "But we need to keep moving while I do. I'm sorry. If it's okay with you, we need to be ready to leave here, Caroline."

For all her anger and confusion, Caroline couldn't help but agree. Police or no police, she hardly wanted to be alone in the flat tonight. She nodded her head and followed Melanie into the bedroom. Caroline pulled their suitcases from the closet, and Melanie started her tale as they packed.

"As I said, it's all true, all the milestones. I grew up in Kochi, India. In the south. My father worked with my mother's family, fishing out of the tiny harbor at Thoppumpady. Enough skipjack and horse mackerel each day to keep me and my brothers and my sister in school, so we didn't have to work at the harbor. It's everything, it was everything, when I think back on it. How Kochi was at the time. Small boats and small dreams and big families everywhere around us. And fish, and the sea, and dirty harbors. There aren't nearly enough smells, in England, Caroline. It can be so sterile here."

"My father – he loved Kochi too. Enough to stay in India with my mother, to leave England and make a life and a family in a tiny shack off the coast of a place in India none of his family had ever heard of. When he moved there in the sixties there was almost nothing of the West at all in Kochi. Culture or people. He'd been in the Royal Navy, met mum, and that was that when he got out. Always said it was her green eyes that sold him."

Caroline agreed with Melanie on this point, and looked up with a small smile. They stood on opposite sides of the bed, folding clothes and tucking them into their suitcases. Melanie was moving slowly, working with a studied calm that kept Caroline's heart rate at a reasonable pace. It mellowed her to hear Melanie talk about her family and her childhood, because when she did a trance came over Melanie, one she'd never thought of as sad, until right now.

"I was the youngest in the family. By the time I was eighteen my brothers had started to do well. Kochi started to fill up with tourists and with promise. A second boat in the family made a lot more money as a charter for rich white men who measured themselves by the size of the fish they caught. One small boat led to two. Two led to an opportunity for me to come to England to study."

Caroline sniffed as her tears subsided, feeling more on-balance. Almost feeling as though she'd already forgotten why Melanie was telling her this now. But every so often she'd think of the man and the ice cream cone, and the pit in her stomach would return, and she'd wish none of this had happened. That they could rewind and she'd have the Melanie back she thought she knew. But that wasn't how she lived her life anymore, hiding from truths. "I know your father was initially from Manchester – that's how you ended up studying there?"

Melanie smiled and nodded. "Yes. Not exactly the first place you'd think a young woman on her own from India would pick. But it was where I had family. So there I was – the City College of Manchester, as it was back then – they were friendly to international students. And my aunt let me stay above their shop."

"That's when you learned to love English fish and chips?" Caroline couldn't forestall the twinkle in her eye quickly enough, and it was hard to recover her look of disapproval as Melanie laughed at her joke and at herself.

"To love and to cook properly. At least how your lot here enjoys it. Bland." Melanie made a joke of it back, and Caroline didn't rebuff her attempts to warm the chill in the air.

"Three meals a day, most days for almost four years. Before I started up with Richard."

"Throw in pot noodles and Walkers crisps and you're describing my diet from university days." Caroline sighed and leaned against the bed, staring at the ceiling. John, a flat, and a single electric burner. She tried to cast a romantic haze over all of it, but even now she couldn't.

"It's a wonder we're still alive sometimes, isn't it?" Melanie's voice brought Caroline back to now and back to trying to be angry. It was so hard to stay angry at Mel. With John it could last days. His being on the outside of the relationship never really bothered her. But with Mel – even after an hour she felt lonely. Even in her anger she realized she was turning to Mel to try and fix things - together.

"So you studied at Manchester. I remember that. You studied to become a teacher, at the primary level."

"Yes, I did. But that's not what I ended up doing – not how I finished. I actually started an apprenticeship program. In energy systems. Last of its kind, really. Program died, and my plans died with it."

"So there I was in Manchester. Starting to get serious with Richie and not wanting to go home. I would have been a failure, you see, if I'd gone back right then. As though my brothers had thrown away money on me that the family could have used – in so many other ways. They'd invested so much, and all I had was a degree no woman in India could really use at the time, and a dead-end apprenticeship here in Manchester. So I started looking at my options. Where else I might go, perhaps try London or America. But in the meantime, I was stuck."

"And Richie, well, he was never one to miss an opportunity. Me being stuck was just right for him."

Melanie closed her suitcase. She walked out to the living room. She tipped back the shade and Caroline wondered if Mitch were still on the other side of the road. Perhaps he was now snacking on crisps.

"I was stuck, but Richie wasn't. He finished university, but for him it was just a medal on his chest. He'd always been lined up to take over his dad's appliance business. 'Pulling's your pal for sales and service.' Had commercials on radio and tele, a real empire."

"Still was an empire when Richie finished, but a different kind all together. Richie was a titan, no doubt. Did more for heroin in Manchester than any other man in England. The 90's in the North West belonged to Richie Pullings, as far as the drug trade went."

Caroline let out a long sigh. It was essentially what she'd expected to hear. Not that she wanted to. Nor did she want to hear about Melanie's involvement – coerced or not. Neither scenario eased her pain. She closed her own suitcase and set it next to Melanie's by the bedroom door.

A quick glance at the bedroom and then they both descended on the kitchen and began clearing the dishwasher and the fridge. It was still well-stocked, but neither of them cared about preserving a few yogurts and cheeses. Though Caroline did feel it physically as she poured half a bottle of cabernet down the sink.

"We married. Richie bought us a place, lovely cottage in Worsley on the canal. He worked for his family, and so did I. He went out on calls, I worked in the office in accounts, his dad on the sales floor. All such a nice end for me, it seemed, for a few years."

Melanie paused and tugged at a dishtowel in her hands.

"I think you can paint the rest of the picture. The appliance repair business was just about the best cover Richie could come up with, to move the product and the money. His dad retired, bad heart that caught up with him not long after he left the company. I took over the books with fresh eyes, and curious ones. Didn't take long to figure things out. Didn't take long before Richie figured out that I had. I think he expected me to embrace it? I don't know. But I kept quiet about it. Pretended I hadn't noticed. It was absolutely the wrong thing. Because then it got bad, Caroline. It got very bad. I spent the next two years wondering when I'd walk into a dark house or a dark room and never walk out."

"Melanie." Caroline stepped forward and hugged her girlfriend. It was a reflexive gesture and no matter where they were headed together in the future, the past had been hard for Melanie in a way that squeezed Caroline's heart and stung her eyes. "I'm sorry."

Melanie half-laughed and half-sobbed before snuffling and pulling back. She looked toward the window and Caroline wondered how she could be so composed at this ghost from her past come to life.

"What happened Melanie – and what does this have to do with that Mitch person, or Leann?"

Melanie nodded. "Mitch was with Richie - before he was with Nigel. Came up with Nigel when they were both with Richie."

Caroline frowned and her wheels turned. Melanie caught on. "Nigel Pullings - he's the big bad wolf now – that's Leann's husband."

"Nigel Pullings?" Caroline tried to follow all the connected surnames. She wondered if Melanie had changed her name back from Pullings – or all together.

Melanie sniffed. "I know. It's actually very simple. I'll explain. I will. I'm so sorry. But Caroline I have to tell you – everything – that happened with Richie first."

Caroline nodded back with a whispered 'okay' as she felt her stomach tighten. Melanie's volume faded as she continued.

"I spent two years in abject terror. But I planned as well. I looked for a way out. I was afraid of the police, afraid of my own complicit actions, even if it was turning a blind eye. No one wants to go to jail, Caroline." It felt as though Melanie tried to challenge Caroline with her look, but the steely blue gaze she received drove her eyes to the floor as she began to wrap her story.

"In any case, I finally figured it. I wasn't often alone, but I could speak to my family in Malayalam. Not for long, and certainly not often. And I could post letters here and there, though of course I didn't dare have any come to the house in return. But it was enough to see a way clear. One that meant I didn't have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, one that would keep my family safe too."

A chill came back into the kitchen, and a stillness into both Caroline and Melanie. The sun dipped back behind a cloud on the horizon and the apartment dimmed. Neither of them moved to flip on the lights.

"I convinced Richie to let my family visit. My mother, dad, my two oldest brothers. He agreed that they could come if they stayed in Manchester with my aunt. We were never all alone together. Dave – the man you've seen – or Mitch – was with us the whole time. Sometimes Nigel. But one day Richie decided to make a show of it for my family and we all went to Liverpool. My dad – my brothers – they bragged at Richie about the fishing boats at home, the charters. It was too much for him. Drug kings and egos, they go together."

"Richie got us a charter. Off the books of course. Cash up front. Mum and I stayed back, escorted by Dave. Tried to make a bright day of it at the shops. Chirping and laughing and pretending that everything wasn't going to be very different and very dangerous in a few hours."

Caroline put a hand to her mouth as she imagined how the tale would play out – mostly.

"My father and my two oldest brothers, Rohan and Jai, went out on the boat with Richard that morning. Only Rohan and Jai came back."