‘Look, sorry, Chloe, I had no idea this is where … where you’re from. Hang tight. You can stay in the car. No one will see you. Here, wear these. You can be in disguise, like in a movie.’

She’s laughs and hands Chloe her sunglasses.

‘I need to check if Mo’s at work. It’s just a shop. I promise I won’t take a second.’

They pass rows of new houses and a supermarket, more fields and a stretch of dual carriageway. Chloe knows this road. The new houses confused her for a moment, but the line of hedges and trees hasn’t changed. They’re slowing down, turning in along the side of the playground. Chloe catches a glimpse of the four Eagle Mount tower blocks and closes her eyes.

When the car stops, they’re in front of the shops. Library at one end, Health Centre at the other, with the bookies and AK News and Convenience Store sandwiched in between. It’s a bit shabbier than she remembers it, but otherwise nothing has changed. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t have trusted Taheera. While she waits in the car the sunglasses keep sliding down her nose. She daren’t open the door. A group of teenage girls shriek past in too-tight shorts. She tells herself that they won’t recognise her; they would have been toddlers the last time she was here. The older women scare her more. She’s torn between wanting to scrutinise their faces and trying to keep her own face turned away. There’s a glossy magazine in the footwell of Taheera’s car, so she stares hard at a C-list celebrity’s wedding photos, and lets the people outside blur in her peripheral vision.

Finally the driver’s door opens and Taheera puts her head in.

‘You have to get me out of here,’ Chloe says but it comes out as a whisper.

‘Here, have a couple of quid and get yourself a cold drink. I’ve got to nip into the library.’

She drops two pound coins on the seat and shuts the door again. Chloe picks them up and holds them in her damp palm. She turns to see Taheera disappear through the double glass doors of the library. She’s thirsty, incredibly thirsty. Rows of cold drinks will be lined up in the fridge in the newsagent’s. She looks around her and opens the door, pushes the sunglasses back up her slippery nose.

He’s coming out of an alleyway between the buildings, Mo, the bloke she saw at York Minster. He’s carrying a big folder and heading for the library. He walks straight past her and if he sees her, he doesn’t acknowledge it. That’s good: if the huge sunglasses that cover half her face have hidden her from someone she’s seen recently, then perhaps she’s safe from being recognised by people who haven’t seen her for ten years. She decides she’ll be all right, if she’s quick, and walks the few yards to the shop without turning round.

Inside it’s cool and gloomy. She finds her way to the fridge, but it’s hard to see with the glasses on, so pushes them on top of her head. She lifts out a small bottle of the cheapest lemonade and goes to the till. There’s a girl in a headscarf who takes her money and gives her the change. Chloe turns away quickly, back towards the door, passing a low shelf of newspapers on her left. Heavy black headlines and the face of a teenage girl in school uniform stare up at her.

She doesn’t break her stride as she leaves the shop. The sunglasses thump against the bridge of her nose as she runs to the car. She gets in, slams the door shut and presses the cold plastic bottle against her neck. Her hands are trembling.

When Taheera comes back, Chloe says nothing. She barely notices the young man slipping back up the alleyway. They move off and soon a blast of air from the fans chills the sweat on her legs.

‘Thanks for waiting,’ Taheera says cheerfully, as she drives towards the top of the estate, where the road opens out onto the dual carriageway.

Chloe just wants to get out of there. She doesn’t look at the flats this time, keeps her eyes fixed on the label of her lemonade bottle, scratching it away with her thumbnail. When they reach the motorway, she snatches a look at the speedometer, creeping up past sixty, seventy, still rising as the tiny car hurtles along the inside lane, getting her away from the estate and its towers, the shop, the local paper with the headline she’s been dreading. She wishes they could go even faster.

‘Look, um, I hope you don’t think I put you in a difficult position,’ Taheera says, twirling a section of her long black hair in her fingers. ‘I should have explained. It’s a bit difficult between me and my boyfriend. I’d rather you kept it to yourself, do you know what I’m saying?’

Chloe doesn’t reply.

‘I’ve said I’m sorry, Chloe. But nobody needs to know about you being in Doncaster, or about me and him, do they?’

It sounds like a deal. A deal in which she has no choice. The kind of trade she’s got used to over the years. Another debt to honour and obey.

‘OK,’ she says. It sounds hollow in her mouth.

The little car drifts towards the hard shoulder, until it runs over the catseyes and the tyres set off the ratchet sound designed to wake up sleeping drivers.

‘Oops!’ Taheera laughs and straightens up the car.

‘He’s on tag, isn’t he?’ Chloe says. She doesn’t care all that much, but she’d like to know the terms of their deal, to work out how much it’s worth.

A truck swings too close to them. It tries to overtake, gives up and slides back in behind them, as the road rises up over a long bridge. Yellow fields are spread out on each side of a river far below. Chloe feels the nausea of vertigo rising in her throat. She tries not to look over the side.

‘He was,’ Taheera finally says. ‘But he’s just had it taken off. How did you know?’

A sign to York causes them to swerve onto a slip road, a lorry horn blaring behind them. On the smaller road, they drive some way in silence, careful now, taking the bends at a speed that the little Fiat can manage.

‘I saw it. His tag,’ Chloe finally says. ‘He was going up the steps at the Minster.’

‘I see,’ it comes out very quietly. ‘Did Emma see it?’

Chloe can’t decide what to tell her. ‘Don’t know.’

‘I’m going to pull over, I need to think.’

She swerves into a gap on the grass verge. They come to a standstill with the bonnet of the car inches from the gate to an empty field. Taheera turns off the ignition and they sit listening to the ticking fans cooling the engine.

‘I met him when I was teaching in a prison,’ she says slowly, as if each word must be selected and checked before she uses it. ‘Nothing happened, I mean, nothing then. I decided to leave my job after he was released. The hostel job came up and I had the right skills, the right background. I mean, it’s not like he’s one of our residents,’ she hesitates. ‘I don’t think it’s against the law, but … Oh God, it’s really messy. I could be sacked if anyone found out and my parents—’ Taheera’s voice wavers and Chloe can see she’s trying not to cry. ‘I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it.’

Chloe decides to leave her to it. She can’t believe she cared for this silly girl, with her shiny new car and wealthy parents. Someone who has all that, a degree and a job, and risks it all for a boy; it’s ridiculous. She gets out and walks to the centre of road. They are in the middle of nowhere, on a country lane raised up from the flat fields either side. Heat shimmers off the road. She feels the huge space all around her and holds out her arms, as if she could touch it. Someone knows she’s out. It was there on the front cover of the newspaper. If she’s lucky it’s just one local paper, not the nationals. But she doesn’t feel very lucky. Her arms fall by her sides.

Across the fields, the cooling towers of a power station fill the sky, soft cotton wool clouds of steam, hanging in the air around them. She looks up and sees a figure, balancing on the rim and falling into the steam cloud. She wants to call out to him. Jay! But her ears are filled with the roar of the wind, as if she’s the one who’s falling. Someone grabs her arm and pulls her back.