CHLOE

"Well?" Harry demands, his teeth bared in fury, when I don't answer.

Fear has rendered me speechless and immobile. It is all I can do to stare at him dumbly, my eyes wide and my mouth open in a silent scream.

"Get out. Get out!" he spits, and reaches into the car to close his fingers around my upper arm. He yanks me from the back seat with surprising force, and I stagger out onto a gravel floor beneath a bridge with street lamps at either side. From the sound of the traffic above, we are below some kind of flyover, although where I do not know. Amateur, mindless graffiti adorns the drab concrete and litter is strewn carelessly in the grass across this wasteland.

"I'm - I'm sorry," I stammer, and I can hear the fear in my own voice. 

"How the fuck did you get in there?"

"The door was unlocked, I -"

"Why? Why are you here?"

"I don't know, I hid, I was scared - "

"Why? What are you scared of? What do you know? What did you see?"

"Chris... I think he's dead... there are police everywhere and I just panicked!"

My hysteria is rising; my own volume along with it.

"Keep your voice down, fucking hell!"

Harry is pacing back and forth in front of me, grabbing fistfuls of his hair in his hands. His mania is infectious.

"Where are you going?" I ask, trembling. "Is this your car? Are you running away?"

"Of course it's my fucking car."

He offers no further explanation, and I watch him striding up and down for another few seconds, breathing faster as my heart hammers in my chest.

"You need to keep your mouth shut," he warns, turning suddenly towards me, pushing his face right up to mine. His eyes are crystal clear, and even in the orange light from the street lamp twenty feet away I can see flecks of darker green around his irises and his pupils dilating as he stares me down.

"Wha - what do you mean?" I gasp. "About what?"

"Don't tell the police anything. Don't mention me, or what happened earlier. Just keep your mouth shut when they come knocking."

"Come knocking?" I echo, terrified.

His eyes dart between mine, and his jaw pulsates menacingly.

"They'll want to speak to everyone," he explains, slightly less aggressively. "They'll ask you what you know; what happened. Don't tell them anything."

This whole conversation isn't making any sense to me. I am completely confused. The noise from the traffic overhead seems to be crowding my mind and my senses, echoing in the blackness that surrounds us and consuming every cell in my body.

"How will they find me?" I splutter, and he looks at me with his own confusion.

"They'll be coming round the flats, talking to everyone," he says, his brow furrowed.

"I won't be there."

"They'll find you in the pub then."

"What pub?"

His expression turns again to one of rage. "What do you mean, what pub? The Flute! Are you fucking stupid or something? You work there!"

"I left," I blurt, and his face contorts into a look of disbelief.

"You were there tonight!" he shouts, throwing his arms up in the air, as though furious with me.

Was that really only a couple of hours ago? My shift in the pub feels like days, weeks, months ago. A lifetime ago. Literally, for Chris.

"I'm not going back there," I inform him. "I'm leaving. Tonight. I have to get away."

He stares at me as though I have grown another head.

"You're leaving?" he asks, much more quietly this time. "Why?"

His mood swings are unnerving me, and in my current state of panic this is not a good thing. 

"I just need to get away. That place is a hellhole. Full of scumbags and scrotes. I don't belong there, I've never belonged there!"

My breath is coming in short bursts now, and the world is blurring around me. Traffic zooms above us, lights shine bright in the darkness, Harry's voice is muffled and far away. I feel strong hands gripping my arms, pushing me to the ground, and I no longer have the strength to fight. Whatever he is about to do to me, I don't have the energy to stop it. I can feel myself sinking into my own subconscious to escape this monstrous reality. 

Ice cold water suddenly drenches me, pulling me back to my senses with a jolt. I take a sharp intake of breath and instantly begin to cough, thanks to the liquid in my airway. I realise I am now sitting on the gravel with my legs crossed in front of me with no idea how I came to be here, and I open my eyes to see droplets falling into my lap from my forehead. I can feel my hair clinging to my scalp, soaked from whatever has just been thrown at me. I look up in shock to see Harry standing over me holding an empty Evian bottle, panting and wide-eyed. His expression has changed from one of fury to one of fear, and this adds to my confusion.

"What - what the hell did you just do?" I ask, scrambling to my feet again and wiping my face.

"You were freaking out," he mutters, his eyes roaming my top half. "You were having some sort of panic attack. I couldn't hear myself think."

"So you chucked your water on me?" I gasp, clutching my hands to my chest where my wet top is now clinging to my skin. 

"Shut you up, didn't it?" he demands belligerently. "Soon snapped you out of it."

He hurls the water bottle to the ground where it clatters away into the darkness to join the hundreds of other pieces of rubbish left here to rot, and I observe him as he crosses the few feet of dirt to the boot of his car. He lifts out a holdall, and I realise suddenly that he is the person I saw turning into the street just after I had taken refuge on the back seat. I watch as he slings it over his shoulder in the same stance as before, and begins to make his way further under the bridge. He is about thirty feet away before I realise what is going on: he is leaving me. 

He may be terrifying, angry and unstable, but I don't want to be alone right now. I am too afraid. I would rather experience a night of his wrath than sleep out here alone.

"Hey!" I shout, taking a few steps after him, but he doesn't even flinch. "Hey! Where are you going?" 

He must have heard me, but he continues his path towards a set of steps at the far end of the flyover. If I don't do something fast, he will disappear out of sight and I really will be completely alone.

"Harry!" I shout, breaking into a jog, and then a run. "Harry, please! Wait!"

He turns to face me just as I skid to a stop beside him, his face filled with rage again.

"What?" he hisses. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

"Don't leave me," I plead, and he blinks.

"What?"

He is clearly confused. To be honest, I am too.

"Don't leave me," I repeat, my eyes filling with tears at my own clear desperation.

"What do you mean, don't leave you? You weren't even supposed to be here! I'm getting the fuck out of this place and you need to fuck off right now."

"Please," I beg. "I don't even know where I am. It's dark - there could be anyone out here. Muggers, murderers..."

"Murderers," he chuckles, and my stomach jolts, but not out of fear. "You're afraid of murderers, yet you want to hang out with me?"

"Not 'hang out'... just stay with you. Take me with you, wherever you're going."

I may sound insane, but he is my only option right now.

His eyes widen in disbelief and he runs a hand through his long curls. "You're out of your mind, girl."

He turns and begins to walk away, and as he reaches the bottom of the steps I throw my last card at him. "The police are looking for you!" I call, desperately. "They went to your house, and they think your girlfriend is covering for you. They think you killed Chris." 

Harry freezes on the spot, and my heart clenches with anticipation. He turns slowly to look at me, an expression of shock now registering on his face. I say nothing, but wait as he walks slowly back towards me, his brow furrowed and a trace of what looks like fear in his eyes. He crosses into my personal space, leaning right into me to stare into my eyes. My heart is now pounding.

"Tell me what you know," he whispers dangerously. His mouth is so close to mine I can feel his breath on my lips as he forms his words, and smell the mint from his chewing gum.

"I just did," I mutter back, forcing myself to maintain eye contact with him, determined not to let him see that he not only intimidates me, but downright frightens me.

"What do you know about my life?" he demands.

"N-nothing," I stammer. 

"You're lying." He says this without even blinking; without even breaking his stare. Having him this close to me is causing my insides to tremble.

"I'm not," I protest. "I swear. I'm just telling you what I heard the policeman say into his radio. They're looking for you."

"You know about Katie," he says suddenly, and I am thrown by the change of direction.

"Know what?"

"You mentioned her before, when Chris was chatting shit about Colette. You know too fucking much. You're a liability."

I haven't a clue what he means by this but his uncertainty seems to have inspired a change in his mood, and dare I say it, it seems to be for the better - albeit only marginally.

"Then take me with you," I urge. "If you're worried I'm going to drop you in it, take me with you so I can't. I saw what you did to Chris. If the police question me they'll break me, and then you really will be in the shit."

I have no idea where this spurt of courage has come from, or why I am reminding him that I hold the key to his undoing when he has already proved to me tonight that he is capable of uncontrollable violence. But it is enough to make Harry think twice. He stares at me silently for a few moments, and then spits into the dirt.

"For fuck's sake. This has to be some sort of fucking joke!" he roars.

"I've got money," I add, gesturing to his car that is abandoned a short distance away, the back door still open from where he pulled me out unceremoniously. My rucksack remains in the foot well behind the driver's seat, with two months' rent money inside.

He gives a derisive smirk. "You've got money, have you? Join the club, kid."

I don't understand why this is funny, so while he appears to contemplate this, I jog back to the car to retrieve my bag. I pull the tatty blue blanket off it and swing the rucksack onto my shoulder, tossing the blanket into the dirt as I do so.

"Pick that up."

I look up to see Harry walking towards me with his jaw set in a hard line.

"What?" I ask, uncomprehendingly.

"I said Pick that up!" he yells, making me jump, and he pushes past me to grab the blanket off the ground, shaking it to dislodge the gravel sticking to the dirty fibres before stuffing it into his holdall.

"What's the big deal?" I ask, confused, but before he has time to answer, blue flashing lights approach in the distance, sweeping round the bend and down the ramp beneath the flyover, heading towards us at a moderate pace. In a matter of seconds, we will be in their headlights and the game will be up.

For a split second we are both rooted to the spot, frozen with fear while time around us stands still. 

"Run," Harry whispers.

He turns gracefully on the spot and races away into the shadows, and I am right behind him. 

---***---

Twist is back! I'm so excited about this book! If you're still here after almost ten months of no updates, then thank you! I hope the chapter was worth waiting for :) I'm aiming for one update a week from now on, but I don't want to promise as life has a habit of getting in the way... xx