She walked until the streetlights blurred.
The rain fell cold and hard and without mercy, soaking through her thin cardigan within minutes.
Her hair plastered itself to her face. Her shoes squelched. Her bag grew heavier with every step, as if the books inside were filling with water, and she did not have the strength to throw it away.
She didn't know where she was going. She didn't have anywhere to go.
She thought of Julian. His house was somewhere in the town, but she had never seen it, and she was ashamed to think of arriving on his doorstep like a stray. She thought of Mr. Abel, but the shop would be locked. She thought of Martha, who would pay for any kindness with her job.
Everyone she could have run to was someone she would hurt.
At the end of the road, she stopped under a dead streetlamp and let herself cry, finally, loudly, with her whole body. She cried for her mother, whom she had never met. She cried for her father, who had looked straight at her and seen a liar. She cried for the girl in the tool shed, and the girl at the table, and the girl kneeling on the floor, begging.
Nobody heard. The rain swallowed every sound.
When there were no more tears, she wiped her face and started walking again. The road was empty. It was the part of the city where the houses grew larger and the streets grew quieter, where the rich lived behind high walls and nobody walked after dark.
She did not look up. She did not see the headlights until they were nearly on her.
The world exploded into white light and a screech of tires. Lily froze, her bag sliding from her shoulder, her body too stunned to move. The front of a long Red car stopped less than a foot from her knees, so close that she felt the heat of the engine on her skin.
For a moment, there was only the sound of rain.
Then the driver's door slammed open.
"Are you out of your mind?" A man in a dark uniform strode toward her, his face red with fury. "What are you doing in the middle of the road? You could have been killed! If you want to die, go and do it somewhere else!"
Lily stared at him, trembling. She could not find her voice. She could only look at the glossy red car and the rain streaming off its bonnet, and think how strange it was that she had survived so much only to be run over on the way to nowhere.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I am so sorry."
She bent to pick up her bag with numb fingers. She turned away.
"Ma'am," the driver began, a little more gently, as though he had finally seen her face. But she was already walking.
He stood there, uncertain, with the rain beating down on his shoulders. Then he shrugged and returned to the car.
"Who is that?" asked a voice from the back seat.
The driver paused with his hand on the door. "Nobody, sir. Some girl in the road."
"Nobody?"
"A silly girl, sir. She nearly walked straight into us."
"You almost hit her."
"I know, sir, but..."
"Samuel." The voice was calm, low, and impossible to argue with. "Go and get her. It is pouring rain."