March arrived cold and petulant, throwing rain at London with the particular spite of a season that had forgotten it was almost spring. Jane moved through it with the practiced resignation of someone who had lived in England long enough to know better than to take the weather personally.
She had an essay due. She had a seminar presentation on Conrad. She had a group project with three classmates who communicated exclusively through increasingly passive-aggressive emails. These were her problems. These were the correct size for her life.
She stopped noticing the black cars.
Or rather — she noticed them, but she told herself she was imagining the pattern. Cars parked on streets near her flat. A vehicle that seemed to appear on the road when she walked to the library. She was a twenty-two-year-old literature student who read too much and had an overactive narrative instinct. She was making a story where there was none.
"You're doing that thing again," Maya said on a Wednesday, watching Jane glance over her shoulder as they left the campus library.
"What thing?"
"The looking-behind-you thing. You've done it three times since we left the building."
Jane made herself stop and face forward. "I'm just — I don't know. I've been feeling a bit watched lately, which is probably just essay stress manifesting as paranoia." She attempted a laugh that came out slightly less convincing than intended.
Maya looked at her with the long, careful look of a person working something out. "Jane. Is everything okay? With you and Luke, I mean."
Jane blinked. "Yes? Why?"
Maya hesitated in a way she almost never did. "No reason. He was — I saw him, the other day. On campus. And he was with someone. A girl from the sports faculty. I'm sure it was nothing, just—"
"Who was she?" Jane's voice came out very level. She was proud of that.
"I don't know her name. Blonde. They were — it was probably nothing, Jane. I shouldn't have said anything. I just—" Maya looked pained. "I just think you should keep your eyes open. That's all."
Jane kept her eyes forward. She kept her voice level. She kept walking.
But something had shifted. A small, silent thing. A crack in the certainty of ordinary life, barely visible, but there.
She didn't confront Luke. Not yet. She needed to be sure before she said anything — because Jane Williams did not make accusations on the basis of a feeling and a glimpse. She was careful. She was thorough. She gathered evidence before she drew conclusions.
It was, she would later think, the most useful and most painful quality she possessed.