One of Us by Iain Rowan

forget it. Keep your mouth shut, see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. And remember: I can help you. Look after you.”
    “And why would you do that?” I asked him. “I do not have a good experience with people offering to do things for me. There is often a catch.”
    “Ouch. Touché. But that’s why, Anna. I feel like I owe you one for what happened. That’s why I’m offering to look after you.”
    “No other reason?”
    “Not that I can think of,” Daniel said, and he grinned the biggest grin of the day. “Why, you thinking of anything in particular? Anything you had in mind?”
    “You are never in my mind,” I said, and Daniel laughed and got back into his car.
    “Later,” he said, and drove away. As he did, he raised one hand out of the window in goodbye. I might have done the same in answer, but I had already picked up the laundry bag, so he lost out.

CHAPTER SIX
    Two days later I was sat cross-legged on my bed, staring at a newspaper that was two days old, but not reading any of the words. I was thinking of my father, of how he shivered in a damp cell, mourning his son and not knowing whether his daughter was dead too. He did not mourn for long. They told my aunt it was a heart attack, but that was a lie often told and we knew it for what it was. She told me over the phone, while I stood in a phone box in a city I did not know, in a country that was not my own, and I cried because he was dead, and I cried because I would never see him again, and I cried because I was not there for him, and I cried because I was cold and on my own and my father would never hold me and say “Hush, hush,” again. I told my aunt that I wanted to come back to the funeral, and she said I could not, that it was not safe. “You need to know why, child,” she said. “It is time you knew the truth, past time”, and she told me other things, things I knew already, but had not allowed myself to believe, and then my money ran out and that was that.
    Safira poked her head around the door. She was nervous, like a little mouse, always watchful, always timid. I wondered if she had always been like that, or if her journey to this place had made her that way.
    “Anna, there is a visitor for you,” she whispered. “A man.” She said this as if it was a thing of great surprise.
    I sighed and folded the paper up. I did not want visitors. I did not want men, men were trouble. I just wanted to sit, and to drink hot tea, and to think.
    I walked down to the front door and opened it. Safira would not have left the front door open to a man she did not know. Sean stood outside, shuffling from foot to foot, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat.
    “Anna,” he said. “Hello.”
    “Sean,” I said. Then neither of us said anything else for a moment.
    “So there’s a problem?” I asked. “At work, I mean. Does Peter need me in?”
    “Work’s fine,” Sean said. “It’s not about—I just—I just thought it would be nice if we could talk. Outside work. See how you were, you know. Get a coffee or something. If that’s OK. So I thought I would call round early, before work, see you.”
    “Talk about what?” I said. “What else is there to talk about?” He looked as if I had slapped him.
    “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” he said. “Sorry.” He turned to walk away.
    “No,” I said. “Wait. I am short on good ideas. Wait there, I will get my coat. We can walk in the park before work. It will be good to get some air.”
    We walked to the park without saying very much. Sean tried to make conversation about work, talking about something that Peter had said, telling it like he was a comedian and I was his audience. His heart was not in it though, and after a while he stopped, and we walked on a way in silence. It was not busy. There were nicer parks, with beds of flowers and bandstands and swings for the children to play on. This one was just trees and scrubby grass and a pond. It was used by joggers and flashers and