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He frowns and sits back in the chair. “I just want to help, Jess.”
She feels bad. He’s risking everything by having her here. And all she can do is be a bitch to him.
“I know, I’m sorry,” she says.
He nods in reply. “So what are you going to do?”
Jess shakes her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t.” She notices him going to say something, but cuts him off. “I can’t go back to the hospital, Nav. They’ll arrest me, and then where will I be?”
“But at least they’ll let you see Alice,” he says quietly.
The mention of her name makes Jess want to cry. Alice has been at the forefront of her mind since she left the hospital: a constant worry, the separation from her daughter causing an almost physical pain. But she can’t be arrested, to be in the hands of the police.
“I don’t want supervised visits,” she replies. “With a fucking social worker present. Don’t you think I’ve had enough of those in my life already?”
“It’s better than nothing. And I’ll help you find a lawyer. They’ll sort it all out before you know it.” He pauses. “It won’t be like last time. I promise,” he adds softly.
Jess shakes her head, looking down at the floor. Big round tears start to fall. “I can’t risk it,” she says.
Nav puts his arm around her. He feels warm and familiar. It’s all she can do not to sob in his arms, and she rests her head on his chest, closing her eyes. She can smell Nav—the unique mix of him—and it’s comforting. Not for the first time, she wonders what life would have been like if she and Nav had gotten together.
They’d never even had a drunken kiss. For a while at university Jess wondered if he was gay, but the two-year live-in girlfriend put a stop to that pondering. She was long gone now, though. Jess couldn’t remember why, something to do with the demands of medical training.
Nav was everything Jess wasn’t. Grammar-school educated, ridiculously smart, cultured. He was fit: running marathons for children with leukemia. And he was a cancer doctor, for God’s sake. A good bloke, through and though. Jess thought maybe that was why they’d never got together. They were too different.
She pulls away and wipes her eyes. She looks at him. The light is fading, and Jess can see how drained Nav is.
“We need to talk about this, Jess,” he tries again. “You heard what the police said. They’re looking for you.”
Jess looks at her hands. Her nails are split and broken, she assumes from escaping the fire, and there is a scratch running across her wrist that she hasn’t noticed before.
“And I don’t want you going back to that apartment,” Nav continues seriously. “Who lives there?”
“Griffin. He’s a …” She’s not sure how to answer the question. “He’s helping me,” she finishes.
“Helping you do what?”
Jess detects a trace of something in his voice. Jealousy? Surely not.
“Find out what happened. Someone started that fire deliberately. Griffin knows something …” She stops. She barely believes it herself. To repeat it seems ridiculous. “You heard the police,” Jess says. “They have their minds set. It was me. They’re not looking for anyone else.”
“You can hardly blame them,” Nav blurts out.
His words hang in the room.
“If you don’t believe me, then why didn’t you tell the police where I was?” Jess growls.
“I do believe you! I know you’re not capable of doing something like that—”
“So act like it!”
“But, Jess, you have to see it from their perspective,” Nav pleads. “Innocent people don’t run.”
“I don’t trust the police. I’ll end up in prison.”
“But you trust me, right?”
Jess stays quiet. She does. But Nav’s never been on the wrong side of the law. He doesn’t understand.
