The Only Way Out

Hannah felt the soft brushed fabric of the small black notebook in her hand, and held it a little tighter in that moment. She closed her eyes and whispered to herself, ‘Just one more week to go.’ Flicking through the pages of names she had carefully accumulated over the last twelve years she stopped, when she saw the clients name in question, double checked the payment terms of the job and opened the drivers door.

Stepping out of the van Hannah looked up to the bright sky above. Today felt different. Today was different. Walking round to the back of the van she pressed the immobiliser key and swung open the back doors, unlocked the internal security cage and started to pull out the equipment.

This client was a regular. The best thing about this job was the client knew the score without having to put Hannah in any awkward situations. She always offered to pay in cash and Hannah always said yes. This made Hannah more grateful than she could ever let the client know.

Forty five minutes later and the job was done. The equipment being carefully placed and made secure in the back of the van was crucial. This took a little longer than usual, and when completed Hannah sat for a while in the front seat, looking down at the black notebook which now tightly held the money under its elasticated coverband. The decision to put everything on paper twelve years ago leaving no digital trace had been the right one. To a passerby looking over her shoulder at that given minute they would simply have seen a book containing lines of names, addresses, phone numbers, and written next to the client’s specific job number the crucial words ‘CASH’ or ‘NO CASH’. However, if you looked deeper between those lines there were the words which only Hannah could see. Words of future hope, the journey of her past, her promises to so many and the power to change a life she didn’t just want to change, it had now become a matter of survival. The total monetary amount was ever growing on the back page of the book. Hannah stared at this number daring not to blink in case it changed in front of her eyes and whispered to herself, ‘Just one more week to go.’

The van pulled up outside the high-rise tower block. No parking spaces. Again. The daily pilgrimage to the road which ran behind the block was becoming excruciatingly tiresome, and as usual when exiting the van she kept her wits about her. The imposing tower block that loomed over her filled her stomach with the same sense of anguish she felt every time she looked up at the eighteenth floor. The kit bag on her right shoulder didn’t get any lighter, and after struggling to open the ground floor entrance door, she started trip one of two she would have to do that day. To leave her kit in the van overnight was unthinkable and to lose it at this stage in proceedings would be the true meaning of devastation.

With every step up the eighteen flights of stairs the reoccurring thoughts entered her mind, and started formulating into ‘The Plan.’ The plan of action in case the unthinkable happened. What was her exit strategy? Would there be an exit strategy or would she have to stay? When would she be able to not have these same torturous conversations with herself. Her brain was tired. She was tired.

The eighteenth floor and at the top of the stairs, to the right hand side, the front door she had looked at every day for the past twelve years. Dropping the heavy kit bag on the floor, she opened the top of the bag, pulled out a key and opened the door. A man stood at the other end of the hallway.

‘What are you doing here?’ Hannah tried to keep her voice calm but she heard her nervousness with her own ears.

‘You said to let myself in if there was an emergency’ the man replied coldly, staring at her, his eyes not diverting for a second.

‘What’s the emergency?’ Hannah could feel her anxiety setting in remembering the exact equipment which had been left in the van. The man continued his stare. Hannah’s eyes were drawn to something on the hallway table she had never seen in the flat before. A ticket. A small, yellow ticket which gave the appearance it had been roughly torn out of a raffle book. Something was stamped across it. Hannah flipped the ticket around to read the word but she could barely make out the faded ink stamped letters. Then she saw it....COLLECTED.

‘What is this?’ Hannah asked as she lifted up the yellow ticket so the man could see.

The man averted his stare to the ticket in Hannah's hand, ‘The man who knocked at the door asking for the bag? I gave it to him, he told me to give you that.’ The surge of panic rushed from Hannah’s knees to her head within seconds and without a moment's hesitation she flew over to the kitchen cupboard and flung open the doors. There staring back at her was the black bag. She heard a movement and looked behind her, the man was now standing in the kitchen doorway, his eyes had changed and had become darker in an instant.

If life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die, for Hannah this was that moment. The hallway cupboard. She had to get to the hallway cupboard, although every part of her now flushed and panicked body didn’t want to see what she thought might be the case. With everything she felt she had she ran at the man who seemed to want to step aside when he saw the sheer desperation which now filled up Hannah’s eyes. She frantically opened the hallway cupboard doors, and fell instantly to the ground. The black bag that had been living inside this cupboard for the past twelve years, the bag her brain couldn’t compute it wasn’t seeing, was gone.

How her legs ran out the front door and down the eighteen flights of stairs Hannah doesn’t know. What words the man was shouting at her as she was running Hannah doesn’t know. She didn’t know which direction to go in to look for the man who now had the bag, her bag when she burst out of the ground floor entrance door, nor did she recognise the words which were now being screamed out of her mouth. She doesn't know how long she screamed, she doesn't know how long she sobbed. This is grief she thought. The same form of grief she had felt when her Mother had walked out on her as a girl and not turned around at any point in her life to look back for her. This moment was a different kind of grief. A gut sickening, wrench turning, struggling to breath kind of grief. Her life was over.

--------------------- EIGHT YEARS LATER -----------------------

The not knowing who had discovered the $20,000 inside the bag on that day eight years ago consumed Hannah's head and strangled her thoughts every waking minute of every desperate day. Sometimes she thought upon it so much that she wondered how she ever kept managing to pull her mind back from the point of no return. A person who forever looked forward now being forced to look in the opposite direction. Was it the man who had knocked at the door, or the person or people he was dropping the bag too? Was it somebody else who had intercepted the bag completely by chance? Or was it him? The man who had been there to greet her on the eighteenth floor on that day, eight years ago. The unknowing was the unbearable. 20,000 times she has asked the question why? Twelve years, and that was her only way out.

Hannah looked down at the small black notebook in her hand. She rang the doorbell of the house she stood in front of and whispered desperately to herself...