Those few days stuck in the flat had been some of the worst I'd had in a while. The migraine eased —eventually— but in its absence I was left with something else. It was subtle at first, a flutter in my chest or a shiver down my spine, then it started to grow. Soon it was this deep-rooted feeling that I wasn't safe. That somehow, this little flat I'd called home —my sanctuary— had been violated and was no longer a place of security and self-preservation.

I found myself peering over my shoulder for fear there was someone behind me or flinching at the slightest noise. In the beginning, I thought it was just some remnant of the feelings stirred up by the burglary, but then the dreams started.

They were innocuous at first, nothing more than brief flashes of the yard outside, with the tall brick walls and patio steeped in silver moonlight, and the metal stairs casting long thin shadows. It was nothing I hadn't seen before. After all, I'd spent many a sleepless night staring out at that square of concrete; looking at how the moss favoured the north facing back wall, or the old bricks had been dimpled and rounded by years of wet weather and harsh frosts.

The difference was that this image, this memory, came with a sense of foreboding. An irrefutable feeling that there was something coming, or there was something sinister hiding in the shadows.

As if the feeling wasn't enough, my mind taunted me with a face —a lovely angelic face — with pillowy lips and apple-like cheeks. It was the kind of face that should have garnered trust, but instead it made a cold sweat break out across my skin. Each night, no matter how much I tried to take my mind off it, my subconscious played out the same scene. First the yard, eerie and silent, and then, as if in slow motion, my eyes find her in the darkness and her own flashed to mine, empty and hollow. Not just blank like the look I had seen on Book Boy now and then, but completely devoid of emotion. Not even a flash of humanity; that flicker that said, 'I'm like you'.

In that moment I try to run, but like so many dreams before, my legs feel thick and heavy. I struggle to move like the air around me has turned viscous.

To my horror, she moves silently towards me. Her footsteps are soft and steady and ceaseless. The promise of her touch on my skin makes my stomach roll in fear. It's like there's this unfinished thought in my head that knows those hands had done things that would bring bile to the top of my throat. Unspeakable, unforgiveable things. I just couldn't remember what those things were. If I even knew in the first place.

A shiver trickled down my spine as I remembered the dream. The thought of that face, even in the bright harsh world of daylight, still filled me with terror. I didn't recognise the face. I didn't even know how my mind had imagined such a disturbing thought, but it wasn't the first time my brain had excelled its ability to conjure up nightmares.

"Anna?" Kelly's warm voice pulled me from my reverie. I blinked once, clearing the haunting image from my head. The bar rushed back into my consciousness, filling my ears with the clatter of cups and drone of everyday conversation.

Kelly was standing at the foot of the stairs, her arms crossed while she surveyed the bar.

"Can we talk?" she asked in a tone that wasn't a request. I nodded stiffly.

We hadn't discussed my outburst since I'd fainted, and there had been an awkwardness between us since I'd turned up for work this morning.

"Amber!" she called, pointing at the cash register.

Amber sashayed through the tables, taking her place without question. She was filling in for Emma while she had class. Callum and I adapted to the addition of the redhead, but it felt wrong watching Amber strut around the bar in place of Emma's gleeful bounce.

I followed Kelly as she marched up the stairs towards her office. With each step up, I reminded myself to I think before I talked. I needed this job, and I respected Kelly, both of those things were more important than satisfying my emotional insecurities.

With a calming breath, I entered the office behind Kelly and softly closed the door. I could feel my heart thrumming against my rib cage in anticipation of what was coming.

"I wanted to check in," she said as she settled into the swivel chair beside her desk. She shifted a few times getting comfortable. The chair squeaked each time she moved. Every time it did, I saw her frown deepen.

"Clearly, time to cut down on the brownies," she muttered to herself. She cast me a grim smile which I returned awkwardly. I'd always admired Kelly's figure. She was all soft womanly curves like she'd been pulled out of the 1950s. It was the complete opposite of Emma's, but both were covetable in their own way. On good days, I'd look in the mirror and reason that mine was the median between the two. On bad days, I couldn't stand to look at all.

"So, how are you?" Kelly asked, pulling me from the tirade running through my head.

"Fine."

I felt my palms start to sweat with nerves. I could fight until I drew my last breath, but I had never learnt how to apologise without breaking out in a cold sweat. It was like my body was allergic to the prospect of showing any real emotion.

Woman up!

"Look, Kelly, I..." I started, throwing myself into the conversation with the rash bravery of a bungee jumping novice. Thankfully, she cut me off.

"You don't need to apologise, Anna." The second the words left her mouth I felt myself relax.

She played with a blue biro as she continued. "Us Eastfield girls have to stick together, right?"

"You remember?"

"Of course, why do you think I hired you? Your sparkling customer service?" Her eyes twinkled while the sarcasm lay thick in the air between us. I'd always wondered why she'd hired me, but after a few years working here I'd put it to the back of my mind.

"I guess I never really thought about it." I propped myself against the wall as I watched her twirl the pen in circles against the desk. It was little things like that which reminded me that she wasn't that much older than me. Old enough to demand authority but not quite enough to be comfortable in these kinds of situations. It was half the reason no one had ever been fired from the bar. Kelly just didn't have the guts to do it. Not that anyone had any inclination to test that theory.

"I know what it was like growing up in that world," she started in a far-off voice. The kind that spoke from behind a veil of memories rather than the now. "The money, the people, the expectations." She exhaled a deep sigh while her hazel eyes fixed on the pen spinning against the polish wood. "I know this probably sounds totally fake, but I get it. You know? How hard it can be."

Her eyes flicked to me, and I tried my best not to squirm under their stare.

I knew the world she was speaking of. It was the kind where a person either thrived or failed. There was no in-between. Or at least that was how it had seemed as a teenage girl. Before I met Mr R that world had seemed so brutal, cutthroat. It was an endless rat race of who had the most expensive bag, who's Daddy earned the most, or who's postcode garnered the most social credit. It was vapid and conceited, and nothing compared to the world I existed in once I met Mr R. Once I met him, I transcended the inane chatter of schoolgirls and stepped into something beyond anything they could conceive in their vacuous minds. Or at least that was how I'd felt at fourteen, when love wasn't really love unless it was melodramatic and all consuming.

Still, Kelly thought she could understand, but really, she had no idea.

The itch whispered in my head, telling me to taunt her for her beliefs. To cut into her good intentions until she understood that she knew nothing, and in fact could never really know anything about what I'd been through.

But then I saw a glimmer of innocence in her eyes, and I swallowed the bile down.

"Look, I don't know what happened back then, and I'm not going to ask you to tell me, but can you just promise me that you'll eat something other than coffee when you're here?"

She smiled a small quiet smile. The kind that made the corners of her full lips turn up at the sides and the corners of her eyes crinkle. It was a forgiving smile and with it the awkwardness between us disappeared into the ether. Like it had never really been there to start with.

"OK."

I returned her smile, partly because my face felt the urge to mimic her own, and partly with relief that she wasn't going to try and push our friendship to somewhere beyond what we had.

"Christ would you look at that," she said as she spun to look at the CCTV stream of the bar below. On one of the four images we could see Amber leaning over the counter, flirting with a customer. "Between her and Cal I'm going to end up being sued for sexual harassment."

I chuckled as I thought of the number of times I'd found Cal flirting with a customer. In the past four years, I'd watched him hone his technique of brazen flirtation and candour. He was fearless, and there had been more than a few times when he had surprised even himself by the innuendos he'd managed to construct from seemingly innocent phrases.

Thinking of Callum, I scanned the CCTV to see if he was still chatting with the hipster who had walked in an hour ago. The guy had walked in complaining about the cold as he ordered his coffee, and Callum had wasted no time in telling him he'd 'warm him up in no time'. They had been chatting since, but as the black and white images flickered on the screen, I could see the guy had left.

The screens changed again, showing the storeroom, the rear entrance, and the mezzanine. None of us had noticed that there was a camera up there, especially Callum. He'd been disappearing up there to sleep off the last hour of his shift since the first week he started at the bar. Now I could see him sprawled on one of the booths, his arm slung behind his head and his mouth hanging open.

Kelly must have heard me shift in discomfort because her eyes flicked from me to the screen and back again.

Her soft laughter made her shoulder shake and her wavy hair bounce against her chest.

"It's fine, Anna. I've had the cameras up there from day one. I know what he's like."

"It doesn't bother you?" I asked as the screen changed again.

"It's Cal, it's part of his charm. Same way your insults are part of yours. It doesn't change the fact I trust you. All of you. Except Sev. I'm not sure I'm a big fan."

"Yeah, he's a bit of a dick," I commented bitterly. Our last conversation had left a sour taste in my mouth.

"I got the feeling you weren't keen on him. Is there history there?"

"Me and Sev? Urgh no." I paused as I shook off the shiver of revulsion. The very thought of his greasy hands anywhere near me made me want to dry heave. "He just went to that boy's school around the corner from ours. You know the Royal Academy place?"

Kelly nodded. No girl went to Eastfield without knowing about the neighbouring boys' school.

"Anyway, he's just one of those guys, you know, once a dick always a dick."

"Fair enough. I don't think he'll be around much to be honest. He sent me a message, after the shift you guys had together, saying his workload was ramping up."

I stifled a smirk. I hadn't meant to make him quit, but I couldn't lie and say it wasn't an added bonus. "I told you to stop hiring students. They're flaky as fuck."

"I know, I know." She glanced at the CCTV. The bar was playing out before us in black and white. Clear as day, in the lower right corner, was Amber texting on her phone as the coffee machine spluttered steam and hot coffee beside her.

As if the system couldn't bear to watch anymore, an error message popped up on the screen with a storage warning.

"Damn! I've got to go help Amber, but could you do me a favour and delete the CCTV files? I've been meaning to do it but..."

"But it's boring and you don't want to?" I finished.

"Pretty much," Kelly replied with a wide grin. "And there's that whole being the boss thing."

"Fine, but if I'm going to have to spend the rest of my shift watching Callum learning to twerk when he thinks no one's watching, or guys ogling Emma for hours on end, I want coffee in return."

Kelly laughed at my demands, because we both knew I'd have done it simply because she asked me to.

"You've got a deal."