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The Twisted Vigilante Box Set

(Three Book Collection)

Copyright 2021

Gary Kittle

Published by Gary Kittle (2021)

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to the vendor or your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The Twisted Vigilante Box Set. Copyright Gary Kittle, 2021. This eBook is a work of fiction. While reference may be made to actual

places or events, the names, characters, incidents and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

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Dedication:

To Rose Mary Deal 1891-1979

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Cover design and illustration by

‘germancreative’

CONTENTS

BULLY FOR YOU GLASS ALIBI THE HOUSE RULES Other Books by this Author About this Author Connect with Gary Kittle

Bully For You – Contents

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter One

The house was full of shadows, but only one of them was his. Chris switched on all the lights, but the brightness only made his headache worse. He closed his eyes and swallowed but someone had lodged a golf ball in his throat. He tried to shift it with gulps of sweet tea. Sicky tomorrow, he thought, as if this dark cloud had a silver lining. Or maybe it would be better to get an early night and from tomorrow pretend it had never happened. After all he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He poked out his tongue and winced: the stiff upper lip was his already. Fatigue set him swaying, and in the living room glare he could smell again the mugger’s breath tickling his cheek, the fingernails skewering his flesh…

Chapter Two

‘In… my jacket….’ Chris wheezed. ‘Wallet… mobile…’ From behind his ear came a spray of laughter. A meaty arm curled around his throat and yanked his head upward as a knee pressed down into his lower back, stimulating the need to inhale whilst making it physically impossible. ‘What… do you… want?’ ‘Your dinner money, of course.’ The contemptuous laughter came again. ‘So be a good boy and hand it over.’ In an agony of stretching Chris slipped his hand into his tro pocket and clawed its contents out onto the pavement. It wasn’t just the wallet and smart phone that were ignored; there was also a decent watch. Not a desperate drug addict, then. And certainly not a professional thief, not if he was only going to get away with £2.34 each time. ‘Take… it! Take it!’ And with a final yank of the forearm his assailant did just that…

Chapter Three

The sound of movement from above snapped Chris back into the present. Would Bradley even notice his cuts and bruises? Footsteps moved over his head and a door slammed. Here we go again, Chris thought. Just what I don’t need. The footsteps clumped down the stairs and Chris stared at the living room door. The handle bowed and the door crept open. It stopped, and for a brief moment Chris caught a phantom whiff of that fetid mugger’s breath. Then the door swept inward and there was Bradley. Does he even look like me? Chris wondered. It was hard to tell with that curtain of hair flopping about. Didn’t the school have any standards? ‘What happened?’ The tone of voice was flat, the facial expression neutral. ‘Tripped up,’ Chris replied. ‘Down some stairs.’ Bradley grunted and headed for the television, sweeping up the remote as he fell into the seat. ‘I’m all right, though,’ Chris added to the back of the boy’s head. No response. ‘You hungry?’ Again nothing. ‘Brad?’ He caught what might have been either a grunt or a belch. ‘I thought maybe Chinese?’ The volume from the television climbed. ‘Chinese it is then,’ Chris muttered, turning away to the kitchen. Nearly a fortnight and she had hadn’t called him or even emailed. Tess was being deliberately cruel, and Chris was damned if he’d read those letters. They weren’t addressed to him anyway. It was a question of respect. He was still the man of the house, the head of the family. ‘You’re suffocating me,’ she’d complained. But the truth was their marriage had been a slow-motion car crash for the past three years, with both of them grappling for the steering wheel. Snatching up the Chinese takeaway menu, he searched for something reasonably healthy. Telephone order completed Chris walked over to the kitchen window to close the blind. The moon cast its milky glow onto the lawn. Before he knew it the clocks would spring forward and he’d have to start mowing every fortnight. Not that Tess had ever done much in the garden except put the washing out. The garden fence was a wall of darkness; the summerhouse a solid featureless block staring back at him. Movement caught his eye. Frowning, Chris leaned forward, his nose close to the cold glass. Outside all was still. A cat, perhaps? Or one of those urban foxes

monopolising the news? He stared into the darkness, but the throbbing behind his eyes intensified and with a curse he tugged down on the blind cord. ‘Jumpy sod.’ He put out the crockery and cutlery; then on second thoughts a couple of trays so that they could eat in front of the television together. Even if there was no conversation they could still share the same air, surely? Their Chinese meal arrived courtesy of a young boy who insisted on telling Chris he was Vietnamese. ‘That’s all right. I’m not planning on eating you.’ When he retold the gag his son accused him of being racist and headed for the stairs. If only Tess could see what she had done, walking out on an adolescent boy and his dutiful father. There had to be ‘someone else’. Feeling gloomy Chris watched the television alone, drifting in and out of a doze; but when Crimewatch came on it seemed a good time to call it a night.

Chapter Four

Bradley Haynes hoped that flight of stairs was long and hard, the steps jagged. Over breakfast the next morning he’d noticed more bruising on his father’s face, and he seemed restricted in his movements. Good job. Since she’d been gone the house was drowned in silence. Mothers didn’t abandon their children, as Dad had claimed, no matter what they were going through. In the first few days of that unexpected quiet he thought about ing the police, but realising his father would just turn on the charm - Brad hasn’t taken this very well. He’s in denial, officer - he remained tight-lipped. He didn’t want to be the next member of the family to ‘disappear’. Dad kept trying to reassure Bradley that Mum would call him up any day now, but every day that she didn’t his misgivings about the summerhouse grew stronger. When he wasn’t in school, Bradley took to his room, trying to figure out how he could get back at his father. Sometimes he felt as if the crown of his skull could blow clean off with all the rage bubbling away underneath. Several teachers had criticized his schoolwork, and though he was trying to keep up appearances, he knew a ‘welfare meeting’ with Dad was inevitable. ‘It’s his mum, you see. She’s…gone.’ And she wasn’t coming back, Bradley knew. Thank God, then, for Gordon. ‘Hey, Gordon. Wait up,’ he called across the park. Gordon froze like a cat catching the scent of a very large dog. He was hanging about in the doorway of the lavatory block, as if he couldn’t quite make up his mind whether to pee. ‘Little freak,’ Bradley muttered. He started to slink inside, pretending he hadn’t heard his name, as Bradley strode across the grass towards him. Bradley decided to play Mr. Nice. Today it would be a bear hug; tomorrow, a rugby tackle. ‘Hey.’ Gordon didn’t turn around. If there was a hole nearby would he have stuck his head into it? Brad wondered. Pathetic. ‘I thought it was you. Didn’t you hear me?’ Gordon spun round, wearing the least convincing smile Bradley had ever seen. It looked like someone had put fishing hooks into the corners of his mouth and pulled them back hard. Now there was an idea… ‘All right, Brad?’ Gordon bleated. ‘I was just on my way home.’

‘But don’t you live on the other side of town?’ Gordon’s smile faltered. ‘You know where I live?’ ‘Sure. East Street. Number fifty-three.’ Gordon’s despair was obvious as he tried to think how this could have happened. Bradley leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper: ‘I followed you from school last Thursday.’ Gordon’s shoulders slumped for a second, before he rallied himself. ‘Wow, I never even suspected. You should become a spy.’ Or an interrogator. Boy, this was fun. ‘So what are you doing here?’ ‘Um,’ Gordon paused before answering, as if to gauge the least harmful answer. ‘Just - you know - hanging out.’ ‘I thought you said you were going home?’ Gordon suddenly looked weary, like someone swimming towards a distant shore who realised he was never going to make it. Bradley stifled a pang of sympathy and reminded himself that Gordon was someone whose idea of a good time was to stick his face in a book till he ran out of pages. ‘I was hanging out… on my way home,’ Gordon stuttered. What, in the lavs? Priceless! ‘So let’s hang out together. I’m not in any hurry to get home, are you?’ No word of a lie there. ‘Unless you still need the…’ Bradley nodded towards the Gents. Gordon blushed. He actually blushed! Bradley laughed to himself as he draped an arm around the other boy’s shoulder and led him off in the direction of the park gates. Buy that man a tank top! ‘It will give us time to get to know each other better. You know, become proper mates.’ ‘Really?’ Gordon asked. ‘Sure. And I never realised you collected coins.’ He’d brought them in to show the class the week before. T.W.A.T. ‘You got any brothers or sisters, Gordon?’ ‘Sort of.’

Sort of? What are they, rented? Virtual? ‘How do you mean, Gordon?’ Bradley let his arm fall away. Didn’t this guy ever wash? ‘Well, my dad’s remarried so I’ve got two step-sisters now. But they don’t like me.’ You don’t say? ‘So, we’re both only children, then? See, something in common already?’ Bradley laughed. ‘Apart from collecting coins, of course!’ ‘You mean you collect them, too?’ Bradley laughed harder still. ‘You bet. I’ll show you some time.’ Gordon’s eyes shone with excitement, and that pang of sympathy hit Bradley again, threatening to spoil his entertainment. He forced himself to take a long critical look at the other boy. Everything about Gordon Moore was obnoxious: his threadbare second-hand clothes, the way his nose seemed always to be dripping, his nervous ticks and awkward movements. Awkward? Watching him on the sports field was like watching someone with two left feet. Had he actually been born at all? Bradley wondered. Or was he some kind of six form biology experiment gone wrong? Do you know, Moore, I actually think I hate you? The sympathy vanished. ‘So where shall we ‘hang out’, then?’ Bradley grinned. ‘Well…’ Gordon looked uncomfortable again, as if he suddenly did need the toilet after all. ‘I… I guess I could show you my secret place.’ Oh, Jesus, a den! Only six-year olds have dens, you cretin. ‘Great! Sharing a secret would really make us mates.’ Which potentially was not so great. ‘Lead on, my friend.’ Bradley didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Talking to Gordon was like being trapped in an R.E. lesson forever. For a second Bradley was convinced the stupid freak was going to start skipping. They called in at a newsagent for sweets, and then Gordon led him away from the town centre towards the industrial estate. Sometimes Bradley came up here to skateboard with his real friends, so he was relieved to see there were no other kids about to witness him in the company of creepy Gordon. They walked over to the wire fence holding back the wilderness beyond.

‘Here,’ Gordon said, scanning in both directions to make sure no one was watching. Bradley noticed a tear in the wire close to one of the metal poles. As he watched Gordon grabbed the lower corner and peeled the wire up, producing a corner just wide enough for them to squeeze through. Once on the other side they had to skirt the length of the fence for a short distance before turning into the wood proper. This was obviously ancient woodland, like they’d learned about in Geography. After a few minutes they came to a clearing, at the far side of which was a small concrete hut. ‘Now do you know where we are?’ Gordon chirped, full of himself. Of course, the railway embankment, the grey rails describing the cut below. And this building was an abandoned signalman’s hut or something. Gordon scuttled over to the entrance which was covered by two rusty corrugated metal sheets. He moved one of these aside and motioned for Bradley to enter. ‘Hey, this is… nice,’ Bradley smirked, poking his head inside. ‘How did you find it?’ ‘I just got lucky, I guess.’ ‘Does anyone else know about this place?’ ‘Oh, no. Just you and me, Brad.’ The interior was a bare concrete shell in the centre of which was an old faded rug, a Seventies coffee table and a camping chair. ‘Home sweet home,’ Bradley muttered. Hanging from a nail was a faded picture of two adults smiling. ‘Joseph and Mary?’ ‘They’re my parents - my real parents, I mean. Before Mum… you know…’ Bradley’s attention was immediately captured by the father. There was something about the way his arm fell across the woman’s shoulder – as if he were not just holding her but holding her still - that unnerved him. ‘You won’t tell anyone?’ Gordon whispered.

Bradley turned to look into those frightened, dull-witted eyes and felt a welcome surge of disdain. ‘No. Course not, Gordon. Like you said, this is our little secret.’ ‘Perhaps we should give it a name?’ chirped Gordon. Bradley surveyed the interior again, noticing how the rubbish and dirt had all been pushed up into one corner. ‘Sure. And maybe put some more pictures up.’ ‘You think so?’ Gordon gushed. Bradley took a step towards him, anger suddenly coursing through his veins. ‘Of course not, you moron. I’m taking the piss!’ Gordon’s jaw dropped a good two inches, his shoulders by nearly as much. He tried to smile but it looked more like another nervous tick. His eyes flitted towards the gap between the tin sheets that served as a door, then back to Bradley. ‘So only you and me know about this place, right?’ Gordon could only nod. ‘Then it’s perfect. Give me your mobile number. I’ll text you when I want to see you here again.’ Gordon’s face blanched with dread. Bradley leered and patted his tro pocket. ‘You can help me with my coin collection.’

Chapter Five

The walk home took fifteen minutes, but to drive it would have taken Chris twice as long with the temporary traffic lights in the High Street. His nerves had tightened before he’d even left the office. The night air was sopping with the occasional flap of wind. From the front entrance to his office he was able to survey both ends of the road, crawling with cars and pedestrians alike. And though there was nothing he could identify as threatening or out of place, neither could he shake off the feeling that somewhere in that puddled vista was a pair of eyes staring directly at him. He pulled up his coat collar and stepped down to the pavement to merge with the masses. But if anything that sense of being watched intensified. And he’s following you now, too. He bit his lip as the urge to look behind him tapped him on the shoulder. Feeling exposed he put up his umbrella; but that only made him feel worse. A furled umbrella would make a useful weapon, he thought as he took it back down. He wouldn’t be caught off guard this time. Oh, just listen to yourself! You don’t even know there’s anyone there. But that was a lie. He turned left up a short hill, which was well lit and still busy with pedestrians. But the crowd was thinning, and the night was getting darker. He quickened his pace, despite the gradient, and felt his thighs warm beneath his damp tro legs. At the crest of the hill he crossed over and took the next right. Chris tried not to stare back as he crossed but was unable to resist a furtive glance. His stomach gurgled as the knot there tightened. He glanced back again, this time to see a slim shadow dart behind a tree. For God’s sake, get a grip! But that tree was thick enough to conceal two people. No, no. He works alone. The shadow did not reappear. ‘Because there’s no one there,’ he said aloud, and was relieved to find no one had heard him. The next road was lined with parked cars on both sides. There were coppiced trees by the kerbside every ten meters, a postbox, a couple of litter bins, gardens with hedges and fences – so many everyday objects to hide behind. Chris flattened his collar despite the chill and listened to the clump, clump, clump of his own footsteps echoing beneath him, leaden-footed, clumsy. He needed a drink, a lie down, a deadlock and a couple of door bolts. Straining his senses he guessed that the pavement behind him was now empty – or nearly empty. Then he heard what he had been dreading: in the spaces between his heavy clumping feet he heard a much lighter tread keeping pace behind him. Those steps

belonged to someone full of energy and purpose; someone fitter if not necessarily younger. Chris walked on, his mind attempting to calculate the number of steps remaining to his front gate, surely only in the hundreds. The pursuing footsteps maintained their steady rhythm. Not soft enough to be trainers, not loud enough to be boots. Drug addicts always wore trainers, as did pickpockets and muggers. Or did muggers prefer boots in case they needed to give someone a good kicking? Chris strained his hearing, cocking his neck a little to one side. No, that was the sound of well-cobbled work shoes, designed for the sedentary comfort of an office. So maybe their owner was just another commuter keen to find a stiff drink in front of the six o’clock news. If he turned around very quickly he might even find it was someone he worked with. Chris tightened his hold on the umbrella’s handle, urging his legs to greater effort. He imagined spinning around and pushing a button in the umbrella’s handle that dropped the hinged tip, revealing a hypodermic needle. No, if it came down to it Chris would have to jab at an eye socket or the groin and then scarper. Turning into his own road, the urge to just drop his belongings and leg it was almost overwhelming. The pursuing footsteps grew louder and quicker. They were gaining on him. Closing in for the kill. Chris pushed on, his teeth set hard together, as his front gate came into view. A few dozen more steps and he’d be safe. His lungs started to burn as he adopted the stride of a power walker. What the two men must look like to a erby… But that thought only reminded Chris that there were no witnesses. Inviting lights burned behind curtained windows. Would anyone hear him cry out above the sound of the wind and television and kids squabbling? The wind gusted in answer, blotting out the sound of footfalls. When it dropped again, Chris heard those lighter footsteps jogging. Adrenaline flushed through his heart and his legs were sprinting before he had time to think. Now was the time he really regretted giving up his gym hip. The front gate loomed. With a grateful moan he noticed that Bradley had again left it unlatched. The damp breeze slapped him across the face and a paper coffee cup skipped across the road. So be a good boy and hand it over! a voice echoed in his mind. But that crucial element of surprise was lost. This time it would be Chris that held the upper hand. And with that thought he imagined the hypodermic tip of his umbrella penetrating an eye. He wouldn’t see

that coming, the bastard. As he reached out for the gate Chris watched in horror as a stronger gust pushed it closed, the latch rattling home. His feet slapped against the pavement; blood rushed through his ears. Thrusting his umbrella under his left arm Chris flipped the latch up and pushed himself through in one fluid movement, mindful to slam the gate behind him again as he went. The door promised safety. His eyes went straight to the small mocking face of the Yale lock. His hand was already in his pocket, searching for the house keys, his ears straining to hear the sound of the gate latch set free once more. Surprised at his own dexterity Chris pulled out his key bunch and stabbed the front door key home, twisting and pushing forward simultaneously. He almost fell inside, his umbrella and case flying through the air, and with a groan of desperation he pushed the front door closed with his backside. Blood thundered through his veins like a washing machine in a spin. Panting he waited for a heavy thump against the door, but even the gate latch remained silent. Water dripped around his feet like urine. Breath bellowed back and forth through his throat, a light sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. An hysterical laugh escaped him that he barely recognised as his own. ‘You idiot!’ Had he seen anyone? Yes there had been running footsteps behind him, but it could have been a boyfriend rushing to an after-work date or someone heading for the railway station or... His breathe stopped short in his lungs and his hand slapped his tro pocket. A low moan escaped him, as his mind’s eye supplied the answer he dreaded: his key bunch dangling from the lock outside. No worries; there were bolts inside. He was still safe. But no, he couldn’t just leave them out there; not unless he was prepared to change several locks at no small expense. And would a locksmith be prepared to change all his locks out of hours? That meant a long night listening to every bump and scrape coming from outside. Maybe he could barricade the back door with furniture? No, that would be ridiculous given how close those keys were to him right now. The wind rattled the gate. Yet what if the mugger was still out there, a great here’s Johnnie! grin on his face as he starred at the dangling keys waiting for the door to reopen? He bit his knuckles, paralyzed by indecision. Then he had an idea and grasped it with both hands. But don’t forget… If he went upstairs, looked out from a bedroom window without the light on first… Don’t forget to… Yes, check that the coast was clear and then get the keys back. Simple. He was already halfway

up the stairs when he heard a familiar grating sound from behind him. But don’t forget to bolt the front door first, you idiot! Chris turned to watch in horror as the front door lurched inwards. The security chain rattled against the frame, unsecured; the door bolts as useless as rifles without triggers. Chris’ heart lurched back down the stairs, leaving him dizzy and weak above. How could he have been so stupid? ‘Dad, you’ve…’ Bradley stopped when he saw the terrified look on his father’s face. ‘You’ve left your keys in the door.’ Chris let out a long sigh of relief. But he still couldn’t relax until that door was shut again. ‘Yes, I know, Brad. I was just coming down to get them.’ Chris descended two steps at a time, pulled open the front door and avoided looking at anything but the keys. ‘Thanks.’ He quickly slammed the door back home and clutched his keys till his palm hurt. Bradley headed off to find the television remote. Adolescents were so self-absorbed it was bordering on autism; they noticed only their own needs. The blood still whooshed through his head like something had burst. No harm done, really, Chris decided as he slipped both bolts across and popped on the chain. He let out a bray of relief, ignorant of the fact that he had overlooked two important things. But then single parents noticed only their own needs.

Chapter Six

You can’t go wrong with pasta, he ed someone telling him. But that was obviously a joke, he decided, staring at the lake of cloudy water in which his spaghetti floundered. Bradley did not even pause to consider it, and one forkful was enough to convince Chris it was only fit for the bin. He understood now why chefs used such foul language. Still, the boy’s attitude irked him. Chris was doing his best to look after him and the house and hold down a full-time job. He wondered how Bradley was doing at school and hoped that no news was good news. Then again they didn’t seem to notice when kids were carrying offensive weapons in some schools. Thinking back to his irrational behaviour of earlier did little to improve his mood. For God’s sake! As if someone would follow him, let alone chase him down the street! But if they did, they know where you live now. Chris screwed up his eyes and wondered how long the aftershocks of his mugging would last. Perhaps he should ask the quack for a sedative. Damn you, Tess! The fact that he had been running up the stairs when Bradley had waltzed in and the tiny smirk of recognition on the boy’s lips had still failed to in Chris’ mind. The living room door opened suddenly and in slouched his son. Chris opened his mouth to speak but the boy kept his eyes to the floor. The kitchen door swallowed him up, leaving Chris simmering in the main course of a cookery programme. At the end of the day it was only a matter of heat and bloody ingredients. Chris watched as the smiling television presenter dropped spices into a bubbling pan and stewed with envy. At least we’re not fighting. But maybe that was the problem. Real men didn’t debate, they argued. The constant apprehension in the house was like waiting by an oven door with a soufflé inside. That at least made him smile; he’d only just mastered omelettes. ‘Time to break a few eggs,’ he decided, marching towards the kitchen. Bradley was making a sandwich the hard way. An image jumped into Chris’ mind of Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot. The butter, bread, cheese, mayonnaise and ham were already spread across the worktop like the aftermath of a burst shopping bag. Oblivious, Bradley picked up a knife and jabbed it into the margarine. There was definitely no hope of a father and son catering venture on the horizon.

‘I hope you’ll clear that up,’ Chris growled, not knowing how else to start. ‘Brad?’ ‘Well, it’s my mess, isn’t it?’ Bradley scoffed, keeping his eyes locked on the bread. ‘Meaning?’ ‘Meaning yes, I’ll clear it up.’ ‘Bradley, I was only…’ ‘We talked about it in school, actually.’ Bradley looked up briefly, the smirk in the corner of his mouth like a winking eye. ‘Responsibility, actions having consequences. All that stuff.’ ‘Listen, Bradley. I’m doing my best here, you know. I don’t see you helping out much in the kitchen, so I’d like you to clear up any mess you make - if that’s not too much to ask.’ ‘And I said I would, didn’t I?’ The voice was high, strained with emotion. Bradley offered up his buttered slice as Exhibit A for the defence. Bradley returned his attention to the sandwich making, the turning his back on his father a very deliberate provocation. ‘We need to start talking about our situation here, Brad. We’re in this together, ?’ Chris hoped there might be tears lurking on the periphery of the conversation, anything that would force things out into the open. ‘I mean we’ve both lost someone important in our lives…’ ‘And whose fault is that?’ Bradley spat back, the grip on the knife tightening. ‘Listen, your mother has…’ ‘She isn’t here because of you!’ ‘Life isn’t always so black and white, Brad. These things are never clear cut.’ Bradley started hacking away at the block of cheddar. ‘I know what happened. I’m not deaf. Or stupid.’

The truth will out. What famous do-gooder had said that? ‘Brad, what are you talking about?’ ‘I heard the arguments, Dad. I know what happened…’ ‘It was her decision to go. No one forced her. If she’d stayed we could have worked things out.’ ‘I said, I know, Dad!’ the boy screeched, his wet eyes wild and wide. There was something odd about this conversation, Chris decided, something elusive but essential. Chris worried about the best way to proceed tactically and opted for conciliation. ‘Just because…’ ‘And not just arguing either!’ Bradley yelled. Chris stepped closer, keeping his voice low. ‘Bradley, listen. Those arguments must have sounded a lot worse than they were, but I give you my word…’ ‘Bull…sugar.’ ‘Bradley!’ Bradley lurched backward, the knife still clenched in his hand and a look of terror in his eyes. ‘Why couldn’t it have been you, Dad? Why can’t you disappear?’ Bradley screamed, slapping the knife down loudly on the counter. ‘Listen, your mother and I had problems for years and in the end things just…’ ‘I don’t believe you!’ Bradley returned to his increasingly chaotic sandwich experiment, his hands and brain seemingly at greater odds than father and son. ‘But you have to believe me, Brad. It’s what happened! It was your mother that…’ Bradley finished off his angry sandwich and sloshed himself a noisy glass of milk. The worktop was wilfully messy. The knife tipped over the edge of the worktop and clanged to the floor like a bell. ‘No, Dad! You’re what happened! You caused this mess!’ And as if to emphasize

the point he snatched up his glass and slopped milk over the breadcrumbs and mayo. Chris’ head started to pound. He couldn’t see the elephant in the room, only smell its dung. ‘You can’t talk to me like that, Bradley. Please go to your room after you’ve cleaned...’ Bradley stormed off, drops of milk spitting left and right. ‘No! You do it, Daddy!’ He balanced the plate on top of the glass in order to open the kitchen door, exercising an impressive dexterity in the process. Then he was gone, his footsteps clumping up the stairs towards the sanctuary of his bedroom. ‘Brad!’ Chris shouted after him, recovering his authority far too late. ‘What the hell?’ he asked the mutilated cheese. Round One to the twelve-year-old, then. He looked down at the smears of margarine still slalomed between plastic tubs and jars. It really was a terrible mess.

Chapter Seven

There were times over the next two days that he feared he might have a stroke. He frequently embroiled himself in petty arguments with colleagues; caught a cold that quickly blocked one ear; and made endless errors and omissions at work. He lost his appetite, whilst trebling his caffeine intake. He left a tub of ice cream out overnight and grilled a plastic knife on toast for breakfast. Every shadow was a lurking figure, every gust of wind a hiss of menace. He went to bed with the light on and then later the radio at low volume; though neither strategy earned him sleep. So when the second attack came it was something of a relief. At least I know I’m not crazy, Chris thought as the weight slamming between his shoulder blades sent him flying. And yes, despite his hyper-vigilance, the assault had still caught him by surprise. Why does he always attack from behind? Chris fumed as the familiar forearm snaked around his throat and pulled his head back. Just let me see you coming next time and we’ll see who hits the ground first. He didn’t have the first idea where to buy pepper spray, but surely any aerosol would blind – hairspray, furniture polish… Everything in his field of vision went red for a few seconds, and when it returned to normal callous laughter was caressing his cheek on a warm rush of breath. ‘You’ve been avoiding me. Don’t you us want to be mates?’ Chris started to reach down, but the stranglehold tightened immediately. ‘It’s all right, Mr. Haynes. I know where to look.’ A rough hand buried itself deep into his tro pocket, fingering out the loose change. The obvious question forced its way up his throat like vomit. ‘H-How… How do you…?’ His assailant chuckled. ‘I don’t think you know what’s going on here, do you?’ The pressure around his neck slackened a little, but the pain in his back made it hard to concentrate. ‘Perhaps that little thug of a son can enlighten you.’ ‘Bradley..?’ Chris immediately cursed himself for using the name. The snake tightened its hold on his windpipe. Chris was aware of his small change being scraped across the tarmac followed by a sigh of disappointment. ‘Ever been abroad, Haynes?’ the voice hissed in his ear.

Chris was suddenly furious, and despite the pain he tried to roll over onto his side, spitting and swearing as he did. ‘What the hell does….’ ‘Wrong answer.’ His throat was clamped shut completely and the knee in the small of his back had a grown man’s weight behind it. His vision flushed red once more but somehow he didn’t out. ‘I’ll ask the questions. All right?’ The pressure and weight relented, but Chris exercised his defiance by saying nothing. ‘Only my boy’s a collector.’ The menacing voice tickled the lobe of his right ear, as a hand slapped his empty pocket playfully. ‘So next time I expect to find a few surprises in here, all right?’ He snorted at his own joke. ‘Think of it as homework.’ And with a final thrust from his knee his assailant pushed himself back into the shadows. Chris slowly rolled over. Hard stars glared down at him through the clouds of his bellowing breath. After what seemed like ten minutes, Chris pulled himself up onto his knees. Now he would have to go to the police, give a statement, possibly let forensics dust him down or whatever it was they did. It was all so bloody annoying. These nutters should be locked up or at least supervised more closely. They were a danger to normal people. This one had obviously become obsessed with him, the sad bugger. Care in the community? More like stare in the community. With a groan Chris stood upright, though he had to lean against a tree as the red tinge re-entered his vision. He felt like he’d been hit by a van. ‘Here, you all right, mate?’ Chris stared down at his feet until his eyes behaved themselves. ‘I’m fine. Just tripped, that’s all.’ Up some stairs. ‘Let me give you a hand with those,’ the stranger said, bending down to the pavement. He dropped the silver into Chris’ hand, but all he could think about was the man’s description of his son as a thug. He couldn’t go to the police before he’d to spoken to Bradley first, find out if any strange men had been talking to or following him; or if he was having

problems with other kids at school. Make sure you’re not dropping him in it, you mean? Then they would go to the police together - unless Bradley really did have something to hide. Hobbling homeward it suddenly occurred to him that he might have some French centimes in his desk drawer. He rubbed his aching head, feeling weak and nauseous. It wouldn’t come to that, though, surely? But why not? whispered a dark inner voice. It’s no longer you that’s in control.

Chapter Eight

Chris had planned to devote that Saturday to his son anyway, but now the agenda had changed. His spine was a rod inserted into his back without anaesthetic. His shoulders felt like they were encased in concrete. Sleep had been virtually impossible, but at least the empty pre-dawn hours had reignited his appetite. The four-a.m. tea and toast had never tasted better, even if he did have to follow it with painkillers. Bradley suggested roller skating, which opened at ten o’clock. Chris agreed, though the only thing harder for him to participate in would have been a parachute jump. Bradley also wanted to bring a friend, but Chris managed to talk him out of it. Bradley was a keen skater, and accomplished too, but baulked at his father’s suggestion to take it more seriously. Apparently skating clubs were ‘gay’, whatever that meant. ‘Whew! I didn’t realise the rink would be so packed. Is it always like that?’ Chris was exhausted. Even as a spectator the circling figures had made his head spin. ‘Wheelers? Always. Sometimes you can’t get in for hours.’ ‘Sorry I couldn’t you.’ Bradley shrugged, his hair flapping between them like a limp flag. Chris was grateful he wasn’t in one of his stroppy moods. In fact, this was as relaxed as he’d seen his son in weeks. Agreeing to eat lunch in Bradley’s favourite pizza restaurant certainly helped. ‘I’m sorry,’ Bradley blurted out. ‘About the sandwich.’ Choose your words carefully, Daddy-O. ‘Me too.’ Bradley sighed. ‘I should have helped clear up.’ The aroma of melted cheese and onion was making him regret having only a starter, so when asked if they wanted to see the dessert menu Chris practically ripped it out of the girl’s hand. ‘I think there are more important things going wrong than our cleaning arrangements.’ They both ordered Mississippi Mud Pies. Chris decided to wade in. ‘Can we talk about that?’

‘What’s the obsession you guys have with ‘talking’?’ Bradley frowned. By ‘you guys’ Chris assumed Bradley meant parents. ‘You know, entering your teens is a difficult transition for any child…’ Hell, that sounded like something straight from a child development textbook. ‘But when your home life is already strained…’ Even Brad’s teachers didn’t talk like that, he felt sure. His back went into spasm unexpectedly, making him stiffen in his seat. ‘What I mean to say…’ he grimaced. ‘I thought you’d quit the gym, Dad.’ Chris studied his son’s face and realised that what he had mistaken for calm was actually cockiness. There was certainly no sign of the previous kitchen worktop insecurity. Maybe it wasn’t just Daddy’s agenda that had changed. ‘I just think we need to get things out in the open, clear the air.’ Just be natural. He’s your son not a job candidate. So why did Chris feel like he was the one being interviewed? A smirk flickered impishly across Bradley’s face. ‘So let’s talk, Dad.’ Chris waited for his back to stop screaming and tried to ignore the sensation that Bradley was just waiting for his next faux pas. ‘How’s school?’ Bradley slowly sipped his refilled coke. ‘Parents Evening was only a few weeks back. Mum was there, ?’ ‘I know how you’re doing lesson-wise,’ Chris answered. Bradley just stared down into his cup. ‘Tell me about your friends…’ ‘What’s to tell?’ Chris plunged onward, no longer caring what might be the right or wrong thing to say. ‘So who’s your best friend now? Is it still Peter?’ ‘Peter? Peter changed schools, Dad. Don’t you ?’ Bradley pushed his pizza crust around the plate. ‘I have made one new friend recently. But he’s… different.’ Chris felt the hairs stir at the back of his neck. Bradley’s smirk was back. ‘We have a secret den we go to after school sometimes.’

‘So what’s his name, this new friend?’ This time it was the boy’s turn to stiffen in his seat. ‘Perhaps he could come round for tea one night.’ ‘Yer, right!’ Brad snorted. ‘And a sleep-over?’ Chris misread the sarcasm. ‘If you like.’ The generous deserts arrived. ‘I have a question,’ Bradley announced suddenly. ‘Sure. If it’s .’ Bradley leaned forward in his chair and scooped up a fat spoonful of pie. ‘It is. In a way.’ Chris felt the tension swelling behind his eyes. Whatever was coming, the boy was preparing himself to enjoy it – a different sort of mugging. He looked his father full in the face, that scornful little grin scurrying around the corners of his mouth. ‘What’s happened to your back, Dad?’

Chapter Nine

Watching Gordon’s attempts to ingratiate himself with his peers was pitiful; he seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to choosing exactly the wrong boys to approach. He was hopeless at football, had only the most rudimentary computer games skills and dressed like someone from another era. Indeed, Gordon now spent a lot of his time with girls, much to everyone’s amusement – the girls included. Hating Gordon was fast becoming the most popular pastime in school. In many ways the weekend past had been by far the worst since Mum had vanished. Dad was obviously going out of his way to master his role as dickhead of the family. But it was the injuries that really interested Bradley. Talk about accident prone. First the unknown staircase, and now whatever had damaged his back on Friday. He had cried off actually skating at the rink and winced at the slightest movement. It was fun making the old man wave to him as he sat stiffly upright, barely able to draw in half a lungful of air. But it only delayed the nauseating ‘chat’ that followed. Now Monday was behind him, too, and he was back in the wood by the industrial estate. He pushed aside a low-hanging branch and there was the signalman’s hut sticking out from the railway embankment like a poor man’s castle. One section of corrugated tin had been pushed aside already. Gordon had got there first. Good. He frowned momentarily as something firm and heavy bulldozed through his thoughts, hitting the back of his skull and then dropping down to form a lump in his throat. What would his mother think of all this? Bradley stared at the darkness beyond the threshold of the hut, relishing the prospect of seeing Gordon alone again. He probably wouldn’t even be here if Mum was still around; but now that she wasn’t he wanted not just to see Gordon’s suffering but to hear it, touch it… Taste it. The lump dropped into his guts so suddenly that for a second he felt certain he’d messed himself. He stepped forward. Inside Gordon was standing behind his pathetic garden chair, as if for protection. He stared wide-eyed for a second then spread that unconvincing smile across his mouth by way of a peace offering. Bradley blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. ‘Got here as soon as the bell went, like you said,’ Gordon beamed.

Bradley stifled a yawn. He was finding it harder to sleep these days; it took longer to nod off and he was always awake with the birds. He glared at Gordon, reminding himself why he was there. He felt his heartbeat quicken. ‘Stop staring at me.’ Gordon obliged, and started rustling in his carrier bag. ‘I got three different flavours...’ ‘Got Worcester Sauce flavour?’ Bradley smiled inwardly at Gordon’s uncomfortable frown. ‘I’m kidding. Cheese and onion will do.’ Gordon tossed over a packet. Bradley let himself sink into the camping chair and buried his hand in the quickly opened packet. ‘I saw you running in the cross-country race earlier. You looked whacked.’ ‘I know. I’ve got asthma, but they still make me do it.’ ‘Is that why you don’t in at football during break?’ he asked, knowing full well it wasn’t. ‘Dad doesn’t like me to scuff my shoes.’ Bradley glanced down at the black school shoes that already looked third hand and guessed there wasn’t much still holding them together. ‘Dads, hey?’ ‘It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it, I suppose,’ Gordon smiled. ‘What’s that club you do on Tuesdays?’ Gordon looked anguished. ‘Promise you won’t laugh?’ Bradley leapt forward, centimetres from Gordon’s flinching face. ‘Of course I’ll laugh. If it wasn’t something to laugh about you wouldn’t have kept it a secret, now would you?’ The look on Gordon’s face was priceless. Cowering, like a cornered animal. Oh yes, this was a big deal for Gordon, all right. Gordon looked down into the carrier bag, as if contemplating whether it was possible to hide there. ‘It’s not a club. I have to do extra maths on Tuesdays. I’ve got dyscalculia.’

‘You’ve got what!’ Gordon seemed anxious for a hole to appear beneath him and spare him the agony of explanation. ‘Well, you know Jane Harrison has dyslexia?’ ‘Can’t read, can’t spell, writes like she’s on a Ferris wheel. I know.’ ‘Well, it’s a bit like that only with me it’s numbers rather than words.’ Bradley stared for several seconds, revelling in Gordon’s embarrassment. Just as it seemed that he might try changing the subject, Bradley threw back his head and let out the biggest, deepest burst of laughter he could muster. He didn’t need to look at Gordon; he could sense his shame wafting across the hut like a fart. ‘I’m only telling you because you’re a mate,’ Gordon declared. Bradley stopped laughing. ‘You’re telling me because you have to, Gordon. And don’t you forget it.’ Gordon eyes widened in alarm. ‘Sure, Brad. But you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you?’ Everyone already knows, you idiot. ‘So what’s two plus two?’ ‘It’s not that bad, Brad. I’m not stupid.’ ‘But you’re special needs, right?’ Gordon turned away, deflated. ‘Well. I suppose…’ ‘No suppose about it, pal,’ Bradley snorted. ‘You’re mentally disabled.’ Gordon stared at the floor. ‘Educationally subnormal, is what they called it in my dad’s day. I heard him talk about it once.’ He moved up closer still and whispered: ‘Or as my granddad used to say: retarded.’ Gordon failed to respond, and Bradley noticed that he was trembling slightly. Was he about to lash out? Bradley hoped so. If it came the assault was bound to be as pathetic as its owner and allow Bradley the righteous liberty to give him a good kicking. All Bradley needed to do was push him over the edge.

He put on his best careers’ advisor voice. ‘So what job do you hope to get after school, young Gordon? Let’s look at your prospects.’ And with gusto he spun the camping chair about face and perched himself behind it, pretending to hold a clipboard and pen. ‘ancy’s out, of course; as is working in any kind of retail setting. Street cleaning, that doesn’t require any counting; nor does being a lavatory attendant. I used to know a lavatory attendant,’ Bradley chuckled, ‘he said the hours were shit but he never got caught short…’ That was when Bradley heard Gordon’s first sob. Oh, give me strength… Gordon’s sobs deepened, becoming more frequent like a gathering shower. And with it Bradley became aware of something stirring in his own heart. He set his teeth together. ‘If you want me to keep your little secret, Gordon, I’d shut the hell up right now.’ There was a burning sensation in Bradley’s stomach. Not even when Mr. McGuire made him rewrite his geography homework in detention every Wednesday did he feel rage like this. But at least it filled a void within him, like air being pumped into a football. The only problem was when the pumping didn’t stop and a sickening dizziness spilled through his brain. He tasted acid in his mouth and felt certain that everything would come up if he didn’t throw a punch soon. Bradley leapt from his chair and strode towards Gordon. Bradley did not know what he was going to do until it happened. He reached out for Gordon’s gaping mouth and pinched his trembling lips between his fingers. Gordon yelped, his face a picture of shock and indignation. Bradley squeezed harder, laughing, pulling the other boy’s face out of shape. He laughed harder. ‘Ow! Bwrad! Bwrad, w-what are you do-wing?’ A tear dropped from Gordon’s eye onto Bradley’s hand and immediately the spell was broken. He looked at Gordon’s greasy skin, his recycled clothes and rubbish shoes and felt ashamed. He felt the words ‘I’m sorry’ sliding round his mouth like half-chewed cabbage and bit down on his own lip. Sometimes it felt like he had never hated anyone as much as he hated Gordon, not even his dad. But then something like this would happen and the only person he hated was himself. Letting go of Gordon’s mouth he murmured: ‘Just… Don’t let it happen again.’

Bradley turned away, his head swimming like it did after a fairground ride. A memory overpowered him, Dad snarling at his mother: ‘One day you’ll push me too far, Tess!’ So did that make it Mum’s fault? Was it her defiance that had landed them all in this mess; that sarcastic response that so angered his father? Bradley’s lips moved before he could stop them: ‘I think you need help, Charlie.’ ‘W-what?’ Bradley stared ahead but all he could see was his mother’s tear-stained face. Bradley suddenly felt like crying as his mother’s face faded as quickly as it had arrived. ‘And stop bloody staring at me!’ Gordon looked away, sullen. You silly bloody tit! The impetus to beat him unconscious was potent. Not yet, Bradley told himself. There were other games he could play first. ‘Listen, I’ll prove I’m on your side,’ Bradley sighed, placing a reluctant hand on the other boy’s shoulder. Gordon dared to sneak a glance up from the floor. ‘You’ve told me secrets, right? And maybe I shouldn’t have taken the piss.’ Bradley tensed as he realised he was sailing close to the rocks of an apology. ‘And I promise I won’t tell.’ Gordon nodded, his snivelling diminished. Bradley’s voice was gentle now, soothing, unthreatening; but inside a plan was forming that had him bellowing secretly with laughter. ‘Now let me tell you one…’

Chapter Ten

What if the police just gave his attacker a warning? Wasn’t there a very real risk of a reprisal attack if they didn’t lock him up straight away? And on top of all that was the embarrassment of itting he’d been twice overpowered by someone on major tranquillizers. If he hadn’t left it too late beforehand, this latest development surely put the final nail in the coffin. He stared at the message again and clicked on DELETE. He withdrew from a handful of social networking sites, citing ‘taking a rest’ as his reason for leaving. Half-term was approaching and Chris would put in an annual leave request to coincide with it. That way he could kill two birds: spend time with Bradley and get away from Small Change Psycho. In truth it would be good just to get out from these four walls. There was his poor health (mentally and physically) to consider, the uncertainty over Tess, his nemesis the cooker… Not so much two birds to kill as an entire flock. What better time to migrate? The first of the three emails had been the most innocuous, but in its own way just as ominous as its successors. Doubtless the police would not have been able to trace the sender, anyway. This guy was cunning, if more than a little loopy, as all the messages confirmed. THE PAVEMENTS AROUND HERE ARE LETHAL. YOU NEED TO WATCH YOUR STEP. FROM A FRIEND. Part of him still hoped this might be a practical joke from someone he knew, something tactless but not truly malicious. But then if the prankster knew he’d been mugged? He was clutching at straws. There was no doubt about the identity of ‘A. Friend’. His second email followed five minutes later. YOUR BOY TOLD MINE EVERYTHING, MR HAYNES. AND I MEAN EVERYTHING. A FRIEND. His sleep that Tuesday night was predictably lousy, the anticipated new message waiting for him first thing Wednesday. Ironically, each message was shorter but more unsettling than its predecessor. Permanently deleting the three messages one by one, Chris lingered on the last, debating on whether it was cryptic or just psychotic before stabbing the BLOCK SENDER icon: I KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE IN THE SUMMERHOUSE. A.FRIEND

Chapter Eleven

‘What do you mean ‘you don’t know’?’ Chris felt something throbbing at the side of the head. He’d caught his son after deleting the emails, eager for answers before he sloped off to school. ‘Bradley, I asked you a question.’ Bradley shrugged his shoulders. ‘He’s just some boy at school, that’s all.’ ‘But you said he was a ‘different’. And you’ve got a den you go to. Tell me his name, Bradley!’ ‘What does it matter?’ Bradley’s defiant gaze started to wilt immediately beneath his father’s scrutiny. ‘Just leave me alone. I’m late.’ Bradley took a step forward. ‘No. I’ll drive you to school if necessary; but first I want answers. Tell me the boy’s name!’ ‘Why? He’s my friend!’ Chris put his hands on his hips and frowned. ‘Gordon! It’s Gordon! There! Satisfied?’ ‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ Chris sighed. ‘So what makes him different?’ ‘He’s not like other kids, all right?’ ‘How exactly?’ ‘He has… special needs or something. OK?’ Oh, no… Chris thought as Bradley moved to squeeze past him again. He felt like he’d swallowed a stone. Please don’t tell me that. ‘What do you want to know about him for anyway? He’s a Muppet.’ A Muppet? Chris thought back to his own childhood and tried to the parlance back then: spacko, flid, dummy, idiot. The names might change but the prejudice was the same. ‘I thought you said he was a friend?’ Bradley made another attempt to squeeze past, his cheeks beetroot red. ‘I have to go, Dad!’ ‘No, wait a minute! I haven’t finished. I need to know what this so-called friendship involves.’ Chris grabbed his arm, trying not to hurt him but almost

wishing he could. ‘Now tell me: Gordon who?’ ‘Moore. Gordon Moore.’ So now he had a surname at least. If his worst fears were correct, this was the mugger’s son. But there was still something missing from the overall picture – something fundamental. ‘And what have you been telling him exactly?’ Chris did not give the boy time to deny anything. ‘There are some things that should stay within the family, Bradley. I think you know what I’m talking about here.’ ‘Family! You mean us? You and me?’ ‘Yes. You and me, Brad.’ ‘Don’t make me laugh!’ Chris tightened his grip on the boy’s arm, determined not to let himself be sidetracked. ‘We’ve not been a family since you got shot of Mum!’ Bradley was fighting back the tears. ‘She was your victim and now I’m a prisoner!’ ‘I’ve told you already, it wasn’t like that. It was…’ ‘Tell that to the judge!’ Bradley screamed back. ‘What?’ ‘You can’t get away with it!’ the boy blubbered. A squirming red-faced twelve-year-old glared up at him, sweat glistening on his forehead. Chris slackened his grip, concerned about leaving finger marks. He would keep him off school, if that was what it took; but he was determined to get to the truth. ‘Tell me what the hell you’ve done, Brad!’ ‘Why should I? You don’t care about me!’ ‘Bradley, who cooks your food, washes your clothes, pays the…’

‘You’re just looking out for yourself! That’s what Mum used to say all the time!’ Bringing Tess into the argument was as good as her standing there in person and bouthing him. ‘Bradley! This is serious! Some bloke’s been harassing me and….’ But did he really want to disclose the true extent of his vulnerability as a man? He pulled Bradley closer to him, giving him a shake for good measure. ‘This isn’t some game, boy!’ ‘Let go. You’re hurting my arm.’ But Chris knew it was not physical pain that was making his son uncomfortable. Chris sucked in a breath and bellowed into the boy’s face: ‘Some bloke has been sending me creepy emails about things you’ve been telling his son. And I strongly suspect that the boy concerned is this special needs kid, Gordon. But as your father I want to hear it from your lips. I want the truth, Brad. And I want it now!’’ ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t… Ow!’ A cry of genuine pain. Chris let go of the boy’s arm, knowing there would now be marks he would struggle to explain away. He channelled his anger into his voice and leaning into Bradley’s face he roared: ‘This bloke’s a nutter! We could be in serious danger. Now! Tell! Me! The! Truth!’ ‘I’ll report you! I’ll report you!’ ‘For what?’ Chris laughed, noticing the tears starting to spill from the boy’s eyes. Tess had been just the same, holding out on him, playing him for a fool. But he’d always got the better of her, hadn’t he? What chance did a twelve-year-old have? ‘I know what’s happened, Dad! I’ll tell them everything!’ ‘Like you’ve already blubbered ‘everything’ to Gordon and his psycho dad?’ Chris let his fingers grasp his son’s arms again like the talons of an eagle, lifting him up onto his toes, not caring about the consequences. Nothing else mattered except getting Bradley to confess. The way things were going he could end up being hospitalized by this Moore nutter and Bradley would be taken into care anyway. ‘The summerhouse…’ Bradley moaned, struggling to escape.

A chill ran over Chris’ skin. ‘Summerhouse? What about the bloody summerhouse?’ ‘I know what you’ve got in there!’ And with a strong twist of his body Bradley shook himself free, his father’s nails tearing at his white shirt sleeves. Just like that final email. Oh, Bradley! Only when the front door slammed did Chris realise that his son had escaped. Round two to the twelve-year-old. He stared at his empty, outstretched hands and felt horribly alone. Chris wandered into the hall and slumped down onto the bottom stair. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

Chapter Twelve

Bradley’s words came out as a growl: ‘Call yourself a mate?’ Gordon peaked mouse-like from beneath his greasy hair. ‘Course,’ he muttered. ‘Well, ‘mates’ are supposed to keep secrets!’ ‘Oh,’ was Gordon’s lacklustre reply. Bradley shoved him further inside the railway hut, anger spurting through his veins. ‘You don’t understand, Brad…’ Bradley squared up to Gordon’s sweating face and jabbed his forefinger into Gordon’s chest. ‘I told you something no one else knows and what was the first thing you did?’ ‘It wasn’t the first thing….’ Bradley pushed Gordon backwards again, harder still: ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ ‘No, Brad. Honestly! But you really don’t understand…’ Bradley launched himself forward, propelling Gordon up against the back wall and grabbing his shirt collar. Tiny flecks of spittle rained down on Gordon gaping mouth. His top shirt button suddenly flipped through the air, narrowly missing Brad’s eye. ‘Say that again and I swear I’ll…’ Gordon pushed Bradley away with surprising force, his cheeks flushing with excitement. ‘I didn’t want to tell him. Honestly I didn’t! But he made me, Brad. He made me!’ Gordon started snivelling, his full sail now dangling. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Brad. It’s my dad, see… He… He…’ Then the tears began in earnest, a full-scale storm at sea. Bradley looked closely at Gordon’s shabby clothes and decrepit shoes, his revolting skin and hunched shoulders, and felt the welcome heat of contempt.

Gordon got out a question, one word at a time, like mayday in Morse code. ‘But how did you find out?’ Bradley slammed him back against the wall. ‘How the hell do you think, Mr. Special Needs?’ ‘I don’t get it.’ This must be his Tuesday after school look, Bradley decided, the look he was damned to wear for the rest of his life. But that was no excuse for dropping him into such hot water. ‘Your old man is trying to blackmail mine with what I told you!’ ‘You mean…’ ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. And my Dad’s blaming me for the whole thing! So thanks a bundle, mate!’ The tears had ed as quickly as they had arrived. ‘Brad, I’m sorry. Really I am,’ Gordon whispered. ‘Is your dad all right?’ ‘Not really. What’s your old man after, anyway? Is it just cash? Is that what he does for a living, then: take money with menaces?’ ‘No. He’s a postman...’ Gordon’s head sank. ‘Or rather he was.’ ‘Don’t tell me, he got caught stealing cheques out of envelopes!’ ‘You have to believe me, Brad. He forced it out of me!’ ‘Well I don’t believe you. How would he know to ask?’ Gordon’s voice became defiant again: ‘My dad’s not the sort of bloke you say no to. That’s why Mum left. That’s why my step-mum and the girls will leave eventually.’ Bradley watched as Gordon’s boldness again dissolved into tears. He ed his father’s bruises, his limping and hobbling about over the last few days. He looked up at the picture hanging on the wall, those cold eyes

boring into his. ‘Is he – you know - violent?’ ‘Like I said,’ Gordon sniffed, ‘he’s not the sort of bloke you say no to. As long as I that, I’m OK.’ He let out a shuddering sigh. ‘Your dad should that, too.’ Bradley turned away. ‘It was still our secret, Gordon!’ ‘I suppose that’s it, then? You don’t want to see me again.’ ‘Are you kidding?’ Gordon looked up, hopeful again. ‘So you… you believe me?’ ‘What I believe is that you’re a Grade A turd and that even if this mess wasn’t your fault, you’re still the only one that can get me out of it.’ It was hard not to burst out laughing as he played his indignant role for Gordon. Mr. Smith, his English teacher, was always banging on about increasing his vocabulary. Well, here was a good one, Smithy: gullible. Gullible Gordon. With a final growl of feigned outrage, Bradley realised his plan was going off better than he could have dreamed of.

Chapter Thirteen

Bradley squeezed his eyes shut, desperate to hold back his tears for another night. This was always the time when he missed her the most, though she had not read him a story or tucked him in since his pre-school years. Maybe it was just the ghost of those things that plucked at his heartstrings? Thinking back he realised that Tess had never been a ‘hands on’ mother, as such. In fact, sometimes she ignored him for hours, chatting to her friends or rushing off to the hairdressers. Bradley turned over. No wonder she couldn’t give him as much attention as he wanted with that beast of a father breathing down her neck all the time. ‘Controlling’ was the word she’s thrown back at him. Well, you’re not in control now, are you, Daddy? Bradley smirked to himself. A great weight rested on his chest and he felt himself sinking down into the bed, not so much drifting off to sleep as being sucked unwillingly into it. When he finally opened his eyes again it was not to the lightly cracked bedroom ceiling but the dusty glass panes of the summerhouse. The grass beneath his bare feet was icy cold. The door was unlocked and slightly ajar. He saw his trembling hand reach out for the handle. But he could not stop himself, for in his – dream, trance, hallucination? – he heard weeping: a deep, desperate sobbing that drew him forward. His fingers settled on the brass handle, its cold surface jabbing through his wrist like an electric shock. He pulled the door open wider, the sobbing instantly louder, and inched himself slowly into the darkened interior. Please let me wake up… Inside there was gloom and dust and the smell of old carpets and weed killer. But the sound of weeping grew louder. His breath clouded the space before him and there she was, as he knew she would be: a hunched, dark-haired figure facing the opposite wall. In the weeks since her disappearance she seemed to have grown smaller, the best part of her vitality lost forever like grapes left on the vine. Bradley tried to look away, to free himself from the nightmare, but couldn’t. There was something else in the summerhouse that he couldn’t identify, something bad. The tears welled behind his eyes, making the scene smear before him like sun cream on sunglasses. Why didn’t she get up, run away, fight back? Before whatever it was hiding in

the shadows could reach out and take her from him forever? His mother’s weeping intensified, fear mixing with her misery like sour milk in cold tea. He caught the glint of pale sunlight on metal from the periphery of his vision. He tried to cry out a warning, but instead all he could do was watch as the kitchen knife ate up the space between its fierce tip and his mother’s back. Run! Get away! If she could only have fought back against this brute, this ogre… left with a hastily packed suitcase, as he had claimed. But instead she just sat there, crying, powerless as the knife advanced. Wake me up! Wake me up! Wake me up! The lava of hatred rose within him. He stared at the knife, leaned forward to examine its surface with macabre fascination, the tip set to spear the vulnerable back below. His hand shook with terror and fury, the tremor so harsh that he had to concentrate on gripping the knife’s handle… His eyes traced the length of the kitchen knife to the trembling hand in a white school shirt that held it. ‘You’ve done me proud, boy!’ a familiar voice chuckled. Suddenly there was no air in the summerhouse, the door behind him locked, its edges sealed with rust and grime. He caught a whiff of something rotten coming from the faded planked floor below his feet. Bradley, is that you? The bloodied knife clattered against the wood but there were dark stains there already where his mother had breathed her last. He was alone again; the weeping a haunting memory. ‘Brad!’ What had he done? He heard his father’s voice chuckling from the shadows, taunting him: Proud! Dead Proud! ‘Bradley!’ the strident voice wrenched him back into his room. He looked around, dazed and sweating, the flush of relief draining his body of energy. He felt the warm sting of tears on his cheeks. He turned to face his bedroom door, a door without locks or bolts or chains; cheap, flimsy, accessible... He sucked air into a tight chest. This was the real nightmare. ‘Bradley, come downstairs please. We need to talk.’

Chapter Fourteen

‘This has gone far enough!’ Chris barked at Bradley standing in the doorway. Good. Start strongly. Establish control. ‘I called Child Line.’ ‘What..?’ Draw a line in the sand. ‘No you didn’t!’ Bradley puffed out his chest. ‘Yes I did!’ ‘And told them what, exactly?’ ‘What you did…’ Chris sighed. This was getting ridiculous, but logically Child Line would have to act on the call. ‘Listen, Brad,’ he began, ‘I need to come clean.’ ‘You mean, turn yourself in?’ gasped Bradley. Give me strength. ‘No, Brad. What I did was regrettable, but I had my reasons…’ Bradley’s face bleached with shock; and his legs actually wobbled as if they were about to collapse beneath him. ‘Brad, you’re blowing this all out of proportion. You need to let me explain. Now please come and sit down.’ Chris took a step forward, only for Bradley to slink back through the still open door to the hall. The front door was within easy reach, and Chris doubted if he could get to it quickly enough if the boy bolted. Bradley’s lips trembled, his eyes bulged. ‘How… How can you say that? No one has the right to do what you did. She’s my mum!’ Chris recalled an argument with Tess the weekend before she left, an argument their son was certain to have heard. There was the usual gamut of shouting, finger pointing and flushed cheeks, charges and counterclaims. Chris ed how furious Tess had made him feel, ed his fists coming up, not to hit, but to let her know just how far she had crossed the line. ‘Don’t!’ she had screamed, and burst into tears. But there was something else, something

else she’d said, even more significant. Chris strained to recall what it was, but his unconscious denied him. ‘Listen, Brad, it wasn’t like that.’ But you wanted her to think it might be if she didn’t back down, didn’t you? ‘Your mother and I hadn’t been getting on for so long; things just couldn’t go on that way anymore.’ ‘So you took matters into your own hands?’ Bradley wailed. ‘You… You got rid of her!’ His memory squirmed but still would not speak up. ‘No, Brad. She left us! You and me. Alone. She made a choice.’ Chris didn’t want to poison the boy against his mother; but neither could he accept that she was blameless. All right, so he had said things he shouldn’t have, bellowed and posed like a bull a little. It wasn’t called the ‘heat of the moment’ for nothing. But to lay all the responsibility at his door was surely unreasonable. ‘And that’s why we have to stick together until she decides what she wants to do.’ Although of course she might already have done just that in one of those letters. But Bradley was backing steadily into the hall, shaking his head and crying. For the first time Chris was seriously worried about his son’s mental health. This was more than just grief and anger, blended with a dash of adolescent hormones. ‘Bradley, stay where you are, please. We have to talk this through.’ But Bradley kept inching backwards, his eyes wide with alarm, tears running down his young face. ‘Or else what?’ Bradley shouted. ‘I’ll end up like Mum?’ But his ‘Mummy’ was either at her sister’s in Islington, a small hotel on the coast or the spare bedroom of a friend from work. Again Chris experienced that unsettling feeling that he and his son still weren’t talking about the same thing exactly. I need to read those letters, find out where she is. All right, so maybe she should have phoned, but his pride in hiding those letters in the summerhouse had fast become his Achilles’ heel. Bradley let his head sink into his chest and sobbed wildly. ‘Bradley, please…’ Chris took a stride towards him, instantly regretting it.

‘No!’ Bradley screeched, and in a heartbeat he was fleeing for the front door. Chris sprung forward in pursuit, his aching spine sending shafts of pain into his brain, but Bradley was so much faster than him. The door slammed shut, narrowly missing the outstretched fingers of his right hand. ‘Shit!’ He heard Brad’s receding sobs, the rattle of the gate latch and the still small feet pounding away down the pavement, but made no attempt to follow. The sense of defeat robbed him of the little strength he’d had. He scrunched his eyes closed and waited for the throbbing pulse in his brain to die down. It was only when he opened his eyes again that he noticed a small rectangular card poking through his letterbox. How long..? He held his breath a second, and walked across the hall, let his fingers grasp the hand delivered card and pulled it free. It was a plain white card with a short message on one side only. No envelope, no stamp, no signature. But then there was no doubt in his mind who the card was from. It certainly wasn’t Tess’s handwriting. A random memory jumped into his thoughts. Or else what? Bradley had screamed. I’ll end up like Mum? The memory persisted, metamorphosing into an older, more elusive one. Chris stared at the message and tried to imagine the face of its author; a grinning face chewing on a dark secret he thought he could use for blackmail. And not anything to do with a mother’s letters, but something far juicier. ‘Bloody hell, Bradley.’ He thought back over the last few weeks, pictured his son’s cryptic words and actions, the fear and anger in both. ‘Oh, bloody hell! No!’ Something Tess had said during that last blazing row, a phrase voiced metaphorically in between screams and bursts of sobbing, choked sobbing They must have been the last words Bradley heard her say: ‘You’re suffocating me.’ Chris reached for his coat – not just because Bradley was in a state, but because ‘he’ might be out there too. Chris stuffed the card in his pocket and lurched towards the door. No envelope, no stamp, no signature. And on the card itself four inoffensive words: I’ll be in touch.

Chapter Fifteen

He’d hidden behind a tree until his father came storming out of the house, then let himself back into the house. His text message demanded Gordon’s presence immediately, and here he was banging frantically on the front door. Bradley kept quiet, prolonging the other boy’s ordeal. It was only what he deserved, after all. More knocking and the doorbell rang a third time; then silence. Bradley, smirking, counted to ten then swept the door open. Light splashed down the path, spotlighting Gordon with his hand on the gate latch. An expression of wretched despair fell across his face as he sloped back toward the house. ‘I… I got your text.’ Gordon didn’t look well. His cheeks were pale and sunken, and there were black smudges beneath his eyes. He looked tired, run-down, like he’d just got over flu or was about go down with something far worse. And he seemed not just tense but overwrought with fear and worry; not so much on edge as clinging to it by his fingernails. Not that any of this evoked any sympathy in Bradley; not today. ‘I can’t stay long,’ Gordon said lifelessly. ‘I don’t feel too good.’ ‘Get inside, retard. This will take as long as I say it takes.’ Bradley took a quick glance up the road and wondered how much time he had to play with. At least ten minutes. That would be long enough. Gordon drifted into the living room and collapsed into the nearest chair. ‘Oh, no…’ Bradley grinned. ‘Let’s not stay in. It’s boring. Let’s go out to my den.’ Gordon jerked himself upright, as if on invisible wires. He stood swaying and breathing heavily, awaiting instructions. ‘Come on,’ Bradley growled, heading for the kitchen. Bradley led him out through the back door into the garden. Gordon took out a grey handkerchief and snorted voluminously into it, his shoulders sagging as if bearing a great weight. He looked at the drizzle and frowned. The light from the house was just good enough for him to see what Bradley meant by his ‘den’. His eyebrows hitched up a notch and he froze. ‘Oh,’ he whispered. ‘You want to see the scene of the crime, don’t you?’ Bradley sneered, producing

a torch. Gordon continued to stare at the summerhouse, mute, his glassy eyes wide like an owl’s. Bradley dug his fingers into the other boy’s upper arm and hissed into his ear: ‘You want to see… the evidence – don’t you?’ Reluctantly, Gordon trudged over to the door of the summerhouse, looking disconsolate and frightened. The circle of torchlight bobbed ahead of them. ‘It was always going to end here,’ Bradley whispered, his legs feeling weak with excitement. ‘You know that, don’t you?’ Away from the house the darkness quickly encircled them. Bradley shone the torch onto the door handle and leaned close to Gordon, his voice melodramatic and mocking: ‘Is this your first murder scene, Master Moore?’ Bradley slapped him hard across his left cheek. The thwacking sound made them both start. Gordon gasped, his hand rising to cover the point of impact. Bradley held his breath, horrified yet excited. He shone the torch into Gordon’s face; when he took his hand away the skin was already rouged. ‘Now get inside,’ Bradley snarled, reaching across for the handle. ‘We don’t have long.’ He shoved Gordon inside and pulled the door closed behind them. Bradley sucked in a lungful of air, his heart racing. Gordon’s face looked ridiculous, with one cheek glowing crimson and the rest drained of colour - like a clown disturbed halfway through make-up. ‘Go on, then. Take a look around. Try and guess where she is.’ Gordon turned to him, his terrified face full of pleading – and something else. Bradley jabbed at the switch for the bare light bulb dangling overhead. Immediately he noticed the sickly yellow tinge to Gordon’s eyeballs. He really isn’t very well - Bradley decided - all the better. ‘Think of it as a game.’ ‘A game?’ ‘Damn it, you really are retarded.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’ ‘Ask me where it happened, then, dummy. Don’t you want to know exactly where ‘it’ was done? Your dad certainly will, I’ll bet.’ That brought Gordon back to life. ‘You mean you actually saw him… do it?’ Bradley let his eyes stray to the area of floor where he knew the loose board lay. He let his eyes linger there, not daring to make eye as he replied, ‘Of course.’ Gordon remained still. ‘But what I want to know is whether you’ve got the balls to see for yourself.’ Bradley looked up, curious to see the other boy’s reaction. ‘But I can’t smell anything,’ Gordon complained. Now it was Bradley’s eyes that widened. ‘What?’ ‘From all the decomposing. It must have been weeks ago.’ Gordon returned his scrutiny to the floor. ‘And what about rats?’ Bradley glared at Gordon, but he refused to look back up. ‘I’m just saying…’ With a snarl Bradley grabbed Gordon by his collar and shoved him down towards the floor. ‘Go on, you snivelling little creep. Pull that board up and take a look!’ Gordon backed away, shuffling awkwardly on his backside, glistening eyes bulging in his shaking head. ‘No. I… I really don’t feel well.’ Bradley imagined Mr. Smith laughing at him with a dictionary in his hands. Suddenly he couldn’t get the word decomposing out of his head. ‘I’ve gone to a lot of trouble for you, Gordon. Because I thought you wanted to be mates. So do you want to share this secret or don’t you?’ ‘Can’t I take your word for it? I feel sick.’ His face was sweating, his eyes bulging. De-com-pos-ing... ‘Will Daddy be home soon?’ Bradley mocked. ‘Worried you’ll get in trouble?’

‘No. It’s just…I’ve never seen anything like that before.’ Now he stared deep into Bradley’s eyes. ‘Is it - you know - bad?’ ‘Bad’ as in rotten and festering, was what he meant. Bradley tried to gulp down spit that wasn’t there anymore. ‘I don’t want to spoil it for you.’ He winced at his use of the word ‘spoil’. ‘Just have a peek and tell me what you see. Go on,’ Bradley goaded, but there was an acid burning in his stomach too and he could feel sweat on his face. ‘Can’t I do it when I’m feeling better, Brad? I really do feel sick.’ He was swaying again from side to side, sweat glistening on his upper lip. ‘Please?’ ‘Please!’ Bradley mimicked him. But inside he was swaying, too; because he had to know now, this second. Every day he had been in and out of this place, staring at the loose board, pacing up and down and, yes, despite his disgust, sniffing for any unusual smells; but never once daring to take a peek. ‘The sooner you do it the sooner it’ll be over.’ Gordon looked as if he were about to cry. ‘I have to go now, Brad. Please!’ Gordon started to get up, but Bradley lunged forward, grasping Gordon by the scruff of his neck and thrusting his head back down towards the floor. His darkest imaginings surged into his mouth like vomit. ‘They’d been arguing for hours already. Did he have it all planned? Only he knows that and I doubt he’ll ever confess. But once it was done he must have panicked and stuffed her under the floor because he didn’t know what else to do.’ Bile swept up his throat, filling his mouth with its bitter taste, interrupting the flow of his rant but only for a moment. His hands on the other boy’s neck tightened as something worse than vomit threatened to erupt from within him. He swallowed hard but when he found his voice again it was broken and distorted with emotion. ‘She tried to break free… She fought back. So hard! But he was too strong. Too… too…’ Bradley pulled Gordon close to his chest, face aflame and teeth gritted. ‘Please, Brad. You’re hurting me!’

Before Gordon could react Bradley sent him crashing down onto the grimy wooden floor. The impact sent Gordon’s breath puffing upward in a cloud of dust particles, his skull clunking against the boards like an underinflated basketball. Bradley sunk to his knees and pulled Gordon towards him. Shaking and sweating, his vacant eyes blinked rapidly. ‘This is all your fault!’ he bawled in a deep, unfamiliar voice; and as Gordon struggled to escape Bradley swung his right fist down into the middle of his face.

Chapter Sixteen

Less than twenty minutes later Bradley found his father spitting into his face: ‘Have you seen what’s happened out there?’ ‘More rain?’ Chris seized him by the arm and hauled him towards the front door. ‘Dad! What the..?’ From the pavement there seemed nothing wrong with the old man’s BMW that a good clean wouldn’t put right; but from the enger side it was a different story. ‘It wasn’t me!’ Bradley declared. But of course in a way it was. Bradley stared again at the car to avoid his father’s glaring eyes. This had been no accident, no error of judgment by a distracted driver. My dad’s not the sort of bloke you say no to… The side mirror was not just damaged; it had been destroyed. ‘So why don’t you call the police?’ Bradley scoffed. ‘We both know who did this, Brad.’ Chris looked up and down the road. ‘And why.’ He quickly shepherded Bradley back towards the front gate. ‘Inside.’ The slam of the front door echoed through the house. ‘I can’t involve the police without dropping you in it, can I? The last thing we want now is some social worker sniffing round our private life. You have to leave this Gordon alone right now…’ Bradley took a long deep breath, like a holidaymaker taking in his first lungful of sea air, and puffing out his chest he said, ‘Father, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’ Leaning forward, Chris roared into Bradley’s face: ‘This isn’t a game, Brad. It has to stop!’ ‘But I have stopped…’ ‘I know you’re lying!’ Chris screamed, and held up the side of his right hand

which was raw and weeping blood where the skin had been grated off, parmesan style. Bradley frowned, staring first at the crimson wound, then back into his father’s bloodshot eyes. ‘For crying out loud, wake up, boy! I’ve been roughed up twice and now this!’ Chris implored, thrusting his injured hand even further into Bradley’s face. ‘Every time you hurt his son he hurts me! That’s how I know you’re lying!’ ‘How…’ ‘I was crossing the road a few doors up. I didn’t notice the car until it started to accelerate. When I ran for safety the car swerved deliberately – swerved towards me!’ His lower lip started to tremble. ‘He could have killed me, Brad!’ Better luck next time, I say, Bradley thought to himself. But suddenly he was afraid. If Dad went, too… ‘Maybe it was just a warning.’ ‘Are you enjoying this, Brad? Do you think I deserve this?’ Bradley started to protest his innocence; then he thought back to the moment when Gordon came close to taking up that floorboard to reveal what lay hidden beneath. But he knew the truth without needing to be shown the evidence. ‘It’s all down to you, not me! If Mum was still here…’ ‘What are you talking about?’ Chris turned away, raking his hands through his hair. ‘What do you think will happen to you if I end up in hospital?’ ‘You don’t care about me anymore than you cared about her!’ ‘Bradley, that’s not true!’ ‘You don’t want social workers sniffing round here because you’re a bad father.’ ‘Bradley, I will not allow you…’ ‘But it’s the bloody truth, Dad!’ Bradley shrieked, and a tiny fleck of spittle sailed through the air between them and landed on his father’s cheek. Before either of them had time to think, Chris pulled back his hand and slapped Bradley

squarely across his face. There was silence, an empty anticlimactic stillness. Chris stared as if into a void, opening and closing his mouth, unable to speak. He couldn’t deny being a monster now. ‘Go to hell!’ Bradley wailed, bolting for the stairs. ‘I hate you!’

Chapter Seventeen

After school the next evening, winter throwing its gloomy cloak over slippery paving slabs, Bradley tried hard to recall in what state Gordon had left the summerhouse twenty-four hours earlier. But his memory would not let him past the dreadful argument with his father that had culminated in physical violence. He should not have been shocked; it only confirmed his darkest fears about Daddy and what happened when he couldn’t get his own way. But he’d still not slept until the small hours, and then only because of the improvised barricade he’d built against the bedroom door. That morning he had dressed and slipped quietly out the front door whilst his father was using the bathroom. Bradley wasn’t sure which he wanted to avoid more: the threat of further violence or the bullshit justifications his dad would offer him. At least it stopped him thinking about why Gordon hadn’t made it into school that day. A phrase kept worming its way into his consciousness; so much so that on one occasion it even invaded his English essay: like father, like son. On top of that he’d had to stay behind for a detention for daydreaming through Period Three. It was five o’clock before he could make his way towards East Street. And by then his thoughts were dominated by the memory of his clenched fist crashing down into a twelve-year-old’s face. It was a two up two down house that opened directly onto the pavement, Coronation Street style. The pale green skin of paint on the front door looked set to peel by the end of the year. There were closed plastic blinds in the window nearest the front door; in the upper windows were parted cream curtains, with cheap metal wind chimes dangling from the centre of the curtain poles. There was no car parked directly outside. Bradley marched up to the door and knocked twice. He had to know what he’d done that stopped Gordon coming to school. For a few seconds there was silence then footsteps approached. Perhaps he would get to meet one of Gordon’s drippy stepsisters. He certainly wouldn’t meet his mum. The door opened six inches, revealing the left side of Gordon’s face in a poorly lit hallway. Bradley ed something whispered to him in the summerhouse, only to realise that was part of the nightmare he’d had: ‘You’ve done me proud, boy!’ The door opened slowly to reveal the rest of Gordon’s face. A wave of guilt rippled through him - but no, the hands responsible for this were far larger and crueller. They wouldn’t be seeing Gordon at school for a while, that was for sure.

He stared at the thin arm circling Gordon’s ribcage and guessed there was worse to see beneath his clothing. Bradley stood there staring, unable to speak. If this wasn’t the first time, how did his dad get away with it? How did any of them get away with it? he reminded himself. Fear seized his intestines as a car ed slowly but didn’t stop. But Gordon’s dad could come back at any time. Just how much could you bite off before all you could do was choke instead of chew? But he couldn’t leave; not yet. His lips parted, but what the hell could he say under the circumstances? My God, the bastard could have killed him. Both Gordon’s eyes were black, but the right one was swollen halfway shut. The left cheek was purple with bruising, but the right cheek bone was darker still and the skin looked fit to split in two places. His lips were swollen and misshapen, and there were multi-coloured bruises down one side of his neck. But the worst part was non-physical: the eyes that were filled with a sorrow and desperation that would never heal. ‘Come in, Brad. I’m glad you came,’ Gordon lisped. He stepped aside, revealing a dingy hallway beyond. There were shoes scattered here and there, a mass of coats, mainly children’s, clinging to unseen hooks on one wall, and a dilapidated set of wicker drawers beneath the stairs, the middle one of which was yawning outward. Lifting his heavy feet, Bradley stepped past Gordon and into the Moore household. ‘Dad!’ The door slammed behind him, Gordon’s voice much stronger than expected: ‘He’s here.’ Bradley turned to stare at Gordon but found him looking fixedly at the stairs. Somewhere above a door opened and a pair of denim jeans came tripping down the stairs, causing something sharp and jagged to twist in Bradley’s guts. When the father’s face came into view Bradley was struck by the similarities with Gordon’s. With his trim physique and recent haircut, Mr. Moore looked more like an older brother. The smell of aftershave settled around them like an embrace. Moore Senior smiled politely, an expression that did nothing to disarm Bradley’s unease. The jaws of a trap were yawning. Gordon looked at him briefly to mouth, ‘I’m sorry’, and the coat hanger lodged in his intestines drew blood. ‘Bradley?’ He swept past them both and opened the first door on the left of the

hall, gesturing with his head to Gordon. ‘In here, I think.’ The living room was thick with the tang of tobacco. Bradley declined the offer of a drink, though his mouth was sand dune dry. ‘Good. So let’s get down to business.’ Bradley’s knees folded and the sofa seemed to collapse beneath him. If anything, the stench of cigarettes was worse lower down. Bradley’s lungs hitched and his throat tickled in protest. Gordon remained standing, his eyes glued to the floor. There was something in Gordon’s hair, just above the right ear, something dark and clotted. A stitch? That was certainly what it looked like. But surely Gordon couldn’t have gone anywhere near a hospital looking that way; so how had… He stared up at Moore Senior, who smirked almost bashfully, as if he could read Bradley’s thoughts. Bradley looked away again, ing the desperation in his father’s voice: the car swerved deliberately – swerved towards me! His bladder turned to ice. ‘I told the school he’s got flu. And then it’s half-term. So don’t worry; we’ll both be in the clear after that.’ Moore’s smirk transformed into a sneer. ‘He’s a quick healer, this one!’ ‘Listen, Mr. Moore...’ He tried to rise from the pudding mix which ed for a seat beneath him. ‘I don’t know what Gordon’s been telling you, but…’ the would-be lies burst from him like juice from a squashed tomato. ‘Can it, Tarzan. I’m not interested in what either of you has to say, believe me.’ Moore waved his hand at Bradley like he was a particularly irksome fly. The acid in his guts leapt upward, trying to dissolve the soft tissue in his throat. He gulped hard. Moore leaned forward, bringing his face closer to Bradley’s. ‘Ah. You might well look nervous, Bradley… Or can I call you Brad?’ he smiled pleasantly. Pleading seemed Bradley’s only option, but that leering grin seemed to dare him to utter another sound. He looked over again at Gordon, catching him glance up as he did so, those multicoloured splashes over his normally ashen complexion provoking the same awkward question again and again: Did I do some of that?

‘You and me,’ Mr. Moore continued calmly. ‘We understand each other, don’t we?’ Bradley stared blankly, the only reply he dared make. Moore sniggered: ‘Or did he kick his own head in?’ Bradley’s lower lip started to quiver. ‘Ah, so we do understand each other, then? Good. Because frankly I’m skint and from what I’ve seen your daddy’s doing all right for himself. Right?’ Bradley nodded slowly, unable now to keep his head from rising and falling like a puppet’s. ‘I like your attitude, Brad! You should take note of this, Gordon. Bradley here is demonstrating how a dutiful son should behave. You’d save yourself a lot of ‘inconvenience’ if you could be a bit more like your friend here.’ Moore turned his attention back to Bradley. ‘He’s a bit of a div, though, isn’t he, Brad? Let’s be honest.’ He looked over at the tearful figure of Gordon, who shuffled beneath his stooped shoulders as if his bruises were weighing him down. ‘But he’ll learn his lesson sooner or later; won’t you, Gordon?’ Moore suddenly growled. Gordon mumbled something that Brad guessed was a Yes, Dad. Moore snorted in disgust then took a deep breath. ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother, Brad.’ But he sounded anything but to Bradley. ‘It’s not right, that. Someone should pay.’ Bradley looked up into the mean looming face above. ‘The person responsible, I mean.’ Moore’s disquieting leer returned. ‘Got your mobile?’ he winked. ‘I think it’s time we sent that person a message, don’t you?’

Chapter Eighteen

It was a quarter to six when Chris got home from work and the house was empty. Two iron fists immediately began pummelling his skull and chest. He snatched his mobile from his pocket when the message alert sounded and stared at the envelope icon like it was the black spot in Treasure Island, his thumb hovering above the keypad. The message was from Bradley: CHECK THE CAR. OK. So the message came from Bradley’s mobile. But that didn’t mean it was Brad that had sent it – which in turn sent his mind spiralling into a maelstrom of dark possibilities. Fear paralysed his resolve. A second message arrived: CHECK THE CAR. An image jumped into his mind of Bradley trussed up on the tarmac in front of the BMW, handbrake off, driver’s door gaping, and the wind coaxing it down the road’s slight incline, the front tires nudging the boy’s body and starting to squeeze. Chris bolted for the door, a primitive protectiveness galvanising him at last. To his relief the car was still where he’d left it, with nothing in front of it but litter. The mobile was still in his hand. When it vibrated he nearly dropped it. come to the industrial estate. griffin rd. hole in the fence. thru the woods. railway hut. don’t keep me waiting. ‘It’s a trap,’ Chris warned himself as he turned back towards the house. He stripped quickly out of his work clothes. He’d need a good pair of boots, a proper coat, and the heavy-duty torch that might have more than one use, if he got the chance. It was frustrating that he couldn’t risk carrying a shovel through the streets, but that torch could do serious damage. Moore had crossed a line, and whatever it took Chris was through being a victim.

Chapter Nineteen

The high fence running along the periphery of the industrial estate seemed to be holding the darkness beyond at bay. When the torch batteries had last been replaced was anyone’s guess. Chris tried to swallow, but the golf ball was back. The last text message had been predictable: he wasn’t after coins anymore. Maybe he was watching Chris now from the trees ahead. It was never going to be a case of just handing the cash over with a no-hard-feelings handshake. The maximum amount he could withdraw on his three cards was bulging in his inside jacket pocket. His fingers tightened around the torch. It took him several minutes to spot the tear in the wire. Crouching down he pulled at the corner of fencing and it peeled up easily. Chris slithered through, the damp making both knees ache. The wind fingered the foliage around him. He took a deep breath, trying to clear his head and listen out for any unusual sounds. The electric hum from the warehouses was surprisingly loud. He waited for the hoot of an owl, the cry of a fox, the snap of a twig underfoot. But whatever lay ahead was waiting patiently for him to make the first move. Chris slowly picked his way along an ill-used path, using his arms and feet to navigate, the unlit torch held upright to protect his face. He stumbled twice, nearly falling full length the second time. A branch slapped the side of his head and cold, dirty water ran down his neck. He forced himself onward, deeper into the uncertain dark. A train approached at speed and he watched as its lights weaved through the cut below. He emerged from the undergrowth just in time to see the last few carriages bobbing along the line like an escaped fairground attraction. He wondered if any of those commuters imagined they were being watched, that a dramatic scene was about to be enacted high above them? He’d only relied on the torch beam twice and briefly, but surely that would have been enough to announce his arrival. The hairs at the back of his neck stirred in the breeze. He thought he heard the rumble of another train, but it was only the sound of his heart. The dark taunted him with its hidden secrets. Chris pointed the torch forward, his thumb jabbing at the switch, and the beam splashed through the wet leaves. But he was still alone. He stealthily approached the concrete hut ahead, torch beam sweeping the ground like a mine detector. Chris stopped at the threshold, his torchlight bouncing off the tin sheets crudely

covering the entrance. He listened intently but the fear had suddenly left him; whatever the trap, he was well and truly in it. His only hope was that he might get in at least one good crack with the torch or swing of his boot. Knocking away the improvised door with a clatter, he advanced into the hut. His torch beam swept left and right, expecting to find a leering kidnapper with one strong hand on a tearfully cheeked Bradley – or worse. But there was only crap furniture and a lot of dirt and litter. Any minute now he’s going to get the better of you again… Chris stood upright, the truth giggling at him from each of the four dank corners. Chris turned and ran. He pictured his front gate still swinging in the wind where someone had left it open moments earlier. A fresh message arrived on his phone; he didn’t bother to look. Bradley had a front door key; which meant if Moore had the boy’s mobile then he had the key too. Branches snipped at his exposed cheeks, his torch beam bouncing up and down like a horse’s head as he dashed through the undergrowth. Somewhere to his right a fox screamed, as if to mock him. You’re out of your depth, sucker! And all he could do now, he realised, was plead, beg, piss himself; give Moore all the money and promise more - anything that would spare Bradley pain and suffering. Suck up to him. Suck up to him and hope he didn’t blow.

Chapter Twenty

Bradley slipped out of his damp coat - safe at last. But that wasn’t how he felt. Whatever he had expected Mr. Moore to be like it was nothing so apparently ‘normal’ as the man he met in Gordon’s house. Yet beneath that cheery mask something terrible lurked, just as he’d foreseen in the photograph hanging in Gordon’s den. And the fact that Moore Senior had just casually let him go made Bradley’s situation seem worse rather than better. ‘And then all you have to do,’ Mr. Moore had explained, ‘is to sit down in front of your telly and wait for Daddy to come back home like a good little boy.’ Screw that; he hadn’t broken away from one tyrant to allow another to take his place. So long as what Moore wanted coincided with what he wanted there was no need to rock the boat yet, however. But he couldn’t let himself end up with Moore alone again. That way, when Bradley disobeyed his orders, it would be his father that Moore went after. Staring at the blank TV screen Bradley grinned at the prospect of playing one adult off against the other. He heard raised voices from the street and his breath caught in his chest. What if Moore got really pissed off, and went too far? Wasn’t a bad parent better than none at all? Gordon had got the rough deal in that regard. A ludicrous idea jumped into his mind that with his real parents out the way Mr. Moore might even try to adopt him. Panic overwhelmed him like a power cut. Did he really believe he could go through with this so-called plan? And what was his longterm goal, to become an orphan? He pictured Gordon’s injuries, his father’s stiffened back at the roller-skating rink, his wing mirror dangling by a wire, and his heart rate accelerated. Someone outside laughed and the two voices receded into the distance, leaving him alone again. Dad would be home any minute, according to Moore. He had arranged everything, apparently. Was that part of Bradley’s plan, too? Suddenly he pictured a swimming pool and ed the day his parents had dragged him out of the deep end when he was six; Mum scowling and Dad growling, ‘Know your limits, boy’. They’d always looked out for him, even when they weren’t getting on. If Dad disappeared too, what then? He heard a key rattle in the lock and had to fight the urge to bolt straight into his father’s arms, but his body felt lifeless. ‘Brad? Brad, are you here? Brad!’ The voice was breathless.

The faces of those he supposed to be part of his plan danced before him: leering, laughing and pointing their fingers at him. He felt hot and the room turned red around the edges. He thought he heard a police siren approaching in the distance and saw himself tearing up floorboards, desperate to move the body in order to protect his father. ‘Bradley! Bradley!’ Someone was shaking him roughly by the arms, dragging him upright, but he couldn’t take his mind’s eye from the summerhouse floor. The loose board was free, but the space beneath… ‘Bradley, please!’ The living room swam back into focus and there was Dad, his eyes wide with terror, his features weighed down by stress and worry. His hair would turn grey after this little drama. They might have to move house, change their names, God knew what else. But none of that mattered because Bradley knew she was alive. Yes, she had left and he didn’t know why. Yes, his father was not perfect and had driven her away. But none of that mattered. He felt older, suddenly aware of what adults meant when they said ‘tired’ but weren’t sleepy. The panic grabbed his throat and squeezed. Bradley buried his face in his father’s chest just as he had years earlier by the side of that swimming pool. ‘Oh, Dad!’

Chapter Twenty-One

‘One more time should do it for Haynes.’ Bradley’s father was not the first. ‘He’ll cough up and I can get your step-mum off my back.’ If only she knew. But she must suspect something, Gordon decided. Dad hadn’t had a proper job in years. What came next was the part of his existence Gordon hated most, the part with the Polaroid camera. The beatings he could take, but this final humiliation was what really got to him. He could lie to himself about everything else but that. Gordon was still his flesh and blood, after all. That should have counted for something. It all seemed so long ago now, when he and Dad found themselves living in the old house, alone. Not that Gordon’s mother was dead, of course – unlike Bradley’s; though perhaps she’d suspected she might end up that way what with Gerry Moore’s fondness for using his fists. So she ran, and although Gordon was old enough to understand why, he still cried himself to sleep at night ing that his mum had apparently saved her own skin and left him to it. There was some in the weeks that followed – perhaps she did try? - but Mr. Moore had something over his mother that kept her at arm’s length, something unspoken but which set Gerry into fits of spiteful laughter whenever she phoned. He’d be in high spirits after that; jolly even. But sooner or later Gerry Moore’s mood would change and he’d start getting itchy fists again. He ed that day his father asked casually from behind his newspaper: ‘Gordon, are you ever bullied at school?’ He replied in the negative and watched as the paper was lowered and a smirking face asked: ‘Why not?’ Gordon stared wide-eyed at the Polaroid camera. One day he would be big enough, strong enough to say no. But how long would that take, another five years, more? It was hard sometimes to recall a life that didn’t involve this role his father had created for him. A knot tightened in his stomach. Five years might as well have been fifty the good it would do him. ‘Come on,’ his father sighed like a man losing patience with a dog that refused to heel. ‘You should know the drill by now.’ The drill: a good way to describe his life, that. Gordon pulled down his tros, leaving them bunched around his ankles and tried to think about something else

as the camera clicked and whirred into life. The camera moved in closer, whirring a second time. The exposures were carefully laid on the arm of the sofa. When there were four his father chuckled: ‘One more for luck, partner.’ Goose flesh broke out over his body. In spite of his apparent frailty that body was far from broken; but what of his spirit? No one really liked him, especially his step mum and the evil sisters who made every effort to make his home life hell behind the adults’ backs. His father turned away towards the door, blackmail pictures in hand. They would find their way to the Haynes’ letterbox one at a time. Like the Polaroid camera, he always sent them the old-fashioned way - ‘Because I used to be a postman, see?’ He never sent a note; the pictures told their own story: Look what your son did to mine… Sometimes it would take two or three to do the trick. Wanna go to the police? Be my guest. And while I’m being questioned I can mention your little secret in the garden. But if his dad really believed Bradley’s mother was buried under the summerhouse why was he backing off now? Did even monsters sometimes meet their match? ‘You disgust me,’ his father sneered. ‘Get dressed and go help your mum in the kitchen.’ A horrifying image sprang into Gordon’s mind: the next photo shoot in six months’ time, but this time with his stepmother and –sisters watching on; watching, pointing and laughing. The living room door slammed shut, leaving Gordon alone with his bruises and the promise of more to come. He wasn’t sure he was even growing like his classmates – one more reason for them to ridicule him at break time. As he got older things could surely only get worse, wherever he turned, so maybe getting older wasn’t a good idea. Apart from his misery what else was there to lose? Pulling up his tros and wincing at his various aches and pains, Gordon made a decision. It settled over him as easily as his oversized shirt. There was a sensation of lightness that had nothing to do with his weight, and he felt warmer than he had in months; taller even, as if the lost growth had suddenly returned all at once. He closed his eyes and smiled, for his decision promised him the one thing he craved above all else: No more photos.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Bradley stopped crying at last. ‘I started this. It’s all my fault.’ ‘No. You mustn’t say that!’ Yes, this whole nightmare had started with Bradley’s bullying of Gordon Moore whilst he and Tess had been busy dismantling their marriage. But that was both their faults. If he was going to salvage anything from this mess Chris knew he would have to be honest with himself firstly. Any fool could act macho, but being a real man – and a real dad - was a lot more painful. ‘What are we going to do, Dad?’ ‘We do as we’re told, son.’ Bradley started to protest, but Chris held up his hand. ‘And pray that’s the end of it.’ Because this was all part of a well-practiced scam, he realised. Moore knew exactly which buttons to press and in which order, the one marked ‘male pride’ being the prime reason for his not going to the police right at the start. It was child’s play. ‘What about Mum?’ Chris screwed his eyes shut. ‘I need a drink.’ Bradley struggled up from the sofa. ‘I’ll get it.’ Chris wondered what it was he would be told to do, but he didn’t have to try too hard. Moore had had his fun, and now he was moving in for what he’d been after all along. He knew when he woke up there would be a note through his letterbox or under the windscreen wiper of his car asking for money. The only thing he struggled to comprehend was how Moore had manipulated his own son into getting bullied in the first place - unless, of course, the boy was in on it, too. Chris must have zoned out for a few minutes because Bradley seemed to have re-entered the room with a steaming mug instantaneously. Chris smiled. Tea was not what he’d meant by ‘a drink’. The boy looked worn out. He dreaded the outcome of his forthcoming confession, but realised there was no way to avoid it.

Bradley put the tea down on the table and slumped back into the sofa. Chris ed him there, stroking the hair from his eyes. ‘Bradley, there’s something I need to tell you.’ ‘It’s all right,’ the boy sighed. ‘I know you were telling me the truth about Mum now.’ ‘No. I need to tell you the whole truth, Bradley. And it’s not something I’m very proud of.’ Chris took a breath. ‘You see… I have hidden something from you, something important.’ Bradley stared at him for a second, brow furrowed suddenly. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘It is about your Mum,’ Chris began. ‘Your mother has been writing to you... from Auntie Roz’s’ Chris forced himself to hold Bradley’s gaze, like it was a form of penance. Guilt seemed to puncture his heart like a stiletto blade; no sign of bleeding but a fatal wound, nonetheless. ‘I kept those letters from you.’ ‘But I thought…’ ‘And I hid them under the floor of the summerhouse.’ Bradley just stared at the carpet for nearly a minute. Did he look relieved? ‘Is she all right?’ ‘I don’t know. I never opened them.’ As if that made any difference. But to his great surprise it seemed to. ‘I knew she wouldn’t just forget about me.’ ‘I’m so sorry, Bradley. I could never have imagined things would turn out this way.’ But all actions had consequences. That was what fathers were supposed to teach their sons, not vice versa. Bradley looked down into his lap, as if weighing up how to react. Tears? Foul language? Violence? But when he looked up it was with the cruellest weapon of all: a look of total disappointment.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Gordon did not take precautions the next morning. He merely walked to the front door and left 53 East Street forever. No one was going to chase after him, because no one wanted him – not really. He was alone, an object of utter contempt, a thing to be mocked and despised. There was only one possible escape, and Gordon had to concede that he was probably as stupid as everyone said not to have seen it beforehand. He avoided the school. Home aside it was the place where he had suffered the most. Instead he headed for the park, ing that first invitation to Bradley to visit his ‘secret place’. It had all been part of a well-rehearsed routine to lure Bradley into his father’s trap. And as his father had told Gordon so often he really did not need to try very hard to wind people up. He was bait, whilst the great white shark was circling out of sight. It had been different this time, though; maybe because he had things in common with Brad beyond a uniform and a favourite crisp flavour. He thought about his absent mother and the look on Bradley’s face whenever he talked about his. Those were the ties that bound a true friendship, he decided. The sun came out around noon, its warmth quickly filtering through his threadbare clothing. Several adults frowned his way, but none could be bothered to challenge him over what he was doing out of school. A fresh, light wind ruffled his hair like an avuncular hand. At lunchtime he took the twenty pound note he had stolen from his father’s wallet after breakfast and spent the lot on cakes, milkshake and a length of washing line. By three o’clock it was clouding over again, but at least the rain held off. He went back to the park and fed the birds with what was left of his cake. He sat on a swing for nearly an hour, staring into space, and then popped into the gents for a piss. In the doorway he looked out across the grass and pictured his first real friend jogging towards him on that wonderful afternoon. Five minutes before the end of school time Gordon set out on his final journey.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bradley was never going into school that day, any more than his father could have gone to work. If he had, he would not have expected to see Gordon there anyway. He’d read Mum’s letters now over and over. There were no great secrets; nothing specifically for Bradley to be angry at Dad for beyond the fact of concealment itself. Indeed, the letters were curiously upbeat and optimistic, as if his mum were trying to convince him that she really was just taking a short break at her sister’s. He tried to feel positive, too, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how Gordon’s mother had drifted away to start a new life without him, despite her best intentions. Gordon’s dad was different from his, mind – fundamentally different. Of course he was hurt by what his father had done – and guessed that he might be a lot angrier later on as it sank in properly – but there was still an overwhelming sense of relief in the confirmation that his mother was all right. But there were other people involved now. He thought about Gordon (kept thinking about him again and again) and how he would react when he saw him after half-term. ‘Awkward’ did not do that scenario justice. They could never speak again; probably not even make eye . Bradley ed his initial dislike of Gordon and wondered how such strong feelings could evaporate almost overnight. Dad was out. Firstly to Auntie Roz in Islington, and secondly, he said, to kick start collecting the money for Moore on Friday - Moore had sent another text from Bradley’s stolen mobile. Dad promised not to be too long. Bradley noted how composed he seemed, how determined. Ten grand was one serious payout, especially now the extra blackmail leverage in the summerhouse could be discounted. Why didn’t he call his bluff? Dad’s resolve – almost enthusiasm to pay up in full could only be based on the threat of greater violence, surely. At least now they were batting together on the same side. Tears stung his eyes at the thought that he’d only recently relished the prospect of ing forces with his father’s adversary. Dad had promised to drive him to see Mum tonight if he could arrange it, though that seemed a tad over-confident in Bradley’s eyes. Still, he felt a lot more optimistic about the future – or at least he would from Saturday onwards. Dad was really trying hard to make everything all right; but maybe trying too hard explained why he had held onto Mum’s letters in the first place. Suddenly the prospect of entering the adult world one day soon seemed like the scariest thing

of all; governed as it was by a set of rules that made no sense whatsoever. One day in the months to come some other family man would get a nasty surprise, in a dark alley or a car park. Gordon would ‘befriend’ some disaffected kid and help draw that person’s family into a well-practiced scam. Had Gordon really been totally innocent throughout their ordeal? From what he’d seen of Mr. Moore it seemed likely that Gordon was pretty powerless to do anything but exactly what he was told. Bradley hoped he would one day forgive him for the terrible things he had said and done – although whether he could forgive himself was another matter. Maybe under different circumstances they might have become genuine friends; although that coin collecting lark was a non-starter, he smiled to himself. The front door slammed and in swept Dad, looking healthier and happier than he had in ages. He slapped his hands together and almost shouted, ‘All done!’ Chris’ smile faltered momentarily. ‘She’ll only see you, though. I’ll have to wait outside in the car.’ ‘Because of the letters, right?’ Chris tried to force a smile, just like Gordon did when he was cornered. ‘Did you get his money?’ Chris’ ebullience returned and he patted the inside pocket of his jacket, though it seemed hard to imagine how all that money could have fitted in such a small space. ‘Down to the last centime,’ he grinned. Bradley stayed silent. There was something unsettling about Dad’s upturn in mood. Chris bent down to the coffee table where Mum’s letters lay scattered and stacked them neatly. ‘Actually, let’s get lunch out somewhere,’ he said, ‘treat ourselves.’ ‘Can we afford it?’ ‘Don’t look so worried, Brad,’ Chris laughed. ‘I swear I won’t make you eat vegetables!’

His dad was far too happy, elated almost. There was a lot of making up to do between father and son, Mum was refusing to see him, he seemed to have aged ten years in as many days, and he would be ten grand worse off by the weekend – and yet... If he’s lied to you once… ‘And don’t worry about school tomorrow. We’re staying away tonight. I’ve organised a surprise,’ his father laughed. But hadn’t they had enough of those recently? Bradley stared at the letters, letters that had been within reach through every sleepless night. He looked back up at his father and forced himself not to see anything wrong. ‘I’ll get my coat.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

An hour earlier Chris had stood outside the station, cursing his former pride and indecisiveness. If he’d taken this step earlier it would have saved everyone so much suffering. If he knew anything for certain it was that the blackmail would not stop at ten grand. And even if it did the scam had to be stopped. Because one day he’s going to kill someone. Marching through the foyer Chris headed for the part of the bus station undergoing renovation, the part that specifically told him to keep out. But there was no one around to challenge him. He saw Max straight away and they wound their way together through hardboard corridors and scaffolding. Max even gave him a fluorescent jacket and a hard hat. Finally they came to an open patch of ground with a portakabin on it; inside Terry and Mick were waiting. ‘We could end up inside if this goes wrong,’ Terry frowned. ‘Are you sure there’s no other way?’ Chris was too tired to argue, but he owed them some sort of explanation. ‘I’m way out of my depth. The guy’s a psycho. I think he actually enjoys it when I fight back.’ ‘Has he threatened Bradley?’ Max asked. Chris could only shake his head, with a dozen golf balls in his throat. ‘But he will, right?’ Chris nodded. ‘Where and when?’ asked Terry. Chris gave them directions to the meeting place by the railway line, told them when he was expected; and it was that simple. Now it would be Chris that had something on Moore, the threat of anonymous muscle should he ever bother the Haynes again. As for Bradley, he hated replacing one secret with another, but his priority was to protect him. He looked at the three men before him, their broad shoulders and tattoos, and felt suddenly sick, as he always did around violence. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t break anything,’ Max said, punching him on the shoulder. Even after all these years Max was the sort of older brother who he liked to remind Chris of who got their head out first. ‘Yer,’ joked Terry. ‘We’ll just bend him a bit.’ Tiredness soaked through into his bones like flu. He found himself a café for tea

and a toasty, and phoned his sister-in-law whilst he ate. In spite of everything a smirk crept into the corners of his mouth at the thought of Moore being ‘bent’ where no one could hear him scream. All that remained was for Chris to go home and give Bradley the good news – or at least the gist of it – jump in the car and drive away. The end was in sight.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The back gate was locked, so he had to climb it. There was a lot of pain in his chest still, just under his armpit, but he struggled over; then ghosted across the lawn, looking up briefly at the house – had Brad got back from school yet? - and pulled open the summerhouse door. Familiar smells brought back memories of his previous visit with Bradley, though he preferred to think of their underlying friendship rather than the circumstances that threatened to spoil it. Even brothers had fights. He closed the door behind him, his resolve unshaken. Inside there was still plenty of light to see the single wooden cross beam in the roof. From his torn rucksack he removed the length of clothesline and ran one end under his nose, smelling its freshness. Outside the sun was kissing the roofs of nearby houses, and unhurried shadows reached out across the grass. Using an old garden chair, Gordon fed the clothesline over the beam and tied a noose as he’d seen demonstrated on the internet. He’d been practicing in the park and got it right first time. He tied the line off tightly and standing in the dusty half-light, pulled the noose over his head and tightened it at the base of his neck. The advice from one website flittered through his mind: No need to leave a note. If anyone wanted to read it you wouldn’t be doing this, would you? Gordon stared down at the floorboards below, his balance on the garden chair already precarious. With a smile he ed the trust Brad had shown by bringing him in here, an act of true comradeship surely. You want to see the scene of the crime, don’t you? Maybe this way Brad would never be able to think of his mother without thinking of Gordon too; the two most important people in his life resting at peace together. He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath and smiled. That was what made his plan so perfect. He wobbled on the chair, ready to surrender his equilibrium. His knees were very weak, his thighs hot and aching. The rope tightened and there was a squeezing sensation at the back of his head. He was halfway there already. There would be no need to jump or kick the chair away. All he needed to do was let go… Everything started to go red and he felt himself riward through the roof. It was always going to end here, Bradley had said, as if he had known all along that this was how he and Gordon would be bound together forever. Two new shadows spilled out across the lawn near the house, one longer than the other. Gordon could see them from far above the garden, it seemed. His heart

beat harder. A boy and a man; the latter with his right arm draped protectively across the other’s shoulder. They looked relaxed, happy even. The man said something, and the boy looked up and laughed. Gordon felt happy, too. His forehead throbbed, thick with pain. Gordon continued to rise, higher and higher, his fear running through his feet like an evening shower, a snakelike grip around his windpipe. He wouldn’t have long to wait for what he wanted – no, for what he deserved. He opened his eyes, the dusty interior of the summerhouse swimming back into focus. Panic roused him from his torpor like a bucket of cold water thrown into his face. The panic intensified, a hot gushing tap dropping into his screaming mouth. He stared at the chair beneath his feet and then back outside at the silent, empty lawn. You’re alone and no one’s coming… he heard his father hiss. No one really wants you, ? The snake coiled itself a little tighter around his throat. He didn’t want to die, not here, not now. Brad wasn’t much of a friend by normal standards, but he was still the best friend Gordon had had by miles. And those things they had in common made them almost like brothers; soul mates even. This didn’t need to be the end at all, he realised, but a new beginning. Gordon reached up to the knot behind his head, but it had shortened by several inches. It was hard to breath and his legs felt like they were shrinking by the second. Every movement threatened to tighten the noose. He looked over at the house again; the empty house. Bradley wasn’t in, of course. So where was he? Gordon’s bag lay at the periphery of his vision. Inside was his mobile phone. But didn’t his dad still have Bradley’s mobile anyway? Not for first time Gordon was trapped. But Bradley would come back – within the hour or maybe longer - just as he always had. A great serenity overtook him. It was all still a waiting game: waiting for Dad to stop and Mum to come home, and now this, the latest Chapter. Why had he supposed it would be any different? Soon the light would fade away and Gordon would have to stay here, teetering in the dark, for as long as it took. But he wasn’t afraid. He had been through much worse and with no new hope to sustain him – until now. He forced himself to the adventures he and Brad had been through

already, with the promise of more to come. And with these memories the calmness settled into his shaking body and softened his thumping heart. He could wait all night if he had to. A best friend never let you down.

Glass Alibi - Contents

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter One

Geoffrey Madely stood motionless behind the display window, staring hard at a woman in her mid-thirties. As she sauntered towards him, he imagined her gliding down a catwalk with a hundred camera flashes lighting up her face. She had that look of supreme confidence only the truly beautiful possess. But then again, she was so much more than photogenic to Geoff. Photo-erotic would be a more apt description. Is there such a term? he wondered, watching her hair bounce in time with her step. There is now. His vision became misty and he noticed that the condensation from his breath was clouding the window. He inched to his right. Unable to look away, his eyes continued to track the woman’s movements as she drifted through the crowd. She tossed her hair more deliberately and straightened her back a little, almost as if she knew she was being watched. But when a lady was this good-looking, Geoff decided, inevitably someone would be. Something inside him had melted the moment he recognised her amongst the other shoppers. That much at least hadn’t changed. From the moment they met she had held this power over him. Every kiss was like the first, every cut still the deepest. In his mind Geoff already had his hands on her hips, pulling her gently towards him. She resisted for a second with a diamond’s sparkle in her eyes, before allowing the space between them to close. He could even imagine the sweet smell of her breath, the taste of that gliding tongue glimpsed behind her perfectly whitened teeth. She smiled, letting her lips part further, drawing Geoff’s mouth forward as if by suction. Geoff felt himself leaning towards the glass again, his pulse racing to catch up with his imagination. He could hear it thumping loudly in his ears like repeatedly dropped furniture, drowning out all other sounds. Time had stopped, and the storm of modern life was suspended. In those few precious seconds he was nothing but a shipwreck beached upon her shore. She still hadn’t noticed him, but three boys standing immediately outside had. They pointed up at him, pulling sarcastic faces, as he stood statuesque between

two plastic mannequins. The glass steamed up again, and when he pulled away Geoff finally noticed the boys, now bent double in hysterics. ‘Find what you’re looking for?’ Geoff felt the warmth of blood in his cheeks and turned to face the teenage shop assistant. ‘No. I’m just waiting for my wife, thanks.’ The shop assistant was struggling to keep a straight face. One of the boys on the pavement had pushed his lips against the window and proceeded to lick the glass with his tongue. Screaming with laughter, his two mates clung to each other to stay upright. Trying to ignore his unwanted audience, Geoff quickly looked over their heads. ‘Ah, here she is now.’ The woman in the crowd finally saw him, gave a little wave, and suddenly there was only the two of them in the whole world again. The shop assistant turned away, allowing himself a broader grin. This was a game he liked to play when he was bored: to imagine that he and Claire were strangers, meeting for the first time. Thus, a restaurant meal became a first date, a short break became a dirty weekend and making love after a few drinks became a one-night stand. There was nothing abnormal involved, he reminded himself. It was hardly S and M. He’d read somewhere that a bit of fantasising kept many long-term relationships fresh. But if that were true, it must mean that Claire had fantasies, too. He asked her once what they were, and she had just laughed and changed the subject. She wasn’t much into pop stars, so maybe she imagined he was her favourite actor, though if it was Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp he at least had the consolation that they were older than him. She always sounded satisfied, both during and after, but how could a man ever be sure? Oh, please, Roger, he laughed to himself, Moore! Outside, Claire followed up her wave with a smile. In her other hand, Geoff saw, was a single department store bag. That was a relief. Though he was too proud to encourage his wife to be thrifty, they both knew that money was tight right now. First the boiler needed replacing, and then

there were those repairs following a failed M.O.T. on a car they wanted to trade in but ironically couldn’t afford to. And while the cost of living continued to creep up, Geoff had not had a pay rise in nearly three years. It was the same for a lot of households, he knew, and for some, of course, a lot worse. But she was a beautiful, sophisticated woman who deserved to be kept in style, so he kept his mouth firmly shut, and indeed encouraged her to spend if she found something she was particularly in love with. It meant he had to make a few economies himself, but there weren’t that many things he enjoyed as much as seeing his wife in a new dress. Except, perhaps, seeing her slip out of one. He smiled back. ‘Drink?’ she mouthed through the glass. He stepped outside to her. The sun had outwitted the clouds, but there was still the nip of late February stealing down his neck. The air tasted fresh, like it did after rain, though it had been dry so far today. ‘How about that place you like, a couple of doors up?’ ‘The patisserie, oui?’ Geoff smiled. ‘They’re not really French.’ ‘Then how do you explain the accents and the fact they call you monsieur?’ ‘No one there has ever called me monsieur, Claire.’ She turned away with a grin. ‘Allons-y.’ At thirty-seven Claire could still put a lot of women ten years her junior to shame. Her auburn hair was never out of place, even if she was unwell, and she would touch up her makeup to buy a pint of milk more often than not. Today she wore jeans and ankle boots with her favourite winter coat. The fur trim around the top of her boots matched the fur collar of her coat. She looked after herself physically too; a dedication necessitated by her job as a fitness trainer. Lead by example, was her motto, though Geoff often worried that Claire must look so perfect to the post-Christmas Teletubbies bouncing around in front of her that it was actually a tad demoralising for them.

Claire’s exercise was predominantly aerobic, and the programmes she offered to the public involved spinning classes, crash mats and house music rather than dumbbells and incline benches. The result of which was a lithe body defined by subtle curves. She kept away from weights generally, which was a good thing when you saw pictures of female bodybuilders. Classes were free to staff partners, so he’d tried them all, except for yogalates, which he was couldn’t take seriously; it sounded more like a probiotic drink. Claire insisted that he perform at the back of the room, eyes to the floor, claiming she would feel uncomfortable otherwise. ‘You mean you won’t be able to stop laughing at me!’ he’d joked back. Unless she’s genuinely embarrassed by me? He knew other men must notice Claire, probably even fantasised about her. And as her husband, it was rather flattering, of course. But so long as it went no further than that – and so far it never had, and why should it? - such adoration by others was confirmation that he was a man of good taste, a man to be envied. They were irers, not rivals. Like the guy Geoff had seen loitering by the newsagents a few minutes earlier, for instance. He, too, had followed Claire’s progress with his eyes whilst Geoff stood in the shop window. Geoff doubted he was speculating on whether or not she would teach him yogalates. But so long as he never got to find out what her real favourite drink was, he had nothing to worry about. ‘Get anything nice?’ he asked, as they looked round for a spare table among the cake-munchers. ‘Maybe I’ll show you when we get home,’ she winked. Though probably you won’t, he thought, bitterly. After more than a decade together, she didn’t seem bored with him. And as his soul mate, why should she? Not being beleaguered by the stresses of childcare helped, no doubt, though naturally Claire would have loved a child; maybe several. A woman who didn’t want children was like a man who didn’t like football, in Geoff’s book. He could definitely find advantages to not being a dad, however, and because of that he found it easier than her to be philosophical. Think how tired you’d be, love. But at least that would give him a more palatable explanation for her withering libido.

‘I’ll get this,’ Claire said, looking down the menu, though she always had the same thing, part of the Saturday afternoon shopping ritual. Other parenting couples he knew did seem to have something he and Claire lacked, mind; apart from dark circles under their eyes. The Madelys were missing out on something, for sure. But the evenings and weekends were basically theirs to do as they pleased with. They didn’t have to worry about babysitters and night feeds and all the rest of it. Even clouds without cherubs could have silver linings. Not that married life was completely worry-free. Geoff was very aware, for instance, that he was seven years older than his wife. That meant he’d hit fifty whilst she was still in her early forties, and looking like someone ten years younger, to boot. He did everything he could to stay in shape and mirror her commitment to fitness, of course; but deep down he was bored with the gym and the trim trail through the park, and he knew that beneath his current waistline there was a fat man with a television remote glued to his hand struggling to get out. At weekends he always dressed smart but causal, as he liked to call it: jeans with unstained trainers, a black jacket over a buttoned shirt and loose Italian scarf. The secret was not to dress too young or too old, making his true age ambiguous. He kept his hair short to avoid any nascent grey hairs from showing and shaved religiously for the same reason. There was no way he was going to hand the advantage over to someone else on a plate. So when Claire asked if he fancied pastry, he restricted himself to a skinny cappuccino with sweeteners. ‘I still have a couple of things to get,’ she almost sang, ‘then we’ll push off. OK?’ ‘Do you want me to get anything?’ He had cancelled the home grocery service to save money, though he still couldn’t to take carrier bags with him to the supermarket. He would be watering down his cologne next. ‘No need. We’ll detour via the by on the way home. Stock up for the week.’

How could anyone sound so excited about a ring road supermarket? At least that would give them the whole of Sunday to themselves. Imagine if it turned windy overnight and some grubby little tyke they’d produced wanted them to fly a kite? he asked himself. He knew of some people’s children who could fly a kite for hours without getting bored. Maybe Claire was getting used to the idea of being childless and starting to realise the advantages of living without an individual who could never take no for an answer. There had to be more to it than that, he thought. Claire had been cheerful all week, Geoff realised; and not only that, but positive and energetic. Her whole outlook was affected, it seemed, inspiring enthusiastic home improvement ideas and the embracing of unlikely sounding paint colours. Modern wisdom decreed that when a man spontaneously buys his woman flowers she should be instantly suspicious. But for a man, Geoff decided, a corresponding threat indicator was a sudden desire by his partner to redecorate their home wholesale. Something must have happened. Even her gait was different, her high heels seemingly as light as a pair of ballet shoes. Suddenly her ts seemed to have more spring than a mattress factory. Maybe she was getting bored with the man she shared the flat with, too? That wasn’t a pleasing thought, he decided, swallowing it down into his empty stomach. Looking back, her mood had been rising steadily for several weeks now, like a kettle coming to the boil. She seemed genuinely happy, but could that zest just as easily be a sign of restlessness and dissatisfaction? He should have been glad she was so ebullient, but oddly the little paint tester pots dotted around the flat had the reverse effect on him. If she wanted to paint over the cracks in their marriage, where were they? Is she only happy now because she wasn’t happy before? he wondered. And if so, what had changed? She’ll be singing in the bath next, he concluded. A bright-eyed teenage girl brought over their drinks. ‘Merci,’ Claire said, and gave him another wink. He smiled back, but his attention was taken by the fact that his wife had yet again experimented with the shade of blusher on her cheeks. This had to be the third or fourth alternative in as many days. Claire was embracing change the way Christmas trees embraced tinsel; only it

was nearly March. Something must have happened. Just then Claire’s phone pinged from inside her handbag. When she made no move to see who had texted her, Geoff immediately felt a tightening across his shoulders. ‘I bumped into Jacky earlier,’ she said brightly. ‘Jacky who?’ ‘You know, Jacky from the swimming pool? The one you used to fancy.’ The girl’s face swam into focus. It was actually her sister he’d liked. ‘Oh, right. How is she?’ ‘You’re not denying you fancied her, then?’ He forced himself to laugh at her little joke, but inside all he could think of was the phone in her handbag. He could see it trapped next to a lipstick and her house keys, struggling to be picked up. ‘Aren’t you going to see who that is?’ he asked, trying to keep the question light. Claire raised her skinny cappuccino over her mouth, breaking eye with him. ‘It’s probably Mum again. You know what she’s been like since I got her that new phone,’ she chuckled. But the laughter was forced, he felt, and the joke that preceded it manufactured. Besides, Claire’s Mum preferred to leave a voicemail message if she couldn’t speak to Claire, like an act of defiance against modern technology. ‘What do you fancy for dinner tonight?’ she asked and began reciting a list of options with gusto. Geoff was barely listening, though. He was convinced Claire was hiding something, and he doubted it had anything to do with new blinds or lampshades. His thoughts wandered back to that man loitering outside the newsagents, not five minutes earlier. Was that why she had tossed her hair? He replayed the

incident again and again, and by the fifth rerun he was sure Claire had given the stranger the briefest of coy glances in return. Maybe that was her fantasy: a younger man? Or at least one that didn’t look increasingly like an older brother. He felt the tightening in his shoulders turn into a solid weight, as he stared down into his half-finished coffee. ‘So, maybe you could go check the football results in the electrical shop or something, and I’ll come meet you there in about half an hour?’ She stood up, in a hurry to leave. No, Geoff corrected himself, in a hurry to escape further questioning. She looked away again when his eyes searched for hers. Maybe she was planning to buy something grand with money they didn’t have, Geoff pondered. Shoes had always been her Achilles heel. He would have preferred that explanation to the one lurking in the backwaters of his mind. ‘Finish your coffee,’ she said gaily, heading for the door. ‘Half an hour, then.’ She didn’t look back, but then why should she? Geoff asked himself. Couldn’t all this just as easily be explained by stress-induced paranoia? Work had been a real slog of late. The weekends were such a relief but never seemed long enough, which he knew was a bad sign. The tension in his shoulders wouldn’t leave him, nor the memory of her avoiding eye . Claire never moaned about her job, about being tired or disaffected. She was so fit and healthy, so overflowing with vitality and enthusiasm. So, was he experiencing the preliminary stages of aging? He tried, unsuccessfully, to recall if he panted walking up steps, and promised himself that from now on he would jog up every flight. Claiming that your forties were the new thirties was all well and good, but logically it meant that his gorgeous wife was still effectively in her twenties. Shit. Geoff sipped his cappuccino, which tasted bitter despite the sweeteners. Claire had always been a coffee hound. It was her only vice; or at least the only one he knew about. They’re irers not rivals, he onished himself.

But when he looked down at her drink, he saw she had barely touched it.

Chapter Two

Pulling up outside their home, the late winter sunset splashed orange dye across the windowpanes. They had a top floor flat, which fortunately for them, especially if they had shopping to carry, was only on the third. That was plenty high enough, Claire used to laugh. But for a while he knew she had considered pulling the plug on the move because she worried about a fire breaking out. But none of their immediate neighbours were elderly or smackheads, Geoff pointed out. ‘And besides, I can always leave an old mattress under the bedroom window in case we have to jump.’ ‘It’ll be you that goes first, then,’ Claire replied. ‘But you don’t jump, Geoff, you drop. I’ve looked into it.’ Presumably dropping from a third-floor window was a risk worth taking, then; though she never mentioned the mattress idea again. There was grass beneath their bedroom window. There was no proper garden as such, and not even a balcony, but at least they were homeowners at last. The road outside was rarely disturbed by fast cars or drunken singing, and littering was scarce. Occasionally you found dog shit on the sole of your shoe, but then nowhere seemed immune from that. The town centre was a mere ten-minute walk away, if you knew which short cuts to take, and Claire’s gym was only two stops on the bus. Geoff also worked in town. Walking home meant not queuing to escape from the staff car park for twenty minutes, of course; but it also meant jousting the English weather with your umbrella. Inside, most of the second-hand furniture they’d inherited as wedding presents had been replaced by more modern, albeit self-assembled counterparts. Claire liked her R & B, Geoff his televised sports. What books they had were largely autobiographies of iconic actors and millionaire sports stars, with an incongruous Mandela and Alan Johnson hiding here and there. Claire had read

Les Misérables because Geoff hated musicals. ‘If you want singing, we’ll go to a concert.’ Neither smoked, but the odd glass of white or red could lead to the emptying of a couple of bottles of French or Chilean at weekends. They had a tacit agreement not to drink during the week, though lately Geoff had rebelled a few times (‘on special occasions.’) without remark from Claire. Their honeymoon was spent in Ireland because they shared green as their favourite colour, they told everyone, and not because it was two hundred quid cheaper than Paris. The bars and restaurants were so good, mind, that they probably spent the same amount anyway. Geoff certainly enjoyed trying to convince his new bride that the national dish of Ireland was steak and ale pie. Despite several attempts, neither of them managed to finish a Guinness, though Geoff swore he saw a leprechaun in the hotel’s reception. That was the launchpad for their relationship, Geoff maintained. How they’d got together in the first place was not something he liked to think about. ‘We need more lamps,’ Claire said in the hallway. ‘You know, make it cosier?’ They had redecorated the flat room by room only the year before last, which was why Geoff had been so surprised one Sunday when Claire dragged him into a DIY superstore with the biggest trolley available. They’d bought three lamps that day alone. ‘We could do with a change,’ she had announced. Now there were discrete little squares of new colour hiding behind paintings and cupboards, awaiting final selection. She was taking the whole thing extremely seriously. But given the fact that there was, in his opinion, nothing wrong with the flat the way it was, he was convinced that eventually she would get cold feet. She remained resolute, however; the spare room becoming a particular preoccupation. Geoff was relaxing in the living room now, the shopping unpacked and the television on low in the background promoting that evening’s predictable schedule. Claire was even more relaxed, in the bath, treating her muscles to one of her lengthy soaks. She probably needed it after a long week accumulating lactic acid. Geoff had plenty of time, then, for what had recently evolved from a monthly to a weekly ritual in his life. Claire’s handbag rested in his lap, not bulging but heavy. In a natural disaster a woman would be safe so long as she could grab her handbag; it doubtless

contained all she would need to survive any emergency. He took out her purse, and opening it, carefully looked through her receipts. Food, petrol, car park tickets: the usual suspects. He had already checked through her bank statements and the small pocketbook she used mainly for lists without finding anything untoward. Most of the discarded letters in the paper recycling bin were advertising circulars or other junk mail. But it was the phone that most interested him. Maybe that text in the patisserie had been from her mother, but did that mean all her other messages that week could be explained away so easily? He unlocked the phone with Claire’s date of birth and scrolled through the list of messages. Of all the things he did behind his wife’s back, this was the only one to make him feel uncomfortable. Maybe it was because in the modern world the mobile phone had taken the place of the personal diary as the ultimate private sanctuary; but then again, most of a phone’s contents were shared, sometimes with dozens of people on social media, so why not? Any guilt he might feel was offset by the knowledge that he was acting in her best interests as much as his own. After all, who else could love Claire as deeply as he did? The list of his sacrifices for her over the years would have covered every inch of wall space in the flat, for sure. Did he play football anymore? No. Did he look for better paid jobs further afield that would leave her to come home to an empty flat? No. Could he stand the sight of her mother? Oh, no. And keeping a regular check-up on her like this was just another example. He was the luckiest man alive, he told himself late at night, but to stay lucky he had to be vigilant. There were men out there who would not respect her the way he did and might take advantage of her just as a boast to their friends, a conquest, a scalp. Whether you called them irers or rivals, Claire was worth so much more than that. To him she was a sun-kissed lagoon, secluded and exclusive, natural and unpolluted. Without her life would be nothing but a common ditch. If she ever leaves me, he thought, as he checked for messages received between half-past four and five o’clock that day, I will dry up like a fly trapped behind a curtain. Geoff frowned. There was nothing from his mother-in-law. In fact, there were no messages received during that period at all. Could he have mistaken the sound of someone else’s phone for Claire’s? Then why that reaction, and her hurried exit without finishing her coffee? So, if the message was real, that could mean only one thing: Claire had read and erased it. Other messages received that day from

people he knew were still there, so why erase this one alone? Geoff turned the television to mute. He listened to the sounds of water gently lapping in the bath, and imagined Claire’s long, athletic legs rising and falling through the foam like dolphins. Why the subterfuge, Claire? Why go to the trouble of erasing one message in particular? Then a more troubling question leapt into his thoughts: did that mean she suspected him of checking her phone? It hardly mattered that he actually was checking her phone. The important fact was that her suspiciousness meant she didn’t trust him. It could also mean, of course, that she had something to hide. Geoff let his head fall back into the upholstery of the sofa and closed his eyes. This had never happened before. In the past Geoff had always found what that mysterious receipt was for, or what Claire had been doing at a new business listed on her credit card statement. But he’d always known this day would come, hadn’t he? Claire was a beautiful flower. You could look at a flower, ire it from afar, even get close and imbibe its intoxicating scent. But it would never be enough. Sooner or later someone would decide to pick that flower for themselves. If she knew, if she marched out of the bathroom right now and caught him redhanded, would she understand? Of course, he decided. She’d have to. She knew how much he loved her. But she would be upset for a while, until he could justify his actions, make her understand the beneficent motive behind them. Upsetting Claire was something he strived to avoid, of course, so he was always careful not to give her grounds to suspect that he regularly checked up on her like this. He had never been caught or come close to it. Devotion kept him sharp. But he only needed to slip up once, and the cat would be out of the bag. Then what? Tearful forgiveness, sure. But would he ever be able to check her phone again? If she did confront him about her suspicions, of course, it probably meant she really didn’t have anything to hide in the first place; otherwise, she’d be drawing attention to it (whatever or whoever ‘it’ was). The more complicated the mind games became, the more ridiculous they seemed. So why erase this one message? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe the message had been deleted by accident. It was possible. Equally, there might be another quite innocent explanation; though it

was a struggle to think of any right there. He remained convinced she was hiding something from him, but did it necessarily have to be ominous? The image of a hand reaching down towards a helpless flower and ripping it from the soil refused to leave his mind, however. Could there be someone at work trying to worm his way into Claire’s affections? Was she being bombarded with a charm offensive by some over-confident muscle head? Young single men could be as manipulative and astute as anyone when a mature woman caught their eye. He was only doing what any decent loving husband would do, under the circumstances: protect his wife from her own vulnerabilities as a woman. He opened his eyes to a man kissing a woman’s neck in a perfume advert. That was all well and good, he told himself, but it didn’t get him any closer to finding out who had sent the missing text message. And he had to find out. This was not something he could just shrug his shoulders over and forget. If the message was important Claire would have called whoever it was back when she left Geoff alone at the patisserie. It was worth a quick check of her call log, then, he decided. ‘Darling,’ her voice wafted through the flat. ‘Could you get me a towel?’ ‘Sure,’ he replied, tapping the call log icon with his forefinger. ‘There,’ he whispered. The outgoing call time was 16:48, when Claire must have been well out of sight of the patisserie. She had phoned someone called ‘Maxine’. It was a name he hadn’t heard her use before, and of course it could be a hairdresser, a new girlfriend or a trainee at work. But it could just as easily be a false name for a man. A man called Max, for instance, a man who fancied his chances with a more experienced but still attractive married woman. And whoever this ‘Max’ was, Claire wanted to keep him a secret from her husband. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? Not because she had done anything wrong - yet - but because she felt embarrassed in an awkward situation. Flirting might be harmless fun, but fun didn’t always have harmless consequences. The more he thought about it, the deeper his conviction grew, and the stronger

his instinct to protect became. ‘I’ll be right there,’ he called. He took a fluffy cream towel from the airing cupboard and was about to knock on the bathroom door, when his fist froze an inch from the wood. The smell of lavender wafted up under the door into his nostrils. Lavender mixed with something else, something exotic. It was certainly new. Maybe it was a gift? From an irer. He listened hard, certain he could hear something between the lapping of bath water and the dripping of a tap. Yes, there. He could hear it again now, clearly. It was hushed, more like humming, in truth, but distinctly carefree and joyful in nature. The sounds someone made without thinking, when they were profoundly happy. It chilled his blood. Claire was singing in the bath.

Chapter Three

Barring illness, Geoff and Claire had a rule that they should never stay home on a Saturday night. ‘Because that’s when we’ll start getting old,’ Claire explained. More often than not that meant The Three Horseshoes, often just as a way to kick the evening off; but it also made a good contingency if nothing else was happening. It was a free house with a longstanding reputation for providing more than just basket chips, big screen sports and conventional beers. Once a month there was a comedy club, plus the occasional open mic nights, summer barbecues, a mini music festival in August. By nine o’clock the place was rammed. A mixed ability blues band played old standards for an hour, before making way for the compere, who seemed convinced that the naming of various bodily parts in Latin was a ground-breaking innovation in stand up. Erratum. Claire bumped into a couple of old girlfriends she hadn’t seen in ages, and what with that, the music and the crowd Geoff found it easier to mask his anxieties. He went easy on the lager, despite the temptation to get plastered, hanging on to his second pint like it was closing time. ‘You Janet, don’t you?’ Claire shouted as the band started on the second half of their set. ‘Sure,’ Geoff lied. ‘We were at school together,’ Claire continued shouting in his ear. ‘Then she moved to Chelmsford with her boyfriend. But she’s moved back in with her parents, because they’ve split up.’ ‘What, the parents?’ Geoff asked, feigning confusion. ‘Silly!’ Claire slapped his arm. ‘You know what I mean.’ She went into great detail over how the relationship had ended. It did little to help him relax. Mercifully, Geoff could only understand one word in three thanks to an overambitious guitar solo. Janet was the victim, of course. He continued to nod in what he guessed were the

right places, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from straying to her handbag. There was no way to hear her phone in here, of course; but somehow that made his unease worse. For all I know, there could be a dozen new messages waiting down there. ‘Geoff!’ she exclaimed suddenly. He looked back into her face and saw a grin beaming across it. ‘I can see what’s on your mind,’ she continued, thinking he had been ogling her breasts. He laughed and gave her a quick kiss. ‘You’d better make that pint last if you’ve got any ideas in that department,’ she said, squeezing his leg. He doubted she meant it. When had they last made love? It felt like weeks. At least they still did it. His mate Dave had told him he and his wife hadn’t had sex for two years before they finally called time on their marriage. He wished now he’d asked if their love life had stopped abruptly or slowly petered out, like a marathon runner floundering half-way round. Claire grabbed her drink and disappeared with her friends to the makeshift dance floor. He truly couldn’t seeing her this happy in years. She beckoned for him to them, but he went to the Gents instead. A man ing the other way saw Claire’s velvet clutch under Geoff’s armpit and nodded to him, almost in sympathy. He took himself into the only cubicle with a lock and shut himself in. If Claire had trusted him with her phone like this, was there really any need for him to check it? The fact he had it in his possession with her full knowledge was surely proof enough that he was worrying needlessly. Geoff felt the drums thumping through the wall and straight into his head. He imagined himself heading back and surprising Claire on the dance floor with a squeeze of her waist and putting all this nonsense to bed. He reached for the cubicle’s door catch but hesitated. If he really wanted closure on this uncertainty, surely the best way was to see a list of messages and missed calls from his mother-in-law and the likes of Petra, Diane and Gay Gareth, her male friend from the nail bar.

He opened the clutch. Inside was a basic supply of makeup, some spare change and a debit card, but no phone. He snapped the clutch closed again, angrily. She had left it behind: deliberately, of course. The thumping of the drums seemed louder. Near closing time, as he finally sunk the dregs of his second pint, he found himself wondering when Claire would finally reveal to him her ‘embarrassing dilemma’, as he still insisted on calling it. After her irer sent her flowers anonymously? After he waited for her outside work one night? Or even tried to kiss her? What really needled him was the fact that he had no idea how long this had been going on for or what stage it had already ed. ‘Time, ladies and gentlemen, please!’ My God, he thought, as he watched the band pack up their instruments, would she let this ‘Max’ kiss her just once because she was afraid to upset him? Maybe let an ardent irer kiss her out of politeness almost. Perhaps she saw that as the lesser of two evils, the other being the risk of offending him? Yes, especially if it was someone in management, someone who could make things difficult for her if she rejected him outright. It was the kind of thing that happened at Christmas parties every year. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. But what if, halfway through, she started to enjoy it? And what if he wanted more? What if she did? ‘You all right, Geoff?’ she asked him, later, in bed. He didn’t answer, pretending to sleep. He heard Claire sigh and turn over. Ten minutes later she was snoring, but he wouldn’t have slept anyway. Claire’s phone was on the dressing table, and all Geoff could think about was what dark secrets it might contain. The urge to slip out of bed and take the phone with him to the bathroom for a quick peak kept him awake for what felt like hours. Sunday morning found him slightly less uptight, though his poor night’s sleep meant he still wasn’t himself. There had been quite a few of those of late, he realised. And even if worry wasn’t the cause, it soon appeared from the back of his mind to fill the void. After a lie in they made a cooked breakfast midmorning, and added croissants, fresh orange juice and coffee to the table. They were generally careful what they ate during the rest of the week, so this was their

weekly treat. Even then they’d skip lunch and not eat again until Sunday evening. Sometimes it felt like his whole life was spent preparing for Claire’s next class. ‘There’s probably more calories in a Sunday roast, anyway,’ Claire insisted. I could just do with a nice pub lunch, he thought. It was yet another sacrifice. Despite his growling stomach, eating the sausage, eggs and bacon was something of an ordeal for Geoff when he sat down at the table. Something was eating him. ‘It’s not like you to leave anything. You’re not worried about your weight, are you?’ ‘No,’ he answered, feeling irritated. ‘Should I be?’ ‘I noticed you only had a couple of pints last night, too.’ ‘You checking up on me, babe?’ he asked, as light-heartedly as he could. If only she knew, he told himself. But maybe she does? She took her first croissant and cut it in two. ‘And you were very quiet last night. Preoccupied, that’s the word.’ Geoff sipped his coffee, forcing it down, even though it was still too hot. ‘I don’t need to be pissed to have a good time.’ ‘You seemed on edge, that’s all.’ She hesitated, the pastry still in her hand. ‘You still do, to be honest.’ To be honest? The phrase echoed through his thoughts as Claire spread the thinnest layer of jam imaginable on her croissant. ‘My stomach was misbehaving, that’s all.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘There must be something going around,’ he added.

Claire ate her half-croissant in slow motion, as she always did, but which today Geoff found incredibly annoying. If she tried swallowing that slowly, she’d choke. ‘We haven’t been away for a while. Not since that party up near Norwich, when we stayed over. ?’ That was one hell of a weekend, he ed. It felt like years ago. ‘You certainly sunk more than two pints that night.’ ‘And not all of it stayed down.’ ‘Yuk! But it blew away some cobwebs,’ Claire said, stroking his hand. Cobwebs? ‘So where do you suggest?’ ‘How about Brighton? Might be quite cheap out of season.’ Was that another dig, perhaps? Suggesting he would rather save money than spend it having a good time? Well, they wouldn’t share too many laughs if the flat got repossessed. ‘Or why don’t you book me into one of those swanky health clubs? You know, to help calm my nerves, while you have a good time with your friends in the meantime.’ Not all the single young men in Brighton would be gay. Claire didn’t reply, as if his assertiveness – as he thought of it - had caught her off-guard. Men had to remind their women occasionally that as the hunter-gatherer their burdens were by far the heavier, he decided; and if the woman so much as hinted that he wasn’t up to the job, then the man inevitably took it badly. And why not? He was the one with the proper job; though the only hunting and gathering he did was via a computer screen. ‘Listen,’ he declared, pointing his teaspoon at her. ‘It’s not stress, babe.’

‘OK. I know. I’m not saying that.’ Wasn’t she? ‘I just think we need a break.’ From each other? Was that what she meant? ‘Just a change of scenery. A bit of excitement, some adventure.’ ‘Claire, really. I am not stressed. OK?’ he growled. ‘Then what is it?’ The only thing stressing him out right now was this interrogation. But he couldn’t help noticing that Claire was quite tense herself. Had something happened at work? But yes, of course: her unwanted irer. Stalking was said to be one of the most stressful experiences a woman could endure, especially in the workplace where there was so much more to lose than just your dignity. ‘Come on, what?’ Her eyes had an intense look, as if the problem really was with him. There were no secrets on his phone. ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’ Irked by her insistence, he needed her to change the subject now. Tomorrow was Monday, the working week stretching ahead like a long queue in a thunderstorm; his head ached already. ‘But it’s definitely not the menopause.’ ‘Men do get it too,’ she replied, frowning. ‘Bloody hell,’ he exploded. ‘I meant that as a joke!’ Claire looked flustered again, but maybe a little annoyed too? Well, tough titty! She was the one who should be answering his questions, but he was too proud to ask for the moment. She looked away, nonplussed. He noticed she’d stopped stroking his hand, too. ‘I’m not losing anything or suffering from anything, all right? There’s nothing happening that I can’t deal with, so stop nagging, thank you very much.’ But that just made him feel worse, because none of it was true.

‘Maybe if we have a walk, get some fresh air, it might help. Then we can talk about it again later. Maybe go online to look for a B & B?’ Or a nursing home, he thought bitterly. ‘I told you, I’m all right,’ he said, still a little too sharply. To his relief, Claire stood up and began collecting the breakfast plates, but she wasn’t giving up, not really. ‘Let me start on this lot and then we can get going.’ He snatched a ing sausage and started nibbling at it, as if it proved something. Claire came back for the cups and condiments, then faltered. ‘Actually, let’s finish this off when we come back,’ she said decisively, forcing a smile. Geoff felt his tension increasing. ‘Don’t you think it’s you that worries too much about your waistline?’ She hadn’t touched any more pastry. The smile dropped. ‘What do you mean?’ A cloud must have ed over the building, for the light in the flat seemed to darken. He stared at the contents of her plate, all of which had been nibbled partially, as if by a mouse. ‘What I mean is, why rush to start burning calories when you literally didn’t finish anything you started?’ And he hated coming home to a mess. After a long walk he just wanted to kick off his boots and watch the rugby highlights with a can of lager, not stick his hands into greasy suds. Claire looked at him for a second, as if trying to gauge his mood. ‘No. They said it might rain later, that’s all,’ she said, picking up the empty cafetière and a jam jar. ‘We’ve walked in the rain before. It’s supposed to be romantic.’ She didn’t reply and turned towards the kitchen. Was she going to clear up or not, for God’s sake? ‘So, come on. Explain it to me, please. What’s the bloody rush?’ He tasted

something sour in his mouth just as the words spilled out. ‘We have all day, Claire. It’s not as if there’s anything we have to rush back for.’ Geoff heard the teapot hit the worktop so hard he was surprised it didn’t shatter. What he was hinting at could have been any number of things, their diminishing sex life included, but they both knew instantly what he meant. A second later she put the jam jar in a cupboard and banged the door shut. She came back with a cloth to wipe the table with, staring down at her wet hands throughout. ‘No,’ she replied, her voice devoid of any emotion. ‘There’s just you, me and a spare room.’ Left alone again, Geoff could hardly deny his comment was spiteful and cruel, especially since medically it was he that had the problem. Apparently, his sperm count was so low that if it got any lower it would fall into the minus category. He’d suggested adoption to Claire, but to his surprise she had rejected the idea rather histrionically. Was she afraid she wouldn’t be able to love it? If she had truly accepted the impossibility of having children, then surely his comment would not have hit her so hard. In fact, if they’d got on with things back then they could have signed the adoption papers last year. But somewhere a wound was still open, and Geoff had just deliberately jabbed his elbow into it. Maybe you should stick to hunter-gathering, he conceded, feeling the unreachable itch of guilt. He picked up a clean spoon hiding behind a small vase and stared into the concave face of it, feeling small. Did adoption represent some form of defeat for Claire’s womanhood? But that was ridiculous; the problem was with him, after all. Geoff’s tension twisted in his guts. Had this younger suitor reminded her that the only thing stopping her from becoming a mother was a promise made in a registry office ten years ago? ‘Shit,’ he murmured. ‘What?’ ‘I said I’ll give you a hand,’ he called, gathering up the remaining cutlery. They scraped the plates into the food bin and dumped everything in a sink of soapy water to soak. Geoff decided not to say sorry. Sod her hang-ups. In fact, he

decided it would be a mistake to say anything at all and slipped into a sulk. In his head, however, the spat dragged on. Only women could have feelings about infertility, apparently. What a load of bollocks! He had always considered the concept of maternal instinct to be an unacknowledged form of sexism. All those clichés about men not knowing how to tie a nappy or release trapped wind were groundless. Mind you, if he’d been out at work all day it might be fairer if the mother took responsibility for domestic affairs. That wasn’t sexism, it was economics; his job paid better. Geoff threw his tee towel at the cooker and went to the loo, Claire to get a warmer hat from the wardrobe. When she came out five minutes later holding a dark fur hat, Geoff was sure she had been crying. She headed towards the front door without speaking. Now it’s you that needs the long walk. Ha! He followed her downstairs. Being in a flat, they couldn’t even have a pet. He understood Claire’s despondency, but in a way it was self-inflicted, and that made her silence petulant. It wasn’t as if he’d deliberately reduced his sperm count. No. It wasn’t him that should be feeling put out, anyway, he decided, as he watched Claire marching towards the pavement. She paused. The fur hat was still clutched in her left hand, but there was something in her right. She slipped it into her coat pocket and used both hands to pull the hat down over her ears. Before it disappeared, Geoff caught a glimpse of what it was: her mobile phone. Thinking back, he was sure she had something in her right hand when she came back with the hat. And how come that excursion had taken her so long anyway? She was fetching a hat not shopping for one. Geoff was sure now that Claire had been crying. Was that just because of his insensitive remark? Or had Claire received another clandestine text message and been upset by its contents? A bit of excitement, some adventure, she’d said earlier. Geoff didn’t need to check the phone to know that any such message would have been erased, just like the previous one. And if there was a log of the call it would, of course, be listed as ‘Maxine’.

Geoff’s hand made a fist in his jacket pocket. Claire had a secret, and she was working overtime to keep it hidden. That was why she was so tense, so restless, so moody. If his guilt was an itch, hers must be a rash. The big question he needed answering, though, was not why or with whom or for how long, but what was he going to do about it? He didn’t need to analyse the problem, just sort it out - and quickly. So, get on with it, man, he told himself, catching up with his wife. Before it’s too late.

Chapter Four

Geoff never thought he’d be glad to go to work on a Monday morning, but in truth it still didn’t distract him enough to stop thoughts of the shadowy ‘Max’ from seeping into his mind. At lunchtime he had to help a colleague celebrate their birthday down the King’s Head, which helped; a celebration he was only too ready to continue immediately after work. By the time he stepped back through his front door with two rosy cheeks, the tension had released its grip a little. Claire was already busy in the kitchen, her own tension still intact and working its way through a medley of vegetables with a kitchen knife. ‘You’re late,’ she observed. ‘I’m sorry, I should have sent you a text.’ And besides, I don’t have any homework tonight, Mum. ‘Traffic?’ ‘No, it’s Ted’s birthday. He’s fifty again, poor bastard.’ ‘Is he the one that got divorced on Halloween?’ ‘That’s our Ted,’ Geoff laughed. ‘Although he’s become a big hit with younger women lately, would you believe?’ He hadn’t. In fact, just before Christmas he’d tried to kill himself. Geoff stooped to kiss Claire’s cheek. She recoiled a little with a mock sniff. ‘Wow. It must have been some celebration!’ Geoff was determined to ignore these provocations. It was literally one drink. ‘You know what it’s like, babe. I can you rolling home late a few times after a night out with the girls.’ He didn’t mean it to sound critical but was quite satisfied that it did.

Claire resumed her aggravated vegetable slaughter while Geoff emptied the dishwasher. She didn’t mind cooking most of the time, so long as Geoff mucked in with the other stuff. Occasionally he would make a lasagne or ravioli, but generally they kept their pasta intake down as much as possible, for calorie control reasons; which was a shame, given how much Geoff loved preparing and eating Italian food. He was wondering what he could say next without reigniting the tension in the room when she beat him to it. ‘Making up for Saturday night, then?’ Now that had to be a dig. Because by Saturday night what she really meant was the fallout from Sunday breakfast and the route march they’d endured in near silence afterwards. ‘Not really. I had one pint. That’s all.’ Overlooking the other pint at lunchtime, of course. ‘During the week, though?’ ‘Like I said, it’s Ted’s birthday.’ ‘Couldn’t he have celebrated at the weekend instead?’ ‘He did, apparently. But how many times do you hit fifty?’ Quite a few in Ted’s case. ‘No one else minded,’ he added. ‘It’s all right for Ted, he’s divorced.’ Ted was still drinking where they’d left him at the King’s Head. Geoff decided to give him a bell later, just in case he drank himself into another suicide attempt. ittedly the last one had been farcical, but he was still a mate. Claire abandoned her vegetables and started making an elaborate salad instead. ‘What does it matter what your marital status is when you’re at work?’ ‘You weren’t at work, though, were you?’ She had him there and he knew it. ‘I had one drink and came home, all right?’

‘Did everyone from the office go?’ Was she offering him a way out? ‘Not everyone, no.’ But it was a trap, of course. ‘No,’ she pounced, ‘because other people have partners and…’ She swallowed back the end of the sentence, realizing too late that the trap she’d set was for herself. Children, Geoff thought. She was about to say children. And he suddenly felt guilty. ‘I think I can handle a few drinks midweek, Claire.’ ‘It’s not midweek, though, is it? It’s only Monday.’ ‘I’m not planning to carry on drinking all week, babe.’ Where was the bright and bubbly mood of Saturday afternoon now? ‘And even if I was, I’m a big boy,’ he added. She fiddled around in a drawer but couldn’t find what she was looking for. A pair of nutcrackers, presumably, Geoff decided. ‘That boss of yours will never give you a pay rise if you turn up wasted every day.’ ‘I’m hardly wasted, Claire!’ he laughed. ‘Not this time, maybe.’ Something that felt like a rubber band snapped in his head. ‘Fine! I’ll have an early night, then!’ What he meant was to sleep it off, to be fresh for work the next morning, if that was what worried Claire so much; but Claire seemed to think his reply might have a hidden meaning. She gave him a derisive sniff. ‘Not with me, you won’t,’ it seemed to say.

‘I’ve drunk during the week before, Claire. One of us should be able to let go now and again, don’t you think?’ Claire bit her lip, but not for long. ‘I just think it’s a bit irresponsible, that’s all.’ Geoff had no idea where the argument was going but felt powerless to follow it doggedly. ‘For God’s sake, what’s the worst that can happen?’ She started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. ‘There’s a lot of calories in alcohol, Geoff. People don’t realise.’ ‘What? Shall I skip dinner, then?’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she answered, the salad completed with croutons and pumpkin seeds. Well it’s a good job he didn’t want to celebrate in a restaurant, then, isn’t it? he thought. She was making her own dressing for the salad now. He wanted to ask her to add more honey but realised he didn’t have the nerve under the circumstances. When he heard her sigh, he tried to start over. ‘How was work?’ ‘Fine, Geoff.’ Jesus. ‘Busy?’ ‘No more than usual. Yours?’ ‘In between drinks, you mean?’ To his surprise the joke worked, and she graced him with a semi-smile. But it

quickly faded. She was mixing the dressing as if her life depended on it. ‘You wouldn’t joke if you lost that job. I don’t earn enough alone to keep us afloat.’ ‘I know, Claire. It’s true for a lot of people these days.’ Why did she suddenly think he might lose his job? ‘But listen, I’ve been there for years. I’m part of the furniture.’ But without a seat on the board. ‘You know what they say: first one in, last one out.’ ‘You can’t take anything for granted these days.’ This is ridiculous. ‘It’s a good job with an established firm, Claire.’ ‘What, feeding successful people’s money through the latest tax loophole?’ Successful people? ‘We don’t do anything illegal. And besides, it’s the big boys that do the real ducking and diving when it comes to tax avoidance. I’ve explained all that.’ ‘Don’t you get bored?’ Did that infer that she was bored? ‘It pays the bills, babe.’ ‘And that’s the extent of your ambitions in life?’ The alcohol in his bloodstream drew Geoff’s attention to the way Claire’s hips kept bumping against the edge of the kitchen unit, sending a tremor through her toned buttocks. Angry sex could be better than any other, he ed. Although any sort would have been welcomed right there on the kitchen floor, thank you very much. Sex was like food, sometimes: the longer you waited for it, the hungrier you got. ‘Cooking up something spicy?’

‘No,’ she said, sweeping her chopped veg into a colander pan at last, which she placed over another of boiling water. ‘I’m steaming tonight.’ You don’t say, thought Geoff. ‘So, how about you?’ he teased. ‘What exactly did you have to do today to earn money?’ She scowled briefly at him, then looked away. ‘I think as your husband I have a right to know,’ he added, trying spectacularly badly to resurrect an already lame joke. Claire’s shoulders relaxed an inch or so, in conjunction with another, deeper sigh. She never had been very good at prolonging a sulk. ‘Two beginners’ classes, back to back, would you believe?’ ‘Not good, then?’ ‘They come in with the right intentions, but to be honest most of them haven’t stretched in decades. It’s like trying to teach yoga to trees.’ Or bushes, Geoff thought, feeling the blood rushing towards his groin. He moved closer to her, smelling her sweat beneath the steam. ‘They must have been inspired when they saw you,’ Geoff whispered in her ear. ‘Oh, do give over, Geoff,’ she snapped. Geoff recoiled. Apathy was one thing, but rejection hurt. She quickly tried to paper over the outburst. ‘It’s amazing how many stick at it, though.’ Geoff wondered what had happened to spoil Claire’s mood. If he hadn’t known about the text message on Saturday he might have concluded it was all his fault for being so insensitive after Sunday breakfast, but this was about something else entirely. Had she been expecting a call that hadn’t come? Had she received a message with some disappointing news? He couldn’t help her if she insisted on keeping him in the dark.

In! he imagined Claire shouting as she bent over in spandex with her legs apart. And, out! ‘That’s Mondays for you,’ he huffed. ‘I don’t think tomorrow’s going to be any better, somehow.’ Geoff stared at her expressionless face, trying to read what lay behind it. ‘No?’ ‘Marie went off sick. If she’s not back tomorrow, I’ll have to do her sessions in the evening.’ The only stiffening he felt now was across his shoulders. ‘That’s a long day. Couldn’t you start later?’ ‘Then who would do my sessions?’ Shit, girl. You’re a fitness instructor not a vascular surgeon. Geoff felt his spirits being dragged back down, and with it resentment rising in the opposite direction. No leg over, tonight, then, he mused. Pity. Mondays used to be their night once upon a time; starting the week the way you finished it: fucked. ‘But the extra money will come in handy.’ ‘We’re doing OK financially,’ he put it, defensively. ‘Honestly, don’t worry.’ ‘Yes, but getting this place up to scratch won’t come cheap, Geoff.’ She looked out through the kitchen door to the living room as if the ceiling had recently collapsed. Everyone who visited the flat said they loved the look of the place. Since when had cosy gone out of fashion? And since Claire had the lion’s share of all the design choices, anyway, didn’t that mean she should be criticizing herself rather than her husband. ‘Send me a text when you know for sure,’ Geoff said. And don’t forget to let

Maxine know, too. ‘Sure,’ Claire replied. She was already miles away, in a world of paint brushes and full-length drapes, presumably. Geoff didn’t believe a word of her story; his own interpretation made a lot more sense. If Marie was off sick today, why hadn’t they asked Claire to stay on tonight? No, Claire was waiting to hear from someone other than Marie about tomorrow’s arrangements, and it didn’t look like she was too optimistic about the outcome. Geoff took a long, deep breath behind Claire’s back. With such a beautiful wife this was inevitable, he reminded himself. It was how he reacted that was important. He had to stay calm and level-headed, not respond to childish impulses based on fear and insecurity, he continued to counsel himself. So, if she goes through with this bullshit yarn tomorrow night, he decided, I’ll follow her. ‘Grate some cheese,’ Claire demanded, as she unscrewed the lid of a pasta sauce jar like she was wringing someone’s neck. ‘How fine do you want it?’ he asked, picking up the grater. ‘It’s parmesan, Geoff. I hardly want flakes.’ He considered putting her right on that but thought better of it. ‘Say when.’ He had a plan, at least, and that lifted Geoff’s spirits considerably. A real man was decisive, he reminded himself, imposing. Don’t take it like a man; dish it out like one. ‘Al dente?’ Claire asked, switching off the pasta. It wasn’t often Claire did anything with pasta. That was his forte, of course. Was the choice another deliberate provocation? ‘Isn’t he a jazz singer?’ he forced himself to jest. The last of the hot water dribbled down into the sink in silence. There was not even the ghost of a smile on Claire’s face this time, as she completed meal preparations with a series of bangs and clatters.

‘Al dente, I mean?’ Nothing. Geoff spoke reasonably good Italian, though not good enough to call himself fluent. Her angry attics around the kitchen reminded him of another cooking term: the spicy pasta sauce, arrabiatta. He’d cooked it once last year. Its main ingredient was hot chili pepper. Claire threw some of Geoff’s parmesan over her vegetable pasta like she was throwing breadcrumbs out for the birds and marched through into their deficient living room. The completed salad sat untouched in a white plastic bowl, the sumptuous dressing in a smaller vessel beside it. ‘We’ll skip the wine tonight, shall we?’ she muttered from the sofa. Arrabiatta. In Italian it translated simply as ‘angry’.

Chapter Five

The dreaded text from Claire arrived at just after two o’clock Tuesday afternoon. That in itself was suspicious. Surely Marie would have known that morning whether she was going to make it in or not? He’d never met her, but Geoff prayed she was suffering at home with a raging fever and a full bucket by the side of her bed, because that would mean his worst fears were groundless. He reread the message for a third time, and felt the urge to fill a bucket of his own: fend 4 yrself run me a bath about half 9 Sorry Xx ‘We can’t take this lying down,’ Whiting broke into Geoff’s thoughts. ‘What?’ ‘Now the recession’s over.’ Geoff slipped his phone away, uncomfortably aware that his colleague had probably been talking to him for a while. ‘The recession’s behind us,’ Whiting continued. ‘Right?’ ‘I’m sorry, Mark. You’ve lost me.’ ‘I think we should have another go at getting a rise, Geoff. Collectively, I mean.’ Whiting was young and ambitious, but in truth his ambitions far exceeded his abilities, in Geoff’s opinion. Furthermore, he suspected Whiting would struggle to convince his employers to even renew his current contract; so his scheming for a pay rise was a joke with his future as the punchline. Everyone knew it, but

no one had the heart to say it to his face – including management, it would seem. He was well liked, but people were getting tired of having to pull him up over the same old mistakes again and again. ‘They can only say no, I suppose,’ Geoff replied. Which any fool could see was exactly what they would say, of course. ‘Bit defeatist, aren’t you?’ Whiting frowned. ‘No. Defeatist would be telling you they will definitely say no.’ And he didn’t have the heart for that. Whiting looked taken aback. Maybe Geoff’s tone of voice had been a bit sharp. Or maybe Whiting’s optimism wasn’t looking for a reality check right then. ‘All I’m saying is we might have to wait a bit longer, Mark.’ ‘You mean, when there is a recession?’ Geoff found the younger man’s mockery mildly annoying. Another addition to the growing list of irritants in his life was not what he needed right now. ‘I mean we might have to pick our moment.’ And that moment isn’t right now, pal, he thought, as he turned back to his screen. The last thing he wanted was a row, because a row could very easily deteriorate into a scene. The mood he was in today, he could have argued over whether the lottery numbers were truly random. Everything seemed like a provocation, from the weather to the speed of his computer. He just needed to be left alone. ‘Is everything all right, Geoff?’ Yer, that’ll help. He didn’t consider Whiting a close friend; or a friend of any kind, to be honest. The age gap was too wide for that. But he was a decent bloke, even if it often took half the office to sort out his cockups; one of which was overdue, he realised. Geoff felt frustration stirring restlessly in his guts. But it wasn’t as if Whiting was fucking his wife. He wished that Whiting’s phone would ring, or someone would call him over to their desk; but instead he felt the younger man waiting good-naturedly for an answer. The pubs would be open. If only it was

someone else’s birthday today. A drink might have helped. He forced himself to smile. ‘I don’t know about a pay rise,’ he sighed, changing the subject, ‘but I could do with a holiday.’ A week at a beer festival, for instance. ‘Back to Rome?’ Italy: now there was a subject close to his heart. ‘No, actually. I haven’t seen Florence yet.’ ‘Is that the new girl in Human Resources?’ Geoff started to reply, but the smirk on Whiting’s face made him realise it was a wind up. Relax, Geoff reassured himself. He’s harmless. ‘She looks about as Italian as Beyoncé.’ ‘Oh dear, casual racism in the workplace, Geoff! Steady on, now.’ Geoff frowned. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Relax! ‘Anyway, someone told me she drinks from the furry cup,’ Geoff clarified. ‘If that doesn’t make me sound homophobic, to boot.’ Whiting laughed. ‘Italian cities: very romantic, Geoff mate,’ he continued. Suddenly, Geoff had a vision of himself lurking in an alleyway off a Florentine street, a stiletto blade clutched in his hand. It was close to midnight. Footsteps approached, and two long shadows bobbed into view across the medieval cobblestones. They were laughing and chatting blithely together, as if both were still single. With a cry of ‘Bastardo!’ Geoff emerged from his hiding place with

the fleetness of a tarantula. Claire screamed as Geoff’s slight blade sunk into the heart of the man she was holding hands with. ‘Vendetta, Maximilian!’ Geoff cackled wildly, as his nemesis slipped to his knees in a pool of his own blood. ‘Vendetta, bastardo!’ ‘Geoff?’ Whiting said loudly. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ ‘No… Yes.’ He blinked several times, feeling woozy. ‘I mean, yes.’ Whiting looked him over, incredulous. ‘You don’t look too good, to be honest.’ Why can’t you mind your own business, you interfering little shit, Geoff came close to yelling. ‘Just need the loo, that’s all.’ It was as good an excuse as any other. He was halfway there before the last word had left his mouth. Alone in the sanctuary of the Gents, Geoff splashed cold water over his face half a dozen times, breathing deeply. He looked at his watch. Three hours to go, and then what? He couldn’t just linger outside Claire’s workplace all evening on the off chance that he’d spot her sloping off somewhere. If she or one of her colleagues spotted him he might feel awkward explaining his presence. No, what he needed was a pretext to speak with her. That way he could establish if she was there at all without his behaviour seeming untoward. He dried his face on a paper towel, but when he opened the waste bin to toss it in his vision snagged on an empty crisp packet. Of course: food. He’d drop by at the gym with a sandwich for Claire. If she was working such a long day he thought she could do with the energy, he would say. Thus, he could make a romantic gesture and check out his suspicions without appearing suspicious himself. Genius. When Geoff sat back at his desk, Whiting still seemed concerned. ‘You still don’t look a hundred percent. That gastric flu is still knocking about, you know.’ ‘Between you and me,’ Geoff leaned closer to his young colleague and whispered, ‘I think I had a bit too much to drink yesterday.’

‘Oh,’ Whiting said, then smiled. ‘You and everyone else,’ he whispered. ‘Have you seen the state of some people in here?’ Geoff raised his head and surveyed a scene of chins resting in hands, bloodshot eyes and slumped postures. He hadn’t noticed till now. Ted hadn’t made it in at all. Either he had a hangover from hell or he’d finally managed to top himself. Guiltily, Geoff ed his pledge to phone the birthday boy last night. ‘Bloody hell. We all look fifty now.’ ‘Just don’t start chucking up,’ Whiting whispered again, his grin failing. ‘The cleaners don’t come till six.’ ‘No, no. Don’t worry. It wasn’t that, honestly.’ ‘Good,’ said Whiting, letting out a melodramatic sigh. Geoff was about to change the subject, but Whiting hadn’t finished. ‘I get enough of that at home.’ For the first time that day, Whiting had Geoff’s full attention. ‘If you know what I mean,’ he winked. Maybe Geoff didn’t consider Whiting a friend as such, but it seemed the younger man was about to open up to him about something serious. Whiting’s parents lived in Cheshire, and Geoff got the impression they weren’t emotionally close either. Did he see Geoff as some sort of substitute father figure, perhaps? Mark Whiting was barely twenty, on a starting salary, and now this. No wonder he was so keen on a pay rise. Poor sod would need it. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes,’ Whiting replied, and for a terrible moment Geoff felt certain the boy was going to burst into tears and throw himself into Geoff’s lap. What am I going to do, Dad? ‘She’s three months gone.’ Geoff couldn’t believe it was planned, the silly fools; but he didn’t want to use

the word ‘accident’ either. These things happened all the time; mishaps rather than disasters, was the way he intended to paint it. ‘You’re renting, right?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How long’s the agreement for?’ ‘Twelve months.’ ‘And is it big enough for three?’ ‘It’ll have to be,’ Whiting replied, a little desperately. ‘It’s that place near the river bridge, right?’ Geoff ed going to a small party there last summer. The girl was sweet, he recalled, but they’d only invited a handful of guests because the place was that small. ‘She’ll get maternity pay,’ Whiting said, almost as if he were attempting to make himself feel better. By the look on his face, it hadn’t worked. ‘And don’t forget paternity leave.’ But that wasn’t on full pay, Geoff ed. Whiting took a deep breath. ‘To be honest, Geoff, I think we’ll struggle.’ ‘Oh, Mark,’ he began, and realised he was on the verge of saying how sorry he was. Think mishap, not disaster, he cursed himself. He cleared his throat, starting again. ‘You’ll be OK. Having your first child is always a struggle.’ Whiting stared back at him and Geoff knew exactly what he was thinking: how would you know? It was a fair question, but Geoff still felt a little resentful. He was only trying to help, after all. The kid obviously saw something in Geoff other than parental experience that made him want to confide in him, then. Or maybe it was just because nobody else was interested. ‘Seriously, Mark, some people have dozens of the little buggers while they’re on benefits, and they survive.’ He surprised himself by giving Whiting’s elbow a reassuring squeeze. Immersing himself in the other man’s woes was taking his

mind off his own. Meanwhile, the kid looked sick with worry. ‘Have you told your parents yet; either of you?’ ‘She’s told hers.’ ‘And?’ ‘They’re over the moon.’ ‘So?’ Geoff asked, raising his eyebrows. Whiting gave him a tiny smile and let his shoulders drop a few inches. ‘They’ve offered to put us up at their place, nearer the time.’ And that makes you feel a failure, Geoff thought, his own worries suddenly resurfacing. I know all about that, pal. ‘At least you’ve got options, Mark.’ So, what are mine? Mark’s unspoken question, ‘How would you know?’ kept spiralling around his head, like a wasp round an ice cream; but he couldn’t work out why. He thought about Claire’s changeable mood, its vacillations and extremes. She was touchy. She was weepy. She was unpredictable. He thought about the tester pots and the endless browsing through home and garden magazines, her preoccupation with the tiny spare room. He thought about Claire’s recent disinterest in sex, and finally he ed the wounded over-reaction to his snide remark over Sunday brunch. Not to mention the sulk that followed. Touchy, weepy, unpredictable: equals? He ed how it wasn’t just him that struggled with the full English that morning. No! ‘I want him or her to be proud of me, right from the word go, that’s all.’ Even the most experienced consultants got it wrong sometimes. He had a low sperm count, but it only took one of the little buggers.

‘Do you know what I mean?’ Geoff gazed at his own ghostly image in the computer’s standby screen. ‘Geoff?’ You idiot, he told himself. How could you have been so blind? ‘Egotism,’ Geoff shook his head. ‘What?’ A new sensation – excitement? – was fizzing away in the pit of his stomach like a giant Alka-Seltzer. He looked at Whiting, ing him for the first time in over a minute, and saw the frown etched across his young brow. ‘There’s nothing wrong with putting yourself first, I mean,’ he gabbled desperately. ‘You’re going to be a father, after all.’ Whiting straightened in his chair. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That’s right. I am.’ ‘You’re bound to be nervous. It’s as natural as the thing you’re nervous about.’ ‘You’re right,’ Whiting nodded slowly. Geoff nodded back as warmly as he could, then pretended to concentrate on his work again. You’re going to be a father, after all, he’d said. ‘Thanks, Geoff.’ Oh, Claire, his ghostly reflection mouthed.

Chapter Six

Geoff didn’t recognise the girl at reception. Staff turnover at the gym was high, so it was generally hard for him to get to know anyone from Claire’s workplace. This one looked like a school-leaver making her debut in the competitive world of work, and desperate to avoid scoring a spectacular own goal. Or maybe he was being too harsh, and everyone looked as if they were about to drop something valuable at that age. ‘Hi. Is Claire Madely free?’ For a second the girl could only stare at him, as she decided what would be her least disastrous response. Geoff got the impression she was either about to ask him for ID or run away. Was he any more confident in his late teens? Probably not, though he had always found a way to hide his insecurities. Show people the face they wanted to see and they’d always accept you, he’d learned early. Fill in the blanks later? He was still working on that. ‘I’m her husband. Geoff.’ He tried to keep his tone of voice neutral, his body language undisturbed; but he needed to see Claire urgently, and this drippy girl’s reticence was an unnecessary delay. If he was about to become a father, it would be a huge transformation in both their lives. Whiting wouldn’t be the only one struggling next Christmas. Why the hell hadn’t she told him? And, more importantly, how long had she known? Maybe she was waiting to see a specialist to make sure everything was fine before she broke the good news to him? Given the status of his sperm count, he could understand why she would want to be one hundred percent certain. But that didn’t change the fact that they were still his sperm; especially the one that worked. He gave the girl a disarming smile (I’m her husband) and tried to stop thinking about reproduction. Behind the genial mask his heart was racing, but he couldn’t decide whether it was fear or exhilaration that was stamping down on the cardiac accelerator. Behind reception he could hear the squeal of rubber soles on sports hall flooring,

the intermittent pounding of a football. There might be other dads watching from the balcony. He imagined watching with them, so he could get a feel for the role, and frowned at his own presumptuousness. You haven’t cut the cord yet, mate. Hell, he didn’t know if there even was a cord. ‘I’ve got something for her,’ he added, waving his sandwich pack before the girl’s eyes, as if that might extract her from her trance. Encouragingly, she blinked and swallowed; articulate words must surely follow. ‘I’m not sure where she is,’ the girl stammered. ‘Let me check.’ Do you know where you are, love? he wondered, smiling. She stabbed at the telephone keypad four times, seemingly at random, and asked whoever was on the other end where Claire was. It was twenty minutes to six, so chances were she would be in the middle of one of Marie’s classes somewhere. If she was telling the truth. ‘Sorry, she’s not here,’ the girl announced. ‘She went home at five.’ Now it was Geoff’s turn to stare in silence. His mind desperately tried to manufacture excuses for Claire: Marie had miraculously turned up anyway; or someone else had stepped in to cover; or a class had been cancelled, due to a low turnout. But it was no good. He was bullshitting himself as much as Claire had been with this concocted overtime yarn. Unless, of course, she was at the surgery right now, being probed, or whatever it was a GP did to pregnant women. Of course! That had to be it. While he was here feeling sorry for himself, she was lying on a white sheet somewhere, being explored by a quack. What kind of husband am I, for God’s sake? ‘Oh, right.' The girl beamed back. At least one of them had been put out of their misery. ‘Thanks.’ So why didn’t she invite you to the surgery with her? he asked himself, heading for the exit. Wouldn’t she already be sure if she’d used a couple of testing kits in the female staff changing room? And if she wasn’t pregnant after all, wouldn’t she want her husband to be by her side to her in her desolation? His

hopes were floundering beneath a relentless avalanche of doubts. He thought he had uncovered the truth, but this still didn’t add up. Claire was keeping him at arm’s length, not over an imagined lover, but his own child, for God’s sake! Maybe ‘Maxine’ was the name of the midwife? Then it hit him, sharply, just beneath his ribcage, like a stiletto knife on a dark Florentine side street. His breath froze in his lungs, and he sat down hard on a low wall. There was another explanation, one that could accommodate both the secret child and the clandestine lover. He dropped the sandwiches in the first bin he ed. Taking out his phone with a shaking hand, he pondered his next move. What he wanted to do was let her know that he was wise to her lies, to make her feel guilty and uneasy. But then again, why should he? Shit, this was a betrayal within a betrayal. Geoff shouldn’t have to catch his wife out like this, slinking about in the shadows like some junkie. It was her responsibility to come clean, throw herself on his mercy. But the fact that she hadn’t done so meant that she still harboured fantasies of a Plan A. Which means Plan B is sticking around with me? He would have to force her hand, show her that he knew she wasn’t at work, that she had lied about Marie, that he knew about that and so much more. Sticking it out with the old man. Geoff saw himself bursting into the office of a wealthy private physician. Claire and Max turned in their plush seats to face him, lower jaws dropped. Then Geoff saw the pronounced bump in Claire’s abdomen, saw the lover’s hand resting upon it, and pointed a finger instead of a knife: ‘Bastardo, mon ami!’ That would put the pie around the chicken, all right. He walked on, picking up his stride with purpose. Sorry, she’s not here. His fingers were already stabbing out their home number. She went home at five. The flat would be anything but cosy tonight. Shit, no! Geoff stopped abruptly in the middle of the pavement, someone crashed into his back, cursing under his breath.

Whatever was going on it was complicated and could never be resolved by such a ham-fisted showdown, surely. If she played dumb, what then? Beat it out of her? How could he hit a pregnant woman? And not just any woman, but his wife, Claire. No, to tackle her duplicity effectively he needed firm evidence; give her nowhere to run but straight back into his arms. The baby might still be his. He mustn’t forget that. There was inevitably more at stake here than he realised, not less. He needed to think this through carefully. Geoff grabbed a railing, breathing hard, suddenly feeling lightheaded again. There was still part of him that hoped he would get home and find Claire ill in bed. How ironic would that be? If only he had asked the receptionist if Marie was available to speak to instead; but on what pretext? He could hardly claim to be married to her as well. I’m not well, he moaned to himself. Getting the right side of his front door would be the first step in his salvation, he was sure. He would be alone with his wife inside, whilst the rest of the world locked out. No, he corrected himself, Max would be locked out. It was starting to rain when he got back into his car, which he had parked discretely around the corner. Leaving the windows down for the fresh air, he jumped the red light at the end of the road. The spray on his face made him feel a little calmer, but not much. He would be home in ten minutes, fifteen tops. Homeward bound traffic had thinned considerably, but he kept glancing up in his rear-view mirror, concerned that someone might be following him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he muttered. Back outside the flat, however, he switched off the ignition and sat motionless behind the wheel, staring through the darkness. From beneath the bonnet the engine began to tick as it cooled. He tried to visualize his metabolism cooling off in much the same way, but his heart wouldn’t cooperate. Looking out from the driver’s side he could see the living room, bedroom and bathroom windows. The flat was in darkness. She wasn’t at home. What foolish notion was it that he imagined she would be? And once he was inside, of course, the rest of the world could do as it pleased, with him safely secluded in his ivory tower. Something tightened around his throat, as if an assailant had been hiding in the back seat the whole time and was now meticulously throttling him. Wake up, you fool!

She had lied to him about doing overtime, about covering for a sick colleague. She had lied to her work about going home. Lying was becoming a habit for her, it seemed; like lying about who the father of her child was. A second later he was lost in fantasy. It was late at night, nearly midnight. A gale slapped fattened raindrops against the windowpanes. Somewhere in the distance sirens echoed through the night. Most of the town was without power. He sauntered through the flat with a look of cold contempt on his face, the light from a dozen candles casting haggard shadows across his features. Claire, all wringing hands and restless feet, turned and ran towards him, sobbing ‘Thank God! Thank God!’ But he pushed her away, and staring down into her watering eyes, replied: ‘I know, Claire. I know about Max, the baby, everything!’ And even before Claire had a chance to concoct a denial, Geoff’s hands were around her throat, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. ‘Everything, damn you! Everything!’ With a jolt, Geoff found himself back in the obscurity of his parked car, the leather of the steering wheel squeaking beneath his clenching hands. Squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. The back of his neck was damp with sweat, and his heart was thumping. In all their time together he couldn’t recall raising his voice to Claire, let alone his hand. Perhaps it wasn’t the end of the world that she wasn’t there, after all. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said aloud, pulling his hands away from the wheel. A gust of wind rattled the car door. He looked outside again, up at the place he had considered home for over a decade. What would it become now, after all this? Just bricks, tiles and glass. He thought back to his most recent, most disturbing fantasy, and ed the very real thrill at feeling his fingers sink into Claire’s neck. A deluge of shame took his breath away again: he knew if he really believed he could hurt Claire, he would start the car and keep driving until it ran out of petrol. ‘So what the hell do I do now?’ he begged the ticking engine. The darkened windows of the flat gave him stark advice: Stay cool, act naturally. Get upstairs quickly. Find a light switch and press it. Be a good boy. Run her a bath, tidy the kitchen. Sit in front of the television with a cuppa. When you see her again, smile, ask her how her day was.

Even if when he asked, ‘how was your day?’ what he would really be asking was, ‘how do you want me to think your day was?’ And thus quietly, efficiently and shrewdly, he would begin the process of winning her back.

Chapter Seven

Geoff heard the key grinding in the front door lock at just after half-past nine. He had the television on and a mug of tea in his hand, the ever faithful, dutiful, ignorant husband. Having shut out the filthy night with a kick at the front door, Geoff had tidied up the wreckage from breakfast, microwaved himself a ready meal and thrown some salad leaves at it. At nine-fifteen he ran the bath, as instructed. Everything had to seem as normal as possible. Maybe the guilt of seeing him sitting there waiting patiently for her return, with the flat all spick and span, would provoke a spontaneous confession; but he didn’t really believe that was probable. This nut wasn’t going to crack just at the sight of a hammer. ‘Hi,’ she said brightly, from the hallway. ‘Mind if I jump straight into that bath? I’m whacked.’ She didn’t even bother entering the living room. Was that to avoid looking at him? He heard the sound of running water grow louder as she pushed open the bathroom door. How many times had he seen her naked in the past week? he wondered. Not that he’d taken the initiative in that department. It was clear to him that she didn’t want him laying a finger on her, and he certainly wasn’t going to present her with the opportunity to humiliate him further with a polite ‘not tonight, darling’. ‘Claire?’ he called. ‘What?’ But still she wouldn’t come through. ‘It must have been hard going tonight, then.’ He waited calmly for a response. His upper and lower jaws pushed against one another, as if there suddenly wasn’t enough room in his mouth for all his teeth. He didn’t deserve this. He had always been decent to her, loving, caring, devoted. This was her opportunity to confess. He wouldn’t give her another one. ‘The overtime, I mean.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t too bad,’ Claire replied with a sigh. ‘You don’t want to let yourself get run down,’ Geoff said, twisting his neck to try and see her face. ‘Pick up what Marie’s had, for instance.’ ‘They let me have an extra break.’ Claire was fiddling with something inside the bathroom. ‘I could do with a nice drink, though, if you’re making?’ ‘Sure,’ he replied, getting up. Should he go to the bathroom and make her look at him? Or would that seem unnatural? ‘So, what did you have to do?’ If he stood there watching, would she start undressing or wait for him go on through to the kitchen? ‘You know, the usual desperate post-Christmas intentions: fingers and thumbs; mums with bums, dads with tums.’ And then the bathroom door slammed shut before he could ask her anything else. ‘I’ll make you that drink,’ he shouted, but instead of going to the kitchen he picked up the remote control and lowered the volume on the television a little. She’d be putting her toe in the water any time now. ‘Ouch!’ he heard her cry. The sound of running water stopped momentarily, then resumed. He returned his attention to the television, allowing himself a smirk. She could wait for her bloody drink. ‘Yes, I forgot to mention you might need a bit more cold water in there first,’ he muttered. A few minutes later he heard her close the tap and drop herself into the water with a groan. He crept through to the hall beneath the cover of a cookery programme and stuck his hand inside her bag. Darting into the bedroom, he quickly unlocked her phone, and stopped. If she really wanted to keep secrets, why didn’t she just change the PIN code? Doubts piled up in his mind again, but only for a second. Changing her PIN would have made Geoff instantly suspicious. She was pretending everything was normal, too. Hence, the same old code. And besides, what could she say when he asked her for the new one? ‘I can’t ’? Under the circumstances, erasing messages was the best Claire could do without drawing attention to her ‘new friend’. It was what he would

have done, he realised. Geoff continued to stare at the phone, as if he expected it to give him a message. There was something still buzzing around the periphery of his consciousness; something crucial that stubbornly refused to reveal itself. ‘Come on. Come on,’ he murmured, his eyes squeezed shut as if that might help unlock his brain. ‘Tell me.’ But it was useless. He heard splashing coming from the bathroom and quickly checked through her recent messages. No sign of ‘Maxine’, of course. The only two messages that interested him were from work and her mother. The message from work was not from the new girl at reception, he was relieved to see, informing Claire that someone claiming to be her husband had tried to deliver a sandwich; just a reminder about booking some first aid training by March. Would that drippy trainee mention his visit to Claire when she returned to work tomorrow? ‘Oh, by the way, Claire, your husband caught you out the other night.’ Based on her constant state of agitation, there had probably been countless other mini dramas in her life to preoccupy her (booking a table tennis game in a squash court, for instance). But even if she did , so what? Claire could hardly mention it to him without shattering her own alibi. She would most likely play dumb and bite her nails in secret. Good. For why should he be the only one to live in torment? Who was the victim here? He cross-checked the call log. There were about six missed calls from her mother, Sheila. But hidden amongst those, the name Maxine appeared on the log list at 18.06. There was no voice mail recording, or at least none that remained in the phone’s memory; so he could only guess at what might have been said by both parties. The fact that there had been any at all when she was supposed to be working wasn’t good, to say the least. Geoff stared at the name and tried to imagine what this ‘Max’ might look like. Ten years younger, at least; tall, athletic, confident, exciting. Maybe someone who wanted to travel for a year, and then settle down to have kids? Claire had travelled a lot in her early twenties, but still talked of exotic places she wanted to visit. A man who shared those same ambitions would seem very attractive to Claire, especially when Geoff’s priority on arrival was to track down the local five-star restaurants. He always let himself go, eating- and drinking-wise on holiday; mainly because of the calorie restrictions they endured for the rest of the year. Maybe his rival liked diving and waterskiing, a creature of dynamic appetites whose libidinal stamina sent him charging past midnight into the early

hours without breaking sweat. And on top of that, of course, he probably doesn’t fire blanks. Whoever she had been with tonight, it wasn’t a bloody doctor. Unless the drippy girl had got that wrong, and Claire had left just in time to grab the last appointment before the surgery closed. But that was him clutching at straws again, and he knew it. Geoff went back to the messages and opened his mother-in-law’s. Did she like him? Really? Or even approve of him, for that matter? Sheila’s interactions with him seldom extended beyond being civil and polite. She had never really opened up to him as a surrogate mother or even a friend, so he couldn’t claim to have a relationship with her properly. Perhaps she just expected grandchildren, and her detachment reflected her stoicism. One message from Sheila certainly caught his eye: call me back you need to think this thru must talk please mum Think what through? Keeping the baby? (So, she knows?) Leaving her husband? Or both? How long had this affair being going on for that Claire could even begin to contemplate packing her suitcases? Geoff felt like an idiot to only have recently gotten wind of this bad smell wafting through his marriage. At least Sheila seemed to be backing his corner for the moment. He heard Claire’s body splashing through the bath water as she stood up to get out. No long soak tonight, then. She probably needed an early night. The plug was pulled, and a gushing sound followed. Before he slipped the phone back into her handbag, however, Geoff looked again at the call log to make sure his eyes had not deceived him. Next to the name Maxine there was a small red arrow pointing to a handset

symbol and the number and time of the call. He tapped the screen again and noted that their conversation had lasted nearly twenty minutes. Had they gone on to meet somewhere afterwards? A country pub, perhaps, or straight to a hotel? Was that why Claire had been so desperate to get into the bath? ‘Oh, shit! No!’ Well how else do you suppose she got pregnant? Geoff moved through into the hallway and placed Claire’s phone back into her handbag, but not before he’d scribbled down Maxine’s number. This option had been there waiting for him to grasp since Saturday night, but the boldness of it had initially discouraged him. Recent events had helped make up his mind, however. The stakes were now far higher. From now on he needed to act, not react. Geoff resumed his seat in front of the television, the scrap piece of paper stuffed into his pocket, and picked his mug back up, staring down into the lukewarm tea. ‘I’ve got your number, Max,’ Geoff whispered, as the bathroom door opened. ‘Did you say something?’ asked Claire, as she walked through to the bedroom, swathed in towels. ‘Sorry, I forgot your drink,’ Geoff smiled. ‘I’ll bring it to you in bed.’ She didn’t reply. As Geoff headed for the kitchen, he gave his tro pocket a friendly pat with the palm of his hand. ‘I think it’s time you and I were introduced. Maxine.’

Chapter Eight

‘Use it or lose it, Geoff,’ she told him over breakfast the following morning. Geoff let the triangle of toast wave in front of his lips. ‘I do.’ Apparently, the gym’s policy of issuing bargain hip cards to wives and husbands was under review. ‘When?’ The question hung in the air like laughter at a funeral. It was the way Claire asked rather than the question itself that irked him. Without thinking, he smoothed his midriff, only to find it wasn’t as smooth as he’d assumed. Use it and lose her, was what she meant. Did Max have a six pack? Undoubtedly. He was probably hung like a horse, too, but there wasn’t much Geoff could do about that in a public gym. True, his exercise regime had been on the slide all winter, what with one virus after another laying him low. And the turn of the year had not given him much motivation, either, what with all the wind, rain and shortened days. It was nearly a week since he had done anything except walking. At least he didn’t have an appetite. Claire stared at him, waiting for his excuse. ‘I’m going tonight,’ Geoff said. ‘Getting back into it properly, actually.’ He took a defiant bite out of his toast and discarded the rest onto a side plate. ‘Thing is, if partners don’t make use of the scheme, management will use it as an excuse to scrap it.’ Geoff was astonished at how patronising Claire sounded. If they had a child, this was exactly how she would have onished it. Geoff’s mood darkened further. He turned away to refill his mug, unwilling to let Claire see how much she had

gotten under his skin. ‘We haven’t got much planned for the weekend, either, so I thought I’d put in a couple of hours Saturday and Sunday, too.’ That’s telling her, he thought, as he left the kitchen; though the prospect of so much physical exertion after a full week’s work made him feel even more disheartened. ‘I’m just fore-warning you, that’s all,’ she called after him, as he disappeared into the bathroom. But fore-warning him of what exactly: that he was about to be part-exchanged for a younger, racier model if he didn’t get his act together? She’d been in a bloody mood from the moment she’d woken up. Had her mother finally caught up with her and given her a piece of her mind? ‘How would you keep in shape without that gym?’ she persisted. ‘Especially with the weather the way it is. Have you even been jogging since Christmas?’ Maybe Max ran marathons? He’s certainly running rings around you, mate. Listing Max’s number on his phone under the name of ‘Maxine’ on his way into work had lifted the corners of Geoff’s mouth into a smile instantly. Even if Claire spied on his calls, too, she could hardly ask, ‘How do you know Maxine?’ That would make for a very uncomfortable conversation. ‘Oh, but darling,’ he would tell her. ‘This is a different Maxine.’ Back in the office, he focused again on the Murphy , laid out before him in all its glory. He had started this last Thursday, and it was Wednesday already. Murphy was a builder whose idea of bookkeeping was to dump his receipts into a large cardboard box that he kept under his desk. This he would drop off at reception each spring for Geoff to sort out. It was a big box. ‘When you can do what I do, Geoff,’ Murphy liked to joke, ‘I’ll start doing what you do.’ ‘Dickhead,’ Geoff said aloud. ‘You can barely add up.’ Whiting looked his way, but Geoff pretended not to have noticed.

When the moment came, what would he say to Max? That was what he needed to consider. Should he just threaten him with violence, leaving no room for misinterpretation? Or perhaps a subtler approach was needed, the equivalent of the Mafia leaving a horse’s head in a rival’s bed? But on second thoughts, that didn’t sound particularly subtle. Also, if they planned to elope, might an incursion by Geoff force the young buck’s hand? The husband might assert himself in the role of the Alpha Male, only to find his marital love nest downgraded to a bachelor pad overnight. Even a casual remark from the trainee receptionist at the gym might still provoke the same reaction from Claire, once she knew her cover was blown. An appalling image slipped into his mind like an unwelcome hand on a crowded train. Max, the tall, dark stranger, was standing behind a distraught Claire. As she told him that for the sake of her marriage their affair had to end, Max slipped his arms around her waist from behind and began kissing her neck. Claire stopped talking, closed her eyes and let out a low moan. Her right hand reached back behind her and buried itself in his shock of dark hair, just as his hand began travelling up towards the swell of her breast. A vibration scampered through his groin from the mobile in his pocket. Management frowned on employees taking personal calls at work, unless it was an emergency. Well, if this didn’t qualify as an emergency, he didn’t know what did. Knowing it would be impossible to concentrate on work carrying a missed call, he headed off towards the Gents. Much to his surprise, when he looked at the caller’s name, it was his mother-inlaw. ‘Sheila. Hi.’ He always tried hard to earn her approval, even if expecting her to like him was overambitious; but nothing had loosened the well-mannered reserve yet. ‘This is a surprise.’ ‘Hello, Geoff. I know I shouldn’t call you at work.’ So why are you? ‘That’s OK. I know I shouldn’t answer,’ he laughed. As usual, he was trying too hard. ‘Because I’m at work,’ he added quickly. ‘Well, if you’re sure you can talk.’

Geoff’s grip on the phone tightened. ‘It’s my break.’ All he needed now was for his manager, Neil Hopkins to breeze in and see him taking a personal call. ‘Is everything all right, Sheila?’ ‘Not really, Geoff. But I can’t talk about it over the phone.’ ‘Sounds serious.’ Why now? he wondered. ‘It is, rather.’ Because Claire is avoiding you, and there isn’t anyone else to call. ‘I wondered if maybe you could call round to the house some time for a chat?’ Pop around. Pop in. Have a drink. Have a chat. All the things that normally she wouldn’t say except under torture. She was putting it on because she wanted something from him. And, of course, once that need was satisfied, she would revert to the distant mother-in-law that he only felt increasing resentment for. ‘It depends when Claire’s free,’ he teased. There was a moment’s pause. ‘No. You don’t understand me. I want to speak to you alone, Geoff. Just the two of us.’ This had to have something to do with her pleading text message to Claire and the succession of missed calls. It was too much of a coincidence, otherwise. He was relieved to think he wasn’t the only one being led a dance by Claire and felt an urge to unburden himself into the mouthpiece. No, he decided, on second thoughts, make her stew. ‘I’m pretty tied up during the week, to be honest. How about the weekend?’ ‘Well, if that’s the earliest you can do,’ she replied, a little tersely.

‘Oh, no.’ Geoff suddenly ed his commitment to reacquaint himself with the gym. He would make her sweat, too. ‘Actually, I promised Claire I’d do something for her this weekend.’ Geoff could feel the frustration rising across the airways; and realised happily that his own was heading in the opposite direction. ‘Well, how about early next week?’ By then everything might have blown over, of course; but just in case: ‘I could pop over during my lunch hour next Monday.’ ‘Next Monday,’ she huffed. ‘OK. If that’s as soon as you can do it. Next Monday it is.’ That would teach her to buy him the same socks each Christmas. ‘Shall I cook you something?’ Bloody hell, Geoff thought, you are desperate. ‘I wouldn’t mind a salad.’ Claire would be proud. ‘No dressing.’ ‘I’m sure I can manage that. What time, Geoff?’ ‘I’ll be over about twelve-fifteen.’ Another sigh, as if she secretly hoped he still might change his mind about the weekend. Do you even how I take my tea? Geoff thought, shaking his head. Sheila thanked him and said goodbye. Geoff returned to the onerous Murphy , but on his way out of the Gents a shockingly brilliant idea leapt fully realised into his mind. A grin spread itself across Geoff’s face that Whiting, edgy and distracted himself, couldn’t help but notice. ‘You got some hash hidden away in there?’ ‘Better than that,’ Geoff chuckled.

Whiting just stared at him uncertainly; then looked back down at his desk. Geoff had steadfastly denied him any opportunity to talk about his impending fatherhood again. At least you know you are the father, pal; you should be counting your blessings. He scrolled up and down through a few spreadsheet pages, in case Hopkins was on the prowl. If Claire had been really clever she should have bought herself a cheap phone and used that to communicate with ‘il bastardo’. That way he might well still be living in blissful ignorance that very moment. But she hadn’t. Because she trusts you, a voice called from the back of his mind. Well it was a good thing he hadn’t trusted her, was the only response to that thought. That wasn’t the important point, though; what mattered was the fact that he could still use a second phone himself to outmanoeuvre his adversary. ‘How’s it going with Murphy?’ Whiting broke into his thoughts. ‘Looks like a nightmare.’ Yes, because people like you keep interrupting me, he thought. Why couldn’t Whiting concentrate on his own work? No wonder he was struggling. ‘You know Murphy,’ he replied, without looking up from his screen. Whiting took the hint and went quiet again; but Geoff knew he wouldn’t give up. Meanwhile, back to the plan. He would make his initial with Max via text message from a new pay-as-you-go he would buy during his lunch break. So long as Claire didn’t try ing Max before Geoff could do something about her phone this evening, the plan was workable. The spreadsheet danced and blurred before his eyes, but Geoff didn’t care. Murphy and Hopkins could wait. To hell with them! He was planning ahead, practicing the words he would spell out on the miniature keypad: a brief, simple message guaranteed to have big repercussions. Oh, yes! He would beat them at their own game. Once Geoff had neutralized Claire’s phone, the way would be open for him to start hitting back. He tried to sort out another wad from the box under his desk, but all he could think about was that first text message to his rival. ‘This might even be fun,’ he muttered, stapling some petrol receipts together.

Yes, tapping out an intimate message, and then g it off with the name ‘Claire’. As he pulled together more receipts, Geoff found himself whistling.

Chapter Nine

Geoff had forgotten about dinner at the Joneses’ that night, which scuppered his plans to reignite his gym regime. Claire hadn’t mentioned it that morning, either, he was sure. Did she want to frustrate his attempts to rebuild his fitness? He couldn’t see her being bothered one way or the other about rebuilding anything. Doubtless the Joneses’ would ply him with appetizers, second helpings, wine and dessert, too. Pretty obvious whose side they were on, then, he decided on the drive over to their semi-detached. Waiting on the doorstep, he told himself to relax, which of course had the reverse effect. He shuffled from one foot to the other, complaining about the cold. Inside, the only way he could let the handbrake off a little, as the evening continued, was with red wine; which at least was less calorific than white, he’d heard somewhere. ‘Pity it’s not a Friday,’ remarked Martin, nodding at Geoff’s already half empty glass. ‘Then we could have really let our hair down.’ ‘I know, but we kept putting this off,’ Claire replied. ‘Maybe we should have just met up for a drink instead,’ continued Martin. ‘But Geoff here is notorious for not getting a round in. Hey, Geoff?’ Geoff threw out a laugh which he hoped didn’t sound too phony. ‘I think it’s nice to do something midweek,’ said Amber, sipping her wine. ‘Breaks the week up.’ ‘Isn’t that why God invented the Champions’ League?’ Martin said. ‘Oh, here we go,’ Amber rolled her eyes at Claire. ‘It’s either football or sex. You know, I’m surprised they haven’t found a way to combine the two.’ ‘They have, darling,’ grinned Martin. ‘It’s called a flat screen in the bedroom.’

‘Not in this house,’ said Amber, shaking her head. ‘And before you ask, not even for Christmas or your fortieth.’ ‘How about my fortieth Christmas with you, then?’ Amber grinned sarcastically: ‘I heard they have football round the clock in heaven. Wait till then.’ ‘We can watch other stuff apart from footie,’ Martin mumbled into his glass. ‘He even has a portable in the kitchen now. It’s the only way I can get him to cook.’ ‘You always insist on watching Hollyoaks.’ Amber laughed. ‘He once stood staring at this girl for so long, he peeled a potato down to nothing.’ Claire sounded as if she were trying to laugh for both of them, as she cast anxious glances at her virtually silent husband. ‘You’re quiet tonight, Geoffrey,’ Martin said, with a wave of his glass. ‘Work’s been a pain so far this week,’ Claire answered quickly. ‘Hasn’t it, Geoff?’ In fact, the working week had been grimly predictable thus far. After working at the same job with basically the same clientele for so many years, Geoff saw his working environment as something closer to a production line than an office. And there was nothing more tiring than boredom. The firm got paid to sort out how much other firms owed the Inland Revenue, and a small proportion of that pay trickled down to stalwarts such as Geoff (minus a cut to the Revenue from his own salary, of course). How was that for irony? He knew what could be claimed as an expense, what could be offset as a capital investment and how to take advantage of various sundry loopholes, which were forever being closed before new ones opened. Sometimes he believed he could do the job with his eyes shut but was equally confident that if he ever tried it he would be asleep inside the first minute. In fact, judging by his modest output so far, it was easy to imagine that he had been.

‘Same shit, different arses,’ Geoff declared, tipping back his glass. The silence of strangers at a bus stop descended on the room; then the other three all tried to speak at the same time. ‘No, go on, Amber.’ ‘At least there are only a couple of days till the weekend. Any plans, Claire?’ None that include me, Geoff wanted to say. ‘Just the usual marital indulgences, hey, guys?’ Martin slurred. He usually found Martin ably amusing but would quite cheerfully have tipped his drink over his host’s head if he could have found the energy. He knew Claire was squirming at his lack of conviviality, but he just couldn’t be bothered. Everything about her body language was screaming at him What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong? But she could never risk articulating it; not unless she was prepared for a particularly honest answer in front of witnesses. ‘Geoff’s back at the gym soon,’ Claire said, almost as if she were suggesting that he leave right now. ‘Oh, yer. Too much Christmas pud?’ Martin grinned. ‘You’re not alone.’ Really? Geoff roused himself to respond for the sake of etiquette, although he would have preferred telling them all to fuck themselves and finish the bottle off. ‘I don’t want to let things slide, that’s all,’ he replied, shooting a glance at Claire, who offered back an encouraging smile that said Yes, go on, then. Converse. This is our social life you’re murdering here. But instead his mind went suddenly blank. Claire jumped valiantly into the resulting chasm. ‘Well, everyone knows the risks, don’t they? Heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Especially as we approach middle age.’

Nice one, Claire, he thought. ‘Use it or lose it,’ he said, lamely. ‘Do you know, you’re thirty-five percent more likely to…’ she continued. But he had more important things to occupy his mind than small talk. The text message he had sent Max at half-past five had seemed more like an ission of defeat than a triumphant riposte. Judging by Claire’s relaxed demeanour as they’d got ready earlier, the consequences of that first had yet to strike home. When they did, it would be Claire that was lost for words. But part of him couldn’t really believe that anymore. ‘We might go down to Westfields, I suppose,’ Geoff announced, then added, seemingly to all and none of them: ‘Don’t you get sick of this town, sometimes?’ Amber exchanged a look with Claire, who could only shake her head. Her eyes were glistening. ‘More wine, Claire?’ asked Martin. Instinctively, Geoff thrust his glass over the table before the bottle got anywhere near Claire. ‘Cheers, everyone. Here’s to Fridays!’ This, then, was ‘the pleasant informal evening’ in the comfortable world of the not-so-affluent middle classes, he reminded himself, cynically. He couldn’t knock it really. This was the life he had chosen for himself. No one had forced him into ancy. His parents had never tried to steer him or manage his expectations. But maybe that was a bad thing. Maybe, left to his own devices, he taken the easy option, lowered his expectations too far because Mum and Dad simply didn’t have any for him. There was nothing safe or predictable about his choice of partner, mind. That had been one in the eye for his father, who had married his first steady girlfriend six months after their first date. When Geoff first knew Claire, they couldn’t go anywhere without other blokes giving her an imaginary undressing and him the evil eye. But for all those who ired Claire for her looks, her style, her figure, some would try to touch, too. People like Max. It was inevitable. Geoff thought about the text he’d sent Max and wondered what his rival would make of it. Strange that Max had not replied straight away to Claire (aka Geoff).

After all, the message was deliberately ambiguous, mixing urgency with desire, not to mention the unexplained need for the new phone: its me new phone need to talk soon where & when? claire Originally, he’d added a couple of kisses, but then on second thoughts erased them. Martin was laughing loudly about something that had happened the previous weekend involving a sink plunger and a toothbrush. ‘Hey, Geoff?’ he added. ‘Happens all the time,’ Geoff replied, not caring whether his reply made sense or not. They all laughed again and carried on without him. He laughed, too, but for him the evening had ended before he left the flat. He noticed Claire wasn’t holding back on the wine herself: evidence that she couldn’t be pregnant? What a stupid, desperate conclusion to jump to. He still wanted there to be a positive outcome to this crisis, that by next Christmas they’d be a happy family of three. But the truth was, whatever he did next would in part be an exercise in damage limitation. ‘I don’t suppose there’s much point in offering you pudding,’ Amber asked. ‘I think there are enough calories in this glass, thanks!’ Claire replied with a giggle. ‘I don’t know why you’re so strict,’ Martin told her. ‘You could burn off an entire gateau tomorrow with all this overtime they’re making you do.’ Claire smiled awkwardly. She must have mentioned it earlier whilst he’d zoned out.

‘It’s not that straightforward,’ she replied, and began explaining some of the particulars of energy use in aerobic and anaerobic exercise. She’s changing the subject, Geoff realised. ‘Coffee?’ Amber said, a little loudly. ‘Geoff?’ Claire said, looking embarrassed. His glass was nearly empty again, but he couldn’t the drinking of its contents. Thankfully, they’d walked over, though he doubted that fact would seem quite so positive when he put his coat back on at the front door. His dessert sat before him, untouched. Had he fallen asleep at the table? Or worse, just zoned out through dessert, which Martin seemed to have enjoyed guilt free, judging by the chocolate smudges around his mouth? He realised Claire was on the verge of tears but couldn’t decide whether that made him feel sorry or pleased. ‘Sure. Why not?’ Amber bustled away into the kitchen. Martin started to talk about films, and to placate Claire, Geoff engaged his host as earnestly as he could. By the time coffee arrived they had agreed that Superman was better than Batman. Although the definition of ‘better’ remained intangible, and its significance to cultural history dubious. ‘Batman’s credentials are always hanging upside down,’ Martin concluded, not getting any funnier. Geoff ate half his dessert at last as his coffee steamed. Claire was fidgety and preoccupied one minute; talking too loudly and pretending to have a good time the next. Geoff hoped she didn’t regret drinking too much alcohol and then having caffeine so late, he grinned to himself. The two never cancelled each other out, and she was a martyr to her sleep. ‘Maybe we should make a move,’ he heard Claire say minutes later. He also heard the note of despair in her voice. ‘Work again tomorrow!’ But no overtime, hey?

For his part, Geoff predicted a long and uninterrupted night’s sleep. A few seconds earlier, as he rinsed chocolate mousse from his mouth with Columbia’s finest, he had felt his new mobile vibrate with an incoming message. There was no way he could have left that behind. The not knowing would have made him run out into the street screaming. As it was, the vibrations were as welcome as a long-nailed finger tickling his cock. He didn’t think Claire had noticed, and even if she did she probably thought nothing of it. Claire’s phone could be taken care of as soon as they got home. For the first time since Saturday, he felt in control again. The message couldn’t be from anyone else. It was a brand-new phone, and Max was the only person who had the number.

Chapter Ten

Claire stood in the living room doorway, watching him. He could hear her languid breathing now, but for how long she’d been there, he had no idea. He kept his eyes fixed on the television screen, wondering what thoughts were going through her mind right now. What surprised him was how she was keeping the cork in the bottle; some achievement, given how furious she must be at his performance over dinner earlier. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked the television. There was no reply at first, so he turned to look at her. ‘Claire?’ For a second she just stood there, staring, and Geoff could almost imagine the cork quaking in the bottle neck with all the pressure expanding beneath it. But the explosion never came; she just forced a smile and said, ‘Sure.’ Geoff turned back to the screen, instantly piqued by the fact that she wasn’t going to lay into him about eating and drinking too much, embarrassing her, and being rude to two of their oldest friends in the process. The harsh truth was that what he did and said was not as important to her as it should be. She was only brooding, not fuming. Two years ago, she would never have let him get away with this. Next time I’ll dance naked on the dining table, he ruminated. But would there be a next time? ‘I’ll be along in five minutes,’ Geoff yawned, stretching out along the length of the sofa. If Claire had heard his mobile vibrating with two unanswered calls, she didn’t ask who it was. It was almost as if telecommunications had become a taboo subject between them, which in a way it had. Geoff was watching a discussion on climate change. ‘Global warming?’ she asked, as if watching anything so serious was beyond him.

‘They’re all getting pretty hot under the collar,’ he jested. In the silence, Geoff could hear her hovering in the doorway still. ‘No highlights tonight, then?’ she asked. ‘No. Most of the matches were postponed. Bad weather.’ ‘Well, it is February.’ ‘This was because of rain not snow. It’s not cold enough for that.’ ‘So, you think they’re right?’ Two of the invited guests added jabbing forefingers to their already raised voices. Claire still hovered in the doorway. She was about to remind him what the time was, he knew; how they both had work in the morning. ‘It’s all right,’ he yawned. ‘I won’t sleep yet anyway.’ ‘Fine,’ she said, turning away at last. ‘But it’s nearly half-past eleven.’ He almost laughed out loud. ‘Night, then.’ When he heard the bedroom door close, Geoff took out his new mobile phone to look at the text from Max that was meant for her. There was a smile on his lips, but his hands still shook. It had been an excruciating wait, especially after Max had tried to call him, first on the drive home, and again as they walked through the front door. Claire had been in a sulk from the second they said their goodbyes to the Joneses. Now at last, all was silent from their bedroom. Geoff opened the new message and read it through twice, as if it were a long letter full of nuance, dark undertones and implications. whats wrong?

2 late 2 back out you said call me M. x So this was his first real interaction with Max, and it confirmed all his suspicions. It was no real surprise; but still, the small screen started to blur as his eyes filled up with tears. He blinked them back. There was still time, he told himself. Geoff stared at the screen, wracking his brain for his next move. It would be ideal if he could prolong this pretence, instigate a bogus meeting between Max and ‘Claire’, where ‘she’ could stand Max up. That would piss him off, big time. He might get the hump and decide Claire was a tease, tell her (in other words, Geoff) that it was over. Then, of course, he would simply disappear from Claire’s life without her having a clue as to why. After that, Geoff would be free to pick up the pieces. He imagined Max shivering in some deserted car park like a curb crawler, his hard-on shrivelling away as he realised he was being stood up. It wasn’t going to be that easy, though, he suspected. After all, would Geoff give up so meekly if their roles were reversed? If only he could set up a bogus meeting where he could at least get a good look at his adversary; weigh him up, so to speak. But there simply wasn’t time for any of that, he cursed. Claire’s mood could flip over at any moment, and he still had to remove her phone from the equation. If she decided to ring ‘Maxine’s’ number now, his artifice would be pulled apart in seconds (‘What new phone, Max?’). The only reason she hadn’t made the call, he assumed, was that she was in a hump with lover boy, too. ‘Geoff?’ he heard Claire call from the bedroom. He jumped, but the voice had clearly come from the bed itself. ‘It’s really late.’ ‘Coming,’ he called back, switching off the television. He needed Claire’s phone out of commission, just for a few days. The phone had been a birthday present from him last year, and he was still paying for it monthly. If he cancelled the direct debit in the morning ‘by mistake’, would the

network provider block her calls straight away? He wasn’t sure. His original idea still seemed to be the strongest: make it disappear. Their bedroom was silent again. Jumping up from the sofa, he made a beeline for Claire’s handbag. To his relief her mobile was still inside. She always forgot to switch it off at night, often leading to frantic recharging episodes over breakfast. Geoff switched the phone off now and hid it behind a line of paperbacks in the living room. He would work out how to get it back to her with a convincing story after he had dealt with Max. Inside the bathroom, as he brushed his teeth, he felt his phone vibrate again. ‘Talk of the Devil,’ he whispered, and opened the new message: are u there? pls call M. Geoff thought quickly before typing a reply. He had to think and write as Claire would, a task made easier by the truncated, impersonal language of text messaging. cant talk lets meet will txt details tmorrow claire x He turned his new phone off and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket in the hall. Sleep on that, prick! Slipping into bed beside Claire, he ed his original text to Max: ‘need to talk’. Oh, yes, he’d have plenty to say to this unctuous little creep when he saw him. There were consequences to messing about with another man’s wife in any

culture. The only variation was the severity of the punishment invoked. But what if Max really was ten years younger, muscle bound and from the rough side of the tracks? That might have been the big attraction for Claire in the first place: Geoff, the sophisticated, educated professional; Max, the carefree, reckless ‘bit of rough’, as the saying went. No. The last thing he wanted was to present his rival with the opportunity to kick him out of town. Geoff opened his mouth like a goldfish, aware that he was starting to grind his teeth. Could he take someone with him as back up? Or would that just make him look weak? Either way, there was a real danger that Max wouldn’t listen. And what then? Well maybe Geoff would be forced to find some other way of making him see sense, take something with him, not someone. Whatever advantages Max held by way of size, strength and youth, the fact remained that no one loved Claire more than Geoff; and true love could move mountains. Maybe, when the moment came, there wouldn’t be any need for talking at all.

Chapter Eleven

Geoff fired off another message to Max the next morning. He sat waiting in his car outside work for ten minutes, but his phone stayed silent. Must be at work himself, Geoff concluded, doing an unskilled job for the minimum wage probably. Claire’s bit of rough. But maybe what Geoff was really afraid of was that Max was a professional, like himself, only more successful and better paid. In his mind he pictured a svelte man carrying a briefcase and wearing a doublebreasted suit. As Geoff looked the man grinned condescendingly at him and winked. He slammed the car door angrily behind him and marched into work with only a minute to spare. The Murphy was pretty much done, miraculously, albeit after a week’s toil. But it was all billable time. If Murphy wanted to waste his money when he could have saved himself a packet by sorting out his receipts as he accumulated them month by month, it was his lookout. Hell, with a few more Murphys around, Whiting might get his pay rise yet. Geoff entered the office scowling. There were several messages waiting for him from other disgruntled clients expecting to hear what their next tax bill would be. That was the only drawback with the Murphys of this world: they put all your other work behind. It would take him another week to get back on track. It always surprised him that the smaller businesses didn’t just hire a temp to run the figures through one of the many computer programmes available. But then again, how many people paid someone to fix a leaking tap or a loose fence instead of doing the job themselves? Wastefulness was what it amounted to. But at least it gave other people a living. If everyone became self-sufficient half the world would be out of a job, he supposed. The rest of his day was tainted by the same blue funk he had fallen into over the weekend. Outside the wind was blowing a procession of thick clouds in varying shades of misery across the rooftops. No wonder February had fewer days than any other month: thirty-one would have killed him. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, and although he still wasn’t hungry, his stomach hurt every time he drank something. The last thing he needed now was a stomach ulcer. To make matters worse, he didn’t get a reply from Max until late afternoon. Everything was set for that evening, in a pub called the George V, at nine o’clock

sharp. Every nerve in Geoff’s body tingled at the thought of it. He was going alone, but still hadn’t decided on the precise approach. An unequivocal word delivered firmly? A veiled threat? Or merely a statement of fact: ‘I know your game, pal. You need to back off, and we’ll say no more about it.’ That sounded lame, though. Max would probably just laugh if he said anything like that. Or worse; which was why he had chosen such a public place. He won’t hit me, even if we’re outside in the pub car park, Geoff decided. Especially if he really is some debonair professional type. At least then the only humiliation Geoff would need to endure would be being laughed at. ‘Great!’ he grumbled, and quickly looked around to make sure no one had noticed. Whiting was in a meeting with Boss Hopkins, he was relieved to see; begging on bended knee for one last chance, probably. Hell, this might even be his last day, poor sod. And it could just as easily be the last day of your marriage, if you screw things up later tonight. Geoff put his hand to his chest and felt his heart hammering away like he was being chased through a wood by a bear. He thought about taking refuge in the Gents, but he’d been there four times in the last hour. His stomach was hurting again, flipping every ten seconds like an overcooked pancake, and his throat was drier than a frying pan. The problem was he had no idea how a husband was supposed to react in this situation. He didn’t want to it to his friends that Claire was dissatisfied with her husband, and when he considered his favourite screen hard men, all he could think of was Ray Winstone saying, ‘Leave town now, you slag!’ with a halfeaten pasty in his fist. The hours dragged on horribly. He pictured Murphy slumped against a bar, laughing and raising his pint to Geoff. He pictured himself shopping and cooking for one in the flat that was now rubbish strewn and dirty. He pictured Claire asleep in a hotel bed, smiling contentedly as a hairy arm that definitely wasn’t Geoff’s snaked around her shoulders. Murphy left the bar, revealing Claire and a tall dark figure. It was the bar of the George V, where Geoff had arranged to meet Max later tonight. They stopped kissing and started laughing so hard they could hardly stand upright. What if it’s me that’s being set up? he wondered,

terrified. At just after four o’clock he threw up, though thankfully the Gents had been empty at the time. It was just after he’d read Max’s reply on his phone: ok Not really, pal, he thought, just as his stomach started to coil and spasm. ‘I have to do whatever it takes,’ he told the toilet bowl as it flushed his stomach lining away. Ray Winstone shook his pasty at him and spat, ‘Too right you do, you slag’. There were only a few more hours to wait. Firstly, he needed to go home, keep up the pretence of normality. Having missed the gym on Wednesday he knew he should have walked in that morning, but his energy levels were flatter still after a poor night’s sleep and no breakfast. Now he had to endure the rush hour, which the advent of rain had reduced to an overcautious crawl. He left a carrier bag on the enger seat in case he felt sick again, but it felt like anything left in his stomach was weighed down by a large rock. Back in the warmth of the flat, Claire had her hair up. She said hello but seemed distant and frustrated. Of course, Geoff realised, she’s lost something. He even let his eyes stray to the row of paperbacks that screened her hidden phone. So near and yet so far, babe. ‘You all right?’ he asked casually. ‘I don’t think I slept too well,’ she replied, implying it was his fault. They had something spicy, courtesy of the microwave: some lean, green, bean dish made edible only with a jar of lime pickle. It was just what his stomach didn’t need. For one terrible moment he wondered if Claire was opting for convenience because she was going out herself, but the sight of her in her onesy shortly afterwards put his mind at rest. ‘I’m popping out for a drink with the guys later. Why don’t you tag along?’ He knew that always annoyed her, like she was some sort of pet that might get

distressed if left alone in the flat for too long. Besides which, she hated the way men talked together in the pub almost as much as ‘the boys’ hated having her there cramping their style. ‘Do you mean Chas and Dave?’ ‘Amongst others, yes. And no one else calls him Chas.’ He ed how this sort of exchange used to provoke a bit of cheerful banter once upon a time. ‘I think I’ll , Geoff,’ she said. Good. ‘Why not give your mum a ring?’ he asked innocently. ‘I was thinking of having an early night,’ she said, ignoring his suggestion. ‘So try not to come in too late and disturb me.’ ‘I’ll text you just before I’m leaving, if you like.’ Claire shot him a look of annoyance. ‘Oh, sorry. I forgot.’ She had been searching for her phone over breakfast, almost certainly making herself late for work. By now she must have realised that the phone was well and truly missing in action. ‘If I haven’t found it by tomorrow, I’ll have to assume it’s been nicked.’ ‘I don’t know, Claire. I’m still sure it will turn up somewhere.’ Geoff enjoyed keeping a straight face. ‘Do you want me to ring the number again?’ ‘No. If it was here, I’d have heard it.’ Oh, yer? ‘Unless the battery’s dead?’

Claire looked on the verge of tears. Now why would that be? Geoff wondered. ‘I’d think about changing your internet s and stuff, though. Just in case.’ ‘I know. But that’s like itting it’s really gone.’ She made it sound like the denial stage in the grieving process. ‘Come on,’ he said, pecking her on the cheek. ‘These things happen. I’ll make you a herbal tea. What do you fancy?’ How about nettle? She opted for raspberry. Whilst the kettle boiled, he loaded the dishwasher, and cleaned up the kitchen for good measure. At just after half-past eight, he slipped on his overcoat and left the flat with his door keys jangling merrily. ‘Sweet dreams,’ he called as he slammed himself out. ‘See you in the morning.’ Lover.

Chapter Twelve

The weather couldn’t decide if it wanted to be winter or spring. Geoff only felt the cold when the wind got up, but he opted to take the car, nonetheless. His immune system couldn’t be trusted these days, and it would only take a sudden downpour to put him in bed for a week, something that would be catastrophic if he wanted to hang on to his wife. He glanced up at the flat and saw that the lights were on in the living room. He started the car and crawled away. ‘She’s safe at home,’ he whispered. ‘Where she belongs.’ There was a faded sticker on the dashboard advertising outdoor adventures in Snowdonia. When was that, five years ago? Maybe when all this was over they could go back; maybe April time. They’d had a real laugh that week; and more, besides. To his surprise, he found he had already parked the car and switched off the ignition. Zoning out whilst driving was quite common, but he’d been doing it regularly now for several weeks, he realised. He sat listening to the ticking of the engine beneath the bonnet for a minute, like it was a countdown of the last few moments of his life. According to his watch he was fifteen minutes early. That was good. He could find himself a seat that commanded the best view of the bar. Would Max be there already, too? Of course, he had no way of knowing that, because he didn’t know yet what Max looked like. But he had thought of a solution to that dilemma during the long afternoon at work. He stepped straight out of the car into a gust of wind, and hurried inside, shivering. The bar was L-shaped, with all the usual suspects of English pub culture, including pictures of the recently victorious red-faced pub football team, and a few portraits of grinning, overweight darts and pool players. The flat screen television in the corner had already usurped the status of the dartboard, and had obvious designs on the pool table’s standing, too. With the amount of televised sports available, cribbage and dominoes had long since bitten the dust. Geoff bought a drink and settled himself behind a corner table. There were perhaps twenty other punters, mainly blokes, only two of whom appeared to be on their own. Geoff took a sip of his drink to wet his dry mouth, and found he had ordered a lager and lime, his father’s favourite. It wasn’t a drink he enjoyed or ordered usually, and his Dad had been dead since his teens. So why was he

drinking it now? Geoff put it down to tension and a lack of sleep. Would Dad have approved of Claire? Probably, if you could find a way to make indifference and acceptance synonymous. He never seemed to care what his only son did, either way. At five to nine a girl walked in and went straight up to one of the solitary blokes, kissing him hard on the mouth. That left one other man seated alone at a table, like Geoff. Was this Max? The temptation to gape was strong, but he reminded himself that it was a waste of time to speculate idly. Despite this, he allowed himself a few stolen glances across the bar. This lone drinker was perhaps in his late twenties and looked decidedly geeky from where Geoff was watching. Surely Claire would prefer someone a bit manlier than this, for God’s sake? Geoff felt vaguely insulted. He allowed himself a longer look, since the other bloke was staring down into his lap the whole time. After a few seconds Geoff realised he was reading a book. A student, then? At least he won’t put up much resistance, Geoff concluded, imagining the bookworm paying for his drink with a cheque. The twat! Just then, with the time at one minute to nine, a well-dressed man in his midthirties burst through the same door that Geoff had used. His breathing was rapid, as if he’d been running, and immediately his eyes scanned the bar from one end to the other. The man moved forward so he could survey the other wing of the bar. He looked disappointed when he didn’t find what he was looking for and ordered himself a half a pint of lager. Geoff’s heart accelerated at the probability that this, at last, was Max. At least his rival turned out to be a man. He tried not to stare as the new arrival headed over to a table not far from the geeky bookworm. Geoff slipped his new mobile out and started another message: running late sorry Geoff pressed send and watched as unobtrusively as he could at the new arrival. He slipped his phone away again, just as Max fished out his own mobile. Though Geoff couldn’t hear the ping of the message received on the stranger’s phone, he was convinced the timing couldn’t be coincidence.

This, then, was Max. It has to be. The fluster with which Max had entered the pub quickly dissipated. This was a man who knew the importance of staying cool, or at least of projecting an aura of coolness. There was nothing flash about the way he dressed: clean and tidy, yes, but not immaculately so. But his underlying self-confidence meant that he could probably have gotten away with wearing anything. With him, casual was just another type of style. Scrutinizing his rival reminded Geoff of Claire’s recent critical comments about the state of his wardrobe. He didn’t suppose that was a coincidence, either. Max was writing his reply, his brow creased deep in concentration, as he obviously chose his words carefully. Then he stabbed a key with his thumb and relaxed again, just as there was a lull from the television in-between adverts. What happened next was close to disastrous. Geoff’s mobile let out a loud ping. He snatched up his pint glass and took a long gulp of lager and lime, not daring to look anywhere but into the glass. It didn’t matter, though, surely? People received texts all the time. There was even a condition now where people became anxious if they didn’t get calls or messages. Max wouldn’t think anything about it, though. Why should he? But that didn’t stop Geoff from imagining Max staring at him right now. Was he scowling, his brow creased with annoyance and suspicion this time? All he needed Max to do now was follow up his text with an attempted phone call. In his mind Geoff pictured his damp, slightly pudgy fingers desperately trying to turn his phone off as it started to ring like a fire alarm. But he dropped it instead and looked up just in time to see a red-faced Max reaching for his throat across his tiny round table. ‘Oi! What’s your game?’ Geoff imagined Max saying as his free hand curled into a fist. Or had Max already left his seat, and was right now about to throw his shadow over Geoff’s defenceless form? He was too scared to look. His instincts told him to run first, find out if someone was chasing him later. A new music video blared out from the flat screen, making him jump.

As casually as he could, he pulled out his mobile phone again and switched it off. He took another sip of lager, and as he put the glass back down, threw a glance over at the geeky reader. In this way he was able to see in the periphery of his vision that Max was still in his seat and looking down at his phone. Temporary relief settled into Geoff’s shoulders. He’d got away with it, for now; next time he might not be so lucky. A second later he let his eyes flit to that side of the bar again. Max wasn’t staring at him. With no reply received from his first attempt, he was busily composing another message to Claire; or so Geoff assumed. Having sent this new message, Max nonchalantly flipped his mobile onto the small table before him, waiting. How Geoff longed to see what Max had written, but he was too nervous to switch his phone back on. A group of about eight people had left at once and the noise level in the pub was now considerably quieter, despite the best efforts of DJ Fuckwit or whatever the rapper called himself. Geoff pondered his next move, and decided it really depended on what Max had said in his last text. Damn it! He stood up slowly and slouched over towards the Gents, knowing the whole time just how odd his acting must be making him look. He couldn’t even as drunk. Inside a free cubicle the first of the two messages from Max was waiting for him. here now need this sorted please come dont worry how late u r Geoff opened the second message, reading and re-reading, as if the message were in a foreign language. you said ‘meant 2b’

? M. x A horrible chill hit him, as if someone had flushed all the toilet cisterns over his head at once. He had acted decisively and at the right time, he realised. Another week’s delay and he would have come home to a handwritten note from Claire on the kitchen table. Or worse still, a text: have to go geoff its meant 2b Bloody hell! Taking a deep breath, his fingers hovered over the tiny keyboard. It was obvious from the tone of the messages that Max intended to sweep Claire off her feet with promises of wild adventure and romance on distant shores, he reminded himself as he typed. big decision need more time 2 think will call u soon v sorry claire Ha! That would piss him off, for sure. Geoff pressed ‘send’ as he pocketed his phone and burst from the cubicle just as Max walked through the door from the bar. Geoff came perilously close to freezing in the cubicle doorway and crying, ‘Oh, shit!’ Instead he managed to throw his eyes to the floor and keep walking, dreading a heavy hand on his shoulder at every step; but his ears told him Max had kept walking, too. As he reached for the outer door to make good his escape, Geoff heard the ping

of his message reaching Max’s phone. Despite his tension, or maybe because of it, the urge to laugh caught his breath like a gathering sneeze. He coughed loudly as the door to the Gents slammed behind him, a grin on his lips as wide as a lavatory bowl. Outside the pub, the cool air hitting the perspiration on his brow, Geoff made for his parked car, a child-like spring in his step. He snatched out his phone, feeling smug and self-satisfied at the success of the little game he was playing with Max. He knew his adversary’s face now, but Max didn’t even realise he had been found out by a vengeful husband. Up close, Max definitely looked about mid-thirties. Not a toy boy, then, and not a brute, either; but he moved with the poise of someone in their prime, who was investing time in prolonging that state for as long as he could. So it had to be the gym where they’d met. Clean shaven, his skin looked unreasonably healthy, so maybe he was a regular at the sauna, too. His brown eyes were a shade lighter than his hair, and he was a couple of inches taller than Geoff. Apart from that, there was nothing else in that split second that gave any further clues about what and whom Max might be. Not that it should bother him, though curiously it still did. He still longed to understand the source of his attractiveness for Claire. If he knew that then maybe he could change, be the man his wife wanted him to be. Fat chance, he thought, feeling the roll of blubber lolling over the top of his tro belt. ‘Come on,’ he muttered. ‘He hasn’t beaten you yet.’ And there was much to be pleased about, for sure. He’d been brave and smart in a tight corner, keeping his cool to great effect. The little Max rat had been within striking distance and didn’t even realise the danger he’d been in. That made him grin again. Maybe next time he’d stand right next to him at the bar whilst he ordered his drink, so long as he ed to switch his phone off first. Speaking of which, he pulled out the mobile that had so nearly blown his cover. When he read his rival’s reply the smile was wiped from his lips like chalk from a blackboard left out in the rain: make it soon then u started this

if u wont come 2 me maybe I will come 4 u M.

Chapter Thirteen

‘It’s all right, Geoff!’ Claire called gaily, sweeping through the front door after work the next day. As the front slammed, she practically skipped along the hall. Geoff looking up from the television. What now? ‘Marie said there’s an app you can use to find your phone.’ She dropped her handbag on the coffee table so that the long stiff straps obscured his view of the screen. ‘She’s back, then?’ ‘What?’ asked Claire, surprised. Geoff pretended to look at the parts of the television he could still see. ‘From her illness?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ He could feel her hovering by the side of the sofa, like a fly around a dinner plate, desperate to share her good news. ‘It was just a twenty-four-hour thing,’ she added. ‘Let’s hope it’s not catching,’ Geoff said, enjoying the act of frustrating her moment of triumph. ‘Oh, don’t!’ Claire slipped out of her coat, dropped it over the arm of the sofa. ‘So, you were saying?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ Claire’s words were chasing each other out of her mouth. ‘There’s an app, apparently.’ Geoff laughed inwardly. Wasn’t there an app for everything these days? Except fidelity, of course. He took a mental breath and the air between them became tense. She must have felt it, surely; must have realised that Geoff was about to say, ‘Yes, but.’

‘I’m afraid the app she’s talking about has to be on the phone before you lose it.’ Was that correct? He had absolutely no idea, but it sounded like he did and that was proved enough. He heard the barely perceptible hush of her sigh. It also helps if your husband doesn’t get to the said phone first. ‘Oh, really?’ she asked. ‘I’m afraid so, love.’ ‘Damn.’ He made a show out of staring at the screen, even though it was like trying to watch a drive-in movie through a pair of McDonalds arches. ‘And there are other technical issues to consider,’ he added. The last thing he needed was for her to challenge the validity of his declaration. But he didn’t need to look at her to know that her smile had vanished and her shoulders were weighed down with despair. ‘I need a phone, Geoff. I can’t keep telling everyone to call you.’ I don’t think you tell everyone to do that, darling. Do you? ‘It’s no big deal.’ Geoff patted the empty space on the sofa next to him, but instead Claire headed for the kitchen. ‘And there’s always email.’ But he’d redoubled his vigilance on that score already. There was no sign of Max lurking in her inbox. ‘If it was going to turn up again, I think it would have done so by now, Geoff,’ she said over the angry clink of china. ‘I need to report it stolen. Get myself a pay as you go.’ ‘And that’s precisely when it will turn up, you see.’ Geoff was starting to enjoy himself. ‘It’s an aid to communication, not a necessity for survival. But we let manufacturers convince us otherwise through compelling marketing strategies.’ He was quoting verbatim from a documentary. Who said television couldn’t be

educational? ‘I didn’t get my first mobile until I was in my twenties, you know.’ ‘Yes, but when was that, Geoff: last century?’ Ouch! Baby, you really are pissed off, aren’t you? ‘Do you know, I can still those big old answering machines they used to have for land phones,’ Geoff said, ignoring her. How long will it take il bastardo to get the message? he wondered. ‘My dad had one.’ Claire slammed a cupboard door. ‘Speaking of which?’ ‘What?’ ‘Messages?’ ‘Ah, right. Your Mum wanted to speak to you.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘Three times, in fact.’ Which was a lie; Sheila had only phoned once. ‘Didn’t say what about, though.’ ‘You spoke to her?’ ‘Hardly. She spoke to me.’ Was that apprehension he heard in Claire’s voice? ‘It was a message, ?’ ‘Oh.’ The clinking and clattering from the kitchen had evolved into full scale banging. He decided to stop tormenting her; at least for now. ‘She just said to call her back as soon as.’ So why don’t you do it right now, so I can listen? ‘Must be the first time she’s phoned me in months,’ he laughed. There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow. When I get the new phone sorted. OK?’ There was a definite edge to her voice now. He imagined it must be quite tricky keeping track of what secrets to keep from which loved one. My heart bleeds…

‘I feel guilty for not getting it insured, Claire. They offered me a really good deal, too.’ ‘Yes, but if you had I would never have lost it in the first place.’ ‘Sod’s law, Claire,’ he huffed. ‘Sod’s law.’ ‘Which I still don’t get, Geoff. You know how careful I am with my phone generally.’ And why, he mused. The lies were coming thick and fast now, all right. He thought he might even have mentioned her phone’s insurance plan when she unwrapped the present; but if he had, she had forgotten about it. The paperwork was in a kitchen drawer. ‘It must have been stolen, Geoff,’ Claire grumbled. ‘But the last place I had it was here, I swear.’ ‘Did you speak to Amber or Martin? We were there on Wednesday. You might have dropped it.’ ‘Of course. They’ve looked everywhere. It’s not there.’ ‘Shall we have one last big hunt here tonight? It would be typical to spend money and then find it.’ Behind Terry Venables’ autobiography, for instance. Geoff had been home long enough to take Claire’s phone out from behind the row of paperbacks and give it a new home, of course. Ironically, it was a lot less secure now, but he had a long-term plan which the new hideaway fitted in with perfectly. She wouldn’t suspect a thing, though she might start to doubt her own sanity. ‘You can, if you want.’ Claire slumped onto the sofa next to him at last, her herbal tea still cooling in the kitchen. ‘I loved that phone,’ she sighed, grabbing his hand. ‘You think that’s bad,’ Geoff said, nestling his chin in the nape of her neck and

looking up into her face like an orphaned child, ‘I lost my heart once.’ Her face broke into a lukewarm grin. ‘Yes, I know. On Mum’s sofa,’ Claire laughed, and gave him a brief kiss on his mouth. ‘And before you ask, the back of this sofa was the first place I looked.’ Then she was up and heading for the kitchen again. Before he could try to kiss her back? Despite the levity, his head felt like the inside of the cushion he was leaning against. All this thinking on his feet was exhausting. But once Claire had another phone, it would only be a matter of time before she found out from Max that Geoff knew everything. That moment was inevitable, of course, and Geoff did not want to make Claire suffer in the long term. Ultimately, he wanted to rescue not punish her. Didn’t he? Despite the fatigue, the hurt and the anger, his strongest emotion today was exhilaration, surprisingly. Looking back, the past week had been like playing James Bond, but without the HIV risk. ‘Did you check the bin?’ he called to her. ‘I even looked in the recycling,’ she called back, half-laughing. ‘Well, it’s not in the fridge,’ he said, reaching for his mug from the coffee table. ‘I’ve just made tea. Do you want me to run you a bath?’ ‘No. Not yet,’ she replied, wandering back into the room. ‘I’m not a seal, Geoff. I don’t have to return to the water every few hours.’ He looked over his shoulder and gave her a cheeky grin. ‘I thought you’d want to get out of that sweaty gym gear.’ Claire sipped her drink standing up, staring at the television. The comment didn’t get a response, and a second later she was wandering again, this time to their bedroom. ‘I’ll check my emails. At least a laptop is too big to mislay.’ He swallowed more tea. He could just imagine the man he had seen in the George chatting amiably to Claire after a class at the gym. Maybe he asked her advice about stretching or over-training at first, and then on subsequent occasions slipped in the odd compliment, before building up to that fateful moment when a mobile number travelled in one direction, or maybe both.

Oh, Claire, he frowned. ‘Hey,’ he called. ‘What?’ ‘The bathroom.’ ‘I told you, not yet.’ Here we go, then. ‘No. I mean, you still had your phone here on Wednesday. Right?’ Claire stuck her head around the door, looking confused. ‘Yes. Why?’ ‘It was a mad rush. ?’ ‘Because we were late for dinner at Amber and Martin’s. So?’ If anything, her look of confusion deepened. ‘And?’ ‘Done any washing since?’ ‘When have I had time,’ she began to moan. Then she stopped short, her eyes widening. ‘Oh, my God! You mean the laundry basket?’ ‘Must be pretty full by now.’ ‘No, I’ve checked already. I told you, Geoff, I’ve checked everywhere. It’s gone.’ Geoff did not reply, merely raised his eyebrows challengingly. Without another word Claire’s head disappeared back into the bedroom. ‘I might take another look under the car seats with a torch in a sec.’ It was getting harder not to laugh out loud. The laundry basket was just behind the bedroom door, where it fitted snugly. He heard her rummaging inside it for a few seconds before ing her. There were dozens of clothes scattered on the floor already, and Claire was patting

individual items for hard lumps, her face creased with concentration. They never bothered with laundry on a weekday; they were both too tired. Suddenly Claire froze, a single but very colourful expletive punctuating the pause. ‘What? What?’ He felt that tremor of exhilaration flow through him, like a stiff drink. Sod’s law, love. ‘No!’ she hissed. Geoff slowly let his eyes widen. ‘You’re kidding?’ Geoff said with the appropriate level of melodrama. Slowly, Claire withdrew her hand and dangling from her fingers was her precious phone. She looked up at Geoff and started laughing. ‘You’re right. It was a real scrap that night.’ ‘But you checked all the pockets, right?’ ‘It wasn’t in a pocket. It was caught in the sleeve of my hoody.’ ‘How the hell did it get there?’ How the hell, indeed, Geoffrey? Claire looked bemused, as if she were confronting the loss of her own sanity. ‘I must have swept everything up and stuffed it in the basket.’ ‘See? What a good thing you didn’t buy a new one.’ She tried to switch it on. ‘The battery’s dead.’ She went over to the bedside cabinet and plugged it into the charger. She wiggled the connector; switched the wall switch off and on again. ‘Have a look, will you, Geoff. It’s not charging.’ Geoff did his very best ‘trying to fix it’ impression, but he already knew it was useless. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ The frustrated edge to her voice was too strong for her to disguise.

‘I don’t know. I think it’s the charger,’ he said, handing the phone back to her. ‘We’ll take it into town tomorrow.’ ‘It was sitting there all this time,’ Claire said, almost to herself. ‘I bet there’s a ton of missed calls and messages on there,’ he laughed. Claire didn’t answer. She held the phone tightly in her hand, as if she were attempting to squeeze the messages out manually somehow. Seal or no seal, Claire would take a bath soon, and when she did Geoff could agree another rendezvous with Max. From tomorrow Claire would have her phone back up and running, and that would be it. Tonight was his last opportunity for a showdown behind Claire’s back, unless he could think of some other way to prolong the drama, which seemed unlikely. It was Max he wanted to torment now, to punish the true guilty party. ‘Did I tell you I’m popping out around seven, love?’ ‘What? It’s a Friday night, Geoff!’ ‘I know. Should only take an hour. We’ll be on our first drink by nine o’clock, I promise.’ ‘What about dinner, though?’ ‘I’ll rustle something up before I leave. There are plenty of leftovers. How about one of those big Spanish omelettes you like?’ ‘What are you up to?’ You’re asking me? Geoff almost laughed out loud; but he kept a straight face. ‘Dave needs a hand shifting some furniture. He’s decorating this weekend.’ Papering over the cracks in his marriage, he laughed inwardly. Must be the time of year for it. ‘OK’ he heard Claire let out a huff. ‘I’ll have a quick soak while you’re cooking, then.’

She headed for the bathroom as he made his way to the kitchen with their two empty mugs. He heard her say something he didn’t catch at first. ‘Hey?’ ‘I said, mind your back.’ He heard her running the taps. ‘At Dave’s, I mean.’ Geoff smiled broadly as he opened the egg box. You couldn’t make an omelette without breaking a few of these, he mused. ‘Oh, I will, love,’ he called back; then, beneath his breath: ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

Chapter Fourteen

Later, when he looked back on the events of that evening, Geoff would swear he never planned what happened. In fact, once he had set up his new rendezvous with Max that was pretty much where his planning began and ended. He did not believe his rival, being taller, fitter and younger, would be physically intimidated by him for a second, and pleading would just make Geoff look like a wimp. What else was there, then? Bribery? He could raise a grand or two, maybe, but that hardly seemed enough. As for blackmail, there was not enough time for him to dig anything up on Max. He didn’t know his surname, where he lived, what he did for a living. Loitering in the pub car park, Geoff felt like someone standing in last minute at someone else’s job interview. He was under qualified and ill prepared; not to mention his total lack of experience. Inside the George there was a much bigger, noisier crowd than on his last visit, which made an already edgy Geoff feel claustrophobic. At least Max was there waiting, sitting in the same spot, this time with a pint. Geoff noticed an empty pint glass close by. If it was his, that meant he was onto his second already. Max looked tense, too, restless but resolute, like a gun dog waiting for the first shot. A girl collecting glasses spoke briefly to Max, who nodded as she swept up his empty. His second was half empty, too. Great, if he got on to a third he would be well tanked up before Geoff had even finished his crisps. He forced himself to that it was Claire Max was expecting, not her husband. He still had the upper hand, albeit it one that held nothing more dangerous than a packet of ready salted. More people were adding to the throng every few minutes. There was always a good atmosphere in the George at weekends. It wasn’t a pub you associated with trouble. He checked the time. Oh, dear. ‘Claire’ late again? Tut, tut, tut! He stole another glance at Max, who was staring at the phone in his hand. She won’t ring, he thought. Trust me. Max tossed the phone on to the table and snatched a look over in the direction of the door. The knuckles of the hand

holding his pint glass were white with tension, it seemed to Geoff. He gulped down more lager. If Max had any fantasies about driving Claire away with him that evening, maybe Geoff could report him for drink driving? At least that might give Claire the time to appreciate the gravity of what she was doing. Shit, is that the best I can come up with? he cursed himself, tossing down his empty crisp packet onto the bar. The gloating at a distance was enjoyable, but it wasn’t offering him any kind of feasible solution. Geoff slipped out his ‘secret mobile’, as he now thought of it. It was time to put Max out of his misery. And mine, too. His mouth was dry and sour. It would be fun to see Max’s reaction when Claire stood him up yet again; but once that hand had been played, what next? Would Max’s patience finally snap, as Geoff hoped? In his mind he saw his nemesis marching through the bar, shoving punters out of his way, with Geoff following discretely in his wake to watch his car accelerate from the car park in a cloud of tire smoke. And that would be that. Unless Max liked it when a woman played hard to get? He thought back to Max’s last text: maybe I will come 4 u Did Max know where they lived? When his car sped from the car park, in which direction would it turn? My God, he thought, has he been there already? Geoff tipped back his lager and lime, but his mouth was dry again as soon as he’d swallowed. Geoff stared at his mobile’s screen, almost as if he hoped someone would text him with a suggestion of what to do. Now that would be an app worth having. His earlier euphoria had left him as he realised his only weapon in this fight was the little plastic case full of wires in his right hand. He couldn’t a single fight he’d been in, even at school. And weren’t you supposed to throw a punch rather than just swing your arm? He suddenly saw himself nursing a broken wrist just before a red-faced Max laid into him with all the other punters laughing and pointing at Geoff’s ineptness as a man. Wimp! Wimp! Wimp! No, it was brains that would win the day here, not brawn. But how? He still held the advantage that Max thought his texts were coming from Claire. But what could he say in a text that would get rid of Max for good? That Claire was ill?

He wouldn’t believe that. He thought about scaring him off with the resurrected pregnancy, but of course that might just as easily have the reverse effect. Whatever Geoff did, he thought disconsolately, a younger, fitter, more confident Max was bound to take the initiative. He must know where Claire worked at least. And by tomorrow, of course, Claire’s phone would be back in the equation. Geoff felt the energy he had arrived with evaporating through his sweaty shirt collar. He looked at Max, saw him glance at his phone again, and then over to the entrance as a group of very loud women burst in laughing. Max scowled down into his drink. His date was now fifteen minutes late; though unknown to him, of course, the ‘date’ was staring straight at him. But so what? Was that to be his only triumph tonight? Think! Think! Think! Geoff felt his spine stiffen as Max picked up his mobile and answered a call. It had to be someone else, not Claire. But he talked eagerly and seriously, as if his waiting was over. Had Claire borrowed a charger from a neighbour? There was no way to repair the original charger that he had sabotaged earlier. Max looked suddenly relieved and a grin swept across his face. Shit, it was Claire! But the grin did not stay there for long. Soon Max was scowling again, shoulders raised, and shaking his head in stubborn disagreement. Geoff felt the breath imprisoned in his lungs burning against his ribs but found it impossible to exhale. He ed the George in the days before the smoking ban, when you sometimes couldn’t see let alone breathe clearly. He still couldn’t shake the impression that Max was arguing with his wife. She was alone in the flat, anxious to her lover, reassure him – and herself – that everything was still all right between them. She had found his mobile number somehow and was using the landline to re-establish . It proved how deeply she had fallen into his trap that she could not wait one more day to hear Max’s voice. Geoff ground his teeth, his free hand snatching up the fabric of his tro leg until he was certain it must tear. ‘That’s my fucking wife, you bastard,’ he growled down into his drink. Max was still deep in conversation, and using his hands a lot, too. Just like an

Italian, Geoff thought. Max looked up and scanned the room, taking another long gulp of his nearly finished pint. Geoff’s heart was racing, and his mouth was sawdust dry. Think, man! Before it’s too late. The group of loud women drifted across the space between them, and Geoff was spared further torment of watching another man enjoy intimacy with his wife. He readied himself for the inevitable confrontation. Go down fighting, was his hopeless mantra. The game was over, his adversary a clear winner. For Claire and Max the penny would be dropping right now, and soon everyone would know that Claire Madely had left her husband for a younger, fitter, stronger man. A real man, in other words. A spasm of terror rippled through his guts at the prospect of what lay ahead. Not the violence, but the shame, the loneliness, the ignominy of a redundant manhood. ‘He just took her,’ they’d say. ‘Whilst he did nothing.’ ‘Here, watch it,’ someone complained, and looking up Geoff caught a glimpse of Max heading for the exit behind the gaggle of overexcited geese. Now what? He downed the dregs of his lager and lime for courage, feeling immediately lightheaded and slightly sick. No wonder his father seldom went to the pub, if this was his poison. If he could talk to Claire for just a few minutes that might be enough to regain the initiative, remind her of the good things in their marriage, the things she was casting aside. ‘You don’t know this man, Claire,’ he rehearsed with purpose in the darkness outside. ‘Not really.’ Max was marching away from the pub with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket, his head held proudly, his stride long and shoulders wide. The mobile phone was useless now, Geoff realised. Maybe one day there’d be a Taser app. For now, even his shoes were built for comfort not conflict. ‘I had to do it, Claire!’ he rehearsed. ‘The lout threatened me, threatened to hurt me; and you. To kill us both! He didn’t care about you. He only wanted you for

one thing.’ But he didn’t want to keep thinking about that. Max ignored the parked cars and headed off on foot in the direction of their flat. Of that, Geoff was in no doubt. if u wont come 2 me maybe I will come 4 u Geoff hurried after him, facing the truth full in the face: Max knew what he wanted, and no wimpy ant was going to stop him. Especially one that crept about sending fictitious text messages instead of using his fists. As Max marched along the pavement people moved respectfully out of his way, and in that moment Geoff hated him more than he had ever hated anyone or anything in his life. This arrogant bastard was going to march straight into their life, their home. He was marching over their love, their commitment, their history. Max didn’t respect anything, and he certainly wasn’t afraid of consequence. He used his physical presence, his fresh white skin and ramrod spine to intimidate and intoxicate the vulnerable in equal measure. Was that how it was with Claire? Was she under his spell? Then it would be that spell that would be broken, not her heart. This time you’ve met his match, pal! Max took a right turn down a quieter street, and then almost immediately slipped up an alleyway bordered by a high wire fence. Yes, he could see it all now. Claire had given him her address back in the pub, and pleaded, ‘Come now. Something’s wrong! I think it’s Geoff!’ No, no! She had given up their address under duress. Max was a cad, a gigolo, an amoral sexual predator who probably targeted happily married women because of the additional challenge they presented him with. Bastardo! Geoff knew where that alleyway led, too. In only a few minutes Max would be striding out of the darkness into the far end of the horseshoe-shaped road where Geoff and Claire lived. Their front door would be less than a five-minute walk further on. Whoever rang their doorbell first would be the one to get their foot in the door, their feet under the table and their head beneath the bed sheets. Those

were the stakes, and Max was a good fifty metres ahead already. But Geoff knew another route, a short cut, and breaking into a sprint he turned right into another, narrower ageway. This route was longer and not officially a public thoroughfare at all, but when he emerged near some garages he found he had outflanked his adversary, put himself physically between his nemesis and Claire. There was a plan, after all, and his mind was revealing it to him step by step. He felt strong again, convinced that his actions were part of a cast iron strategy that would dispose of Max forever. Geoff could hear footsteps approaching along the longer alleyway. His breathing was fast but not too loud, and taking out his mobile, he typed in a four-letter word and quickly pressed send. Geoff withdrew into the shadows. Brains were about to trounce brawn, just as predicted. As he watched from the darkness he saw his rival approaching, a mere bobbing silhouette at first, and then in full. Max pulled up short beneath a streetlamp and looked down into his phone screen. Max stabbed at the keypad with his thumb, looking perplexed. Message received, Geoff grinned. Right at that moment Max was staring at the one-word message Geoff had texted to him: wait Max turned to stare hard into the darkened mouth of the alleyway, his body language betraying perplexity and exasperation. Geoff stepped forward, his comfortable shoes silent as he put down each foot with exaggerated care. ‘Claire?’ Max called into the darkness. Geoff stared at Max’s back and felt the hatred rise in him once more. He could sense the confidence, the arrogance, the presumptuousness of the other man, and the blood was expanding through his veins as if it were literally boiling. He took another slow step forward, then another, closing the distance between them. The final squeeze of the trigger, he knew, would be hearing this usurper use Claire’s name again. When he did just that, a second later, the trigger was pulled.

That trigger was fear; the gun, his wrath. ‘Claire, is that you?’ What he did next was his silver bullet. Geoff raised his right arm high above the other man’s head. The raised arm was unexpectedly heavy, though, and to his surprise he saw he had something square and solid clutched in that hand. He stared at the arm as if it belonged to someone else, a guardian angel. He sucked in a mouthful of damp air at the sight of the alien object’s dulled symmetry. Where had that come from? Geoff swallowed hard, the effort making an audible click in his throat. Max spun round at the sound. His eyes widened at the sight of the arm wavering high above his head and the wild-eyed, red-faced man below, but did nothing to defend himself. Max was opening his mouth to speak: ‘Who the hell are you?’ perhaps. But Geoff had recognised his opportunity and seized it urgently. ‘Her husband,’ Geoff growled, and with all his fury he sent the broken half-brick crashing down into Max’s face, burying it deep into that lying, deceitful mouth, splitting both lips and knocking out teeth instantaneously; like God unleashing His reprisal upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

Chapter Fifteen

Claire opened the curtains on the first morning of the new weekend, allowing a dart of sunlight to bull’s-eye Geoff straight in the face. Just before he squeezed his eyes shut, Geoff caught a glimpse of his clothes scattered across the floor. Though no memories of the previous evening were forthcoming, he felt strangely relieved to recognise the bedroom as his own. ‘For God’s sake!’ he moaned, pulling the duvet over his aching head. He heard soft footfalls accompanied by a sigh and peeked out to see Claire standing at the foot of the bed. Her face looked imive, but her body would not keep still. She looked like someone queuing outside a toilet cubicle. ‘Geoff?’ The voice sounded shrill but dry, like a harmonica with sand in it. ‘Geoff!’ At least the window didn’t have bars on it. But why should it? The thought made his heart beat a little bit faster. ‘Shut the bloody curtains, will you?’ ‘It’s nearly one.’ ‘Yer? Well, I feel about sixty, so let me be.’ In truth, it was more like seventy. He heard her moving round the bed, heard her pulling at the curtains again. He felt a stronger warmth fall on the hand that clutched the duvet cover. She meant business. This was not going to be an argument about leaving the toilet seat down. ‘We need to talk, Geoff.’ Oh, yer! ‘And I need to sleep.’ ‘I’m not surprised.’ ‘Seriously, Claire, I need a lie in.’ ‘You’ve had one: all morning.’

‘A need a longer one, then.’ She ignored him. ‘What happened to you last night?’ You tell me, he wanted to say. But even as he thought that, vague images and sounds started filtering back into his consciousness from the depths of his brain. ‘I’ve never seen you drink that much.’ He could feel the sun on his bare hand, making it itch. ‘Ever.’ That explained the pains in his head, the aching in his lower back and the taste of envelope gum in his mouth. He ran his tongue across his lips and felt several cracks. ‘I don’t feel sick,’ he croaked defiantly, peeking out from under the duvet through narrowed eyes. That was the usual consequence of his drinking too much. ‘Not anymore you don’t.’ Claire had folded her arms beneath her bust. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ ‘You threw up five times, Geoff. Five times!’ she repeated. Shit! ‘Well, I’m all right now. So leave me alone for another hour, for pity’s sake.’ Claire turned away, looking towards the daylight streaming through the window. She was embarrassed, Geoff realised. No. It was worse than that. She looked ashamed of him. ‘Not to mention,’ she struggled to say, ‘the other.’ His eyes darted back to the clothes scattered across the floor. No underpants. Shit! Geoff pulled the duvet back over his head with a low moan. ‘You’re not serious?’ ‘Oh, yes!’

To his surprise, Claire dragged the duvet down again, exposing him almost to the waist. He covered his face with both hands. It had nothing to do with the sunlight. ‘Claire, I’m sorry.’ ‘Not yet, you’re not. First you have to hear everything there is to be sorry for.’ Could anything she told him now be worse? ‘Like what?’ ‘Like trying to start a fight,’ she exclaimed. ‘No, sorry. Let me get my facts right. Actually, it was two fights. Thank God everyone had decided you were too much of a dickhead to take the bait. I hardly recognised you. One minute, crying and shouting; the next, throwing insults around at random. I doubt your mate Dave will ever talk to you again. In the end I had to run back here for the car and drive you home.’ Geoff pulled his hands away at last. ‘You haven’t ed your test.’ ‘I know,’ she said, suddenly close to tears. ‘What if I’d been stopped?’ Despite his throbbing head and the feeling that he was about to throw up for a sixth time just to prove a point, Geoff dragged himself up onto a pillow and stared at his wife through painfully squinting eyes. In his mind he saw a crumbling red half-brick in his hand, but could not imagine how that might have ended up in the pub. The pub? He must have gone back again afterwards. After what, though? ‘Tell me what happened,’ he implored, against his better judgement. ‘We were in the pub,’ she began. ‘No, no. Before that, Claire. Trust me, the whole evening’s a blank.’ A look of disgust ed over her face. ‘You came home at half-past eight from Dave’s, changed your clothes and dragged me outside without saying anything. that? I couldn’t get any sense out of you. You looked like you were

lost in some bad acid trip. What was that expression Mum used to use? That’s it,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Away with the fairies! And then when we got to the George…’ The pub. The George. Back to the George. But back to the George from where? Certainly not Dave’s. If he’d tried to make any sort of joke, Claire really would have burst into tears. ‘I’d best steer clear from there for a while,’ he said sheepishly. ‘You’ve got that right. The landlord’s barred you.’ ‘Barred me? For what?’ But he knew he could have easily guessed as soon as the question left his mouth. ‘You threw a punch at him, Geoff! A man with a heart condition, and you tried to thump him. A couple of other punters had to drag you away, and then you spewed right over them.’ Tears rolled down Claire’s cheeks. ‘Deliberately, for God’s sake!’ The sun had moved across the window an inch. Geoff squeezed his eyelids tight, partly as a respite from the glaring winter sunshine, but mainly in shame. When he opened them again Claire was waiting for him. ‘And the whole time you were laughing your head off. It was like watching a man!’ Geoff’s brain slowly wound itself up into a quasi-thinking state. He let the words fall from his mouth, knowing he should self-censor, but finding the effort involved too onerous. ‘Then you took me home?’ ‘Eventually, with Dave’s help. That’s when you tried to hit him.’ Because he was about blow his decorating alibi? Probably. Geoff opened his mouth and knew he would regret what came out next. ‘Doesn’t Dave drive?’

Claire’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t try to blame Dave, you arrogant sod! He’d been drinking himself.’ She still doesn’t know, a cunning voice whispered through the pains in his head. ‘Though not in your league,’ Claire continued. She doesn’t know you’ve been sending Max messages. She doesn’t know you’ve been pretending to be her for days, the voice persisted, unperturbed. That’s not what she’s mad about. ‘Don’t you anything?’ Not really, and even when I do there’ll be large parts of the evening I won’t want to share with anyone, ever. Someone had once said, jokingly, that talking to yourself wasn’t a sign of mental illness until you started answering yourself back. ‘I hope that’s not true,’ he muttered, before he could stop himself. ‘Of course it’s true!’ Claire shouted. ‘Do you think I’m making this stuff up?’ ‘I know, I know,’ he said contritely. ‘Sorry.’ Worm! the voice laughed sardonically. He became aware of a lump in his throat as heavy as a brick and a burning sensation in his stomach. Instinctively he knew he had done something a lot worse than throwing up and trying to clout Dave; much worse. The question was, of course, how much worse? ‘Claire,’ he asked solemnly. ‘Did I try to hurt you?’ Claire turned away, breathing heavily and dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her top. ‘No,’ she managed to whimper. ‘But you said things.’ ‘Things?’ he repeated. About her phone? About her secret second life? No, apparently not. But he sensed that everything was about to come back to him,

and that when it did it would feel just like waterboarding. ‘What things?’ ‘I don’t know. It’s like I said, you were away with the fairies. You kept on and on about love and commitment and how the best things in life had to be fought for. I didn’t understand any of it.’ That proves it, then, the voice chipped in. She really doesn’t know a God-damned thing. Amen to that, Geoff thought. That was when he had his first clear memory of following Max out into the car park with adrenaline rushing through his veins and resolute intent throbbing in his brain. ‘Have you got nothing to say to me?’ Claire sobbed. ‘You used language straight out of the gutter.’ ‘Claire, I,’ he began. He saw himself running down a deserted street, desperate to get somewhere before someone else got there first. Max. ‘Did you and Dave have some kind of bust-up at his place earlier?’ ‘No,’ he sighed. Not with Dave. He’d won a battle, he knew; now his memory was about to show him how. ‘Oh, Claire.’ He looked at the palm of his right hand and noticed how red and frayed the skin there seemed. ‘I really am truly sorry.’ Now it was Claire’s turn to bury her head in her hands. The clouds across his memory parted finally, images hurrying through his mind of events in the George from seven o’clock onwards. There he was following Max across the pub’s car park; and then using the short cut to make sure he could intercept Max before he reached the flat. This flat, right here. Max had

been coming here, to their home, coming for his wife. He had to stop him, he knew, at any cost. And Geoff had stopped him. But that was where the memories dried up momentarily. ‘You scared me,’ Claire managed to say. How did I stop him? Again he saw the half brick clutched in his right hand. Only this time he was not in the pub, but somewhere dark and isolated. There was someone else there, someone with their back to Geoff; someone who had it coming to them. Geoff felt panic dance round his skull and closed his eyes tightly until the feelings subsided a little, grateful that he was still lying down. He opened them again when he felt Claire sit on the edge of the bed, just out of reach. ‘This has been coming for a while,’ she sniffed. ‘I know that.’ Had it? ‘You’ve not been yourself for months, Geoff. You’re so, I don’t know,’ she struggled. ‘So absent. What is it? Is it this baby thing?’ He looked away from her, feeling sharp claws grabbing at his heart. ‘You never talk about it. How can we move on if you won’t tell me how you’re feeling?’ Months, she had said. Was that true? He recalled Mark Whiting asking him if he was all right? Not just this week, though, but since Christmas, and often. And Dave, always asking if he wanted to talk, that he could talk to Dave and that Dave would listen, any time he needed to. Was that what had prompted him to take a swing at his friend, Dave asking yet again if he was all right, if he needed to talk? ‘Claire, I can’t tell you how wretched I feel,’ he said, and as if those words were the consent she had been waiting for, Claire threw herself into his arms. But suddenly he needed the solace as much as she did, and the realisation felt as much like a threat than a comfort.

She clung to him like a frightened lamb cowering between its mother’s legs in a children’s picture book. None of this made sense. Claire really was in the dark about him and Max exchanging messages. But when he recalled Max’s reaction to the phone call he’d received in the pub, the conclusion could only have been that it was Claire on the other end. Max was marching in the direction of their flat, too. Geoff needed to think this through carefully, but having Claire in this state, as well as the mother of all hangovers, made it impossible to concentrate. Again the image of a brick held aloft beneath a streetlamp on a cold winter’s night flashed into his mind. However intent Max had been to get to their flat, one thing was true: he hadn’t made it. Tears were stinging his eyes now, too; catching him by surprise. At least it helped convince Claire that his remorse was genuine. But he should be relieved, if anything. Max was out of the equation. That particular threat was neutralised. So why did he still feel vulnerable? ‘I’m going to sort this out,’ he told her resolutely, staring deep into her shining eyes. She shook her head. ‘What’s wrong, Geoff? Talk to me!’ My God, could he really believe that she knew nothing? How can you go on pretending? he thought. You must know. Unless this pretence at ignorance was the only way they could move on together? Maybe this new game was the lesser of two evils. ‘Claire, what happened last night will never happen again. I swear.’ And he heard himself lapse into a hollow stream of excuses about work stress and health issues and money worries; not all of it designed to throw a blanket over Claire’s suspicions about him, but also to convince himself that the cause of his own doubts about her was removed. It was like watching a man, she’d said. ‘It won’t happen again,’ he heard himself declare for a second time. ‘No!’ a dark voice suddenly shouted in his head: ‘Not if you’ve killed the poor sod!’

He choked violently. Claire settled back into his chest for a fresh outburst of tears that quickly soaked into his tee shirt and started to soften the bitterness in his heart. It was why he didn’t mind those lightweight rom coms she liked, because it meant he could take a tissue and wipe her tears away. It was what he was good at. Not fun. Not sexy. Just there. Mr. Nice saves the day. But Max had been having an affair with Claire, he couldn’t forget that. The texts he had received back from Max left no doubt of that in his mind. Geoff shuddered. Pretty soon the body (yes, the body) would be discovered, if it hadn’t been already. Could he be certain that Max was dead? If someone had died, then surely there would be police everywhere. So maybe he was still alive, after all, recovering in a hospital bed somewhere. And what could he say when he regained consciousness anyway? In that split second, could he have got that much of a good look at Geoff’s fury-contorted face? Another brief image from yesterday evening flashed through Geoff’s mind, but this time immediately after the attack on Max: he saw his own hand reaching down towards the crumpled body, and then the image was gone. But he had seen what his mind wanted him to see. He had to get to the jacket he was wearing last night. ‘Claire,’ he said firmly. ‘Run me a bath, will you? And make a cafetière of that Brazilian coffee we’ve got. I need to sort myself out.’ ‘Sure,’ she half-smiled, reassured by his decisiveness. As soon as she had left the room, Geoff staggered out of bed. The room tipped fiercely from right to left and back again, but he forced himself out into the hall. He heard Claire getting his bath ready. This time he needed a long soak. His scrotum was stuck to the side of his leg and his penis ached like he’d been doing press-ups with it. Had they had sex last night? ‘Claire, did I try to hurt you?’ he asked the empty bedroom in a whisper. Shit, was there still more she wasn’t telling him about his meltdown? ‘Are you sure?’ He stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the three items he already knew were concealed there. Claire emerged from the bathroom just as he collapsed back onto the bed with a moan, his full hand darting beneath Claire’s

pillow. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard as the bed tipped around the room like a kite. ‘Oh, dear,’ Claire said, sympathetic at last. ‘I’ll get that coffee sorted.’ When she had gone, Geoff lifted her pillow to stare at what lay beneath. He ignored his own ‘secret phone’ and stared at the two foreign objects now in his possession: someone else’s wallet and another mobile phone he didn’t recognise at first. The word ‘trophies’ sprang to mind, because that was what some killers took from their victims. But Geoff’s motive for taking these items was far more practical, he understood now. He didn’t need to examine either one closely to know exactly who they belonged to.

Chapter Sixteen

Getting himself into any sort of condition to walk out the front door was a painfully slow process. Claire didn’t even ask if they were walking. By the time they parked the car in town it was nearly four o’clock, and the light was bleeding down towards the horizon. Any sudden movement on his part sparked rebellion in some corner of his body, and it felt like he’d left several vital organs back at the flat. He had been loath to suggest that Claire go alone, though. Whatever she was chewing over would not be easily swallowed, and he guessed that another wrong move on his part would mean that the thing she chewed on next would be him. He bought Claire a new charger straight off. There was no point in trying to postpone the inevitable now. ‘At last,’ she said, clutching the plastic casing to her chest as if her life depended on it. Geoff had spent what felt like most of that week trying to delay this moment. It hardly mattered now, of course. Geoff put on his best man-flu face and Claire suggested he sit in a café whilst she continued shopping. ‘You look like something you brought up last night,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’ ‘I won’t be too long.’ There was no kiss. Something told him Claire was going on a spending spree; partly as therapy, but also to punish him for last night’s performance. He couldn’t face being back in the patisserie, so he found a broad leather armchair in one of the big coffee chains and crashed there with a mint tea and a paper. Surrounded by mugs and muffins reminded him of the patisserie, anyway. Seven days. That was all it had taken to turn a molehill into the mound of a freshly filled grave. Well, eventually. He thought back to what Claire had told him in the bedroom at lunchtime. Months, she had said. Apparently, he’d been ‘absent’ for months. What the hell was that supposed to mean? And how long had that sordid affair been running for? Months, too, no doubt. So, was she implying that it was his fault? She could

have given him a bit more time to sort himself out before trying to trade him in. Geoff sipped at his herbal tea and grimaced. You knew you were in a bad way when your body demanded this hippy shit. But if he tried anything with milk, he’d start chucking up again, for sure. Apart from the big chair, he’d chosen this store because he knew they had a charging facility for mobile phones. He could always get a charger for the mobile he’d taken from Max last night if he needed to (From his lifeless body, an idle thought reminded him), though he might be wiser throwing it in a river. Under the circumstances, it certainly wouldn’t be wise to keep this newly acquired mobile in the flat. And what if Claire found the wallet by chance and thrust it into his face, screaming ‘Where’s the rest of him?’ Geoff let out a loud snigger, quickly disguising the noise by pretending to blow on his hot drink. A couple of girls at a nearby table looked up like deer momentarily startled by a snapping branch, then resumed their conversation. ‘You scared me,’ Claire had said. Because I’m a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he thought. Geoff had promised to watch a film with Claire tonight, her choice, but all he really wanted to do was climb straight back into bed and make everything keep still. He swallowed another couple of painkillers, even though he was way over the recommended dose already. So long as he avoided alcohol it should be OK; and going anywhere near the stuff wasn’t something he planned to do for a very long time. He let his hand fall on his left-hand jacket pocket. Inside was Max’s wallet. It gave him a feeling of potency knowing that he had it and Max didn’t. Dare he look at it now? It would surely be riskier trying it at home, where the temptation might force him into carelessness. But then again, he’d always checked her phone, her handbag, and bank statements, and all without getting caught there. What made this wallet so different? Again he felt the urge to laugh out loud but suppressed it by holding his breath. Dizziness enveloped him quickly, immobilising the threat of hysteria, but causing the table legs to apparently start walking by themselves. Geoff turned his back on the two chattering girls, and there was no one else close enough to see what he was doing. Not that there was anything suspicious in a man looking in his wallet. He told himself not to be so paranoid, and carefully

released the brass poppers on his jacket pocket. It wasn’t as if the wallet had blood on it. Or did it? He quickly checked, but there was nothing. He let the wallet rest in his lap, just below the table’s edge. Who would guess that one their fellow Saturday shoppers held an item of evidence from a murder scene in broad daylight? The thought gave him a thrill. The wallet was black, not very worn yet, maybe under a year old. A present from someone? Was he married? Were there kids? The answers might well be inside. He pulled on the retaining fastener and opened the wallet out. There were no personal photographs on display, which was something of a relief; he didn’t want to think there might be a tearful wife filing a missing person’s report or kids asking anxiously where daddy was. Max had brought this on himself, mind; if his family knew what he’d been up to, what he’d been planning, they might not be quite so eager to find him. There was a collection of plastic cards in one section, the top-most one bearing the name Enfield Public Library. Not a local man, then. But that wasn’t important. What held his attention was the name. He flicked through the cards again. Store cards, loyalty cards, debit and credit cards: all in the same name. Bates. Now he had the surname, too. But what sent another wave of dizziness rolling up through his head was the Christian name: Peter. Not Max, after all. Peter was a liar, Claire; he even lied about his name. He closed his eyes and smiled. It’s always been me that really loves you. Haven’t you realised that yet? ‘Hi,’ Claire’s voice cut through his thoughts. Geoff saw her striding towards his table and shoved the cards back inside the wallet. He snapped the fastener closed, but too quickly and the wallet slipped from his fingers onto the floor. Instinctively he covered it with his foot. Had she heard it hit the carpet? ‘Someone looks better,’ she said. Apparently not. He started to breathe again, but the dead man’s wallet was still beneath his shoe. ‘Although you do seem a bit jumpy.’ Did she know something?

‘Perhaps it’s guilt?’ Was she mocking him? ‘You’ll certainly jump when you see the landlord of the George again.’ But that was the least of his worries. ‘I’m starting to feel human again. Thanks.’ Claire sat next to him, sighed and took a sip from his cup. No shopping bags, he noticed. ‘Find what you were looking for?’ He ed the teenage shop assistant asking him that very same question exactly one week before, and the nauseating sense of deja vu made him clutch at the fabric of his tros beneath the table. ‘Couldn’t decide,’ she said, taking another sip. ‘Shall I get you one?’ ‘I had a takeout earlier,’ she said. ‘You are feeling better, then?’ Geoff didn’t know how he felt, physically or mentally. ‘I think my appetite’s returning.’ ‘That must be a good sign.’ She looked at him with a stone face. ‘Welcome back to the Human Race.’ She was still digging at him, still kicking him when he was down. His weariness of her anger was starting to give way to resentment. He decided he felt well enough to have a subtle dig back. ‘So, you didn’t see anything you fancied?’ ‘Plenty, but I’m not in the mood.’ Geoff thought of another riposte to hurl, but he was too exhausted to play the game into its second minute.

‘Let’s go home.’ If we can still call it that, he pondered. Claire was back on her feet. Doubtless she wanted to get her phone charged so she could call her beloved Max. It was noteworthy that she hadn’t bothered using the recharging point here, he concluded. She obviously wanted to view her phone’s hidden content in private. Speaking of which, Geoff realised to the tune of his rumbling stomach, he couldn’t just walk out, not with Max’s phone still recharging nearby. He just wanted to stand up and lurch home; but he also had a dead man’s wallet under his shoe. For a second Geoff felt sure he was going to vomit again, and forced his eyes shut until the feeling began to subside. ‘Shall I get your mobile?’ Geoff’s eyes snapped open in time to see Claire’s hand reaching across the table for the key fob to the charging box that lay next to his twin handled cup. He slammed his palm down over it, loud enough for several people to look up. ‘Geoff!’ He looked straight into her eyes, desperately trying to think of an excuse to get her out of the way. He put on the best smile he could manage. ‘You’re right: I am jumpy.’ ‘You really are a very funny colour again,’ she said. ‘Yes. I think I need to go home right now,’ he moaned. ‘Quit while I’m ahead.’ They looked at each other for several more seconds, as if both had forgotten who they were talking to. This wasn’t the first time they had acted like strangers since Christmas. But then Christmas itself had been something of an anti-climax. ‘Honestly, Geoff,’ she sighed. ‘You’re such an idiot! Drinking like a teenager. Whatever next?’ Claire’s face broke out into a far from genuine smile. How about having an affair?

‘I’ll sort myself out while you pop to the loo.’ If only it were that simple, her parting look seemed to say. Geoff stared at the key fob now safely in his hand. The relief was like taking all the analgesics he had already taken that day at once. He waited until she disappeared around the corner before reaching down for the wallet, checking that nothing had fallen out. He slipped it back into his jacket pocket and headed for the charging station. He opened his locker, took out the phone and secreted that in a jacket pocket, too. Returning to his table, he finished what was left of his socalled tea; realising, as it hit his delicate stomach, that something herbal was the best thing he could have chosen, since he was bound to be dehydrated by the alcohol binge. Maybe they could indulge in something else herbal when they got back home. It might be the only thing to calm them both down in the absence of sex or booze. Geoff looked up to see Claire returning from the Ladies. She was staring hard, her face a mask, scrutinising him closely. Maybe he’d best turn completely teetotal instead. He tried to placate her with a boyish smile, but she was already turning for the exit. Maybe become vegan, too, he thought. I’m already a monk. He followed her out into the car park on legs that felt like he’d borrowed them from someone else, a marathon runner presumably, and wondered when he could risk taking more paracetamol. ‘Wait up, Claire!’ She slowed but didn’t stop. It doesn’t matter how long you charge that phone for, darling, he thought, he’s never going to you again unless I let him. ‘Yes,’ he gasped into the cold dank air. ‘Because from now on, I am Max.’

Chapter Seventeen

Drowsy was not the word. Geoff had spent Saturday evening propped up on the sofa like an elderly relative, having increased his overdose of analgesics by another four tablets. The only thing he could eat was toast and what film they’d watched was anyone’s guess. He’d crashed at ten o’clock and slept nearly twelve hours. Even then Geoff still felt far from well the next morning, but he was keen to examine the stolen mobile phone he had stashed in the boot of his car after Saturday afternoon’s trip into town. He now had three mobiles at his disposal, he realised, which was not only ridiculous but potentially confusing. He decided he’d leave the ‘secret’ second mobile he’d used to communicate with Max switched off in a drawer at work on Monday; take the SIM out and stash that, too. Max’s own phone could stay in the car boot after he’d checked it out properly. That would mean the only mobile phone on his person would be his. Nothing to incriminate him if he got stopped by the police, he reassured himself. I mean, me. Sunday was the brighter of the two days that weekend, but the glare hurt his eyes. At least he’d devoured the Sunday breakfast this time round and felt certain he could have repeated the process straight afterwards. He was ravenous, and not just for food. Claire was a little more approachable after Saturday’s standoff, but not to that extent. No change there, then, he brooded. His head felt hollowed out, as if someone had sliced the top of his head off and spooned the contents out, but at least it no longer hurt. The rise in blood sugars made it easier to walk about without constantly feeling dizzy. Now what he needed to do was get back into his normal pattern of living, and what better way than to clean the car on a Sunday morning? It might give him some uninterrupted thinking time, too; though how he hoped to explain away his behaviour of Friday night to people who were there was something else. And explaining it to the police would be harder still, especially if someone had been put into hospital by a maniac on the same night he’d gone berserk in the George.

If anyone out that night had looked capable of assaulting a stranger, it was Geoff; and there was a pub full of witnesses to corroborate it. Ironic, then, that his lunatic behaviour had occurred after the attack. That might swing things in his favour, if only circumstantially, he hoped. But the bottom line was that he had no alibi that would coincide with the time of the attack, for the simple reason that he was the real attacker. The question arose again of whether Max could identify him based on the brief glimpse he’d had of Geoff under a streetlamp. He caught sight of a slither of memory, his full hand swinging down into Max’s face. Then there was darkness, but from within it came a sound like a watermelon hitting the ground after a long fall. Not anymore, hinted a dark voice in his head. He soaped the roof first and used a supersized sponge to slosh the suds around half-heartedly. Someone was watching him, he was sure, but he dare not look up from the car. The sight of anyone in uniform, even a traffic warden, would have made him scream. He was just rinsing off when his neighbour, Eddy finally wandered over. Geoff’s anxiety swiftly changed to relief. Eddy had taken early retirement because of a heart condition diagnosed just before he turned sixty. ‘I’ve worked thirty years in insurance, and my heart’s no longer in it,’ he liked to joke. Since retirement, Eddy had enjoyed a new lease of life, and, with a decent company pension and his mortgage paid off, he seemed to be having the last laugh. ‘You might still make retirement age, at this rate, Eddy,’ Geoff often quipped back. His life expectancy certainly seemed more positive than Ted’s from work. ‘Spring’s around the corner, I do believe, Geoff.’ With the sun enjoying a cloud-free monopoly of February sky, it was hard to argue otherwise. His neighbour’s cheerful optimism was genuine and brought a cautious smile to Geoff’s lips. He’d always liked Eddy. ‘Hi, Ed.’ He was thankful the boot was closed, though. Most blokes didn’t bother with that part of the car, anyway; resulting in car boots that resembled miniature garages inside. But it suddenly felt very important not to let anyone else be the judge of that.

Not because of his phone, though, the dark voice teased. Geoff’s eyes flicked briefly to the closed boot lid. No. Not because of his phone. Something else. ‘You know, there’s always been something I’ve wanted to ask you, Geoff.’ His neighbour was something of a comedian, so Geoff readied himself to fake laughter. ‘Oh, really?’ Eddy slowly circled the dripping car, pretending to scrutinize it in detail. It was a cliché that all insurers were desperate to find a reason not to pay out. Despite the impending gag, Eddy looked like a seasoned pro adept at doing just that. Maybe he even had a sixth sense for fishy business. That thought killed Geoff’s smile. ‘Yes,’ said Eddy, stopping with his shins mere inches from the car’s rear number plate. He clasped his hands behind his back and bopped down at the knee several times in a caricature of a bobby on the beat. ‘This vehicle, sir,’ he said sombrely. ‘Is it ed to you or your sister?’ ‘Sod off, Eddy,’ Geoff laughed loudly. It was the first time he’d had a laugh with someone all week. It felt good, if slightly alien. ‘We both know it’s nicked.’ ‘For God’s sake, man, trade it in for something a bit less sensible. There’s just you and Claire to think about. I mean, you only live once.’ ‘Ed, are you sure you worked in insurance?’ ‘I think my customers appreciated me more than my employers, if that’s what you mean,’ Eddy laughed. Geoff turned away to give the bodywork another rinse. He never bothered to chamois off. You only lived once. At least Eddy was a man who practiced what he preached. Last year he’d started learning to fly, Geoff ed, grasping the opportunity to change the subject. ‘How are the lessons going?’ ‘Up and down,’ Eddy grinned. ‘It’s too bloody cold up there this time of year,

mind. I’ll start up again in a month or so.’ ‘You wouldn’t want your bearings to freeze.’ ‘It’s certainly not the best place to stall an engine, that’s true.’ Geoff was surprised the instructor had not taken exception to Eddy’s heart condition. Presumably a reassuring letter from his G.P. had put that concern to bed; or maybe just a letter that appeared to be from Eddy’s doctor? Doubtless, he would know how to word such a letter convincingly. God, was there anyone whose motives he didn’t suspect? He forced himself to sound blithe in the hope that it might lighten his mood in earnest: ‘Do they really still give new pilots wings, or was that just in the Battle of Britain?’ ‘You’d have to ask my father that one,’ Eddy said. ‘My arrival in the world was a result of his extensive celebrations after we’d won.’ Mercifully, Geoff could feel the tension flushing from his muscles again, like coming into a sock in front of Baywatch. ‘It’s no joke, though, Geoff. You should try something different while you’re still young.’ Drinking like a teenager, for instance? he wondered. And then taking a pop at someone? Several someones, according to Claire. ‘I mean, look what happened to that poor copper Friday night.’ Geoff let water from his hose douse his right foot as his heart seemed to stop mid-beat. Now his sock really would be soaked. ‘Friday night?’ Head swimming, he redirected the water back onto his car roof for the third time. ‘What was that, then?’ ‘You didn’t hear?’

He had a sudden urge to collapse against the side of car. ‘Only happened a stone’s throw away from here,’ Eddy continued with gusto. ‘A stone’s throw?’ Geoff’s mouth repeated. No. Something heavier. ‘Didn’t you see all the vans and squad cars Saturday morning?’ Over the sound of running water he thought he heard the sound of an exploding watermelon again. ‘I wasn’t feeling too good yesterday.’ ‘Could have easily been one of us.’ ‘What?’ Geoff snapped. ‘You know: wrong place, wrong time?’ ‘Oh, right,’ Geoff grunted, nearly choking on his own relief. ‘So where did it happen exactly?’ ‘Other end of our very road, can you believe?’ ‘Up near the garages,’ Geoff finished, clutching at a snippet of memory. ‘So, you did hear?’ Shit, Geoff cursed himself. ‘A copper, you say?’ ‘Yes,’ Eddy said, lowering his voice. ‘This is all hush-hush, you understand? He was in a coma for a couple of nights but slipped away in the early hours of this morning. I know someone who’s a porter up at the hospital, a friend of the wife’s. There was nothing anyone could do. It was a miracle he didn’t die at the scene. Someone didn’t half clobber him one.’ Didn’t they just.

‘You can’t get near the crime scene. It’s cordoned off with those police Do Not Cross tapes.’ ‘It’s a cul-de-sac,’ Geoff chipped in, again against his better judgement. Both ends were dead ends, in fact. Another road connected them to the main road about halfway around, effectively creating two cul-de-sacs, though they shared a single name. So, Max could have been heading somewhere other than their flat, after all; just using a convenient short cut. Geoff gulped down air as if it were something he’d never tried before. His father had been an avid crossword-puzzler, sometimes spending whole evenings chewing a pencil with brow furrowed. Cul-de-sac could also mean a situation in which further progress was impossible. Thanks Dad. At the time, Geoff had hated his father’s newspapers, but in hindsight he recognised it as an opportunity spurned, given his own love of television quiz shows. It could have been a way to finally connect with the old man and gain his approval, something Geoff always longed for, right up to the moment of the old man’s death. What word means killing in circumstances other than murder? Manslaughter. ‘There’s a short cut into town that way,’ Eddy said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Is there?’ Geoff said flatly. ‘Shows how often I go there.’ He doubted he’d ever go there again after Friday night. He was surprised the news hadn’t reached him or Claire earlier, but maybe the police were trying to keep the ‘incident’ out of the media whilst the officer was still fighting for his life. Oh, shit, a copper! ‘They’ll be asking questions house to house, I’d have thought,’ Eddy said cheerfully. ‘Now he’s dead.’ ‘When?’ Geoff snapped. Deader than a dead end. He suddenly felt sick again.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Eddy replied, a little taken aback by Geoff’s tone. ‘But someone must have seen or heard something. Stands to reason.’ Geoff directed the water onto his bonnet next. So, he was a copper. Big deal. What difference could that make? Quite a lot if you’re his colleagues. The Old Bill took the killing of one of their own as seriously as killing a child. If his neighbour hadn’t been standing there talking to him, Geoff knew he would simply have dropped his hose and run inside to hide. ‘So, what happened? Do they know?’ ‘Well, apparently he was off duty. They think it was a mugging that went wrong.’ ‘How do you know he was off duty?’ Eddy raised an eyebrow. His porter friend, Mr. Big Ears again, presumably. ‘Anyway, like I said, someone clobbered him with something heavy.’ Were porters allowed to wander wherever they wanted in a hospital and then blab about whatever they overheard to the general public? Whatever happened to confidentially? Something heavy, the words echoed in his mind. There was something heavy in Geoff’s stomach now, and it was starting to move up his gullet. What was it that he saw in his hand when he thought back to that night? There was something there, for sure. He hadn’t just punched Max in the face with his fist. He’d really bashed him one. A sudden smell of cement and dirt wafted through his nostrils. ‘They couldn’t find the murder weapon, whatever it was,’ Eddy was explaining. ‘Forensics are still working on it.’ ‘Forensics?’ ‘Literally it means ‘used in court’.’ One across, two down, Geoff thought, smothering an urge to scream.

‘Oh, yes,’ Eddy declared, in the manner of a university lecturer. ‘The science of detection, fascinating subject. It’s like a team of Sherlock clones combing every centimetre of ground. Imagine that.’ Geoff felt a spasm of annoyance. ‘Imagine.’ This was all pure speculation on Eddy’s part, of course; but it was still the kind of exaggerated tittle-tattle that ended up on the front pages, eventually. Would Eddy risk getting his hospital source sacked just to get his own name in print? Of course he would. ‘Almost sounds as if you were there, Eddy.’ Eddy looked momentarily flustered. Geoff ed how his neighbour was an avid fan of screen crime dramas. He collected the box sets as soon as they were released. How excited he would be, then, if Geoff told him that most of his suppositions about this real-life case were spot on, that Geoff was that most reliable source of all: the murderer himself. A bubble of acid erupted at the back of his throat. ‘Luckily, I have an alibi,’ Eddy declared. ‘I was at the flying club AGM with Jane. Your Honour,’ he added with a wink. Geoff moved down to a wheel arch. ‘How about you, Mr. Madely?’ ‘Pub.’ And there were plenty of witnesses, before you ask! Eddy carried on with yet more deductions about what might or might not have happened. He expounded on what forensics would be looking for, how assailants often overlooked vital evidence because they didn’t realise what could and could not incriminate them in court. Funny how caught and court sounded so alike, he thought without warning. Another bubble of acid rose from his stomach. ‘Take footprints,’ Eddy enthused. ‘In many cases they can be as useful as fingerprints.’

But Geoff had zoned out. A question started swirling around his brain, demanding an answer: was it just the uniform? Like with the American GI’s during the war, was that the sum of Max’s appeal for Claire? No, wives were abandoned during the war, left to struggle alone under curfew and rations on the Home Front. Most British hubbies were hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away, fighting. ‘You’re so, I don’t know,’ Claire had said. ‘So absent.’ ‘Listen, Eddy, I’d better switch this thing off,’ he said, a little brusquely. ‘Oh, yes,’ Eddy replied, deflated that he had been interrupted mid-Sherlock. Geoff headed abruptly towards the flats. He hated being rude to Eddy, but the urge to scream was making his ears sing. Suddenly it was like Saturday afternoon all over again, his body wracked with pain, his mind in turmoil. ‘Be seeing you, Geoff. My love to Claire.’ Claire? Damn it! He still hadn’t had a chance to check Max’s phone, though he knew Claire would have tried to him by now using hers. Was there any point in looking, really? He could guess what betrayals he’d find from his wife there: where r u? please call back I need u Or some other stomach-churning sentiments along similar lines. As he watched Eddy disappear through his back gate, the full impact of what he had told Geoff finally sunk home. Max was dead. Max was a copper. And he, Geoffrey Madely had killed him. Geoff kept repeating these facts to himself, forcing them back the way he had to force the bile back down into his stomach every few minutes. He followed the

hose around the building to the outside tap like a detective following a trail of blood. He had no qualms about speaking to the police on his own , but what if the police showed Claire a picture of the victim? What a way for her to find out. She would go to pieces on the spot, and people in that state could say anything about anybody. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that Claire was the one thing that connected him to the murder victim through all those text messages. But now he had both phones, of course. Better to throw them into the river. But maybe not the same river, and certainly not in the same spot. His oesophagus was burning. He’d have to take something for it when he got back upstairs: antacids, more analgesics, a gallon of herbal tea. He couldn’t stop the worry, though. There was nothing he could take for that. Claire was his motive and his defence. If she didn’t vouch for his whereabouts that night, he was done for. Dave wouldn’t cover for him. Hell, Dave might even suspect, if Geoff asked him to vouch for him. And besides, once Claire put two and two together, there was no doubt in Geoff’s mind how she would react. As he reeled up his hose, the logical conclusion refused to be suppressed any longer: if he wanted to keep himself out of the spotlight, he would have to find a way of keeping Claire quiet. He recalled the fantasy he’d had in his parked car on Tuesday evening; how he had been returned to the here and now by the sound of his steering wheel squeaking beneath his rhythmically clenching hands. He ed, too, the gratifying sensation of squeezing, squeezing, squeezing that accompanied his flight of fancy. Geoff had to pinch himself hard to make it fade away.

Chapter Eighteen

As nonchalantly as he could, Geoff checked the road outside every few minutes for the next two hours. It didn’t help. Everything might have looked normal from the safety of his living room window, but of course it wasn’t. How could it be? Now that their colleague was dead the police would start banging on doors soon enough, just as Eddy had predicted. ‘Did you see or hear anything unusual on Friday evening?’ they would ask. ‘Well, officer, I did hear that Geoff Madely went berserk down at the George. Oh, there he is now, looking out of the window of his flat like some pervert.’ Then what would he do, take Claire hostage? Geoff went to the bathroom when he couldn’t hold his bladder any longer. The phone in the hall rang just as he flushed. ‘I’ll get it,’ he called, rushing back out. Claire was watching television from the comfort of her bed with the door closed. There was no danger of her stirring from her resting position, but the fact that she could have, the fact that she was in the flat with him when the phone rang was enough to make him feel vulnerable. He imagined her tied up on top of the duvet, trying to call for help through the gag in her mouth. ‘Let me speak to the Chief Constable or by God we’ll both be dead before you make it halfway up the stairs.’ In his imagination she was naked, too. ‘Yes, I’ve got a weapon, and I’m not afraid to use it!’ He tittered into his fist before picking up the handset. ‘Oh, Sheila. Hi,’ he answered softly. Now what? ‘Hold on a tick.’ Geoff moved into the living room with the handset and closed the door behind him before continuing. ‘Did you want to talk to Claire?’ he asked, still in a low voice. ‘No, Geoff,’ she began, her voice breaking constantly, high and low, like an adolescent boy. ‘It’s you I need to speak to.’

Was that what the police would say when he opened his front door next time? Sheila wants to talk to me? A little bell sounded in the back of his head: Monday lunchtime at the mother-in-law’s for a cosy tete-a-tete. Tomorrow, in other words. ‘I hadn’t forgotten, Sheila,’ he lied. ‘I’ll be there.’ Suddenly, not getting on with his mother-in-law felt like a good thing, the stuckup cow. He’d fallen in love with Claire not her relatives, so why couldn’t he just be married to her and the rest of them piss off? Not that there were that many relatives left on either side; Claire was an only child, and her father had buggered off years ago, leaving mother and daughter to cope alone. ‘Well, actually, I wondered if we might be able to bring it forward? Something’s happened.’ And before he had time to think what that something could be, or pretend to give a damn, she was bawling uncontrollably down the phone. Instinctively, he moved further away from Claire’s ears into the kitchen. On the way he cast a quick peek outside through the living room window. There was still nothing to see. It could only be a matter of time, though. ‘Sheila! Sheila! Calm down,’ he hushed. ‘What is it?’ With great difficulty his mother-in-law brought her sobbing under control. ‘I can’t say over the phone,’ she said with great difficulty. ‘Please say you can come around?’ ‘You mean now?’ Not now. Please not now! Geoff took another peek outside, before retreating into the kitchen. Maybe, the police would start their house calls first thing Monday morning. But then again, there was more chance of catching people at home at the weekends, especially this time of year. He had no idea what the procedure would be, especially given that this was no regular victim. It was the slaughter of one of their own, as he kept telling himself. But if all that were true, where were they? Seeing Sheila now would free him up tomorrow, of course, for he hadn’t ruled out suggesting

to Claire that they both call in sick and disappear for a couple of days. Marie’s bug would give them the perfect excuse, and Murphy’s s had only to be typed up by an office assistant. That would only delay the inevitable, though. The police would keep a record of any property that had failed to open its door. ‘Geoff?’ she snivelled again. He thought he could still hear the television droning away from the bedroom. He shut himself in the kitchen, making that three closed doors between them. Claire didn’t know who he was talking to, and probably didn’t care. Maybe this might be a good time to check on how Dave was doing with his decorating, then? Geoff got his hand over his mouth just in time and let the hysteria quake soundlessly through his body. ‘Geoff, are you still there?’ Sheila asked. He took a deep breath, composing himself as best he could. ‘If you’re sure this can’t wait?’ ‘No. I don’t think it can. I’ve let this go on for too long. Something has to be done.’ That quietened him instantly, the way putting his foot into an icy pothole would have done. ‘I’ll be around shortly, Sheila.’ ‘Thank you, Geoff,’ she snivelled. ‘Thank you.’ She lived close by, in another cul-de-sac a little further up along the main road into town. Had it been Claire’s decision to stay so close to the nest? At the time he was more impressed by the flat’s price and its location close to his work to even consider the possibility of Sheila interfering in their life together. Their relationship was frosty right from the off, so he didn’t see what difference it could make having her just around the corner. What a misjudgement that had proved to be. If she’d lived an hour’s drive away like other in-laws he’d have had half an excuse to say no before the conversation even started. Now it was like she was a witness.

He was about to cut the call when she added, ‘But please don’t tell Claire where you’re going.’ Not if you begged me, he thought. ‘She wouldn’t approve.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘You see, I promised I wouldn’t involve you.’ Involve him? He was her husband, not her best friend. She wouldn’t approve. The thought stuck in his mind like a seed between his teeth. ‘It’s just that I don’t know who else I can turn to.’ Thanks, Mum, he thought. Geoff sensed a fresh wave of howling gathering force on the other end of the line, and promptly said his goodbyes with a solemn promise not to say anything to his wife about her daughter. Making his way back through the flat he realised how odd Claire would find it if every door was closed against her. ‘Claire?’ he said, peeking through the bedroom door. The ‘something’ that had happened was obviously the assault on Friday night, which Sheila must only now have heard about; which meant it was in the news at last. Unless Sheila knew the same hospital porter that Eddy was friends with. The way things were going, anything seemed possible; even Sheila learning to fly with Eddy. ‘What’s up?’ Claire replied, not taking her eyes from the talent show re-run. She had the duvet cover, which she had changed along with the bottom sheet and pillowcases, pulled right up under her chin. She looked less like someone resting as a woodland mammal about to hibernate. All that was missing was the stockpile of nuts; and, of course, she’d made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t interested in those anymore. He wondered if she was naked underneath the covers. Times past this would have been an occasion to slip in beside her. But now the idea seemed almost ludicrous, like sliding into bed with her mother.

Getting rid of Max was only the start, he now realised. There was so much more work to do to repair their relationship, with or without the help of the boys in blue. The phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’ flitted through his mind. If he’d never checked Claire’s mobile in the first place, Max would still be alive; and the police would not be after him. True he would have come home one night to find himself single again, but the way things were going he was looking at spending the next fifteen years of his life behind bars. Longer, considering he’d killed a copper. Reluctantly, Claire turned her head to face him. Her eyes were dry, but she looked tired and dispirited. He didn’t think the ‘Dave option’ would convince her this time, after all, so he chose something more customary for a weekend chore. ‘I’m just going to check the tyres.’ When they had first been married he used to bring her back little treats from the garage shop, like a bag of Maltesers or an Aero, and a packet of salt and vinegar for himself. Such pleasures were a thing of the past now. The only thing they had in common these days were guilty secrets. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ He left without waiting for a reply.

Chapter Nineteen

When her front door opened ten minutes later, Geoff found Sheila in much the same distressed state that he’d heard over the phone. She wore a bright floral blouse with a plain brown skirt, as if she couldn’t make up her mind what mood she wanted people to think she was in. What little makeup she had on was either smudged or had run down her cheeks, giving her an almost clown-like visage. Her daughter’s indiscretions had been cut short by a tragedy no one could have predicted. Now the original injured party was standing on her doorstep, forcing her to come clean; and her guilty conscience had stepped up to the plate to torment her until she did just that. Claire was still in primary school when Sheila’s husband had left her. Here one minute, gone the next; like a death. But to everyone’s surprise, Sheila’s especially, he’d turned up at his daughter’s wedding. He wished them good luck the way the postman or a local shopkeeper might have, and then disappeared again before the reception started. Sheila only found out once the speeches were over but had nothing to say. Claire hadn’t seen him before or since. It didn’t seem to bother her. It was as if she had already accepted that fathers were something that happened to other people. She certainly made no move to touch her old man; though Geoff had made a point of shaking his hand. He felt closer to his father-in-law in that brief exchange than he did in all the years he’d known her mother since. Sheila had kept the marital home in which to raise her daughter alone without the involvement of a solicitor, so there must have been some between the parents, an affable agreement, presumably by letter. She made the most of her freedom, though Claire always said her mother was afraid to get involved with anyone else in case it all went wrong again. Geoff didn’t know Sheila well enough to form an opinion. Perhaps she was untrusting of men generally? If so, he could hardly blame her. There was no third-party intrigue, no rifts over money or having more children, no protracted migration of affection: Sheila just woke up one morning to find the other side of the bed empty. So maybe it was men’s unpredictability that worried her rather than whether they could be trusted.

‘Thank you, Geoff,’ she sniffled, looking him straight in the eye. ‘I really appreciate this. I’ve been worried sick.’ And, ushering him quickly inside, Sheila lapsed into another paroxysm of misery. She gestured him towards the living room settee, but then stared at him, drying her eyes, as if she were seeing him properly for the first time. If Sheila had issues connecting with men, maybe Claire did, too? Geoff pondered. But Sheila had not even tried to replace her husband, according to Claire. That was the big difference. ‘Geoff, are you OK?’ The question on everyone’s lips, it seemed. ‘I’m good, Sheila,’ he said. But it’s not my health you’ve invited me here to talk about, is it? ‘You look very tired, that’s all. Have you been ill?’ ‘No,’ he lied. That winter had been one long running nose thus far, of course. The habit of superficial small talk between them was hard to shake off. Sheila was obviously feeling a little awkward about diving in at the deep end. That will teach you to keep me at arm’s length, Geoff thought. She started dabbing at her eyes again. He hoped she wouldn’t beat around the bush. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving Claire alone in the flat for too long. If the police turned up, they wouldn’t skip questioning her just because he wasn’t there. ‘Now, then, Mrs. Madely…’ Geoff suddenly found himself feeling intimidated, victimized almost, as if he were, in fact, innocent; which, if you looked at the wider context, he was. ‘So,’ he prompted her. ‘What’s happened?’ Sheila let out a shuddering sigh: the prelude to her confession. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ she began. He wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter where she started. They both knew where the conversation would end. He’d come for vindication not revelation. Sheila let out a longer, steadier exhalation. This was by far the most intimate they had ever been, but under the circumstances it was the last thing Geoff

wanted. Something was wrong, Sheila had declared that much on the phone already; but maybe it was not the same thing he anticipated, after all. He could almost sense it, like waiting for the crack of thunder after the lightning strike. But until Sheila put him out of his misery all he could do was anticipate the impending shock waves about to hit his senses. Revelation might be what he got anyway. Something was missing from his appraisal of the situation, something unexpectedly vital. Yes, Sheila was upset, but she had absolutely no problem in making eye with him. This was about her daughter, about something bad or inadvisable that she had done. But it seemed that it wasn’t something that directly affected Geoff in Sheila’s eyes, or at least not in the way Geoff would have assumed. Sheila’s attitude to him was so guiltless, so matter of fact. She was embarrassed for herself and her daughter, nothing more. There was none of the painful shame that a mother should demonstrate in regard to her daughter’s extramarital transgressions. This was about Sheila and Claire, but definitely not Geoff, in other words. It was as distinct from what he would have predicted as manslaughter was from murder. None of it made sense. ‘There’s something you need to know, Geoff,’ she told him. Five minutes ago he would have seen himself answer, ‘Yes, I know. She’s having an affair.’ But whatever was cutting up his mother-in-law was something entirely unrelated to infidelity. To make matters worse, a nagging voice had started repeating the same phrase, each time a little louder than before: What have I done? ‘Go on, Sheila.’ Incongruously, he found himself blushing, angry flames burning across his skin like spilled cooking oil across a hob. Any minute now he was going to find out. ‘Please.’ What have I done? ‘Claire hasn’t been entirely honest with you,’ she continued with difficulty. But not about a lover.

‘I’m not convinced she’s been completely honest with me, either.’ What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? ‘I wanted to tell you, but she said I didn’t have the right.’ ‘But now you suddenly do?’ Because something’s happened. ‘This isn’t easy, Geoff,’ she said, a little defensively. That’s what they all say. ‘She said that you were her husband, and she had to tell you herself when the time was right.’ ‘But you’re telling me anyway?’ Sheila looked suddenly wounded and he was glad; the selfish cow, dragging him away from home just to talk in riddles. ‘I don’t have any choice!’ ‘We all have choices,’ he sighed, failing to keep the bitterness from his voice. If he encouraged her to tell him now, didn’t that make him complicit in the betrayal? Husband, mother: could anyone fully justify breaking a trusted confidence? He was sick of it all. Shouldn’t you get her to shut up before it’s too late, then? he asked himself in a panic. Before you find out what it is you’ve done. ‘She’ll never trust you again, if she finds out.’ ‘I know! But she’s making a terrible mistake!’ Sheila cried out. Geoff shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His mobile, the one he’d had before he

started collecting other people’s, started to ring. ‘It’s not too late, Geoff? You can help, can’t you?’ ‘I can try, Sheila. But first I need to know the truth.’ The muscles under her skin pulled her face taut like a sweater left too long in a clothes drier. The phone kept ringing. Whoever was calling was wasting their time. It was too late, Geoff decided, with terminal resignation. His nightmare wasn’t about to end; it had just got started. Worse was to follow. He’d known that from the moment she’d opened her front door. Whatever Sheila was about to say would ruin him totally. Bizarrely, his phone stopped ringing, but the noise continued in his head, disrupting his thoughts. He couldn’t shut it up, any more than he could shut his mother-in-law up. She was still whining on, her eyes welling up and her jaws clenching beneath the skin. ‘They’ve only just started getting to know each other.’` This was it. ‘Who?’ Not Max; not some muscle-bound toy boy. How could he ever have thought that Claire would sell herself so cheaply? There was nothing sordid going on here; except in his head. This was something far less sleazy, something he could never have foreseen. ‘There’s no harm done, yet.’ Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Geoff thought, feeling hysterical laughter bubbling in his chest like phlegm. He didn’t seem to have any control over himself anymore. He might laugh, cry or simply scream the next time Sheila asked him something. ‘She only knew his Christian name. No surname, no address, nothing else. So I hoped it might not come to anything! But she always was resourceful, smart.’ Single-minded. ‘You have to tell me, Sheila!’ He wanted her to endorse his suspicions, because deep down he knew they were totally wrong. ‘Now!’

But when she did, Geoff knew it would tip him over the edge. I don’t need to hear this. Just tell me what I want to hear instead. Geoff fished out his mobile as it started ringing again, clashing with the tone still echoing maddeningly in his head. Because what I’ve done can’t be undone. Not ever. He looked at Sheila and put a finger to his lips. ‘It’s Claire,’ he mouthed. But he’d only seen her less than half an hour ago, for God’s sake. Sheila quietened instantly. ‘Geoff, are you all right?’ he heard Sheila say, but her lips hadn’t moved. Her voice was in his head now, it seemed. He made an odd noise like a hiccup combined with a groan and jabbed a finger at the phone. ‘Claire?’ ‘Geoff, you need to come home straight away.’ What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? ‘Why? What’s happened?’ But he’d already guessed. ‘The police are here,’ she whispered. Sheila was staring at him through wide, sore eyes. The phantom ringtone was still ringing in his head. ‘And they want to speak to you.’ He could hear his wife’s tensed breathing, as she waited for his response. ‘Now,’ she added.

Chapter Twenty

Geoff stared at the picture of the man he still thought of as Max, but who he already knew from the contents of his wallet was really called Peter Bates. PC Bates, to be precise; or maybe even DCI Bates? Obviously, things could only get worse. If he hadn’t asked, he was convinced the police would not have produced the photograph. But he had to know for sure, even if that meant taking the risk of showing some sign of recognition non-verbally or through his tone of voice. Someone cleared their throat, breaking into his reverie, and he understood he was required to say something. A simple yes or no would be a start. ‘Yes. Sorry.’ How long had been staring at the bloody picture for? About as long as everyone has been staring at you, you prick, that inner voice snorted. ‘I mean, no. I’m sorry,’ Geoff stuttered, feeling ridiculous. ‘I’ve never seen this man before.’ Dead or alive. ‘And how about you, Mrs. Madely?’ Geoff stared at his wife, waiting for her to either lie or break down hysterically. She glanced at the photograph a second time. ‘No,’ she said, and Geoff knew for certain that she meant it. ‘I don’t recognise him at all. Sorry.’ Geoff felt the urge to punch the air with joy. That she was telling the truth could only mean that she and Max had never met, never kissed, never touched. The euphoria was short-lived, however, as the memory of Max’s texts sent his mind into a swan-dive of bewilderment: make it soon Maybe they had met online, after all? you said meant 2 b

But online they would surely have seen pictures of each other? ? Whatever meeting they had envisioned, it would literally have been a blind date. ‘I heard he was a policeman,’ Geoff blurted out, immediately cursing himself. ‘What was his name again?’ ‘Peter Bates,’ the taller, male police officer told him. ‘Does the name sound familiar?’ Geoff wanted to scream with laughter. ‘No.’ ‘You’re right, though,’ the female officer said. ‘He was a policeman, but he was off duty at the time of the incident.’ ‘But that really isn’t something we need to comment on,’ her colleague added, with a peremptory glance in her direction. ‘So this wasn’t his patch? Or beat, or whatever you call it.’ ‘We really can’t comment on that, either, sir. Our priority at the present time is to identify any witnesses to the incident.’ Good luck with that, Geoff thought. I can’t help and I was the one that bloody killed him. The female officer was staring at him. Had she noticed some nervous tick or slip of the tongue? The possibility gave him a license to lie in the face of inevitable arrest. ‘So, what was he doing down here?’ Geoff continued, feeling Claire’s eyes crawling over his face, too. ‘As I said, sir, we’re just looking for witnesses at present.’ ‘What if the fact he was a policeman wasn’t a coincidence?’ Eddy would have loved this. ‘It’s for us to worry about the motive for this crime, Sir.’

‘So you are saying it wasn’t a coincidence?’ The taller officer smiled good-naturedly. ‘I’m saying we’re looking for witnesses.’ Geoff felt a glimmer of optimism. His tactic was obviously aggravating the two officers and distracting them from the line of enquiry they wanted to pursue. ‘All I’m saying, officers, is that either it was a coincidence or it wasn’t. Surely that would alter the whole focus of the investigation.’ My dear Watson. ‘Mr. Madely…’ A thought jumped into his head, animating his whole persona. ‘Unless, of course, he was working undercover.’ ‘What? Geoff!’ ‘Peter was off duty,’ the female officer reiterated. ‘So we don’t think the fact that he was a police officer has any relevance.’ Her colleague cleared his throat disapprovingly, and her cheeks rouged instantly. ‘Unless he was working undercover!’ Geoff repeated triumphantly. And the murderer, ladies and gentlemen, is: ‘Neither of us saw or heard anything,’ Claire snapped. Had this Max or Peter not even told her he was a copper? Not only had they never met face to face, Claire seemed to know very little about the man at all. ‘Do we even know any coppers?’ he exclaimed, causing six narrowed eyes to fall his way. He smiled, trying to make light of it. ‘We don’t know any Peters, come to that.’ If he was right about Sheila’s incomplete confession and Claire wasn’t having an affair, then who was this man calling himself Max or Peter or whoever? Could Claire be part of his undercover investigation, for instance? How? Geoff and Claire had shared a spliff occasionally when they were younger. But apart from that and speeding on the by, that was the extent of her involvement with the

criminal underworld. It was a ludicrous idea, but right then it was the only thing he had to cling to. ‘I would never have guessed a town this size even had an underworld,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But I suppose everywhere does, doesn’t it?’ The two officers exchanged a look of exasperation. ‘If you’re sure you don’t recognise the man in the picture, either of you?’ said the taller officer, putting the picture back in his folder. ‘We have a lot more doors to knock on.’ ‘So, was it a mugging that went wrong, then?’ Geoff asked with gusto. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’ The two officers looked at each other again awkwardly. ‘We really can’t comment,’ said the female, finally gaining her superior’s approval. ‘I bet the papers will,’ Claire said under her breath. The taller officer’s patience suddenly buckled. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Madely, I cannot stress how brutal this attack was.’ This time it was the female officer’s turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘Brutal?’ Geoff echoed. He’d only hit him once. But, then again, according to Eddy’s mole, someone ‘didn’t half clobber him.’ ‘We’re advising all local residents to take reasonable precautions until the attacker is apprehended.’ The word ‘unidentifiable’ jumped into the forefront of Geoff’s mind, accompanied by the image of someone spooning out the contents of a tin of cat food onto tarmac. He almost laughed, choking it down in a ball of air at the last moment.

‘There’s a psycho on the loose, is that what you’re saying?’ Claire said, folding her arms across her bust. No, I was provoked, Geoff thought. ‘And all you’re doing is asking for witnesses? Great!’ His thoughts were derailed again by the intrusion of the word ‘unidentifiable’, followed by an image of the cat food being scraped up with a shovel. The cat food was red with tiny grey lumps in it. He suddenly felt queasy. ‘Is it safe to go out at all?’ Claire asked, and then sarcastically: ‘Off the record.’ Absolutely, Claire, Geoff thought hysterically. I’d go out as often as you can, in fact. Geoff faked a coughing fit and covered the emerging titter with his fist. Cold-blooded murderer; a brutal psychopathic murderer, the inner voice added. ‘Just take reasonable precautions, madam.’ ‘But sometimes I have to work late.’ ‘Maybe your husband can pick you up?’ Shit, whose side are they on? The inner voice dissolved into hysterical laughter. ‘It was Geoff I was concerned about,’ Claire continued. ‘The victim was a man, ?’ ‘No, this was personal,’ Geoff said suddenly. All three turned to stare at him. Claire’s eyes widened, as Geoff stumbled on. ‘I mean, if you’re using words like brutal, then maybe there was some other motive? That’s all I’m trying to say.’ The two officers continued to stare at him for several seconds, seemingly unable to decide whether to be wound up or suspicious. In desperation, Claire offered them tea. They declined and said their goodbyes, scowling at Geoff as they went. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Claire hissed at him when the door was

closed. Geoff locked himself in the bathroom and sat on the toilet with the seat down, his shirt stuck to his back with sweat. Despite everything that had happened, there was still a part of him that was enjoying itself. He hadn’t been caught yet. No one had accused him of anything even. In many ways this was about as far removed from the world of ancy as you could wish to get. He felt strong again, in control, invincible even. What did it matter if he started to go grey and lose his looks? This past week had proved he could outwit the younger competition in all departments, physical combat included. He looked around the bathroom. He’d lived here for years and yet everything seemed so unfamiliar. No, not just unfamiliar, unreal. You still have Max’s phone, the inner voice reminded him. It was safely hidden in the boot of his car, of course. And the police had left without him, which meant he was still at liberty to use it, moreover. ‘No, you can’t mean what I think you mean?’ he whispered. Sure, why not? replied the inner voice. ‘Claire still doesn’t know,’ he tittered. Exactly. You can keep this going yet. ‘She doesn’t have a clue!’ Geoff rubbed his knees like an excited child. Only this time, Geoff, there’s one important difference. Geoff laughed out loud at the beauty of it. You get to be the secret lover! ‘Geoff? Are you OK in there?’ Shit, was she listening at the door? ‘Sure. Just coming.’

He flushed the toilet for effect just as a memory burst into his mind; a memory from late Friday night. He stared back at the toilet, all his euphoria and renewed confidence of a second before drowned. He listened as the flush tank steadily but quickly refilled itself. The memory came again, clearer this time. No, he told himself. It couldn’t be. Could it? ‘Someone clobbered him,’ he could hear the words of his neighbour, Eddy from earlier. ‘With something heavy.’ His mouth agape and hands trembling, Geoff lifted the lid off the flush tank and peered down into the now stilled interior. It was such a simple idea, to put something in the bottom of the tank to prevent water wastage. Hadn’t someone on television claimed it could save the average household two hundred pounds a year? He’d always meant to do it himself, but never seemed to get around to it. Until now, apparently. ‘Exhibit A,’ he whispered. Something heavy, Geoffrey Madely, the inner voice whispered jubilantly. Sitting at the bottom of the tank was the half-brick he had used to smash in Peter Bates’ skull.

Chapter Twenty-One

This is how a Monday morning should be, Geoff decided cynically, shaking out his umbrella. The rain had come down so heavily first thing it had woken him up before the alarm clock. The rush hour slowed to a crawl and a set of traffic lights failed, adding to the chaos. He arrived late for work, but then so did everyone except for Whiting, who sat soaked from the knees down, forlornly wishing he could at least feel superior for his punctuality. Geoff slumped into his office chair and lamented the prospect of a low-pressure system covering the entire forty working hours ahead. Christmas felt like even more of a myth than it actually was. By mid-morning he finally started to feel warm again, though his eyelids were constantly drooping and his throat was sore. He hoped he wasn’t going down with something. Like twenty years? the inner voice snorted. This was definitely a week that sooner or later was going to be cut short, by illness if not arrest. Till that happened, Geoff tried to concentrate on his work, though if asked what he had been working on he would have struggled to get beyond the name of the client. It was at times like this that he wondered if ancy was a profession at all or just glorified debt management by numbers. He wished he could lay his head on the desk and fall asleep until five, but the prospect of yet someone else asking him if he was ‘all right’ ensured he kept wide awake throughout. Geoff took the latter part of his lunch break in his car. A change of identity might brighten his mood after the weekend’s anti-climax, he scoffed. Making sure no one was watching, he finally retrieved Max’s mobile phone from the boot. There was no pin lock, which surprised him, but it was a cheap phone and considering how few s were listed on it, one that its owner had not had for very long, he surmised. He saw half a dozen texts sent by Claire over the past thirty-six hours from her revived smart phone; messages the real Max was sadly unavailable to answer. Did their contents really matter now? He read them

anyway, but more through habit than curiosity. There was nothing overtly incriminating in the messages, nothing sleazy, dirty or devious. He wasn’t surprised. Not now. They all asked where he – Max – was, expressing great concern about his state of mind, and could he get in touch with Claire urgently; the way she might ask after a close friend: Marie at work, for instance. Perhaps Max was gay? Had been gay, he corrected himself. Didn’t every girl long for a male gay friend, he’d read somewhere? He wouldn’t be feeling very gay laying in a metal drawer. ‘And his name’s Peter, not Max,’ he sneered at the phone. ‘Sorry, was Peter.’ He still couldn’t get the affair idea out of his head, though. Claire must have used some sort of dating site, which was why Peter had used a false name. Some people did that, apparently, until they were sure they could trust the potential partner they had met. Geoff still thought of him as Max, though. It stopped him reminding himself that he’d killed a copper. Also, if he thought of him as Peter he might well slip up later writing a message. And that was the plan. Now that he’d taken il bastardo out of the equation, it was time to teach Claire a lesson, too; something that would give her cold feet even looking at another toy boy. And to pull that off, all he had to do was keep her away from her all-knowing mother for a while. With a bit of luck, he could pull this off before the police hauled him in for formal questioning. Geoff started a new message and considered how he might kick things off again. He decided that Max should play the wounded, jilted lover: tired of yr games No word of a lie there leaving later today He grinned at the prospect of the message arriving on Claire’s smart phone under the name ‘Maxine’. He added a couple of kisses, and then on second thoughts deleted them. Max was supposed to be angry with her. Before pressing ‘send’ he imagined Claire’s delighted expression at receiving a message from lover boy dissolving into one of misery when she read its contents. He kept Max’s phone on his dashboard for the last ten minutes of his break, but there was no

immediate reply. Throwing the phone in the boot, he trotted back into the office. He could check for new messages after work. The suspense he could live with if he knew she was sweating for a few hours, too. It had stopped raining at last, and although the sun was not out, at least the colour of the sky had lightened to a less demoralising shade of grey. ‘Someone called you,’ Whiting said, when he saw Geoff returning. ‘My wife?’ ‘No, your mother-in-law.’ Doubtless there would be missed calls from her on his personal mobile, too. He hadn’t bothered to check. ‘Sheila?’ ‘Yes, that’s her. I told her you were out to lunch.’ Monday lunchtime. Had she still expected him at the house, as planned? She had tried to call him on his mobile after the police had left on Sunday, but he’d not returned the calls. She was desperate if she was calling his work number, though she would not risk calling the flat, he was sure. He couldn’t put her off indefinitely, though. Geoff would eventually have to face the gory details of his wife’s affair. ‘Poor old Geoff,’ the voice laughed. ‘Did she leave a message?’ ‘What have you done?’ ‘No. Just said she needed to talk to you.’ And if he didn’t, would she then try to get to Claire instead, convince her to confess her guilty secret to her husband, as she’d promised? No, he had to keep Sheila away from his wife, at least for a day or so.

Yes, but what is their secret? That Max and Claire had met on some dating website and were planning to meet imminently for the first time that weekend? That wasn’t the impression he’d got from Sheila somehow. He felt like the answer should be staring him straight in the face; but if it was, it was wearing a mask. ‘She only knows his Christian name!’ Sheila had claimed. What did that mean? Only that, as Geoff had decided earlier, ‘Peter’ had used an alias for his dating site profile. Boredom with work slowly eroded his patience, and by three o’clock the urge to check Max’s mobile for a reply from Claire was overpowering. He headed off towards the Gents, feeling like a fat man on a diet sneaking off for a donut. When he was sure he was alone, he diverted to the back stairs and made his way quickly to the car park. He opened Claire’s reply, only ten minutes old, with the boot lid up for cover. No dont off tmorrow will defo meet u this time ok? So, she was still just as keen to have that first date, it seemed. If Max left as planned (or as Geoff had planned for him, to be precise), would that work now? Or would Claire try to follow him somehow? But if Max had used a false name, maybe he had used someone else’s photograph, too. Most lonely hearts would want to look their best, even if it was how they looked ten years ago. That was nonsense, mind, since Geoff had seen at first hand that Max was obviously a half-decent looking bloke at the peak of his fitness. So, could this Peter/Max character have had some other reason for maintaining anonymity, other than the obvious one of a wife and kids? Whatever the reason, the bottom line was that Claire still didn’t know what Max (or rather, Peter Bates) looked like. So how could she hope to follow him? Geoff bit his lower lip. It simply wasn’t a risk he dared take. There couldn’t be any loose ends left over. ‘No, especially the ones long enough to hang you with.’

He looked at the message again. How to reply? There was no point in beating about the bush anymore. Plus, his energy levels were fading fast again. He typed in Max’s reply and sent it: where & when? A full two minutes ed. Then an envelope icon appeared on his screen, with an accompanying ‘ping’, which seemed to echo around the car park like a doorbell. He already knew where she would suggest, but he was afraid to see it confirmed. He obviously wasn’t the only one tired of prevaricating. It would be the ultimate betrayal, but he had no alternative but to read it. His thumb hovered over the screen before dabbing downward: artillery crescent 23A Then there were three words he read but refused to acknowledge, followed by: 2 o/c Just as he’d feared all along, in just under twenty-four hours she would have been gone forever. A pain jabbed into his chest and with a jagged edge began hacking downward through his vital organs. But it was the second part of the message that finally severed something precious that could never be repaired. He quickly sent a reply, his eyes blurring with tears. if yr really sure this time? Claire’s reply was immediate, as if she couldn’t wait to confirm her treachery: v sure should have done this yrs ago A tear welled in the corner of his right eye. Sheila must be the one misinterpreting the signs. Geoff had been right all along. He typed: tomorrow at 2 then

cant wait He switched the phone off at last, and let the tear roll down his cheek. When it reached his jaw line it dropped into the air and splashed in the centre of the phone’s screen. Claire’s first text refused to leave his mind. Sandwiched between the meeting time and the address of their flat at 23A Artillery Crescent was his wife’s three-word description of it: where I live ‘No,’ Geoff whispered, wiping the tear from the screen. ‘Where we live.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

Any semblance of effort and concentration was beyond him after that. All he could do was stare into his computer screen, head propped up on his hands. Occasionally his eyes shut, but he didn’t care. He brought up a random , not to feign working, but so that he no longer had to look at his reflection in a blank screen. should have done this yrs ago Claire’s text had said. Was Max even the first? A hand fell lightly on his shoulder, and he turned to look up into the face of his manager. Neil Hopkins was only a couple of years older than Geoff but was already expecting a partner’s role in the firm. They all knew it was just a case of when, but there no resentment in the team. Everyone said how approachable he was, generous with his time and advice. Hell, he needed to be with the likes of Whiting under his wing. He was organised, bright and motivated, but never selfimportant. He’d put on a little weight in recent months, but, if anything, that had merely embellished his avuncular status. But at that moment Geoff wanted nothing more than to tell his well-respected, affable boss to fuck off. ‘It’s nearly three o’clock, Geoff,’ Hopkins began, flicking his eyes at the open spreadsheet on Geoff’s computer. ‘If you’re ready?’ What was the significance of three o’clock? For a second all Geoff could do was stare back at Hopkins as if he’d just spoken to him in a foreign language. ‘Your appraisal, Geoff?’ Hopkins prompted. ‘I emailed you an agenda this morning. I hope you’ve read it through.’ Appraisal? Shit, wasn’t that next week? And he hadn’t even looked at his emails. ‘Yes, of course, Neil,’ he stammered. ‘I’ll just pop to the loo before we start. If

that’s OK?’ ‘Sure,’ Hopkins replied. ‘Come to my office.’ But as he turned away Geoff noticed him exchange a look with Whiting. Ten minutes later he felt able to face his manager, who offered him a seat without looking too annoyed, Geoff thought. In a strange way this unexpectedly scheduled meeting came as something of a relief. He did his job efficiently and conscientiously most of the time, and although he never saw himself rising to the dizzy heights that Hopkins was about to attain, meetings like this were pretty straightforward for the likes of Geoff. As long as the firm didn’t go bust, he had a job for life. And if a firm of ants didn’t know how to keep their heads above water financially, there was no hope for anyone. Hopkins being the man he was, such meetings were always informal, with tea and biscuits, firm handshakes and encouraging slaps on the back. So his manager’s first question, presaged by a deep sigh and a frown, caught him totally off guard. ‘Is everything all right, Geoff?’ Why the fuck do people keep asking me that? ‘I’m sorry if the question’s a bit abrupt, but I really didn’t know how else to tackle this problem we have.’ Problem? The only problems he had were in his personal life, and that was where he intended to keep them. All he could do by way of reply was shake his head and let out a low croak like a frog with a throat infection. He noticed there were no tea and biscuits, either. ‘You do know what I’m talking about?’ Geoff sucked in a long, deep breath that he hoped spoke of resignation and acceptance. In truth, he didn’t have the first idea what Hopkins was on about. Had someone been casting aspersions about him? ‘Sheet spreading,’ the voice in his head interjected gaily. Only now, the voice sounded as if it originated from somewhere in the office. Hopkins said: ‘There have been complaints. Both internally, and, more worryingly, from some of our oldest clients. Frankly, it’s only their long

relationship with the firm that’s kept them loyal. They’re not happy, Geoff. They’re not happy at all.’ Internally? So, there were knives out, after all. ‘Who?’ he snapped. ‘Thompson and Thompson, for one,’ Hopkins began. ‘No, not them,’ Geoff interrupted. ‘You said internally. Who, specifically?’ ‘It’s more than one person, Geoff. This is serious.’ ‘I know I’ve overrun on a couple of occasions.’ Yes, but with everything that was going on in his life outside work, what else could they expect? Didn’t they realise he could be sitting in a police station right now? ‘But no one I’ve spoken to has complained about it to me.’ ‘That’s probably because of your attitude, Geoff.’ Attitude? ‘What attitude?’ Hopkins picked up a file and started reading off a list of adjectives. ‘Argumentative, abrupt, evasive, dismissive, rude, short-tempered.’ At least no one could accuse him of being absent. ‘OK. I clashed with someone. I don’t . I’m sorry. Maybe I was having a bad day?’ Yes, he thought, but which one? ‘Geoff, I also have emails from six clients complaining about various aspects of your interactions with them.’ ‘Interactions!’ Geoff scoffed. ‘I’m serious, Geoff. Six clients. Six! Frankly, I’m shocked.’ He wasn’t smiling now. ‘You need to start talking to me, Geoff. This is not good enough.’

Ah, yes: ‘us’. You’re about to become a partner and don’t want anyone rocking the boat for you! How predictable! ‘Thompson and Thompson were with us practically from the day we opened.’ Had he even worked on that ? He couldn’t . Looking back over the past few months he knew he’d been running on autopilot a few times, sure, but these complaints were bullshit. The work was done, wasn’t it? No clients had moved away, had they? That wasn’t what bothered him, though. What he wanted to know was who had snitched on him from inside the firm. ‘I want to know who’s made these allegations internally.’ Hopkins pulled a face, as if he thought Geoff was being evasive. Not to mention argumentative, rude and all the rest. Couldn’t one of them at least have had the balls to confront him face to face; given him the chance to clean up his act rather than just dropping him into this istrative shitstorm? ‘Haven’t you noticed how apprehensive your colleagues are around you?’ ‘No.’ But he had noticed that popular phrase Are you all right, Geoff? on a daily basis. ‘There’s an atmosphere, Geoff. You’re making people nervous out there.’ ‘Who, Neil?’ Hopkins tossed his file back on the desk like a dirty tissue. ‘You’ve been such a lynchpin in this team for so long, I refused to believe it at first. But I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes, Geoff.’ Witnessed? Was he on trial? Neil Hopkins and his kangaroo court. The mirth exploding from within squeezed through his lips like someone blowing a raspberry. His boss looked horrified and opened his mouth to speak, but Geoff cut him off aggressively. ‘I asked you, who?’

Hopkins rubbed his fingertips together slowly. ‘I blame myself for thinking it might all blow over by itself.’ Was he nervous, too? Geoff wondered. ‘He’s afraid, all right,’ the voice whispered in his ear. ‘Afraid of you.’ As well you might be, Geoff thought. ‘I need to know right now.’ Trying to keep his cool only fanned the flames of a rage he’d last felt in an alleyway on Friday night. Whatever his motive, Hopkins was the one being evasive now. He sat quietly for a few seconds, lacing his fingers in front of his nose and rubbing his thumbs together. He looked like a man weighing up how to deal with a snarling dog: be firm or back away carefully. Geoff wanted to warn him that he didn’t just bark. ‘Differences of opinion between colleagues can always be sorted out later, Geoff.’ ‘Differences of opinion,’ Geoff mimicked sardonically. ‘But it’s our rapport with the clients, our reputation that I have to maintain.’ ‘Yes. Especially if you want the firm to make you a partner.’ ‘What?’ ‘Any second now you’ll start waffling on about ‘team spirit’ and ‘shared goals’ and all those other psychobabble soundbites you’re always spouting.’ Hopkins looked insulted. Geoff no longer cared. ‘There’s no I in team, isn’t that right? Well, you’ll find one in bullshit, boss. Or have I got that wrong?’ ‘Three of those six companies that have complained want you to have nothing further to do with their businesses. Did you know that?’ ‘So, there’s the solution, then,’ Geoff sniffed. ‘I’ll just work with the ones that aren’t up themselves.’ Hopkins looked horrified again. ‘What’s got into you, Geoff?’

Are you all right, Geoff? Are you all right, Geoff? Are you all right, Geoff? ‘Look, they’re not happy. They want someone else instead of me. Fine by me. Problem solved.’ ‘Until you upset all the others, you mean.’ ‘Murphy sounded happy enough the other day.’ But Murphy, as Geoff was always quick to point out, was an arsehole. ‘It’s not that simple, Geoff. If you want to know the truth, the suggestion to reallocate those three s to someone else was mine.’ ‘What?’ Hopkins looked suddenly embarrassed. ‘I had to talk one of our oldest clients out of leaving us last week. Over lunch. At our expense. And before you ask, it wasn’t even Thompson and Thompson.’ Shit. Geoff felt his mouth go dry. Hopkins had hit the nail on the head: what had gotten into him? Max, that was what. He’d been a fool to believe he could prevent something so serious from affecting his work. The other partners must know, too. How could he patch things up with Claire if he ended up unemployed at this delicate moment? ‘They said it was because of me, specifically? That’s what they said?’ Hopkins broke eye . He wasn’t getting any pleasure from this, Geoff realised. He was a decent, straight-up bloke. He was all the things people said about him. The slimy creep. ‘Yes,’ Hopkins nodded after a few seconds. ‘They were furious. Because of your attitude and approach to them, they wanted out. God, they even said you put the phone down on them.’ Had he? When? The dryness was spreading down into his lungs, making it hard to breathe. He coughed weakly and swallowed some air. He felt his indignation resurfacing.

‘Well, it’s hardly surprising if I’m being persecuted by my own colleagues, is it? And who’s that down to?’ ‘Geoff, Geoff, Geoff. It’s hardly persecution. Everyone here has been very patient over the past few weeks. But your mistakes are affecting other people’s work, too.’ ‘So whose work is it that I’ve affected so badly, then?’ ‘Geoff, I want to deal with that issue separately, at a later date.’ More meetings? More bullshit? Not bloody likely. ‘I can’t let this go, Neil.’ It was first honest thing he’d said in days. ‘I want to know who, please. And not later, now.’ Hopkins gazed at Geoff’s reddened face, his tensed shoulders, the way he was balanced on the edge of his chair and made a decision. ‘This is supposed to be your appraisal not a disciplinary inquiry.’ Geoff was speechless at last. His breathing was short and shallow. He had thrown all his toys out of the pram. Now Hopkins was going to collect them all up in a black bin liner and show him the door. ‘All right,’ Hopkins sighed. ‘I can see how important this is to you.’ Too right, Geoff thought, picturing himself mooching about at home whilst Claire had to do regular overtime just to keep them afloat. ‘The person concerned is quite keen to help you with whatever it is you’re going through. Obviously, I wanted to hear your side first. And to keep it informal, of course,’ he added. Suddenly, Geoff wasn’t sure how he would react when his acc walked through the door. However justified his anger was, it still frightened him. Yet he had to know. ‘What exactly have they said?’ Another pause, as Hopkins cautiously chose his words.

‘That you’re in a daze for most of the working day. Sometimes you don’t speak for hours, and when you do it’s quite often to bite someone’s head off. You talk to yourself. Even I’ve seen you laughing out of the blue. Frankly, Geoff, I’m worried.’ ‘I’m not crazy, Neil.’ Was he? ‘And what’s this thing you have with the toilets?’ A name sprung into his mind immediately, but Geoff couldn’t believe he was the snitch, after all he’d done for him. ‘Toilets?’ ‘Sometimes you’ve reached double figures before lunchtime. Are you ill?’ ‘No.’ Geoff started to say more, then stopped. Was stress an illness? ‘Maybe I’d best cut down on the coffee,’ he tried to joke. ‘Jesus, man, your job’s on the line!’ And there it was; out in the open at last! First his wife, now his job. Did they want to steal everything from him? ‘Then get him in here now,’ Geoff rallied, ‘and let’s sort this out man to man!’ Hopkins sat back in his chair, alarmed by the rage in Geoff’s voice and body language. He tapped his forefingers together one last time, and then stood abruptly, looking determined. ‘OK. If you’re happy to do it now, we will.’ He stepped outside, leaving Geoff alone with his spinning thoughts and an urge to just run away. When Hopkins returned the man following him was Mark Whiting, just as he’d suspected. ‘What’s this shit you’ve been stirring about me?’ Geoff spat at him before the door was closed.

‘I couldn’t just sit there and watch you screw your job up. You’re a nice guy.’ Geoff sized him up with a sneer on his face. ‘Are you after my job, pal? Is that it?’ He turned to Hopkins. ‘This is a wind-up, right? He’s about as useful as a zip on a condom.’ ‘Actually, Mark has come on leaps and bounds in the past six months.’ ‘You think he could do what I do?’ Hopkins broke eye again. ‘That’s not what I meant. You’ve got years of experience. We just want the old Geoff back.’ The old Geoff? Was that the Geoff that allowed strangers to toy with his wife’s affections? Sod that. ‘I wouldn’t be where I am today without your help and advice,’ Whiting said. Supercilious little prick! Geoff wanted to pick his chair up and throw it at him. ‘Help and advice? I’ve propped you up, boy.’ ‘Actually,’ Hopkins cut in. ‘Looking at the work you’ve both been doing recently, I think it’s Mark that’s been propping you up.’ ‘Bullshit! The cleaner would give this moron a run for his money!’ Whiting’s mouth opened wide enough for Geoff to get his whole fist in. He was aware of a silence in the main office outside, as if the whole team were holding its breath. ‘There’s an atmosphere,’ Hopkins had said. His manager pointed a finger at Geoff, as if he were about to cast a spell over him. ‘Calm down, Geoff. I can’t allow you to speak to a colleague like that.’ Geoff’s focus was only on the traitorous Whiting, however. ‘I’ve wiped your arse since the day you got here! Whose shoulder was it you cried on when you found out your girlfriend was pregnant?’ Whiting’s face went blank. He looked over briefly at his boss, who looked equally perplexed. ‘What?’

‘Oh, come on. It’s hardly something to be ashamed of.’ Geoff looked at his manager. ‘Didn’t you know?’ ‘Geoff, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ Whiting said. ‘You were in tears, man. Last Tuesday. She’s three months gone already. it it!’ Hopkins stared at Whiting. ‘Mark?’ Whiting glanced back at his boss and shook his head. ‘Geoff, my girlfriend is not pregnant. Not by me, anyway.’ He looked momentarily gloomy before continuing. ‘I was upset because she’s not my girlfriend anymore. I told you. We’ve split up. It was you that kept going on about having kids. Hell, you were close to tears yourself more than once. That was why I finally decided to approach Neil. I felt you were at some sort of breaking point.’ ‘And so do I, Geoff,’ Hopkins interjected. ‘I need to make a decision.’ Geoff started to argue back, but Hopkins cut him dead. ‘I’m recommending you take a couple of weeks off. Get your head straight. And then we can meet again and talk about things a little more calmly. You’ll be on full pay.’ ‘What?’ Geoff leapt out of his chair. ‘You’re suspending me?’ Hopkins raised both his hands, palms pointing down at the desktop in a gesture of appeasement. ‘As far as everyone here is concerned, you’ll be on annual leave.’ ‘Ha! Some holiday that will be!’ In his head all he could see was the half-brick lying in the water of his flush tank and his hand reaching down to grasp it. ‘And in the meantime, this backstabbing little shit will be getting his feet warm under my desk. Thanks for nothing, boss!’

He stormed out, making Hopkins’ flying office door crash against a filing cabinet. Everyone was staring at him in silence. Well, fuck the lot of them. He charged through the office in the direction of the Gents, his lunch already halfway to making an unwelcome return. His mouth was already gaping as he pushed his way into the toilet cubicle. He flushed his undigested meal away and listened to the cistern refilling. If only that was where the half-brick was right now.

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘Back at the usual time?’ he called, at the sound of the front door opening. Claire paused to call back to him, ‘Sure. See you then.’ Sure. Because this is just another normal working day, isn’t it, darling? Maybe Claire had some time owing she was cashing in for that afternoon’s assignation with Max’s ghost. She wouldn’t want to miss this any more than he would; albeit for very different reasons. The door closed with a clatter. Geoff was dressed for work, too, but of course he wasn’t going in. Instead, he was supposed to be ‘sorting himself out’. No one at the office would believe he was on holiday, but he still might turn the suspension to his advantage. At the very least it meant being at work all week was one less thing to worry about. Would Claire consent to relationship counselling? They would need to start over, highlight this whole chapter in their lives and press delete. Once she realised that Max had gone (sometime later this afternoon), and that it was Geoff who truly loved her, this whole episode might act as a catalyst for some of their best years together yet. He couldn’t tell her everything, of course. But what he held back, he would do in her best interests. There were some sins only God could absolve you of, but luckily Geoff was an atheist. He looked up at the clock, and decided to play along with the ‘just another working day’ act that they both had parts in. Pantomime season was still going strong this winter. By a quarter-to-nine he was on the road as usual, and just after nine he was sitting down with his first coffee of the day. The supermarket was up on the ring road and the table he sat behind was tucked away in a quiet corner, where he could try to think.

He wasn’t alone, but it wasn’t just other shoppers surrounding him. The store’s management was holding what looked like an interview in another quiet corner, complete with the usual excess use of false smiles and furious head nodding. Several sales reps were poring over paperwork. A young couple seemed at least an hour into a relationship counselling session with an older woman; whilst closest to him sat four blokes wearing hoodies who seemed to be in the final stages of planning a bank job, given their fervent gesticulations and the use of various table-top items to create a model of the town centre, which the presumed leader of the gang then proceeded to navigate with his index finger. And what did they make of him? he wondered. Despite his best staring, no one seemed to have noticed him at all. Would it be the same in the office? ‘Doesn’t someone use that empty desk?’ Unless Whiting was sitting there now. Or worse, would everyone breathe a huge sigh of relief that he was banished from their environment, possibly forever? Geoff was officially on comionate leave. Hopkins had sent him an email reiterating his comments from the appraisal meeting and emphasising his commitment to getting Geoff back on track. He was a valuable member of the team, apparently. So valuable, in fact, that they were paying him to keep away. He sat nursing his black coffee and pretended to read an already torn and stained tabloid. In a little over five hours’ time Claire would be opening their front door and letting a complete stranger enter their home. Didn’t she know it was wrong? If she found him attractive, would they make straight for the bedroom without so much as a preliminary gin and tonic? Geoff shuffled in his plastic seat, feeling hot and clammy. What the hell was he thinking? It wasn’t going to be a complete stranger ringing their doorbell; it was going to be him, Geoff. Max was dead. Eddy had told him. Later the police had confirmed that Peter was dead, too, of course, even though he and Geoff had never been formerly introduced. So, in a way, he’d killed two people. ‘No,’ the voice in his head tittered. ‘Three, when Claire finds out.’ His hot flush intensified, making him feel dizzy. He sipped more coffee, not tasting it but grateful for the burning sensation at the back of his throat. Pain was the only thing he could be sure was real anymore. A harassed mother wheeled in a screaming toddler struggling to break the

restraining straps in her buggy. She left her daughter by a spare table and went back to collect her tray. The child’s distress, or protest, went up a gear, as the mother clearly had no intention of providing the reaction the child sought. When she sat down at last, Geoff saw she had a huge cream horn on a plate, which she proceeded to demolish, much to her daughter’s mortification. It reminded him that he’d skipped breakfast again. He was definitely losing more weight away from the trim trail than on it. Perhaps he would write a bestseller in prison called The Infidelity Diet. ‘Or how about The Insanity Diet?’ He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut as thoughts and images swirled through his mind. He hadn’t slept properly in weeks, and though he was still eating sporadically, he could never what it was he’d eaten or whether he’d finished everything. Sometimes it felt as if his whole life was just one long nightmare that he would only occasionally wake up from. The little girl was rocking and screaming now, making her buggy rattle so loudly that it felt like it was rolling around the inside of his head. Whether this was part of his nightmare or reality made very little difference to his state of mind. Suddenly the supermarket wasn’t big enough and he had to get out. Geoff finished his coffee, but an aching heaviness settled into his shoulders, pushing him down into the chair. When Claire heard their doorbell and opened the door, it would be Geoff she came face to face with. How could he explain his presence in the middle of the working day? No more than she could, of course. Some of the truth would come out, but wasn’t the reality that the pretence would live on and that any second chance their marriage appeared to have would be built on another lie? Claire would never go near a relationship counsellor because that would involve an implied ission that something was wrong; and, furthermore, that it was her fault. Which of course, it was. Infidelity was a crime without context, in Geoff’s book; no one forced you to do anything you didn’t want to. There was always mutual consent, no matter how silver-tongued the hunter. If it had been rape, would the judge have deemed what he did to Max a crime of ion? Might he still? Maybe he’d get a reduced sentence because of mitigating circumstances, and then with good behaviour he might be out again in a couple of years. But how would Claire see it all? Whatever the circumstances, he would still be guilty of murder. Would Claire really want to spend the rest of

her life with a killer? No, he mustn’t get caught. That was his only hope. As far as his marriage went the best outcome he could hope for was a continuation of the status quo. Unless, of course, it was the status quo that had driven Claire into another man’s arms in the first place. No, no, no! The status quo, he decided irritably, was him being reliable, dependable and ive to his wife. He was nothing more than a consistently decent husband, and he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him he was inadequate in any way. ‘I didn’t start this,’ he said to his coffee. ‘But I will finish it.’ Geoff wrestled his slouching torso into an upright position, the chair legs screeching across the floor like four deranged toddlers. It wasn’t going to be easy, though. He needed to stay sharp, focused. One slip and he would be done for. He was a wanted man. He’d killed a copper, and forensics was hot on his tail, according to Eddy. They would never stop looking until they’d found him. It was a well-known fact that the Law looked out for their own. He felt his phone vibrating, and had to remind himself before answering that it was his original mobile as opposed to the one he’d bought to text Max whilst pretending to be Claire, or the one he’d taken off the corpse of Peter Bates, which he was now using to Claire in the guise of Max. How long, in this declining physical and mental state, would it be before he answered the phone with a cheerful, ‘Hi, there. Max speaking’? He slipped it out of his pocket and turned it over in his hand to reassure himself that it was indeed his. The caller’s name stared back at him. It was Sheila again. Would she never leave him alone? Geoff despaired at the prospect of trying to keep her quiet about the Peter Bates murder for the next twenty-four hours, let alone whilst they went through marriage guidance, or whatever they called it now. He could hardly hit her with a brick. Persuasion was his only weapon. Why not see her now, then? he wondered. Put her under pressure, squeeze her conscience? Yes. Convince her to spill all the beans about Claire’s would-be affair. He was still in the dark over the finer details, but Sheila obviously knew everything. There might be information he could use to his advantage. And talking to him might be enough to stop Sheila talking to her daughter instead. So long as Claire thought that the man killed locally was some out of town plod

called Peter Bates there was still hope. ‘I can’t give up.’ He could persuade Sheila that her daughter was mentally unbalanced. Yes, that might work. He could tell her that Claire had recently attempted suicide, and that any more strain might tip her over the edge. He’d tell her Claire was seeing a therapist and taking a high dose of a controversial new antidepressant. He’d tell Sheila that he forgave her for not telling him about Claire’s secret, because he too had been sworn to secrecy by Claire about her mental problems. Then all he would need to do was stand Claire up at two o’clock and send her a text from Max saying it was all a terrible mistake, and ‘farewell sweetheart’. ‘That will mean more lying, of course,’ the now outside his head voice added. ‘You and Claire are the perfect match in that respect!’ ‘Shut up!’ Geoff snarled, making a trolley-pushing shopper change direction with a raised eyebrow. The police were obviously at a loss as to the motive for the Peter Bates murder. There were no witnesses, and certainly no murder weapon they would find. Hell, the Old Bill didn’t even know why Bates was in Colchester in the first place, by the sound of it. Would men in white paper suits be crawling around the crime scene on their hands and knees even now, looking for blood or hair or clothing fibres? It had rained on and off every day since Friday night. His own clothes from the time of the assault had disappeared and he had no memory of what he’d done with them. No one was going to find anything incriminating anytime soon. ‘Forensics, my arse,’ he huffed. Geoff dropped the tabloid on the table next to his empty mug and strode towards the exit. The newspaper looked as dry as his mouth felt. He’d get a fresh brew at Sheila’s, he decided.

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘Oh, thank God, Geoff. Please come in.’ Compared to the last time he’d seen her, Sheila looked a lot more composed. But once they started talking it might be a very different story. She made them tea, using a matching teapot with cups and saucers, as if she were entertaining someone distinguished. She offered him a plate of digestive biscuits that his empty stomach wished was a mound of toast. ‘You’re not at work today?’ ‘No,’ Geoff said. ‘I’m off sick.’ Stress-related, he reassured himself. ‘Oh,’ Sheila replied, fretfully. ‘It’s nothing you can catch.’ But thanks for your concern, Mum. Geoff decided to take the initiative. ‘But I’ve not been sleeping, Sheila. It’s Claire.’ ‘Oh,’ she repeated. Somewhere he thought he could hear buzzing, but it was a bit too early in the years for flies to make a comeback, surely? ‘That’s why I’ve come around this morning. To talk about Sheila. I mean, Claire.’ Max, too, he added to himself. And don’t forget Peter. No, no! It’s the same bloke, ?

‘The same dead bloke,’ his wandering inner voice corrected. Thankful that he was already sitting down, Geoff let out a strange little noise that sounded like something a mouse might make in a trap. Sheila didn’t seem to notice. ‘She’s not herself, is she?’ Who is? he thought. Certainly not Max or Peter. ‘No. She’s like a stranger.’ Sheila began smoothing the material of her skirt down over her knees. ‘I begged her not to do this. Or at least, to discuss it with you first. You need to be open about this, I told her. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’ ‘Really?’ Geoff asked. He was taken aback by her attitude. He’d always considered Sheila quite a conservative woman; but obviously not. ‘Geoff?’ ‘Well at least you and I can be open about it from now on, Sheila,’ he replied, trying not to look flustered. Sheila held eye with him for a second, and he wondered if she were about to ask him if he was all right. Hell, everyone else had. He stirred three sugars into his tea and hoped the rush might help keep him focused on the here and now. ‘She wouldn’t listen, Geoff.’ ‘She can be very headstrong.’ ‘And then she made me swear not to tell anyone.’ ‘Meaning me,’ he interjected, unsure whether he’d intended to say it or just think it. Come to that, he speculated, was it even him that had the thought; or was it that little voice again? It was so hard to be sure anymore. It was getting to the point where he was paying more attention to his own words than other peoples’.

‘I mean, I know. You said on Sunday.’ ‘I wanted to, Geoff. You must believe me. But she was adamant I was not to tell you.’ He believed her, too. In fact, he felt quite sorry for the tight spot Claire had put her in. Geoff wasn’t alone in being deceived. But that didn’t necessarily mean Sheila was on his side. ‘How long?’ he blurted out before he’d even realised what it was he was about to ask. So much for self-monitoring. Sheila looked momentarily bemused. Then the crease in her brow was flattened out by the realisation ing beneath it. ‘You know already, don’t you? Did she tell you? When?’ Sheila started ringing her hands, and for several seconds his concentration was trapped amongst her writhing digits. The sugar rush wasn’t helping his concentration, after all. He realised that his mother-in-law was waiting for an answer and opted for an honest response. ‘I worked it out for myself, Sheila.’ ‘I knew she couldn’t hide it.’ ‘I’m not a fool,’ he added. So why did he still feel like one? ‘You don’t know what a relief that is to hear,’ Sheila sighed heavily, still lathering up with her imaginary bar of soap. ‘That you know already, I mean.’ ‘So, you may as well fill in the blanks for me. You’ll not be breaking any promises now.’ Geoff kept his tone friendly, but inside he was screaming at her to get on with it. ‘She found him just about a month ago.’ ‘Online?’

‘Is that how it’s done these days? I don’t know. Must have been.’ Sheila went back to smoothing her skirt. ‘I said she should think about it. But she just ploughed right ahead.’ ‘Why did she tell you first?’ ‘Because I’m her mother,’ Sheila said, as if his question was ridiculous. Yes, and I’m her husband! This was why he felt like a fool: because everyone kept treating him like one. Geoff needed to carefully choose the moment when he played his trump card. Whatever had happened in the past, it was the future he was trying to put right here. Telling a mother her daughter was away with the fairies and on the old psycho juice required sensitivity and tact. ‘She didn’t have enough information to do it alone, you see. But that didn’t stop her.’ ‘What?’ ‘Just his Christian name. I told you. ?’ An alarm bell was ringing at the back of Geoff’s mind, literally. That was where he had heard the buzzing come from. It was still faint, but it wasn’t likely to stop either. Yet again he had that dizzying sensation of dislocation. It had happened before with Sheila on Sunday, but this time it was worse. ‘So, she must have hired someone to do it for her,’ Sheila told him. Geoff just stared at her. What? ‘You know, one of those private detectives.’ ‘A private dick!’ his migratory inner voice screamed in his ear. Geoff tried to redirect the conversation to a point where he might at least have a fighting chance of comprehending what the hell his mother-in-law was talking about.

‘But they haven’t met yet. Right?’ ‘Not as far as I know, thank God.’ That fitted, at least. ‘Why not, if she found him a month ago?’ The words came from his mouth but made no more sense to him than those issued from his mother-in-law’s. It was like listening in on a dialogue between two other people. If he walked out now, it was hard to dispel the conviction that the conversation would continue without him. ‘Did she get cold feet?’ ‘No. He did.’ Geoff raised his eyebrows and coughed to cover the sound of his mouse-in-atrap noise again. It was almost as if Sheila knew about the text messages from Max that Geoff had sent to Claire. But unless Claire had told her about them, that was impossible. One second there’s sense; the next, nonsense. ‘He has his own life now.’ What? Who does? I am still here? ‘A wife, children. I don’t know,’ Sheila said hurriedly. ‘And I don’t want to know. It was all such a long time ago,’ she added, snatching up her cup for a gulp of tea. ‘The past should stay where it is,’ she almost shouted. ‘What’s done is done!’ Geoff’s brain physically ached from the thick band of tension running around his skull. Either he was losing his mind or Sheila already had. ‘I don’t think he wanted to be found. That was why she resorted to professional help.’ He nearly laughed aloud. Someone certainly needed some sort of professional help around here; both of them, perhaps. Whatever Sheila knew, or thought she knew, the only thing that mattered to Geoff was getting her to keep shtum when it came to dealing with her daughter.

‘Actually, Sheila, that was what I wanted to talk to you about.’ But to Geoff’s annoyance, Sheila completely ignored him. ‘Of course, I only knew his first name, too. I didn’t lie about that. I told her that name when she was younger, but nothing else. There was nothing else I could tell her, you see?’ Sense, nonsense. Sense, nonsense. Geoff felt the rage growing inside him again. He wanted to launch himself at his mother-in-law and shake her by the throat until she started to make sense. He let the incomprehension show on his face. ‘His surname was changed after he went away, you see.’ There were tears in her eyes. What the fuck? Geoff’s mind screamed. ‘Whoever she hired must have found him somehow, though. Claire got a number to call and that was all. No full name or address. Just a mobile number. I don’t know how these things work. These things must be regulated. You know, Data Protection and such like?’ Find? Search? Found? The volume of the background alarm bell in his head was turned up a notch. ‘When was all this?’ ‘When it started, you mean?’ Sheila frowned. ‘Like I said, months ago.’ Months? The word echoed around his mind until it stopped having any meaning at all. She might as well have said moths. ‘So why wasn’t that the end of it, when he got cold feet?’ They’re very cold feet now. Technically, they were now reflecting on something that wouldn’t happen until several hours into the future, he realised with dismay.

His mouth was horribly dry. When he reached for his empty cup, Sheila obliged by refilling it with slightly stewed tea. When he took a gulp it tasted slightly coppery, like blood. Maybe his gums were bleeding. ‘Because Claire wouldn’t let it go. It was like an obsession.’ An obsession for a man she had never met? The alarm bell in Geoff’s head grew louder. ‘But now you know, Geoff, you can make her see sense.’ Not unless I can see it first, he thought. Geoff took another mouthful of tea to give himself a few seconds thinking time, though his head turned out to be quite a hard place in which to try it. ‘I’m lost, Sheila.’ ‘She came around here about three weeks ago, sounding so excited. Mum, she said. I’ve done it! I’ve made with him.’ Sheila put a hand to her mouth, unable to continue. Whatever it was she was banging on about, it was something that tormented her. It was something very personal for her. But how? ‘What was his name, Sheila?’ he asked, for no other reason than to keep the conversation moving. ‘According to Claire, he called himself Max.’ So, I was right about the Maxine bit, at least. This did nothing to relieve him. He felt the walls around him leaning in closer, the ceiling only inches above his throbbing head. ‘Max?’ Sheila looked up. ‘I begged them to keep the name I’d chosen for him. Somehow, I always knew they wouldn’t. It was as if they wanted to erase any part I’d had in his existence. Now, do you understand why I was so against this?’

‘Well, Geoff, do you?’ his inner voice shouted above the din of the alarm bell. ‘Because I bloody don’t!’ ‘Just stop it!’ Geoff pleaded. ‘Oh, Geoff, I’m sorry. I know this must be hard for you,’ Sheila sniffled, wiping her nose. He hadn’t even noticed that Sheila had started crying again. All he could manage was to shake his head dumbly. ‘I was only fifteen. Fifteen! I couldn’t cope with a baby.’ ‘A baby,’ Geoff echoed, as if saying the words aloud might reveal their meaning. Wasn’t Whiting having a baby? ‘And his family said they’d bring the child up as one of their own. My parents agreed it was for the best, and that was that. They were waiting at the hospital. I never even got to hold him!’ What have I done? Geoff felt his connection with reality start to come adrift. His head was a kaleidoscope of faces, names and random phrases that seemed to have no connection between them. ‘That’s why I didn’t want Claire delving into the past. It wasn’t for her benefit. It was for me! OK? For me! Do you understand?’ Not in the slightest, he thought, rubbing his aching, ringing, spinning head. ‘His father was just sixteen himself. We were only kids!’ Suddenly all the noise and visions in Geoff’s head froze. Something big was approaching. He gazed around his mind like a visitor at an exhibition, sensing the big something but not seeing it, like an approaching night train through the throat of a dark tunnel. ‘What name did you want him to have, Sheila?’ ‘Oh, does it matter now?’

He grabbed her arm and asked again. ‘What was the name you chose for him?’ She just stared for a second, shocked by the force of his grip. ‘Peter,’ she said, her mouth twitching down at the corners like a child’s after it has fallen. ‘I wanted to call him Peter.’ The bell ringing in his head wasn’t an alarm bell at all, but the bell belonging to a runaway train, a train that was about to thunder right through his sanity. ‘Now he’s agreed to meet her, apparently,’ she sobbed, grasping his hand. ‘She sounded so happy, but I’ve got such a bad feeling about the whole thing.’ She sounded so happy. The noise of the train was deafening. He stared at Sheila, and seeing her mouth was still moving, forced himself to listen above the din generated by his injured mind. ‘I had Claire only a few years later. To compensate, I think. But I never tried to get the boy back. It just seemed wrong somehow. He had someone else he called Mum and Dad. I wanted it left alone. But now Claire’s dragging it all back up!’ ‘Sheila,’ he said weakly, but the rest of the sentence was immediately lost. Suddenly he didn’t want to shake her to make her tell him the truth. He wanted to stuff something down her throat to get her to shut up. ‘I told her about Peter by mistake when she asked if she could have a brother or sister one day. It just came out.’ The train was rushing around the inside of his skull in a cacophony of belching steam and grinding metal: What have I done! What have I done! What have I done! What have I done! ‘Sheila! Stop it!’ But Sheila wasn’t listening. She was lost in the release of her long-suppressed misery and pain. She had to let it out. Her body rocked with it, like a zoo animal gone mad in its cage.

‘I said to her, “You already have a brother, darling.”’ Suddenly there was utter stillness in Geoff’s head; as if he had emerged into the eye of a hurricane. ‘A brother?’ ‘Of course,’ she heaved a sigh. The voice hissed in his ear, ‘At least it rhymes with lover!’ ‘That’s what this is all about, Geoff.’ But Geoff could only gape; the runaway train in his skull was returning louder than ever, but this time with a scream like an animal caught in a trap. ‘That’s what you worked out for yourself, right?’ She sounded so happy. ‘That Max is Claire’s half-brother.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

It had just gone one o’clock in the afternoon. He was still free, free but on the run; though no one was chasing him, as far as he knew. Maybe they were just watching him, waiting to pounce. He blinked wildly as the sun sailed out from beneath a cloud and shone through the windscreen directly into his face. Looking around he recognised the large, gravelled car park, but he couldn’t put a name to it. There were picnic tables to his right and left. He ed coming here with his mates, on their bikes, at weekends and school holidays. He thought of fishing, though he’d only been once as a child with his uncle, and certainly not here. Fish on Fridays, that was why he’d thought about fishing. Then it came to him. This was Friday Woods. How long had he been sitting like this? A pain in his bladder suggested quite a while. The sun disappeared behind another dark cloud, as if Fate were deliberately trying to keep his spirits dampened. In the distance he spotted a man walking his dog, wearing a hat and gloves against the cold. He wanted to run to him, to confess everything and beg him for help. But catching a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror, he knew the man would bolt before he got close enough to be heard. Invading the silence, he heard the humming of a small plane, high up and far away. Maybe Eddy was up there, looking down in sympathy but so far out of reach. Never in his life had Geoff felt so alone. Where had he been earlier? Ah, yes, chatting with his mother-in-law about how he had killed her firstborn child and Claire’s half-brother, who also happened to be a police officer. Fuck! He opened the car door and vomited noisily onto the gravel, but there was only Sheila’s tea and biscuits to bring up. He vomited again, all the same. His bladder threatened to burst, sending him stumbling towards a nearby tree to relieve himself. He ed how popular this spot was with kids and was glad it was a school day; though it was hard to believe that anything could make his situation worse, even being reported for indecent exposure. He found a half empty bottle of water in the enger footwell and splashed

some of it over his face and into his mouth. It didn’t help. He was overwhelmed by an urge to end it all there and then. But how did you commit suicide in a forest? Climb the nearest conifer and jump off? Wade into a lake with your mouth open? Or step out in front of a mountain bike with your eyes closed? Slumping back into the driver’s seat, he let out a loud bark of laughter, and then started to cry. Contemplating the various impractical methods of self-destruction at least brought him back to reality. But he still felt panicked, as if two jackdaws were fighting in his guts over what was left of his stomach lining. Right on cue, his stomach did a forward roll; but whether from hunger or a prelude to more dry heaving, he couldn’t tell. He took a sip of water and waited for the sensation to , slowly letting the immensity of what he’d learned seep back into his consciousness. So, this was Claire’s big secret, the part of her that he could never reach, and now never would. Did Max even look like her? He tried to , but all he kept seeing in his mind’s eye was the half-brick flying through inky night air. He checked the time, as if he still didn’t believe that so large a chunk of his day had vanished. Only one hour before Claire would expect to meet her long-lost half-brother; the quest that had evolved into an obsession, according to Sheila. Why couldn’t she have told him? Geoff let his head rest against the steering wheel, struggling to breathe. ‘And do you know the funniest bit?’ the now permanently external voice asked. ‘Neither of them knows yet. You’ve robbed them both of something precious and they’re still getting on with their lives in blissful ignorance.’ But not for much longer, thought Geoff. ‘Pretty soon now one of them is going to put two and two together and tell the other. Then where will you be, Geoffrey mate?’ ‘In hell.’ The voice started to laugh. Geoff looked up from the steering wheel, his eyes widening, and his torpid blood started to pump back through his veins again. ‘Neither of them knows yet.’

The laughter ceased. Yes, it was true. They didn’t. And maybe they never would, not entirely. That threat was real and huge, of course, but it wasn’t inevitable that either of them would find out the whole truth about this Max/Peter character. Claire had never seen Max and didn’t connect him with Peter, the murder victim, because she had never learned his real name, the name Sheila had chosen as a teenage mother. In her mind, Max was still out there and planning to visit her shortly at the flat. Sheila had been Geoff’s major worry. He had assumed that she recognised the name of the murdered man in the news as her son, but their conversation earlier seemed to indicate otherwise. She hadn’t mentioned the murder at all. How was that possible? Sheila knew that her son was in the area, because she had told him so just before her dreadful revelation: ‘He’s agreed to meet her,’ she had disclosed. So why didn’t she at least consider that the murdered man, Peter, who had died only a stone’s throw from Claire’s home, was her own little Peter? ‘Now he’s agreed to meet her. She sounded so happy,’ Sheila’s voice echoed from his memory. That was the key to unlocking this mystery. She was talking about their meeting that afternoon at two, but how? Geoff thumped his forehead with his fists, knowing that the answer was within his grasp but still tantalisingly out of reach. The sun re-emerged and warmed his stubbled face. ‘The obvious, damn it! Think of the obvious!’ He wanted to scream, to cry, to roll about on the ground, tearing his hair out. ‘Claire must have told her, you idiot!’ the voice sniggered. Claire must have talked to her mum about today’s meeting, if only briefly. OK, but how was that significant? It wasn’t, not really. Geoff sat still, thinking hard, knowing that he was inching ever closer to the truth, a truth that still might save his neck. And then he had it, just like that, practically gift-wrapped. ‘You’ve got it, fucko!’ Max’s meeting with Claire in just fifty minutes time had only been set up by Geoff yesterday via text, so mother and daughter must have talked sometime between then and now. They both assumed that the man called Max was still

alive and well and would therefore never connect him with the murdered Peter Bates! By thinking of her brother as Max, Claire had helped create a smokescreen over the murder of Peter that Sheila would never see through. It couldn’t be her Peter that was dead, because according to Claire he was alive and well under his new name of Max. But the final piece of the puzzle was Peter’s surname, Bates. Whatever the name of the family that had waited at the hospital when Sheila was only fifteen, it couldn’t be Bates, otherwise there was no way Sheila wouldn’t have ed it in the news. No, little Peter had obviously been moved on to another family, maybe several, until he had finally adopted the surname of Bates. ‘Silly cow,’ Geoff tittered. Now, all he had to do was make Max disappear for good with a final farewell text, as planned, and mother and daughter could console one another about a ghost consigned to the past forever. What was it Sheila had said? ‘The past should stay where it is.’ Would it ever come out that Bates was related to two local residents? Would anyone ever point the finger at him? Not if Geoff dumped Peter Bates’ wallet somewhere minus its credit cards and cash, reinforcing the motive of robbery. Bates had been mugged, they were bound to conclude in the absence of any other plausible explanation; and, being a copper, he had tried to fight back, thus enraging his attacker. What was it Eddy had said? ‘They think it was a mugging that went wrong.’ Another ghostly memory, a more recent one, flitted through his mind, but his mind refused stubbornly to acknowledge it. Whatever it was made him feel powerless and frozen again, despite the sunlight on his face. He shrugged the feeling off, annoyed that some minor detail was attempting to spoil what the Italians called trionfo, the sense of triumph. There was still a way out for him; and after all he’d been through, he was not going to let anything block that opening for him. The feeling persisted, however, growing in strength, gnawing away at his raw stomach. ‘She sounded so happy.’ In his mind’s eye he saw Sheila’s face in profile, her mouth forming the words.

Geoff started repeatedly thumping the steering wheel, not caring about the airbag beneath or whether the dog walker might be watching. Maybe the dog walker was a copper in plain clothes? ‘No! Get out of my head. Don’t spoil it! Claire belongs to me. I deserve her. I won’t let you take her away from me!’ Geoff stopped his pounding. He wasn’t just thinking aloud. He was ing. Those were his spoken words, ed verbatim: ‘Claire belongs to me. I won’t let you take her away.’ His own words uttered in a rage, a dark and terrible rage, and recently, too. In his mind’s eye, he saw broken crockery and tea dripping from the edge of an upturned table. Yes. At Sheila’s house, and not just recently but within the last two hours. The missing two hours. Geoff looked up at the winter sun and stared at it until the back of his eyes hurt and he was temporarily blinded. ‘Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse!’ that jabbering voice goaded him. He pictured Sheila from earlier, inviting him into her house, a loving mother, her brow taut with worry, telling him how happy her daughter had sounded at the prospect of meeting her brother at last. ‘But I’ve got such a bad feeling about the whole thing,’ Sheila had added. He stared at his hands and noticed something dark and viscous beneath a couple of fingernails. His heart started to beat faster. What have I done now? He heard a voice laughing in the car with him but didn’t know who it could belong to, until he caught sight of his open mouth in the mirror. On his white shirt sleeves, too, he saw a peppering of small dots close to the

wrists, like the spray from a fountain pen. He’d experimented with a fountain pen at school, because his father said it always created a good impression in the reader. But it had always made such a mess that he couldn’t think of a way of making a worse impression and gave up; much to his father’s disappointment. His heart beat faster still. He had a sudden craving for ice cream, and imagined his lips peeling away, as in a desert. When he swallowed his throat made an audible click. Oh, what have I done now! He stared closer at his shirt sleeves, at the dark matter beneath his fingernails, and let out a horrified moan. His school insisted on its pupils using black ink; always black. Any marks or corrections were written in green, bizarrely. No one at his school, not even the teachers, had ever written anything in red. He pictured the black tea leaves soaking into Sheila’s carpet; and something else there, too, that though dark, wasn’t quite black. Something, he knew, that should not have been there, and should never be found. Something that would be the signature to his doom.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was one twenty-five, the dashboard clock reminded him. The hour quickly approached. This, then, would be Max’s last text to Claire, his final farewell. It was also its author’s last throw of the dice, so Geoff needed to choose his words well. That Claire would struggle to accept Max’s decision was a given. She had not come this far to give up so easily, as her mother had implied. But give up was what she had to do, for everyone’s sake. She might try to call her brother back, but it would be useless. Soon the phone would be as dead as its former owner. There would be tears, outbursts, even a genuine trip to the doctor for a sedative. It was only natural that discontent would hit her hard. But her ignorance would be bliss compared to knowing the truth. It would all blow over, though, because the rock in this coming tempest would be the ever-faithful Geoff, telling her that he’d noticed how unhappy she had been, how distant (how remote). He wouldn’t ask her why, of course. He would just acknowledge the change and offer his love and . Perhaps he could take her away for a few weekends as the weather improved? If Whiting, now that he was the boss’s golden boy, could instigate his much sort-after pay rise for the staff, they might even consider moving home; anything to distract Claire from pursuing her half-brother any further. And all that would start when he turned up at the flat, within the next hour, and explained, without the need to lie, why he wasn’t at work. ‘You’re right, love. I’ve got problems, and you’re not the only person to notice.’ When Geoff stepped out of the car again he felt lighter and calmer than he had in weeks. Or maybe he was just numb with exhaustion? It was hard to tell. Recently it was like his emotions belonged to someone else, someone withdrawn, implacable and resentful. He was sure of one thing, though: even before that very first text from Max in the patisserie, he’d been aware that something was wrong. That’s what came from living with someone for over a decade, you got to know them as well as they knew themselves. Things that had once felt free and natural had become laboured, contrived; as if they were mere actors playing the roles of husband and wife. Would Claire really have chased

after her half-brother if she and Geoff had been as contented as they had been in the early years? He thought not. In that respect, the fact that Max was not a lover was irrelevant. The symptom was different, sure, but the cause was unchanged. That was what he had to focus on now. He had taken his eye off the ball, allowing routine and predictability to become the referees of their perfect match. Having conceded a disastrous own goal, he realised that the best he could hope for now was a last- minute equalizer. Geoff took out Max’s mobile phone from the boot of the car, refusing to think of it as Peter’s, and switched it back on. There was one message that immediately caught his eye. He opened it. The message was from Claire. He read it over several times, letting it sink, not into his brain, but his heart, as that relentless heaviness returned to crush his body like Jovian gravity. For a few minutes there he had imbibed again the relief of knowing there was still a way for him to sort this out; but with this one message, those hopes had been ripped from him and scattered like autumn leaves in a gale. He read the message one more time, hoping maybe that he had misread it somehow: will talk 2 mum again if poss will bring her 2 claire Struggling to breathe, Geoff leaned against the side of the car. He felt his stomach begin to spasm, but there was no time to waste. He had to get to his mother-in-law’s house first. No one must enter, especially not Claire. He couldn’t recall why this should be so important, especially since he had already talked with Sheila; but it had something to do with a whistling train careering through a tunnel and a river of red ink. Geoff jumped back into the car, and with a roar from the engine and a spray of gravel, he was hurtling back towards the road. He barely paused before accelerating back towards town. A tractor pulled out from a field, forcing him to slam on his brakes with a curse. Something rolled across the boot and thumped into the back of the rear seats, making him jump. He heard it rolling back again as he overtook the tractor near a bend, too impatient to be cautious, and

accelerated away. Max’s phone (or was it Peter’s now?) was in his jacket pocket, he realised, but whatever had been displaced was considerably heavier anyway. He thought back to the moment he had switched the phone back on. It wasn’t just Claire that had tried to call Max. There were a dozen missed calls ed. But you didn’t need to work in Forensics to try calling the dead man’s missing phone first. ‘Shit,’ he hissed, as another thought jammed itself behind his eyes like a migraine. What if they were tracking his phone signal instead, which he had conveniently switched back on for them? Could they do that shit, with satellites and stuff? It wasn’t worth taking the chance. He would have to turn it off as soon as he could. But that could wait. He didn’t want to pull over yet. He had to get to Sheila’s house before Claire did. That was his priority. If he didn’t, he might as well hand himself in at the nearest cop shop anyway. He wondered what made it so important to stop Claire getting to Sheila’s; or rather, what made it so important that his mind should withhold the truth from him. Her mother knew what her daughter was attempting, and no amount of persuasion on Claire’s part would get Sheila to the flat at two o’clock, Geoff was certain. ‘The past should stay where it is,’ his mother-in-law had declared. Claire would just go back to the flat alone and Geoff’s strategy would conclude as planned. So why the big panic? ‘Because you’ve spilled the wrong ink everywhere, you messy boy,’ the voice whispered. ‘And you’re going to have to pay for it with your life.’ Life on the inside might not be so bad, of course. The other cons might even see him as something of a hero for killing a copper. Certain parties in the underworld might even arrange protection for him. Maybe at the end of his sentence he and Claire could… Something flashed in his rear-view mirror as he entered the outskirts of town without slowing down. Under the circumstances breaking the speed limit seemed a bit trivial. The only set of wheels he would have access to for the next God knew how many years would be those on a prison library trolley. ‘Stop thinking that way!’ he scolded himself.

‘No,’ the voice piped up. ‘You stop deluding yourself that you’re anything but screwed!’ An image formed in his mind of a police photographer taking pictures of the broken crockery, the upturned table and the dripping tea. He saw it all, as if through the lens. The oddest sight was of the black tea leaves scattered across a dark red stain in the carpet. The police photographer’s camera flashed in his mind again, before finally focusing in on something else lying among the debris. He had to fight to see the road ahead; his mind kept showing him little flashes of close-up photos as that part of the imagined forensic process drew to a close. He saw an elbow, a knee, the hem of a skirt, a foot half out of a slipper. With a shriek, Geoff slammed his head back against the headrest, dispersing the phantom images but making the world around him turn crimson. Someone thumped their car horn angrily, and then he was back in control again. He could not forget what he had seen, however. As the traffic started to slow him down, one portentous notion predominated: Whoever got to the house first, it wouldn’t be Sheila who opened the door.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The screech of his brakes turned every head his way, as he ed a red light at the very last moment. The seatbelt strap cut across his chest like a cheese wire. A mother with a stroller had already stepped off the pavement in front of him. He saw another mother put her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Again something heavy had shifted in the boot, rolling from one side to the other this time. He lowered his window to apologise, but the indignant mother beat him to it. ‘Wake up, you idiot! Before you kill someone.’ He closed the window quickly, willing the stern expressions to disappear, and staring straight ahead until they did. ‘Before I kill someone?’ The hardest part was not laughing. He would need to explain how he knew Claire was going to be at Sheila’s flat, he realised. Wandering into their flat and confessing that he was off work on comionate leave he could have made sound plausible; but turning up at Sheila’s almost simultaneously with Claire would look instantly suspicious. ‘Talk your way out of that one, fucko!’ the voice muttered. ‘As long as Claire doesn’t get into the bloody house,’ he replied, unmindful that he was now regularly conversing with someone who wasn’t there. The blaring of a car horn behind him made Geoff look up at the green light. He tried to pull away and stalled. The car behind gave him a longer blast. Geoff could feel the eyes of the watching pedestrians crawling all over his face again. Would someone assume he was drunk and call the police? He twisted the ignition key, pulled away and quickly took the next left to escape the angry driver trying to kiss his rear bumper. When he found a space along the side road, he maneuvered into it with difficulty and turned off the engine. Stopping like this was a gamble, true, but if he hit any kind of traffic holdup he might not get to Sheila’s first anyway. There was a pain in the centre of his chest that he didn’t like the feel of. When he reached forward to turn the ignition on, the pain got acutely worse. He would have to wait a minute or risk ing out in transit. Trying to control his breathing only made things worse, as did imagining Claire reaching out to ring her mother’s front doorbell.

‘Think of something else, then. Think of something else, damn it!’ And closing his eyes he thought of something he hoped had been safely consigned to the depths of his mind many years past: Darren. He’d had his eye on Claire for several months before he dared speak to her; and the reason he’d waited so long was Darren. Theirs’ was a steady relationship, he could tell. He knew, for instance, that she stayed over at his flat three times a week, because he sat in his car outside Darren’s most nights. He knew they’d been on holiday together, where they liked to drink, which restaurants they preferred, who their mutual friends were. He watched and waited, praying that one day they would split up; and when he saw that Darren was seeing someone else behind Claire’s back he knew his chance had come. Somehow, she found out, and Darren got the push. Somehow. Claire was understandably upset. He bought her a drink to cheer her up one night but didn’t push his luck. Over the next few months they went from casual friendship to a more confidential relationship, Geoff making himself an increasingly indispensable shoulder to cry on. They started eating out together, going to the cinema, the odd nightclub. He wanted to tell her how he really felt, but the right moment never seemed to come. He knew it would, mind. He and Claire were meant to be; he just had to be patient and understanding. Everything was going to plan, too, until the night that Claire said Darren had learned his lesson and she wanted to give him another chance. So, a shoulder to cry on was all Geoff would ever be to her, so long as Darren was around. Unless somehow Darren could be made to disappear. Somehow. The police presumed the driver who struck Darren late one Friday night as he crossed the road eating a kebab had been drunk. There were no witnesses, and Forensics didn’t have anything to show for their efforts. All Geoff could do was be there for poor Claire, let that trusty shoulder get soaked through to the skin, until one day, out of the blue, Claire kissed him hard and told him she loved him.

‘I love you, too,’ he whispered, opening his eyes again to the present. The pain in his chest had been replaced by a warm, dull ache. He looked at the clock in the dashboard and cursed the minutes he’d wasted. He pulled out the dead man’s mobile and began texting a new message: not mum I cant its all wrong goodbye so sorry M. So much for choosing my words carefully, he thought as he pressed send, but it was the only thing he could think of that might stop her. Would she even hear the phone’s single ping if it was in her handbag? He thought about ringing her as well, killing the call the moment she picked up, and then resending his text. Of course, she might not stop for the phone at all, focusing on persuading Mummy to return to the flat to meet her beloved little Peter instead. What else could be more important to Claire right now? Certainly not her marriage, he decided angrily. The conviction that he was wasting precious time grew stronger by the second. ‘Get there anyway,’ he counselled himself through gritted teeth. Talk to her, convince her to spend a few days away sorting things out. ‘Don’t leave anything to chance.’ ‘Because this isn’t the first time you’ve taken your eye off the ball, is it?’ the voice mocked. Claire would be on foot, of course. She wouldn’t waste time waiting for a taxi. That would slow her down. Unless she ran?

‘She’s a fitness trainer, for God’s sake!’ the voice screamed in his ear, making him jump. ‘She’d run it just to burn off a few extra calories, you stupid fat bastard!’ In his mind’s eye he saw her, tearstained face red with exertion, dodging past dog walkers and shoppers, running to her Mummy. She reached Sheila’s door and rang the bell. No answer. But wait, there was a text message! It was from Max, minutes before she was due to meet him at the flat. She read it carefully, once, twice; stood there, her breathing sharp and shallow. Her mouth twisted into a soundless No! and her head shook from side to side. ‘No! No! No!’ Then she was hammering on the front door and shouting through the letterbox. ‘Mum! Mum! Please!’ She tried to see through the windows, but the house looked empty. Claire was alone, abandoned, afraid. So, she didn’t rush back to the flat or scour the streets hoping to spot her mother. She didn’t go to the railway station and frantically call Max’s name along the length of the platform. She went to the one person who truly loved her. The man who had looked out for her like a guardian angel from the moment they’d met. The man who had killed for her. And running into the office, she would bury her sobbing face into his chest and he would hold her and make everything all right again. ‘But you won’t be at the office, hero!’ the tormenting voice roared with laughter. ‘?’ The fantasy in his head dissolved immediately. ‘Damn you!’ He reached for the key still dangling from the ignition but stopped when his own phone started to ring. It was Claire; Claire ringing him on his phone, not Peter’s. It was a potential lifeline. He should answer it, of course, but what should he say? Had she read his recent message pretending to be Max or not? She knew he would never answer his mobile at work, so did that imply that she knew somehow that he wasn’t at work today? Eventually the phone stopped ringing and Geoff took his hand away from the ignition. Swapping phones again (‘Hi, Claire, it’s Max here, Geoff here, Peter here.’), he looked at the earlier message from Claire on Max’s mobile, stating her intention

to involve Sheila in her little family reunion drama. If the police were tracking the signal they’d have surely got a fix on his location by now. For the past ten minutes he had risked his own life and other road s’ in a frantic quest to get to Sheila’s house before Claire did, only to let himself get side-tracked again. ‘Eye off the ball, son! Eye off the ball!’ I should be running right now, he thought. ‘But it’s too bloody late!’ the voice bellowed. The pain was growing in his chest again. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ ‘It’s always too late for losers like you!’ Because, because, because. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Sheila hadn’t responded to her daughter’s calls (‘But she can’t, can she?’), so Geoff had imagined Claire running through the streets instead with the intention of transforming her imminent two o’clock rendezvous with Max into a cosy family reunion. But, of course, all that depended on the text he had read from Claire being in real time. ‘Oh, dear.’ He had just assumed it was fresh without noting the time received. ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ Which meant it could have been sitting there for five minutes or ten, longer even. Geoff massaged his chest, feeling a tightening in his throat as well. ‘Oh, no! Oh, shit!’ ‘Oh, yes! You’ve got it! Yes, you have, boy!’

He scrutinized her message envelope. Geoff had read the text at about one thirtyfive. But that was not the time Claire had sent it. The time Claire’s text had been received was one-fifteen. ‘I’m too late,’ he whispered. ‘Bingo!’ came the shout in his ear. His own phone started ringing again. ‘You’ve always been too late, fucko!’ Then Max’s phone ed in, too; both phones buzzing at him in each ear. But wait; he’d got something wrong there. It was Max’s phone that had rung first, then his. ‘And what does that tell you, loser?’ Ignoring the dead man’s phone, Geoff pressed his own mobile into his chest, feeling the vibrations sink into his sternum. He knew who was calling him without looking. It was someone in need of a shoulder to cry on.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘Claire?’ At first all he could hear were sobs. ‘Calm down, Claire. What’s wrong?’ In his mind he heard Sheila say again: ‘I’ve got such a bad feeling about the whole thing.’ Still more sobs. ‘Claire?’ ‘I’m. At. Mum’s,’ she managed to say. ‘I know.’ Shit, no I don’t! The sobbing and hitching breath continued unabated. His comment hadn’t ed. ‘Is she… all right?’ Easy. ‘What’s happened?’ The only reply was more snivelling. And something else. Someone had said something to her in the background. It wasn’t a voice he recognised. ‘Claire!’ There was a fresh wail of despair that lasted a good ten seconds before she could finally speak again. ‘The police are here.’ ‘What!’ The police, of course: who else? An ambulance wouldn’t be much use now. Sheila hadn’t had a fall or choked on a fish bone like the Queen Mother. That was what ambulances were for; and there was nothing accidental about what had happened at this address. ‘The. Police.’

‘Why?’ But he knew, of course. I was there. I was a witness. ‘Oh, no. I think you were a bit more than that, hero!’ I was provoked. ‘Oh, Geoff!’ Cornered. ‘Claire, what is it?’ Left with no alternative. ‘For God’s sake tell me!’ He imagined her banging frantically on her mother’s front door, but no one answered. Yes. She bangs on the door and tries to look through the windows, but the curtains are drawn. Through the unlocked back gate and staring into the empty kitchen, she sees that the connecting door to the living room is closed. The curtains on the back windows are closed also. She bangs on the glass there, too, but still nothing. She gives up. ‘She gives up and runs again, runs to you, Geoff! Straight into your loving arms!’ But she hasn’t. She’s still at the house. Still inside the house. But how, when there’s no one there to let her in? ‘Because of the other thing you’ve overlooked. The worst thing; the worst

possible thing.’ No house-proud mother has her curtains closed in the middle of the day. It’s what you do when a household is in mourning. ‘Oh, Geoff! Geoff!’ ‘Claire! Why the hell have you called the police?’ There was a meanness in his tone of voice now. He was done for and he knew exactly why. All he needed to make the guillotine drop was to hear her say it. ‘I. Went. Inside,’ she moaned. ‘No. No, you couldn’t have!’ Because Sheila didn’t need to open the door for her. ‘I went inside, Geoff!’ she almost screamed. Of course she went inside. She could do that anytime she wanted, day or night, any day of the week. She used to live there, after all. ‘She’s dead, Geoff!’ ‘Dead?’ Dead. How had Claire done it? he tried fooling himself into ignorance. Had she broken a window and turned a door key on the inside? Jimmied a window lock? Climbed down the bloody chimney? ‘No, you idiot,’ chuckled his demon voice. ‘Dead!’ This time Claire did scream it. Again someone said something in the background, louder this time, attempting to mollify. It was a woman’s voice; someone professional. Was it the same female officer that had visited their flat asking questions?

‘Mum’s dead!’ Claire was screaming down the phone. ‘She’s dead! She’s dead! She’s dead!’ Geoff terminated the call, unable to cope with Claire’s screams any longer. Much to his surprise, they did not persist in his head afterwards. It seemed his mind was too numbed now even for psychosis. Sheila was dead. OK. He knew that much. But he’d locked the doors and windows, closed the curtains and slammed himself out through the front door; even calling out ‘Bye, then’ over his shoulder as he left. But even if that had succeeded in keeping Claire out, his situation was hopeless. However careful he had been inside the house – and he really hadn’t; not in his state of mind – forensics would find something to connect him with the murder. It wasn’t like a hit and run. His prints and D.N.A. would be everywhere, as Eddy would say. In the end, he hadn’t even been able to protect Claire from the grisly discovery of her mother’s body. Claire had simply let herself into the house through the front door, Geoff realised. She’d been inside as his wheels spun in the Friday Woods car park, probably, as he charged past a tractor on his way into town, as he’d stamped down on his brake and clutch pedals at a pedestrian crossing. She’d let herself in, walked in, full of excitement and anticipation about reuniting her family, and found instead the upturned table, the smashed crockery, the slowly dripping tea, now cold, and the dark red stain on the carpet. She’d been inside and found Sheila, found what he had done to her. ‘Because? Because? Because?’ Geoff closed his eyes, screwed up his face till his teeth hurt. ‘Because she has a spare key,’ he whispered.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

One consolation prevailed: at least Claire would be in the clear. She had been at work all morning. Could anyone corroborate that? Only thirty sweating housewives in leggings and crop tops wobbling their way to fitness nirvana. Geoff, on the other hand, might be ed by the angry woman at the pedestrian crossing he’d nearly flattened, but the only other person he had seen was dead. Of the actual killing itself, and what had provoked it, there was still just a gaping hole in his memory. His last recollection of his visit to that house was of Sheila telling him that Max and Claire were brother and sister, or as good as. Had that been enough to finally tip him over the edge? It didn’t matter. He knew what he’d done, even if he didn’t know how; and that, furthermore, the police would eventually catch up with him. He was a double murderer now. Forensics could cross-reference, or whatever they called it. For one insane moment he even considered giving Eddy a call to find the right term. ‘You’re in a different league now,’ Eddy would have told him sternly. Geoff was still driving without a destination in mind, which given his state of distraction was probably a recipe for further fatalities. He pulled in at a supermarket up on the by and parked, just another happy shopper. This was where his day had started, he ed. Was it really the same day? He sat in silence for a few moments, all his anger dissipated. Indeed, it was hard to feel anything. This must be what Peter and Sheila experienced now: a state of nonbeing, an eternal peace, a fitness nirvana without the sweat. He waited for that tormenting voice to make some sarcastic comment, but there was silence on that front, too. Even his madness had forsaken him, if it had ever been there. At least now he knew what it was that kept rolling around in the boot of his car. All he had tried to do was protect his wife, to love and cherish her, just as he’d promised in their wedding vows. Wasn’t that a mitigating factor? No, because instead of defending Claire he had robbed her of her mother and half-brother in the most gruesome, sickening way. Claire would hate him for it forever. Her only solace would be if he were caught and punished. His last journey as a free man, he realised, would be to the police station.

But first there was something important he had to do. He stared at his phone momentarily, scarcely believing what it was showing him, and felt the tiniest stirring of emotion. His finger dabbed and the next moment, incredibly, he was speaking into the phone. ‘Claire?’ You read my mind, baby. He thought he could hear faint breathing in the background, but it could just as easily have been his own. ‘It’s me. Geoff.’ She didn’t reply. He hadn’t expected her to. ‘The police will be here any minute.’ They’d surely have his car registration number by now and someone would have picked him up on C.C.T.V. ‘I just wanted to talk with you whilst I still have the chance.’ How often had they called into this supermarket to do their weekly shop? Him smuggling treats into their trolley like a naughty schoolboy. ‘Anyway, I’m not going to try to explain.’ I’ll leave that to the psychiatrists. Tears welled in his eyes, as if to prove to himself that at least part of him was not a monster. ‘Claire, if I think hard enough, I can every single moment we’ve spent together. Every coffee, every carrier bag, every drunken snog in the back of a taxi, every euphoric toast on New Year’s Eve. Everything. And that’s just what I’m going to do, Claire: you. You see, where I’m going there’ll be nothing else to do but ; and even if there was, what could be more beautiful than to fill my hours with memories of you?’ He looked out through the windshield and thought he heard the rattle and hum of a helicopter approaching. It would be soon now anyway. His heart beat a little faster.

‘I love you, Claire.’ It felt good that the last words between them didn’t have to be lies. ‘And I’m going to spend the rest of my life ing just how much.’ He slumped forward suddenly against the steering wheel, exhausted. Tears fell as if from a burst water tank. Everything was ruined and there was to be no escape. But he’d meant every word he’d just said and found strength in the fact that he had been able to say them in confidence. He refused to repeat them in court. He stared down at his empty hand. The mobile phone had slipped from his grasp down into the footwell next to the brake pedal. The screen was as empty and lifeless as his future. Amid the chaos of the last few days he had simply forgotten to charge it. He got out of the car. The sun was still hiding behind a bank of grey cloud. His flesh felt as numb as a cadaver’s, his presence as undetectable as a ghost’s. He walked round to the boot and opened it slowly. Ah, yes, the object that he’d heard rolling around during his mad dash into town. The half-brick had blood on one side and the carrier bag he had tried to hide it in was bloodied, too. He must have collected it from the flush tank on the way over to her house the second time, before he’d heard what she had to say. Did that imply malice aforethought? The prospect of a judge, a jury, a thousand questions and opinions loomed over him like a punishment in its own right. So much for persuasion being his only weapon. You can hardly hit her with a brick, he ed thinking only that morning. Looking back over the past fortnight, there was so much he couldn’t recall, so many gaps, unanswered questions, sleepless nights and waking nightmares. But that didn’t make his crimes any less real, or any less appalling. No court would show him pity or mercy. But perhaps he would be sent to a mental hospital instead, deemed not guilty by reason of insanity? Diminished responsibility, they called it. But two people were dead because of him, and another’s life would be ruined now wherever they put him. Losing his sanity didn’t frighten him. It was recovering it again one day that would be unbearable. Diminished responsibility? He let out a weak, soulless chuckle. ‘I’m certainly diminished now.’

His shoelaces were untied, his filthy hair tangled and gone awry. The shirt was buttoned in the wrong holes. His tros were stained with splashes of vomit. On psychiatric wards, didn’t everything get fastened down the back? Or would he be too sedated to care? Geoff slammed the boot shut and trudged over towards the supermarket entrance. Muscle memory tried to push him towards the shopping trolleys, but he kept walking straight. There was still a way to get his message to Claire; and looking the way he did would actually make it easier. Not to mention the smell, he considered, cracked lips beaming incongruously. When had he last had a bath? Trade was still brisk in the supermarket. Even when he and Claire had tried shopping at night it was the same. I bet they don’t keep their business receipts in a cardboard box, he laughed to himself. A man in a navy-blue suit clutching a walky-talky stood in front of the fruit and veg aisle, hands in front of his paunch. He looked Geoff up and down distrustfully. ‘Can I help you, Sir?’ Geoff let himself get just close enough for the man to smell his vomit and bad breath. ‘I’m not feeling too good, mate. Is there a phone I can use to call someone?’ Mr. Navy Blue Suit looked him up and down again, wiggled his nose, and obviously decided the cost of a local call was a good investment if it meant removing this drunk from the premises. They’d had enough truck recently with drug takers in the toilets. ‘Certainly,’ he smiled insincerely. ‘This way, please.’ He discretely explained the situation to a woman in customer services and resumed his front of store position, gladly leaving Geoff in her care, but casting the occasional glance his way every few seconds. Above the piped music and the chatter and the rattling and banging of shopping being dropped into wire trolleys, Geoff could clearly hear the sound of the helicopter overhead. ‘If you pick up the handset on the wall, you should have a line,’ the woman

explained. The first time he dialled there was no reply. Where was she? Giving a detailed statement already? Or maybe she had needed sedation first. No, the police would want answers. Two dead bodies in less than a week within two miles of each other didn’t add up to a coincidence. CID would want to get cracking: before the orgy of bloodshed continued, as the press would doubtless describe it. He tried her number again. There was still no answer. Whatever was happening, wherever Claire was, and whoever she was with, there seemed a good chance that she would still be in the dark about the killer’s identity. Even the police wouldn’t work out immediately that Max and Peter were the same person. There was even a possibility that Claire might suspect her half-brother as the assailant. Maybe Claire would imagine a heated confrontation between mother and estranged son, with raised voices and bitter recriminations escalating into physical violence? That would put the pie around the chicken. But he was clutching at straws when the only material to hand was mud. ‘You finished, mate?’ a voice asked from behind him. He turned and stared hard at a young man holding a rolled-up tabloid in tee-shirt and jeans. ‘One more try,’ he muttered, more to himself. Geoff heard the man tut impatiently and looked back at the face of Miss Customer Service. ‘Please. One more try?’ The woman raised an eyebrow and looked away. On his third attempt the call was answered. He knew they’d be listening, but hearing her say his name one last time was all that really mattered. Then he’d know for sure who she truly loved, wouldn’t he? ‘Hello?’ Her voice was hollow, weak and diluted by a misery that he experienced as his own. In his mind he pictured a tiny bird with a broken wing struggling in his hand. He wanted to tell her again that he loved her, but he held his tongue and waited.

‘Hello?’ she said again, a little more urgently. Geoff thought he heard voices murmuring in the background. Eager detectives, in all likelihood, trying to trace the call. But they were wasting their time. He was done with hiding. The coppers, the courts, Max, Whiting, Hopkins: they could all go to hell. This would be the one liberty they could never take from him, this tacit emotional bond between two people that transcended the banality of time and place, and the ham-fisted reach of the law. ‘Is it you?’ Claire whispered. Yes, darling. He had won. It’s me. Their love was still intact, and however much she hated him when she found out he was responsible, somewhere in the deepest eddies of her heart this pearl of love would always catch the light. It was as if their love had ed a terrible test and the reward was a bond they shared that not even eternity could erode. And that bond would be solidified the moment he heard her say his name. ‘Fuck sake,’ the man waiting behind him said. ‘You ordering a taxi or what?’ When Claire spoke again, her voice clearly lifted by hope, the handset dropped from his grasp, as if it had electrocuted him. His mouth opened wide in a twisted, soundless scream. A little girl looked over and burst into tears. The woman in customer services stepped back behind a chair in horror. The security guard brandished his walky-talky, as if it were a weapon. Driving his curled fingers deep into his eye sockets until they started to bleed, Geoff slowly sank to his knees. The half-brick fell from beneath his jacket and rolled across the floor, disgorging flakes of dried blood. From every direction came gasps and screams and calls for help. For Geoff, however, he and the outside world were now divorced forever. The last word Claire had uttered was a word that would haunt his every waking second, his every tortured night. This, then, was the truth, and there was no escaping it. He was no longer the most important man in her life. The sense of betrayal was how he imagined Peter must have felt when his parents told him he had been adopted. Maybe this would have been how he felt if they’d had a child and Claire showed it more affection?

His body shrunk into a foetal ball, head buried in a tangle of shuddering limbs. The phone cord swung above him like a noose. In the distance came the sound of sirens. ‘Is it you?’ she had asked. Geoff? Even in her darkest hour, Claire still held onto hope that her true champion would come. Her expectant, whispered voice resonated around Geoff’s uninhabited mind, a jumping stylus stuck at the same spot on the soundtrack to his wretched existence, forever: ‘Max?’

The House Rules - Contents

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Other Books by Gary Kittle About the Author Connect with Gary Kittle

Chapter One

The nightmare began where it would end, on her doorstep. Over the past few months, Christine Money’s life had been steadily improving. She was under no illusions about the difficult path that lay ahead, but the coming of the spring flowers, the lengthening of the days, the sunbeams lighting up the dust motes when she opened the curtains in the morning, all served to put a distance between her former desolation and the floor. But opening the front door only a few minutes ago, her spirits had hit the ground like a dropped box of eggs. ‘Janet, you said?’ ‘No, Janice. From social services. I’m sorry I’ve not been round to introduce myself before, but we’re a bit thin on the ground in the office. We have a lot of long-term sickness, unfilled vacancies... It’s stress central, to be honest.’ Stress, Christine thought, feeling her throat stiffen. ‘Anyway, there’s something I need to talk to you about urgently. Something that has only just come to our attention. Like I said, it is quite urgent,’ she added, glancing pointedly over Christine’s shoulder. ‘Oh, yes. Of course,’ Christine replied, reluctantly stepping aside. ‘You’d better come in.’ That was all it took to turn her world upside down. One minute she was staring outside into a stranger’s face, and the next that stranger was making herself comfortable on Christine’s sofa. The young woman wore an ID card holder on a blue lanyard around her neck, the miniature plastic smile mirroring the one she wore in person. Her hair was tied back, but not severely; she wore black tros and a plain white puff sleeved cardigan with a floral shirt beneath. Her makeup was minimal, her nails unpainted. Her eyes were bright and clear like something she had picked up in a jeweller’s. Early to mid-twenties? The former, Christine decided. They would be hiring them straight from school next. Thin on the ground was an understatement. The word ‘urgent’ still rang in Christine’s ears like tinnitus.

They only sent someone out unannounced like this if the House asked them to, and for that to happen there had to be something seriously array. The House was not like a car alarm, prone to go off unexpectedly in high winds. The system was virtually failproof. It had to be, given the threats of litigation and insurance claims that seemed as habitual in her age group as stiff ts and memory loss. Through the living room window, Christine Money saw the first rays of that late March morning break through the clouds and fall at her feet like the paws of a loyal cat. Mistakes could occur in the world of automated home health monitoring, of course; but when they did, they usually made the evening news. ‘Sorry if I seem a bit flustered,’ Christine began, lowering herself into her late husband’s armchair. Flustered was not the word. She had forgotten the girl’s name again. Christine tried to catch the name on the ID card, but it was turned on its side and she could not read it. She realised how odd it would look if the young woman noticed her staring at it with her head cocked sideways. ‘As I said,’ her visitor continued, ‘my name is Janice and I’m looking after Donna’s caseload at the moment.’ Christine took instant umbrage at the girl’s use of the phrase ‘looking after’. She did not need anyone looking after her at the age of sixty-two. Until her husband’s hospitalisation she had had to look after both herself and him, though mercifully that had only been for a few months. But that made it sound as if she were glad he was no longer alive, when the truth was that she had half-wished it were Bill ringing the doorbell this morning. Hi, darling. I’m back from the dead! She quickly suppressed that thought, too, reminding her, as it did, of the famous ghost story involving a monkey’s paw. ‘Until Donna returns, of course.’ ‘Can’t it wait until she gets back?’ Christine wondered aloud. Janice smiled in the manner of someone amused by a child’s naivety. ‘We’re talking weeks not days, I’m afraid.’ Donna had been her social worker for, what, five years now? And though she was always professional, it was hard not to think of her as a friend as well. She had certainly been a rock following Bill’s death.

‘She’s ill, then?’ ‘It’s nothing serious.’ So why are we ‘talking weeks’? thought Christine. She would have to buy a getwell card the next time she went shopping, maybe pick some flowers from the garden. Donna had always complimented her on her garden. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But I wish someone had told me sooner.’ ‘I did send out an urgent email first thing, just to forewarn you I was on my way.’ ‘Oh, really? I must have missed it.’ If the email had been flagged as urgent the House would have alerted her as soon as she got up. But that had not happened, or at least she did not it happening. She would have to check her inbox and junk folder later. ‘I’ve been getting a lot of junk mail recently,’ she added. ‘Well, anyway,’ said Janice, leaning forward in her seat. ‘As your case worker, something important has been brought to my attention. And that’s why I’m here this morning. Listen,’ she continued, lowering her voice. ‘I still see this as a routine visit, in some respects.’ If her visitor moved any nearer, she would end up in Christine’s lap. ‘I doubt it’s anything to worry about, Christine, but we have to respond when a call comes in.’ ‘A call?’ What call? This was painfully melodramatic. ‘There’s been a few… irregularities here.’ ‘Irregularities?’ ‘That’s right. Recorded by your Wellbeing Monitor.’ Rubbish! She wanted to scream. ‘The House, you mean?’

‘Yes, that’s right. The House.’ So there it was. Spoken with a soft voice and couched in non-threatening language, but all the more ominous for that. Donna would never have prevaricated like this. By now she would have laid out everything on the table like a last will and testament. What did this mere slip of a girl know about love and life? The age gap between them might have been a good four decades, but that did not stop the younger woman from talking down to her – and in her home, too. The nerve! Christine tried not to let the indignation show on her face. ‘We really do need to act quickly, though. For your own peace of mind, more than anything.’ Janice’s voice was as condescending as her smile. Even her eyelashes looked false. ‘I really don’t understand. Everything’s been so – well – ordinary. So routine.’ That’s what they all say when they’re minds start to go, the condescending smile seemed to say. ‘Are you sure there hasn’t been some sort of system error? I really have been fine, honestly.’ ‘I know this must be quite a shock for you, Christine, my turning up on your doorstep like this. A stranger, bearing… well, unexpected news.’ Unexpected? She had been about to say ‘bad’, Christine realised. ‘When you say, irregularities…’ ‘We’ll come on to that later.’ Her language was changing from condescending to demeaning, like she was talking to someone who could not what day it was. ‘The last thing we want is for this (bad news) development to play on your mind.’ ‘I think it’s doing that already,’ Christine tried to joke. ‘Well, exactly.’ Had she been able to, Janice would have leaned across and patted her knee, Christine was sure. ‘Worry really can cause havoc with an older person’s mental health. It becomes a problem in its own right, quite often. I see it all the time in this line of work, believe me.’

Any hope Christine held that they might still develop a working relationship evaporated. How much experience could someone of Janice’s age have had? She looked like she’d barely qualified, her language seemingly lifted straight from a textbook on bad interpersonal skills. But even a good textbook could not teach sensitivity. Only experience could do that. ‘I’m sure you’ve read my file,’ Christine stated, tersely. ‘Not in full, no. Although I have read Donna’s most recent report, of course.’ Any second now she would start calling Christine ‘dear’. She would not stand for that. ‘I’ve had a lot of trouble over the last few years. It’s been quite stressful, as you can imagine, the changes to my personal circumstances and… everything.’ Her nerve had failed her. She did not want to hear herself use words like loss and bereavement, loneliness and grief. ‘I’m sure I’ll be stronger for it in the end.’ ‘And now I’m on your case, you won’t have to deal with it alone.’ ‘No.’ But I think I’d prefer it, she added secretly. ‘There’s no shame in asking for help in later life.’ Janice seemed to have read her mind, adding further to Christine’s discomfort. ‘And that’s why I’m here this morning, Christine. To offer you that helping hand.’ She did not need any kind of hand, any more than she needed looking after. ‘You were saying about the House?’ Christine’s Wellbeing Monitor – the House - was five years old now, one of the original models, but it had been such a long time since any ‘irregularities’ had been reported that in many ways Christine had forgotten it was still running. She thought of the House more as an automated home help than anything else. Obviously, it had been checking up on her the whole time. Five years ago, Christine had been a pioneer – though guinea pig might be an alternative description. She had signed up for the pilot scheme after a routine

operation developed secondary complications, and the hospital managers intimated that the alternative would have been a protracted delay to discharge. Or worse still, she might not have come back out at all, as was to happen to Mrs Green from number eight a few years later with her pancreatitis. Though Christine was below retirement age back then, the hospital managers informed her, they were looking to recruit people with less complex needs for their pilot scheme, until they could be confident that the system was as good as the manufacturer claimed. Bill was still alive and well back then, and her ission had been the longest time they had slept apart since their wedding night. The thought of him ‘getting by’ in her immaculate kitchen kept her awake at night on the stuffy ward. She was back at home once the system had been installed and tested. Even so, all her cooking knives were blunted and her non-stick wok scarred in three places. ‘Do you know what my Gran used to say?’ Janice’s voice interrupted her reverie. ‘You’ll worry yourself silly.’ You really are a Little Miss Know-it-all, aren’t you? ‘And she lived into her nineties.’ ‘Really?’ Christine would not want this one as a grandchild, not that she had any of her own anyway. She and Bill had decided early in their marriage not to have children. ‘But that’s not to say she didn’t have problems, as she got older,’ Janice continued. ‘I’ll not be ninety for quite a while,’ Christine chuckled through clenched teeth. ‘Oh, of course not. But it is a part of the normal aging process, isn’t it? There’s bound to be some degree of impairment somewhere along the line. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about, I’m sure: missed appointments, lost items, misplaced names. But of course, once you start worrying about these things it just makes the situation ten times worse. And before you know it, you’re not sleeping and eating less and that just exacerbates the problem…’ ‘Yes, I know how a vicious circle works, dear,’ Christine interjected, a little too sharply.

Janice opened her mouth to spit out another of her pearls of wisdom, so Christine stood up quickly and brought the palms of her hands together with a soft clap. ‘Oh, but I am rude, Janice. I haven’t offered you a drink.’ She tried to imagine what it would feel like to slap Little Miss Know-it all across the face and tell her to get out. Christine was relieved when the reply was a grateful ‘tea’. Her mouth was bone dry. She needed to escape to the kitchen to recompose herself. When she returned with the tea tray, she found Janice dictating into a tablet, her lips moving silently as the lipreading app behind the screen translated and logged her words. Obviously, Janice had been as keen for a break in the interview as her host. Apparently, Christine had told Janice a lot about her mental state already. She signed off as Christine poured them each a cup. At least all that talk about memory and concentration lent weight to the assumption that the irregularities were mental rather than physical. But whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen. ‘Listen, Christine,’ Janice persisted, after a loud sip of tea. ‘I’m sure there’s probably nothing to worry about at all, that’s all I’m saying. Normal cognitive decline in later life is…’ ‘Biscuit?’ ‘Oh, yes. Well, it’s just that, isn’t it: normal. Thank you,’ she crunched. ‘And the quicker we can confirm that that’s all we’re looking at here, Christine, the better it will be for your peace of mind. Yes?’ Her mind had been perfectly peaceful half an hour ago. ‘I suppose so.’ And please, call me Mrs. Money from now on. ‘I’d just feel more comfortable if Donna was doing this. Nothing against you, you understand,’ she lied. ‘Well, there is a procedure we must follow when the House calls, and that’s why I’m here. To explain what happens next.’ From the moment this young woman had opened her mouth Christine had felt her nerves chafing. It wasn’t hard to pinpoint the cause, either; Janice seeming to possess a unique ability to choose exactly the wrong phrase at the wrong time,

and then deliver it in exactly the wrong tone of voice to allow any chance of trust and understanding to blossom. ‘When this kind of thing happens in someone of your age (grate), the cause is usually something innocuous like insomnia or even constipation (grind), would you believe? Simple matters easily resolved (rasp). That’s what the House was designed for, after all, to stop small problems from turning into bigger ones (scrape).’ Janice evinced the over-confident air of someone who knew how things worked hypothetically but had yet to put any of it into practice. Like a health visitor without children, Christine thought mischievously, or a traffic warden without a car. And the annoying thing was that it all had to be a mistake, a technical error. Not so long ago, a second cousin had been forced to employ a solicitor to prove that she was not dead, after a computer error. These things happened. It would be rewarding to see the look on this haughty little madam’s face when that error came to light. ‘So, what happens next?’ ‘Well, naturally, our tech staff will make sure the system itself is doing its job.’ Which would be the beginning of the end, Christine tried to comfort herself. The House recorded everything from bowel movements to bath times; when you ate, what you ate, where you ate; it monitored when you went to bed and when you woke up again, your housework routines, social excursions, and energy expenditure. In the first months it learned everything about the person living under its roof, and then adapted data about general age-appropriate behaviour to create unique personal algorithms that if deviated from beyond a probabilitydefined margin of error would raise a safeguarding alert to social services. Or put in layman’s , it looked out for you. It was where personal care met core processing, and in a world with a ballooning elderly population it was here to stay. Christine felt a pang of tension twist in her half-empty stomach. Lunch felt closer than breakfast, though the clock said otherwise.

‘Well, I’m sure they’ll find something wrong with it,’ she blurted out. ‘I’m rather like an atomic clock, me: regular, dependable...’ Decaying. She cleared her throat, determined to discover some of the specifics. ‘What exactly is it that the House thinks I’ve been doing wrong?’ Janice sat back slightly. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’ ‘Oh. Why not?’ ‘It’s just procedure.’ ‘To stop me worrying?’ She knew her question must sound sarcastic, but she didn’t care anymore. ‘Exactly,’ Little Miss Know-it-all smiled reassuringly. ‘As I explained, worrying could make things worse.’ Worse? Christine felt a livelier flutter of nerves run through her stomach. She’s already decided the system’s all right. Weren’t social workers supposed to be non-judgemental? Christine would pay good money to see the look of surprise on that unlined face when the engineer’s report identified a software error. But what if there wasn’t one? Again, the nerves behind her navel fluttered their tiny wings, aggravating her stomach acids. ‘But if I knew what the problem was, I might be able to give you an explanation here and now; clear the whole thing up without any fuss, was all I was trying to say.’ ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ Janice spoke slowly and softly, like a schoolteacher trying to avoid explaining reproduction to a five-year-old. ‘Complicated?’ ‘Like I said, procedure.’ The young social worker broke eye , picked up her teacup and slurped down another mouthful. ‘Before I go, however, I do need to ask you a few questions. If that’s okay?’ Was she worried that Christine might be an immediate danger to herself? ‘Fine.’ And stop slurping your tea, you ill-mannered little bitch.

There seemed little point in arguing, Christine realised. The whole world was run on procedures, the sole purpose of which seemed to be the saving of money by people who already had too much. ‘How much do you have with your family these days? Do they visit?’ ‘Of course.’ Immediately after Bill had died there had been plenty of . And not just occasional visits, but practical help, too, putting right all the things Bill had let slip during his illness: decorating, plumbing, the garden, home security. But once those urgent jobs were taken care of, the visits had dwindled to nothing. Her disappointment at her family’s doing ‘the necessary’ and then disappearing over the hillside guilt-free must have shown on her face. ‘What about friends, then? You must have friends?’ ‘Of course I do,’ Christine replied scornfully. The only problem there was that many of her closest friends were dead. ‘I have a great social life.’ ‘Tell me about that.’ When Mrs Green’s pancreatitis had flared up, it was Christine who phoned for an ambulance after hearing her cries for help. Most of the houses were still standing back then, although the majority were already vacated. But now there was no one left to hear anything if Christine found herself in trouble, just the malfunctioning House. Great! If Little Miss Know-it-all was probing for evidence of social isolation, she had only to look out the window. ‘Can you tell me their names?’ ‘Sorry?’ It was obvious what Janice was up to. What would she ask next? The day of the week? Who was Prime Minister? ‘Some of your best friends’ names.’ But her mind had gone blank. She could see the familiar faces from the lunch club she attended three times a week, the locals who ran a community allotment that always made her knees

ache, ing acquaintances at the shops, the surgery, the library. But not a single name presented itself to her apprehensive mind. And who the hell was the Prime Minister? It was as if her memory had gone on strike. Little Miss Know-it-all leaned forward again. Their eyes met. ‘What’s my name, Christine?’ So, there it was, quite suddenly, the item at the top of Little Miss Know-it-all’s agenda: check she’s not too far gone already. The House was designed simply to monitor any deviations that strayed beyond the norms of human aberration. Repeatedly leave the milk out all night, forget to lock your front door, misplace your keys, burn your toast, miss important appointments, and the House would detect an ‘inexplicable aberration’ and take action. The result of that action was sitting in her living room right now, leaning forward like a bird of prey, just itching to catch her out; and for the life of her, Christine could not recall her bloody name. ‘You do my name, dear,’ Little Miss Know-it-all whispered triumphantly. ‘Don’t you?’ Bugger, did this mean the system had got it right? That the tech guys would find everything running smoothly? Christine cast her mind back over the past few days, picking at various random anchor points that might prove her lucidity unbroken. What had she had for breakfast yesterday, for instance? No, what had she had for breakfast this morning? Toast. Toast and honey, because she’d run out of marmalade. That was good, then, and the toast wasn’t burnt either. But how had she run out of marmalade? And for how long? A day? A week? Longer? How many times had she been shopping and walked right past the jams and spreads section without it jogging her memory? She had a sudden urge to open all her cupboards to find out what other stocks she had failed to replenish. Or maybe the marmalade was there all along, so that Christine could thrust it in Little Miss Know-it-all’s face and scream, ‘Look, here it is!’ ‘Christine?’ She was waiting for her answer, the answer to the question that had nothing to do with anything edible. For a second even the question evaded her. Ah, yes, her name. What the hell was this young girl’s name? The seconds ticked away. Christine reached for her cup and took a gulp, delaying the inevitable. Think!

Think! In her mind’s eye she pictured the social worker wandering into the kitchen, opening cupboards stacked with jar after jar of marmalade. Hundreds of them, and nothing else. ‘It’s Janice, silly. My name is Janice,’ she chortled inside Christine’s head. ‘ now, you demented old hag?’ ‘There’s nothing wrong with my mind, Janice,’ Christine smiled. ‘If that’s what the system’s indicating, then I think the sooner you get an engineer out to fix it, the better. Don’t you?’ The triumph she felt in the simple act of recall was tempered by the significant delay preceding it. And as if some cognitive dam had burst, the names of most of her surviving friends and acquaintances flooded her memory like guests at a surprise birthday party. Christine described them all with relish; where they had first met and what she liked or disliked about them with such gusto that Janice had to put up a hand to stop her. ‘That’s great, Christine. Loneliness can affect people’s mental faculties as much as their age. We all need stimulation, purpose, a sense of belonging.’ I think I know where you belong. ‘Some people on my caseload don’t see anybody from one day to the next.’ The tea slurping was louder. ‘It’s not healthy, mentally or physically. One thing I encourage my service s to do is avoid supermarkets, for instance. Instead, I tell them to go to as many different shops as they can manage. Every shop you go into you have to start a conversation, you see? Whereas if you do everything under one roof, you’re just another face in the crowd. And as for shopping online… Well, don’t even get me started on that one.’ ‘I get all my veg from the market on a Thursday,’ Christine volunteered. ‘And my milk from the newsagents, and…’ ‘Yes, yes. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. And don’t look at a list unless you have to. Try to rely on your memory first and check the list at the end.’ She would certainly never forget marmalade again. Janice rambled on about various health problems and how to avoid them, the process of bereavement, how often to keep in touch with the surgery, what

benefits she could claim, until finally Little Miss Know-it-all (Janice to her friends, if she had any) seemed satisfied that her job was done. ‘I’ll arrange for the tech specialists to check out your system, then,’ she smiled, back at the front door. ‘As soon as I’ve got their report, I’ll be in touch.’ Janice’s smile was pleasant in an advertising photoshoot manner. ‘Probably only take a few days.’ ‘Will they call round?’ Christine did not want yet more strangers invading her home. ‘No, no. They can do everything remotely.’ ‘Oh. Okay.’ Christine could not decide whether she was happy about this news or not. ‘Goodbye, then, Janice,’ she said as warmly as she could manage. ‘Let me know, ASAP.’ ‘Of course I will, Christine,’ Janice replied, not looking back. ‘Take care.’ Whatever they found, or did not find, Christine knew this young woman would be back. And that was what irked her the most, the fact that apart from being irritatingly supercilious, Janice seemed to be winding her up deliberately. Like this was something personal - which was ridiculous, of course, since the two women had never met before. Even so, that paranoid conviction would not leave her. As soon as the front door was shut, Christine went through all her kitchen cupboards and wrote a long shopping list she was determined never to use on a point of principle. On the top line she scrawled marmalade in block capitals and underlined it three times.

Chapter Two

Her kitchen inventory finished, Christine wandered slowly from room to room searching for clues that might explain the House’s judgment that there was something wrong with her. Nothing was broken or missing, damaged or neglected. She found everything exactly where she expected to find it. The clothes she wore were clean and ironed. Her wash basket was empty, the damp washing still hanging out on a clothes horse from yesterday. Even the kitchen waste bin failed to produce so much as a charred sausage. It was practically a show house. Was that the irregularity? Did the House think she had obsessive compulsive disorder? True, she tended to clean, dust, sweep, vacuum, polish and disinfect everywhere twice a week, but that hardly qualified as obsessional. Besides, it had been her usual routine now for as long as she could . If this was the irregularity, it should have been flagged up years ago. No, either she was missing something or that hoped-for technical error was to blame. This had to be a system malfunction. She felt fine. Nothing was wrong. And wouldn’t her friends have commented had she started acting oddly? Maybe they wanted to but didn’t know how to broach the subject? After all, humans were far more susceptible to system errors than machines. Especially older humans. More to stop herself from touring the house for a third time, Christine decided to make herself a drink. Her mouth was dry and, despite the sunshine on the carpet, the air in the house felt chilly. The kitchen surfaces shone impeccably. There was certainly no evidence of an older woman letting things go now that her husband had died. She would probably have another clean around later. There was no way she was going to let a set of algorithms prove she had turned into a slob. ‘Bill, put the kettle on, please. You’re wife’s gasping.’ The House responded with a single ping.

‘And less of the sarcasm, please. I’m not in a good mood.’ Christine listened to the kettle filling via a retractable hose in the wall (the kitchen cock, Bill had called it), and within a few seconds the first gurgles and splutters of the boiling process began. If the House was designed to maximise its resident’s independence, gadgets like this were surely counter-productive. But this was hardly the right time to make a stand on the issue. The water came to the boil with a tired click and another ping from the House. ‘You don’t need to tell me it’s boiled, Bill.’ She watched as the small cloud of steam dispersed before her eyes. Was that what happened to your thoughts when your mind started to fail? ‘They think I’m losing it, love,’ she sighed. She let her fingertips hover above the spout, feeling the vaporous warmth on her skin. Sometimes feeling that something, however intangible, was still there was all she had left. ‘But the only thing I lost that mattered was you.’ That sounded dangerously like self-pity, but not to miss the man she had shared so much of her adult life with was to offer an invitation to that even more dangerous demon, denial. This kind of melancholy came and went on a daily basis, but its strength had diminished in recent weeks. Surviving January was a milestone. The sadness she felt was still sadness, but it lacked the power to overwhelm her, like shop brand instant coffee. When it threatened to re-energise itself, like this, the only solution was to keep herself busy. Hence the show house rooms. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ she muttered on her way over to the crockery cupboard. She made herself a black coffee with two sugars. Bugger the diabetes risk. And bugger what the House thought too. ‘Why don’t you me, Bill?’ she asked with a sniff.

The coffee was hotter than the tea she had made earlier for herself and Janice, but she was careful not to slurp it. Did the young generation have any standards? Next time she would leave some straws on the table. But she did not want to think about Janice’s return until nearer the time. In only a couple of weeks it would be exactly a year since Bill’s ing, and she was still crying herself to sleep at least once a week. Who was she kidding that things were steadily improving? Maybe the second anniversary would act as a rite of age and her heartache would end then. (My God, next year?) She ed seeing something on television about Native Americans and their ‘grieving time’, where a widow was exempt from all responsibility and restraint until such time as the chief of the tribe told her that her grieving time had ended and she needed to return to communal life again. As if. Unless she asked the House to play the role of Big Chief. ‘Bill?’ The House responded with the usual ping. Despite a promise to herself to restrict the amount of time she spent in dialogue with her dead husband’s voice, Christine put down her mug and asked, ‘Bill, switch to voice mode.’ ‘Switching to voice mode,’ said Bill. Christine ran a finger around the rim of her mug and sniffed. ‘I love it when you talk dirty.’ Christine had been careful to switch off the House voice as soon as the doorbell chimed. Though it was not technically illegal, most psychologists frowned on the bereaved programming their House with the voice of a dead spouse, sibling or child. But people did it anyway, and in surprisingly large numbers. There were regular scare stories in the media about the bereaved driving themselves into psychosis and suicide. There was even an online group that offered help both with the ‘voice dependence’, as it was called unofficially, and the underlying grief. Like any strategy for dealing with loss, using the loved one’s voice helped some s and hindered others. Christine increasingly suspected that if her dead husband was still talking to her after next year’s second anniversary she would belong firmly in the latter camp.

‘You’re encouraging pathological grieving here, you realise?’ Not using Bill’s name meant the House did not respond with some stock response like ‘Can you repeat the question?’ or ‘Please clarify’. The first time the House had responded with a ‘I don’t know the answer to that’ in Bill’s voice, Christine had stood in the middle of her living room and sobbed for twenty minutes. ‘Bill, who else lives at this address?’ ‘No one. You are the sole occupant, Christine Money,’ replied the House. ‘You are the owner.’ She closed her eyes, pinching the lids together tightly, as a child might do whilst having its hair washed. She would not cry, not today; and to prove this to herself she quickly added, ‘But if you’re not here anymore, where are you?’ In the weeks following Bill’s death she would sometimes run from room to room, shouting at the top of her voice, ‘Bill! Bill, please, where are you?’ Sometimes it made her feel better to hear his voice asking for clarification in the otherwise empty rooms. Sometimes she laughed until she cried. That there were no neighbours to hear her ravings was a blessing in that respect. But the House had been watching all along. ‘Maybe this Janice is on to something. Maybe someone needs to re-programme my head.’ The Wellbeing Monitor, the internet router, the fuse board, and even the electricity meter, were all hidden beneath the stairs, the access discretely covered by a framed photograph of her precious Bill. Only qualified engineers could open this , but the technician her friend had arranged to install Bill’s voice had performed the operation remotely with the ease of someone pulling the ring on a coke can. One minute there had been the standard female voice familiar to millions and the next there was Bill’s voice sounding as if he were still alive and trapped behind the walls like rising damp. That was the day she had cried until she laughed. The photograph was of Bill in his forties, back when his hair was still thick and chestnut-coloured, his waistline only slightly swollen above his tro belt. He looked relaxed if not exactly cheerful. She had caught him unawares. It would

not be the last time. ‘Bill, what’s our favourite song?’ ‘Our favourite song is La Ritournelle by Sebastien Tellier.’ One of those songs people only know when you play it. She would not ask the House to play it now. She had not heard it in over a year. If she did, she feared it might kill her. She ed whistling the chorus one morning and spending the rest of the day in bed. ‘Why can’t you ask me something for a change?’ They both knew the answer to that one. Grieving widows had been talking to their long-dead spouses for centuries, she felt sure; so what difference did it make if she projected her loss and yearning onto the bricks and mortar that Bill had strived so hard for? It was not as though she believed the House was Bill. Now that would be pathological. No, this twelve-month period immediately following her husband’s ing was designed to give her time and space in which to get used to the idea of Bill’s physical nonexistence, whilst preparing her for the eventual acceptance of his psychological disappearance too. At least that was how she justified the situation to herself in psychobabble language. But of those supposedly cathartic twelve months only a few weeks remained. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ she asked, wondering if the tech staff had started work yet. The House was silent, just as the real Bill had been initially when she confronted him about that other woman, all of fifteen years ago. What have I done to deserve this? was a question he could not answer then either. It was a meaningless one-night stand during a particularly sterile period in their marriage. She smiled in spite of herself: ‘one-night stand’ always sounded more like a form of medieval combat than anything involving intimacy and tenderness. It might have been the final straw for some couples, though. She knew women her age who had shown their hang dog husbands the door straight away. It did not matter how modern the world became, adultery seemed to bring out the outraged conservative in the most otherwise liberally-minded individuals. He did not love this other woman, of course. That really would have constituted a crisis.

Apparently, they worked for the same firm, though not closely. He never told Christine the woman’s name, and she never asked. What mattered was the agony of guilt Bill went through for months afterwards, an agony she let fester before deciding enough was enough and that it was time to draw a line in the sand. He had suffered enough, and her pain had been eclipsed by guilt at her own spitefulness. The night their relationship returned to normal (but did it ever, really?) they had drunk two bottles of white wine, reminisced about the ups and downs of the previous two decades, and fallen asleep together, naked, in front of the fire. ‘If I got that drunk now, it would definitely trigger the House alarm,’ she smiled to herself. A loud bang followed by a heavy crunch sent her eyes searching for the nearest window. They were preparing old Mrs Green’s house for demolition. Her two sons had been persuaded to sell up and who could blame them? Neither of them lived locally and the sale would have proven a welcome windfall, whatever their personal circumstances. Coming into money could never make someone’s life worse. Not that she had been tempted to do likewise after losing Bill. She would have to sell up eventually, of course; move into a small bungalow when the stairs became too much and even the army of gadgets could not overwhelm the housework. But that had to be at least a decade away, surely? No, there was no rush to relocate, despite the wholesale destruction happening all around her. From her living room window, she watched as a succession of old pipes came spewing from a gaping upstairs window across the road. A young man, decidedly overweight for his age, dragged it all off towards a pile of similar debris, bound for a scrap metal yard. His movements were nonchalant, his demeanour jaded; but Christine could only marvel at the way he never came close to being hit by flying pipework, even when he was gazing into his mobile phone. He seemed to know exactly when to step forward and when to retreat. ‘A valuable life skill, that,’ Christine reflected. She was about to turn away when a freshly cleaned car pulled up, fifty metres from the gutted house and out stepped Mr O’Sullivan, a single-minded Irishman who’d decided in his mid-thirties that life was better if you were the one hiring rather than being one of those to be hired. The gleaming car, the new shoes, the

dapper suit told everyone exactly how well his gamble had paid off, which was exactly Mr O’Sullivan’s intention. An entrepreneur, he called himself. But he was still a glorified builder as far as Christine was concerned, and, as it turned out, anything but a gentleman.

<>

Christine recalled the first time O’Sullivan had knocked at her door. It must have been about eighteen months ago. She had been expecting him, of course. He had been well over three-quarters of the way through buying up the whole road at the time. Rumours of what he intended to do with the land ranged from a parade of retail spaces at ground level with flats above, to a small number of high-end mansions complete with communal lake and private tennis courts; a gated community, no less. In truth, she was not intrigued enough to visit the council website and view the relevant planning application. She had met his type before; shameless men for whom greed was a better word than ambition because it cost fewer letters. There was no way she and Bill - still alive and undiagnosed back then, of course - would be selling to him, on principle. If only she had known that coming Christmas would be their last together. His beaming smile was already fixed firmly in place as she opened the front door. He knew how to present himself in a positive way, for sure. Even if he did not mean a single word that came out of his mouth, he seemed confident the person he was talking to would. ‘Ah! Top of the morning to you, Mrs Money!’ It was the only time, either before or since, that she had heard an Irishman utter that stereotyped phrase in person. She assumed it was just part of his well-practiced charm offensive, rather than anything more profound like self-deprecating humour. ‘The name’s O’Sullivan. You may have heard of me?’ Christine smiled politely but said nothing, preferring to let her visitor do the work. No one had invited him to knock on her door, and the fact that he would like to smash it in with a wrecking ball did not aid his cause. ‘I’m the chap that’s been buying up your neighbourhood,’ he continued,

broadening his smile. He obviously intended to make light of his professional intentions, dispelling any fears she might hold about property developers in general by itting to them up front. It was all a rather predictable spiel, though. But there was also an edge of wilfulness about his half-joking declaration, something that spoke of the inevitability of his success and the futility of resistance. ‘I know,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re hard to miss.’ She let her eyes wander over O’Sullivan’s shoulder at a yellow dumpster bellowing along the road behind him. O’Sullivan gave her a subdued chuckle by way of reply but did not bother looking behind him. They both knew her comment was a thinly disguised criticism. Work did not start until eight o’clock every morning, but when it did it was pretty much a constant mix of loud noises and dust clouds until four o’clock in the afternoon. It was early December, she recalled, a bright, fresh month that failed to dampen the spirit despite the dwindling hours of daylight. Bill had retired but had not really enjoyed the experience up to that point, being very much out of sorts from the moment he had started setting his alarm for eight o’clock in the morning instead of six. Retirement had been like a divorce; though there had been countless things he was not happy with workwise, he was still lost after the event. He was not sleeping well, and even when he did, he was always complaining of lethargy the next day. His appetite was fine for a man no longer working, but Christine felt he was losing weight as winter bit. He was watching far too much television for his own good, though she put that down to a lack of jobs to do in the garden. He barely noticed the outside world anymore and Christine started to wonder if he might be depressed rather than having anything physically wrong with him, though he also suffered from headaches every other day. The call from social services was to be a relief when it came, confirming, as it did, her cast iron intuition. The Wellbeing Monitor, already a fixture in the house for the past three years, would pick up not only weight loss but constipation, sleepwalking, reduced activity levels and an alarming sixty-six percent reduction in leaving the house. Though she had known something was not right all along, she still hoped the pathology behind it would not be anything serious.

Depression would still be a strong possibility right up until the results of the blood test and scans came back confirming Dr Osbourne’s original suspicion of a brain tumour. These were the worries dominating her thoughts on the day the property developer made his unexpected house call. Developer, she ed thinking spitefully as the man on the doorstep chortled on with his false good cheer, you’re nothing but a common bricky, plain and simple. ‘Just thought I’d knock on your door,’ O’Sullivan chirped on. ‘You know, introduce myself.’ And butter me up in the process, Christine decided. ‘Are we going to be neighbours, then?’ O’Sullivan laughed, genuinely, she was surprised to hear. ‘No, no, Mrs Money. I’m in the business of making homes for others.’ For profit, she thought wickedly. ‘We’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the months to come.’ At last he cast a glance over at the ing dumpster. ‘I do hope the lads are keeping the noise down as much as possible, Mrs Money. But demolition and construction are far from the most considerate of neighbours.’ To be sure, she added in her head. ‘I’m sorry if I kept you waiting,’ she said. She had been busy upstairs when the doorbell rang. Bill was in front of the television again, unmoved. When the bell sounded twice more, she knew Bill was not going to budge and she had rushed down in case it was someone important. Instead, it was someone self-important. ‘No problem. Like I said, I just wanted to make myself known.’ O’Sullivan rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ll not take up anymore of your time, then. Good day to you, Mrs Money.’ He started to turn away, then paused to add as an afterthought. ‘Any problems with noise or inconvenience, you’ll let me know, yes?’

‘Of course I will,’ Christine found herself mimicking his false smile. ‘Thank you.’ ‘And please, call me Tom.’ After he had gone, she had swept back into the living room with a growing headache, demanding of her husband, ‘Didn’t you hear the wretched doorbell?’ But Bill was lost in the deepest of morning slumbers, an opened blister pack of analgesics on the arm of his chair. And that was not the first time that week, either. His solution to poor sleep at night seemed to be sleeping the rest of the time instead. Christine snatched up the silver-backed packet and pushed one out into her hand. Top of the morning it had not been.

<>

How much had changed in those blighted eighteen months. Back over at the disappearing shell that had once been Mrs Green’s home, Christine watched as an older but no less chipper O’Sullivan changed his shoes for wellies, picked up a white hard hat and disappeared inside, the young chubby boy following nonchalantly behind. A few seconds later the banging and clattering ceased, and the dust began to settle in what had once been a much-loved garden. O’Sullivan had been a stranger that first morning, but she had certainly learned all she needed to know about him since. He had even had the nerve to come to Bill’s funeral, though the flowers he brought with him were glorious. For the previous five months, however, he had kept away from her door. Now it was late March and O’Sullivan would surely want to start turning all this bare earth back into bricks and mortar. But he could not do anything with her house stuck stubbornly in the middle of the site. There was something unnerving about his protracted silence, something far more threatening than the manipulativeness that she had grown used to or the anger and bad language of his last visit six weeks before her first Christmas without Bill. What a shocking performance that had been.

Was he resigned to building around her? Would that work? Her house was in a reasonable condition, but it would stick out like a sore thumb in any new development, especially a luxury one. That he was up to something was a given, but not knowing what, precisely, was becoming increasingly unnerving. She recalled something he had said to her once, on another of his neighbourly house calls, that was particularly disconcerting by what it did not say rather than what it did: ‘In my book, a successful businessman always knows how to play the long game, Mrs Money.’ Christine turned away from the window with a sigh and thought about lunch. God, she needed to keep her strength up and her wits about her with all this going on. The thought dismayed her. The last few years had been hard all round. She longed not just to drop her guard, but to simply throw it away like a postarmistice weapon. She dropped two slices of bread into the toaster and reached up into a cupboard for a tin of baked beans. It was not unusual for her to opt for a light lunch like this, nothing that the House needed to get into a tizzy about, at any rate. She could no longer deny that the tech staff would be running their diagnostic tests right about now. Janice would see to it personally, she felt sure. But in a way, that was a relief. Christine wanted this cleared up quickly. Though she would miss the sound of Bill’s voice, sampled from video and audio recordings to create a vocabulary sufficient to answer as the House, she knew that to persist with this arrangement into a second year would handicap her efforts to come to with her loss. Janice’s impromptu visit was potentially the catalyst that could allow her to move on with her life, finally. ‘Bill,’ she said, dumping the beans into a saucepan. ‘Check I don’t let the bread go beyond lightly toasted.’ She reached for a wooden spoon and started to stir her lunch as the heat rose beneath. ‘I don’t think we can afford to burn anything from now on.’

Chapter Three

‘Bill, I’m going out.’ And putting her shopping list in her bag, she slammed the front door closed behind her. ‘And don’t wreck the kitchen while I’m gone,’ she added under her breath, heading for the front gate. On the opposite side of the road, and indeed running its entire length from one end to the other, was a temporary hoarding fence painted royal blue. Installed partly for security, the timber structure was also supposed to protect the immediate neighbourhood from wayward dust and rubble. However, the doors to the site beyond were directly opposite Christine’s garden, and when opened fully, as they were now, it allowed not only clouds of dirt and sand to waft across the road, it also increased the noise pollution by several dozen decibels. There were doubtless numerous regulations that were being broken throughout the day, but Christine refused to give O’Sullivan the satisfaction of knowing he had got under her skin enough to make her put in a formal complaint. As a consequence, Christine had not opened any of her front windows so far that year. The only other house in Clarence Road still occupied was Number Fifteen, but recently she had seen a small skip filling up in their garden. Did that mean they were preparing to leave? She could just imagine O’Sullivan paying for the skip out of his own pocket. As she approached the four-bedroom house, Christine saw that the skip had gone and all the blinds were closed. She did not know them well enough to ask outright what their plans were. They kept themselves to themselves, hardly ever seemed to be home and she had not seen them at all for the past few weeks. The remainder of the road was one long blue shaft, creating a wind tunnel over the winter months, behind which only more dirt and dust lay hidden, the

pavements bedecked with intermittent lampposts that served only a single resident. Occasionally there were days when the funneling effect of the unbroken hoarding boards was so severe she was unable to leave home. If only those isolated days were the notorious ‘irregularity’ picked up by the House, Christine mused, all her worries would be over. At the end of this wind tunnel of a road she turned left, heading for the shops. She was determined that her list should remain where she had stowed it. That would show Little-Miss-Know-it-all. But, of course, the person she was really trying to prove a point to was herself. The closer she came to the high street, the more people she encountered and the lighter her spirits became. Sometimes living in Clarence Road was a bit like living on a desert island. There was certainly no shortage of sand. Getting out like this relieved that cabin fever-like tension that stole over her on days when the weather was poor or she had picked up a cold bug from somewhere. The sun was still gloriously bright, the air laced with the scent of freshly cut grass, the birds singing in a chorus of gratitude. The hum of sporadic delivery drones flying above her head was a soothing sound. The dank, truncated days of December were confined to memory. Optimism flooded her bloodstream like opium, her steps became lighter and brisker. The fatigue of earlier that morning seemed to belong to another day. Christine ed the newsagents, making a mental note to call in for the milk on the way back. She was heading for the supermarket first and could have made that her only stop, of course, but she had a point to prove. In her mind’s eye she saw the list in her bag and started checking off what was on it, rehearsing her forthcoming performance like a cello player. Speaking of which, didn’t Jacqueline du Pre die of a brain tumour like Bill, or was it something else? Christine was too young herself for it to be dementia, though younger people could get it, of course. (Forget about dementia. You don’t have it, silly.) Until a few hours ago she would not even have described herself as forgetful. And even if she did overlook something on the list, doubtless being in the shops would jog her memory nearer the time. That was what usually happened. Feeling her confidence renewed, Christine nodded to a few random strangers, eliciting a couple of smiles in return and lightening her mood. The supermarket was only moderately busy when she got there. She took her

time and brought herself a couple of treats for later to celebrate her successful recall of the list. There was nothing wrong with her memory or anything else up top, she reassured herself as the shopping trolley quickly filled. Twenty minutes later she was queuing. Her trolley was full but nothing like the one belonging to the couple ahead of her, which they had to maneuver between them. Shopping for one was so much easier, and all the more dismal for it, she decided. When it was her turn, Christine checked off each item mentally before loading it up into one of the carrier bags she had brought with her. There were people half her age who would have struggled to a list that ran into double figures like hers. The urge to at least glance at the list when it was time to pay reared its ugly head, but Christine was confident she had ed everything. She spent more than she had planned to, but this was a special occasion, after all: the discrediting of Little-Miss-Know-it-all. The two bloated carrier bags were much heavier than she had anticipated, the weight straightening both elbows as she turned to leave the store. A fellow shopper grinned at her and said, ‘The Olympics was last year, love.’ A few hours ago this might have annoyed her, especially with the light sheen of sweat gathering on her forehead, but now she merely laughed aloud and staggered on past the security guard. This was a battle she was already halfway to winning, she felt. Everything started to change, however, when she got outside. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud that appeared determined to soak up all the light and heat exclusively for itself. Was that the best part of the day lost for good? The static cloud seemed to think so. Her shopping bags were growing heavier with every step. There was always a bus, but it might prove more trouble than the effort was worth, queuing up, buying a ticket, finding a seat; only to have to struggle back off again five minutes later. She would have to break the journey up into stages, she decided. There were at least two benches she could use, for starters. The exertion would help her to sleep later on, she hoped, which reminded her of how poor her sleep had been lately. It might kickstart her appetite, too. Most of her beans on toast had ended up in the bin. There were more clouds gathering above the rooftops. Christine’s former liveliness and good cheer had migrated to the far side of the static cloud too. Was her mood so precarious that this minor change in local weather should knock most of the wind out of her sails? She recalled a TV documentary once declaring that most clouds never produce rain. But gazing up at the place in the sky where

the sun should be it was hard to believe that was true. What other purpose could a cloud have but to rain? Returning her attention to street level, Christine noticed a well-built young man with a phone in his hand staring at her, his expression somewhere between a frown and a grin. What must she look like, standing in the middle of the pavement, laden down with bulging plastic bags, staring up into the underbelly of a far from spectacular cloud? She looked straight ahead, refusing to make eye with her witness, and set off for home. Even when she had ed the younger man, she imagined his eyes scrutinising her retreating figure. She hoped he would not feel impelled to phone social services about her odd behaviour. Now you’re being ridiculous! But it was only the weight of her shopping that stopped her breaking out into a run. Two minutes later her arms were screaming at her to catch the bus, but the traffic was brisk and the nearest pedestrian crossing was way behind her. The sight of the newsagents reminded her to buy milk, and the fact that she had ed this in spite of her perturbation lent her a little relief. The only problem, of course, was the fact that her shopping now weighed even more. She swapped her bags between hands, trying to rebalance the load in the shop doorway, and noticed that someone was waiting to come inside. For a horrible moment she felt sure it was the young man who had been grinning at her earlier. ‘I’m sorry,’ she spluttered. ‘I’ll just…’ ‘Christine!’ a familiar voice chimed. ‘I thought it was you!’ Startled, she looked up into the face of one of Bill’s former work colleagues. ‘Oh, John. How are you?’ She tried to sound warm and enthusiastic, but the effort only served to emphasise the insincerity. ‘Glad to be back on dry land,’ he said. ‘We’ve been cruising.’ Christine’s mouth fell open. He and his wife had to be about her age. John laughed, throwing his head back as if he were trying to catch a nut he had just tossed up into the air. ‘No, no, not that kind of cruising, Christine! A round the world cruise.’

No wonder she had not seem him about for a such a long time. ‘Oh, I see,’ Christine chuckled, lowering her bags to the ground with a groan. ‘We saved up for it for years. I said to Serena, “As soon as I’m retired, we’re off.” And three weeks after I finished we at sea.’ His expression changed abruptly, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, ‘She’s a widow, ? Stop being so bloody cheerful!’ ‘But how are things with you? How are you coping, Christine?’ Until this morning, very well, she thought. ‘Not too bad, John, overall. It’s not easy, but I’m still here so I must be doing something right.’ The contrast between her outlook on life and his in the autumn years of their lives made her feel as if there were still a couple of shopping bags pulling on her shoulders. ‘Well there’s nothing wrong with your appetite,’ he said, nodding at her shopping, his face flushing with embarrassment at his offhand remark. ‘I mean, you’re looking well, Christine, all things considered.’ ‘It can be a struggle,’ she replied morosely, not sure herself whether she was referring to life generally or the shopping specifically. ‘I can imagine.’ I doubt it. Not if you’ve been living the high life on a luxury cruise ship with your not-dead partner for months on end. ‘It must be a year since Bill…’ His voice trailed away. Yet more awkwardness. ‘Not quite,’ Christine corrected. ‘But it still feels like yesterday sometimes.’ I still hear from him regularly, she wanted to add. ‘Anyway.’ John shuffled from one foot to the other, struggling, as she was, to find a way to save the conversation. ‘It was lovely to see you,’ he smiled. ‘And looking so well. I’ll tell Serena I bumped into you. She will be chuffed.’ Why? Because Christine hadn’t succumbed to either a brain tumour or dementia? Stop saying that!

Christine wondered if John had a car parked nearby, but it would be impertinent to ask for a lift. Thankfully, the roof ridge of Number Seven Clarence Road was almost close enough to see. She really had overdone it with the shopping, mind. ‘Please send her my love, John.’ ‘I will, Christine. Be seeing you.’ John started to move round her towards the door of the newsagents then stopped. ‘Listen, why don’t you come round to ours for dinner one night? We could catch up properly.’ Christine was touched. John was not asking out of sympathy, she could tell. ‘I’d love to. That would be great.’ It would also be something to flout in front of Janice, the fact that not only was she maintaining existing friendships but that she was renewing old ones too. ‘You’re still at the same address?’ An image of a leering Tom O’Sullivan flashed into her mind but she ignored it. ‘Oh, yes. Home sweet home. Let me give you my number.’ They both reached for their mobiles and exchanged numbers. ‘Okay, then. I’ll be in touch. Bye, Christine.’ And fluttering of his right hand like someone performing a conjuring trick, he disappeared into the shop. Christine bent her knees and wrestled the bags back off the ground. The addition of the milk carton seemed to have added the weight of the whole cow. The bank of cloud she had noticed earlier on the horizon had now nudged the solitary cloud aside, its colour even darker in hue. She started walking again, but the break had done nothing to help her arms recover from their exertions. This walk home was going to be longer psychologically than it was in of pure meterage. She was sweating again already, a sheen gathering on her upper lip and another one in between her shoulder blades. The ts in her arms were stretching so severely she worried that the bottom of the plastic bags would start to drag on the pavement and split open. Then what? She had to stop and rest, even though the newsagents was still in sight behind her. She turned around to see John’s back striding away towards town, a packet of what looked like cigarettes in his hand. Resentment rose up within her that he had not offered to give Christine a

lift. She was suddenly convinced that neither he nor Serena had any intention of inviting her to dinner, after all. The steady flow of traffic only reinforced her status as a helpless pedestrian. Maybe she should buy one of those new-fangled ‘flying shopping trolleys’, as they were nicknamed. You simply filled it up and it followed you – or rather your mobile phone signal - home, hovering three meters above you. But being new, they were still quite expensive, so she hadn’t bothered up till now. Today might change her attitude – if she ever made it back home with her heart still beating. Sixty-two was certainly not too young to have a heart attack. Christine started to reach back down for the already stretched bag handles, then stopped. Had John turned around? No, there was no sign of him now. But someone was watching her, she felt sure. There were maybe four or five other pedestrians in view, but all of them looked preoccupied with their own concerns. ‘Come on, Christine,’ she sighed, reaching down again. ‘You need a nice bath and a mug of hot chocolate.’ But the feeling persisted. She tried to focus on the act of putting one foot in front of the other – no mean feat – but that sensation of someone’s eyes burning into her back was constant. She decided to take another rest at a bench outside a pub, and having sat down, she tried to scan the road behind her as discretely as she could. Had Janice set someone to follow her, to see how she behaved? Or maybe it was Janice herself. But Christine could not imagine Little-Miss-Know-it-all choosing to do the leg work in person. No, a thought stole into her mind, but she wouldn’t need to if she was using CCTV. The nearest camera was attached to a lamppost on the other side of the road. It was not pointing in her direction. But that did not mean it had not been tracking her movements leading up to the last bench. A new weariness soaked into her shoulders and made its way slowly down towards her feet, draining the blood with it. She stood up again, desperate to get inside before it rained. The journey home felt like an increasingly impossible challenge, and she even considered leaving half the bags behind and coming back for them later; but of course they would gone if she did that. It was the way of the world, these days.

Only the thought of how much the watching Janice would be enjoying her suffering forced Christine to soldier on. Fifty meters ahead was a green telecommunications junction box, the metallic paint chipped off at the edges of the doors. She pulled on the bag handles and marched determinedly towards it. And that was how the remainder of her journey unwound. Fifty-meter segments of sweating punctuated by three-minute breaks of panting in between; and all the while the certainty of a CCTV camera focused on her hunched shoulders making her skin crawl. When her house came into view, she almost cried out. At least there was no sign of O’Sullivan’s car. Slamming the front door on the world at last, she left the bags spilling their contents across the hall floor and collapsed onto the sofa for ten minutes. When the red tinge to her vision faded, Christine made a start on unpacking her groceries, one bag at a time, checking off each item from her list as she went. ‘Right, then, Bill,’ she puffed, the final item in her hand, ready to go into the cupboard. ‘I need caffeine.’ ‘Please be aware there is more caffeine in coffee than tea,’ the House announced. ‘Thanks for that, Bill. Coffee it is, then.’ Christine opened the end cupboard, ready to place the jar of marmalade victoriously inside. But a sinking feeling was already weighing down on her, despite the fact that her ticked list showed she had not forgotten a single item. The word marmalade had a thick tick next to it. She looked up into the cupboard and her suspicions were confirmed. The first jar of marmalade on the shelf did not lie. The jar was new and unopened. She had obviously ticked it off and placed it inside already. But when? Within the last few minutes, presumably. Christine had obviously picked up the same product twice, in other words. Was that as bad as forgetting, or somehow worse? No, in the grand scheme of the universe it was a minor error, but standing alone in her spotless kitchen, Christine felt like she had accidently picked up someone else’s shopping by mistake. ‘Start running the bath too, Bill,’ she said in a weak and husky voice. ‘I need to wake the hell up and fast.’

But somehow Christine knew it was going to take a lot more than hot water and caffeine to outwit the forces ranged against her. It was hard not to imagine LittleMiss-Know-it-all’s grinning face looking over her shoulder at the two new marmalade jars standing side by side. Christine slammed the cupboard door closed. ‘Oh, damn it,’ she hissed, closing her eyes in despair. And to think, she had come this close to victory, only to have it snatched away from her a single short step from the finishing line. For thinking of Janice had reminded her that there was something important that had not even made it onto her blasted list: She had forgotten to get Donna a get-well card.

Chapter Four

Thinking back, that first ever House alert, coming as it did nearly four years after installation, had not come as a complete surprise to Christine. The only real surprise was that the alert had not come sooner. For several weeks previously, she had noticed subtle changes in the mood and behaviour of the man she planned to grow old with. If someone invented a female intuition monitor, they would be a millionaire overnight. Despite his growing indolence, Bill had not lost interest in life. They still made plans together, looked forward to outings and shared experiences. Rather, it was a matter of his body refusing to cooperate with his desires in every respect. The outings were more often postponed, the experiences only imagined. Christine convinced herself it was a part of Bill’s adjustment to the world of the perpetual weekend, before the House decided enough was enough and medical help was required. She knew that day was coming and did her best to stop Bill heading straight for his armchair as soon as breakfast was over, a daily battle. ‘Let me have a minute, Chrissy,’ he would moan, sinking into the well-worn upholstery. ‘I’m proper whacked.’ And then, as if to prove it, she would find him snoring with his chin resting on his chest as the dishwasher whirred into life, the words ‘I’m ready of you are,’ dying on her lips. What she would have given to see him still breathing heavily in that armchair today. She had awoken to a Tuesday morning overcast but dry. Her sleep had been surprisingly deep, a fact she attributed to exhaustion. Her arms still ached from yesterday’s shopping marathon. Peering out through her living room window, she saw a yellow excavator with a giant rake attachment at the bucket end scraping up what was left of old Mrs Green’s plumbing. The large family at Number Fifteen, originally from Uganda, whose name she would not have ed at any age, now had another empty skip to fill. She had watched it being lowered onto their driveway ten minutes earlier. That had to mean they were preparing to move out, if they had not gone already. So hers would be the

last house standing in the way of whatever plans O’Sullivan had for this giant naked wasteland bisected by the dusty tarmac of Clarence Road. O’Sullivan had systematically demolished her local community. Christine frowned. Was that really true? Back when the houses had all been occupied, she did not know half the residents well enough to even begin mispronouncing their names. Token nods and smiles were about as communal as relations had ever got here. Even Mrs Green was only sociable in her final years because she was struggling to cope. No, it was not the property developer’s doing. This community had died a natural death; and who could blame the likes of O’Sullivan for wanting to breathe new life into what was left? But that did not mean she had any intention of selling to him. Not after his performance last August and then the things he had said to her on his final visit back in November. No wonder he had not dared show his face at her door since. Even someone as single-minded as O’Sullivan must realise that he had overstepped the mark. His turning up at the funeral last May had been bad enough, but the next two visits to her door later that year really had served to burn any bridge reaching out between them. If he wanted this house now, or rather the land it stood on, he would have to bury her first. They both had a sense of what was coming, of course, the pressure building up like shit in a blocked sewage pipe. O’Sullivan’s customary charm offensive was not working, and he could not understand why. Christine Money was a grieving widow in a house that would have been too big even if her husband had survived. She had to sell; it was only logical. His penultimate visit, last August and hot on the heels of poor Mrs Green’s ing, was his final throw of the charm dice, she now realised. It was the visit where the first cracks in his public relations persona had shown. Christine should have seen what was to come later that winter, that desperation was impacting on O’Sullivan’s composure and a darker side of his personality was about to reveal itself.

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It had been particularly hot, even given the time of year, the soil in her garden returning to its former grey within ten minutes of her having watered it; but she

thought it was not just the ambient temperature making those sweat beads stand out on O’Sullivan’s forehead. ‘Mrs Money!’ he began eagerly. ‘Phew! It must be forty degrees out here already. Don’t be surprised this afternoon if the tarmac on the road starts to melt. I’ve some good news for you. Fantastic, in fact! Could I come inside for a second?’ It was the first time since Bill’s funeral that she had heard from O’Sullivan in person, and she was so taken aback that hot August morning, that he was over the threshold before she could open her mouth. She had been bearing up quite well on her own, too, until Mrs Green had ed away. The pancreatitis had turned out to be even harder to treat than to spell. Christine had visited her a couple of times a week from her dramatic hospital ission in June and her unexpected death in late July. A few weeks later Christine had found herself at her second funeral of the year, digging up memories she would have preferred to stay buried. There was no sign of Mr O’Sullivan at Mrs Green’s funeral, however; he’d been away on business, but again he sent an impressive wreath with his condolences to the family from whom he obviously hoped to buy her empty property. Standing with the other mourners brought her own loss crashing back down on her like a bulldozed wall, and she could not leave the house for the rest of that week. ‘I hope I find you in better spirits than on our previous meeting, Mrs Money,’ he continued, alluding to Bill’s funeral. My husband’s still dead, she ed thinking. But she felt mean about her cynicism, after her visitor had been so generous with his floral tribute at the graveside. He had kept a low profile in person, too, recognising that he was neither friend nor family. She had been quite touched by his thoughtfulness at the time. Now she was frankly annoyed, convinced that O’Sullivan’s sensitivity was merely a tactic. ‘Yes. Thank you. I’m much better now.’ As if grief were something contagious that you had to fight and throw off. ‘How’s business?’ For she presumed, cynically or not, that that was the real motive behind his visit that day. O’Sullivan took out a clean handkerchief and soiled it with the sweat of his brow.

‘I have more pies than I have fingers to stick in them, Mrs Money,’ he guffawed loudly. Did that mean he was in debt? Perhaps. There was certainly an edge to his usual bonhomie on that day. The beads of sweat on his face continued to proliferate, despite the relative cool of her hallway. The heat generating them obviously emanated from some internal source, a foretaste of a much more extreme change in temper a few months later. Christine waited for O’Sullivan to continue, though he seemed ill at ease as to how to begin his pitch. There’s a lot riding on what he says next, she guessed. Closing the front door on the glare outside, she had led him through into the sitting room. ‘So, the good news!’ ‘Can I get you a drink of some sort, Mr O’Sullivan?’ She could see the edges of two stains under his arms. ‘Oh, no. Please. I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Mrs Money.’ ‘It’s no trouble. Really.’ ‘No.’ Had that retort been a little bit sharp, a little too loud? Hindsight suggested it was. He recovered quickly. ‘It’s fine, really. I just wanted you to know that I’ve been talking things over with the bank.’ He smiled superfluously. ‘And I believe I can put forward a substantially better proposition than my previous offer.’ There had been a letter from his solicitor a month earlier, she ed. ‘Mr O’Sullivan…’ O’Sullivan held up his right hand to cut her off, the palm a little too close to her nose for comfort. ‘And when I say substantially, Mrs Money, I’m not exaggerating.’ He obviously thought that this was what she had been holding out for all this time; that she was being cagey and astute, waiting for the right price. Because that was the way he thought, he assumed that was the way everyone else thought too; that financial concerns took precedence over everything else. But Christine was in no state to say goodbye to these four walls yet. Bill’s memory pervaded

every room, every cupboard, every corner. Reminders of their life together crowded around her at every turn. The place even smelled of him. But far from being a tribulation those reminders were a comfort, a consolation. There were times when she would wake up and hear Bill snoring before she was fully awake and realise it was the hot water cylinder filling up. Besides which, Bill had only been dead four months that August. Insensitive was not strong enough a word to describe the property developer’s presence in her home. Were these, then, his true colours? she reflected as he forced another smile over his clenched teeth. An adverse event must have struck at the heart of the O’Sullivan empire to provoke this ham-fisted address. If she had tried to explain to him how she felt, that her feelings were no more negotiable than her memories, would O’Sullivan have understood? Did he have a long-term partner himself (other than the bank manager)? He looked old enough to have kids that had left home and be on his second marriage by now. Perhaps he had bought himself into those relationships, too? A resentment stirred in Christine that stiffened her spine. She did not need to sell. She did not want to sell. And she certainly did not have to justify that decision to anyone, least of all a property developer. Glorified builder, she corrected herself. ‘I’m sorry, Mr O’Sullivan. But I’m not thinking of moving right now. It’s too soon.’ Christine was annoyed at herself for letting any kind of justification slip into her response. ‘But you haven’t even heard what the offer is, Mrs Money. You might be looking a gift horse in the mouth, as they say.’ Yes, but she might also be desecrating a shrine to the best years of her life. She realised then that she could never have explained her feelings to her unwelcome visitor. But far from feeling annoyed by his presence, she was surprised to find herself feeling a little sympathy for Mr O’Sullivan. His bank was probably the only thing in his life that was not empty. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, and for that one moment she truly was, ‘but I’m not interested in selling at any price.’ She hoped her unambiguous declaration did not sound too brusque; but there was no disguising her mixture of indifference and resolve. ‘I understand,’ O’Sullivan surprised her, leaping back up from her sofa so

suddenly that one of his knees popped. ‘I’ll be leaving you in peace, then.’ O’Sullivan’s response had initially caught Christine off guard. Had she misjudged him? ‘Oh, well…’ But he was already making his way out of the room. Were things going to be settled so coolly? A niggle in her spine suggested otherwise. At the door O’Sullivan turned on his most charming of smiles. ‘I’ll ask my solicitor to send you a letter outlining my proposal next week, then.’ Her heart sank. ‘Yes, but…’ He still thinks you’re holding out for more money. Did that mean that the offer his solicitor would make would now be greater than the one he had been about to make verbally? ‘Be sure to read it through carefully. Maybe show it to your own solicitor, why not? I’m sure he’ll tell you what an excellent offer it makes.’ I must never open my door to this man again, she ed thinking, returning his smile with difficulty. He stepped back outside, the sunlight glistening in the sweat droplets his neckline seemed to have collected like a jewelled necklace. At the last moment he had an afterthought and turned back to face her, his eyes scrunched up against the August glare. ‘I should have sent the new offer by letter first, Mrs Money. Please forgive me.’ But he must have presumed his own face to face charisma would do the job better. ‘It isn’t that…’ Christine began. But he clearly was not listening. She wondered if he ever listened to anyone. The lonely rich seldom did, in her experience. ‘When I come back,’ he smiled, ‘we can have a proper chat about it. The nuts and bolts, so to speak. Good day to you, Mrs Money.’ And off he strode, his confidence and poise rejuvenated - opportunities to exploit, money to invest, people to persuade. For although he had said nothing in the least bit threatening, there was something about his last comment that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable; something that would only be fully revealed a few months later in November.

And it was not so much what he had said, she realised, looking back, as the way in which he had said it: When I come back.

Chapter Five

‘Perhaps I could pop round, Christine?’ Janice said over the phone at just after two o’clock on Thursday afternoon. A couple of days, just as she had predicted. In a way, it was a relief. ‘Sure.’ No point in being obstructive, she decided. ‘When would be a good time for you?’ ‘I could be there in about twenty minutes. if the traffic isn’t too bad.’ ‘You mean now?’ ‘It’s quite urgent, Christine.’ That word, again. ‘Good news, I hope?’ she asked not very hopefully. ‘I’d rather not say over the phone.’ ‘Oh, okay.’ Shit. ‘Come right over, then,’ she added. But the line was already dead. ‘Let her come,’ Christine reassured herself. One look at her immaculately maintained home would surely dispel any doubts Janice had about her ability to take care of herself. But that, she had to remind herself, depended on what the House had picked up – not to mention how often and for how long. For all she knew, the House might be telling social services that she was getting worse. ‘But I’m not,’ she said aloud. The past two nights she had found herself wide awake before dawn. Niggling negative thoughts were indeed starting to interfere with her normal routines. Between the hours of four and seven a.m., Christine had found herself lying

immobile in her bed, thoughts racing through her mind, terrified that the House would detect her movements and record them as either early morning wakening or insomnia. ‘Bill? Switch to silent mode, please.’ The House bleeped once. Christine had searched online for optimistic information about the imminent tech report, should it prove problematic; but her scattergun research had continually thrown the spotlight back on the ’s mental state. However, there was one explanation for the disparity between the system’s objective alarm calls and her subjective mental fitness. Assuming that the engineer’s report showed the system operating within the parameters set for it, it might be that those parameters had not been adjusted for such a long time – five years, in fact - that they were no longer pertinent to the Christine Money of today. Equally, when Bill had died, they might have factored in the effect this would have on her, she reasoned, and not bothered to readjust it back. Either way, things had changed, and that fact had to be accommodated for within the House’s brain. Machines did not make mistakes, after all; they just did as they were instructed. And if the instructions they were given were inaccurate then any data gleaned from them would, by definition, be inaccurate too. The wrong question had inspired the wrong answer. ‘That must be it.’ But could that explanation be defined as ‘urgent’? She was not just clutching at straws anymore. She was fabricating them. When Christine opened her front door, she found it hard not to look over the young social worker’s shoulder in search of burly psychiatric nurses skulking behind the bushes. ‘Christine,’ Janice smiled. ‘Shall we go and sit down?’ Why? Christine thought. Do I need to? She did not bother with tea this time. The feeling that Janice had already made up her mind about what was wrong with Christine Money was stronger than ever in the older woman’s mind. She wanted to negate this unwelcome invasion, expose this hidden agenda, this… conspiracy, was the word that sprang to mind.

But that made her sound paranoid even to herself. ‘We’ve had the report back from the tech staff.’ ‘And?’ Christine blurted out. For God’s sake, calm down! ‘Time for an upgrade?’ Janice smiled again, but broke eye just long enough for Christine to understand that the only thing that needed fixing in the young social worker’s eyes was her current client’s brain. ‘Anyway, as we expected, the House is working fine, and has been ever since installation. It’s not very old, you see.’ Christine tightened her jaws. Unlike me, you mean. ‘They’re built to last,’ she quipped, lamely. ‘And so they should,’ Janice laughed, ‘considering how much they cost.’ Christine considered asking about the validity of five-year-old parameters, but a sense of defeated fatalism kept those words unspoken. ‘So what happens now?’ In her mind’s eye, the burly male nurses were barrelling up the path ready to shoulder charge the door in. ‘Stage Two.’ Her imagination now showed her the ambulance moving away from the house with her face pressed against a tiny window in the rear door. ‘Stage Two?’ ‘Yes. Once we’ve ruled out the unlikely possibility of a technical fault, we…’ ‘So why bother checking?’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘If the system is so faultless, why bother checking it at all?’ It was hard not to feel bitter about all this, and harder still not to put that feeling into words, especially to someone she was coming to resent more and more with every

ing minute. ‘Oh, yes, I see,’ Janice said. ‘It’s a legal requirement. We can’t proceed any further until we’ve got the green light from the tech staff.’ ‘So, you were saying: stage two.’ ‘Yes…’ ‘Like cancer?’ Suddenly Christine did not want to hear what stage two involved, because whatever else it would be, it was bound to be an inconvenience at the very least. Janice frowned. ‘Stage two in cancer, I mean,’ Christine clarified. ‘The disease is still localised, not regional.’ Janice’s frown deepened. ‘Is that what you think you have, Christine?’ No. I don’t think I have anything. ‘So, what do I have?’ ‘I’m not a doctor. Any diagnosis will come later on in the assessment process.’ ‘Assessment?’ ‘Yes. Stage two of our assessment protocol means a two-week period of intensive observation and monitoring by the House. It will analyse multiple data streams round the clock, so we should see a much clearer picture of how you are almost on an hour-to-hour basis.’ She did not feel any of the anticipated relief yet. This was nothing like what she wanted to hear. What if she jumped out of her seat and started running around the room screaming? Jump two squares to stage four, a locked rubber bedroom. ‘Listen, Christine, it may well be that what the House found earlier disappears as quickly as it arrived. Sometimes people get run down, they become out of sorts, not themselves. Nothing intrinsically to do with any particular disease, just a

reflection of a person’s age and circumstances. You’d be surprised how often that happens. We may get completely different results in two weeks’ time. You shouldn’t worry.’ ‘Oh, really?’ She tried desperately hard not to sound sarcastic, just not hard enough. Little-Miss-Know it all’s prize advice ‘not to worry’ had the opposite effect. After all, was it not more likely that the House would only replicate the original results, or even reveal other more subtle irregularities? Now the House would not just be watching her, it would be practically following her from room to room. ‘What do I have to do?’ Janice laughed. She actually laughed. ‘You don’t have to do anything, Christine. Just act naturally, be yourself.’ That was why Janice would not tell her what this was about, so she would not try to cover her tracks by being extra careful with certain behaviours. ‘The House will take care of it all.’ Would the House be able to cut social services out of the loop and request an ambulance by itself? She was too scared to ask. Doubtless if that were to happen, Janice’s patronising smile would be waiting for her at the hospital. ‘The worst thing you can do is try to second guess what the system is looking for. Stick to your usual routine, your usual schedule, your usual habits.’ There had been nothing typical about this week so far. How much less taxing these past three days would have been had the community centre been open on the lunchtimes she went there to eat and socialise. Apparently, the place was having a deep clean and maintenance review, though a rumour suggested the building was being valued should the owners choose to cash in on their asset. Maybe O’Sullivan was behind that too. ‘You can call me anytime if you’re worried,’ Janice said. ‘During working hours, of course.’ But it was the nights Christine was thinking of, all fourteen of them; each one more restless than the last, no doubt.

‘If you keep busy, try not to think about it, the time will fly by.’ But fourteen days was also three hundred and thirty-six hours. ‘What choice do I have?’ It was the only semblance of rebellion she could muster. ‘Why don’t we arrange to meet up again two weeks tomorrow, say ten o’clock? It will give you something positive to focus on.’ Christine had to gulp down a snigger. Really? She could not imagine anything positive about seeing this smarmy face again, unless it was for the last time. ‘But how bad were they?’ she could not resist asking as Janice started to stand up. ‘The irregularities, I mean.’ ‘You know I can’t tell you that, Christine. It would influence your behaviour over the coming days.’ Yes, fourteen of them, I know, Christine thought. Or three hundred and thirty-six hours; over a third of which she would have to spend alone after sunset. ‘I just wanted an idea of how serious this is.’ ‘Which if I told you, would only make you worry,’ Janice exclaimed, like a schoolteacher in a bottom set class. ‘And that wouldn’t help the situation, really, now would it?’ ‘No. I suppose you’re right.’ You patronising little bitch. An imaginary ambulance driver trod on his accelerator pedal, his knuckles showing white over the gearstick, as the wailing siren heralded her arrival at a mental institution. Because it was not cancer. Is that what you think you have, Christine? No, this was something less tangible than the Big C. Something furtive and illusive – sinister. ‘Right, then.’ Janice moved towards the front door. Incredibly she was leaving after barely ten minutes, but nonchalantly, like she already knew how this one was going to pan out. ‘Two weeks tomorrow, Christine. Okay?’

Three hundred and thirty-six hours was also twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty minutes. And then what? she wondered. The thought must have written itself across her face, for Janice said, ‘Try to have fun, treat yourself to something special, feed yourself up a little, exercise. It might still all be nothing.’ But make sure you stick to your normal routine, your normal schedule, your normal habits… Christine marvelled at the contradictions evident in Janice’s advice. Jesus. Who let these people loose on society? A few minutes later she was alone again with a House watching her every move, listening and recording from the shadows of her life. Christine turned away from the front door and looked around the lobby, imagining sensors and monitors buzzing beneath carpets and behind light fittings like an infestation of insects. Her mouth was dry, her muscles weak. A cup of tea was in order. She would make a whole pot and drink Janice’s share, too. Little Miss Know-it-all. You haven’t won yet. And with that thought in mind, she went around every room making sure there were no lights left on anywhere. If a resident unintentionally left a light on in an empty room, the House would turn it off after five minutes, of course. But it would still record the fact that the aberration had occurred in the first place. Or as Janice herself had put it: The House will take care of it all.

Chapter Six

That weekend was a blur, as if she were a teenager again experimenting with drink and parties and late nights; but in truth she could not much of what she had done. Sticking to her usual routine proved to be harder than she could have envisaged, the act of focusing on what and how she did things interfering with her natural responses. It reminded her of repeatedly trying to swallow a large pill: the more she thought about the process of swallowing, the harder the act became. But Christine did not feel as if she had any choice, not unless she wanted to be swallowing real pills in just under two weeks’ time. First thing Monday morning Christine found a half-used notebook in a drawer and began writing out an itinerary for the day ahead. But sticking to such a rigid schedule might create more problems than it solved, she thought by the third line. Act naturally, was the advice Janice had given her. The trick was surely to be predictable, decisive and consistent. In a way, what she did with her day in of activity and event was irrelevant. What she was doing now was simply overthinking everything. Concentration was the key, then, she decided, putting the notebook back in the drawer. Whatever she did from hereon in, she was determined to do authentically, the way the old Christine had always done it. That was her masterplan. But all her ideals were ruined by what lay waiting for her on the front doormat. She knew immediately by the quality of the envelope and the bold, gaudy font spelling out her name and address that this was yet another letter from O’Sullivan’s solicitor. Be sure to read it through carefully, O’Sullivan had advised her once before. He made it sound as if along with an offer she could not refuse, any letter sent to her on his behalf would contain thinly veiled references to issues more critical than just financial ones. Or was she just being paranoid in the light of his last visit in November? Would a solicitor risk threaten someone in writing, however cleverly disguised? She did not want to open it either way. She took the unviewed letter through to the living room, sipped her first tea of the day, and left the envelope on the coffee table. She was not a woman to be

‘persuaded’ to do anything against her will; and her stubborn delay in opening the solicitor’s letter was an attempt to prove conclusively to herself that she really was not interested. Did O’Sullivan really think she would cave in so easily? What could the solicitor do beyond make her a handsome offer on quality velum paper? Legally, she wondered if it could even be considered an offer, given that the house was not yet up for sale. And, moreover, if it was merely an inquiry, there was no obligation on her part to do anything but throw the letter straight into the bin as junk mail. It would not be the first letter from O’Sullivan’s solicitor that had suffered that fate, but such an act of defiance was known only to Christine herself. Instead, she considered popping the envelope through the late Mrs Green’s front door (if it were still there) so that O’Sullivan would end up reading his own offer. But that would come across as antagonistic in the extreme. She did not want to make the situation worse, especially when she suspected that O’Sullivan would be back on her doorstep soon wanting to ‘discuss’ her house sale. Maybe by reading the letter and dismissing its contents yet again, Christine would be reinforcing her commitment to staying put. Then she would be ready to tell him to his face, thank you for your generous offer, Mr O’Sullivan, but no, I won’t be taking it up. That might finally get through to O’Sullivan that he was wasting his time. Looking out the window, however, showed her a wasteland itching to be built on, presided over by a property developer with a decidedly itchy trigger finger. Even the weeds were slow in coming up this spring, as if they knew it was a waste of their effort. These barren plots were earmarked for regeneration. But even the best architect in the world would struggle to build anything whose value would not be degraded by her eyesore nineteen fifties detached house stuck in the earth like a crashed spaceship. Maybe she could plant trees around the garden? ‘But why the hell should I?’ O’Sullivan’s problems were his own. And she refused to let a salesman’s pitch drag her into them, however exquisite the script it was written in. ‘Bill, switch to voice mode, please.’ This was not over by a long shot, she knew.

‘Switching to voice mode,’ said Bill. ‘This is still our home, damn it,’ she muttered, clattering her cup back onto its saucer. And all the while the House was working overtime, trying to catch her out too. It felt like everyone was trying to intimidate her, and the realisation made her feel suddenly weary and pessimistic. Thinking of that tireless sentinel watching over her every move was not going to help her relax. She needed to keep busy, occupy herself; just not in ways that might qualify as irregularities. Thinking of which, would they even be classed as irregularities from here onwards? Surely, she had entered the world of the ‘aberration’. ‘Bill?’ she said. ‘You don’t need to respond. But keep your wits about you, okay?’ It was a comfort knowing that her Bill was watching over her in this way, and with her best interests at heart. Which was nonsense, of course, because using her late husband’s name changed nothing. It was not Bill that responded to her comments, it was the House; and the House would do its job regardless. Her only hope was that she could do hers and not behave like a lunatic over the next ten days. The letter begged to be picked up and ripped open, the way a Christmas present did when the turkey was prepped and shut in the oven. Open me, Christine, it seemed to say. Open me and read what I have to say. It’s urgent. But the voice she was hearing was not that of a faceless solicitor but O’Sullivan himself, with his soft Irish lilt and top-of-the-morning chuckle. ‘It’s urgent for him,’ she concluded. She did not want to provoke Mr O’Sullivan, especially after what had happened last November. That had come as a shock but not a complete one; for all his oldworld charm, she had detected a darker side to his personality beforehand. It was nothing she could articulate precisely; more a sense that there was a reservoir of anger behind his mask of civility. When that mask finally slipped, its owner had thrown it to the floor and stamped on it like a child who cannot get his own way. ‘To be sure,’ she sniffed, ing that fateful Winter’s day.

Chapter Seven

O’Sullivan was a master of timing, she had to give him that. He had a habit of catching her when she least expected to see him. There had been nothing since his August visit and the promised follow-up letter from his solicitor a few days later. Then, suddenly, six weeks before Christmas, she was opening her front door to him again, standing there on her glittering garden path with gloves and a multicoloured beanie hat, the freezing air pinching the corners of his ridiculous grin. Just a kindly neighbour calling around to make sure everything was all right. As if. ‘Mrs Money! Top of the morning to you!’ He made no attempt to enter the house, just stood there rocking on his heels and rubbing his gloved hands together enthusiastically. ‘How does the day find you?’ ‘Mr O’Sullivan…’ She recalled her annoyance that her previous pledge never to open her door to this man again could have been subverted so casually. To what do I owe the pleasure? she was tempted to reply sarcastically. Not that he gave her any opportunity to retort. ‘I won’t take up too much of your time,’ he almost sang. Much later Christine would learn that Mrs Green’s family had accepted a provisional offer on her house only the day before. ‘But I wondered if you’d got my solicitor’s letter?’ He must have known she had. ‘It’s been a while now and my solicitor says he hasn’t had any reply. August, it would have been. If you recall?’ She ed the beads of sweat on his forehead that day and wondering if it was just the heat alone that explained their presence. An image popped into her mind of the last unopened solicitor’s letter sitting in the recycling bin. There was no guilt to experience but she felt uncomfortable, nonetheless. Telling him what had happened to his precious letter would have been like lighting a match to see where the smell of gas was coming from in a darkened room.

‘Mr O’Sullivan,’ she repeated, determined to start firmly. ‘I did get the letter back in August, yes.’ O’Sullivan took a step closer, as if he could not hear properly through his winter hat. Her resolve failed her as his face loomed over her in the doorway like a jack-o-lantern. Her visitor saw his chance and pounced. ‘And I bet you were surprised by what you found?’ he laughed. ‘You know, when you opened the door just now, I almost put my arms behind my back for fear you might bite one of them off.’ Even though I’ve been sitting on your precious offer for three months? If this was his charm offensive in overdrive, it was off to a shaky start. Christine felt suddenly emboldened by the presumptuousness of the man. He was not confident, he was desperate. ‘I’ve read the letter, of course; and yes, it is a good offer,’ she lied. ‘But as I’ve said on many occasions now, I see myself continuing to live here for the foreseeable future.’ Was he now leaning over her, his weight shifting onto his toes? His head looked twice its former size. She cleared her throat. ‘The offer was generous – very generous, as you say - but I’m simply not interested in selling at any price. I understand why you’re keen to buy,’ she added, casting a glance across the road, ‘but I’m afraid the answer has to be no.’ ‘But if you’d…’ His right shoe had inched closer to the doormat on which she stood, like a cat stalking a mouse. She felt blood warming her cheeks as the cold air crept past her. ‘No, Mr O’Sullivan. I’ve made up my mind, and I’ve no intention of changing it any time soon.’ Far from being emboldened, Christine now felt enraged by this hard sell with a sweet smile. It was the first time there had been any overt animosity between them. The situation on her doorstep had deteriorated swiftly after that. ‘Oh, you understand, do you?’ O’Sullivan’s smile had fallen like a crimson leaf. ‘Yes,’ Christine confirmed, and started to close her door, the heat in her own cheeks spreading down her neck. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me…’ With hindsight she could see this was a contemptuous move, but at the time she had just been

desperate to terminate the conversation before it deteriorated into a full-blown argument. ‘Do you know how much all that land is worth, Mrs Money?’ he asked, sweeping his arm behind him without looking. ‘It’s a long time since I bothered to look at house prices,’ she answered, trying to resurrect her former resolve. ‘And I’ve no intention of starting now.’ It was the worst thing she could have said. ‘Go on. Have a guess,’ he snapped, his big angry head blurring her vision. She gave a little laugh to cover up the fear that was stirring within her. ‘I really don’t…’ ‘You’ve read my offer, you said.’ ‘Yes. I have.’ ‘Well, there used to be forty-odd houses in this road. All you have to do is multiply that number by half of what I’ve offered you to find out the scale of my investment here. It’s that easy.’ His face was becoming as red as it had been on that sweltering August morning. His eyes were unblinking beneath his furrowed brow, his hands clutched into fists. The colour of his hat seemed to mirror that of his cheeks. Tiny flecks of spittle started jumping between them every time he took a bellowed breath. Her own breath caught momentarily in her chest. He looked less like a jack-o-lantern and more like a killer clown on steroids. ‘Mr O’Sullivan, I know you must have invested...’ she said weakly. ‘And do you know what I can do this very week to start getting that investment back?’ Christine did not know what to say. ‘Nothing!’ the property developer spat. Christine’s reply was a look of confusion that seemed to enrage O’Sullivan

further. ‘Absolutely nothing!’ ‘I can’t see how…’ But by that point, O’Sullivan had stopped listening to her. ‘With your house stuck in the middle of the site like this, I can’t lay a single brick.’ The ‘site’, as he called it, included her home not just some random pile of inconveniently stacked bricks. ‘That’s hardly my concern,’ she countered, her indignation stirring again. ‘I’ve staked my entire fortune on this project. I can’t build a modern, luxury housing development for the young executive and his family to live in with this,’ and here he cast a contemptuous glance around the inside of her home, ‘monstrosity stuck in the middle of it!’ ‘Monstrosity?’ ‘Have you looked at your brickwork recently? Your window frames, the guttering? And the less said about your roof the better.’ Christine had stood frozen, conscious of how easy it would be for the now redfaced O’Sullivan to lunge fully across her threshold before she could shut him out. All his charm had evaporated; the only thing left was belligerence. Despite her racing heart and the heat burning through her chest, a wicked idea stole into her mind. Maybe she could ask O’Sullivan to give her a quote for the repairs. But another glance at his clenched teeth and cherry red cheeks sent that idea scuttling back from where it came from. ‘The original offer I made you was twenty percent above market value, Mrs Money. That was more than ‘generous’, as you put it. This latest one was closer to thirty. Thirty percent! You know I won’t get anywhere with this hovel still standing in the way, don’t you?’ His breathing was speeding up again, this time stirring the hairs in his nostrils like marram grass in a gale.

Christine opened her mouth to speak, but just the idea that she might dare make some form of reply to his diatribe seemed to incense him further. ‘You’re just holding out for every last penny you can screw out of me, woman! Well, I won’t go any higher, do you hear! I won’t! So I strongly suggest you speak to a solicitor so he can explain to you what a fool’s game you’re playing here!’ He just did not get it, she realised; and being a property developer, he probably never would. She knew this was a gross generalisation, that there must be respectable property developers out there too. But it was a different type of developer she was referring to: O’Sullivan’s type. To his way of thinking there was no reason for a single woman in her sixties to refuse such a gift horse, other than to exploit the buyer’s circumstances to get even more. He’s assuming I think the same way he does, she realised. ‘I could even help you find somewhere else, if you’d let me. I’ve plenty of s.’ The dancing hairs in his nostrils seemed to be reaching across the space between them. ‘But oh no, you’d rather tear the shirt off my back than be reasonable.’ Christine was alarmed to see that O’Sullivan had taken another step towards her and that his hands, formerly fists, had uncurled like talons. For God’s sake, she had only buried her husband in May. O’Sullivan should have ed that, he was there. Now there he was again, blackguarding her on her own doorstep. She wanted to be angry too; but at the time she was suddenly too tired to feel anything beyond despair. His words lost their meaning as the sound of his voice became a drone like a pneumatic drill. ‘Like I said, I am sorry, but the answer is still no,’ she murmured automatically. Her head swimming and her legs feeling feeble, Christine decided enough was enough. She started to close the door again, but the toe of O’Sullivan’s gleaming right shoe was planted firmly over the threshold. ‘Please, I have to go now.’ ‘Please, I have to go now,’ he mimicked her, speaking in a weak and trembling voice. ‘Why, got some pressing engagement somewhere?’ ‘I really don’t feel too…’ Christine leaned heavily against the frame of the door, feeling the blood draining from her face. If he had noticed her deterioration,

O’Sullivan did not let it inhibit his tirade. ‘You’re not going to stay here for much longer. Be realistic. You can’t afford it, for one thing. Not with all those repairs.’ Not to mention the roof, of course. ‘Down to the one pension and no savings? How long do you think that can go on for? Alone and uned?’ That comment brought her momentarily back to full consciousness, like a slap. How did he know about her finances? Was it just a guess? It sounded more like a statement of fact. It begged the question: just how far would this man go to get what he wanted? Age had overtaken Mr and Mrs Money very abruptly, taking them both by surprise. Two years before they had both been working full time, seeing friends, keeping fit, eating healthily. Then came Bill’s illness, and their lifestyle had been dismantled by invisible hands. The funeral had halved what they had put away over the years, which was not a lot after they had decided to settle the mortgage. She had already sold Bill’s car. Yes, O’Sullivan was spot on about not being able to keep such a large house maintained long term; but the question remained: how did he know? ‘Six months? A year?’ O’Sullivan growled. ‘Then you’ll sell, won’t you? Hey?’ O’Sullivan’s voice sounded as if it were coming from across the road. The doorframe was reassuringly solid beneath her shoulder, but she had the sensation of slowly sliding down towards the floor like melting ice. ‘But not at the price I’m offering now. Oh, no!’ he laughed in the distance. ‘You’ve cost me time and money, as it is. It will be your turn to grovel then, Mrs Money. Won’t it? Oh, yes!’ Everything had gone black. The only thing she was conscious of was the sting of the doorframe grinding into her cheek bone. If only she could sit down in the peace and quiet of her own living room, regain her poise. What was she doing here, out in the cold? Where was she, even? And where was Bill? ‘Mrs Money? Mrs Money, are you okay?’ a voice asked through what she assumed was deep water. For a moment Christine had imagined that O’Sullivan had suffered a turn of

conscience. That would teach him to harangue a vulnerable, elderly woman! But up until that morning she had not considered herself to be either. Her current condition might force her to re-evaluate that later. ‘Can you hear me? You don’t look too good,’ O’Sullivan’s watery voice continued. But when she had finally forced her chin up from her chest and her eyes to open ajar, she found herself staring into the concerned face of the postman. ‘Come on, let’s get you inside,’ he said, linking his arm through hers. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ she said eventually from the comfort of her armchair. ‘One moment I was talking to Mr O’Sullivan and the next everything went dark and echoey.’ ‘Talking?’ the postman snorted. ‘I sent him off packing, I can tell you. I’m glad you didn’t hear some of the language he used. Who is he, anyway? Some sort of debt collector?’ Christine had managed a laugh at that comment, but she did not reply to the postman’s question. ‘That’s a good sign, Mrs Money. Are you starting to feel any better?’ ‘Much better,’ she forced herself to smile up at him. Anything that did not involve that dreadful man and his unreasonable demands was medicinal. ‘Thank you.’ After the postman left her, with a cup of tea, to resume his round, Christine wondered what would have happened without his intervention. Would O’Sullivan have taken the opportunity to slip inside the house and have a good snoop about whilst she lay unconscious in the hall, gurgling? She had been too afraid to answer her doorbell for the rest of that year, even to carol singers. That looming jack-o-lantern face gave her nightmares for months. The wolf had finally shed his sheep’s clothing.

<>

Now it was springtime. Mrs Green’s house was his and part-way demolished. Number Fifteen would be next. Her finances were slowly but relentlessly dribbling away, and somehow, she was sure, O’Sullivan knew it. The new solicitor’s letter waiting on the coffee table could only mean one thing: Mr O’Sullivan was about to return to her front door to have another go at her; to manipulate, intimidate, and instigate self-doubt in her weary mind. This was all part of his long-term strategy. If it were not for Janice and her blasted home assessment Christine would have considered reporting O’Sullivan to the police, the moment he showed up again. The postman would back her up, surely? But it was all academic until the week after next – maybe not even then. Down to the one pension and no savings. How long do you think that can go on for? O’Sullivan’s words echoed in her head. Even six months sounded optimistic to her suddenly. Then you’ll sell, he had sneered. Won’t you?

Chapter Eight

Christine had been reading in bed for hours but was still only about twenty pages further into her book. She refused to check the time. If it was later than she assumed, she would worry that she was developing insomnia; if it was earlier, then there would be the worry that her mind was losing touch with reality, that time existed somehow independently from her consciousness. The realisation that this was yet another example of her overthinking was something she tried not to think about. The book was the latest award-winning novel to drive itself to the top of the bestseller list, scattering heart-racing thrillers and heart-breaking romances asunder on its upward trajectory. But if asked what it was about, she would have struggled to explain; which had nothing to do with the book itself, of course. Her mind kept wandering off, her eyelids heavy, promising the long-awaited arrival of sleep. Then she would snap wide awake again and stare at the book laying open in her lap as if it had not been there a minute before. The pages, when she did start reading again, were slippery; her eyes constantly sliding back up to the start of the paragraph she had just finished. ‘This is supposed to be the novel of the year so far,’ she sighed, ing the times when her husband lay snoring next to her as she read propped up in a nest of pillows. So was this latest episode of sleeplessness merely an exaggeration of her former nocturnal routine? The only way to be sure of that, of course, would be to check the time. Christine stared back down at the beautifully constructed sentences before her and a second later she was asleep. When she awoke again, she assumed it was because the bedside lamp was too close to her face. The book had tumbled down onto the duvet cover, but whether her sleep had lasted three minutes or three hours only the clock could have told her. She certainly did not feel refreshed. Little strands of dust were singeing on the light bulb. She did not need to touch it to know how hot it had become. Would the House have ed the fact that the bedside light had been on for hours and Christine herself lay next to it asleep? Almost certainly. But so what? she told herself. People of all ages fell asleep with their lights on, didn’t they?

The answer her mind provided did nothing to reassure her. Yes, people often woke up in the night with the lights still burning, but not whilst being assessed by social services. She could not entertain the idea of turning that light off, however. Everything seemed worse in the dark, in her experience: the aftermath of a row, a headache, indigestion. The smell of burning was faint but unmistakable. She recalled a weekend break she and Bill had enjoyed in Prague one Spring. Chatting in bed after midnight, they had stared in wonder as a tendril of brown smoke escaped from the top of the bedside lamp. Grabbing the bedside phone, she had immediately complained to the front desk. ‘Yes, madam, of course,’ the receptionist answered, ‘all the bulbs in this hotel are Russian.’ Quickly turning off the troublesome light, they had practically laughed themselves to sleep that night. Lying here alone, however, she found nothing to laugh about. She only had her memories to hold onto for comfort. She picked the novel up again. This bedside lamp would have to keep burning till dawn – unless it burst into flames, of course. Again, the plot of the novel had eluded her within seconds, the characters’ relationships to one another waxing and waning with every fresh paragraph, her concentration flitting like a moth from one dimly lit room to another. She put the book down in her lap and closed her eyes. ‘Sod it. It’s obvious the butler did it, anyway.’ And that was when she heard the sound. Sitting up in bed, the book rolling across her thighs and the pillows tumbling down around her, Christine sat pensively, listening. For a few seconds there was stillness, then she heard the sound again. It was so faint, so subtle that it was barely there at all. It was certainly impossible to place where the sound might be coming from. Except to say, of course, that it was somewhere ‘out there’, in the darkness. And there it was again, a tiny distant sound just loud enough to make trying to concentrate on anything else impossible until she could identify its source. Instinctively, she had started counting. After twenty-eight seconds the sound came again and realising that what she was hearing was a dripping tap, she

began counting afresh. Twenty-seven seconds later and there it was for a fourth time. A dripping tap, definitely. Maybe she had not closed the cold tap properly after brushing her teeth? If assistive technology were so clever, why could it not turn taps and lights off automatically when they were not in use? The answer to that was simple: they did, but not in the homes of people undergoing assessment. ‘Whose side are you on?’ she whispered to the empty bedroom. If she got up now to turn the tap off would that make her aberration seem better or worse? Surely it would be in her favour to correct her error now that she was aware of it. But to do so would also confirm that she was not sleeping, which might be viewed as a more worrying symptom by those analysing the data from the House. Momentarily, she was afraid to even move. But that was ridiculous, any small movements she made in bed would be attributed to the normal tossings and turnings of slumber. But then again, how much of such movements would fall within normal parameters? If she moved about in the bed too much would the House record that she was having a nightmare? Plop, went the dripping tap. That she was overanalysing this whole dilemma, that it even was a dilemma, made her feel angry with herself as much as it did with social services for insisting on this ridiculous assessment in the first place. What was it Janice had said? Just act naturally, be yourself. Thinking of that jumped up little madam really set her nerves on edge. And with a hiss of ‘Right, that’s it,’ she climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom. ‘Bathroom lights please, Bill.’ She watched as a thin bar of light shone along the bottom edge of the bathroom door. The upstairs bathroom was the smaller of the two, containing a shower, toilet and sink pedestal only. Bill had put in some shelves and a cupboard for their toiletries. He used to bemoan the fact that he had to repaint the ceiling every other year because the steam from the shower used to discolour it and he could never get the extractor fan to work for longer than a couple of months at a time. It was a regular cause of arguments, which, as ridiculous as that seemed now, was something she really missed. She preferred the bath downstairs these days, where she could soak in comfort for half an hour, letting the healing bath crystals

soothe her with the full impact of their suggestive advertising messages. Who would decorate for her now that Bill was gone, and her relatives had ‘done their bit’ and would only send a Christmas card for another few years before forgetting that too? She would just have to do it herself. It would be good for her, keep her active and… That’s more than twenty-eight seconds, girl, her mind interjected, standing outside the bathroom door. In truth, it was closer to a minute. She pushed open the door and stared at the two sink taps. The surface of the basin looked dry. The tap had not been dripping. The shower, then? No. That was fine too, the tray underneath not just dry but dusty. ‘This won’t look good, Bill,’ she muttered, regretting her comment immediately. Did the system record what she said? Again, it was an aspect of the House she had never considered before. But it made sense. If you were assessing someone’s mental health, what they said could be as revealing as what they did. ‘Please repeat the question,’ the House replied in Bill’s voice. She vowed to be more guarded from now on. It would do nothing for her mood and outlook to be reminded that Bill’s voice belonged to the machine trying to catch her out rather than her husband. Speaking of which, look at me standing in my bathroom staring into space when I should be asleep. That would definitely be recorded as nocturnal wandering. She sat on the loo and was grateful there was something in her bladder to let out. She caught a small movement in the corner of her vision and heard the tiny sound of a drop of cold water hitting the sink basin. Thank God, she laughed to herself, giving the tap the minute turn it required. But the course of the fallen water was clearly visible on the surface of the sink, like a tear on a make-upped cheek. This was not the latest droplet, then. It was the first. The realisation made her instantly tired. ‘Flush please, Bill.’ If the system had picked up that she was using her dead husband’s name for the House it would make her look even crazier if she abruptly stopped using it. ‘Lights out, Bill.’

Standing on the darkened landing, she was drawn back towards the dim light coming from her dust-barbecuing bedside lamp. ‘Now who’s the bloody moth?’ But on the threshold of the bedroom Christine paused and retraced her footsteps to stare down the blackened mouth of the stairway. What the hell was that? she asked herself, grabbing the top of the banister for . But she knew what she had heard and where it was coming from. This time, though, the dripping sound was louder and faster. ‘You can’t just stand here staring into the darkness. Go and turn it off!’ she onished herself. But inside she was despairing. How would this look to social services, two taps left running on the same night? At least she could correct the error and hopefully show those watching that she was aware enough to respond appropriately; but it was an exercise in damage limitation and she knew it. ‘Hall and stair lights on, Bill.’ It felt colder downstairs, but that could be due to her fatigue – and fearfulness. ‘Ground floor bathroom light on please, Bill.’ This time she did not hesitate to enter the bathroom. Much to her surprise it was not the sink tap that was dripping this time, but the bath’s. When had she last had a bath? During the proceeding day, she was sure. But if it was earlier in the day, then this tap had been running like this for hours. And it was actually running, too. This was no intermittent dripping. God knew how much water she had wasted. That would cost her money as well as a black mark with the watching assessors. Unless there was a fault, of course. She turned off the tap, kidding herself that she had to turn it much further than usual, that this was evidence of a mechanical error that would exonerate her. The prospect of sleep was as far away as ever, but she headed for the stairs, nonetheless. ‘Bathroom light off.’ She could not even be bothered with Bill’s name this time, like it was somehow all his fault, and the thin yellow strip along the bottom edge of the door persisted. But she could not afford to start leaving lights on all night,

as well. ‘Bill, bathroom light off.’ Looking up, the staircase seemed longer than when she had climbed down, but that was not what kept her right foot planted on the bottom step. It was not what kept her head cocked to one side in concentrated listening, eyes wide with concern. Somewhere else on the ground floor she could hear water falling onto something hard. Automatically, her eyes flicked towards the nearest window, for it almost sounded like rainfall. But no, this was coming from inside the house, and, as she listened, it was clearly originating from the kitchen. When she opened the kitchen door it was to be confronted by the sight of water flowing steadily into the metal sink. It was not a cascade exactly, but it should have been clearly audible from the ground floor bathroom only seconds ago. It was as if the tap had only just been switched on, but that was not possible. Indeed, the night’s events were becoming increasingly impossible. She must have left the sink tap on earlier but not been able to hear it through the closed kitchen door only moments before. That was the only explanation. Was she going deaf, too? ‘No, I’m not going deaf. I’m not going mad. And there is nothing wrong with my brain,’ she cursed, switching off the kitchen tap angrily. For a few seconds she stood in silence, listening intently, as if she expected to hear something else gushing away in another part of the building. But this time there was nothing to break the silence but her own shallow breathing. The damage was done, though, she imagined. Staying awake most of the night and only belatedly switching off all the taps she had left switched on hours earlier, wandering from room to room in her nightdress in the process and then doubtless lying back on her bed wide awake until dawn painted a picture of someone far from her best mentally or physically. ‘Bloody hell, Bill!’ she cursed as she mounted the stairs at last. ‘Please repeat the question,’ the House responded.

Christine squeezed her eyes shut, feeling something damp fall on her cheek, and fantasised about going blind. At least that way she would not have to watch her world fall apart around her. She kept her eyes shut as she crossed the landing. When she re-opened them in the bedroom, it was to find her bedside lamp still burning. What she did not find, however, was anything resembling reassurance.

Chapter Nine

Christine’s nerves buzzed with foreboding, her appetite had vanished, and her sleep-deprived brain felt like steel wool dipped in diesel oil. She had to fight to keep her eyes open, the urge to catnap on the sofa constantly tempting her weary defences. Her preferred strategy would be to stay indoors, turn her phone off, or pretend it was Christmas Day and that nothing was open. But she only stayed home in the mornings if she was physically unwell. And being any kind of unwell was not the thing to draw attention to over these two weeks. The idea that her perfectly legitimate reason for staying home would be misinterpreted as evidence of ‘mental deterioration’ was an added stress. She pretended to do household chores for the sake of appearances, but it was no good: she would have to go out as usual. If she did not, the House would red flag it and an overqualified technician would categorise it as psychopathology, no doubt. ‘Maybe I can phone in sick, like an employee,’ she laughed to the dishwasher. Joking aside, though, would they take it into consideration if she said she had a virus for the next few days? It might give her space to calm down again, get some rest. But the House would measure her symptoms throughout her ‘illness’ – her temperature, heartrate, kidney function, etc. She could not give up on the idea that easily. Surely there were ways to fake such vital signs? As midday loomed, however, she realised that Little-Miss-Know-it-all would just extend the assessment deadline by the same number of days missed. ‘And you’d enjoy telling me that, too, wouldn’t you?’ The mouth of the empty dishwasher gaped, so she closed it with a bang. ‘Bitch.’ The prospect of eating and meeting when she had no desire to do either made her head throb with trepidation. With the exception of a headache, it was the first

thing she had felt above the neck so far that day. The lunch club was a volunteer-run drop-in centre. No one had to go. It was not compulsory. But they could not afford to waste cooked food by too many regulars dropping out unexpectedly at the last moment, not with the funding issues they had. Her absence would be noted, remarked upon, and if it kept happening, acted upon. Demand was unceasing. Resources were not. But then again, these were senior citizens, for God’s sake. Things happened, unexpected things. You got sick, you got tired, you got (intimidated by greedy property developers and do-gooder social workers) waylaid. And it was not as if she did not enjoy the usually. They made good company, the lunch club regulars, like mourners at a wake after the first round of drinks. Her internal argument waged on, back and forth, draining her energy further. As the clock reached twelve, Christine realised that for this week and next, she really did not have a choice about anything. To ensure her liberty she would need to be a prisoner of habit and convention for a few days. Besides which, what would she achieve by staying put? At least the lunch club crowd would be a distraction, even if it did prolong her headache. ‘If I stay in here much longer, I really will go mad,’ she informed the dishwasher. Outside, despite the noise from the demolition crew across the road, the billowing clouds of dust and the wasteland that made her environment look like it had succumbed to a force nine on the Richter Scale, an unexpected calm washed over her. Slamming your front door was supposed to be a relief when you shut the world out, not when you were on the other side, she reflected, heading for the sandy pavement. No one would be monitoring her behaviour out here, thank God. Or would they? She kept her eyes away from what was left of Mrs Green’s house. Yesterday it had reminded her of the Peace Dome in Hiroshima, with its exposed roof beams and torn walls. One day this week even that much would be gone. Was the new owner’s car there? She was not really interested, and certainly did not want to risk making eye with O’Sullivan and provoke his saccharine salutations. She had other things to worry about… ‘Damn it!’ Christine pulled up sharply, every muscle tightening instantly. Where was her

key? Oh, great, won’t that look good, locking myself out so soon into the assessment! Talk about drawing attention to herself. If O’Sullivan, or anyone, for that matter, was watching her right now, how odd she must look, petrified on a deserted pavement, indecisive, confused. That thought was enough to get her moving again, thank heavens. She opened her handbag as wide as it would yawn, but her worst fears were quickly confirmed. There was no sign of a key. She reached inside, started moving items around, to see if the key had worked its way down to the bottom somehow. No, it wasn’t there, and wishing it were otherwise was not going to help. The temptation to tip the contents of the bag out at her feet and grovel about on her knees was so great that she had to snap the handbag closed to stop herself from acting on the impulse. The realisation that she really had locked herself out paralysed her like moonlight falling on a shrew with an owl circling overhead. Maybe there was a window open somewhere round the back, and she could get back inside that way. But of late, of course, Christine had been making a big effort not to leave anything unlocked or open. And even if there was a hopper window left ajar, what good would that do her? Burglars sometimes used small children to access properties that way, but never the child’s grandmother. Even at school, gymnastics had not been her forte. Damn! Damn! Damn! ‘No, wait!’ A sudden feeling of relief swept over her. Her right hand plunged deep into her coat pocket, and there it was, a small Yale key with a keyring from Hastings. That helped calm her nerves further, for the keyring had been bought by Bill on a weekend break to the East Sussex town. Brighton had been booked solid and Eastbourne made them feel old, so they opted for a landmark in British history and spent hours walking through the meadows and lanes surrounding the battlefield, drinking so much tea and then beer in equal measure that they feared their bladders would betray them in between toilets. Bill’s drunken exploits had only made that threat ten times greater as he took out his handkerchief and performed mock Morris dancing to the local sheep population. Christine had been doubled over with laughter. ‘Oh, Bill, if you could see me now.’ She slipped the key into her handbag, where it belonged, conscious that standing

in the street with a stupid grin on her face was no less conspicuous than her former stance. Striding resolutely forward with her head held high, Christine headed off down the royal blue wind tunnel in search of civilisation. It made her feel normal to be walking alongside shops, bus stops and other pedestrians again. Looking out on Clarence Road was starting to make her feel like her house had survived a natural disaster. All she had to do now was survive the alleged calamity unfolding inside her skull. She picked up her pace, determined not to be late for the lunch club. It was a point of principle now, even if social services never found out about it. The venue had changed over the years as financial constraints forced the lunch club organisers to relocate, but they had been back in the community centre for the past three years. The centre itself had been forced to up sticks on several occasions but two charities and the local church had brought some stability to the project at last. And that, after all, was the main purpose of the lunch club, to provide a sense of reliability and constancy in the lives of people dealing with challenges to their health, their finances and their social lives. As the lead organiser had once put it, ‘this place is so much more than meat and two veg.’ Christine hated the corny analogy of ‘a big family’, but to most attendees that was exactly what it was. Christine made her way up the long concrete ramp that hopefully she would not need to be pushed up in a wheelchair any time soon and walked through the open double doors. ‘Phew!’ she sighed to no one in particular, a little too loudly. Thankfully, no one inside noticed.

Chapter Ten

According to the clock on the far wall it was two minutes past midday, but it was always five minutes fast, no matter how many times it was reset. Standing in the doorway of the community centre, Christine felt as reassured by that faulty clock as she did by the sight of familiar faces and the hum of warm conversation. Things could malfunction in the modern world, after all; and, moreover, decline repair. ‘Christine,’ said Kim, one of the young volunteers. ‘Late again?’ She had obviously noticed Christine’s glance at the clock. Kim was an intelligent girl with a genial personality and very genuine. But she noticed everything, and today that was not what Christine needed. ‘We should buy a new one,’ she replied. Kim smiled. ‘We barely have enough money to change the battery.’ ‘I know the feeling,’ said Christine. ‘Ah, come on. You’re looking well.’ Christine smiled back. She felt far from it. Kim was either being nice or discreet. ‘It’s good to be back.’ No word of a lie there. ‘The old place won’t poison us for the next six months, at least.’ ‘Actually, it’s three months,’ Kim frowned. ‘Oh, really?’ ‘The regulations have tightened.’ ‘Again!’ Christine raised her eyebrows. ‘Anyone would think they were looking for a reason to close us down.’

‘We’ll be fine so long as the church sticks with us.’ Without that everyone knew the community centre’s days would be numbered. Christine took a deep breath. ‘Wow smell that disinfectant. We could eat off the floor.’ ‘Then they really would close us down.’ The lunch club volunteers were predominantly women in their thirties and forties, with only a few around Kim’s age. At the other end of the scale was the centre’s venerable, wheelchair-bound matriarch, Old Mrs Bull, who held the twin accolades of always being the first to arrive and the last to leave. Indeed, Christine had never seen the place without Mrs Bull in attendance. The joke among the others was that Mrs Bull never went home at all and lived in the community centre as a volunteer night-watchman. Even in their eighties referred to her as ‘Old’. Anticipation over her imminent centenary birthday was only tempered by the rumour that she had lied about her age as a young girl to marry, and that she was already one hundred and two. Maybe the fast-running clock was deliberately left that way as a mark of respect? ‘Ah, Christine!’ She looked up to see the approaching smile of Jimmy Thompson. He was a couple of years older to her and had been widowed a year before Christine. His trademark cravat, of which he seemingly owned an endless supply, was never the same two days running; but one thing that never changed was his ebullient enthusiasm for life. That Jimmy had taken a shine to her was the worst kept secret in the group, but there was no chance of a romance flowering between them, as far as she was concerned. Especially now. Not that there was anything wrong with Jimmy. If anything, Christine felt a little dependant on his relentless optimism and good humour, feeling positively disheartened on the rare occasions when Jimmy failed to show up. No, it was too soon to contemplate any relationship beyond friendship right now. She doubted Jimmy was up to it emotionally, either. He had spent the last decade fighting cancer, and though he had beaten it back three times, all the indications were that the disease was rallying itself for a fourth bite of the cherry. Jimmy’s outlook on life dictated that whatever happened he would face it with grit and a grin. But he was ten years older since that first diagnosis; and it was as much the

treatment as the cancer itself that had denuded his resources. She hated herself for thinking it, but the writing was on the wall for Jimmy Thompson and the paint’s colour was black. Privately, he must know that he would not beat it next time. Only a fool would have thought otherwise; and Jimmy was never that, in spite of his endless gags and bad impressions. Sometimes people learned how to adopt a positive outlook on life; but Jimmy’s outlook was hardwired into his DNA. ‘I was born smiling,’ he often said. ‘I’ll die laughing.’ The only problem was that his cancer was genetic too. His latest blood test results were due any day now. His might not be the last laugh. ‘Is everything all right, Chrissy?’ That was the question she should be asking him, considering his imminent test results. ‘Jimmy,’ she beamed, giving him an enthusiastic peck on the cheek. ‘So?’ Jimmy persisted. He was not one to be easily deflected, she knew. ‘Oh, it’s nothing really.’ He cocked his head to the left and raised an eyebrow in a tell-daddy-what’swrong look. ‘I’m just not sleeping too well, that’s all,’ she sighed. ‘And?’ ‘And I’ll probably be back to my old self next week.’ Jimmy returned the peck on her cheek. He treated all the women to that, of course, but with Christine his lips lingered just a little bit longer. Not that she felt embarrassed by this preferential treatment. Though she knew she was in no state emotionally to do anything about it, the feeling of flattery was always a boost to her morale. It was not just men that had egos. ‘Any news yet, Jimmy?’ she asked. ‘With me? No. I’m still waiting,’ he chuckled. ‘No news is good news, though, hey?’ They both knew that was not necessarily true. ‘Let’s have one of those

awful sherries,’ he beamed. Jimmy was drinking more at home these days, he itted a few weeks back, but who could blame him? They collected their drinks, thick sickly measures issued from a large, donated bottle they kept in the back of the storeroom, and headed for two empty chairs in the corner. ‘Do you think this stuff will ever run out?’ he asked. ‘Maybe if anyone here outlives it, they should give them a prize.’ ‘Of what, more sherry?’ He was monopolising her, of course, but that was no trial. Banter and chit chat were fine, but Christine had felt increasingly in need of a confidante over the last few months. The trust and respect between them were mutual. Sometimes, late at night, it felt as if loneliness and self-doubt were smothering her. But what must it feel like for Jimmy, lying in his bed, also alone, listening to the blood flowing through his veins and wondering what else it was carrying along with phagocytes and leucocytes? ‘You know I’m going to make you tell me the truth,’ he grinned in a halfwhisper. ‘At Colditz ve have vays of making you talk, yar?’ he sneered in a terrible German accent. Christine grinned. No one could raise her spirits the way Jimmy did, and she could not help but wonder what would have happened had she met him before Bill. You’d still have been a widow, just a few years later, a dark thought mocked. Her smile fell away like a loose rock from a cliff face. ‘That bad, hey?’ And for a terrible moment she felt certain she was about to burst into tears and throw herself into Jimmy’s chest. She had not fully appreciated just how much recent events had taken out of her, how much pressure had been created by an accumulation of sensors, monitors and processors. ‘I’m being assessed,’ she blurted out, careless of who might be within earshot. ‘At the hospital?’ His ever-present smile faltered for the first time in weeks. ‘No. At home.’

‘Oh.’ A look of understanding sent Jimmy’s eyebrows reaching upward. ‘The House, right?’ ‘Yes. But they won’t tell me what it is I’ve been doing to raise the alarm.’ ‘They’re sure it’s not the system? They’ve checked?’ ‘The system’s fine,’ she replied flatly. ‘Thanks for asking.’ ‘So they think it’s you?’ So it must be you, was what anyone else would have concluded. ‘I had hoped there was a technical error,’ she answered quickly. ‘Software or a trojan horse or whatever. Our monitor is first generation, after all.’ Ours. Mine and Bill’s. How would she ever stop thinking in of ‘us’? ‘And?’ ‘And they’re conducting a two-week intensive home assessment to confirm their worst fears. Or mine.’ ‘Surely it needn’t be that bad. I haven’t noticed anything different about you recently.’ ‘You don’t live with me,’ she blurted out, feeling instantly guilty that she might have been insensitive to Jimmy’s unspoken desires. But for crying out loud, they were both in their sixties. The whole idea of romance and intimacy seemed alien, the way she imagined someone in a wheelchair must feel when they saw other people walking about. Bloody hell, Christine! That’s one hell of an analogy. Jimmy scratched his cheek thoughtfully. He was her one loyal friend, a man who met adversity head-on with zero tolerance for bullshit. Whatever came out of his mouth next it would not be glib reassurances. That would have been truly demoralising. ‘Well,’ he began, thoughtfully. ‘These units don’t make mistakes, it’s true. There’s no point in pretending otherwise, Chrissy. They have fail-safe systems to back them up. If it reports a problem with a resident, it’s because there is a genuine problem to report.’

So he did think it was her. But what else was there to think, that the technicians were incompetent? ‘It’s how you deal with that reality that you have to focus on now.’ And that was his area of expertise without a doubt. She felt slightly uncomfortable comparing her troubles with his. After all, she was talking about a two-week home assessment rather than a decade being stalked by the Big C. ‘But if they tell me what that problem is…’ Christine began. ‘No. It would undermine the whole process. Trust me, you’d overthink it. In the long run, knowing what they were looking for would cause you more grief than just running with the assessment.’ Realising how dry her mouth felt, she took another sip of sherry. It just made her feel a bit sick. ‘There are some things you can’t hide from,’ he added seriously. ‘What’s done is done. You have to focus on what comes next; you know, day by day. You can’t win the game if you don’t play it.’ His words sounded like the kind of pep talk he might have given himself during chemo. Despite knowing how right he was, Christine’s mind was still restless and disconcerted by the whole procedure. She just could not accept there was anything wrong with her. It would undermine the whole process, Jimmy’s comment echoed through her mind. Why was that phrase important enough that she should dwell on it? ‘Christine?’ ‘Sorry. What?’ she said, knowing she had zoned out mid-conversation. ‘Oh, now you’ll think I’m going gaga, too.’ ‘Is that what you’re afraid of?’ ‘Well, isn’t that the most obvious villain?’ They both sipped their sherries unenthusiastically. More diners had arrived and the volume of chatter inside the community centre had risen accordingly. Out in

the kitchen the volunteers were finalising the preparations for serving a hot meal from the cook chill ovens delivered earlier. He lightly clasped her hand and whispered conspiratorially: ‘I’ve got one, too, you know.’ ‘Sorry. What?’ ‘A monitor.’ ‘Oh.’ Now it was the turn of Christine’s eyebrows to rise. ‘Really? But you have outpatients’ appointments, check-ups. And you’re still under a consultant oncologist, surely?’ ‘Yes, but once you’ve been discharged, they use a Wellbeing Monitor to continue monitoring you remotely. I only use the hospital service during the relapses.’ He meant the times when it looked like he might not make it. ‘I see,’ she said, feeling guilty at having reminded him of tougher times again. ‘I should have realised.’ ‘It’s okay,’ he smiled. ‘I’m just glad I’m still around to tell someone about it.’ But did she detect his smile faltering just a tad? ‘Thank God,’ she said, with more relief than she had intended. ‘Even in recovery you can suffer unexpected side effects, collateral damage to cells that makes you poorly out of the blue. The treatment was pretty aggressive at times, you know. It has to be.’ Because the cancer is. ‘It can affect your appetite, memory, concentration, mood, everything, for months afterwards.’ ‘So they installed a Wellbeing Monitor even though you were in remission?’ ‘It kept me on an upward trajectory overall. Stopped me becoming complacent

whilst removing the worry factor. I swear by mine, to be honest. The worst thing you can do sometimes is just soldier on without recognising that your body needs a bit more medical attention to stop you sliding back into a full-blown relapse.’ ‘They didn’t want to give the cancer a chance to make a comeback,’ she said aloud, instantly regretting that she had not kept that thought in her head. Jimmy’s cancer had come back anyway, with a vengeance. Damn, this sleep deprivation was a bitch. She was glad that Jimmy seemed not to have noticed. ‘Saved my bacon more than a few times, believe me. One minute I’d be staggering through the house, delirious on painkillers and with my last meal sitting in the toilet bowl, trying to convince myself I had a virus; and the next, the ambulance crew would be loading me onto a stretcher. They’d already have an idea what had gone wrong by the time I’d reached hospital, and by the next evening I’d be back at home, picking up where I’d left off twenty-four hours earlier, only this time with my evening meal staying where nature intended.’ ‘I never realised, Jimmy. I mean, I knew it was bad from the times I visited you in hospital. But you always put such a brave face on. Especially here.’ ‘It’s the same face I have to see in the mirror every morning, don’t forget. Sometimes the most important person to convince of your own fortitude is yourself.’ ‘You’re the bravest man I know.’ This time it was her turn to give his hand a squeeze. ‘It all worked out for the best,’ Jimmy smiled. ‘It’ll be the same for you. You’ll see.’ If you, of all people, can say that, it’s good enough for me, too. A great rumbling clatter erupted from the kitchen area as a line of trolleys heralded the arrival of what, for many there, would be their main meal of the day. The forty-plus visitors began making their way to the dozen or so tables arranged in the dining area, hungry for the company of a shared meal as well as the food itself. ‘Come on. Let’s eat.’ Jimmy stood and kept hold of Christine’s hand, helping her

to her feet. He was an old-fashioned gent in that respect. ‘Thanks, Jimmy.’ He gave her his best smile. ‘If you promise to eat everything up like a good girl, I might even let you have another sherry.’

Chapter Eleven

Christine was the last visitor to leave the community centre that afternoon, with the exception of old Mrs Bull, of course. It was such a relief to feel normal again, being herself without anyone – or anything – watching her. She had demolished everything on her plate, laughed and joked with a dozen familiar faces and come close to forgetting what was waiting for her back at home. As people began drifting away from the tables, Christine could feel the tension slowly building up again inside her. Knowing she did not have to be alone again straight away helped. But Jimmy, who sometimes walked part of the way home with her, surprised her when he opted for a lift in the three o’clock minibus instead. ‘Too much of the hard stuff,’ he joked. She watched him walk slowly to the steps at the front of the bus and assumed he was just taking his time; but when he mounted the steps, she could not help but notice what an effort it was for him to raise his feet high enough to climb aboard. She should have guessed what was coming, but she had not wanted to spoil her good mood and so pushed such thoughts of his imminent blood test result to the back of her mind. Slamming her front door on the outside world was the comforting experience it used to be. That, coupled with the subtle reassurance of Jimmy’s pep talk, gave her the courage to finally open O’Sullivan’s solicitor’s letter. The offer was predictably improved, though not by as much as she had expected – not that she cared, of course - but it did mention how house prices were falling now and how they were likely to continue falling into the foreseeable future (thus implying how generous the enclosed offer was on her property and how cheaply she could buy elsewhere). The letter also stated how this really had to be ‘the final offer’ and one that would provide her with ‘financial security for life’. Christine wondered if O’Sullivan’s solicitor was as professional as his letterhead suggested. There must be regulations about what you could say, however nicely you said it, and how often you could write to a house owner before your offers

constituted harassment. There was nothing threatening or intimidating about the language used, however. If anything, the letter was couched in the language of a generous adviser, as if this were her solicitor rather than O’Sullivan’s. ‘I’m not selling and that’s that,’ she said, tossing the letter back down on the coffee table. If anything, reading the letter had served to reinforce her optimism still further. O’Sullivan had blown his chances of ever speaking to her face to face after his November meltdown, and whatever else she could read between the lines of that letter, the thing that stood out incontestably was that this was the solicitor’s last throw of the dice. She could just imagine Mr O’Sullivan pacing the solicitor’s swanky office, browbeating him with threats to take his custom elsewhere if he failed to persuade ‘that blasted Money woman’ to sell up. ‘What da hell do I pay you for, man?’ Christine said in an exaggerated Irish lilt, then let out a guffaw. A bowl of olives in front of the television (which she was careful to switch off as she retired to bed) followed, and then the promise of a night undisturbed by bad dreams or dripping taps. ‘Things are looking up,’ she murmured as a greedy sleep swallowed her whole.

<>

Her head clear and body rested, Christine greeted that Wednesday morning as if it were the first day of summer. She ate well and felt confident enough in her own clarity of thought that she skipped checking plugs, taps or lights. Tidying the kitchen even inspired the humming of a nameless tune. But moving through into the living room changed everything. At first, she was so upbeat she did not notice the thing that was wrong in the room. She opened the curtains and had an impulse to give the whole house a good spring clean, not through hypervigilance this time, but as a means of

reinforcing her feelings of renewal. ‘And bugger what the House thinks,’ she muttered to herself, turning back from the window to face the room again. The sunlight, though far from blazing, draped itself cheerfully over the coffee table, the sofa and framed her silhouette up against the back wall. That was when she noticed what was wrong and her body and its silhouette froze. The letter was still on the table, no great drama there, as was the envelope it had come in. But she had read that letter only last night. She knew what it said, what it implied and how it might be construed as coercive and get the signatory into hot water with whatever professional organisation oversaw the ethical behaviour of solicitors. She ed the letterhead, the elegant font of the typescript, the flourish with which the author had signed his name. How else would she know those things if she had yet to open the letter? Yet there it was, face down, the thin seal across the back unbroken. She must have popped the letter back inside the envelope and refastened the seal without thinking, then. Yet in her mind’s eye she ed tossing the letter down disdainfully. It had landed across the discarded envelope, forming an X shape on the coffee table. And yes, thinking about it, she ed how the envelope had been torn open, not carefully pulled open with a thumbnail. But her eyes this morning did not deceive her. The letter was nowhere to be seen and the envelope was sealed and lying on its face waiting to be opened for a third day. Had the letter fallen onto the floor, perhaps? she wondered, ignoring the memory of the jagged paper tear across the edge. Finally, her legs agreed to let her move forward. There was nothing on the floor, of course, and it was clear from the thickness of the resting envelope that there was something folded inside. ‘This is impossible,’ she told the room. But the sealed envelope spoke otherwise. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands. Her address was written across the front, with the dated frank mark across

the top right-hand corner. It was the same envelope. ‘Of course, it is! What else could it be?’ She returned her attention to the sealed lip at the back. There was no way it could have been opened and then re-sealed without using glue. The two edges were as impenetrable as they must have been the moment the solicitor’s secretary had fastened them together in her office. Christine slumped down onto her sofa, the envelope still clasped in her hands like a death warrant (Or an eviction notice, her mind interjected). Now the things Jimmy had told her about the House sounded anything but uplifting: how seldom they malfunctioned; how, if a problem was reported, it was generally because a problem existed; how there was no point in pretending otherwise. Trying to imagine what Bill would say if he were sitting here now, a smile of relief swept over Christine’s face. He would tell her not to be so foolish, that of course she hadn’t torn the envelope last night; she’d folded the letter up neatly and the result of that action was now resting in her hand. She even visualised herself tucking the folded letter back into its envelope, so desperate was she to find a plausible explanation for what she had discovered only minutes before. With a sniff of disdain at her own self-doubt, Christine ripped the envelope open so roughly she nearly tore the enclosed letter. She unfolded it quickly, expecting only to skim-read a letter she had already seen. But the letter she saw before her was much shorter than the one she ed. There was nothing mentioned about falling house prices or financial security or even the phrase ‘final offer’. And that offer was not the small increment she recalled but another significant increase. In short, this was not the letter she had read only yesterday. She let her arms fall, the letter still grasped in the fingers of her right hand. ‘I didn’t imagine it,’ she whispered. ‘I swear, I didn’t.’ But the single sheet of paper dangling close to her knees would not concur. The rest of the morning she spent going over and over in her mind the possible explanations for what had just happened. She tried to keep busy with the promised spring cleaning, but her thoughts were so distracted she forgot to rinse

down the bath after cleaning it, threw a clean tea towel into the wash basket and poured boiling water into an empty mug; all of which, she realised with a sigh, would have been recorded by the House. At least Wednesday was another lunch club day. Jimmy would set her worries to rest again, though the thought of having another heart to heart so soon after the last one made her feel a little awkward. She did not want Jimmy to feel used, especially with the major health worry he had hanging over his head right now. But judging by the way Jimmy monopolised her company at the community centre, he would probably be offended if she approached someone else with her problems – jealous, even. Maybe that was the one obstacle between them that the age of time alone could never surmount? One thing Bill had never been was possessive.

<>

She arrived early this time, hoping that Jimmy would too. Old Mrs Bull gave her a sideways look, as if Christine were trying to catch the grand matriarch in the act of arriving first; or worse still, beat her to it. There was no sign of Jimmy, however, and as the clock moved towards ten past twelve and the community centre filled up, she again ed the stiffness with which her closest friend had mounted the minibus steps. She made conversation with other familiar faces as best she could, but her eyes were constantly shifting to the entrance. Finally, one of the volunteers put her out of her misery. ‘Shame about Jimmy, isn’t it?’ ‘What?’ ‘Haven’t you heard, dear?’ He’s dead, she thought. ‘They took him in last night.’

He never regained consciousness. I’m so sorry for your loss… ‘Had a bit of a nasty turn, apparently. Oh, Christine, are you…?’ For a second the room turned upside down and she had to squeeze her eyes shut until she heard young Kim’s voice. ‘Christine?’ She opened her eyes, and the room was back to normal. ‘Is he all right?’ she asked, deflecting attention from her laboured breathing. ‘Oh, yes. It was only precautionary. But obviously they’re keeping him in for a while longer, what with his illness and all.’ The blood test result would be bad, she assumed. ‘Thanks for telling me,’ said Christine, ‘He seemed very tired yesterday, to be honest.’ ‘I noticed,’ said Kim. You would, thought Christine, not unkindly. ‘But don’t worry. I think our Jimmy is like a cat.’ ‘Sorry?’ Christine still felt lightheaded. ‘He must have nine lives.’ If only they’d taken him in because of fur balls. ‘Sit still for a while, Christine. You’ve gone quite pale. Let your head clear. I need to help dish up,’ Kim continued. ‘Don’t try to get up by yourself,’ she added, as she headed for the kitchen. ‘I’ll give you a hand getting to the table in a moment.’ She just hoped Kim would not try to use a wheelchair to get her to her seat. That really would ruin her day. Now she would be unable to talk to Jimmy until at least Friday. And why?

Because of another bloody House’s intervention. The way he had been tippling with the brandy (she could smell it on his clothing more and more), he might even have been drunk. Was a House programmed to know the difference between unsteadiness caused by alcohol or an illness? It hardly mattered, either way. The upshot was the same: Jimmy was not around. Damn it, they might even suggest he take it easy for the rest of the week, which meant Christine having to wait until next Tuesday. The rest of the visit was something of a blur, but she managed to eat something and park herself on the periphery of at least two conversations. At Kim’s insistence, she took a spare seat on the minibus, something she had avoided up until that moment. She tried not to see it as an omen. Number Seven Clarence Road seemed even emptier when she let herself in, as if the walls had all expanded outward by half a meter in each direction. The letter and the ripped envelope were exactly as she had left them at lunchtime, she was relieved to see. Finding another unopened envelope would have started her screaming. The rest of the evening she made a big effort to keep to her usual routine and not make any stupid errors. The temptation to leave as many lights on as she could was overwhelming, and in the end she had to shut the living room door while she watched television to forget that the rest of the rooms were in darkness. Around nine o’clock she ran herself a bubble bath, but her muscles were so tense beneath the water that she might as well have taken a cold shower. By ten she was pulling back the covers and half-falling into the bed. No reading tonight, she decided; her eyelids were drooping already. Maybe she’d feel better in the morning if she could sleep through without being disturbed. And that was when it happened. Plop, plop, plop. There had to be something wrong with the plumbing, surely? But then why had the bathroom tap been okay last night? Had she even had a bath last night? She could not . But if not, that might offer a partial explanation for the intermittently dripping tap. She always left that kind of thing to Bill, and even he was far from being an expert. Calling a plumber in while the assessment was ongoing was a non-starter. If it got back to Little-Miss-Know-it-all that the

plumber could find nothing wrong, it would count heavily against her. And it would be just her luck that he called round on a day the tap decided to behave itself. Like now, for instance. The dripping sound had stopped again. Propping herself up on her pillows, Christine reached for her novel, after all, and forced her stinging eyes to focus on the top of page seventy-seven. The plopping sound had unnerved her, but she knew that sleep could not be denied indefinitely, and eventually she would be out cold until dawn. After such a promising start, the day had gone from one extreme to the other, and not in the upward trajectory she had hoped. The House must be having a field day. She wondered at this rate if social services would even let her see out the whole two weeks. It was obvious there was something seriously wrong with her – or at least that was what it would look like to them. Keeping one ear open for further plumbing anomalies was impossible to avoid. Even if she woke up tomorrow with no flooded bathroom, her bedside lamp would still be burning and her novel lying upside down on her lap. No doubt she would still be on page seventy-seven.

Chapter Twelve

Christine spent most of Thursday out of the house, spending a couple of hours at the allotment, window shopping, visiting the ducks in the park but forgetting to take any bread with her. Twice on the bus - which her body demanded she take instead of walking - she had nodded off, nearly missing her stop. But at least Thursday night had been mercifully silent in the plumbing department; this despite another long soak in the bath that nearly resulted in her drowning, the third occasion she had fallen asleep unintentionally that day. Her hair needed washing anyway. Now it was Friday, and she was trudging up the concrete ramp of the community centre once again, imagining the long weekend ahead, with all her worries trailing behind her like a shadow in a draining heatwave. Physically, she felt like she had jetlag, albeit the sort you only got following interstellar space travel. Her lack of appetite was compounded by a lump in her throat that made it hard to force food down. The next day she intended to buy nutritional drink sachets and a box of straws, and bugger what social services made of it. Her energy levels were depleting fast, too, making it hard to keep on top of the housework. The kitchen bin was bursting and set to overflow following dinner tonight if she did not do something about it, but she just could not face it. It was the least of her worries, though. That morning, she had discovered a load of damp laundry in the washing machine that she had put in on Wednesday afternoon and forgotten about. The smell from the balled-up mass of moist clothing necessitated rewashing the whole load again. All this in the space of less than two weeks. Where would she be by the end of the month: loading herself into the drum? Even the final lunch club session of the week held little appeal, since Jimmy was in hospital now and might not ever come out again, like Mrs Green. She resolved to visit him that afternoon on the way home. It would cheer him up at least – if she could avoid nodding off on the bus again, that was. So, as she drifted through the doors of the community centre with her eyes on

her feet, it was a great relief to hear her name being called by a familiar male voice. ‘Bill…’ she started to say, before starting again. ‘Jimmy! I thought… What happened?’ The customary peck on the cheek was accompanied by a warm hug, and it was Christine who delayed pulling away first. ‘It was only precautionary.’ ‘I know, one of the volunteers told me, but...’ What was her name, damn it? She suddenly felt very emotional. Once as a child she had become separated from her father at a funfair. It was only for a minute at the most, but in that time it was as if she had fallen through the earth into Hell itself. That was how she felt right now. ‘What was it, then?’ ‘Now what did they call it? A French word, I think it was…’ Jimmy scratched his head, mocking the act of recall. ‘Ah, yes. That’s it! Cognac.’ Christine had to laugh. ‘I knew it, Jimmy!’ But it was obviously more serious than that. ‘What are you implying, Christine Money?’ laughed Jimmy, feigning indignation. ‘That I’m married to the bottle?’ He suddenly looked serious. ‘Booze was only a small part of it, though. I’ve been off my food again recently and they said what with losing weight and tippling on an empty stomach, I was asking for trouble.’ ‘But you’re all right now, Jimmy?’ ‘Good lord, yes,’ he smirked, eyeing the sherry glasses. ‘Very much back to normal.’ ‘I can’t pretend I wasn’t worried,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘I’ll outlive old Mrs Bull, you’ll see.’

Suddenly the tears were welling just behind her eyes. ‘Oh, Jimmy…’ ‘Come, come,’ he chuckled. ‘No need for us both to turn into amateur dramatists. I told you, I’m fine. False alarm.’ ‘It’s all right. I’m just really glad to see you again so soon.’ She knew there was a risk that he might misinterpret her happiness, but she could not keep a lid on every thought and emotion she had. On the subject of amateur dramatics, she felt like she was constantly acting the part of Christine Money for the benefit of the House. No wonder she looked forward to getting away from the place. Suddenly, hearing Bill’s voice was not the automatic solace it had once been. ‘Maybe you need a drink more than I do, Chrissy?’ Now that she had his attention, the urge to offload on him felt like a pair of hands shoving her in the small of her back. But she could not overlook the fact that he had been in hospital earlier this week and must have been scared witless that his symptoms had nothing to do with cognac, or any other spirit, for that matter. ‘Kim.’ she blurted out. ‘Sorry?’ Jimmy frowned and smiled simultaneously. ‘The volunteer who told me…’ her voice trailed away in embarrassment. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter.’ Though it did and they both knew why. ‘How long were you in for?’ she added quickly. ‘Two nights.’ ‘That’s a lot of brandy, mister.’ ‘They had to unpickle my liver,' Jimmy laughed. ‘That’s what took the time. It’s on its way to a lab for scientific research as we speak.’ ‘I thought maybe you might not be back until next week.’ No, you thought he might never come back, and that you’d have to face all this

uncertainty on your own, you selfish cow. Jimmy was aware of her ruminations, that constantly threatened to derail their conversation. She could see it in his eyes, and so avoided looking at him directly, which only emphasised her preoccupation. Christine realised that she was unconsciously inviting him to ask after her and her problems. But she could also see, despite the joking, how tired he was and the effort it must have taken him to drag himself down here so soon after discharge. She ed up on the opportunity to offload, forcing herself to make eye with him again, along with her best brave face. In fairness, just seeing him standing there in the flesh, laughing and joking away, was medicinal tonic enough. ‘Sometimes getting back to normal is the best medicine available,’ he said, echoing her thoughts. ‘Speaking of which…’ he added, raising his eyebrows towards the sherry glasses. ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ Christine tittered. ‘Honestly!’ ‘They said I should take a break,’ Jimmy laughed. ‘But feel free to have mine, Chrissy.’ Usually, Jimmy’s shortening of her Christian name felt a little too familiar. But today, the feeling it lent her was contentment. She surprised herself by taking that extra glass herself, which lightened her mood and numbed the various aches and pains in her body. Her voice was louder than usual, but she found herself not caring. A couple of the other diners noticed and smiled knowingly. By three o’clock her head was starting to clear again in readiness for her usual walk home. Jimmy decided, wisely, to take the minibus again. ‘They said not to overdo it, either,’ he explained. ‘I do hope it rains over the weekend.’ ‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’ ‘Well, that way I won’t feel so glum sitting in front of the television for the next forty-eight hours.’ ‘If you need to rest, you need to rest,’ she said with far more seriousness than she

had intended. ‘I know, I know. But you know me, Chrissy. I’m a participant not a spectator. Getting me to sit still for more than two hours is a big ask.’ ‘You can always call me,’ she said. Usually, that was Jimmy’s suggestion. But they rarely called each other for a chat. There was something intimate about a personal phone call that she was uncomfortable with. Jimmy must have picked up how formal she could be over the phone and taken the hint. Now here she was breaking her own rule. ‘That might break up the monotony,’ he replied, with artificial nonchalance. If she regretted her invitation in case it sent Jimmy the wrong message, she had to concede that she may just have sent him several. But the fact remained that his greatest foe over that long weekend would be the tedium of the tabula rasa. Her weekend, on the other hand, would be punctuated with exclamation marks, ellipses and parentheses, not to mention a steady diet of importunate question marks. That said, she was setting a dangerous precedent and she knew it. But not to have reached out to him in his hour of need would have been cruel and selfish in equal parts. Jimmy’s ascent of the minibus steps was a little sprightlier than it would have been without her invitation, she suspected. He turned to look back from the top step. ‘I’ll call you, then,’ he said. Christine could not deny that there was a hint of masculine triumph in that statement. ‘Take care,’ she smiled. ‘And don’t drink!’ He grinned back, but they both knew it was no laughing matter.

Chapter Thirteen

The knot of tension in her stomach started to twist as soon as she left the community centre. Another surprise awaited her inside her home, she knew. The thought - or rather the presentiment - came into her head as soon as the top of her roof, the roof that so irritated Mr O’Sullivan, came into view as she turned once more into Clarence Road. There was no point in trying to dismiss the intuition as an idle fancy or the association of her home with stress. The sooner she found out what that surprise was, the better. Death by firing squad was immediate, they said; it was the ritual beforehand that was the real punishment. At least the roof was not on fire. It was a far from reassuring thought, and she found herself walking faster in case the fire had only just started. It’s not a fire. she told herself. The House would have set off the sprinkler system if there had been, anyway. And Bill had signed them up to an excellent insurance scheme… ‘Damn it, there is no fire!’ She stared at the curtains in the windows, almost expecting them to be ablaze. ‘Okay, Bill, hall light on,’ she said with the front door still open. ‘Hall light on,’ came Bill’s voice. Sunlight still streamed through the windows. It was not light she needed, but the comfort of saying Bill’s name aloud and eliciting a verbal response from the House. Dust from the construction site around her property billowed through the sun beams. It would be a miracle if she avoided asthma. Had any of the former houses around here been old enough to contain asbestos? she wondered. But that would be as problematic for O’Sullivan as it would be for her. Or would he just bury it all in the bottom of a skip to save money? At least the smoke detectors were silent. She threw her coat at the wall pegs and it caught awkwardly on two of them as she slammed the front door closed again. That sensation of an unpleasant surprise waiting to be discovered was even stronger now that she was inside the house. ‘Now, where are you?’ she hissed. It took her less than a minute to find the culprit.

On the far side of the kitchen, through the open utility room door, she could see the clothes horse standing where she had left it after reloading it with Wednesday’s wash. But now, rather than being fully laden and nearly dry, it was stripped bare again, save for a solitary tea towel. ‘How very Cosa Nostra,’ she frowned. She did not need to look in the machine to know that the missing laundry was back inside the drum for a third time. She looked anyway – what if the washing had vanished completely and was nowhere to be found? - then switched the machine onto a short rinse and spin cycle. ‘I couldn’t have left it in there again,’ she told the now whirring machine. ‘Could I?’ But the memory of hanging out the same laundry a second time was clear. ‘First the letter, now this.’ Leaving the washing machine and its rapidly swirling load, Christine walked through every room, checking all the external doors and windows. Bill had been hot on security. Crime was much worse ten years ago, and the insurance was linked to the number of precautions the policy holder took, he explained patiently. From the top of the stairs she could hear the washing machine hum and turn, hum and turn. Everything was secure. There were no weak points. There was certainly no evidence of forced entry. And no one else had a key. Her last visitor had been Janice, and she knew that for a fact because she had been the one to let her in. ‘Therefore,’ she scalded herself, ‘what you’re suggesting is ridiculous.’ But that left her with no other explanation than that she had failed to hang the clothes out on the horse for a second time. ‘I should know. I was there, damn it!’ Christine sat down on the top step and clasped her hands, prayer-like, in front of her face.

‘Get a grip, woman,’ she sighed. ‘It’s very simple. You forgot to do it. And not just once, but twice.’ The question was not if it had happened that way but what she could do to ameliorate the damage. The House would have recorded the double aberration. Social services would have highlighted the text in yellow. But an hour later she was filling out the bars of the clothes horse and trying to convince herself that this was the first rather than the third time. The more she wrestled with the problem, however, the clearer the image was in her mind of performing the exact same task with the exact same damp clothes. ‘This is all I need,’ she said, hanging up a purple blouse. There was no way she could think of to explain away her actions. It was useless. The House would have recorded her switching on the washing machine three times since Wednesday, and that alone would look odd for a woman living by herself. The thought crossed her mind to simply spend more time outdoors. Avoid the bloody House if it was going to trip her up like this. But it didn’t, though. Did it? an inner voice teased. Social services would never tolerate that, of course. She could not avoid her own home from dawn till dusk. It wasn’t her usual routine. Little-Miss-Know-it-all would simply turn up again on her doorstep and announce an extension to the assessment, ‘because you’ve deviated from your normal habits’. ‘I’m not giving you that satisfaction, bitch.’ Though in truth, if Janice were keeping personal tabs on her progress, she would be grinning from ear to ear right now. Why did she feel Janice had it in for her? ‘Forgetfulness, hostility and paranoia. Wow, look how well I’m doing.’ The gallows humour did not help, either. No, whichever way she looked at it, her situation was bleak. Her only hope was a better performance next week. If only her Bill were still here. He would know what to do. But, in a way, of course, he was. Not for the first time the realisation struck her that the only snag was that his voice was the voice of the House, the thing trying to trip her up. She banished the thought from her head immediately, fearing for her sanity.

‘Ha, that would really show me up as a loon if they found out about the House’s nickname,’ she guffawed, taking her mobile phone out and taking a picture of the fully laden clothes horse. ‘And for God’s sake stop talking to yourself!’

<>

Friday evening yawned ahead of her, filled with restlessness and an ill-defined dread, like being trapped in a room full of hungry rats. As a compromise to her idea of spending more time outdoors, she decided to grab something light to eat in town and watch a film. Christine had no idea what was on, it had been years since she had graced their local cinema. Films were all immersive and virtual and whatever these days, the audience looking as if they were about to embark on space travel rather than big screen entertainment. But the one in town did occasional ‘traditional screenings’ that were popular among her age group. She thought about inviting Jimmy, but there was something about the whole cinema scenario, even at their age, that suggested romance. Her dating days were well behind her. It was tempting to abandon the whole idea, but the alternative involved checking locks and catches repeatedly and seeing where her laundry had ended up since this afternoon. God, how had things come to this? The cinema was an independent just off the high street. One of the big chains had a multiplex out on the outskirts of town, and that was where the young crowds flocked at weekends. Which meant the queue at the box office was as short as it was restrained. She wondered how the place survived financially. All she really wanted to do was to lose herself in something dull and familiar and fall asleep halfway through it. Half an hour into a particularly dire romcom (Four Beddings and a Lifeless Plot), she did just that. The director would have been horrified, the critics, smug. When she awoke it was to total silence and shadowed gloom. For a second, she could not even where she was or how she had got there, and her heart started to race. The spilled popcorn piled on her lap did wonders at reorienting her. What a waste of money that was, but Bill had always insisted they share a box of salted back in the day. She wondered if the film had picked up at all, if she had missed anything, and how long she had been sitting here alone like this.

Her fizzy drink carton was still in the armrest, half-full. The last thing she needed now was to go home with a dehydration headache. Home: that brought everything crashing back down on her like a collapsing stage curtain. Did this unscheduled doze mean she would be unable to sleep tonight? She still felt very tired and acutely unrefreshed. Maybe if she got herself home quickly and climbed straight into bed, she would not have time to wake up fully and instead drift straight back off again. Sweeping the popcorn down onto the floor, she stood up stiffly, ready to leave her row for the central aisle out. That was the moment she first became aware that she was not alone. ‘Oh, sorry. I’m just coming,’ she muttered. Food and packaging crunched under her feet, and she realised how much she needed a pee. That was a half a litre of sugary soft drink she had swallowed two hours earlier. She looked down towards the exit, surprised that the usher had not yet said anything. When she was a child the ushers used to shine torches to help people navigate the dimly lit cinema interiors. But that practice was obsolete these days, even at traditional screenings. This chap certainly made no attempt to light her way. ‘Are you waiting to close?’ What a ridiculous question, she cursed herself. This was a Friday night. There would be another showing, surely. There could be a queue waiting to come in right now and he still had to check that the room was fit to use again. So why didn’t he say that? Or anything? Talk about bad manners. His was a dim silhouette standing to the side of the lowest row, his shoes hidden by the bottom aisle step, motionless and mute. Dickhead, she thought. At the end of her row, she stopped again, knowing that the silhouetted figure still had not moved and that its eyes were on her the whole time. Had she done something wrong? she wondered, ing the spilled popcorn. Her skin felt strangely itchy and she pulled her coat closed against a cold she doubted was actually there.

‘Is anything the matter?’ The figure was stiffly statuesque, just watching. Her eyes were getting more accustomed to the gloom, her senses reinvigorated after her catnap, but the features of the watcher remained defiantly obscured. If he thought it was funny making single women feel uncomfortable in their own skin, he was in for a rude awakening. The manager would hear about this. Some bored acned teenager giving her the creeps late at night so he could brag to his friends about how he had missed his vocation as a horror film director was the last thing she needed. She was about to change her tone to one of outrage, when she realised that the figure had vanished. Making her way down the aisle steps, Christine was determined to confront this young joker and give him a piece of her mind. But out in the brighter light of the foyer, she found she was still alone. A wire grill had been pulled down over the front of the darkened box office. A tall, twitchy middle-aged woman waited by the front entrance, a set of keys jingling in her hand. Her watcher had been shorter and broader across the shoulders, and, she was convinced, male. ‘Fall asleep in there, love?’ the woman asked, unsarcastically. Christine merely smiled and slipped out into the night. Ridiculously, she halfexpected to see the mystery usher waiting for her in the shadows on the far side of the street. But there was only a chip paper dancing on a languid night breeze to catch her eye. Surprisingly, she felt the tug of disappointment. Time for bed, she told herself. This was not the start to the weekend she had hoped for. All she had to do now, she joked to herself, was survive another week of worry, forgetfulness and insecurity. ‘No sweat.’ And don’t forget the plumbing, a dark voice added. Suddenly the empty cinema behind her felt safe rather than menacing. But if she sat through another showing it would only be to find herself in the same situation

but much later into the night. The prospect of walking through dark streets graced only by loud drunks and deeper shadows put paid to any idea of buying another ticket. If only she had invited Jimmy out with her tonight rather than offer him that vague invitation to call her if he really needed to. Now she would have to face the walk home alone; and not just that, but whatever awaited her back at what she was beginning to think of as a haunted house. That would teach her to be so proud. And as her grandmother had told her throughout her childhood, pride always comes before a fall.

Chapter Fourteen

Once she began walking, however, she started to feel warm, the way she might have on a Friday night in August. But this was not even April. It was not a sensation that affected her whole body, though. Originating between her shoulder blades, it spread up to her neck and then across the top of her arms and into her biceps. That was where it stopped. Her gloveless hands were still reassuringly cold. As a teenager she had torn her calf muscle and a physiotherapist had istered ultrasound when she was still limping after a fortnight. That was how this new sensation felt: a warmth so intense it seemed to be spreading from deep within her bones. The word leukaemia jumped into her overwrought mind, but the overall effect was as relaxing as anything she had experienced in weeks. ‘It’s not leukaemia,’ Christine muttered as she set off for home. She could hear raised voices and music throbbing through the walls of the high street pubs and clubs. This was Friday night, after all. Soon, it would be closing time and the crowds would spill out onto the pavements, loud, drunk and disinhibited. But for the moment it surprised her how few other people there were out here with her. As she stood there, in fact, a solitary couple walking arm in arm disappeared down a side street and she was completely alone. Only you’re not. Christine looked around. There were people inside a burger bar, another group in a kebab shop. But that was not what her subconscious meant. Somewhere, out there in the shadows, there were eyes staring back at her. Unblinking eyes. But again the feeling was not an unpleasant one. Her second revelation in as many minutes. In fact, the stronger her conviction grew that she was being watched, the warmer her upper back and shoulders felt, and the more relaxed she became. I’m not being watched, she couldn’t help thinking, I’m being watched over. What could so easily have been a journey fraught with uncertainty and apprehension turned into a pleasant stroll past familiar landmarks. The still air was cool against her face, her footfalls echoing like the night’s heartbeat. Suddenly, the weekend held no fears for her.

At the periphery of the wasteland in which her home defiantly stood, she paused momentarily. Despite her upbeat mood, it was hard to avoid seeing her home for what it was, a ghost ship moored far from the mainland, connected to the shore by a pier made of royal blue hoarding. The streetlights were still up, thank goodness, though the council would be far from happy about all that energy expended for the benefit of one resident. It seemed her stubbornness about moving was going to piss everyone off. Well, tough. No one was going to shift her without her say so. She did not need a solicitor to tell her that, either. If she did not want to sell, she would not have to. Not unless O’Sullivan was planning to build an airport. Christine smiled and resumed her stroll between the head high hoarding s. On one of the final telephone calls from her family last year - her sister-in-law, if she ed correctly – Christine’s reluctant caller asked her how she was coping without Bill. She gave the hackneyed responses of ‘taking things day by day’ and ‘some days are harder than others’, but the truth was she did not have a clue how or even if she was coping without him. And had anything really changed? The truth was, she had not even begun the process of working through her loss. Where the hell was she supposed to start? Looking back over her life she realised that she had been alive for more years with Bill than she had been without him. Childhood aside, it was impossible for her to what life was like pre-William Money. Like the sky and the sun, he seemed always to have been there. Even recalling life as a schoolgirl, despite the fact that Bill’s introduction was years ahead, his presence endured. She did not know what his name would be or what he would look like or when their orbits would collide. But the fact that his trajectory was sending him hurtling towards her seemed as predictable and yet inexplicable as a headache before a thunderstorm or the smell of ozone after the rain. The expression I’ve known him all my life was literally true in her case. Indeed, she could divide her life into two distinct halves: ‘the life of knowing Bill’ preceded by ‘the life of waiting to know Bill.’ But that Bill was always a potential presence in her existence, from her earliest memories, was indisputable. How, then, was she supposed to come to with that loss when the idea of a third stage to her existence – ‘life ing a lost Bill’ – was as impossible to conceive of as the idea of rain falling up into the clouds? How did you end something that had no beginning? How could the likes of Janice listen to such sentiments without labelling it as pathological?

Speaking of which, her ongoing assessment awaited. That was one threat hanging over her that would not be dislodged. What if the results proved to be so contentious that they decided that she needed medical tests conducted by specialists? A hospital ission, in other words. But surely not. Hospital beds were at a . Anything they needed to do would be done at the surgery, or at the worst the outpatients department. Even so, she knew her first week under scrutiny at home had not gone well. At her front door, she turned to face the closed blue wooden doors to Mrs Green’s plot. Weeds and other small plants had gained a strong foothold between the paving stones already. Through a gap at the bottom she noticed that the ground was strewn with strips of metal, discarded plastic sheeting and splintered timber battens. A developer must have an obligation to keep his site tidy, she thought. But no one from the council seemed to be keeping an eye on things. He might get away with anything. ‘What am I doing here?’ she whispered. ‘Really?’ Number Seven was already too big for her, even with the spare bedroom shut up. ‘What am I trying to prove?’ If O’Sullivan’s plans were kept in limbo by her obstinacy and the weeds grew larger and the dust thicker, could she really contemplate living in the centre of a desert? There were no neighbours now. There was certainly no view. She saw her home as a fortress, but it could so easily become a prison overnight. And if she ended up selling anyway, she would have wasted so much precious time and energy. The expression hollow victory echoed through her head and threatened to ruin her mood. ‘But we haven’t come this far to back down now, have we, Bill?’ she proclaimed with a snort. The war was not over yet, then, and wars could only be won on a battlefield. Other than herself, however, there was not a single living creature to hear her declaration, not even a stray dog. Her isolation was almost total, her end of the battlefield barren, yet it failed to disenchant her.

She took a deep breath and let it out again slowly, that sensation of being watched over as strong as ever. Christine turned to the door lock, key in hand, feeling those invisible, unblinking eyes on her back, and, saying over her shoulder, ‘I’m off to bed. I’ll see you up there, love,’ she stepped inside.

Chapter Fifteen

When she saw that her laundry was still neatly draped over the bars of the clothes horse, she should have felt relief. But instead ambivalence reigned. If the clothes had been back inside the machine yet again, she had an image on her phone that proved she had hung them out earlier that day. It was secretly what she wanted, to have something tangible with which to hit back at Janice. See, bitch? It’s not me! There’s something fishy going on. But no, even when she needed something to go wrong, Fate was against her. The rest of the ground floor seemed undisturbed, too; even the solicitor’s letter was where she had left it on the coffee table. If only she had snapped that first letter with her phone, the assessment would have been terminated the moment she had the second letter in her possession to compare it with. It would confirm beyond doubt that something was going on that required scrutiny independent of herself and social services. That conviction remained, but of course there was still no way for her to prove it. Feeling peckish, she ate a yogurt and noticed there were only two left in the fridge. Her current diet contained increasing amounts of sugar-based convenience foods. The House would have clocked that straight away, but so what? There had to be room within those sacred algorithms for the human factor. Just because she ate an extra yogurt did not mean she was on the way to becoming one of those old dears who lived on breakfast cereal three times a day. But that yogurt had been her fourth since breakfast. Feeling guilty, she made herself a fruit tea whilst eating a banana, and headed for the stairs, casting one last glance towards the living room. Shadows hung from the doorframe like spiders’ webs and for a split second she imagined that she could see a pair of knees resting in Bill’s armchair. It was not the first time her eyes had deceived her this way, but as usual the other side of a blink revealed only an empty chair in a gloomy room untroubled by laughter. She turned the last few lights off manually. Incidents like these, though harmless

in themselves, always made her reluctant to hear Bill’s voice; and the House itself was far from trustworthy right now. ‘Have you any idea how mad that sounds?’ she sighed on her way up to the landing. ‘Like talking to yourself, you mean?’ Though she switched the light on first in her bedroom, Christine noticed nothing untoward until after setting down her steaming cup on the bedside table. Paradoxically, that comforting warmth in her shoulders had dissipated once she had taken her coat off in the hall. Now all she wanted was her bed and the promise of a long, uninterrupted sleep. But instead tension ripped through her shoulders like cramp as the latest anomaly finally ed in her weary mind. The duvet had a fresh cover on. Carefully, as if there might be something awful hidden underneath, she picked up the nearest corner and lifted it up with the ends of two fingers. Below, the sheet and pillowcases were fresh, too. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not right. I didn’t do that.’ The prospect of sleep seemed fanciful, even absurd now. ‘No way.’ Yes, she had been planning to change the mauve set all week, but what with all the disruption caused by her assessment and the worry over Jimmy’s health crisis, the task had gotten away from her. Or had it? ‘What’s going on here?’ she whispered, slowly shaking her head. ‘What the hell is going on?’ The mauve duvet, with its matching set of sheet and pillowcases, had been there this morning. She disliked the colour, but it was Bill’s favourite and she slept in it for his benefit. Sometimes she would wash it first thing and have it dried and ready for reuse by bedtime, rather than disappoint him. In fact, that was the main reason she had not managed to change it this week, not to mention all the dust thrown up by O’Sullivan’s demolition crew making it impossible to hang anything outside. The yellow and cream duvet cover with its subtle floral motive along the top edge, was much more her style. But who had put it there?

Christine leaned over the bed, catching the fresh smell of washing powder and fabric conditioner before her nose got anywhere near the smooth laundered surface. Pulling the cover back again she caught the same fresh smell coming from the sheet and pillowcases. ‘So, where’s the dirty laundry, then?’ She hurried back downstairs, out through the kitchen and into the utility area, fretful fingers flicking switches back on, resigned to what she would find. She could see the ball of mauve linen through the closed door of the washing machine without needing to open it. When she had first returned, her attention had been dominated by the clothes horse; there had been no reason to look at the washing machine. Yet she had no recollection of putting the bed linen in there. Did this mean she would have to document her every action with her mobile phone? Christine lent heavily against the door jam and tried to make sense of this recent development. Yes, she was tired. Yes, her week had been the proverbial rollercoaster ride of emotions. But these gaps in her memory could not be explained by any one factor alone. Perhaps, as the saying went, it was all too much: living alone, struggling with loss, dealing with age. She hoped that if her assessment went as badly on the second week, social services would at least try to get her more help at home, maybe give her another week’s trial under that regime. But that would all depend on funding. If it was cheaper to put her away, she had no savings with which to barter for her freedom. And Janice wanted her put away, of that she was sure; though why remained a mystery. There’s something fishy going on, her mind repeated. When she opened the small round door to the washing machine, she was relieved to find the duvet dry and smelling slightly musty. Though she knew she was clutching at straws, it was a consolation to know that she had not started a cycle and forgotten that too. With a jagged weight across her shoulders where that warm, comforting feeling had been less than an hour ago, she trudged back upstairs. Halfway up, however, she stopped dead. She waited, listening intently for over a minute, with her head cocked slightly to one side. Then the sound came again, and she knew she had not imagined it.

She continued up to the bathroom and stared at the taps for so long she started to feel giddy. She let her fingertips explore the two spout ends, but neither held any trace of moisture. Running her hand over the dry surface of the basin, she let out a high-pitched laugh, as shrill in the night as a fox’s scream. ‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed. ‘I think it’s my mind that must be leaking.’ But having set the words free, she found them echoing in her mind like a witch’s curse. Feeling utterly exhausted, she half-fell, half-threw herself onto the fragrant bedclothes. This symbolic act of capitulation at least freed her shoulders of that unwanted tension. Pulling the duvet up to her neck, she surrendered herself to the scent of purity enveloping her. Whoever had changed her bedclothes, she was grateful to them for this unintended kindness. Maybe it was whoever was watching over her right now. Christine opened her eyes slowly and stared at the ceiling above, grateful that she had left the light on. But, as had been the case on the walk home, she was not afraid. The warmth between her shoulder blades was back, familiar now, spreading slowly down the top of her arms and up the stem of her neck. This was the sensation she had enjoyed for years when Bill had treated her to a neck and shoulder massage. Indeed, it was easy to imagine his strong fingers kneading her tired flesh right now. Slowly, she turned her head so that her eyes could see the silhouette filling the doorway. As she watched, she heard a solitary plop from the bathroom. The warmth across her shoulders was easing her down into sleep now. The figure in the doorway continued to stare down at her, unblinking. She was neither afraid nor surprised, not really. The feeling that had engulfed her outside the cinema could only have been caused by love. Not watched, she ed thinking; watched over. ‘Has it been you, all along?’ The figure continued to stare for a moment, then turned away into the darkness of the landing beyond.

She let out a deep sigh, not in sadness but with renewed confidence. Wherever Bill’s spirit wandered from now on, it would never be too far away. And watching over her, too. ‘Bill, bedroom light out, please.’ Letting her head settle back into the yellow and cream pillow, her eyelids seemed to close themselves in the darkness. The fragrance around her reminded her of a wooded clearing in which to enjoy a picnic with someone special, and in place of a dripping tap she heard the babbling of a crystal stream. Not a haunted house, then, but a haunted home. ‘Goodnight, husband.’

Chapter Sixteen

Christine retrieved the old notebook from the kitchen drawer after breakfast the next day. She ripped out the used pages and wrote the date on the top of the first fresh page. Down the left-hand margin she wrote the time and then next to that her every action, blow by blow. Description and detail were the keys, she decided. She even recorded the things she decided not to do. By Saturday afternoon she had already filled a dozen pages of scrawled entries. Now she had a written record of everything she had (and had not) done that day. Meeting her dead husband had given her a whole new perspective on her situation. Then she ed her promise to Jimmy, that he could call her if he started to pull his own hair out. Had it been a promise? She was certain it must have been from Jimmy’s perspective. So why had he not called? Too proud? Or maybe he thought she was just being kind-hearted, saying what he wanted to hear without really meaning it. She could picture him sitting by the phone, drumming his fingers on the arm of a chair, just waiting for it to ring. Yup, that was pride, all right. But that did not mean he was not suffering on his own. ‘Bored?’ she asked when he answered her call. ‘Well, I’m not supposed to exert myself, ,’ he answered. ‘Which in my book is as good a definition of boredom as any. I’m glad you called. How are you, Chrissy?’ ‘I’m okay,’ she replied after the briefest of hesitations. For such a little word it had big implications in the grand scheme of things. ‘How about you?’ Jimmy laughed. ‘To be honest, I feel pretty much back to my old self. I think this enforced idleness could become counterproductive very soon, though. I’ll probably crack and launch myself into something major like landscape gardening or cabinet making.’ ‘Couldn’t you try doing one small task and seeing how you felt afterwards? You know, test the water?’

‘What did you have in mind?’ he purred. She had meant something he could try for himself at home. Now she was momentarily flustered by his suggestiveness. ‘I don’t know. Couldn’t you polish the cabinet you have already?’ ‘It’s a drinks cabinet, Chrissy. Whose side are you on?’ ‘Count the bottles, then,’ she laughed. Any delusions she held that she had successfully distracted him were shattered by his next question, however. ‘How about dinner?’ Jimmy really was back to his buoyant self, but it had been a long time since he had suggested they meet up somewhere as a couple. She did not want to drown his restoration with a flat refusal, however. And what harm could it do? It would distract them both from the shadows hanging over their lives right now. As long as you don’t do anything stupid, like let him kiss you goodnight. She thought about Bill watching on, however. Would he mind? Would he even be there? And what could he do about it, anyway, change her duvet again? That wasn’t him and you know it, a voice hissed at her from those murky shadows. ‘Yes, it was.’ ‘Sorry, what?’ Shit. ‘I meant, okay. Sure. Why not?’ Bill’s spectral presence in her life clearly showed her that no one could ever replace him. And the idea that, looking on, he would be jealous to see Jimmy flirting with his wife satisfied a dark need within her, one she had suppressed for far too long. Hell, she might even flirt back a little.

‘Any suggestion where?’ Christine asked. Her only meals out recently had been at the lunch club, arguably the least romantic dining experience in town. He hoped he would propose somewhere bright, crowded and noisy with not a lit candle in sight. But she knew this was an opportunity that the evergreen Jimmy was not about to up. ‘Somewhere in town?’ she added, thinking of the burger bar and kebab shop she had seen from the cinema foyer. ‘Oh, no. I think we can do a little better than that.’ What have I got myself into now? Jimmy was grinning, she knew, when he said, ‘I know just the place.’

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Jimmy had not offered to pick her up, which she took as a good sign. But she still felt nervous in the taxi ride over to the restaurant. It was an age since she had dined at the White Hart, but looking at their website showed that it had gone a little more upmarket in recent years. Waiters in smart jackets but no ties, cut glass but not crystal, candlesticks but not candelabras. Her biggest worry, she found, was deciding what to wear. She needed to fit in with the clientele but without appearing to dress to impress her dining partner; to make a good impression without giving Jimmy the wrong one, in other words. After changing her outfit for the tenth time – something no House algorithm would have labelled as odd – she found a late middle-aged woman in a blue high-necked cocktail dress, rhinestone drop earrings but no choker staring back at her from the full-length mirror. Yes, she decided, she looked stylish, elegant even but without giving the impression of dressing with an ulterior motive in mind. This would neither embarrass nor excite Jimmy, she hoped; which was the middle ground she had aimed for all along. By six o’clock there were butterflies in her stomach, and she realised how much she had missed this kind of occasion. Mrs Green’s funeral wake just had not given her the same buzz. The White Hart was a Seventeenth century timber-framed pub that had rebranded itself as a restaurant way back in the Nineteen Eighties. In recent years, the website informed her, the establishment had added a limited hotel

service, too. But Christine did not need to consider that. ‘I was beginning to think you’d stood me up,’ Jimmy smiled. ‘Why, am I late?’ She had decided not to appear too keen by arriving early, but maybe she had cut her entrance timing a little too finely. ‘No, no,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I was only joking.’ Christine settled into the chair opposite Jimmy’s whilst he ordered them both gin and tonics. She was relieved to see that Jimmy had gone for a smart but informal look. Snowy white shirt and jacket but no tie. ‘Have you been here before?’ he asked. Do you come here often? ‘Years ago,’ she replied, sipping her gin and tonic, and pouring herself a glass of table water as an afterthought. Pace yourself, girl, she coached herself. ‘It’s changed quite a bit. How about you?’ ‘Same. Been here a few times years ago but not recently.’ ‘Well, it certainly looks swanky.’ ‘Swanky? Now there’s a word I haven’t heard for nearly as long.’ Christine found herself relaxing effortlessly, but she remained conscious of the potential ambiguity of overfamiliarity. Pace yourself! They ordered starters and let the small talk encroach on more serious territory. ‘Are you really okay now?’ The question sounded more concerned than she had meant it to. ‘I just got a bit complacent, that’s all. Forgot how much the last decade has taken out of me.’ ‘It can’t be easy, though.’ Now she sounded patronising. Just relax! She took another sip of her drink.

Jimmy did likewise. ‘And don’t worry about this. The next drink is an orange juice, I promise.’ ‘Or tomato juice,’ she smiled. ‘Full of antioxidants, I hear.’ ‘I’ll compromise on a Bloody Mary.’ They both laughed. ‘It’s just nice to get out,’ she said. ‘Break the routine, have something to look forward to at the end of the week. Something to dress up for.’ ‘Or someone.’ She felt her cheeks flush. ‘I was so glad when you called, Chrissy. I was getting cabin fever back there. There’s only so many times you can count twelve bottles before the process becomes even more frustrating than not opening any of them.’ ‘Twelve!’ Jimmy smirked behind his glass, eyes shining. ‘Being cooped up at home must have felt like you were still in hospital, Jimmy.’ ‘You must have been talking to someone who’s tasted my cooking.’ ‘The one that survived, you mean?’ They laughed, a little more loudly this time. If anything was going to give them permission to enjoy themselves it was the G and T’s. ‘But you’re right,’ he said, glancing around the room. ‘This really helps. Thanks.’ An awkward silence fell between them. ‘Being under formal assessment is worse, though, surely?’ Jimmy reflected. ‘I mean, you know the House is there, obviously, but knowing you’re being formally assessed somehow makes it all that much more invasive. You can’t

forget the bloody thing’s all around you, watching, listening.’ Christine’s stomach gurgled softly. She put it down to hunger. ‘Which,’ Jimmy continued, ‘is why I’m surprised they gave you so much information about your assessment.’ The starters arrived. Neither made a move to eat. ‘I was assessed myself. Years ago.’ ‘Oh, really?’ Now this was news. Another pause, this time more bearable. ‘And they didn’t tell you?’ Christine frowned. ‘Oh, I knew I was being assessed, all right,’ Jimmy replied. ‘They have to inform you. It’s a legal requirement. But they didn’t tell me when the process began or when it ended. And they didn’t even tell me which days the assessment was being conducted on.’ ‘It wasn’t every day, then?’ This was less news and more a revelation. ‘Of course not. If you know you’re being monitored twenty-four seven, that awareness itself will alter your natural responses and behaviour during the assessment. Invalidates the results, they told me.’ But would this disclosure turn out to be good news for her or bad? ‘Like the first five minutes of a driving test.’ ‘Exactly.’ Jimmy laughed. ‘So you can still after stalling in the test centre car park.’ They picked up a spoon each and started on the soup. Did he think she was falling apart? Do I? ‘No, it’s very odd,’ Jimmy frowned. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone being that

aware of their assessment. You must be on edge the whole time. And what do they hope to learn from that? Everyone makes mistakes under pressure.’ Christine put her spoon down again. ‘Jimmy, do you think I could get a solicitor to challenge this? Is that what you mean?’ ‘It depends how you’re faring under the current set-up.’ He continued ladling the mushroom soup into his mouth. ‘I take it you don’t feel the week has gone too well so far, then?’ It was tempting to offload her latest tribulations, to get that weight off her shoulders. But that would have involved alluding to her dead husband’s revival, or at least running the risk of letting that controversy out of the bag by accident. ‘Let’s say things could have gone better.’ ‘Even if you convince yourself the assessment isn’t happening there and then, it still hangs over you the whole time. Believe me. They can’t take that pressure off you completely, not without assessing without your knowledge. And like I said, informed consent is a legal requirement.’ ‘This whole assessment could just be a bureaucratic requirement, then; a hoop they have to jump through when the House raises concerns?’ ‘Well, I wouldn’t look at it quite so optimistically.’ Jimmy let his spoon hover over his soup bowl. ‘Like I said before, if the House identifies a problem it’s probably real. But it just shows the effect the process is having on you. Being under surveillance round the clock is enough to drive anyone crazy.’ So he suspected she was falling apart and going crazy now? Her stomach gurgled again, prompting her to reach for a small bread roll. ‘But what can I do?’ she asked, sounding desperate. ‘Maybe being a bit more fatalistic wouldn’t be such a bad thing,’ said Jimmy, wiping his lips with a serviette. ‘Really? How?’

‘If you give up, it defeat, it might help you to relax and be yourself again.’ Jimmy might not be so confident in his advice if he knew everything that was going on in the Money household. Christine put her spoon back in her bowl, even though there was still a puddle of soup waiting for it at the bottom. ‘How was it?’ ‘Good,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘Wasn’t it. And I’m not a great fan of mushrooms.’ Feeling not just scrutinised but intimidated every minute of the day and night had taken a considerable toll on her mental health, so Bill’s return last night was a perk. Even that might have negative connotations mentally, she realised, but she did not want to think about that. She certainly hoped Bill was not watching her now. Her fantasy about making his spirit jealous seemed more than a little bit mean in retrospect. And there was meanness too in begrudging Jimmy his moment of glory in getting her alone in a restaurant. Both the men in her life were contributing to her moral recovery, even if each had returned from the grave in their own way. The thought made her grin. Jimmy gave her a sideways look. ‘That’s promising, Chrissy.’ ‘You just reminded me of something I heard on a cookery programme.’ ‘Go on.’ ‘All mushrooms are edible once.’ After they had stopped laughing, she told him about her notebook inventory. ‘What do you think?’ He leaned forward, earnestly. ‘You do see my point, though, don’t you? You’re so aware of your evaluation, you’re behaving in ways you would never have dreamt of otherwise.’ Christine frowned. ‘Yes, you’re right, of course.’

He reached across the table and patted her hand. ‘If it helps, keep the notebook going, by all means. Just be aware that it might prove counterproductive in the long run.’ The conversation drifted on to politics, the cost of living, distant friends and even more distant relatives. By her third gin the warmth she had felt returning to her shoulders was all over her body and the floor seemed to be on roller skates. When she got up to go to the ladies, Jimmy had to grab her arm to stop her falling. ‘You must think I’m a right tart,’ Christine giggled. Jimmy raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, it’s just great to see you enjoying yourself for once, to be honest.’ Yes, he meant that, too. Bless him. Without realising what was about to happen, she leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek. As long as you don’t do anything stupid, like let him kiss you goodnight. ‘Back in a jiffy,’ she slurred, meandering towards the ladies’ toilet door like an ice skater. The cool of the toilet cubicle and the cold water she let cascade over her hands afterwards brought her to within spitting distance of sobriety. When she reentered the dining area, she ordered herself a black coffee and by the time the bill came – which they split - she was at least able to fake being sober long enough to say goodnight to Jimmy and take aim at the open door to the taxi. ‘Home time,’ she sighed, waving to Jimmy. He waved back, smirking. What was he thinking? she wondered. The taxi turned a corner and Jimmy disappeared. Fifteen minutes later her isolated home came into view. Somewhere within those familiar four walls another man was waiting for her. ‘You old tart…’ she murmured.

Chapter Seventeen

Drinking her tea in the garden at sunset, Christine reflected on how Sunday had turned out to be the best day of the week. The colour still bloomed in her cheeks from removing rubbish that had blown in from the surrounding plots over time, especially from the shell of Mrs Green’s place. Doubtless, by this time next week there would be strips of plastic, paper and soggy cardboard everywhere, but for now there was satisfaction in knowing that Mr O’Sullivan was bound to notice her keeping up appearances. She was still recording in her notebook, but not with the same intensity as yesterday. Jimmy’s advice had turned the notebook from a written record of vital importance that might be produced in court to more of a comfort item, something she could use for reassurance and certainty. If things continued in this vein tomorrow, she might even slip the notebook back in the drawer it had come from. It was a long time since she had woken up with a hangover. When her head started to clear it revealed memories of the night before frame by frame. Had she done or said anything she would come to regret? That depended on how Jimmy might interpret their evening. Lending a desperate man the gift of wishful thinking was like leading a horse into an orchard. She recalled her last image of him, standing nonchalantly outside the White Hart with his hands in his pockets. Did he look triumphant, smug, cocky? No, not really. He looked like a man who had enjoyed a good night out with a close friend. Nothing more, nothing less. Or so she hoped. Her life was too complicated already. The test, of course, was when they saw each other again at the lunch club. If he approached her in the way she had grown used to over the months, she decided, then she would definitely go out with him again. ‘If that’s all right with you, Bill,’ she said, knowing that the House could not hear her outside. Bill had kept a low profile all that day. She was tempted to consider it as sulking. Well, he would just have to get used to it. At least she was being open with Bill about her assignations. It might be a different kettle of fish should anyone from the lunch club catch sight of her and Jimmy, though. She could not help feeling a little flutter of excitement at the idea of planning their next rendezvous with the need for anonymity taking precedence over the quality of food and service. Christine was never going to have an affair with Jimmy, but the potential to do

so was something that might trouble her ever watchful husband. Or it would do, she reminded herself, if he were still alive. She had not thought through her recent experiences of seeing and feeling Bill’s presence back in her life. Relaxing in her garden at sunset was as good a time as any, she decided, though she had to it the prospect of self-analysis scared her a little. Was this apparition his ghost, a restless spirit that could not on knowing that she was vulnerable? Or was the phantom silhouette a manifestation of her deepest memories of her husband spilling out into reality? If so, her reservations about installing Bill’s voice into the House’s hard drive were about to be realised. Or was something much darker erupting from her psyche? Seeing and hearing things that were not there were no mere symptoms of a neurosis. Her stomach muscles tightened, reminding her that the reason she had not thought about Bill’s return was because she did not want to spoil the solace she gleaned from catching those fleeting movements in the corner of her vision or hearing a soft retreating tread on her landing carpet. The two men in her life, she realised, stood like guards at the threshold of sanity. Lose either one and she feared a breakdown might be only hours away. So why did she also find comfort in the idea that her behaviour frustrated one of them and made the other jealous? That wound had healed, surely? Bill’s fling was nothing, a stupid rush of blood during a period when their marriage was in dire need of resuscitation. And she had to it, that one-night stand had revived their relationship, shaken them both up to what was at stake. They began investing in each other again, showed an interest in each other’s lives, started dating again, in point of fact. Even their sex life was better overall. But that, paradoxically, was the root of the problem. From that very first kiss in front of the fire, after the big showdown that never was, Christine could feel a difference in her husband. The way he kissed, the way he touched her, even the way he moved his body around her were different. Bill’s heart had always been hers, she knew that. There had never been the remotest chance that he would run away with this colleague from work. But she had given Bill something that Christine never could, and it was something that lay dormant within him for the rest of their lives together, just like the brain tumour that would eventually kill him. It was not something he needed or wanted to keep hold of. It was not a deliberate secret that he kept hidden from her. But it was always there – intangible, covert, damaging nonetheless, a constant reminder that there was something Bill had found in the

arms of another woman that his wife could not even identify let alone provide. And that was the cause of her resentment, she understood; that was what satisfied her in imagining Bill’s spirit watching her dres for another man and then letting herself get drunk and disinhibited. ‘You must think I’m a right tart,’ Christine ed giggling mischievously, before giving Jimmy his peck on the cheek. But if a woman could play the hussy, then a man could be a libertine. Bill’s mystery one-night stand had been far from chivalrous. Well, now it was time for Christine to doll herself up and strut her stuff. And why the hell shouldn’t she? Her sentiments carried the acid bite of lemons: sharp, sarcastic, tart. Sitting in her garden, starting to feel a little chilly as the sun dipped towards the horizon, Christine itted to herself that her slurred remark in the restaurant had not been directed at Jimmy at all. She had been talking to her husband, Bill, watching on from the shadows somewhere, and revelling in the fact that there was no way in which he could answer her back.

Chapter Eighteen

If Sunday had been the calm before the storm, the first inkling of that storm’s arrival came at just after nine o’clock on Monday morning. ‘Christine!’ Here was a voice she neither expected nor wanted to hear. ‘Can I come in?’ And there was the supercilious smile she did not want to see to go with it. Christine had forgotten how much resentment Janice could inspire with just a few harmless pleasantries. That casual, overfamiliar repartee she adopted felt tailor-made to antagonise Christine. It was not something she could use on everyone. Someone would have killed her by now, surely. The words she used were unimportant. It was the message hidden within the tone of voice, along with the ‘I-feel-sorry-for-you’ smile and that slight angling of the head, that seemed to say: None of this is your fault. It just happens when you’re past it. We’ll take care of you now, poor thing. ‘Oh, have I ed the test already?’ Christine could not curtail her sarcasm. What she wanted to say was far worse. ‘Christine,’ Janice’s smile faltered, just for a second. ‘We need to talk.’ Panic grabbed hold of Christine’s spine and gave it a warning shake. She pulled the cord on her dressing gown tighter. ‘I’m sorry about my appearance. I’ve not been up long.’ ‘There’s been a development, Christine. Can I come in?’ she said, frowning and smiling simultaneously. The stand-in social worker had not heard a word that Christine had just said, she realised. ‘Oh?’ Christine blinked. ‘Well… yes.’ Janice used the word ‘development’ the way an oncologist might use the word cyst. Something was wrong. The fact that Janice was standing on her doorstep a week early should have told her that much. She widened the mouth of the door like a patient in a dentist’s chair and steeled herself for the worst. Christine sat down in the living room first, her legs unable to her any longer. Janice’s eyes had flicked to the envelope on the coffee table, she noticed, then smoothing the material of her tros along her legs, she clasped her hands

together across her knees. Let us pray. Something Jimmy had said in the White Hart on Friday night leapt to the forefront of her mind. ‘Is this normal? Coming around before the assessment’s over, I mean?’ Unless you really have ed! her mind brayed with laughter. Janice responded to Christine’s barely disguised hostility with her finest look of imperious distain. Bugger the tea, Christine thought. ‘Sometimes it isn’t necessary to go right through to the last day,’ Janice began earnestly. If her head tipped any further to the right, Christine marvelled, it might fall off. ‘Sometimes we find out what we want to know in the first week.’ Whatever was wrong was very wrong, in other words. ‘How do you feel your week has gone?’ ‘I had a lovely weekend,’ she said, defiantly. ‘Really?’ So whatever had gone wrong, it had happened sometime in the last forty-eight hours. ‘Obviously, it’s incredibly stressful, knowing you’re being watched round the clock,’ Christine began, ing what Jimmy had said over dinner. ‘Then my friend at the lunch club was taken into hospital on Wednesday…’ And before she knew it all her worries and fears came spewing out across the room. She mentioned the extra pressure of the solicitor’s letter and the strain that had put on her knowing that someone desperately wanted the house she had lived in for years. Again, Janice’s eyes flicked down to the envelope on the coffee table. ‘It must feel like the whole world is against you.’ ‘No, not that exactly.’ Because that would make me clinically paranoid, you arrogant little know-it-all. ‘But you do make it sound as if everyone is against you.’

‘Not everyone…’ she began. Janice pounced. ‘But most people? How can that be true?’ I am going to slap her. ‘I managed a difficult week quite well, I think,’ Christine spat, truculently. Janice’s smile shrunk like a deflating balloon. ‘Christine, the alarm has been activated practically every day since I was last here.’ And with that news Christine’s spirits deflated too. ‘Even yesterday?’ she said aloud without meaning to. Leave me the consolation of Sunday at least, she thought. ‘Christine,’ the young social worker continued with difficulty. This was the first time Christine had detected any degree of sincerity from the other woman. Sarcasm and contempt would have been easier to deal with. ‘It’s why I’ve taken the unusual step of calling round prematurely. You’re right, interrupting an assessment before it’s over isn’t standard procedure.’ Christine took a deep breath, preparing herself for Janice’s fateful announcement. She was damned if she was going to give Little-Miss-Know-itall the satisfaction of showing trepidation rinse the colour from her cheeks. ‘When we do an assessment of this nature, we always raise the alarm threshold temporarily. We make allowances for the additional stress on the client of being scrutinised round the clock.’ ‘Like the first five minutes of a driving test?’ ‘Exactly.’ So why not keep the assessment times hidden, like Jimmy had said? She thought about mentioning her notebook, but Little-Miss-Know-it-all was in full flow.

‘In other words, the House is programmed to raise the alarm only in extreme circumstances.’ ‘Extreme?’ She suddenly felt cold. ‘Where your personal safety might be put at risk, Christine. The rest of the time the House is just analysing and recording. It won’t step in unless absolutely necessary.’ How could the laundry threaten her personal safety? Nothing else had happened during the past seven days that could be described as life-threatening. A terrifying thought slipped into her mind that she struggled to keep from showing on her face. Did they know about her calling the House Bill? She pictured herself asking Bill to switch the television on or the lights down or the heating up and decided it didn’t seem that weird at all. ‘Christine, you’ve been sleep-walking.’ What! ‘Excuse me?’ She had gone through a phase of sleepwalking as a child, true, but it had barely lasted six months. On one occasion, she ed, she had awoken in the bathtub at dawn. That had been a threat to her decency rather than her personal safety. She was nine years old. If she were sleep walking now, why had she not found mysterious cuts or bruising on her body that might suggest she had hurt herself wandering the house somnambulantly? No, this was bullshit. ‘The House has recorded you wandering from room to room practically every night, sometimes more than once.’ No. Not every night. ‘I have to use the toilet.’ ‘Downstairs?’ ‘Sometimes,’ Christine answered unconvincingly.

‘In the kitchen?’ ‘I get peckish.’ ‘There’s no evidence of your eating anything during these wanderings.’ I don’t fucking wander! But in a way, of course, she had. ‘I always wake up in bed the next morning none the worse for wear…’ Nice one, Christine, you’re playing right into her hands, girl! ‘There’s more.’ I bet there is. And aren’t you feeling pleased to be the one telling me all about it? ‘Lights have been left on for hours, Christine. On one occasion practically every light in the house was on between three and five in the morning.’ ‘When?’ she snapped back. Little-Miss-Know-it-all took a breath. Then she simply said, ‘Last night. Sunday.’ No. Please, not Sunday. If Janice had said Saturday instead, she could have put it all down to alcohol. But Sunday had been by far her best day of the week, the one that gave her renewed hope of facing the future with confidence. And now this frump was pouring scorn all over it. Indignation overwhelmed her at this vilification of her near-perfect day. ‘What? I was out cold last night. I slept like a baby!’ The perfect opportunity for sleepwalking to highjack her body, in other words. ‘I doubt I even turned over in the bed.’ ‘Like I said, there’s a consistent pattern of behaviour at work here,’ Janice continued. There was nothing kindly about her smile now. ‘But last night was the most serious incident so far.’ ‘You mean, I left the house?’

‘No, this happened inside.’ A glimmer of hope flashed through her mind. ‘There wasn’t a single light on when I got up this morning.’ She could say that with confidence, of course, because she checked all the lights systematically. ‘They weren’t on, Christine, because you’d switched them all off again,’ Janice informed her calmly. ‘What nonsense!’ ‘I’m sorry, but it’s true.’ ‘But…’ Janice held up her hand to continue. ‘You got up around five a.m., switched on every light in the house, plus the radio, the television, the washing machine…’ The washing machine? That had been during the day, surely? And besides, that definitely had not been her. Or had it? ‘….then you proceeded to wander from room to room for exactly ninety-six minutes, switched everything back off and on again. You were finally back in bed again at six forty-two.’ Shit! Oh, shit! ‘And I was in danger how exactly?’ Christine scoffed. ‘Was I juggling knives or something?’ ‘The House raised a red alarm call to the on-call team, but because you were no longer in any immediate danger, sleeping, they agreed to send me here first thing.’ And I bet you leapt at the chance! ‘They decided it would be better coming from a familiar face.’ It? What did she mean by ‘it’? Now her alarm was ringing. ‘Immediate danger? Immediate danger from what, Janice? Cold feet?’

The sarcasm might be making her feel better, but it was doing little to improve her case. ‘Christine, I’m sorry to have to tell you this. It’ll come as quite a shock, I’m sure.’ ‘Look around, Janice. Does this seem like an unsafe environment to you?’ Everything was clean and tidy, it was true; but Janice knew something she didn’t and in a peculiar way Christine was just fine with that. She was unhurt, had not even come close to harm, so what did it matter what had happened within those forgotten dawn hours? But something in Janice’s voice said otherwise. ‘Christine, listen…’ ‘When was the last time I had a fall, hey? Ask the House that!’ ‘Christine…’ I don’t want to know! ‘I’ll save you the trouble, Janice. Never! Not once have I had a fall in this house!’ ‘It’s not about falls…’ I. Don’t. Want. To. Know! ‘Nor have I ever eaten anything past its sell by date.’ ‘I know. Listen, Christine…’ ‘I hardly ever drink.’ Which was why she had become so tiddly on Saturday night at the White Hart. ‘Christine, please!’ Janice raised her voice. Christine was silenced momentarily, her jaws clicking audibly as they snapped together. She had never heard Janice lose her composure before. The cause had to be something critical. And it was.

‘You left your gas on.’ There was a silence in the room so complete she could have heard the hiss of gas had the cooker been on now. But it wasn’t, of course. ‘So how come it was off when I got up this morning?’ Her tone of voice held the triumph of a belligerent child. But in her mind, she was answering the question long before Little-Miss-Knowit-all’s lips could voice it: ‘The House shut the gas off. Just like it’s programmed to do under a number of conditions where a threat to the health or safety of the resident is impending.’ ‘Why didn’t I smell gas this morning, then?’ she asked, more to herself. ‘Tell me that, hey?’ ‘I told you. The House…’ Janice began, but what came after those two words simply did not in Christine’s flustered mind. ‘Why didn’t the House alert me?’ Christine shouted. It’s my bloody home! ‘The danger was neutralised instantaneously.’ Of course. Any escaped gas would have been immediately vented outside. The electricity would have been cut to prevent the risk of sparks. But none of that would have been apparent to Christine, dead to the world in her cold double bed upstairs after hours of nocturnal wandering. This was a nightmare, surely? But worse was to follow. ‘Plus, under the assessment protocol…’ It was as if Janice had set a trap for her. ‘Ah, yes, the bloody assessment! How could I forget?’ It was the doorbell that had roused her from sleep. She had not had time to make tea or to switch the television on or even to ask Bill to switch on a light or flush a toilet. Everything electrical around her was dead, and she had not realised it.

Until now. Her heartbeat boomed in her ears like a death knell. The House had taken care of it all.

Chapter Nineteen

‘So what happens now?’ Christine asked, as if she didn’t know. Enjoying this, aren’t you? she thought. And though there was a look of satisfaction on Janice’s face, it was not the smugness she would have predicted, which surprised her. Christine laboured to identify what that look could mean instead, but it eluded her. ‘Usually, under these circumstances, we dispense with the home assessment and offer the service a stay in one of our inpatient assessment and treatment facilities.’ ‘You mean a dementia ward?’ ‘No, no, no!’ she replied, as if repeating the denial made it stronger each time. ‘It’s a general mental health assessment unit up on the site of the General Hospital. It’s only recently been built, in fact.’ But was probably still underfunded in of staffing and resources, Christine decided. ‘So I’ll be in with every Tom, Dick and Jesus?’ ‘You’ll be in a female only ward, Christine. You’ll be quite safe.’ My God, she’s already got me a bed. ‘Can’t I complete the home assessment first? I’m over halfway through it already.’ She could not keep the pleading tone from her voice. ‘You could leave the gas off at the mains, couldn’t you?’ ‘It’s not that simple. It was the gas this time; what might it be next? It’s not a risk we can afford to take. For your sake.’ Christine decided to cut to the chase. ‘And if I refuse?’ Janice’s back straightened. ‘It’s not safe for you to stay here now. We need to assess you in a safe environment.’ ‘But if we neutralise all the risks here first…’ ‘There are too many to count, Christine. If anything went wrong…’

‘But I told you. I never fall. I never give myself food poisoning. I never cut or burn myself cooking.’ ‘Yes, but I’m guessing you’ve not been sleepwalking and left all the gas rings on in the early hours before, either. Have you?’ Little-Miss-Know-it-all had an answer for everything. Christine felt trapped in a web of well-intentioned standardised procedures, and every time she struggled it did nothing but tie her down even further. ‘So, in answer to my question?’ ‘It would be better if you agreed to come in voluntarily.’ Better for whom? she wondered. ‘The less formal route is quicker to terminate. There’s less red tape to cut through when you’re ready to go home.’ Less red tape for you, is what you mean, you conceited little madam! ‘You won’t have to ask every time you want to go for a walk outside, for instance. And you won’t have staff keeping such a close eye on you as you would if you were sectioned.’ There it was: the dreaded s-word. ‘Are you serious? You’d section me for leaving the gas on?’ It hardly sounded plausible. ‘It’s not just about what you did, it’s the concerns we have about what caused such an incident. There’s clearly something going on, you must see that, Christine,’ Janice said, leaning forward again with a serious expression. ‘And it’s getting worse, isn’t it?’ ‘I had a wonderful day yesterday,’ Christine proclaimed defiantly. ‘Yes, but last night was a disaster. Or it could have been. If it wasn’t for the House…’

The bloody House! But the House answered to her husband’s name and spoke in Bill’s voice. Dreading the arrival of tears, Christine leapt to her feet and walked towards the window. She felt trapped, deceived, cornered – all the hallmarks of a paranoid delusion, she realised. Across the road, O’Sullivan’s demolition crew were busier than ever, though what they were doing specifically failed to in her worried mind. ‘Listen, I know it’s a lot to think about all at once. Give it some time and you’ll see there really is no other safe option for you.’ Anger boiled up inside her, but just as it was about to erupt, something caught her eye from the far corner of the front garden. He was wearing his favourite jacket for gardening and his beanie hat, even though it was far from cold. At first, he had his back to her, crouching down in front of the flower bed and doing something with his hands. Weeding? Then, as if he could sense her watching, he turned his head, and, peeking over his right shoulder, she saw a smile forming around his eyes. She closed her eyes and reopened them quickly, but Bill was still there. Only now he was standing and facing the window. As she watched, he rubbed his hands together to get the black soil off, and then, palms facing downward, he slowly raised and lowered his hands in a gesture of mollification. Play the game, the gesture seemed to suggest. Play it cool and play their game. ‘Christine?’ Christine looked down at her feet, feigning tears and nodding slowly like a schoolgirl caught truanting. Bill had a plan, it seemed. She had to trust his judgement. The fact that he was dead was an inopportune technicality, under the circumstances. ‘I’ll give you a couple of hours to pack, Christine,’ Janice smiled. ‘Then we’ll get going, all right?’ As if they were off on holiday together. Rhodes, perhaps. ‘The sooner we start on the road to recovery, the sooner we’ll get there, yes?’ Yet another bloody platitude. Christine looked up just long enough to sigh and nod her head in acquiescence.

In so doing she was able to take in the fact that Bill was no longer in the garden but now stood on the other side of the road, hands resting in his jacket pockets. There were dark circles on the knees of his jeans, where he had been kneeling on the wet grass. Everything about him seemed so real. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, never for a second taking his eyes from hers. It was as if he were waiting for her. Because that’s what he is doing, silly, Christine scolded herself. All she had to do was stay cool and get this interfering do-gooder out of their home so she could fall in with her husband’s escape plan. Play. Their. Game. ‘Think about the essentials, yes? Clothes, toiletries, that sort of thing,’ Janice continued, getting to her feet. ‘I’ve a couple of other things to organise in the meantime, but try to be ready for eleven o’clock, all right?’ I’ll be miles away by then. ‘Okay,’ she whispered, putting her hand to her eyes to hide her crocodile tears from the dragon. There was a pause. She could sense that Janice was close by, and, for a second, she thought the stand-in social worker was going to console her with a gesture of physical consolation. But the squeeze of her hand or the stroke of her forearm never came. Instead, Janice whispered, ‘It will be all right. Honestly, it will. It’s all for the best.’ Christine nodded into her chest again, avoiding eye . If Janice had touched her, she knew she would have sprung round and slapped her across the face. ‘I’ll let myself out. See you at eleven.’ <> Taking out the largest tote bag she could find in her wardrobe, Christine packed it with the bare essentials she might need without a fixed address for the next couple of days. Why don’t you say it like it is? she asked herself sternly. You’re not planning a day at the beach here. But the reality of what she was about to do was too drastic to articulate. She hoped Bill would still be outside when she opened the front door. If not, she would just have to catch him up. Presumably,

he wasn’t constrained by the normal laws of physics anymore and had spirited himself away to the railway station. Given the fact that she was contemplating a rendezvous with her dearly departed, the suggestion entered her mind that maybe she should spend some time in hospital. ‘And maybe I shouldn’t,’ she grumbled with a sniff. Then she had to titter. Despite her best efforts, she could not think of a single film where the hero on the run was past retirement age. There, she’d said it: on the run. Though she despised herself for the melodramatic language, there was a part of her that found that phrase a little exciting. Armed with everything from a port to a toothbrush and a post office savings book to her mobile phone charger, Christine peeked out through her living room window and darted out the front door before her nerve failed her. But it was not fear or indecision that stopped her in her tracks. ‘Oh.’ What with the shock of having Janice threaten her with detention under the Mental Health Act and the relief of seeing her guardian angel in the garden, the big change in the landscape outside had failed to in her mind. They must have started early this morning to finish off the last sections of wall and were now in the process of levelling the site with a large yellow bulldozer. They must have torn down the back of the building first, leaving the front façade till last. Now that also was no longer standing. The symbolism was not lost on Christine. Mrs Green’s home was gone forever.

Chapter Twenty

‘Drink?’ asked Shay Connery, gesturing towards the drinks cabinet. ‘I’ve a feeling a celebration is overdue.’ I could have an office like this, O’Sullivan thought to himself. That desk was mahogany, the chair behind it leather, and the mini chandelier hanging over the two businessmen glistened with almond crystal pendeloques. And one day I will. ‘If you’re twisting my arm, Shay.’ Connery blew a little laugh through his nostrils. ‘No need for that,’ he replied, getting to his feet. Yet, O’Sullivan imagined his business partner adding. Connery was a legitimate businessman these days and had been for a decade or more. He had a high street ant but no hidden set of unaudited books, debtors but no debt collectors, and investments large and small but never anything involving cash in hand. Every purchase had a receipt, every deal had a contract, every employee got a pay slip. But it had not always been that way, O’Sullivan knew. ‘How do you take it?’ ‘Straight, Shay. Thanks.’ Connery poured whisky from a cut glass decanter and handed the impressively heavy tumbler over to O’Sullivan, who immediately took a sip to steady his nerves. Shay Connery promoted himself as a man in his late fifties, but it was no secret that he was well into his sixties. Not that he looked it. Connery had time on his hands, and he used it to keep himself neat and trim. Plus his income allowed him to invest big time in his hair, his teeth, his skin. There was even a rumour he was vegetarian.

The only schemes he ran off the books these days were marathons for charity. Did his partners and investors know about his shady past? They must have heard the gossip, but most of Connery’s criminal activities had been conducted back home in Ulster. Moving to the mainland had been a fresh start for Connery and if anyone asked about how he got started he would simply reply, ‘used cars.’ Connery raised his glass, which did not contain alcohol, O’Sullivan was sure. ‘A toast?’ O’Sullivan raised his heavy tumbler a few inches. ‘The old Green house has gone.’ Connery held his glass midair, staring into O’Sullivan’s eyes. ‘And?’ ‘The sale is complete on Number Fifteen.’ ‘The Nigerians?’ ‘Ugandans.’ Connery took a sip of what was probably an organic tonic water with lemon. ‘I’ll start the boys on getting that leveled this week, too.’ ‘Which just leaves us with our grieving widow?’ ‘Yes.’ O’Sullivan took another sip of whisky. It was half gone already, even though it was a double, for sure. ‘And how’s that going?’ O’Sullivan rested his glass in his lap, covering the top with his left hand. ‘She’s a tough nut to crack, Shay. I won’t lie to you.’ No, lying would not be a wise move. ‘And what are you using to crack her with?’ ‘I’ve made an offer way above the market value,’ he said, feeling the indignity of it take a bite from his pride. ‘Several, in fact.’

‘But she still won’t budge?’ ‘No. If anything, she seems even more intractable than ever.’ ‘Intractable?’ Connery allowed himself a smile. ‘Maybe money isn’t the answer, then.’ ‘Meaning?’ O’Sullivan regretted his directness immediately. This was Connery’s office they were sitting in and it was largely Connery’s money they were talking about. ‘I’ve invested a lot of money in this project. If I have to step in to protect that investment I don’t see how anyone can object.’ O’Sullivan considered making a conciliatory response but decided to keep the conversation moving instead. He took as deep a breath as he could without making his anxiety noticeable. ‘No, Shay. They can’t.’ Connery sat back in his leather office chair, which rocked backwards with the squeak of newness. He sat for a few seconds eyeing O’Sullivan, considering his next statement and making O’Sullivan sweat at the same time. ‘I’m glad those other two plots are dealt with. It’s progress. And it’s progress I need to see, as an investor. But this old woman has to go.’ Connery leaned forward again suddenly and whispered across the desk, ‘Number Seven, isn’t she? What’s her name?’ ‘It’s Christine,’ O’Sullivan answered, still fighting the urge to down the rest of his drink in one. ‘Christine Money.’ Connery’s laughter filled the room, causing O’Sullivan to want to run outside to avoid suffocating. ‘Time is Mrs Money’s, you might say.’ The braying laugh turned into a roar of glee then ceased with an abruptness that made O’Sullivan hold his breath. Finally, Connery let his eyes fall on O’Sullivan’s. ‘I’ll get someone to do some digging.’

Fuck me! O’Sullivan’s heart fluttered as the image of a shallow grave popped into his mind. ‘You know, see if there isn’t anything we can use to push her out with.’ The word blackmail came close to slipping out on O’Sullivan’s tongue, but he clamped his teeth together hard in the nick of time. How far might Connery go if he thought he could get away with it? Construction should have been well underway by now. How could he be sure that Connery had not already started on a different type of digging? That might explain Christine’s unyielding resistance. He knew from experience that the more she was pushed the harder she dug her heels in. Like the donkey his grandparents owned when he was a boy. He could see no other reason why a lonely woman living in a house too big for her in the middle of a demolition site would turn her nose up at the offers his solicitor was throwing her way. If it were true that Connery had started turning the screw on Christine behind his back, O’Sullivan realised, then something else was necessarily true: Connery’s patience was that much closer to snapping than he had presumed. ‘Now,’ Connery concluded, placing his empty glass on the desk. ‘You set your boys to taking out the Nigerians’ place and leave the grieving widow to me.’ The meeting was apparently at an end. O’Sullivan drained his glass with relish and stood to leave. ‘Thanks, Shay.’ He did not wait to shake hands. ‘I was only joking earlier, you know,’ Connery said pleasantly, as O’Sullivan was halfway to the door. About what? O’Sullivan wondered. About ‘stepping in’ to protect his investment? ing blackmail to oust Christine from the last occupied property? O’Sullivan looked back into Connery’s eyes. ‘Time is my money,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Money’s time is up.’

Chapter Twenty-One

Away from the bulldozed desert of what had once been her neighbourhood, Christine’s eyes started searching for Bill. She knew exactly where she had to go – and it was not the railway station anymore - but she needed Bill’s spirit to endorse her decision by leading the way. Only it was not really his spirit, of course. How could it be? A more plausible if less romantic explanation was a grief-induced hallucination. Little-Miss-Know-it-all would have a field day if she knew, which was a good enough reason not to share news of her unexpected reunion with anyone else yet. Up ahead, behind a badly parked delivery van, a movement caught her eye; but it was only the driver, juggling two large cardboard boxes across the road and through the nearest garden gate. She kept moving, sensing that Bill was somewhere up ahead. She glanced at her watch and saw it was already approaching ten o’clock. Would Janice turn up at the agreed time? It depended on how honest she had been. If she needed to rustle up a couple of doctors and an ambulance, anticipating non-compliance on Christine’s part, she might be significantly later. If she believed she had successfully pulled the wool over Christine’s eyes and she was going to come quietly, then she might come ten or fifteen minutes earlier. Either way, time was running out for Christine. But she could not escape from this trap alone. She needed help and there was only one person alive she really trusted. Even so, as she made her way purposefully towards his house, the need to see Bill give a sign of his consent grew stronger. The person concerned was another man, at the end of the day. Her destination was around the next corner when that curious feeling of warmth spread across her shoulders and she turned quickly to look behind her, knowing in advance the sight that awaited her. Bill was standing in the middle of the road, arms hanging limply by his sides, his expression neutral. She longed to run to him, to throw her arms around him one last time. But that could never happen, she knew. She would have to be grateful for small mercies. Christine raised her right hand, more like someone taking an oath in court than a wife waving to her estranged husband after a protracted absence. The roar of an engine made her look behind her husband’s statuesque figure. A car was charging down the road and Bill was standing directly in its path. Though she knew rationally that no harm could come to him now, that however you explained it, her husband was not real, a wave of panicked terror swept over her. Bill used to joke that her fallow maternal instinct was projected onto him

instead. Old habits die hard, it seemed. Bill stood his ground, face blank, hands dangling from his sleeves. She raised both arms, waving them frantically, but it was useless, for the car was nearly on top of him. As it swept through him, the top half of his chest and head remained visible above the car’s roof, and a cheeky grin blossomed beneath his lips. Then the car was sweeping past her, the young chap behind the wheel hooting his horn and giving her a look that denied her sanity better than any psychiatrist could. Eyes wide, she looked back to see a crumpled body bleeding on the tarmac, but the road was empty. Thank God, she thought. I couldn’t bear to watch him die twice in one lifetime. Her heart was thudding in her chest as she turned the last corner, and there at the gate of the house she was searching for stood Bill. He stared at her for several seconds, nodded once and then vanished again. But it was enough. Bill had told her with that brief gesture that he understood what she was doing and why, she felt certain. Whether she would still have gone through with her plan had Bill given her a negative sign, she would never know, but the removal of guilt was one less thing for her to deal with. She could not help thinking, though, that his little stunt with the boy racer had been some kind of payback for her taste in knight in shining armour. But for that to be accurate he would need to be real; and he wasn’t, however much she wanted that particular fantasy to come true. She rang Jimmy’s doorbell, her eyes searching the windows of the house for movement. Nothing. Monday was not a lunch club day, but he might have gone somewhere else, being quite the restless spirit himself. But what if he had suffered another turn overnight? That would wreck her chances. She pressed the doorbell’s button again, twice, and was about to bend down and peer through the letterbox when the front door suddenly swung inward. Christine had to laugh; so loudly, in fact, that she had to stifle the outburst with her hand. Jimmy was wearing a white apron decorated with large black patches like the hide of a Friesian cow and had a dripping dish mop in his hand. ‘Christine,’ he stuttered. ‘This is a surprise.’

The humour left her as quickly as it had arrived, and tears welled unexpectedly in her eyes. ‘Oh, Jimmy…’ ‘Come in,’ Jimmy said, pulling the door wider and stepping aside. ‘Come in.’ The house was tidier than she would have assumed, given Jimmy’s recent health problems. They made their way into the living room, and Jimmy encouraged her to collapse into his armchair whilst he got them both a whisky each. ing Christine her drink, Jimmy hovered by the window. ‘I can tell something’s happened. What is it?’ For a split-second Christine thought she might finally be able to reveal her deepest fears and weirdest experiences. But there was simply no time. For all she knew, Janice could be heading over to Clarence Road right now. She needed a plan and she needed Jimmy’s help to execute it. ‘They’re going to section me.’ ‘What!’ Jimmy stepped towards her, nearly spilling his drink. ‘Why?’ Taking a deep breath, Christine described events from that morning, and the accusations Janice had levelled at her regarding her sleepwalking during the early hours. ‘Oh, Christine! This is terrible news.’ His concern sounded genuine, but she noticed he would not come any closer to her. After their fraternising on Saturday night she would have put money on his pulling her into his arms. He obviously recognised that it had been the alcohol that had led to her disinhibition. It impressed her that he still respected the fact that she saw him purely in of a close friend, but she could have done with a friendly hug right then. ‘I agreed to go in voluntarily to buy myself some time,’ she explained. ‘And that time is running out.’ ‘How much time do you have?’ ‘What time is it now?’ Jimmy glanced at his watch. ‘It’s half-past ten.’

The adrenaline of panic swept through her bloodstream at the proximity of her unwanted confinement. ‘I’m not mad, Jimmy! I’m not losing my marbles. You believe me, don’t you?’ Jimmy slumped down onto the sofa, finishing off his whisky in a single gulp. ‘Yes, I believe you, Christine. Can I tell you why?’ Christine looked intently into his face, but he averted his eyes awkwardly. ‘Go on.’ ‘I’ve never really talked about my Jean, have I?’ Christine took a breath. This was a different sort of intimacy and one potentially more personal than anything physical could have been. ‘I know she ed away a good few years ago. You told me that much, but I didn’t want to pry. I assumed if you’d wanted to tell me more you would have.’ Jimmy nodded his head slowly. ‘It’s not something I find easy to talk about.’ Like seeing the top half of your dead husband poking out through the roof of a speeding car, she thought. ‘She had dementia. It was what killed her. Eventually.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Slow, degrading and cruel. Some days were worse than others. Occasionally there would be a day when I thought a miracle had occurred. Most days it was like living with a stranger who’d taken an instant dislike to me. It took years, Chrissy.’ He squeezed his eyes shut, as if forcing a painful memory back inside his head. ‘It was like watching a fatal accident in super-slow motion.’ ‘Oh, Jimmy, I’m so sorry.’ ‘It’s all right. My own health problems helped me come to with it, bizarrely. Health and illness, like so much of life, are totally random. If you can negotiate the minefield of life you should be grateful, in my book.’ He opened his eyes again, smiling painfully. ‘But that’s how I know all this hospital assessment stuff they’re throwing at you is nonsense. I watched the woman I love disintegrate memory by memory, ability by ability. I lived with it, lived through it. If you had any of the early signs I’d know, believe me.’

‘What’s going on, Jimmy?’ ‘I don’t know, but it stinks, if you ask me.’ He shook his head slowly, brow furrowed. ‘Why didn’t you say something before?’ ‘I did, ? When I described my own assessment.’ ‘Why are they doing this to me?’ ‘This doesn’t make sense. The way they’ve conducted the home assessment, and now this. It’s all so…’ he struggled to find the right word. ‘Unethical?’ ‘Amateurish, to be honest.’ Jimmy got to his feet. ‘There’s no point going anywhere but straight to social services and blow the whistle on this Janice woman.’ Into the viper’s nest, she could not help thinking. ‘Come on. We need to get going. There isn’t much time.’ Christine’s eyes widened as the gravity of Jimmy’s proposal sunk home. Her assumption was that Jimmy could hide her in his house indefinitely, like a geriatric Anne Frank. ‘I know, but what if she’s there?’ ‘If we time it right, she won’t be.’ ‘Can I leave this here for now?’ she asked, nodding towards her stuffed tote bag. ‘I think you’d better,’ Jimmy replied, raising his eyebrows. ‘They might think you’re homeless, otherwise, and send you to a shelter.’ Trust Jimmy to try raising her spirits through humour. But joking aside, her home was the only thing she had left to fight for. That reminder sent her heartbeat racing again.

‘Do you think this is for the best, Jimmy?’ ‘Of course. The best way of getting to the bottom of anything is to go straight to the top.’ ‘Thank you, Jimmy.’ With an effort, Christine stood back up, the strain of the last few hours threatening to pull her back down again. ‘For believing in me, I mean. And ing me.’ ‘What else are friends for?’ he smiled. Now that was about as reassuring a statement as she could have wished for. ‘What if they don’t believe me?’ Jimmy started to extricate himself from the Friesian cow patterned apron, a pained expression on his face. ‘We’ll take the car. Be there in minutes.’ God, she thought, what if Bill stepped out in front of them on the journey? ‘You really are on my side, aren’t you?’ Christine sighed, resisting the urge to kiss his cheek again. ‘I know this might make me sound like someone who needs a mental health assessment himself,’ Jimmy laughed. ‘But if I didn’t know better, Christine, I’d say you’re being set up.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was fast approaching eleven o’clock when they walked into the social services building. In respect of near-guaranteeing Janice being out, they could not have timed it better; but that advantage could only be maintained if they spoke to someone in authority almost immediately. The chances were that once Janice realised Christine had bolted, she would return to her office to plan her next move, which would surely involve the police. ‘Hello,’ Christine began, her voice dragging across the dryness of her throat. ‘I’d like to speak to the manager, please.’ She sounded like someone returning faulty goods to a shop. The receptionist, a suntanned brunette in her mid-twenties, kept a straight face when she asked, ‘Maybe you can let me know what the problem is first?’ Christine resisted the urge to turn to Jimmy for help, at least for the moment. Having someone speak for her was hardly a great first impression under the circumstances. ‘Well, it is rather…’ Christine lent forward and lowered her voice for effect, ‘… confidential.’ The receptionist lent forward towards the plexiglass barrier between them and replied: ‘Everything discussed here is strictly confidential, madam. We couldn’t operate, otherwise.’ ‘I know,’ persisted Christine. ‘But this is a little… delicate.’ It’s also a little bit urgent, Christine screamed in her head. ‘And you can’t give me a broad idea of what the problem is? Are you homeless, for instance?’ ‘Yes,’ Christine blurted out. ‘I mean, no. Not exactly. Not yet, anyway.’ ‘I see.’ Christine could imagine the brunette thinking: Are you confused, dear? She could imagine what her automatic response to that question would be too: Yes and no.

The suntanned brunette reached for her desk phone, and for one terrifying moment Christine felt certain she was about to call security. ‘Let me get the duty officer down to have a chat with you.’ The handset was already at her ear. ‘What name shall I give?’ If she gave her real name, the duty officer would quickly be able to look her up on the system and discover she was scheduled for a hospital ission that very hour. If she refused to say - or even worse, lied - it might cause her further difficulties later on. ‘It’s Christine.’ ‘And your surname?’ Christine pretended not to hear. ‘Excuse me…’ Thankfully, whoever the receptionist was calling had just then picked up. ‘Ah, yes, Sharon. Hi. I wonder if you could have a chat with a lady down here in reception?’ The receptionist’s eyes flicked up to the CCTV camera in the far corner of the ceiling. ‘Sorry? No, they came in together.’ Her eyes flicked from Jimmy back to Christine as she listened to the voice in her ear. ‘She does a little, yes.’ Jimmy reached out and patted her arm. ‘You will? Great. Her name’s Christine.’ But what if she doesn’t come down straight away? Christine worried. What if Janice gets back here first? If that happened, she knew, her slim chance would be squashed flat. ‘Please take a seat, Christine. The duty officer will be down in a tick.’ They sat obediently in a pair of chairs halfway between worn and condemned. There was a pile of donated magazines scattered on the plain wooden table in front of them. Someone, a client she hoped, had left a copy of a hardcore sex magazine beneath a journal whose cover extolled the health benefits of country

walking. She quickly slid the picture of a large oak tree over that of three women wrestling on the bonnet of a soaped-up dragster. What the girl grasping the watering hose was planning to do with it would presumably be revealed within. ‘What time is it, Jimmy?’ ‘Don’t worry. It’s only a minute past eleven.’ They were both whispering, but the receptionist was busy with something on her computer screen. Not porn, Christine hoped. ‘What if Janice walks back through that door whilst we’re still waiting?’ ‘Chrissy, listen,’ Jimmy hushed. ‘We have to keep calm. Yes? Cause a scene and we’ll be playing right into her hands.’ Christine took a deep breath and gripped the wooden arms of her chair so tightly she started worrying about splinters. ‘I don’t like it,’ she hissed. ‘Why doesn’t this woman come down straight away?’ ‘She’s probably on her way. This is a big building, you know.’ ‘We’ll wait another ten minutes, Jimmy,’ she hissed even lower. ‘After that, there’ll have to be a plan-B. I suggest we start thinking of one now.’ But that was the moment a door lock clicked loudly and out stepped a woman sporting clothes that looked at least twenty years too old for her. ‘Christine?’ the duty officer smiled pleasantly. ‘I’m Sharon. How are you?’ ‘I need to talk to someone,’ Christine demanded. Sharon’s eyes flicked over to Jimmy. ‘And this is your husband?’ ‘No,’ they both said together, a little too loudly in Christine’s case. ‘Jimmy’s a friend,’ she explained. ‘Well, I’m the duty officer for today.’ They all shook hands. ‘Shall we sit down and have a chat, then? See what the problem is?’

She reminded Christine of a primary school teacher. You’ve all been so good I think you deserve a story. But the duty worker’s calm demeanour and gentle voice allowed Christine’s heartbeat to drop down a couple of gears, for which she was grateful. Sharon escorted them through the heavily reinforced door she had emerged from and into a featureless anti-room that could have no other function than to scan them for metal objects, traces of drugs and alcohol, and God knew what else. Christine was thankful she did not have her tote bag with her: she had packed a pair of scissors. They entered a side room that was clean but dramatically under-furnished. ‘Please, do take a seat.’ The place looked so underfunded, she felt guilty for not bringing one of her own. They sat together opposite Sharon, who picked up a pen that was lying on top of a memo pad already waiting for her on the scarred tabletop. ‘So, then, Christine,’ Sharon smiled. ‘What seems to be the problem?’ ‘Well…’ ‘Oh, sorry, Christine. I don’t have your surname.’ Now that she was face to face with a professional member of staff it would be counterproductive to waste time over such trivial details. As a client with a named social worker, they could scan her face and identify her that way if they needed to. There were two cameras in this room. Whatever the risks of being here she had taken them already, she realised. ‘It’s Mrs Money. Mrs. Christine Money.’ She added her address and date of birth. ‘And have we seen you before?’ Here we go, then… ‘Yes. I’ve been on Donna Tatum’s caseload for a while now.’ She could not how long exactly.

‘Donna Tatum?’ Sharon had ominously replaced her pen onto the table. ‘Yes, that’s her.’ ‘Oh, you should have said!’ Sharon could not keep the tone of annoyance out of her voice. Christine, confused, glanced over at Jimmy. ‘Shall I see if she’s free?’ ‘I… Sorry, what?’ ‘Donna. Shall I see if she’s free?’ Sharon continued, frowning. ‘She’s upstairs.’ Christine should have been overjoyed at this development, relieved and triumphant; but instead a strange trepidation stole over her, like a cloud covering the sun and bringing with it a stiff breeze. ‘She’s back?’ ‘Back?’ smiled Sharon but looking a little perplexed. ‘From her sick leave.’ ‘Sick leave?’ Now Sharon’s smile was fading, and her frown deepened. ‘Yes,’ Christine confirmed. ‘They said it wasn’t anything serious.’ By ‘they’ she meant Janice, of course. ‘She spent a week in Rhodes with her boyfriend, but apart from that…’ Sharon’s face flushed immediately at this slip of confidential information. ‘I mean, she’s been back a good few weeks since then. What made you think she was ill?’ Christine’s mind became hyper-alert. What she said next could very easily condemn her, but the irritating thing was that she could not grasp how. Whatever negative assumptions the receptionist and the duty officer held about her were about to be exaggerated tenfold, she feared. Saying nothing might look even worse. ‘But you sent me a stand-in whilst she was recovering.’ Sharon started to say something, then seemed to think better of it.

‘Why have I been seeing her if Donna’s been here all along?’ The first of a thousand questions. Now Sharon looked as confused as Christine felt. She stood up and walked to a phone on the wall behind the door. ‘Just wait a second, will you, Christine? We’ll soon get this sorted out.’ A lot of muttering followed, which ended with Sharon concluding, ‘All right. I’ll wait for you, then.’ Two minutes later there was a soft knocking at the door and in walked Donna, her suntan even deeper than the receptionist’s. Her shoulders were relaxed, eyes bright, her step light and assured as she stepped towards the table. She looked like someone who had recently returned from a Greek island, no less. What the hell is going on? Christine’s spinning top mind pleaded again. Had Donna forgotten to tell her she was going on holiday? No, Donna was far too professional for that. Which left Christine facing the possibility that she had been informed and then totally forgotten about it. But that seemed absurd. Unless there really is something wrong with your mind, a dark thought goaded. Then she ed her unwelcome visitor from earlier that morning. How did Janice fit into this mystery? The image of her striding into reception that very second caused a tiny sound to escape from her throat, something between a squeak and a groan. She glanced at Jimmy, looking for encouragement, but he was busy wrestling with his own confusion. ‘Christine! I hadn’t forgotten about you. But it’s been crazy busy here lately.’ It’s about to get busier, Christine could not help thinking. From the corner of her eye she could see Jimmy rubbing his forehead. Sharon wore a smile that looked as if it had been spray-painted on, but her brow was furrowed by intrigue; and Donna herself looked increasingly concerned. Shockingly, Christine found herself wishing that Janice would walk in the room, after all, and put her out of her misery. ‘Christine?’ Donna could no longer ignore the worry etched on her client’s face and her smile failed completely. ‘Is everything okay?’

Christine did not need to look to know that the other three people in the room were all staring at her. No, she told herself, feeling the dark cloud across the sun starting to spit down freezing rain upon her. Nothing is okay. The spitting rain turned to hail stones. And I don’t think it ever will be again.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The lights in the interview room were suddenly too bright, the air stale and stuffy, the hard chair beneath her starting to grind into her hip ts. Coming here with Jimmy seemed like the worst idea she had ever had. I want to go home. ‘I… I heard you were off sick.’ ‘Sick?’ replied Donna. Sharon had stayed in the room. Did she suspect that Christine was potentially dangerous? ‘Yes.’ But it was nothing serious. ‘No. I went on holiday for a week a while back, and like I said I’ve been snowed under recently. I wrote you an email, though, a little while ago, explaining our situation. Didn’t you get it?’ Christine could only gape by way of reply. ‘I may not have been sick, but a lot of my colleagues have.’ She exchanged a meaningful glance with Sharon. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d stayed in Rhodes and got a waitressing job. My caseload is forty percent bigger than it should be. But I’m really sorry you didn’t get my email, Christine.’ Christine looked over at Jimmy, searching his eyes. Was it her imagination, or did he seem uncomfortable under her gaze? ‘I had no idea,’ Christine mumbled. ‘But I take it you need our help now, right? Has something happened?’ You could say that, she told herself. In fact, it’s probably still happening right now. ‘My colleague, Sharon, said something sending you a stand-in?’ Careful, girl, Christine cautioned herself.

She suddenly felt boxed into a corner. Whatever she said or did not say would reflect badly on her in equal measure, it seemed. Because she knew already from the way Donna had framed her last question that there was no stand-in social worker; at least not one that this department knew about. She might as well have said ‘alleged stand-in’. But sitting in an interview room in the local socials services building was not the place to play games. She felt boxed in because she was. ‘That’s right. Her name is Janice. Sorry, but I didn’t catch her surname. She first came around – oh, it was a Monday. Yes. Two weeks today.’ Had it only been such a short space of time? ‘She just turned up and said she was looking after your caseload for a while.’ Donna and Sharon looked at each other and shared an expression of perplexity. ‘From this office?’ ‘I assumed so.’ She ed the ID card holder on its blue lanyard around Janice’s neck, that miniature plastic smile. There had been no reason to doubt the stranger’s identity at the time, but now, of course, things were different. ‘It was Janice that told me you were off sick. And because she knew your name…’ Christine left the sentence unfinished, realising how naive it made her sound. Anyone could have knocked that ID up in minutes. Sharon chipped in with, ‘Did this Janice ask for money?’ ‘What?’ ‘Did she ask to see bank statements, utility bills, savings books, anything like that?’ Donna asked. ‘Was she ever alone in the house while you went to the kitchen, the bathroom, for instance?’ Sharon continued. ‘Was your computer ever switched on whilst she was there?’ ‘My… Why?’ ‘Hang on,’ Jimmy interjected. ‘You think this Janice might be some sort of con artist?’

Now that someone had articulated the question, Christine recognised how that possibility had always been in the back of her mind. It would have been good news, too, had Janice asked for any of the things Donna and Sharon had asked her about. ‘She didn’t ask for anything. She just pretended to be your stand-in.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ Donna looked at Jimmy, ‘Mr…’ ‘Please, call me Jimmy.’ ‘I don’t think we’ve met before.’ ‘No. I’m a friend of Christine’s,’ Jimmy reported. ‘I have mentioned him to you,’ Christine said defensively. ‘From the lunch club,’ Jimmy continued. ‘At the community centre?’ ‘Oh, yes. That’s a great success,’ Donna replied. ‘So long as no one cuts the funding,’ Jimmy said under his breath. ‘And you’ve met this ‘Janice’?’ Jimmy looked uncomfortable, as if he were wrestling with a great moral dilemma. ‘No,’ he confessed. ‘Not exactly.’ Couldn’t you lie for me, damn it? Christine thought. What harm would it do? ‘Not exactly?’ Donna frowned. Jimmy straightened his back as he prepared himself to go on the offensive. ‘Christine told me what’s been going on. I must it the way Chrissy’s home assessment is being conducted strikes me as a bit odd. I’ve had some experience of this in the past myself. That’s why we came here today. To complain about what this Janice – or whatever her name is – has been up to.’ ‘You were having a home assessment, Christine?’ ‘Yes. This should have been the start of the last week.’ ‘And has that been going okay?’ Donna asked suspiciously, tapping her pen into

the palm of her free hand. ‘Yes. I’d been doing perfectly well.’ My laundry has never been cleaner. ‘That’s why this morning came as such a shock.’ ‘This morning?’ ‘She was going to force Christine to go into hospital,’ Jimmy cut in. ‘Oh. Why?’ Donna asked, her pen freezing in mid-air. ‘I thought you said…’ Jimmy opened his mouth to reply but Christine beat him to it. ‘Because she said the House had raised the alarm in the early hours of this morning,’ Christine answered, her voice a little shaky. This is where it gets tricky, girl. ‘And why was that?’ Christine took a deep breath, suddenly grateful for the solidity of the chair beneath her. ‘Apparently, I left the gas cooker on.’ This time the look that ed between the two social workers was prolonged and intense. ‘But it’s nonsense.’ Maintaining her brave face was like trying not to blink during an eye examination. ‘I slept like a log last night.’ Sharon suddenly grabbed Donna’s arm. ‘Do you think..?’ Donna’s eyebrows rose. ‘Christine, is your home secure?’ Christine thought of all the extra checks she had been doing of late and nearly laughed out loud. ‘Yes. Of course. I live on my own.’ ‘Do you still have the app on your phone?’ Christine stared back blankly. ‘The House app?’

Of course. The House app. She had seldom used it and certainly not for months if not years. If only she had thought of it herself, she could have used it to check on the ghostly goings-on with her washing machine. Stop it! she scolded herself. This isn’t a joke! Without needing to be asked, Christine pulled out her phone and found the app after a brief scroll. Within a minute she was seeing a miniature version of her living room, kitchen and landing. The rooms of her house were deserted. ‘It’s fine. There’s no one there.’ Even my dead husband must be out. Christine winced at the realisation that she could have been using the app for the past fortnight, especially if she had turned on the recording function. Now all she had to back up her assertions were her increasingly desperate words and Jimmy’s good will. But wouldn’t that have proved the only person who could have rewashed my laundry and changed my bed linen was me? Ignorance had never felt so blissful and yet so threatening. She felt like a blindfolded drunk staggering through a house of mirrors where any surface she collided with might cut her to ribbons in a split second. ‘Besides,’ Christine blurted, ‘the House has an intruder alarm. I’d get a text alert if anyone got inside whilst I was out.’ Shit! That precluded her mentioning any of the odd occurrences punctuating the previous fourteen days. Maybe I should shut up and wait for them to bring in a strait jacket. But that would be impossible now, since she was the one that had asked to be interviewed. ‘Phew!’ said Jimmy, dramatically. At least everyone else present was labouring under the assumption that this was some sort of good news. ‘Phew, indeed,’ agreed Sharon. ‘I really thought for a second there that your bogus social worker was part of a gang targeting your valuables.’ ‘I doubt that very much,’ Christine voiced aloud. ‘The only things I have of valuable in that house are memories.’

‘So why did this Janice woman target Christine?’ Jimmy asked, a little annoyed. ‘Hang on,’ Christine raised her palm, determined to play on with the bad hand she had been dealt. ‘You are definitely saying there is no Janice here?’ Donna looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’m sorry, Christine. But we don’t have anyone called Janice working at this office.’ Christine glanced at Jimmy, more to reassure herself that he was not in the process of standing up to leave in horror or disgust. ‘What do you mean?’ Jimmy exclaimed. ‘If this Janice, or whatever her real name is, isn’t a social worker and she isn’t part of a criminal gang, what the hell is she doing putting my friend through all this?’ ‘Please Jimmy,’ said Christine. ‘It’s okay.’ But though he was still seated, his backside had slid forward to the edge of the chair. ‘No, Chrissy, it’s not okay.’ His face was flushed with outrage, his eyes darting angrily between the two social workers. ‘Are you implying that Christine is making it all up?’ Donna and Sharon exchanged the briefest of glances that Christine did not like the look of. ‘There’s something going on here that isn’t quite right, Jimmy,’ Donna replied. Christine liked that remark even less. ‘Can’t you check the House records? There’s a security camera over the front door. It will show Janice’s comings and goings if Christine gives you the dates and times. The last occasion was only this morning, apparently.’ ‘That’s when she threatened me with sectioning if I didn’t agree to go into hospital voluntarily,’ Christine clarified. ‘Whoa, hold on there, Christine. Threatened is a strong word,’ said Donna. ‘Sometimes we have to lay the facts about a person’s mental health in front of them without playing down what’s at stake.’

‘So you do threaten people, in other words?’ said Jimmy sarcastically. ‘Jimmy!’ Christine did not need the meeting deteriorating into a mud-throwing contest, but Donna had obviously taken offence. ‘If someone leaves their gas cooker switched on, for instance, and the only thing that saves their life is the House…’ Sharon sounded aggrieved too, but Christine cut her off. ‘I told you, I didn’t leave anything on, I swear! I was fast asleep the whole night.’ ‘And anyway,’ Jimmy growled. ‘What you’d do under those circumstances is irrelevant since we’ve just established that this ‘Janice’ is not a social worker of any kind.’ The atmosphere in the room was getting heated. ‘Okay, okay!’ Donna raised her hand like an exasperated teacher. ‘Tell me more about this home assessment.’ Christine found herself on the edge of her own seat now. ‘I was being assessed for a fortnight at home because I was setting off my House alarm. Apparently. Only I have no idea what Janice was talking about. Everything in my life was normal.’ There were tears lurking behind her eyes. It was not normal now, though. Far from it. ‘Sharon,’ Donna said, turning to her colleague. ‘Can you check that out upstairs for me, please? Just the basic status of Christine’s House over, say, the past two months? And check if anyone is running a home assessment on Christine Money. Just in case.’ Just in case I got the name wrong, Christine could not help thinking. Because I’m gaga, after all. Sharon left the room. Donna put her pen to paper. ‘So let’s get the facts nailed down. When did this assessment start?’ ‘This coming Thursday would have been the last day. So two weeks back from

then.’ ‘Because your House was sending out alerts?’ ‘Yes. But Janice wouldn’t say why.’ ‘And there were only a few days left to run?’ ‘Yes. Only Janice cut it short this morning because of what happened last night.’ ‘Because of the gas?’ ‘The alleged gas. Yes.’ ‘Well, it will all be on the system. If this is some sort of scam, we might at least have a CCTV image we can on to the police.’ ‘You said ‘if’. I’ve had some experience of a House assessment, as I said,’ Jimmy interjected. ‘And it was nothing like Christine’s. This has to be a scam.’ ‘Yes,’ agreed Donna, ‘I must it it doesn’t sound right to me either.’ ‘If you ask me,’ Jimmy huffed, ‘the whole thing is a set up.’ Christine held her breath. Even my friend sounds paranoid now. Folie a deux. Nice one, Jimmy. ‘That’s why my colleague asked you about money or personal information,’ Donna said, directing her response to Christine. ‘If you have been ‘set up’, as your friend called it, the question is what have you been set up for? There must have been opportunities to burgle your home whilst you were out. How long do you spend at the lunch club, for instance?’ ‘A good three hours. And I go three times a week,’ Christine added. ‘Exactly. So why haven’t they gone for it?’ Just then the door re-opened and Sharon appeared clutching a laptop. ‘Ah, Sharon. Great. Any joy?’

Sharon stared into the laptop, eyes scanning from left to right as data continued to fill the screen. She glanced briefly at Christine, but broke eye immediately and pushed the laptop over to Donna, frowning. ‘What?’ Christine asked hoarsely. Jimmy clutched her forearm and stroked it with his thumb, but his frown was painted with the hues of a thunder cloud. ‘Yes, come on. What is it?’ A reply was not immediately forthcoming. But when Donna looked up Christine could see in her eyes exactly what ‘it’ was: Trouble.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Much to Christine’s surprise, they allowed her to return home. Things might have been different, of course, had Jimmy not been at her side, fighting her corner, challenging the system. God bless him for that. There were no available beds anyway, Donna explained, as if what she had discovered on the laptop made that option her preferred choice. It was obvious what Donna thought of her wild accusations about bogus social workers and phantom assessments. And who could blame her? Not even Jimmy had seen Janice. Which inspired another worrying question, one she tried not to think about. If Janice was not a social worker, then she would not have been able to escort Christine to a hospital ward or anywhere else for treatment. So where had she intended taking her? Christine returned home about two o’clock, having popped by at Jimmy’s to collect her tote bag. It seemed ridiculous that she should have entertained the idea of absconding like a boarding school pupil. Jimmy said all the right things, but he only said them once. She could not say there was a distance between them exactly, but there was hesitation on his part in the way he spoke and his choice of words. That morning’s events had put doubts in Jimmy’s mind, and every time he tried to say something to her that doubt seemed to trip his tongue. The house felt cold as she entered the front door. She forced herself to eat and have a bath, but her mind struggled to focus on anything properly. Donna had promised to visit her the following morning, to plan the next move. ‘Move’ being the key word, Christine told herself. How ironic that all she had succeeded in trying to maintain her independence was to delay her ission by twentyfour hours and endorse the reasons for its necessity. She was not angry at Jimmy. He had done his best for her. But where the hell was Bill? He was still her husband, after all. ‘Bill!’ she shouted from the living room. ‘Why are you hiding?’ The House answered immediately with, ‘Can you repeat the question?’ ‘Where are you when I really need you?’ she sighed. Even the calendar was against her. In the frigid air of her empty home she had realised the date, April 1st.

And for the first time since this nightmare had begun, Christine allowed herself to cry without restraint. The tears flowed, her lungs hitched, and her shoulders shuddered; her voice howling like the wind through a broken letterbox. As the storm began to , Christine imagined what her social worker – her real social worker – was saying about her right now. ‘Have the quacks on stand-by tomorrow. If she lacks insight, we won’t have any choice but to section her. Before she really does leave the gas on.’ Did she ‘lack insight’? Less so by the hour, it seemed. Sitting at her dining table with her cold mug of coffee, she found herself wondering how she could have denied the obvious evidence that no one else could have continually replaced her washing back in the machine, or left her taps running or changed her bed linen. And what other explanation was there for the unopened solicitor’s letter than the fact that she had simply never opened it in the first place? As for Bill’s apparent reappearance in spirit form, what other conclusion was there than she had experienced hallucinations. ‘No wonder they want to take me into hospital,’ she whispered. Her biggest regret was dragging Jimmy into this embarrassing mess. How adamant he had been that she was not losing it, how ive in the social services interview room. She could see his face now as Sharon announced that the House alarm had not been activated recently ‘at all’ that year. How damning was that when you hoped to prove your sanity? Moreover, Donna elaborated, there was no sign of anyone matching Janice’s description on any of the security footage relayed from her front door camera. Indeed, the House had not even recorded the presence of anyone else in the house at the times Christine claimed to have been visited by the mystery stand-in social worker. Hopeless was not the word. Christine wandered the house as if she were a ghost herself, a phantom revisiting an old haunt she had inhabited in happier times. Or maybe she was just saying goodbye, subconsciously convinced that once detained they would never let her out again, that her condition would steadily worsen. All types of dementia were degenerative, surely? There was no such thing as a benign senility. At the top of the stairs she looked out over the waste ground her neighbourhood had become. The demolition crew had long since left and the only workers on

site were slowly collecting debris and tipping it into a skip with a small dumpster. The expected return of O’Sullivan to her doorstep had not materialised. Indeed, she had not seen him or his car for ages. Now that all the demolition work was completed, he would be chomping at the bit to realise the value of the land he had bought and cleared, she assumed. All that remained between him and the windfall of that realisation was Christine. So, where was he? Hell, this was his big chance. In the black mood she found herself in, she may have consented to selling her property on the doorstep whilst she was still legally able to. Christine made her way back downstairs and stood in front of the framed photograph of her precious Bill, back when his hair was still thick and chestnut coloured. The House monitor was hidden directly behind it, along with the fuse box, the heating controls and the intruder alarm. Everything neat and tidy and fully automated. The cover was rarely removed. Most problems could be fixed using a phone app, though engineers would still charge you the same standard fee she ed back in the days of call outs. ‘All boxed in,’ she sighed. ‘Just like me.’ She raised her hand to the picture, let her fingers glide across the glass immediately over Bill’s cheek. ‘You’re still here, aren’t you, love?’ she whispered. ‘Looking out for me?’ If the answer to that question was no, then she really was in trouble. Christine wandered into the living room, and, looking out through the dusty window, watched as a light breeze pulled and shook the odd pits of plastic and paper poking out from the bulging mound inside the skip. ‘Do you know how much all that land is worth, Mrs Money?’ Had O’Sullivan been bought out? Had a bigger company made him an offer he could not refuse? He had been so persistent, so relentless and, ultimately, so intimidating that his disappearance was a contradiction that stuck out like a solitary house in a demolition site. If Sharon had trawled back through her front door footage to last November, she would have seen the appalling behaviour of the property developer. That might have shown Christine in a more positive light, might have demonstrated the real source of the pressures exacted on her

over many months. But at the time, Christine had been too wary to introduce a fresh allegation against a member of the public. It would not have helped her cause either that, aside from the improved offer, O’Sullivan had not attempted to her since that awful day five months ago. She had no choice, it seemed, but to keep her mouth shut about property developers trying to force her out of her own home. It almost sounded paranoid to her. Almost, but not quite. ‘Where did you go, Mr O’Sullivan?’ ‘I’ve staked my entire fortune on this project.’ The fat kid glanced over at her house, but when he saw her watching he quickly looked away. ‘If you ask me,’ she ed Jimmy complaining earlier, ‘the whole thing is a set up.’ She ed, too, a still confident O’Sullivan sweating in the August sun with his promise to return. But after November that determination appeared to have waned. Why? ‘People like your boss don’t just give up,’ she said to the fat boy’s back. ‘You know that, don’t you?’ And what was it Donna had said in response to Jimmy’s claim? ‘If you have been ‘set up’, the question is what have you been set up for?’ ‘…When I come back.’ ‘No, people like your boss don’t just give up,’ she repeated. ‘…my entire fortune…’ Donna and Sharon exchanging a look of concern that ultimately sealed her doom. ‘The whole thing is a set up...’ ‘When I come back…’

Someone out there was playing a long, elaborate game. And the more she stared at the pitted, rubble-strewn ground that had once been Mrs Green’s home, the stronger grew her conviction that she knew exactly who that someone was.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Her work complete, Suzanna had come to collect the rest of her money. ‘It must take it out of you at your age.’ ‘What must?’ ‘Being a builder.’ ‘I’m not a builder.’ ‘What are you, then?’ ‘I told you. I’m a property developer.’ ‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’ ‘A builder who doesn’t get his hands dirty.’ Suzanna’s laughter failed to materialise. ‘So, what happens next?’ Not that she really cared. Once she had the money in her hand, she could forget all about that snotty old bat Christine and move on to her next job. But curiosity had gotten the better of her. She had been involved in numerous scams over the years but never anything quite this odd. ‘You get paid and you never breathe a word of this, is what happens,’ her client replied. ‘Okay. No need to be like that. I was only asking.’ Discretion was a given in her profession and she was offended that this arrogant old twat felt he needed to remind her of it. For that reason alone, she decided not to let the matter drop. ‘Let me try to guess, then.’ ‘I really don’t have time.’ ‘Oh, go on. What harm can it do?’ She liked the fact that he was clearly annoyed. That would teach him to talk to her that way. ‘I bet I can get it.’

Her client drew in a long, deep breath and closed his eyes before finally releasing the air in a loud, foul-smelling exhalation. ‘I’m guessing it has something to do with her house,’ Suzanna persisted. ‘Yes?’ Her speculation was met with silence. ‘And if you’re a developer, I’m guessing you’re the bloke that’s bought everything else around her. I didn’t walk down Clarence Road with my eyes closed.’ ‘You should have been a detective,’ he said, taking out his wallet and pulling out eight fifty-pound notes. His sarcasm could not hide the fact that he was secretly impressed by her deductive skills. ‘And, furthermore, I’m guessing my performances have been aimed towards that end. Getting her out, I mean.’ ‘Four hundred, like we agreed?’ He thrust the money at her so forcibly that for a second she thought he was going to try gagging her with it. ‘Plus expenses.’ ‘What?’ Suzanna grinned. ‘I don’t live around here. I have to travel in by train.’ ‘How much?’ ‘Return? Nearly forty quid. It’s a three hour round trip.’ Her client reached into his wallet and handed over another two fifty-pound notes. ‘Keep the change. With the money I gave you up front, that’s seven hundred altogether. I think you’ve done well enough out of this.’ She took the money and stuffed it into her handbag. This kind of work was irregular, but in the grand scheme of things it kept her head above water until the

next stage play or minor television role came in. She never worried about being recognised, however. She was a magician with clothes, wigs, makeup and idiosyncratic mannerisms. No one would ever realise that they had been visited by Suzanna Morris, actor, even if she became famous. Not that there seemed much danger of that happening any time soon. Aside from the cash in hand, of course, these scams involved acting, which she loved. Any excuse, as she liked to joke with herself. ‘Well, whatever happens, it’s nothing she doesn’t deserve. Snobbish old fossil.’ The client gave her a strange look she could not quite decipher. ‘The way she looked down her nose at me,’ she sniffed. ‘You’d think she was some sort of aristocrat.’ ‘Christine Money is an immensely proud woman.’ Again, Suzanna could not discern the sentiment behind the remark. ‘So, is it about the house, Mr O’Sullivan?’ ‘Please don’t use my name. It might become a habit.’ Suzanna found it surprising that O’Sullivan would use his real name, under the circumstances. She assumed it was an alias. ‘Discretion is my middle name,’ she smiled. It made her sound like a hooker, she realised. ‘I’m right, though, aren’t I?’ The man calling himself O’Sullivan allowed himself a smile. ‘Like I said, I’m a property developer.’ He slipped his wallet back into his jacket and stuffed his hands into his pockets, ready to leave. Suzanna could take a hint. There was no more blood to be squeezed out of this stone. But she could not resist one last dig at the old fart. ‘O’Sullivan, would that be a name from the Emerald Isle itself?’ she asked in a lyrical Irish lilt. ‘It is. Why?’

‘You’ve lost the accent.’ The old man gave her an uncertain smile. ‘Maybe I moved to this country a long time ago.’ But Suzanna would still have picked up traces here and there of such a distinctive brogue, she was certain. That he was lying was not in question. It was what he was lying about and why, something that was tantalisingly out of the reach of Suzanna’s curiosity. She opened her mouth to say something sarcastic, but he cut her off in the act of turning his back on her. ‘Or maybe I’m acting too,’ he said. Their business was concluded. ‘Janice.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

That’s got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, Christine reflected, realising that she had left the House on voice mode. Bill’s ghostly figure seemed to have abandoned the cause, so she only had the act of using his name to command the House for comfort. Her intention had been to switch it back to silent only if her privacy was disturbed. Her nerves had been buzzing since dawn after a broken, fitful night’s sleep. If staring up at the ceiling whilst pretending to read and imagining every worst-case scenario could be described as sleep. Once it was safe to get up, she made a desperate effort to make herself presentable. But the mirror would not cooperate with this unblinking woman who seemed to be a facsimile of herself in ten years’ time. She would not age well, apparently. The puffy skin under her eyes could not be disguised with makeup, the eyes themselves bloodshot with a yellow tinge in the corners and her thinning face accentuated every line and wrinkle. Her shoulders hunched around her chest as if they were trying to console her, her spine stooped forward, her head balancing on her thin neck like a watermelon on a gate post. Her clothes, though fresh on that morning, hung from her twitching frame like laundry begging for a warm breeze. At some point she had managed to spill something on her skirt that refused to sponge out. If she was dressing to kill, the intent was suicide. It was as she was heading for the stairs to get changed again that the doorbell rang. There was no time now. She would just have to hope Donna would not notice the white splodge. She turned back to the front door, folding her skirt over the stain as best she could. The apprehension that rippled through her stomach was like being woken by a tide in a cold bath. She grabbed the door catch and positioned herself strategically so that when the door opened it would screen the side of her skirt that was dirtied. The whole exercise was futile, of course, and worse still, she had forgotten all about turning off the voice command. The House would now only respond to ‘Bill’ for the duration of her social worker’s visit. ‘Okay,’ Donna began brightly once they were seated in the living room. ‘There is some good news. So don’t worry too much.’ That, presumably, meant Donna had found a bed locally and she wouldn’t have

to go out of county and cost her department extra money. It was ten-thirty. Christine had already re-packed her tote bag, fearing the worst. It could never be described as her lucky bag, not after all this. When the nightmare ended, her intention was to chuck it into one of O’Sullivan’s skips. She tried to ignore the image in her mind of throwing herself in the skip instead and vanishing forever. ‘But, firstly, I have to be honest with you, Christine.’ I wish someone would. ‘Go on.’ ‘Obviously, we’re worried about what’s been happening with you lately.’ You mean, being set up? she wanted to say. ‘None of the things you’ve told us about this ‘Janice’ could be corroborated. So we do need to conduct a proper assessment to find out what’s going on. Okay?’ Christine could only nod. ‘There are just too many unanswered questions to gloss over.’ ‘I know,’ Christine sighed, feeling something thick and black tugging on her eyelids. ‘We have to discover the truth, however difficult that truth might be for you to accept.’ Because if I don’t accept it, that shows I lack insight, in other words, thought Christine. ‘I’ve spoken to my manager and a couple of colleagues…’ Donna continued. …And we feel you need to be assessed on a psychiatric ward. How was that good news? ‘…and we don’t think it’s appropriate for your assessment to be carried out as an in-patient.’

‘Oh,’ Christine began, and then snapped her mouth shut in case she whooped for joy or burst into tears. ‘That’s right. We can carry out the assessment here in your home, after all.’ Until I fail to show insight, that is, or refuse to cooperate with special restrictions. ‘Good news, yes?’ Christine hoped she would put in a better showing than her last home assessment; but then that, according to everyone else, had never happened. How ironic that her complaint about a non-existent assessment had been rewarded by the implementation of a legitimate one. From the kitchen, she heard the dishwasher bleeping at the end of its cycle. ‘I was convinced you’d haul me off to the mad house,’ she said quickly. And that would have been especially ironic, given that psychiatric locations never used voice command interfaces… Donna let out a short laugh. ‘We don’t use like that anymore, Christine.’ Christine’s chest tightened suddenly. Thinking about voice commands reminded her that the House would only answer to Bill. ‘Christine, are you all right?’ She could hear the blood whooshing through her head on its way down to her feet. ing out would not make a great impression, unless she was hoping for sympathy. ‘Yes. I’m just relieved, that’s all.’ Conscious of the lines and wrinkles hidden beneath her foundation, she kept her smile subdued. ‘I even packed a bag.’ ‘Oh, Christine! This is difficult, I know. But we have to go through with it. It’s the only way.’ At least it wasn’t because I left the gas on. No, Donna was here because her

claim to have left the gas on was false. Though she still might turn out to be crazy, at least she did not pose a danger to herself. How ironic was that? ‘And to be honest, the pressure on psych beds is reaching crisis point.’ Did that mean they would have itted her if they could? ‘No, we’ll conduct your assessment here at home, with maybe a few appointments at the mental health centre?’ But if she were a risk to herself, then they would have had to it her somewhere, surely? The thought that Donna’s words were in any way disingenuous crashed against her failing courage like a storm surge against an ancient breakwater. ‘With a psychologist, though he’s only a trainee. How does that sound?’ Because her behaviour had been perfectly normal for years, and because she had not left the gas on, her House records had actually worked in her favour. But what about the dripping taps? What about the laundry and the lights? How could there be no record of the anomalies she was personally aware of? If the House was to be believed, none of those things had happened. It was only her presentation in the social services interview room and her outrageous claims to have been visited by an imposter that had brought her to this moment. The fact that Jimmy believed her must have helped her case. Beds were scarce. Christine had not done anything that threatened her or anyone else’s safety. Therefore, she was partially off the hook – at least for now. It seemed too good to be true. ‘What a relief!’ Christine sighed. ‘But you have to prepare yourself for the fact that what we find at the end of the four weeks might prove difficult to accept.’ ‘Four weeks?’ Yup, there it is! Too good to be true. ‘Yes, it’s the standard period for a home assessment like this. Is that okay?’

Another blunder by her tormentor, then. Janice had only set her up for a twoweek assessment. But then again, she never intended to go right through to the end date. You didn’t think it would matter, did you? Christine pondered. Well, it matters now, you little bitch. Having wished never to see Janice’s face again, she now wanted to see it one last time so she could give it the sound slap it deserved. Donna reached into her bag and pulled out a notepad. Christine suppressed a frown. What had happened to hers? Did she take it with her to social services? She could not even mentioning it during the disastrous interview. What would Donna make of it, were she to read it? There was nothing in there that could be described as paranoid or psychotic. It was just an inventory of Christine’s daily activities. Come to think of it, the notebook might just as easily be seen as evidence of a self-disciplined mind as it would of a woman struggling to keep that mind under her control. Maybe it was still in her tote bag? Donna, meanwhile, was still talking. ‘…and we’ll need to have your written consent, naturally.’ ‘Consent? Oh, yes, of course.’ The idea of living in fear for another month weighed down on her like a court summons. Donna seemed to read her mind. ‘I’ll visit you once a week, of course. That’s allowed. I wish I could say, give me a ring at the office, if you need to, but I can’t, unfortunately.’ Christine felt grateful but guilty. ‘Because of your workload?’ ‘You are my workload, Christine,’ Donna replied. ‘No, believe it or not, unscheduled might screw up the results of the assessment. But as your social worker, I can visit you once a week for a maximum of thirty minutes.’ Tears came to her eyes before she realised what was happening. ‘I… I’m sorry. It’s just all so much to take in.’ She didn’t feel vulnerable showing her feelings to Donna, not the way she had with the illusive Janice. ‘That’s okay, Christine. I understand.’ Donna reached her hand across the space between them and squeezed her client’s arm. ‘All you need to do is what you’d

usually do. Keep to the same routine, go to the same places (the same haunts), see the same people (my dead husband) and the House will do the rest (the House will take care of it all).’ Christine let out an almost hysterical laugh. ‘Thanks, Donna.’ Donna looked down to make a note of something on her pad. Just then, the dishwasher resumed its bleeping. Donna looked up, surprised perhaps that Christine had not instructed the House to turn the dishwasher off. ‘So when does it start?’ she blurted out. ‘We never tell clients when their assessment begins or finishes. And it won’t be every day, either. So you’ll never be able to tell when you are and when you’re not being assessed.’ Just as Jimmy had said. ‘Why does that matter?’ Christine asked over the bleeping sound. Was Donna frowning? If Christine delayed switching off the dishwasher any longer her social worker was bound to get suspicious. But the only way to do that would be to use Bill’s name. ‘If someone knows they are being observed it affects their behaviour. It’s what we call a confounding variable.’ ‘Oh, I see,’ Christine sighed, relieved that the bleeping had stopped again. ‘When I leave here in a few moments, the four weeks will formally begin. But, of course, that isn’t necessarily when the monitoring itself starts.’ ‘Although it might be?’ Christine raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s right,’ Donna confirmed. ‘You’ll never know. But that’s a good thing, in the long run.’ Four weeks is twenty-eight days, Christine mused. Can I do this? Yes, I have to. I

don’t have a choice. ‘Now, if I can just go through this consent form with you, Christine.’ Donna pulled out a two-page form and explained to Christine what it all meant. She handed Christine a pen and showed her where to sign and date the form. Christine’s signature was scrawled so rapidly she feared the page might rip. She was suddenly aware that any minute the dishwasher would start bleeping for a third time. As glad as she was to have Donna back on her case, she needed to get rid of her as soon as possible. ‘When will I see you again?’ ‘Early next week. I’ll text you my availability before then. And you’ll get an outpatients’ email very soon, detailing when that trainee psychologist is free to see you. I’ll need to pull some strings first, though. The waiting list is usually months long. And it may only be for one session, so make the most of it.’ Donna packed away her paperwork, leaving Christine with a copy of her signed consent form, and got to her feet. Christine followed suit, conscious with every ing second of the dishwasher’s circuitry counting down to its next fit of bleeping. The modern units shut themselves down automatically, but theirs was an older model that ridiculously had to be told to standby. They must have bought it twenty years ago, but it had outlived one of its owners already. Donna moved into the hall. Christine had to force her eyes not to stray in the direction of the open kitchen door. ‘Okay, Christine. I’ll say goodbye for now. But please don’t worry. Whatever happens, we’ll face it together. Yes?’ The social worker reached out and again stroked her arm. Things had surely taken a turn for the better with Donna back on the scene, Christine decided. But then again, technically she had never been away in the first place, apart from that week in Rhodes. Any second now, a cruel voice whispered in her head. Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! But the front door was opening, and the promise of safety beckoned. At the last

second, however, Donna paused and looked back, one foot still planted on Christine’s doormat. ‘And , just be yourself and stick to your usual habits.’ Five, four, three… ‘Thanks, Donna.’ The bleeping started again two seconds after Christine had closed the front door. ‘Bill!’ she hissed. ‘Turn that bloody dishwasher off!’ It was the harshest thing she’d said to him since his death.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The fact that O’Sullivan was back in Connery’s office again so soon should not have surprised him. What surprised him was that this time he and Connery were not alone. ‘This is Adrian.’ No, it isn’t, thought O’Sullivan. The thick-necked, broad-shouldered hulk standing to Connery’s right looked more like a Boris or an Ivan. But if Connery wanted him called Adrian, then fine. The two men exchanged cursory nods. ‘I hear you’ve demolished Number Fifteen now?’ Connery was obviously casting a keener eye over his investment, as he had promised. O’Sullivan could not blame him, but was it just the site he was watching or the developer’s management of it? ‘That was quick. I hope the Nigerians had left beforehand?’ If it was meant to be a joke, Connery’s face did not show it. ‘Ugandans,’ O’Sullivan corrected. If he had assumed that Connery’s countenance could not get any darker, he was mistaken. ‘It’s been flattened and carted off, Shay.’ ‘So that just leaves Number Seven,’ Connery spoke slowly. ‘The Money household.’ ‘Once that’s gone, we’ll be all set.’ Connery cast an exasperated look in Adrian’s direction, who was too busy staring out O’Sullivan to notice. ‘She still hasn’t responded to your latest offer?’ ‘No,’ O’Sullivan conceded. ‘Not yet.’ ‘She should,’ Connery smiled. ‘It’s a fantastic offer, Tom, ‘way above market value’, as they say in the trade.’ He gave O’Sullivan the briefest flicker of a

smile. ‘No, I can’t see what else you could have done to persuade the old dear to take flight. You’ve done your best and that’s a fact.’ O’Sullivan felt himself stiffen. How did Connery know the details of the offer? Had he tapped up his solicitor? Infiltrated the solicitor’s office? Or more sinister still, had he somehow seen the letter in Christine’s possession? Then he recalled who it was that had told him about Christine’s diminishing savings, at the back end of last year. ‘Mind you, I can think of better ways to describe Mrs. Money than intractable.’ O’Sullivan had not been offered a drink, and he knew he was not about to get one. ‘Adrian here has been doing that digging I spoke of last time.’ ‘Oh, yes?’ Adrian looked more like an enforcer than a private investigator. ‘It seems we might be in luck.’ ‘How so?’ ‘Adrian?’ Adrian’s voice, when it came, was surprisingly gentle and measured. It was not a voice accustomed to shouting, O’Sullivan speculated, or growling menacing threats in dark alleyways. In fact, O’Sullivan doubted Adrian ever threatened anyone. He merely stated what would happen if you failed to do what he asked, and that calm and calculated voice left no doubt that this was a man who kept his promises. He certainly looked like the kind of man who only asked once. There was no trace of an accent, either; so maybe he was an Adrian, after all. ‘It seems your Mrs. Money has been having a few ‘mental problems’ of late.’ O’Sullivan’s ears pricked up. Yes, that could be a step in the right direction. ‘She’s been to social services recently and they’ve been to see her,’ Connery chipped in, as if he could not bear to take a back seat for longer than a minute.

‘Looks like she’s in some sort of crisis.’ ‘And?’ ‘We understand she might be undergoing some kind of assessment at home.’ Adrian continued. ‘We don’t know the exact details, of course.’ Yet, thought O’Sullivan. ‘So what makes you think it’s mental problems?’ Wasn’t that a detail of sorts? ‘I’ve followed her a few times. Seen her enjoying herself at that community centre she goes to. She’s in good nick for her age. Sprightly, lively, that kind of thing. I bet she can still dance.’ ‘They say your sixties are the new fifties,’ Connery grinned, possibly referring to himself. ‘And?’ ‘Whatever’s being assessed it’s unlikely to be anything physical, is what Adrian’s saying.’ ‘And if things don’t go well with her assessment, you think they might have to it her?’ His eyes flitted between Adrian and his boss. O’Sullivan could imagine how things might ‘not go well’ for Christine’s mental state if she started noticing the incredible hulk here following her about town. It would have given him the creeps. Crude but effective, his style of intimidation was an art the big man probably had had plenty of experience in perfecting. And if she told anyone about her paranoid delusions of being followed, no one would be able to find any evidence of Adrian’s existence. If she really were undergoing some form of mental health assessment, they probably would not even bother checking CCTV footage. And if they did, they would see that the big man had a perfectly legitimate reason for being wherever the camera found him. The lens would never catch the disconcerting stare Adrian would use to unnerve his victim. Yes, if Connery asked Adrian to tip Christine over the edge, it was practically a done deal. But it did not help solve the house sale dilemma. O’Sullivan could not see the end game.

‘And what am I supposed to do, knock the place down whilst she’s in hospital and hope she doesn’t notice?’ Connery rocked back in his office chair. Adrian, meanwhile, was smirking. ‘Adrian is very adept at exploiting other people’s deepest fears. With the threat of hospitalization on the one hand and someone following her whenever she leaves her front door, I think we can guarantee this particularly hard old nut will crack under the pressure.’ Connery had adroitly sidestepped O’Sullivan’s question, he noticed. ‘And if she isn’t itted?’ Adrian sniffed. ‘Then I’ll have to make it look like an accident.’ O’Sullivan took a moment to digest what he had just heard, to allow his mind to accept what Adrian’s comment implied. Connery looked disappointed in Adrian’s indiscretion. ‘It won’t come to that.’ ‘Then..?’ Connery made a face like he had just swallowed one of his own dental fillings. ‘You’ve tried the carrot. Now we’ll use the stick.’ Adrian’s smirk was back, his indiscretion quickly following in its wake. ‘If Mr. Connery wants the old woman in hospital, I’ll put her in hospital.’ ‘Now, now, Adrian.’ Connery rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath. ‘The word you’re looking for is itted.’ O’Sullivan, meanwhile, thought about who they were up against. Though he might claim to hate Christine at times, part of him ired her. She was tough and uncompromising, like himself. She lived alone, her money was running dry, her husband was under the ground, and her neighbours had all cleared out and allowed their homes to be turned to rubble. But still she held firm, intractable to the end.

‘But she’d still own the land.’ Connery looked bored, as if he were explaining something basic to a small child. ‘Adrian’s done this before, and, believe me, he’s very capable. The secret of intimidation is to make sure the only person who notices you is the person you’re intimidating. How I get my hands on her property after that is my business.’ The nature of the end game was none of his business, in other words. O’Sullivan suddenly felt the way he had as a teenage ground worker, fresh out of school with two O-levels: useful up to a point but ultimately expendable. Wheelbarrow fodder. ‘However alone and defenceless she feels now, she’ll feel lost at sea without fresh water by the time I’ve finished with her.’ Adrian was obviously a man who enjoyed his work. But if that still doesn’t work? O’Sullivan wondered. He was scared of O’Sullivan because he owed him money. A lot of money. But what if Connery was in debt to an even bigger fish in the pond? Part of him suspected that Adrian’s mention of ‘making it look like an accident’ was rehearsed to put the frighteners on O’Sullivan. But if Christine failed to get sectioned and she did not cave into the intimidation, what then? He looked at the towering figure standing over Connery’s shoulder and could not help imagining a chain around his thick neck ending in Connery’s hand. ‘I’m not interested in selling at any price,’ Christine had told him emphatically last year. And she was still there, hanging on by her fingers, surrounded by nothing but barren plots and tumbleweed rubbish. What would happen when that bigger fish asked Connery about the money they had lent him? This latest meeting should have been a relief to O’Sullivan. No one was threatening him at present, just deflecting him, asking him to close his eyes for a few days. But when he thought about the stubborn Mrs. Money alone in Number Seven with no neighbours to hear her cries for help, guilt grabbed him by the balls and squeezed. Adrian looked fit and strong but mentally agile too. This was no trained gorilla, but someone skilled in covering his tracks. What happens when Connery lets you off that chain? The last question alone was enough to make O’Sullivan

secretly shudder.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘Well your appetite’s back,’ Jimmy laughed, as she polished off her apple crumble and custard at the lunch club one week later. ‘Sure you don’t want to lick the bowl clean?’ Christine lent back in her chair and carefully squeezed her buttocks together to suppress a giant fart. The truth was she could easily have eaten something else as well. ‘I’ll be overweight at this rate.’ ‘You’d have laughed if I’d predicted that a fortnight ago.’ ‘I was losing weight back then.’ ‘I know, I could see.’ Christine broke eye at the idea of Jimmy looking at her that way. ‘I was really worried about you, Chrissy. You were like a frog in a frying pan. I thought you might be heading for heart failure with all the stress you were under.’ ‘And now?’ There had definitely been moments when doubts about her mental state must have entered his mind, especially in the company of the two social workers trying to make sense of her story in the social services interview room. She presumed his experiences with his ex-wife Jean must have set those doubts to rest, eventually. She was under tremendous pressure, and Jimmy did not know the half of it back then, but still he kept his faith in her. She now had a good idea of who was behind all of it, however. ‘Now, I think you have to continue jumping through those hoops until their satisfied you’re safe to live at home alone. You’ve got one week under your belt already.’ That first week had been a good one, too. She had found her notebook on Friday, back in the kitchen drawer once again. But by then she was eating and sleeping well, there had been no mishaps or oversights on her part to record, and even the plumbing had behaved itself, so she decided to leave it in the drawer and ignore the fact that she had expected to find it in her escape plan tote bag. People could

make mistakes at any age. There had to be some leeway with the workings of the human brain. It was the House that was the machine, not the person living inside it. Bill - her husband Bill, that was, not the one answering her commands to the House - was back on the scene, though. He seemed to sleep throughout the day, just as he had in the last few months living at home, and wander the house after dark, like a night-watchman. She would hear the tread of his shoe on the stairs as she lay reading – actually reading now, thank goodness – or catch his dark outline framed in the bedroom doorway. After the third instance, she gave up telling him to take his shoes off in the house. They weren’t real shoes, after all. He never spoke or attempted to communicate with her in any way. She took that as a good omen. If there was nothing he needed to warn her of, it meant she was safe. That assurance alone had been the mainstay of her successfully navigating that first week. Was he angry, then, that to celebrate Christine had gone on a second ‘date’ with Jimmy to the White Hart? If he was, then it did not show. But then Bill had previous when it came to deception. It was not a text message, an inexplicable restaurant receipt sent by email, or the faint scent of perfume on an article of clothing that exposed Bill’s dirty little secret. Oh, no, Bill was far too careful about that. In some ways, that subterfuge hurt more than the infidelity itself, the fact that Bill had been so circumspect about his other personal life. Because by keeping his fling such a perfectly isolated incident, however brief, he had gone beyond just having another woman, and created a sub-life from which Christine was excluded. Well, this was her ‘other life’, and she made no attempt to hide it from Bill. ‘Christine? A cloud just went over your face. What is it?’ ‘Oh, nothing, really,’ she sniffed. ‘It didn’t look like nothing,’ Jimmy persisted. ‘Come on, out with it!’ Christine shifted in her chair, relieved that the fart had receded temporarily. She could hardly tell him the truth. ‘It’s just…’ ‘Go on.’

She had to lie, she realised, because for all her well-meaning talk of Jimmy being a good friend, there was still a barrier between them, the barrier of gender. He saw Christine as an eligible widow and because she knew that was the way he saw her, she could not stop herself from seeing him as a red-blooded male. The more he acted like a hunter, the more she behaved like prey, would have been a misogynist’s explanation. ‘Well, there’s still a chance the House might have detected something I’m not aware of. And even if it hasn’t, it might do at some point over the next three weeks. I can’t hide from that prospect.’ ‘You’re thinking about your washing, aren’t you?’ Jimmy knew everything about her House now except that it was haunted. ‘And the bedlinen, too,’ Christine whispered. ‘And what about that letter from the solicitor? I’d swear on the bible that I’d already opened it once. And it wasn’t even the same letter the second time. How weird is that?’ ‘But Christine, you heard what Donna said,’ Jimmy whispered back, squeezing her hand. ‘There was no record of any anomalies during that period. It was just the stress you were going through, making your mind play tricks on you.’ ‘But if nothing happened, then why am I being assessed?’ She knew the answer, but it helped relieve the unwelcomed frustration building up inside her again. ‘They couldn’t find any record of anyone else being in the house at the times you said Janice was there,’ Jimmy answered uncomfortably. ‘But you were adamant those visits took place, that Janice really exists. You have to see it from their perspective, Chrissy. It must ring any number of alarm bells for them.’ ‘So they do suspect I’m mad?’ This was not the way she anticipated or wanted the discussion to go. ‘And for all I know, I might be.’ Jimmy held her gaze, but she had the impression that it was an effort for him to do so. ‘I’m convinced this is all related to stress. Your Bill’s only been gone a year; it’s early days. Then there’s Mrs Green going too, and all this pressure put on by that developer. It’s a lot to take all at once.’

This, she realised, was the moment to acquaint him with the fact that Bill was not gone at all. Fear kept her lips sealed, however; fear of ridicule, yes, but also fear that somehow a spell would be broken, and she would never see her late husband’s face again if she confided in anybody else about his presence. The game she was playing with Bill’s spirit had rules. ‘And what about you, Jimmy? Do you believe me or the machine? Because from where I’m sitting, it’s starting to sound like the latter.’ ‘That’s not important,’ he snapped. His evasiveness irritated her. Why couldn’t men just be honest? She felt angry, too, that he should try to dictate what was and was not important to her. ‘Do you think I’m mentally ill?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Mental health is never that black and white, Chrissy.’ But she was not prepared to let him off the hook so easily. She needed an answer. ‘Jimmy! Yes or no?’ Her voice was raised just enough for a couple sitting nearby to notice and look her way. ‘Do you believe me when I say I’ve been visited by a woman posing as a social worker, a young woman called Janice?’ ‘This isn’t senility, Christine. I’ve seen that, lived with it. ? Whatever you’ve experienced, you can put it all behind you in three weeks’ time. That’s all that matters, surely?’ But what really mattered right there and then, she understood, was whether Jimmy believed in her. She sat staring into his face, a scowl narrowing her eyes. It was not enough for him to just feel sorry for her. Jimmy looked back, uncomfortably, for a few seconds, then threw up his arms in exasperation. ‘All right, you need my answer. I get that.’ Christine allowed her right eyebrow to rise in expectation. Jimmy lent forward and this time took both her hands in his. ‘Christine, listen,’ he began, promising yet another dirge of prevarication and ambiguity. But he

surprised her. ‘I can tell you for a fact that I believe you when you say you were visited by Janice. Is that good enough? Does that me in your faith test?’ Christine relaxed a little. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy. I guess the first week going so well was almost too good to be true. Do you know what I mean?’ ‘Of course, I do.’ Jimmy released her hands. ‘But what about all the other stuff that’s been happening? Incidents that should be on the House records but aren’t? What other explanation is there for that but a severe reaction to extreme stress?’ Christine took a sip of water. Was Jimmy backtracking here? Or was he just trying to be honest and ive in the only way he could? Jimmy’s straight answer was still not straight enough for her, but it would have to do. It was time to share her latest theory, the other explanation Jimmy had, in a way, just challenged her to produce. ‘It’s not just Janice.’ Jimmy looked at her with a sideways glance. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean you can’t sit on the fence anymore.’ ‘Chrissy, I…’ ‘Either you believe it all or dismiss everything I’ve told you as a stress-induced psychological phenomenon.’ Jimmy started to protest, but Christine swept on regardless. ‘There is another explanation. You said yourself that you thought I was being set up. What if I told you that I know who it was doing the setting up and why?’ ‘Christine,’ Jimmy protested, then slumped back into his seat to allow her to continue. ‘It was you that brought the subject up, ?’ Jimmy took a deep breath. ‘I felt a bit crazy suggesting it, but yes, it looks like a set-up to me.’

‘I’ve told you about O’Sullivan, about how desperate he is to get his hands on my property. He can’t lay a brick until my home is flattened.’ Jimmy shook his head. ‘Ah, come on, Christine. You’re saying that this property developer is somehow slipping into your house whilst you’re out – here, for instance – and moving your stuff around to make you go mad?’ ‘No, it’s a lot smarter than that. When I complain about those things happening – to Donna, for instance - and they can’t find any evidence to back it up, it makes me look mad. Maybe they hope that I’ll call the police, the media, the council. That’s the set up.’ Jimmy stroked his chin. ‘But you have an intruder alarm, CCTV, the House itself. How could this O’Sullivan get past all that?’ ‘I don’t know. Yet.’ ‘And I thought you told me this O’Sullivan hasn’t bothered you since last November?’ ‘Exactly! There’s no way he would just back off like that unless he had another strategy to use instead.’ ‘The driving-Christine-Money-mad strategy?’ ‘I know it sounds paranoid. It sounded that way to me when the thought first occurred to me. But you didn’t see the way he behaved on my doorstep that day. He practically barged into the house. That kind of desperation doesn’t just evaporate overnight. I’ve always suspected he must be up to something, now I know what.’ ‘But how can you prove it? How can you ever tell anyone else but me without them taking it the wrong way? Listen, Christine, I don’t think you’re crazy, okay? But if you start coming out with all this stuff to Donna or whoever I will definitely be in a minority of one.’ ‘Yes, but can’t you see, that’s the beauty of his plot? Eventually, I’ll be hospitalised for spouting paranoid delusions or O’Sullivan’s intrusions really

will drive me mad. Either way, he gets me out of my house, and that’s the first stage of his finally getting his hands on it.’ ‘So what the hell can we do about it?’ She was warmed by the fact he said ‘we’. ‘We can use the one card we hold against him.’ ‘Which is?’ ‘He doesn’t know we’re on to him. As far as he’s concerned, I’m as much in the dark about his plot as I was the first time Janice rang my doorbell.’ ‘And Janice was what… paid by O’Sullivan to play the part of a stand-in social worker?’ ‘Now you’re getting it,’ she smiled. He slowly shook his head, but it was not a gesture of denial. ‘And?’ ‘And I think it’s time for a bit of role reversal,’ Christine whispered. ‘I think it’s time someone rang O’Sullivan’s doorbell instead.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Am I using him? It was the same question she could have asked herself on any other day for the last three weeks. But with every ing day it became harder to answer. Did she mean dead Bill or dying Jimmy? It was not a question that flattered her. But standing in her bedroom later that same afternoon, there was only one person that could physically help her, and she dialled his number immediately. ‘Christine? What is it?’ She had only said goodbye to him at the community centre a couple of hours ago. He must know that something was wrong. ‘You need to come round, Jimmy.’ She anticipated a hint of annoyance, or at least a sigh. Instead, he asked, ‘Why? Has something happened at the house again?’ Christine stared from one open wardrobe door to the other. ‘Yes,’ she sniffed, ‘I think you could say that.’ ‘Listen, I’m not too far away, so sit tight.’ That this had happened really should not have surprised her. O’Sullivan was as good as his word. He had come back all right, and not just the once. ‘It’s something big, isn’t it? I can hear it in your voice.’ Her bedroom had looked so unremarkable when she entered it five minutes ago, just the way she had left it that morning. But there was something poking out from between the wardrobe doors that should not have been there. Something incongruous. Something deliberately careless. ‘Christine?’ ‘You need to come round,’ she repeated. Suddenly, the promising start to her assessment and Jimmy’s commitment to her theory of what was behind it seemed like a false dawn, and she felt vulnerable

and intimidated again. She did not want to be alone right now. ‘Okay. I’m on my way.’ ‘You’re sure it’s no trouble?’ The wardrobe belonged to Bill. It had been far too premature to think about hauling its contents down to the charity shop, so she had left everything hanging on the rail like a row of executed spies. Then, when it was no longer premature, she still could not bring herself to take them down. Sometimes she would even isolate one shirt or jacket from the rest of the clothes and, sitting on her bed, try to an occasion when Bill had worn that particular item. It's me that needs to be cut down. ‘I was just doing a bit of shopping, but I’ve only just started so it’s no sweat,’ Jimmy said. She had opened the other wardrobe door and found that the object caught in it was one of her dresses. The red material swung back inside, furtively, like a rat, but her attention had already moved on to what was dangling from the other hangers. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’ She had opened the right-hand door, too, and looked from one end of the rail to the other. Every single item belonging to Bill had been removed and replaced with the contents of her own wardrobe: dresses, coats, shoes, boots, skirts. Everything that should have been there was gone. She did not have to look to know that her own wardrobe on the other side of the bedroom would now be filled with men’s tros, ties, dress shirts and overcoats. It had not been that way this morning, she knew, because she had changed her clothes before leaving for the lunch club. It must have happened whilst she was out. That was when she knew she had to phone Jimmy. ‘But you’re okay? You’re not hurt?’ Not physically, she reflected. And suddenly her mood changed. This was the final outrage, the ultimate insult. No one could disrespect her Bill like this and get away with it. O’Sullivan had been in their bedroom before, of course, stripping

the bedclothes from her bed. But now he had touched Bill’s clothes, all of them, and used them to play a sick trick on her. Anger flowed through her, recharging her drive and empowering her resolve. This was a trap that O’Sullivan had set her, one designed to devastate her self-confidence and provoke a reaction. He’s watching, too, she thought. Watching and waiting to see what catastrophic mistake I’ll make. She could just imagine him sitting in front of a laptop, watching the feed from the CCTV camera he had put up across the road on Mrs Green’s former property. She had noticed it first on Saturday morning, though it must have been erected the day before, again whilst she was out. It had been pointing up the road that day and then down in the opposite direction on the Sunday. Maybe O’Sullivan was just naturally security conscious and worried that travellers would take advantage of the hiatus in the redevelopment process. But when she went to the window now and looked outside it was to find the camera, sitting at the top of a pole at bedroom window height, pointed directly at her. Something told her that it would be staying in that position for quite some time. What if I don’t react? she wondered. What if I don’t give him what he wants? ‘Actually, Jimmy…’ What if I can turn the tables in this set up? Wasn’t that exactly what she had been alluding to in the lunch club earlier that day? ‘…change of plan.’ ‘Yes? Why? What now?’ ‘Can you come over tomorrow morning about eleven o’clock instead?’ In case O’Sullivan was watching the house when Jimmy arrived, she added a piece of advice. ‘But don’t act like there’s some kind of a crisis, okay? Act casual, seem relaxed and unconcerned. Like this is just an everyday social visit. Can you do that?’ ‘Okay. I don’t know whether I should be intrigued or worried sick, though.’ ‘I’ll explain everything when you get here.’

The temptation to put everything back where it belonged was offset by the knowledge that that too was what O’Sullivan wanted. He would get no satisfaction from her that way either. She closed the wardrobe doors and walked out with the phone still to her ear. This latest violation was beyond endurance. O’Sullivan had made this personal. She didn’t just want his game exposed and legal action taken. She wanted to catch him in the act herself, to see his face when he realised she had outwitted and outmanoeuvred him finally. ‘Jimmy?’ This time he did sigh. ‘Eleven o’clock. Sure. I’ll see you then.’ Christine cut the call and stared again at the CCTV camera directed straight at her window. If she complained to the council, they would doubtless ask him to take it down, but that, yet again, was part of his trap-door trickery. Are you watching me right now? Resisting another urge, this time to close her bedroom curtains, she turned away, heading back downstairs. Halfway down she paused to declare defiantly over her shoulder, ‘I can see you, too, Mr O’Sullivan. I can see what you’re up to.’ And all the while ignorant of the fact that, although someone was indeed watching her house at that moment, it would not be Tom O’Sullivan for much longer.

Chapter Thirty

‘You want to do what?’ Jimmy’s face was white with shock, his eyes wide in disbelief, his shoulders hunched with dread. This was no way to treat a friend with long-term health problems, Christine knew, but she was boxed into a corner with no one else she could trust. ‘I can’t pull this off on my own, Jimmy.’ ‘You can’t pull it off safely, full stop!’ After the initial shock, Jimmy’s cheeks were beginning to flush with anger. ‘Jimmy, please! I have to do this. He’ll never stop till he gets what he wants.’ ‘If it’s him.’ ‘Who else could it be?’ Now Christine could feel her own temperature rising. ‘What if he is behind it but getting someone else to do the dirty work - a thug have you thought of that?’ She had. That O’Sullivan had paid Janice to do her turn as stand-in social worker was a given, so in principle he could have hired someone else to enter her home too. But he would want to avoid involving too many other people. What if one of them got smart and decided to blackmail him? No, this part had to be the work of the man himself. ‘And how is he getting in and out anyway? You have an intruder alarm, the House…’ ‘Jimmy, don’t!’ She knew where this conversation was heading, and it was a distraction she could do without. ‘I’ll find all that out when I catch him in the act.’ ‘What are you planning, a citizen’s arrest?’ ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. But that’s where you come in, ?’ ‘But how do you know he’ll come round today, anyway? Are you proposing we play this game every day until he does?’

‘If that’s what it takes,’ Christine replied. ‘But I don’t think it will.’ She moved towards the window and nodded in the direction of Mrs Green’s former home. ‘Did you notice that when you came in?’ ‘The CCTV camera, sure. It’s not unusual for a site this big, especially one where nothing much is happening.’ ‘Yes, but did you notice which direction the camera was facing?’ ‘Well, it wasn’t pointing at you!’ Jimmy laughed, a derisive snort that stung Christine’s feelings. Jimmy recognised his insensitivity and closed his eyes to regain his equanimity. ‘When I drove down the road it was pointing in the direction I’d come from.’ ‘Take a peek out the other window,’ Christine said. ‘Go on.’ ‘Christine…’ Jimmy began. ‘Okay, I’ll look.’ He walked over to the other window and, as discretely as he could, peeked out into the road. He was silent for several seconds. ‘Well?’ He turned back to face her. ‘Could just be coincidence.’ ‘You really think so?’ ‘He saw my car coming and wanted to know what I was up to. So what?’ ‘So why, every time I go outside, does he keep turning the damned thing on me?’ Jimmy frowned. ‘Since I phoned you yesterday, I’ve made a point of behaving as if everything is hunky dory. I spent an hour in the front garden earlier. I took a radio out there with me, had a drink sitting on the front step, enjoying the spring sunshine. After what he did to our wardrobes, he must have expected me to be running around screaming. The fact that his provocation hasn’t worked is bound to rebound on

him. Wherever that live feed ends up I bet the air must be blue. When I go out again, he’ll come back, up the stakes.’ ‘Will he, though? You do realise that you’re running the risk of sabotaging your assessment this way.’ That thought had crossed her mind. ‘I know enough about O’Sullivan to predict that he can’t afford to wait any longer. He’s lulled me into a false sense of security and now he’ll move in for the kill.’ ‘Not literally, I hope,’ said Jimmy. ‘If he’s as desperate as you imply and then you catch him unawares creeping round your home, who knows how he might react.’ ‘Another reason I need your help, then, isn’t it?’ Christine declared. ‘Or a reason to think of something else?’ ‘I hoped you’d me in this, Jimmy. I thought you’d understand.’ Jimmy stepped over to her and held her by the shoulders, gazing down into her determined scowl. ‘I do. Really, I do! But you’re the one who keeps telling me how determined this bloke is. Listen to yourself, Chrissy. I mean literally listen to yourself. Consider the lengths he’s gone to lever you out of your own home. If he’s capable of all that, what isn’t he capable of?’ Christine turned away, disengaging herself from Jimmy’s grip in the process. ‘Listen, I’m only following your line of thought to its worst-case scenario finale.’ ‘I’m not changing my mind, Jimmy. I need your help convincing O’Sullivan that this place will be empty after midday. Then, when he breaks the law, I’ll be waiting here for him filming the whole thing. And thanks to you, the police will be on their way, too. Whatever trick he’s playing to avoid detection, he can’t interfere with the camera on my phone. That’s how it’s going to work, Jimmy. Like it or not.’ ‘There has to be a safer way, Christine, is all I’m saying.’

‘Well, there’s certainly a riskier way and that’s you leaving me high and dry by myself.’ ‘Listen, I believe you, okay, and I want this sod caught as much as you do. I just think the risks are too high to take this on by ourselves.’ But Christine wasn’t listening. Jimmy was wasting valuable time. It was approaching eleven fifteen and they would both need to leave well before midday. ‘If there was any other way…’ ‘But there is. We can stake the place out from my car. Just call the police the moment you see him entering the house and when they arrive confront him then. He’ll still be caught red-handed.’ ‘But your car sitting out there by itself will be as good as a flashing danger sign. He’ll smell a rat straight away.’ ‘So maybe he isn’t as desperate as you imagine?’ ‘No, he’s desperate all right. When the bait is laid, when he doesn’t suspect, he’ll pounce. And when he does, I’ll be here to catch him in the act!’ ‘But we must be able to find a way to achieve that without jeopardising your personal safety…’ ‘No!’ Christine’s anger was rising. ‘It’s not enough, Jimmy.’ ‘But why?’ Jimmy’s voice was rising too. ‘What difference does it make? You want him caught and the intimidation to stop, don’t you?’ Christine began pacing the room. ‘How can we sit in your car and not be seen with that camera of his?’ ‘We’ll drive off and he’ll think we’ve gone. But we can double back and stake the place out from the pub car park. He’ll never know.’ ‘It’s too far away. And what about all those blasted hoardings?’ ‘We only need to see someone arriving at your house to know it’s him. I might even have a pair of binoculars at home if you want certainty.’

‘I can be certain by being inside the bloody house when it happens, Jimmy!’ ‘But you will be, with two police officers either side of you!’ ‘Yes,’ Christine shouted. ‘Police officers that you’ve called on my signal!’ ‘But why?’ Jimmy’s face was starting to glow with agitation. ‘What’s so important about these four walls anyway?’ Christine stopped pacing and stood shouting into Jimmy’s face. ‘I want to see it happen! I want to be here and see the look on his face when he realises I’ve beaten him. He’s been in here without our invitation. Touching mine and Bill’s things, our clothes, our possessions; our bed, for God’s sake! Can’t you understand, this is personal now!’ ‘He just wants your house, Chrissy! It’s not personal to him, it’s business. What’s so precious about this bloody place, anyway?’ ‘It’s all I have left of Bill! Once that’s gone, they’ll be nothing!’ ‘Good!’ bellowed Jimmy, rocking from foot to foot. ‘Isn’t it time you let go, Christine? Bill’s been gone a whole year. You have to start looking to the future.’ ‘My future is here in this house.’ With Bill, she nearly added. ‘This is your past not your future!’ ‘What it is, Jimmy, is my business. I’ll decide what my future looks like, not you or O’Sullivan or anyone!’ ‘Oh, I think social services might take issue with that.’ Christine’s mouth dropped open, but no words followed. Jimmy looked suddenly tired, miserable and guilty all at once. ‘And what , Chrissy? Have you ever stopped to think about that? We get on, don’t we, have a laugh, trust each other? Especially of late.’ Jimmy took a deep breath. ‘Sometimes it’s like there’s a wall between us.’ Christine felt the unwelcome sting of guilt again. Am I using him? But she had

to be honest about her feelings. She owed him that much at least. ‘It’s not a wall between us, Jimmy. It’s a house.’ They were silent for a few seconds, partly to recover their breath. Christine wondered if Jimmy was thinking the same thing she was. I’m too old for this. When she spoke again it was to say the only thing left to ask. ‘So, will you help me or not?’ Jimmy looked long and hard into her eyes. For a split-second, Christine suspected he might turn on his heel and walk out, never to return. ‘You are one stubborn lady, Christine Money!’ he sighed. Christine allowed herself the tiniest of smiles. ‘So I’ve been told.’ Jimmy slowly shook his head in resignation, but behind the acquiescence was there something else, something darker lurking? If she didn’t know him better, Christine would have called that lurking presence resentment. ‘You only have to do this once,’ she said. ‘Help me catch him out and it’s over. We’ll never see him again and I’ll be free to live the rest of my life in peace.’ As your dearest friend. ‘And if something goes wrong? How do I live the rest of my life in peace if that happens?’ How do I live without you? was the message she read between the lines. Maybe this was a test of friendship that was doomed to fail either way. She felt the bubble of guilt turn into an uncomfortable balloon in the centre of her chest as she said: ‘I need you, Jimmy. It’s that simple.’ The pregnant silence that followed only emphasised the spent emotion of their fiery dispute. Staring into each other’s eyes for what felt like minutes, Christine recognised that this was by far the most intimate moment they had shared to date. She felt sorry for both of them when she realised it was a moment that could never be eclipsed.

The corners of Jimmy’s mouth rose mechanically and there was no warmth in his voice when he finally said: ‘Okay. Tell me again what I have to do?’

Chapter Thirty-One

‘You know why I’m calling you, Tom.’ He had not expected to hear from Shay Connery for a few more days, so this call coming within twenty-four hours obviously meant that Adrian had been given the keys to the bulldozer, so to speak. O’Sullivan had the feeling that bigger wheels than he could ever hope to steer were turning in the direction of 7 Clarence Road. It was inevitable that Connery would shout at him to get out of the way, and O’Sullivan knew that if he did not then those wheels would roll right over him too. ‘I don’t have to spell it out, do I?’ ‘No. I understand.’ Don’t go into work today. Make yourself scarce. Give your men the day off. Play dumb. He was grateful for the warning. Luckily, his ground crew were working elsewhere. His last throw of the dice had been to install a camera across the road from Number Seven. O’Sullivan liked the idea that he could train the camera directly into any window he wanted, effectively follow Christine around from room to room if he chose. Though in retrospect, of course, it was pretty pathetic given the level of willfulness glaring back into the lens. He told Connery about it, as if might make a difference, as if he did not know already. The feebleness of his tactic, however, turned out to be the least of its failings. ‘Very intimidating,’ Connery congratulated him over the phone. ‘But what if she takes a video of your camera blatantly invading her privacy? Have you thought of that? If she complains to anyone and shows them the evidence on her mobile, all nicely dated and timed, how will that help us?’ Damn it! ‘I…’ O’Sullivan began. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I can see where you’re coming from with this. But it’s where it leads that matters.’ ‘Sorry, Shay. I didn’t think it through, I guess.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Connery purred. ‘You’re just a property developer, after all.’ I’ve been expecting a boy to do a man’s job, was O’Sullivan’s interpretation, then. ‘The time has come to hand this over to an expert.’ The master’s dog, Adrian, in other words. As much as he wanted Christine Money’s house demolished and construction to begin at last, he also hoped that Christine’s resolve would crack at the last moment whilst he was still the one pulling the strings. But only this morning he had watched Christine sauntering round her garden, weeding here, tidying up there. She had a radio with her and brought out a cup of tea to sip on the house steps. Not a care in the world, was the message she conveyed. And for whose benefit? His, of course. She knew he was watching her every move through the camera, and short of standing there with her middle finger raised she could not have made her message of defiance and indifference any clearer. ‘I’ll take it down again,’ he groaned into the phone. ‘Now that really would look suspicious.’ Connery’s voice did not betray his true feelings. He must be seriously pissed off by now, after all the second chances he had offered O’Sullivan. But if anything, he sounded bored and annoyed by the property developer’s incompetence. ‘No, let it be. Just keep it pointed away from that house. Things will move quickly from now on.’ ‘But what if she’s already recorded it panning into her living room?’ ‘Adrian will get the phone off her before the ambulance arrives. It’s not a problem.’ For a second O’Sullivan was speechless. Adrian, or whatever is real name was back in Eastern Europe, was probably on his way to the Money household right now. And what was to be his remit when he got there? To sort her out and put her in hospital? At times, his ongoing feud with Christine had felt very personal, as if she were deliberately frustrating him for kicks. But whatever threats he had issued in the privacy of his car, however blue the air had turned back in his office, he had never wished her physical harm. Not really. Yes, he had put undue pressure on her, worried and brow beat her at a time when she was still grieving,

behaved unethically if not illegally. But there was a line he would not cross. He had discovered that last November when his temper and exasperation at Christine’s intransigence got the better of him and the poor woman had fainted in the hall. His attempts to revive her were ruined by that do-gooder postman, who decided that O’Sullivan was some kind of doorstep criminal preying on an old woman, and away he had skulked with the postie’s choice words still ringing in his ears. That was the week Connery had started putting pressure on him to sort ‘the situation’ out before winter turned to spring. Fortunately, Connery had disappeared shortly afterwards, but O’Sullivan knew it could only be a temporary reprieve. Just as well, though, for he knew he needed to give Christine some space before he could resume his former charm offence. In the leadup to Christmas, there were rumours of Connery going into hiding, taking an extended winter holiday in the Caribbean to avoid a gigantic tax bill and even his being incarcerated in South America on drug trafficking offences. O’Sullivan only cared that Connery was off his case. Since his return, however, the pressure to start building on the Clarence Road site had increased tenfold. But the uncrossable line, for O’Sullivan, remained. In that respect, Shay was right: he was only a property developer. Connery was a different beast altogether, a man who lived by his own rule book. As for Adrian, he looked like a man who could barely read road signs. Damn it, Christine, I was trying to help you. O’Sullivan knew his next question was stepping over another sort of line, but he could not stop himself asking it anyway. ‘What are you planning?’ His indiscretion was met with a momentary silence, followed by an ominous laugh. ‘Nothing you need to worry about. You can go back to being a property developer now.’ He thought about Adrian standing over Connery’s shoulder, listening to every word they were saying and smiling lizard-like to his boss. A more likely scenario was that Shay was alone in his office and that Adrian was somewhere out in the community, waiting and watching for ‘the Money woman’ to be alone. Even if Adrian made her life perpetually uncomfortable, unbearable even, O’Sullivan knew from experience just how much pressure the silly old fool could take. Maybe Connery had realised that too and had jumped straight to Plan B.

‘Shay, just promise me…’ he began, but he was wasting his breath. Connery had already cut the call. ‘Just promise me you won’t hurt her,’ he told the reflection in his phone screen. The reflection’s stony silence reminded him how much of any spilled blood would be on his hands too. He dropped the phone on his desk with a thud and rubbed his chin like it was the side of a genie’s lamp. If Christine were in danger, he realised, there might be one last task he needed to perform before he could go back to being anything.

Chapter Thirty-Two

‘So, you understand what you have to do now?’ Christine asked. It was eleven-twenty. She needed Jimmy to leave first. Then she would follow him around eleven-forty, just as she did every Wednesday on her way to the community centre. O’Sullivan must know how long he had before she returned, but she doubted he would make his move immediately. What if she forgot something and returned ten minutes later? No, he would sit on his hands for thirty minutes, to be on the safe side. That was how long she had to get herself back inside the house without being seen, she reasoned. ‘And that’s where you take centre stage, Jimmy.’ ‘You think he’s watching you around the clock?’ Glancing through the main living room window, she could see the thin titanium post to which the CCTV camera was attached. ‘Oh, yes. He’s watching.’ And waiting. ‘Where do you think he is?’ Jimmy frowned. ‘He’ll be close by somewhere in that flash motor of his, no doubt.’ ‘Well let’s just hope he’s not watching the community centre, making sure you’ve gone there as usual.’ That thought had crossed her mind, too. ‘I mean, that would really…’ ‘Jimmy,’ she scowled, opening the front door. ‘It’s time. I’ll leave here myself in twenty minutes. We’ll meet up in the pub car park and wait. Okay?’ ‘And hope he isn’t waiting there either.’ This time Christine just scowled. Jimmy stepped towards the open front door then stopped. ‘Christine, you are sure about this? I mean, you’ll be here alone if he comes in.’ ‘When he comes in!’ Christine opened the door a little wider. ‘And don’t worry.

I’ll be ready for him.’ ‘But…’ ‘Jimmy!’ ‘Okay, okay!’ But still he would not budge. Did she have to push him out the bloody door? What did he want, for pity’s sake, a goodbye kiss? Well, maybe he deserved one, she decided; and leaning forward, she pecked him on the cheek. ‘Thanks for this, Jimmy. It will work.’ ‘And if it doesn’t, I’ll have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life.’ Finally, he walked out, and she was able to shut the door. O’Sullivan would be watching now. Would he wonder why Jimmy was leaving alone? Christine hoped it would wind him up. She owed him that much. Now to prepare. From the corner of her eye she noticed that the camera was still facing her house. She had to pretend that everything was normal, that this was just another regular visit to the lunch club. She headed for the bedroom, opened her wardrobe by mistake and cursed. She was glad the position of the window did not allow O’Sullivan to see that. He would have enjoyed it too much. He might also have wondered why Christine had not swapped everything back again. Whatever he had planned next, that stunt with their clothing was to be his last trick. She was about to close the wardrobe door again when something caught her eye among Bill’s shirts and tros. Usually it was hidden out of sight, but somehow it had ended up in the middle of her rail. Was that deliberate on O’Sullivan’s part? That the garment beneath its transparent plastic cover was a wedding suit was clear. Bill had even left a plastic flower in the lapel. It couldn’t be a coincidence. As she looked closer, she noticed that the plastic zip on the cover had been pulled down a good six inches. Had O’Sullivan laid the suit down on their bed, opened the covering and run his fingers across the material? And by leaving the zipper slightly open, was that his way of letting Christine know he had dishonoured an important artefact from their wedding day? Christine and Bill were married in church. It was a perfect day. Everything ran like clockwork, everyone looked happy and well. Her beloved grandfather,

George was there, grinning and restless as a schoolboy, on what was to be his last big social occasion. Her mother, tense for no other reason than this was her daughter’s wedding and it would be tempting fate to just turn up and enjoy the occasion. Her father, laid back and preoccupied as usual, probably wondering if it might rain later because there hadn’t been time to use the hose on his vegetable plot. But the sky was clear and stayed that way until the sun set over the reception marquee. It might have been better if there had been a shower, though, if the best man fluffed his speech, if the groom stumbled three times over a line in his wedding vows, prompting a stern look from the vicar that made him look more like a heaster. Because a perfect wedding day set up a false precedent for the years ahead. It blinded you to the low points that infected every married life, the money worries, the fallow periods in the bedroom borne of repetition and predictability, the arguments over issues of personal taste (they had not spoken for two days following a row about which colour they should paint the living room), the infidelities… Christine reached out for the zipper but instead of closing it up, she pulled it down still further. She did this delicately, almost seductively, then put her hand through the gap and reached for Bill’s sleeve. The dramas had not ended when the owner of that sleeve had taken leave of the stage, but neither had the love in her heart. ‘This is for both of us,’ she whispered, and gave the sleeve a tug to pull out a slight crease below the elbow. ‘There. Now we’re ready.’ She closed up the transparent cover, closed the wardrobe door and turned to open what should have been Bill’s. Having changed her clothes, she shut that wardrobe door too and looked at her image in the mirrored surface. She no longer dyed her hair, the grey steadily encroaching the naturally brown strands like weeds overtaking a garden. There were lines on her face now that no amount of makeup could fully disguise. Her neck had thinned, and her fingers seemed longer somehow, bonier. But she stood proudly, there was no trace of a tremor anywhere and her eyes shone with good health. In eight years’ time she would be seventy. It sounded a long way off, but didn’t every milestone in life until it was suddenly on top of you? She was confident that so long as she could put this current crisis to bed those years would be kind to her. Would she still be here in eight years’ time? And what might she see when she looked out her bedroom window on that day? For surely someone would have to do something with all the land out there, even if it were someone other than O’Sullivan.

Thinking of him brought her resolve back into focus. Her watch said elevenforty. It was time to act. Jimmy was right about the risk, of course, but she had meant what she had said when describing O’Sullivan’s actions as personal. ‘Bill, this is it,’ she said, smoothing down her skirt. ‘Can you repeat the question?’ came Bill’s familiar voice. ‘No need,’ his wife replied. ‘I already have the answer.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

Despite the sense of urgency pumping through her veins, Christine paused by the front door. Though it was already eleven-forty, she deliberately waited an extra two minutes. There was no danger of her being late to the community center. She only had to walk a few minutes to find Jimmy’s car waiting in the pub car park. It was hard to stand still, though. She wanted to get going, move her plan one step closer to its fruition. But O’Sullivan would be watching her front door like a hawk, and the longer she delayed stepping out the more concerned he would become that she would be staying in today. The thought of him winding himself up was an added bonus. Yes, it was petty, even vindictive, but this was a man who had been a thorn in her side for a whole year now. Let him sweat and squirm. Let him shift the camera to peek in her windows and see if he could detect movement within. That was a sensation she had lived with for months. Okay, he had his frustrations, too, but he had tried to make his problems hers, and for that there could be no sympathy. ‘What’s the time, Bill?’ ‘Eleven-forty-two AM,’ the House announced Bill’s voice. If she waited any longer it might push O’Sullivan too far, make him storm out of wherever he was spying from and give up. Then it would be her who had to wait another twenty-four hours for satisfaction. No, she had to be brave, end this nightmare before it ended her. ‘Let’s do this, girl.’ And twisting the door handle, she stepped out into startling sunshine, making it easier to keep her eyes to the ground and away from the camera towering over her. ‘Here I go, then, Mr O’Sullivan. The place is all yours,’ she laughed with the camera doubtless turning and dipping down to focus on her retreating figure. She ed something had father liked to say. ‘The last laugh is always the biggest.’ Her plan set in motion at last, Christine realised how much she was going to enjoy this. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when she finally confronted him with the sound of police sirens swelling in the background as she did so.

She hurried a little along the pavement, just enough to convince O’Sullivan that she was aware how late she was and attempting to make up for lost time. Christine took a left turn and headed for the pub car park a few minutes further on, with its shoulder high wall and temporary wire fence facing the barren waste ground that had once been Clarence Road. Could a road be called such if it only had one dwelling in it? Jimmy had agreed to park in the corner nearest to the entrance, close to the road and shielded by a three-story block of flats, so as to avoid her having to expose herself unnecessarily walking past that low wall. The CCTV camera was surely mounted high enough to pick her out between the buildings if she did not keep her wits about her. It did not matter that O’Sullivan could no longer watch her making her way through town, but it would matter if he saw her climbing into Jimmy’s car. Resisting the urge to look back over her shoulder, she felt like an opportunistic burglar trying to act casually in broad daylight. Yet more irony. Christine pulled up short. Though he had left her house maybe twenty minutes earlier, there was no sign of Jimmy’s car anywhere. This was not part of the plan, and even if there was a plausible explanation for his absence, it was definitely pouring cold water on her mischievous sense of enjoyment. She had been over the part he was to play in great detail, his role in her drama, until he could recite it back to her verbatim – something that seemed to annoy him far more than it should have, she felt. Even then, his obvious questions and queries over trivial details did not inspire her with confidence until she slammed the front door both on him and her reservations about whether he could pull off his part of the plan. Now this. She walked back to the entrance of the car park and scanned the road in both directions. Surely he hadn’t gone to the community centre, after all? Had he suddenly felt guilty about the wasted food that was being cooked for them both? That would be ridiculous. She had specifically told him that neither of them could risk cancelling their places, lest O’Sullivan got wind of it somehow. ‘Now that is paranoia,’ Jimmy had scoffed. And she had to it it was a little farfetched to believe that O’Sullivan was a master criminal with spies and informants at every corner. But accommodating that possibility in her preparations made her feel more confident. This didn’t. Christine made her way back to the car park, resigned to waiting impatiently. At

least she was out of the camera’s line of sight from Clarence Road. Thank God there was currently a ban on drone flights, as the council argued with local businesses over how many hours a day flights could be made during working hours. That O’Sullivan could have tracked her using a drone would have sabotaged the plan instantly. But another worry quickly slipped into her mind to replace the previous one. Without Jimmy around – and more specifically the back seat of his car - she could not get back into her house. If O’Sullivan was at his monitor screen still, as she had predicted, he would spot her coming a mile off. It would be too much of a risk to take. Once O’Sullivan got wind of the fact that Christine was on to him, her chance would be lost forever. And then what? Back in the car park, she had company, however. A woman in her late fifties had emerged from the rear of the pub and was making a beeline for Christine. It was only then that she realised that the pub was closed, and not just for lunch. It was not just Jimmy’s car that was absent. The whole space was deserted. The windows had not been boarded up as yet, but she noticed a full skip in the opposite corner. The pub had gone bust or maybe the owners had sold up. A horrible thought occurred to her, spoiling her good mood of earlier completely: had O’Sullivan bought this place too? Maybe he intended to demolish the whole town, leaving Christine feeling like Robinson Crusoe. ‘Can I help you, love?’ the woman asked. Christine smiled politely. ‘I’m waiting for a lift.’ At least she looked too old to be a prostitute. The woman looked unconvinced. ‘Well, maybe you could wait out on the road? It’s just that this is private property.’ ‘Sorry,’ Christine began. The woman’s hostility was tangible. Christine was obviously not the only one around here going through a tough time. It would not make any difference to wait by the roadside, of course. All she had to do was take half a dozen steps forward. But that was not what the woman meant. She wanted Christine to sling her hook, and it was only then that she realised how sneaky and agitated she must appear to other people. Maybe she didn’t look too old to be on the game, after all. ‘I thought you were closed,’ she jabbered.

Her former composure had abandoned her completely upon discovering that Jimmy had screwed up at the outset. Maybe the strain she had put him under had provoked another relapse? Here she was cursing his name and he might be lying unconscious in the back of an ambulance. My God, what if he had suffered a turn at the wheel and crashed his car? She listened for a siren’s wail but heard only the unremitting hum of urban traffic. She imagined his body slumped over the steering wheel as his car veered off the road and into a crowd of shoppers on the high street. And it would all be her fault. ‘Not closed,’ the woman scowled. ‘Closed down. For good.’ ‘Oh,’ Christine replied, bewildered by the obvious antagonism aimed in her direction. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. It’s okay, I’ll wait by the road. Sorry to have been a nuisance.’ And she quickly scuttled off in the hope that her apology would be enough to end the exchange. ‘I know you,’ the unfriendly voice said loudly. Christine knew it was best to ignore the comment and kept walking. But the swell of hostility had intensified, and she could feel the other woman’s eyes burning into her back. ‘You’re that woman from Number Seven,’ the voice continued to spit its vitriol. ‘The one who won’t sell up.’ Now Christine felt challenged to respond and her step faltered. ‘We were counting on the redevelopment for new trade. It was our lifeline.’ Christine’s feet finally stopped moving. Back in the days when Bill was still healthy this place had been their local. It was always a bit of a dive, to be honest. The landlord had been desperately looking for someone to buy him out, he said, what with his locals dwindling in numbers and flashier chain pubs opening up in the town centre. Whoever had bought him out, this woman or her husband presumably, they had done so on the basis that the vacant plots would soon be filled with scores of new houses or flats, a ready-made clientele for the old place. ‘The bank had offered us a loan to renovate the building, expand and upgrade. Specialist beers, Sunday lunches, soft lighting and a children’s play area. No jukeboxes or fruit machines. We were going up market. It was our dream, this

place. We hoped it would set us up for retirement, eventually. But it all took too long. We couldn’t hold out for another month, let alone the twelve it would take before people started to move in. In the end we couldn’t even hold on to serve chips to the demolition crew.’ Christine was about to respond when the other woman snarled, ‘All because of you.’ Christine turned to face her critic, intent on defending herself, but when she looked into the woman’s eyes she found that they were running with tears. The loss of Clarence Road’s population alone could not have spelled the end for the pub, or any local business for that matter. No, O’Sullivan’s plans were even grander than she had anticipated. Were there other local streets earmarked for redevelopment after hers? If there were, it seemed like this poor woman had got wind of it and gambled her livelihood on the prospect. The woman took a hitching breath and declared with the last of her pride, ‘So I would appreciate it if you waited off my property. Whilst it’s still my name on the deeds.’ How many other people had her intransigence driven out of business or out of their homes? For the first time she was forced to realise that her obsession with not selling up was as fanatical in its own way as O’Sullivan’s determination to buy her out. Their personal battle of wills had blinkered them both. Christine was so shocked by what had happened that she did not notice the approach of Jimmy’s car until it drew up smoothly alongside her, like a curb crawler. ‘Christine,’ Jimmy called from the open driver’s window. ‘I’m so sorry I’m late. Something’s happened. Get in quick. I’ll explain everything.’

Chapter Thirty-Four

‘Jimmy, what the hell happened?’ He inched the car up the road a little and parked directly in front of the block of flats. ‘I thought I could count on you.’ If her comment sounded accusatory, she was glad. ‘I couldn’t come here straight off, like we planned.’ Like I planned, she couldn’t help thinking. But there were knots in the muscles above his eyebrows that looked as if they would need slashing with a razor to find release. ‘Why not?’ ‘I had to drive away from town initially. Congestion, you know?’ But it had not been particularly heavy at the time she got to the pub car park. Could the traffic have dispersed so quickly? Was this the best his imagination could come up with? ‘So I had to circle around and come back on myself to find the pub. But I would still have been here in plenty of time. It wasn’t a great diversion or anything.’ Jimmy’s face was flushed, his breathing sharp and shallow. He kept gazing up and down the road rather than look directly at her. It was not because he was illegally parked, she decided. ‘Anyway, I’m just coming down South Avenue, on schedule and everything going to plan, and who do you think I find myself driving behind?’ Christine knew immediately who Jimmy was talking about. ‘And?’ ‘And he obviously wasn’t looking at your place through that camera.’ ‘Because he was obviously on his way over to the house, Jimmy.’ Which meant he could be inside their bedroom again right now doing God knew what. ‘No, no. He took a left at the lights. As in, away from Clarence Road.’

Christine experienced a sinking feeling as the realization of what was coming next struck home. ‘So you followed him? For God sake, Jimmy!’ Jimmy ploughed on with his report, however, afraid to lose momentum, like a kid reciting a poem in school assembly. ‘He turned left again and then headed off towards the ring road. If he was going out of town, I realised, we would both be wasting our time. So I carried on tailing him for a while to make sure he really was leaving. What else was I supposed to do?’ She was angry, but she also knew he was right. Most of her anger was directed at O’Sullivan for deviating from the script. The thought of going through all this stress again tomorrow, or her next lunch club date on Friday more likely, was not a welcome one. ‘I’m sorry, Chrissy. As soon as I saw him the ring road I knew it was off. I did a U-turn and got back here as quick as I could. He’s not coming, Chrissy.’ ‘Which direction was he headed?’ It was a pointless question, but she asked it anyway to make sure her voice still worked. Another cavernous forty-eight hours stretched ahead, filled with impatience, frustration and worry – not to mention sleeplessness and a loss of appetite. And to think she had started putting weight back on recently. ‘South. The London-bound carriageway. Why?’ Christine bit her lip, her thought processes working far more sharply than she had any right to expect. Then her eyes widened suddenly. ‘I know exactly where he’s gone. He must have an appointment with his solicitor in Mark’s Tey. He’s probably there already.’ ‘How do you know where his solicitor is?’ ‘The offer letters, ?’ Jimmy’s breathing was back to normal, but he still seemed uncomfortable in his own skin. ‘I guess we can try again tomorrow.’ He said it half-heartedly, as if he already knew what Christine’s response would be. She did not disappoint him.

‘We’ve come this far,’ she began determinedly. ‘He won’t expect me back until three o’clock, at the earliest. He’ll have more than enough time to see that solicitor and then pop into my place before my usual return time.’ ‘Is that likely? I mean, it’s gone midday now. If we assume his meeting is for an hour and it’s another fifteen-minute drive back, that will bring him well inside a two-hour window. It’s a big gamble for him.’ ‘Not really.’ But it depended on what he had planned, she knew. ‘When was the last time I went to the lunch club and didn’t stay till the end?’ ‘True, but a burglar’s worst nightmare is being disturbed.’ ‘Maybe what he’s got planned this time is a quick in-out job.’ It must have taken him quite a while to rearrange the two wardrobes, she conjected. A thought jabbed at her – how had O’Sullivan known she was going shopping after leaving the community centre yesterday? – but she ignored it. ‘But…’ This evergreen obstructiveness of Jimmy’s was becoming tiresome. When would he realise that she meant to see this through to the bitter end? When would he demonstrate to her that he respected her independence? If her devotion to Bill was not a barrier between them, Jimmy’s chauvinism would still have kept them apart. It felt like her soul was being suffocated. ‘Listen, if we leave now we can still get to the community centre before they start serving, make plans to reset the trap on another day instead.’ ‘You’re hungry? Buy a sandwich,’ she scowled. ‘No, no, no,’ Jimmy persisted. ‘Think about it, Chrissy. If you deviate from your usual routine today and then tomorrow, it’s bound to be picked up by the CCTV camera and the House. Coming and going like this will just make you look paranoid. You only get one shot at this, right? Otherwise, you’ll be shooting yourself in both feet.’ True, but unless she could prove that O’Sullivan was behind everything this nightmare would run and run, until finally O’Sullivan got his way and she was forced to sell. Plus, another prolonged period of stress and those suspected

mental health problems of hers would become a reality. Even someone in their thirties might crack under this level of pressure. No, screw her usual routine. ‘That’s a risk I’m willing to take, Jimmy. Today, tomorrow or the next day, O’Sullivan is going to make his move. I know it. And when he does, whatever the House reports will be irrelevant.’ ‘And what if it’s his trap rather than yours? Have you thought of that? What if he never turns up and you sit at home waiting for days, or even weeks until that social worker of yours turns up with a couple of doctors to have you hospitalized as a paranoid case?’ Christine sighed. This was not an argument that had any chance of taking off right now. This move had to happen now. She could feel how empty her fuel tank was already. Any time soon she was going to wake up one morning and find she couldn’t move. ‘Chrissy, where are you going?’ Stepping back out of the enger seat into the road, she opened the rear door and laid down on the back seat, pulling the door shut as she did so. ‘Drive me home, Jimmy. I guarantee he’ll show in the next hour or so.’ Now Jimmy really looked flustered. ‘Why? This is madness, Chrissy. Total madness!’ ‘Just drive, Jimmy. The worst that can happen is we get to run through a dress rehearsal.’ Jimmy’s hands clenched tightly against the steering wheel, the knots in his forehead tighter. ‘Listen, my gut instinct tells me he’s going to show up today.’ She watched his eyes searching for hers in the rearview mirror when all he had to do was turn his neck and look down at her. ‘How can you be so sure, Chrissy?’

Christine hitched her knees up and made herself as comfortable as she could for the short ride home. The time for doubt and indecision had ed, for either emotion could bury her as effectively as the other. ‘Because if he’s even half as pissed at me as I am at him,’ she replied from the back seat. ‘That’s what I’d do.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

The car came to a halt and Jimmy’s voice said, flatly, ‘That’s it. You’re home.’ She sat up too quickly, the blood sloshing around her head like moonshine, making her feel giddy to the point of nauseous. Jimmy had parked round the back of the house, out of sight from O’Sullivan’s mounted camera. Having Jimmy back on script meant she had one less thing to worry about. ‘Okay, you know what to do?’ ‘Sure,’ he replied, but he would not look at her, not even in the rearview mirror. She let herself out of the back of the car, resigned to the prolonged sulk. Before closing the door behind her, she said to the back of his head. ‘I’ll text you. Hopefully, it won’t be too long.’ At least this time he turned his head a little in her direction and gave her the slightest of nods by way of reply. For crying out loud, did men ever truly grow up? ‘Don’t overact, though,’ she advised. ‘Try not to be convincing.’ She sounded like an acting coach. ‘He’ll see through it straight off, otherwise.’ She fished in her handbag for the back-door key and hurried towards the back door itself. As she let herself inside, she caught a flash of Jimmy walking around the corner of the house in search of the front door. She relocked the back door from inside and stood waiting next to the washing machine for the sound of the doorbell ringing. When it did, a few seconds later, she imagined Jimmy going through his act, ringing the bell several times, but not looking at his watch (that would be overcooking it), cupping his hand against a window, before disappearing around the rear of the house and driving away in a cloud of dust. A couple of minutes later she heard his engine start and the car drive away. So far so good. Now all she had to do was get herself up to the spare bedroom and wait. But that would be harder than it sounded, if she were to successfully navigate her way through the house without ing any of the front facing windows. From the utility room to the inner kitchen door was relatively easy, however.

Crossing the kitchen itself was harder, because there was a large window at the opposite end to where the sink was situated that she was usually grateful to because it flooded the kitchen with early morning sunshine. Using her fridge freezer as a shield, Christine got down onto her hands and knees and furtively peeked around the bottom corner to make sure the camera was out of sight. If she couldn’t see her spy in the sky, she realised, it could not see her. She pulled her head back in sharply, the way a child might do having stuck their head out of a train carriage window only to see another train hurtling towards her. The camera itself could not be seen, as she had hoped, but what caused her dramatic withdrawal was not what see saw in front of her, but what ed in the corner of her eye behind her. The sunshine was indeed particularly bright this lunchtime, the beams streaming through her window like solid gold bars. But when her head had briefly emerged into that light, it had immediately cast a round shadow on the kitchen tiles behind her. What was worse was the blob of her shoulders standing out sharply against the white front of her oven. Unless she waited for a cloud to conveniently obscure the sun, there was no way for her to cross the kitchen without casting a telltale shadow. Her earlier presumption came to her aid, however. If she couldn’t see the spy in the sky, it would not be able to see her. Indeed, she ed how the camera had been level with her bedroom window the last time she had looked. If it had moved its position anywhere it would be down to the front door to see who the new visitor was. There was very little chance that a dash across the kitchen would be noticed, in other words. She rested her weight on her arms and prepared to launch herself forward in a stance she had not adopted since her last school sports day, half a century ago. ‘Bloody hell, Bill,’ she half-laughed. ‘If you could see me now.’ ‘Please repeat the question,’ Bill’s voice seemed to boom throughout the house. ‘Shit, Bill! No!’ she cursed, throwing her hand over her mouth a second too late. ‘Please repeat the question.’ ‘Bill, switch to silent mode!’ There was a bleep and the mini crisis was over ten seconds after it had begun. Convincing her heart that all was well again was a different matter, however.

‘Damn it, Christine Money. It’s a camera not a microphone.’ She decided to make use of her racing heart and leapt forward, keeping her shoulders as low as her aching back allowed. In fifty years she had slowed considerably, she found. The shadow cast against the cooker and tiled wall above looked like a ghoul jumping out at her. But a second later it had vanished and the kitchen was behind her. Crouched beneath the staircase, she could see the front door and the door that led through to her living room, slightly ajar. The hall itself was even more brightly lit than the kitchen. There was a long, narrow window set half-way up the stairs. Christine ed how Bill used to moan about the fact that the top section was just too high to reach with a paint brush and how he used to have to set up a complicated arrangement of a stepladder and a plank of wood to finish off his decorating. The lower sill was mercifully high enough for her to crawl beneath, though it made her knees ache to move in such an awkward posture. Getting up the stairs was another link in the chain she intended to loop around O’Sullivan’s neck. On the landing at last, she stopped for breath. The first stage was complete. She was inside her house and no one but Jimmy knew anything about it. O’Sullivan probably wasn’t even watching that carefully, she scolded herself. Where was he now? she wondered. Still in his meeting with the solicitor? Or had Jimmy’s original assumption been the correct one and O’Sullivan was still behind the wheel of his car cruising down through Essex towards the capital? ‘No,’ she said, straightening up with a groan. ‘He’s behind the wheel all right. But he’s coming back. He’s on his way.’ Christine had never been so sure of anything in her life. She checked the mobile phone in the pocket of the raincoat she still wore. Four bars and ninety-three percent battery life. She opened the door to the spare bedroom and slipped inside, leaving the narrowest of gaps through which to hear movement from downstairs. When that movement arrived, she would gently close the door and text Jimmy to call the police, that O’Sullivan was in the building, as predicted, and that her trap could finally be sprung. The waiting was nearly over.

The town’s police force were always bragging about their response times. She had even heard one of them interviewed on local radio recently, his statements a mixture of boasting and heroic promises to protect the community. They wouldn’t want to tarnish their reputation. O’Sullivan might not even come upstairs, she reflected. And even if he did, the spare bedroom would surely be the last room in the house he would enter.

Chapter Thirty-Six

A few minutes after what O’Sullivan assumed would be their last for a while, Connery had phoned back and asked him for the access links to his camera feed. He was in no position to refuse, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask why. What use was the camera to him now anyway? He had been relieved of duty, superseded, made redundant. O’Sullivan could not help but see the irony in Connery wanting to use a device he had previously dismissed as a liability. Maybe he was just jealous that he had not thought of the idea himself. Now O’Sullivan could see the real reason for Connery’s declining his offer to have camera taken down again. What Connery did not realise, of course, was that O’Sullivan could still access the feed himself. True, he could not control the camera without drawing attention to himself, but he could still see what Connery could see. And at eleven o’clock that morning what he saw was a man in his mid-sixties knocking on Christine’s front door and being itted, only to re-emerge about twenty minutes later, followed by the lady of the house herself a further twenty minutes after that. Was this man a love interest, perhaps, a would-be suitor? No, he couldn’t see it that way. It was far too soon. He ed the way Christine had looked at her husband whilst his illness overwhelmed him, the way she talked about him after he had died, her near-miraculous dignity at the crematorium, where the slightest misplaced comment threatened to cut the thin wires holding her up. No, a year was not long enough when love was this strong, he supposed. Not that he knew much about that sort of thing. Married and divorced twice, O’Sullivan had mixed memories of both his ex-partners, but after things started to turn sour on both occasions it was more a relief than anything else when a mutual agreement had been reached to separate. Did he think about these two women with whom he had shared nearly two decades of his life? Sometimes, for sure. Sporadically, he would notice the date of a birthday or anniversary and reminisce, but never for longer than a minute. To do otherwise would be tantamount to ruminating over a car sold too cheaply or a broken watch deemed beyond repair. Shit happened, and when it did you had to fight to retain the little part of yourself left unscathed. Still, there was a part of him that envied Christine’s mourning. He could only guess at what level of happiness a human being must have experienced to be so completely devastated by its ing. But O’Sullivan’s attitude to life was always to look forward, though he did not have any plans to start searching for wife number three. That prospect reminded him of an old joke: What do you call a man who marries for the third time? A slow

learner. But Christine was, he suspected, one of life’s true romantics. Her husband Bill had been the love of her life, her soul mate, and there was a good chance, he now realised, that she would never get over him. A bit like Queen Victoria but with less property. He should have seen it coming, altered his plans for the Clarence Road site to include the presence of Number Seven. But that would have meant making less money, and although he could have lived with that the likes of Shay Connery could not. Though he acknowledged that over the latter part of last year he had been a bastard to Christine Money, it was never because he was a greedy bastard. He was a small fish enticed to follow a shark too far from shore and ended up lost in deeper, darker waters than he was used to. Most piranhas had the sense to stick to rivers. Maybe that was something he and ‘the Money woman’, as Connery called her, had in common. Their needs were essentially simple, uncomplicated; but through no fault of their own they had both found themselves out of their depth. O’Sullivan watched on his computer screen as Connery took over the controls of his camera. As Christine had walked up the road towards town, the camera at first started to track her, then tracked suddenly to the right across the waste ground to a parade of shops in the distance. It began to zoom in on this drab, functional building. A fire escape led up to a balcony on the first floor and leaning against the railing was a heavily built man wearing a leather jacket, despite the day’s warmth. The man reached for something in his jacket pocket and brought it up to his ear. O’Sullivan did not have to see his features clearly to recognise the man as Adrian. Whatever Connery had planned, that plan was happening today. ‘Time is my money,’ Connery had said. ‘And Mrs Money’s time is up.’ But ing what Adrian had said was worse, his casual reference to a drastic Plan B, which his boss had tried to dismiss as something fanciful and unnecessary. No, the so-called Adrian would instead use his skills at ‘exploiting other people’s deepest fears’ to drive this stubborn old woman to a breakdown that would get her itted, and thus set in motion the eventual sale of the house. But how would that change anything? O’Sullivan had said it himself,

‘What am I supposed to do, knock the place down whilst she’s in hospital?’ In or out of a psychiatric ward, Christine Money was still the legal owner of 7 Clarence Road. Indeed, as someone with a psychiatric diagnosis, would she even be able to sell her property? ‘You’ve tried the carrot. Now we’ll use the stick.’ Adrian had not moved as yet. Doubtless the call had come from the watching Connery, and the instruction had been to wait. But for what? Midday arrived and ed. Adrian was no longer talking on his phone. O’Sullivan felt ridiculous. This was no longer his problem. How long did he expect to sit here watching like this? But there was something mesmerizing about that distant figure standing on the balcony, immobile and watchful. It reminded him of a film he had watched as a boy about a giant robot called Klaatu who threatened to destroy humanity unless it mended its ways, the silver skin gleaming as it waited to unleash its terrible intergalactic justice. And when Adrian finally moved, what terrible destruction would follow? Whatever it was, it would have more to do with retribution. A few minutes later he found out. Adrian reached for his mobile again, listened and spoke briefly, then turned to his right and started walking. The camera drew back again slowly, but O’Sullivan could still see Adrian walking along the balcony and down the metal steps of the fire escape. When the view from the camera returned to its original position, he was still able to see Adrian’s figure heading across the waste ground towards the one remaining property on the site. O’Sullivan’s heartbeat rattled in his ears like a defective alarm bell. There was only one way that Connery could get his hands on that house, and that would be to make a fresh offer to whoever was the named beneficiary in Christine’s will. He had been staring the truth in the face this whole time: getting Christine into hospital changed nothing. There never had been a Plan B beyond the man now eating up the ground between a row of shops and Christine’s home, only a Plan A. And the A stood for Adrian. ‘Oh, my God! No!’ O’Sullivan was already rushing out to his car as Adrian’s casual ission of

intent echoed again through his mind: ‘I’ll have to make it look like an accident.’ If the traffic and the lights were kind, he could make it in ten minutes tops. Back in his vacant office, the camera continued to track Adrian’s progress towards Christine’s house on O’Sullivan’s screen, his figure growing in the frame as the distance closed. But at the crossroads where the blue hoardings started – and unseen by the absent O’Sullivan - Adrian suddenly turned to his left, which took him away from Christine’s house. A moment later a car reached the crossroads too and took a right turn into Clarence Road, straight into frame. If O’Sullivan had been watching he would have recognised the car as belonging to the elderly man who had visited the house earlier. Adrian and the car disappeared in opposite directions, but not before the former answered yet another mobile phone call from his boss. O’Sullivan, meanwhile, was stamping down hard on his accelerator and hurtling towards the unlikely role of hero; all the while ignorant that someone else had claimed he was somewhere out of town right then, seeing his solicitor; and, furthermore, that by the time he arrived at the Money household, the scenario that awaited him there would be completely different from what anyone had anticipated.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Christine was beginning to wonder if the best outcome today would be a successful dress rehearsal for the real thing, that Jimmy was right, and O’Sullivan would not try to squeeze in an appearance here if he had to be somewhere else first. Then she heard the approach of a car and held her breath as the engine idled to a stop directly outside. She looked at her phone to see one o’clock approaching. She had anticipated a wait of at least an hour. But if the property developer had been on his way to see his solicitor, as Jimmy reported, he must have practically turned around in Marks Tey and driven straight back again. What could have necessitated such a trip that could not have been achieved with an email or video call? How certain was Jimmy that it was O’Sullivan’s car or even if it were him driving it? Whatever the explanation, O’Sullivan now had plenty of time to accomplish whatever violation he had planned this afternoon unimpeded – or so he thought. She listened for the car door slamming and the front gate opening, the sound of feet marching up the garden path. It couldn’t be anyone else. Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t bother with Clarence Road anymore. She wondered if O’Sullivan’s entry point would be at the front or round the back of the house. It didn’t matter really. What mattered was that initial moment of tres. When she heard that sound – the front door lock grating or maybe the back door through which she had earlier stolen slamming or maybe even a faulty window somewhere sending a breeze rippling through the house – then she would text Jimmy immediately that he needed to call the police. His story, which they had rehearsed in advance, was that in the process of delivering something to Christine’s home, he had observed a stranger acting suspiciously and then entering the property illegally. ‘Just lay it on thick about his size and appearance. That should do the trick.’ She heard a scratching sound coming from the direction of the hall and pushed the bedroom door closed to a finger’s width. So he must have acquired a spare key somehow, but that did not explain why the intruder alert remained silent. There was a further second’s pause and then she heard the front door opening and slamming shut again. The moment had come at last. O’Sullivan was now an uninvited intruder. The trap was sprung.

Christine gradually pushed the door all the way closed, holding the handle down the whole time. When the door would not move any further, she began releasing the handle a few centimetres at a time. It seemed to take an age before that too would move no more. There was no lock, which would have been an added reassurance, but, as she reminded herself, this was the last place O’Sullivan would come. There would be little point in him playing his mind game in a seldom-used spare room, which he would have surely checked out in an earlier visit. Christine held her phone up in front of her face, nearly dropping it in the process, and began typing slowly and deliberately. This was a one-shot opportunity. If she blew it, she knew, O’Sullivan would never chance his arm again. Down below it was as if a ghost had entered the house. You’ve got competition, Bill, she couldn’t help thinking. At last her thumb pushed down on the ‘send’ arrow. he’s in the house Jimmy call the police now Any relief she might have felt sending her S.O.S. was nullified by the sound of O’Sullivan’s feet pounding up the stairs. The surprise almost made her cry out, because there had been nothing for a nearly a minute to forewarn her of what was about to happen. She assumed he was heading back to their bedroom, maybe this time to lay some of Bill’s clothes out on the bed. The drumming of O’Sullivan’s feet stopped on the landing. The door to the main bedroom was directly opposite to that of the spare room. She was safe for the moment. Indeed, the worst thing that could happen would be that he would be finished next door before the cops turned up. Then she would have to rely on fingerprints and defer her moment of triumph, maybe until the whole thing went to court. She let her head fall towards the crack between the door and its frame. For the moment all was silent again. She had left the main bedroom door open. Was he in there now? If he was then he must have tiptoed across the landing to get there. and why would he bother to do that if he thought he was alone?

Part of her mind was screaming at her that something was wrong, but she refused to listen lest she should start screaming herself. Jimmy would be calling the police right now, giving them her address and reporting how he had just seen someone forcing his way into the home of a vulnerable woman. How she hated that expression, but right then she was relying on it to set the cavalry in motion. But they had agreed that, with her phone on silent, it would be okay for him to confirm that the police had indeed been called and were taking the incident seriously. So far, however, Jimmy had not replied. Christine sent off a follow up text: Jimmy? Okay? Was O’Sullivan lying on their bed and having a nap? The sudden ping of a text message alert sent her hand flying upward to cover her mouth. Not her phone, though; O’Sullivan’s. And the tiny sound had come from the other side of the spare room door, as in directly on the other side. Had she made a noise, given away her advantage with the scrape of a shoe heel or the creak of a floorboard? A second later the handle started to turn downwards, moving with the same exaggerated precision which she had employed to close it. She looked around, but of course there was nowhere to hide. The room itself should have been hiding place enough. Over the years the room had been filled up with boxes, bags and unwanted items of furniture, but the only item big enough for an adult, a battered double wardrobe with doors that wouldn’t close together properly, was stuffed full of yet more jumble. She strained her ears but there was nothing to hear, either out on the landing or out in the street. Not even a bank robbery would have brought the police running this quickly. Though she tried to suppress the thought, it looked like she had badly mistimed her ploy. The handle, meanwhile, had turned down as far as it would go, and now the door was inexorably moving inward. In desperation, Christine resent her text to Jimmy, adding the extra line: He knows I’m here! Pls hurry!!! But it was too late. Suddenly, the door burst open and there he was, his eyes fierce with concentration.

Christine’s first attempt at speech failed her. Her relief at seeing a friendly face was as overwhelming as the tension that had preceded it. ‘Jimmy!’ ‘Christine!’ Jimmy exclaimed. ‘It’s O’Sullivan. He’s back in town, but he’s not coming here!’ He stepped forward as if to embrace her, then stopped himself. Christine, though relieved, was confused. ‘Where? How do you know?’ Jimmy stood with his hands on his hips, looking pale and wan. ‘Sorry, Chrissy. I didn’t mean to scare you.’ Christine wasn’t listening, however. Her sense of relief was dissipating, and in its stead came disillusionment. ‘Jimmy, what do you mean, O’Sullivan’s back in town? How do you know he’s not coming here?’ ‘I was parked up, waiting for your message, like we agreed, when his car came round the corner and drove straight past me.’ That was two coincidences within an hour or so of each other, she realised. Something’s wrong. ‘How long ago was this, Jimmy?’ ‘Maybe five minutes. I came straight here.’ ‘But Jimmy, he might still come!’ ‘No, no! You don’t understand. I saw him park. I saw him park and head up the pavement a ways to where these other blokes were standing around chatting.’ ‘Blokes?’ Jimmy was right. She did not understand. ‘What other blokes?’ ‘They talked together for a minute or so, and then they all went inside together.’ ‘Inside? Inside where?’

‘The restaurant. Changs, the Chinese place. He’s having a meal with those guys, Chrissy. Don’t you see? He’s not coming.’ Christine felt her shoulders slump. ‘Damn it.’ ‘I’m sorry, Chrissy, but he really isn’t coming here. Not today anyway.’ O’Sullivan’s presence was still so real in her imagination she could almost smell him. ‘And there’s more,’ Jimmy said, his arms hanging awkwardly by his sides. ‘There is?’ Beyond disappointment lay despair. ‘Let’s go downstairs, Jimmy. I’d forgotten how stuffy this room is.’ But, if anything, it was Jimmy’s presence so close to the main bedroom that unnerved her. There was a very good reason why she had never brought him up here before. And that awkward gesture at the start where he seemed to think she might need affection then changed his mind or lost courage, made her want to head for the stairs immediately. Maybe a hug might have benefitted her had it been an unconditional one. But Jimmy’s abandoned would-be embrace looked less like an offer of comfort and more like hot-blooded opportunism. This was not a place you brought a male friend to. But as she brushed past Jimmy on the way to the landing, she realised that any intimacy between them could never be possible under any circumstances. The sight of her and Bill’s double bed through the open door told her that much instantly. She’d always known this deep down; she had hoped that Jimmy would accept the situation likewise. She could offer him a sound friendship, companionship, but if he were looking for anything more, he would need to start looking elsewhere. There was more than enough drama in her life as it was. In the living room, she practically threw herself into the comforting arms of Bill’s chair, catching the faintest odour of his aftershave, she felt sure. Jimmy followed her and sat on the sofa, his fingers steepled together, as if he had suddenly forgotten what to do with them. Something’s wrong… ‘Go on,’ she sighed. ‘You were saying.’

Jimmy sat forward on the edge of the sofa, reminding her bizarrely of Janice. ‘I got out of the car, walked casually past the restaurant window. I saw him but he didn’t see me, so I was able to get a good long look at his face.’ ‘And?’ Christine’s energy levels sagged radically, like a fat man’s chin. She needed some good news, and she knew Jimmy was not about to oblige her. ‘He looked happy.’ ‘So? Perhaps someone else was paying.’ The cheap joke didn’t cheer her up, either. ‘No, I mean really happy. Over the moon happy,’ Jimmy continued. ‘Like he’d just got the best news of his whole life. Like he’d won the lottery or something. Yes, that’s how he looked, ecstatic.’ Jimmy lowered his voice and frowned. ‘Christine, I think something has happened. Something neither of us has any inkling of; something game-changing.’ ‘Or it could just be that he’s a smarmy bastard who’s enjoying his little game of trying to drive me insane.’ ‘You didn’t see his face.’ ‘I’ve seen him look smarmy plenty of times, Jimmy. Believe me.’ ‘But I’m telling you, Christine, something major has happened to him. Maybe he’s sold all the other property’s on to someone else. Those blokes, for instance. Maybe they were all out celebrating.’ ‘How can you be sure?’ ‘Because I’ve seen that look before, Chrissy.’ ‘Really, where?’ ‘In the mirror.’ He paused a moment to let his reference to his cancer treatment sink home before continuing. ‘Listen, I don’t know what’s happened exactly. All I know is the look I saw on his face,’ Jimmy continued earnestly. ‘It was a look that said, I’ve won. I don’t think he’s coming tomorrow or Friday or any other day, Chrissy.’

Christine looked to her right at the metal pole holding the CCTV camera. No one was watching her house if O’Sullivan was stuffing his face in a restaurant. Yet she could not shake off the sensation that she was still being watched. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy. I just don’t buy it. Maybe he recognised you. Maybe this is just another way to get at me.’ ‘You’re wrong, Christine. I think it’s over. I honestly believe that. And you need to start believing it, too.’ ‘No, no, no! Not yet it isn’t.’ Because deep down inside was a bitterness, a rancour that shocked her. ‘Not by a long way.’ Release would never be enough; she wanted revenge. ‘Christine! Oh, Christine,’ he laughed, ‘He’s gone for good. It’s over. Can’t you see? It really is over.’ He looked searchingly into her eyes, making it impossible for her to look anywhere else. ‘It’s time to start planning for the future, Chrissy. Our future.’

Chapter Thirty-Eight

‘What are you doing, Christine?’ Jimmy asked, derisively, as Christine stood by the window pretending to peek around the edge of the curtain. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? He’s not coming.’ But that was not her major concern right now, any more than Jimmy’s throwaway comment about ‘our future’ was. She continued to stare outside, afraid to make eye with Jimmy lest she somehow reveal her innermost thoughts. The camera was still directed towards her bedroom window. If O’Sullivan was in that restaurant with the boys, as Jimmy had claimed, then he would not be looking through her bedroom window now or anytime soon. Which meant, paradoxically, that he might well be, because Christine knew something that Jimmy did not. ‘The restaurant. Changs, the Chinese place,’ Jimmy had said. But Changs had been forced to close earlier in the month after an impromptu visit from the health inspectors that had made it onto the local news, which fortunately for Christine, Jimmy must have missed. In other words, Jimmy’s was complete fabrication. The question on autorepeat in Christine’s mind was therefore ‘why? ‘You’re really starting to worry me now, Chrissy. What you’re doing simply isn’t rational.’ He stood, too, but made no attempt to approach her. She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. Because the impossibility of anyone eating at Changs was not the big issue either. That in itself could easily be explained away as the result of haste or confusion on Jimmy’s part. There were other restaurants in that part of town, after all. But noticing the flaw in Jimmy’s story made her suspicious and that suspiciousness, in turn, made her recognise the much bigger anomaly in the afternoon’s events. ‘Christine?’ She desperately tried to think of a cunning way to get the answer she needed but a direct question was the only way to find out. She turned, trying to remove any trace of emotion from her face, but in the interim period she noticed that he had halved the distance between them, and she flinched just enough for it to be ed by the man standing opposite. Opening her mouth to speak was like feeling nauseous with food poisoning. She knew everything would have to come out in one brutal surge but the thought of it

terrified her. Jimmy’s expression held a message she could not decipher and realising that was all it took to eject the question from her mouth. ‘How did you get in?’ ‘What?’ Jimmy looked both perplexed and surprised, but there was a flash of something else, too: fear. ‘You’re here, in my house and I didn’t let you in.’ Jimmy made a show of innocent understanding and chuckled, reaching into a pocket to produce a key on small silver chain. ‘Ta-da!’ Christine stared at the key. It looked fairly new, as did the attached chain. ‘Where did you get it?’ Jimmy screwed his face up in a parody of bafflement. ‘Why, Christine, you gave it to me. Last summer. Must have been July or August. You said it was ‘just in case’. You said you’d been feeling off colour. I said it was probably stress, but you insisted I keep it. Don’t you ?’ Of course not. This was yet another challenge to her mental integrity. It was another person trying to poison her mind with self-doubt. But this time was different. She didn’t need to consult an activity log or search through CCTV footage to put this latest accusation to the sword. Because this was not a matter of forgetting or ing. It was a matter of principle. Knowing that Jimmy had stronger feelings that those of a close friend and knowing also that she was years away from being ready for that kind of commitment again, there was simply no way she would have given Jimmy a door key. It was not a matter of cognitive processing or memory retrieval, it was an aspect of her character, a fundamental part of who she was. Christine Money could no more have ed Jimmy a key to her front door than she could have given him her wedding ring. ‘Chrissy,’ Jimmy sighed, slowly shaking his head. ‘There’s a question I need to ask you, too. And I think you already know what it is, don’t you?’ Her mind supplied a hysterical answer: Will you marry me? That he was trying

to change the subject, to deflect her from her line of enquiry, was beyond doubt. But she needed time to decide how best to proceed, so she went along with his ploy. ‘What is it?’ ‘Have you ever considered that the House was right all along?’ The House will take care of it all. Jimmy held up his hands to stay her indignant response. ‘I mean, all these mysteries in your life, losing things, forgetting things, overlooking things. It’s been going on for much longer than you realise. I’ve noticed, and it pains me to say that you worry me.’ ‘But you said…’ ‘I hoped I was wrong. I thought maybe my judgement was biased by my experiences with Joan.’ ‘Joan? But you said that was different.’ Not said, sweetheart, she heard Bill whisper in her head. Lied. ‘Maybe all these aberrations do have something in common, though. But not O’Sullivan.’ He took a step closer. ‘You.’ Christine held his gaze, his words echoing through her tired mind. Not O’Sullivan. Those were his words, and they were one hundred percent true, she realised with a sharp sickening wrench in her guts. But it should have been her saying that of Jimmy, that was the truth. ‘Jimmy?’ Not O’Sullivan. You. ‘Jimmy!’ Jimmy tilted his head to one side and frowned. ‘Oh, my dear Chrissy.’

Christine had already started to back away slowly, but Jimmy stepped across her path in three quick bounds, barring her exit from the living room. There seemed little point in playing dumb. The game was up, the ugly truth scattered between them like the debris from a car crash. Her trap was full, just as she had hoped it would be. But this was not the catch she anticipated. She let the contempt show on her face and was glad that Jimmy noticed it. ‘How?’ The why would have to wait. It was simply too painful to contemplate. And she needed to buy herself some time in which to think and plan how to get out of the mess she had inadvertently created. The catch in the net was not O’Sullivan or Jimmy, it was her. ‘The guy I arranged to install Bill’s voice in the House last summer.’ ‘The technician?’ The knot in her guts continued to twist, but her head felt numb. ‘Right.’ Christine had stopped moving. There was still a narrow gap between Jimmy’s right arm and the doorframe. But surely, I’m not in any danger? she asked herself. Her mind’s reticence on the matter was the clearest answer she could have wished for. There were two outcomes that followed a confession, only one of them was submission. ‘You didn’t need a technician to change the voice setting on your House software. I could have done that bit myself. But all the other stuff, that needed an expertise I lacked.’ ‘You hacked my House,’ she whispered, an anger growing in the pit of her squirming stomach, the pieces of the puzzle dropping heavily like boulders down a mountainside. ‘I did it for us,’ he pleaded. Christine ignored his reply.

‘And who was Janice?’ Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut momentarily before answering. ‘An actress. I hired her.’ ‘You’re behind it all?’ ‘Cost me a fortune. Especially ‘Janice’. She squeezed me for every last penny.’ Deep inside, anger and the question of why ed hands and danced a jig. ‘But for what? Are you in debt? Is your place about to be repossessed?’ Jimmy sniffed dismissively. ‘What, then? Tell me, Jimmy, for God’s sake!’ ‘You know how I feel about you,’ he said sharply. ‘But you keep me hanging on with your rationed kindnesses and your occasional dinners and your begrudging phone conversations.’ She could hear from his voice that Jimmy was getting angry too. ‘But you paid someone to impersonate a social worker. What if they track her down and she talks?’ ‘You seriously think that anyone’s looking? You’re undergoing a mental health assessment, unless you’d forgotten.’ An assessment that you made possible, she thought. Now her anger was really building up a head of steam. ‘And besides, the man who hired Janice went by the name of Tom O’Sullivan. He’s a property developer, she’s been told.’ ‘You’ve set him up, too?’ ‘Of course. A man calling himself O’Sullivan hired the actress and the technician. I needed an alibi.’ The anger and the burning question fused together as one and could be contained

no longer. ‘But why, Jimmy! Why?’ she shouted. ‘Why would you do something like this? What the hell did you expect to happen?’ ‘That you would start to take me seriously as a man. And that was never going to happen with him around. I knew that much.’ ‘Who do you mean by ‘him’?’ she howled, but her mind supplied the answer a split second before Jimmy did. ‘I needed to get rid of Bill, that’s who.’ ‘Jimmy, Bill’s dead!’ Now it was the turn of Jimmy’s anger to explode onto the scene. ‘No, he’s not! He’s still around, can’t you see?’ Jimmy gestured extravagantly, pointing at walls and ceilings, electrical appliances and ornaments. ‘He’s everywhere! I’ve heard you, Christine! I’ve heard the conversations you have with him every day. And all the while hoping that you might start to get better one day.’ ‘You’ve been eavesdropping on my private life?’ And the physical intrusions, too, including the most recent outrage with the wardrobes, of course. ‘You spied on me?’ she exploded. ‘How dare you!’ ‘You don’t understand, Chrissy,’ he implored, taking a step closer to her, his hands opening, palms upward, between them. ‘What’s happening to you isn’t healthy. Getting treatment in hospital is the best thing that can happen to you. To us! Away from this place, away from him, you’ll see things more clearly. Perspective and clarity, those are the interventions we’re talking about here. This isn’t a House, it’s a prison!’ But it was Jimmy who was obsessed. Why hadn’t she seen this coming months ago? She had always considered herself a mature, experienced woman, but this guy’s warped fixation had gone uned for more than a year. ‘So what happens now, Jimmy?’ She kept her voice steady and the terror she felt suppressed.

‘They’ll take you in for a few weeks. I’ll visit you every day. We’ll talk and work this out. Together. I’ll get you out again when everything’s settled, I swear!’ ‘How? Don’t you realise you’ve set something in motion you can’t control?’ ‘I’ll convince them I can take care of you. I’ll say you just need someone to look after you, and you’ll be fine. I’ll promise to look out for you round the clock, and I will, Chrissy! I will!’ This was beyond obsession. This was madness. ‘But you have to play your part, too. You have to convince them that you’ve changed, that you’ve come to with losing Bill and that was the sticking point all along. Pathological grieving, that’s what they call it. Then once the house is sold and demolished…’ Christine’s heart froze. ‘What?’ ‘Yes, can’t you see? That’s your rite of age. Once this place is gone, you’ll be free at last and the future will be ours.’ Now it was Christine’s turn to take a step forward and Jimmy’s to flinch. ‘Don’t you know anything about love?’ ‘It was love that drove me to do what I did.’ There. It was out. The thing she had suspected all along but dismissed out of hand. Yes, she understood, I have used him, and part of this nightmare is my responsibility. It was Jimmy who needed the clarity and the perspective. It was Jimmy who needed psychiatric help. ‘No one could ever love me the way Bill did!’ ‘Is that right?’ ‘Yes! Bill is in these walls. He’s in the pipes and the loft and the void spaces and the cavities. He’s there first thing in the morning when I switch on the kettle and last thing at night when I switch off my bedside light. And yes, if this place gets bulldozed then all that will be gone. But there’ll still be one place he can never

be evicted from,’ she cried, clutching the centre of her chest. ‘In here, Jimmy. In here! What are you going to do about that, hey? Are you going to try demolishing that too?’ Jimmy’s body seemed to deflate, his face contorted by anguish and uncertainty. ‘Chrissy… I… I’m so…’ Jimmy lowered his head, his eyes squeezed tight in emotional torment. His head snapped round and his eyes bulged, however, when the voice of a stranger gave them both the shock of their lives. ‘Now this is a turn up for the books. Very theatrical, I have to say.’ A tall, well-built man stood in the hallway, only a meter from Jimmy’s back. Held confidently in his left hand was a taser. From her position by the window, Christine could only hear his voice. But of his forced entry into the house and his subterfuge in creeping up on them both, she had heard nothing. ‘Who the hell…’ Jimmy began, but Adrian simply spoke right over him. ‘Do you know the bit I liked best, Mrs Money?’ he asked, stepping back and gesturing them both to come through into the hall with a flick of his taser. ‘The bit where you said, “Don’t you realise you’ve set something in motion you can’t control?” Well. This is the moment you get to find out just how right you are.’

Chapter Thirty-Nine

‘Where are you taking us?’ Jimmy demanded as heroically as he could manage. But the fact that he had both hands held up above his head ruined the overall effect. ‘If you’ve come expecting to find my life’s savings, you’ve come to the wrong house,’ added Christine, hoping that if she acted like this was just a run of the mill burglary that might be what it turned out to be. But generally speaking, burglars did not know their victim’s name or appear so nonchalant about revealing what they looked like. Adrian chuckled. ‘Maybe I’ll have better luck with one of the neighbours afterwards, then.’ He was still waving them towards the stairs with the taser. ‘What the hell is this about if it isn’t about money?’ Christine asked. ‘Oh, but it is about money,’ Adrian smiled. ‘It’s about the fortune you’ve been sitting on for the past year.’ I’ve staked my entire fortune on this project. ‘O’Sullivan sent you?’ Who else? Christine looked over at Jimmy, the man who had only seconds before confessed to being the architect of this dark ruse, not the property developer. Her confusion was so strong she could almost taste it. ‘You should have accepted his offer when you still had that option, Christine. Now, there’s only me, and I’m in the taking not the offering business,’ and he nodded with his head for them to start climbing the stairs. Christine pulled up sharp on the bottom step and folded her arms across her chest. ‘And what if we refuse?’ Adrian raised the taser and whilst he stared deeply into Christine’s eyes he pointed the weapon at the centre of Jimmy’s chest.

‘I hope lover boy here doesn’t have a heart condition.’ Jimmy’s voice this time was firm and brave. ‘No, actually I’ve got cancer.’ Adrian’s eyes flicked towards his face briefly. ‘So don’t think you can scare me.’ Adrian sneered. ‘As long as it’s not contagious.’ ‘After what I’ve been through with chemotherapy and biopsies and nausea and chronic pain, your little stun gun looks a bit limp from where I’m standing. Boy.’ And to emphasise the point he stepped between Adrian and Christine. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ Adrian growled. ‘Get upstairs. Now!’ ‘Jimmy, maybe we should…’ ‘No, Chrissy. Didn’t you hear what he said? Don’t you get it? He’s come here to kill you.’ Christine’s eyes widened in disbelief, but they were still locked on Adrian’s. The unblinking coldness she found there made her realise that it was true. ‘There’s a will. The house goes to my brother-in-law. You’ll have to start all over again trying to get him to sell up.’ ‘If you hadn’t noticed, this place is in the middle of an urban wasteland. No one in their right mind would want to live here.’ Christine ignored the obvious jibe. ‘He has a growing family. Maybe this place will be just what he’s looking for.’ Adrian narrowed his eyes and a strange smile tickled the corner of his mouth. ‘An hour from now there won’t be a house for anyone to move into…Chrissy.’ Christine held her ground and her nerve. O’Sullivan had failed to intimidate her. Janice had failed to intimidate her. So, too, it turned out, had Jimmy. This was her house and whilst it still stood there was no way she would be dictated to like this. The only problem with her defiance was that this stranger had come with a very different tactic than sending her solicitor’s letters. Without Jimmy standing

there between them, would she be dead already? That was the worst part, in some ways, the fact that Jimmy the villain was again playing the role of hero. Despite his confession, he had still wangled himself a way to impress her. As if on cue, Jimmy stepped close to Adrian’s face, the end of the taser touching his shirt, and screamed: ‘Christine, run!’ ‘Don’t move!’ Adrian shouted, trying and failing to get a clear line of sight at Christine over Jimmy’s shoulder. Jimmy, meanwhile, grabbed the big man’s arm and pushed it upward and to the right.’ ‘Go, Christine!’ Jimmy barked. ‘It’s a taser. He’s only got one shot.’ ‘But…’ Adrian slowly pushed his arm back down and to the left. Jimmy fought the movement, but the bigger man’s strength made the outcome inevitable. Jimmy could only buy her time. ‘It’s your only chance!’ and he half turned his head to add, ‘I owe you this. You know I do.’ Adrian still hadn’t discharged the taser, even though Christine was now back in his sights. Christine, meanwhile, had gingerly lifted her feet up to the second step. ‘Chrissy, I’m sorry. Okay? There’s so much more I have to tell you, to make you understand. What you know – what you think you know – is only half the story.’ Christine was speechless. Deep down, part of her wanted this to be true, that Jimmy had not been responsible for everything she had had to endure, that O’Sullivan was still at least partly to blame. But such wishful thinking was useless, and potentially dangerous. The scenario she found herself in still might not make any sense, but for the moment it didn’t need to. What counted was survival. When she raised her right foot in the direction of the next step up, however, Adrian caught the movement and sprang into action. There was no way Jimmy’s reflexes could have been that sharp. He must have anticipated that this would be the big man’s next move, that he would try to knock Jimmy out of the way and then use the taser on the retreating Christine.

Adrian brought his clenched left fist hurtling down towards the top of Jimmy’s skull, like a club, whilst keeping aim with the taser in his right. Jimmy caught the blow with both hands with inches to spare. Somewhere in that tangle of hands she had heard a sharp crack, however, and she doubted it was one of the stranger’s bones that was the culprit. Jimmy used his own weaker left arm to knock the taser arm away from Christine again, whilst still holding onto Adrian’s left arm, preventing the big man from istering a second club-like blow that would surely have knocked Jimmy out. ‘Go, Christine! Go!’ he screamed. Buying her more time really was the best she could have hoped for from Jimmy, but that time was measured in seconds, especially if Jimmy had a broken wrist. She owed him the courtesy of trying to take advantage of his heroism. She could curse and berate him later - if there was a later. Snorting like a bolting mare, she turned and let the soles of her shoes attack the staircase. From behind her she heard rather than saw the struggles of her onetime friend turned betrayer and now, inexplicably, would-be protector. Adrian tried to pull his right hand away but Jimmy would not be defeated so easily, his feet lifting off the carpet as he hung on like a failed hot air balloonist, a wounded cry escaping his lips as the pressure darted through his broken wrist. Seeing the old woman getting away, Adrian lifted Jimmy’s body a little higher and then brought his knee up sharply towards the older man’s groin. Jimmy saw the blow coming, twisting his pelvis away at the last second. Adrian’s knee still made extreme impact with Jimmy’s thigh, dead-legging him in a fresh burst of agony. Though he tried to continue his resistance, Jimmy felt his wrists weakening and his hands opening. A second later and Adrian was away and taking the stairs two at a time. Jimmy sunk to the ground rolling from side to side with a frozen scream trapped in his petrified lungs. Instinctively, he made a grab with his good hand and was surprised to find his fingers pulling back of the big man’s tro cuff. Adrian stumbled forward just as we was about to discharge the taser. He grunted, kicked away Jimmy’s hand and resumed his pursuit. Christine, meanwhile, had, much to her own surprise, reached the landing. The

only room with a lock on the door was the bathroom straight ahead. Her chest hurt and the sound of her blood pounding in her ears drowned out the bellow of Adrian charging towards her back. If she had heard him, she might have faltered in terror. As it was, she was inside the bathroom as Adrian began to sprint across the landing, his right hand taking aim once more with the taser. Christine slammed the door behind her and turned the lock in the nick of time. When Adrian’s body hit the outer side of the door, the whole frame shuddered and a sharper crack than that of Jimmy’s wrist filled the room in which Christine had found an interim sanctuary. There was the briefest of pauses, then Adrian began a wholesale assault on the bathroom door, using what sounded like first his right boot, then his shoulder, then his whole body. He was a big man. He would be inside the room in seconds rather than minutes, she understood. She hoped Jimmy was not too badly injured. If he had any sense he would be calling for help, as he should have done earlier. Had he done that, the police might be rolling up outside right now. She searched for her own mobile phone in her pocket but it wasn’t there. She must have dropped it. She looked around the room for something to use as a weapon, but even if there had been something hard or sharp that she could use, the treser held the advantage in of age, strength, height, weight, reaction time. Damn it, even his teeth looked superior. Suddenly she felt very old and feeble. The door, meanwhile, was coming loose from its hinges. Adrian had returned to kicking at the door with his size eleven boots. The bathroom window was maybe big enough to squeeze through but outside was a vertical drop onto a concrete path. There was no escape, no way to call for help, no way to fight back. Her situation looked as hopeless now as it had downstairs. What a spectacular way to end her home assessment. Presumably, once she, like Jimmy, was unconscious this thug would set up some form of explosion, something catastrophic that would not allow the House time to react. It had to be sudden and devastating. A basic fire would never work because the House would activate the sprinkler system after the temperature reached a certain point or the smoke particles were detected. Similarly, he could not use the gas taps as a way to instigate an ‘accident’ either, because the House would simply cut the supply. Christine knew all about that, even if she had denied vehemently that it had happened. The House seemed to be able to respond to

most emergencies with an on-the-spot response. But the big man had been very confident in his prediction of there not being a house to inherit. If only she could have set the alarm off herself, but the bathroom ceiling was white and smooth when she glanced up. The nearest smoke detector was out on the landing ceiling – on his side. There was a tremendous crack and the door shuddered inward momentarily before popping back home again, both hinges making a complaining screech in the process. If there were still any neighbours, of course, they would surely have become suspicious by now. But the only witnesses around here were dust devils and scraps of stray plastic. ‘Come out of there!’ Adrian roared. A few more kicks and the door would jump forward and not return, she knew. ‘Bloody hell, Bill! Where are you when I need you?’ The House, however, was still on silent mode and there was no reply. Then an idea leapt into her mind with such clarity that it was difficult not to believe that someone had manually inserted it there.

Chapter Forty

‘Bill!’ she hissed as loudly as she dared. ‘Open the front door.’ The hammering on the bedroom door was sustained and unrelenting. She tried again a little more loudly, listening intently for the confirmatory bleep between the splintering cracks stabbing into her ears. ‘Bill, switch to voice mode. Is the front door open or closed now?’ ‘Switching to voice mode. The front door is open.’ Judging by the rhythmic pounding on the door, her would-be assassin had not heard their conversation. ‘Bill, close the front door again.’ She heard the door bang and felt the vibrations spread up through the floor. ‘Front door closed.’ The man on the other side of the door stopped pounding. There had to be a draft in the house somewhere, invading the house via a window left open perhaps. But no, she had been so careful of late to make sure everything was secure every time she left the house. The doors were designed to close slowly and quietly, so unless the back door was wide open too, there would not be a strong enough draft to push the front door home so violently. Whatever the cause, the effect on her uninvited guest was exactly what she had hoped for: the reticence of the uncertain. A few seconds later she heard tense feet treading cautiously across the landing, presumably so their owner could peer down the stairs. Christine opened her mouth to scream for help, hoping that her raised voice would panic him further. But of course when there was no response it would also tell him that he and his victims were still alone. She ed those nights when she had listened to those phantom dripping taps and chose a different strategy, accordingly. By keeping quiet, she let the silence pray on the big man’s nerves and doubt to cloud his judgement. She allowed herself a moment’s satisfaction at having turned the tables so easily. Whether it would ultimately save her neck, however, was another matter. She could imagine what was going through his mind. Like dripping taps, doors did not just slam themselves.

A second later she heard one of the top steps creak as someone put their weight down gingerly on it. He was creeping downstairs to investigate. Good. Keeping her voice to a level barely above a whisper and placing herself as close to a microphone stud as she could, she said, ‘Bill, close the kitchen door.’ She strained her ears to hear the door tongue click as the kitchen door closed but she heard nothing to break the silence. Which is bad, she told herself. Very bad. She would have to try again, only this time speak to Bill a little more loudly. Then what her senses had just told her finally ed in her mind. The renewed silence throughout the house could mean only one thing: the big man had stopped on the stairs. He wasn’t going down any further. Did that mean he had heard her speaking to Bill? She looked over at the considerably widened gap between the door and its frame. The next blow to the wood would be decisive. What good was this tactic if all it bought her was a stay of execution? Still, the silence persisted. What was he waiting for? And where was Jimmy? Unconscious, or had he left the house to raise the alarm? She hoped he was alive, but only so she could kill him later. Shit, what if the big man had stealthily remounted the stairs and was preparing himself for a renewed assault on the door that very second? He’d enjoy that, too, making his victim cry out in terror. Less than ten seconds later she heard new movement at last, but mercifully it came from the bottom of the stairs not the landing. He had not changed his mind, after all. She heard a noise that sounded vaguely mechanical and could only assume it was the kitchen door being opened manually. Not knowing how else to gauge her next move, Christine counted to ten and tried to keep her mouth directly over the microphone stud. The big man would surely be standing in the kitchen itself by now. Three, two, one… In a slightly louder voice she ordered, ‘Bill! Shut the kitchen door!’ This time she did hear the kitchen door click shut. The was a roar of indignation from directly below, followed by the stampeding of feet across the kitchen and the squeal of a handle being wrenched downward. ‘Bill! Open the front door!’ she rasped at the sound of the kitchen door being

swept open and sent crashing into the wall. The timing was perfect, a gift of fortune that had been lacking in her life of late. She heard the big man run through the hall and out onto the front step, pursuing an imaginary foe. When he saw there was no one there he would doubtless turn and re-enter the house. The opportunity was gilt-edged but tiny. She had only a single second in which to act. ‘Bill! Shut the front door! Now!’ This time the crash of the front door slamming shut was followed by a shout and a tirade of cursing from outside, then by the pounding of a fist on wood. Now she had bought herself some serious time, but she still had to act swiftly if it was to be of any benefit to her. Any second now, she told herself as she unlocked the bathroom door, he’s going to realise that he’s already broken into the house once and re-enter it the same way. Was that where the draft had come from earlier? He certainly didn’t have a key, otherwise he would have simply let himself back in again. Pulling on the door handle, the upper door hinge, which was halfway to popping loose from the frame, screeched the way a dog does when you tread on its tail. The pounding and swearing from outside had ceased. Which could only mean one thing: her window of opportunity was already closing. The door opened by thirty degrees then jammed, accompanied by an even louder hinge screech – the sound of a dog having its tail cut off. Thankfully, there was room enough for her to squeeze through. Once out on the landing she struggled to push the bathroom door closed again and re-locked it, this time from the outside. When the big man returned he would have no reason to question whether Christine was still hiding inside. Her only chance would be to wait for the bathroom door to yield to force and make a bolt for it from her hiding place in the main bedroom whilst the big man searched fruitlessly inside the empty bathroom. What she would do after that was a bridge she could cross only when the tide came in. The sound of boots pounding back up the staircase came sooner than she had anticipated. She flung herself back against the wall of her bedroom, the landing visible through a slither of a gap in the door jam. She caught something flash across it, and for a moment she thought the assailant had out-thought her. But

immediately afterwards the thumping and kicking on the bathroom door resumed. Once he was inside, Christine would slip out across the landing and taking the stairs two a time, make a bolt for the front door, which Bill would obediently open for her. But the noise from across the landing had ceased abruptly again. What now? she wondered. Had the door yielded suddenly, allowing him to sneak inside silently? If so, her one chance of escape was slipping through her fingers. Then she heard as reassuring a sound as she could have wished for: a car door opening and then slamming shut. The big man must have heard the car pulling up in between his blows to the bathroom door. And better still, this new sound was followed by that of running feet towards her front door. The bell started to ring immediately, over and over. On the landing all was still. It was like a replay of her earlier trick. Only this time, it had nothing to do with her. Whoever you are, try the back! she screamed in her mind. Go round the back! But the spaces between each ring of the bell were lengthening. Her white knight was getting saddle sore already. If this white knight got back into their car and drove away, he would be out of sight by the time Christine was down the stairs and out in front of the house, presuming she could even get that far now. The big man was still out of the landing, of course. The timing was all wrong. If only there was a way to let the visitor in without giving her position away. But that, she realised, was now inevitable. Her options were reduced to just one, her final roll of the dice. ‘Bill,’ she spoke up boldly, ‘open the front door.’ As the front door swept inward, Christine caught movement through the gap in the doorframe. Squinting through the narrow gap, she found herself looking eye to eye with the man who obviously wanted to kill her. But he didn’t move, instead he leaned forward a little and let a malicious grin tug at the muscles around his eyes. ‘Christine?’ a familiar voice called from down in the hall. ‘Christine Money, are you there?’ The grin broadened. ‘Up here, O’Sullivan.’

‘Jesus, Adrian, this bloke’s bleeding. What the fuck have you done to him?’ replied O’Sullivan. ‘He did it to himself. Silly sod.’ Christine thought about trying to slam her bedroom door shut, but without a lock what would be the point? And besides, with Jimmy out for the count, it was now two against one. ‘We’re up here, O’Sullivan. Come and the party.’ Christine heard feet on the stairs, approaching fast. ‘This is crazy,’ O’Sullivan complained, but all Adrian’s attention was taken up by his cornered prey. ‘You started this, mister property developer,’ Adrian whispered through the gap, allowing Christine to taste the sourness on his breath. ‘It looks like you’ll get to finish it, after all.’

Chapter Forty-One

There had to be a better word than confused to describe her feelings. Baffled? Disconcerted? Mystified? It was all those things and more. She stepped out from behind her bedroom door. There seemed little point in resisting, not now there were two younger men pitted against her. When Jimmy made his confession, she had automatically assumed that O’Sullivan had been innocent all along. Now here he was, standing next to this man called Adrian, averting his eyes, still very much in the equation. It was evident from their confrontation at the bottom of the stairs that Jimmy and Adrian did not know one another; so if the big man was working for someone other than O’Sullivan, who was it? The same someone that O’Sullivan worked for too or a rival? What the hell have I got myself involved in here? ‘In answer to your question, O’Sullivan, that old fart down there is our stay-outof-goal card,’ said Adrian. She could see O’Sullivan on the landing now. Back-stabbing little weasel. In it up to his neck right till the end. But Adrian was surprised to see him, that much was clear. If his attempts to persuade Christine to sell her house had all been legitimate ones, why had he now put himself in the centre of a crime scene? She tried to hear something of Jimmy downstairs, ragged breathing or moaning, but the only sounds were on the landing in front of her. Her head throbbed and the landing seemed to sway a little beneath her feet. At least three different men had confessed one way or another to trying to get her out of her home. Was the house built over the entrance to a diamond mine? No, confused was far too small a word to encapsulate her state of mind. ‘Not very subtle this, is it?’ O’Sullivan scoffed. ‘I thought your boss said you were adept at exploiting people’s deepest fears. This is just strong-arm thuggery.’ ‘Well, I guess the Boss’s patience finally snapped.’ Adrian gestured with his taser. ‘Come away from that doorway, Mrs Money. I don’t want to have to hurt you any more than I need to.’ Christine took two steps forward, her brain working overtime to think of a way out. But it didn’t look like there was one. O’Sullivan saw her and immediately broke eye .

‘They were having a right lovers’ shouting match when I walked in,’ Adrian tuttutted. ‘If I’d waited long enough they might have killed each other and saved me a job.’ This time O’Sullivan did allow his eyes to flick towards Christine’s, if only briefly. ‘You’re going to kill both of them?’ Adrian puffed out his chest. ‘Sure, why not?’ ‘Won’t it look suspicious if they find him here too?’ ‘No one will bother sifting through the ashes, believe me. Mrs. Money lives alone and has mental problems. I doubt anyone will suspect foul play, do you?’ ‘You know about the assessment?’ Christine asked, incredulous, her dry mouth making her words grate and splutter. Adrian ignored her. ‘So my money is on forthcoming events being dismissed as a tragic accident. Nothing more sinister than that. Accidental death, will be the verdict. And all the focus will be on who thought it was a good idea to conduct a mental health assessment at home given the risks involved. Heads will roll, is my guess.’ Poor Donna, thought Christine. If only she knew what was coming her way... ‘What about the House?’ O’Sullivan asked, again flicking his eyes briefly to Christine’s. Was he trying to communicate something to her? ‘It’s not just going to stand by idly watching as you blow the place up.’ And not just the bricks and mortar, but Bill, too. His memories, his belongings, his voice… ‘There’s ways and means, believe me. I’ve been in this game a long time.’ ‘And what game is that?’

‘The getting a job done game.’ O’Sullivan slowly nodded his head knowingly. ‘Insurance jobs, right?’ Adrian replied with a slow nod of his own. ‘Faulty wiring. Unexplained conflagrations. Burst valves.’ ‘You’ve got the idea, O’Sullivan,’ Adrian smiled. ‘I could make Adam eating his apple from the Tree of Life look like an accident.’ But what the hell could he have in mind that would level the place and incinerate everything inside without the House having time to intervene? He must have brought something with him and left it outside somewhere. ‘No one will suspect a thing, trust me,’ Adrian continued. ‘And they certainly won’t find our fingerprints, O’Sullivan, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ ‘But the sale of the plot? It will still take time. There’ll be a lot of legal hoops to jump through before whoever inherits it is in a position to sell it on.’ ‘True, but we have means to speed these things up.’ Adrian waved the taser at Christine thoughtfully. ‘Six months from now this whole area will begin the transformation into something that will make you, me and the Boss very rich indeed.’ ‘You’re part of this?’ Christine spat at O’Sullivan at last. For the first time since his arrival, O’Sullivan turned his head towards her fully and held her glare. ‘Not this, no. You have to believe me,’ O’Sullivan beseeched her. ‘I tried to persuade you the only way I knew how. I never thought things would go this far.’ ‘But you’re still standing here aren’t you?’ ‘Not to be part of it,’ he said, and again she thought she saw something in his eyes that tried to convey some message tacitly. She felt the warm tickle of hope behind her cold lips, like the flame of a cigarette lighter dancing beneath her

fingertips. ‘Nice speech, O’Sullivan, but you’re involved whether you want to be or not,’ Adrian interjected. ‘So, do you want to do it yourself or what?’ ‘What?’ O’Sullivan turned Adrian’s way, sounding genuinely horrified. ‘Oh, come on. Don’t sound so surprised.’ ‘You’re asking me whether I want to…’ ‘Sure, why not? After all the hassle she’s caused you, I imagine you’d probably enjoy it. No one will ever know it was strangulation, not unless you damage the cartilage in her trachea. Squeeze slowly, never compress abruptly, that’s the trick. Just like firing a gun.’ The blood drained from O’Sullivan’s face. ‘I didn’t come here for that.’ ‘No?’ Adrian began. ‘Honestly, you Irishmen, what use are you to anyone?’ When his eyes met Christine’s again, there could be no doubt that O’Sullivan was somehow on her side. Get ready, his look seemed to say. She tensed herself, ready to react fast if the opportunity arose. ‘You’ll never get away with it.’ ‘Why do so many victims of crime say that?’ Adrian shook his head sadly. ‘It’s such a cliché.’ Christine turned her apparent anger at O’Sullivan. She was playing a role now, she realised. Her survival depended on putting in an Oscar-winning performance. Whatever O’Sullivan had planned, getting Adrian to drop his guard was essential. ‘So why did you come here, O’Sullivan?’ Christine asked dolefully. ‘I think it’s pretty obvious how much you hate me.’ O’Sullivan opened his mouth to reply but the big man cut him off. ‘Actually, that’s a good question,’ Adrian mused, raising an eyebrow, his height

and build dwarfing that of the property developer. ‘If it wasn’t to get in on the action yourself?’ Damn it! The bluff had failed, Christine could see. Adrian was still one hundred per cent in control. O’Sullivan straightened his spine, his eyes locked on to the bigger man’s, all thoughts of distraction and subterfuge abandoned. ‘I came here to stop you.’ Adrian smiled and asked contemptuously, ‘And how exactly were you planning to do that, little man?’ Here it comes, a voice in Christine’s mind hissed. ‘Why, with a taser, of course.’ Adrian frowned. ‘What do you…’ O’Sullivan’s lunge for Adrian’s stun gun was quicker than should have been possible for a man his age, but it still wasn’t quite quick enough. Adrian wrenched his arm back and upward out of reach, and then quickly back down again, so that the heel of his hand connected hard with O’Sullivan’s crown – just as he had done to Jimmy. The taser, meanwhile, was still in the big man’s hand and ready for discharge. ‘Bastard!’ howled O’Sullivan, slumping to the floor. Christine, meanwhile, was already on the move, making her own spirited lunge for the stairs and the front door beyond. Adrian saw her futile dash for freedom, and with a grin took aim. Christine waited to feel the two barbed probes skewer into her back, followed by a devastating surge of electricity, but instead all she heard was a howl of pain. Despite her instincts to escape, she could not help looking around to see O’Sullivan with his teeth sunk into Adrian’s left Achilles’ tendon. He reached down and started punching O’Sullivan’s head immediately with both fists, and Christine knew she had barely a minute’s grace to play with. Poor Donna. If only she knew… The words leapt into her mind and she knew immediately what they signified: deliverance.

‘Bill,’ she screamed. ‘Open all the doors! Close all the curtains! Switch on all the lights!’ The stairs swept up past her feet like an escalator and she almost fell. Above her she heard the crack of knuckle on chin, followed by a grunt and the rumble of boots across the landing. She reached the bottom step and had to jump over Jimmy’s inert form. O’Sullivan was right. Jimmy was bleeding badly, though not heavily and she saw his chest rise and fall as she ed. ‘Bill, put the radio and the television on!’ She headed for the kitchen and the utility area beyond. That outer door had a key in the lock she had not used for years. Getting it free wasted precious seconds, but not enough that she could not shut herself in the utility room, re-inset the key and turn it. Adrian’s considerable bulk hammered against it a second later, the sound of daytime television and easy-listening music droning in the background. ‘You’re going to run out of doors soon!’ Adrian bellowed as he began kicking in the barrier between them. ‘Bill, switch all the lights off again.’ Thud! The first kick landed just below the lock plate. ‘Bill, turn the television and the radio to maximum volume.’ Thud! ‘Bill, flush all the toilets,’ she had to shout. Thud! ‘Bill, preheat the oven to two hundred and fifty degrees.’ Thud! ‘Bill, switch all the lights on again.’ Crack! ‘Bill, start running me a bath.’

Snap! The door flew inward, and a red-faced Adrian stood breathing heavily in the doorway. ‘Bill, run the washing machine on a cold cycle.’ ‘What the hell are you doing, you silly cow?’ Adrian asked, shaking his head as he slowly approached her. Christine could not stop a smile spreading across her face. ‘Bill, turn all the lights back off again!’ ‘I should have let them cart you off.’ ‘That’s right, you stupid ape! Because they’re watching my every move night and day.’ Adrian pulled up sharp, his eyes widening. ‘Didn’t you know? I’m being assessed.’ ‘You cunning old bitch!’ ‘Bill, turn the washing machine off and start the drier.’ Adrian raised a fist above his head, and Christine cowered, awaiting a blow that would surely knock her out cold. Instead she saw a pair of arms snake around Adrian’s waist at high speed and something slam hard into the small of his back, knocking him forward onto his knees. ‘There’s one thing every Mick is good for, you racist fucker!’ a bleeding O’Sullivan roared. ‘A good old All-Ireland rugby tackle!’ On a shelf she saw a box of old kitchen implements and made a grab for the biggest object inside. Adrian tried to get back to his feet but Christine hit him so hard on the back of the head with the rolling pin that she heard the wood split. Adrian slumped forward with a cry of pain, lost his balance totally and fell forward onto his face.

Christine, meanwhile, was heading for the door, a handful of O’Sullivan’s shirt in her fist. ‘Come on, move it!’ The two of them lurched and staggered towards freedom, praying that Adrian would take minutes rather than seconds to recover. ‘Bill,’ she cried as she led O’Sullivan across the hall. ‘Shut the front door behind me!’ Outside, she searched the road beyond her front gate more in desperation than genuine expectation; but much to her amazement a car spun round the corner, heading her way at top speed, the wheels on one side virtually disappearing beneath the chassis, as if the vehicle might overturn at any second. O’Sullivan, meanwhile, had collapsed, his usually spotless white shirt torn and stained with blood, sweat and dirt. Christine turned back to stare at her closed front door. If Adrian had any sense he would be running across the open ground behind the house now, his head throbbing like a lighthouse beam. The hurtling car had already halved the distance between Christine and salvation, its gunning engine filling her skull like a hangover headache. O’Sullivan, meanwhile, looked desperately unwell, his chameleon face having changed from ashen to scarlet to custard yellow. Sweat poured down his neck, just like it had on his visit last August, and his eyes kept sliding upward in their sockets. ‘I couldn’t let them do it, Mrs. Money,’ he moaned, barely coherently. ‘I just couldn’t…’ His knees buckled completely and his body seemed to be melting rapidly into the ground, his eyes now half-closed. Feeling suddenly nauseous, Christine felt herself sliding down too. The momentum was irresistible, though she kept an ear out for her front door to open and the sound of boots to rumble in her direction. Could she really have survived? This was an ending, she realised, though whether a good or a bad one, of course, depended on who was behind the wheel of the approaching car. The screech of rubber on tarmac and a voice she thought she ought to recognise crying out, ‘Christine!’ were the final sounds from the outside world prior to her head hitting the ground.

With an effort she associated more with lifting heavy furniture, Christine Money raised her right eyelid just enough to confirm that her front door was resolutely shut. Reassured, she finally let herself fall down a long darkening shaft, like tumbling through clouds at sunset. The House had taken care of it all for the last time.

Chapter Forty-Two

When the doorbell rang, Christine sighed, and memories of that first visit from ‘Janice’ in March came flooding back. But this home visit was scheduled, and Donna had hinted that they could start to become less frequent after today. Christine was no longer being formally assessed, of course. The visits were more an acknowledgement of the stress she had endured over a period of months, Donna explained. She appreciated the . Though the dramatic climax of her crisis was a good three weeks behind her, she recognised there was still a way to go before she could describe herself as being back to normal. Opening the front door, her expression was disconcertingly vacant and her eyes were locked to the ground. ‘Christine, everything okay?’ Donna’s smile wavered. She looked up, then, and laughed, realising what conclusions others must have come to over that same expression these past few months; not to mention her nervous flitting from place to place, her wide and watchful bird-like eyes searching constantly for danger when she was out and about. ‘I was just weighing up my next move in thwarting the conspiracy against me.’ ‘Nothing out of the ordinary, then?’ Donna’s smile reignited. ‘Come in, Donna.’ Christine led her through to the living room, where a tray of tea and biscuits was already waiting. ‘Here we are again,’ Donna smiled. ‘Any news?’ It was her usual first question but not one she could put off. Even when the answer was predictably disappointing, it stopped the tension from building up inside her if she got it out quickly. ‘Nothing. Whoever Adrian is or was he has disappeared completely. I shudder to think what would have happened if those two friends of yours hadn’t been around to help out.’ Christine sat down quickly. The seismic revelations may have been behind her,

but aftershocks were inevitable. ‘At least this time we have witnesses,’ Christine replied, pouring tea into the first cup. It was still hard to think of either Jimmy or Tom O’Sullivan as comrades. ‘You know there really is an Adrian out there somewhere, not just in my imagination.’ Christine poured and they both picked up their steaming teacups. ‘So, do you think there might be a connection between this Adrian chap and the Janice character?’ Christine was fairly sure that Donna had not yet made up her mind whether the bogus social worker existed or not. Hence her use of the term ‘the Janice character’. Obviously, she believed the testimonies of O’Sullivan and Jimmy in regard to Adrian and the damage inside the house clearly showed evidence of both a break-in and a physical struggle. But if anyone in health or social care had any residual doubts over her mental health, no one would dare articulate them after what Christine had gone through. She decided to steer the conversation a few degrees south. ‘It’s still a worry thinking he might come back, to be honest. I still find myself re-checking door and window locks.’ ‘It’s been nearly a month, Christine. I don’t think you have anything to worry about now. His cover is blown. Whatever crazy scam he had in mind for you is being applied to some other isolated citizen. That’s what worries me. It’s what worries the police, too.’ Christine was relieved to hear Donna refer to a crazy scam and not a crazy citizen. ‘Those are lovely.’ Donna was staring at the huge bunch of flowers sitting in a vase on the windowsill. ‘Aren’t they. They’re from Mr O’Sullivan.’ The display was so large it had nearly toppled her biggest vase. Even now, a lot of the weight was resting against the windowpane.

O’Sullivan’s role in her rescue was beyond doubt. But there were other awkward questions that remained unanswered. O’Sullivan’s arrival on the scene at such a crucial moment was easily explained by his CCTV camera. But how had he anticipated Adrian’s immediate intentions without being party to them? Had he known she was hiding inside, or was that just a coincidence? She didn’t know whether to be angry at him for getting mixed up with thugs or grateful that he had turned up in the nick of time. That he had saved her was the reason she had not mentioned to the police how O’Sullivan and Adrian clearly knew each other on sight and that they shared a shadowy mutual employer, ‘The Boss’. It might have proved a fruitful line of enquiry for the police, but it would have dragged O’Sullivan through the mire and potentially put his safety at risk from whatever criminal organisation Adrian worked for. As her grandmother had been fond of saying, if you want sleeping dogs to lie, you lie down first. ‘The neighbours will start talking,’ Christine chuckled, noticing that the water in the vase needed replenishing already. ‘Or they would if I had any.’ She could not bring herself to see O’Sullivan as a villain. True, he had been pushy, insensitive, domineering and rude in his pursuit of Number Seven Clarence Road, but most of the more heinous acts had been perpetrated by someone she had counted as her friend, Jimmy. It would take her a long time to get over that shock. She took another sip from her cup. ‘I hear Mr O’Sullivan is back at work.’ ‘Yes, apparently,’ Donna confirmed, sipping her tea.’ In fact, Christine had seen him with a group of building contractors and architects earlier in the week, studying a large drawing and pointing in several directions at once. Whatever they had planned was going to go up around her, after all. ‘He’s made of solid stuff.’ ‘Ex-rugby professionals usually are.’ Donna looked at her thoughtfully, then asked, ‘And what about your friend, Jimmy?’ What about him, indeed.

When Donna and a social work colleague had arrived on the scene and roused her back to consciousness, Christine’s first instinct was to search out her betrayer, not through some sentimental sense of loyalty but because of his promise to tell her everything. Knowing the full extent of his treachery was more important to her than her spinning head, thudding heartbeat and tidal nausea. He was still at the bottom of the stairs where Adrian had left him. Despite his injuries – concussion, three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a sprained knee – he was able to respond to her insistent questioning whilst they waited for an ambulance. Donna and her colleague were too engrossed with urgent phone calls to overhear Christine and Jimmy’s whispering. What he told her, not always coherently and through a growing haze of pain, took her by surprise. Their friendship was damaged beyond repair, true, but at least because of what he had disclosed to her at the bottom of her staircase allowed her the possibility of forgiveness. Jimmy would be in big trouble with the police if she disclosed how his manipulation of the House was the foundation upon which all the other criminal acts were built. It seemed impossible that she could ever look at him again, let alone renew any kind of friendship. But he was a cancer patient, isolated through loss and plagued by the spectre of remission. Pain, grief and terror might have driven some men to do even worse. Despite everything, she just could not bring herself to hate him. ‘They say he’s made a full recovery,’ Donna added. ‘Why don’t you give him a call sometime?’ Donna knew there was something Christine had not told her about her relationship with Jimmy, but Christine did not believe availing her of those secrets would benefit anyone, living or dead. ‘I will soon, I’m sure,’ she replied evasively. ‘I suppose I’m afraid seeing Jimmy again will bring it all back,’ she added. But what she was really afraid of was thinking about what he had told her...

<>

Before she died, before she got sick, Jimmy’s wife, Joan had had a fling - a liaison, as she described it. It was nothing serious, just a bit of fun with someone who worked in one of the offices where she temped occasionally. She enjoyed her ‘harmless moments of fun’, maintaining that it kept their marriage fresh and exciting. Jimmy always chose to believe her when she promised that her latest indiscretion would be her last. He swallowed the lie because he loved her more than he loved himself, he said. But each time he swallowed that peculiar brand of poison, a little part of him died. This particular man was not the first, Jimmy itted, nor the last. He was happily married himself. Afterwards, her lover had barely spoken another word to her and when she awoke the next morning he was long gone. Joan told him all this because she too felt guilty the next day – the only time she had, indeed - for this man had not been like her other occasional lovers. He was not some random good-looking stranger. This man was someone Jimmy knew personally. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Christine had begged of him as the ambulance whine echoed across the waste ground towards them. ‘What has this got to do with me?’ ‘I could have confronted him about what had happened, but as you can see, I’m not much of a tough guy,’ Jimmy winced as a rib jabbed into him somewhere beneath the skin. ‘I worked with the guy, you see. Eventually I moved on and we lost touch for a while. When I bumped into him again years later, I pretended to still be his buddy, pretended that I didn’t know that he’d slept with my wife. I didn’t have any plan for revenge or anything like that. But when he got sick, I could suddenly see an opportunity for some sort of justice, at least.’ ‘This doesn’t make any sense, Jimmy,’ she complained, exasperated and exhausted as the ambulance skidded to a halt outside. ‘What has this man got to do with me?’ Jimmy coughed and there was blood in his mouth. He looked deeply into her eyes and said, ‘Would it make sense if I told you that the man’s name was Bill?’

<>

‘Christine?’ Donna said, shaking her back into the present with her concerned tone. ‘Sorry, I was away with the fairies.’ ‘Oh, don’t say that, Christine,’ Donna laughed. ‘Not with a bloody social worker in the room.’ ‘A bloody good social worker,’ Christine corrected. ‘Anyway, I’ve spoken to my line manager.’ Donna became serious again. ‘She said it would be next to impossible to assess you after the trauma you’ve been through. But the House has to stay, I’m afraid.’ Christine felt no bitterness towards the collection of sensors, monitors, wires and processors that made up the House. ‘It’s not a problem, really. I’ve got nothing to hide. And besides, if the House had not responded to all the lights and appliances going on and off that day I might not even be here.’ Christine’s laughter trailed away as she became aware of the social worker’s poker face. ‘Well, that certainly raised the alarm back in the office. But I was on my way by then, anyway.’ Christine felt a cool shadow fall across her shoulders, the exact opposite of the warmth that had heralded the return of Bill’s spirit the night she went to the cinema. She was glad to be sitting down. An aftershock approached. ‘Oh, really? How come?’ ‘The text you sent me.’ Text? ‘I never texted you.’ Her mobile phone had been lost during her flight from an enraged Adrian.

‘Yes, wait a second. I’ll show you.’ Donna fished out her mobile phone and after a few seconds of scrolling, ed the phone over to Christine. ‘See?’ Christine stared at the message on screen, and heard the falling shadow crackling in her ear as it turned to ice: He knows I’m here! Pls hurry!!! ‘I just didn’t like the tone of the message. It’s hard to explain,’ Donna said. In the midst of her confusion and danger, she must have selected the wrong recipient for the message. The message had been meant for Jimmy, of course. ‘You sounded genuinely desperate.’ Jimmy and O’Sullivan had bought her time, but it was the lady of the house who had saved her own skin by doing something a doddery old fool would do in a confused state. It was the one aberration she could not argue with. ‘Sometimes you just have to trust your instincts, I guess,’ said Donna. Christine handed the phone back to her social worker with a wry smile. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Sometimes you do.’

Chapter Forty-Three

As she tried to close the damaged door to the spare bedroom that night, Christine thought she could smell the faintest trace of Bill’s aftershave. That door would need replacing, not just rehanging. The bathroom door, too. There were blood stains on the carpet and dents in the front door. The utility room door was a right-off, too. All those jobs would need paying for with money she did not have. Some things never changed, it seemed. But it was still home - her home - and that much was priceless. Looking out onto the landing, dimly lit by the soft bedroom light spilling out through the doorway, Christine was dismayed to see that her silhouette was the only company available. How she wished Bill could still be standing there, hugging the shadows or waiting dutifully on the stairs just out of sight. What she had felt at the time was a genuine presence were simply hallucinations brought on by stress, hypervigilance and insomnia. Sometimes being able to explain everything brought only doubt for reward. A tear welled in the corner of her eye. She blinked it away and for a split second she thought she detected the sound of something moving in the dark mouth of the stairwell. Who was it that wrote, Love is merely a madness? she frowned. Shakespeare or Mark Twain, probably. They seemed to hold a monopoly on everything quotable between them. If she ed correctly, the next line even mentioned something about a dark house, too. There were times when she had feared for her sanity, but now her nightmare was over she found the prospect of mental integrity too much to bear all at once. The first anniversary of Bill’s death had ed last week. When it arrived, the day felt like any other, but she did not get dressed until two o’clock in the afternoon and ate nothing but marmalade. ‘Bill?’ she whispered into the darkness. The House was set to silent mode, but not indefinitely. Having kept secret her use of Bill’s voice for the House, Christine decided to keep using it for just a little while longer. Maybe until the Fall or even New Year? When the Spring flowers bloomed again, she decided, it would be time to draw a line in the sand and move on. Two years seemed a reasonable period for grieving, given how much she had loved her man. ‘Bill, are you there?’

Christine squeezed her eyes tightly until the tear fell at last and rolled down her cheek. Of all the men who had tried to ruin and rescue her, it was Bill she wanted to see on a big white horse. She ed his silhouette in the empty cinema, the warmth in her shoulders from his invisible massage, his body being cut in two by a car on her way to Jimmy’s house. His role in the drama of the last month or so seemed incidental, almost inconsequential. Or was it? For she could not suppress the idea that maybe it was Bill that had caused that text to end up on Donna’s phone. He would have if he could, somehow. That her love for him was reciprocated, was never in doubt. ‘If you got the chance,’ she said. ‘Would you marry me again?’ The stairs were silent now, freed from the disturbing influence of her imagination. But she heard something dripping somewhere. The bathroom, of course. Where else? This time there was no fear in her heart, only joy. She made her way back out onto the landing, pushed open the damaged bathroom door and switched on the light with her finger. The last thing she wanted was a digital bleep ruining their moment together. Inside, the hot tap had obviously been running earlier, though of course she had heard nothing of it. The mirror above the basin was steamed over, the vapour starting to condensate on the chrome taps and drip down towards the plughole. Of all the tricks Jimmy had played on her, this was the one she could not explain, the one that if she ever confronted him over, he would stare back at her blankly and shake his head. ‘I doubt a hallucination could do that,’ she murmured. As she came level with the clouded mirror, she could see letters cut through the steam in a script familiar to her from their marriage certificate, their mortgage agreement and a lifetime of Christmas, birthday and anniversary cards. It seemed strange that a person’s signature could outlive them. But then their love could, so why not? ‘I can’t talk right now, Bill. I’m so tired. Just answer me one question, though.’ It was the question to the answer already staring her in the face, the letters still refusing to disappear as the steam dissipated, like some clever trick in a magic show.

‘Will you still be here for me in the morning?’ In her dreams and memories. And not just watching but watching over. Or could there still be more? No, to wish for more would be unhealthy, pathological. But keeping that flame alive in her heart would be more than enough, she now realised. Were these the thoughts of a madwoman, or those of a woman still madly in love? The choice was hers. ‘Will you, then, Bill?’ In the pipes and the loft, the void spaces and wall cavities, a benign, unseen presence lodged, made of memories, emotions, understanding and respect. And reaching out, she used her index finger to trace the shape of each letter still visible on the cold, clear glass of the mirror, whispering the word aloud, as if it were a prayer or a pledge. Or maybe it was the best of them both. ‘Always…’

Other Books by Gary Kittle

IF LOOKS COULD KILL

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About this Author

Gary Kittle is the author of ten eBooks. He was twice shortlisted for the Essex Book Festival Short Story Competition and his play 'Walking Through Wire' was staged (and filmed) in London in 2014. Many of his shorter screenplays have been filmed by Film Colchester and DT Film Productions. 'Data Protection', written by Gary for Dan Allen Films, was shortlisted for the Sci-fi London 48 Hour Film Competition. He has won the 1000 Word Challenge with 'The Uncertainty Principle', and twice been shortlisted, finishing runner-up with 'Kismet'. He was also runner-up in the Storgy Halloween Short Story Competition with 'The Gag Reflex'. Gary is now Script Consultant for DT Films. He is also the author of a serial horror novel, ‘A Town Called Benny’, with episodes published fortnightly. His latest collection of dark fiction short stories, ‘Dark Hearts’ was published on Halloween 2019. The published first series of ‘A Town Called Benny: The Beholders’ is out now on KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited. The second series, free to subscribers, begins in the Spring.

Gary lives and writes in Wivenhoe, Essex, and strongly suspects that given his frantic writing schedule, he has developed the ability to travel through time.

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