Husband Material (London Calling #2)(20)

As inconspicuously as, well, as three people who didn’t know much about being sneaky trying to sneak into a public building with massive windows, we dashed inside. Bridge grabbed a copy of one of those magazines with stories like My Husband Murdered My Dog…But Then He Left Me for My Sister from an end display and held it over her face.

“What are you doing?” I asked in the quietest voice I could manage while still making myself heard past the couple buying Diet Coke next to me.

She peered around the corner of the magazine. “Well, I don’t want to be recognised.”

“You’re Tom’s fiancée, Bridge. I’m pretty sure he knows what you look like.”

“Watch out.” Mel ducked behind a precariously balanced pile of four-quid tubs of Cadbury Roses. “Somebody’s coming.”

The somebody turned out to be a man buying one bottle of milk, three teenagers buying nothing, and somebody whose evening plans I didn’t want to speculate about, who was carrying a basket of scouring pads, cling film, and chocolate.

“There.” Bridge pointed. And she was, in her defence, completely right. It was Tom, looking extremely calm and inconspicuous, swiping a few essential items through the self-checkout.

The three of us moved into flanking positions, but since he was a professional spy and we weren’t, by the time we’d got into our flanking positions, he’d already vanished again.

We pursued him into the street where Bridge spotted him again, walking up College Road past the Costa Coffee. We almost managed to kid ourselves he hadn’t seen us on account of our amazingly effective spying techniques, but then he turned sharply into Harrow-on-the-Hill station with the air of someone who knew exactly how to find a crowd when he had to.

“He’s escaping,” cried Bridge. “My fiancé’s escaping.”

She broke into a run, shedding a shoe as she went. I retrieved her shoe and followed. Melanie followed me. And then, annihilating the last remnants of our subtlety, Priya’s truck pulled over and began kerb-crawling along beside us.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, only mildly hysterically, as Priya rolled down the window.

“What do you mean what am I doing? We’re following Tom.”

“Yeah, but”—I was rapidly running out of breath—“discreetly.”

“Mate, Bridge is pelting through London with one shoe on, and I’m driving a giant black truck. Discreet was never an option.”

“Okay, but we still need to get him.”

Priya kept driving. “Fine. I’ll just ditch my truck here in this pedestrian crossing.”

The door opened and Liz stumbled out, realising slightly too late that slow for a motorised vehicle was unreasonably fast for a human being. “Come on.” She made a beckoning noise to James Royce-Royce who was unbuckling Baby J’s car seat.

“Be very careful,” he admonished us as he scooted across the truck and passed Baby J to Mel, who had joined us in the walk-slowly-next-to-a-truck-a-thon. “James would have kittens if he knew I’d passed our little boy out of a moving vehicle.”

After Baby J was safely transferred and then, once James Royce-Royce was on the pavement, safely transferred back, we dashed up the station steps to follow Bridge. Or at least Mel and I dashed. James Royce-Royce followed as quickly as he could, given his embabyment, and Liz kept a vicarly pace beside him.

Inside, we’d just hit rush-hour crowds, and I could barely tell where one face began and another ended. But then I wasn’t Bridge and hadn’t developed her highly attuned Tom senses. She saw him swiping his way through a ticket barrier and dashed after him, scrambling over the gates rather than stopping to find her card—and drawing the attention of a Transport for London guard who immediately set off after her. Which left me with two choices: either hang back with an air of supportive dignity or kick off a ludicrous Benny Hill chase through a crowded Tube station.

Benny won.

Tom was just ducking behind a pillar, talking urgently into his phone while Bridge—minus both shoes now—was sprinting to catch up with him and the guard was sprinting to catch up with her and the rest of us were, well, honestly, most of us weren’t in the mood to sprint but we were at least jogging lightly to keep pace.

“Tom!” said Bridge.

“Bridge?” said Tom.

“Gotcha!” said the Transport for London guard.

Bridget turned around. “You haven’t got me. I haven’t done anything.”

“You jumped the barrier, miss.”

She gave him a defiant look. “Yes, but I’m not getting on the train.”

“That doesn’t make a difference.”

Maybe having a barrister boyfriend had gone to my head. “I think it does,” I panted. “The crime is fare dodging, but if you don’t go anywhere, there’s no fare to dodge.”

This did not endear me to the Transport for London guard. “Who works here, me or you?”

By now, Bridge’s army of wedding guests had arrived and surrounded Tom, wearing expressions of varying betrayal and exhaustion. Except for Baby J who was, y’know, a baby which meant he looked like all babies always look: grumpy and a bit squashed.

Apparently resigned to being caught, Tom put his phone down and said, “Sorry. She’s my fiancée—”