Our House(47)

I became aware that I was blinking, over and over, a tic that was hard to control.

‘Are your eyes all right, Bram?’ Fi asked.

‘Fine, just a bit of grit.’ I recovered my cool. ‘You know . . . No, now might not be the right time . . .’

‘For what? Tell me.’

‘Just a suggestion, but I was reading a thing in the Guardian about families going car-free and I wondered if that might be something we could do. Get the boys involved, appeal to their inner eco warrior?’

She looked as surprised as any sentient human would to hear Bram Lawson, no stranger to Top Gear and hardly a soul-searcher regarding his carbon footprint, speaking in this way. ‘Are you serious?’ she said ‘You’ve always driven. I can’t imagine you without a car.’

‘We all have to try new things now and again,’ I said.





25


‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:36:31

Toby texted on the Saturday morning:

- Let me guess, you’ve googled me and discovered I don’t exist? You think I must be a serial killer with an assumed identity?

I smiled.

- Not quite.

- I’m just a social media refusenik. You’re lucky to get this text.

- You’re lucky I’m replying.





There was a companionable silence, during which I grew steadily more aware of the beat of my own pulse. It was no coincidence that he’d waited till the weekend to make contact. I’d explained my unusual living arrangements, that this was my time at the flat.

Free later? I asked, before he could.

At your command, he answered.


Bram, Word document

Hell-bent though I was on eliminating Mike from my consciousness, I found myself outmanoeuvred yet again when, the Monday after our meeting in the Swan, a replacement phone, this one a Sony, was delivered by hand to my office. There was a charger attached, but no packaging, no envelope, no note.

‘The guy said he saw you leave it charging in the pub just now,’ Nerina on reception told me. ‘He must have followed you back. Wasn’t that nice of him? I do like a good deed, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ I agreed. What I don’t like is a psychotic stalker, I thought. (A lesser gripe: it was good of him to give the impression I’d been in the pub at midday on a Monday rather than at the meeting with a local minor injuries clinic marked in my diary and duly attended.) I took the phone reluctantly and, as if in response to my touch, a message notification lit up the screen:

- Uh oh, looks like someone’s getting her memory back . . .

I read the news update right there, in reception, my bag of samples at my feet:

Road rage caused Silver Road crash, says victim

A victim of the Silver Road collision on 16 September has told police that the incident was caused by a reckless overtaking manoeuvre that may have been the result of road rage.

‘From what the victim remembers, a black hatchback was accelerating wildly past a third car, which was travelling well within the speed limit, and mistimed the manoeuvre, forcing her Fiat off the road and causing serious injury to her and her daughter,’ said Detective Sergeant Joanne McGowan.

Until now, the victim has been too unwell to give police her account of events. Her daughter is still being treated in intensive care at Croydon Hospital for life-threatening injuries and is believed to have undergone multiple surgeries.

‘We are very keen to speak to the driver of this third car, thought to be a white saloon, and work together to establish the identity of the speeding driver,’ DS McGowan continued.

The victim’s account confirms that of the owner of the house where the collision occurred, who saw a black VW or Audi turning off Silver Road soon after.

The victim’s husband has offered a ￡10,000 reward for information leading to a breakthrough in the investigation.





I swore under my breath, ignoring Nerina’s curious gaze. It defied belief: the police might have been mouthing Mike’s own lines, so well did they serve his cause. The bastard hadn’t let me overtake, that was what caused the collision, but, no, in the official account I was reckless and he blameless. And what were the chances that his car’s brand had eluded recognition, while mine had not? A white saloon: was that all she’d noticed?

Once again, I consoled myself that it was in my interests for him to escape the attention of the police; thanks to the evidence he’d collected against me, he’d be even more dangerous in their interview room than he was in his harassment of me now. Far worse was the fact that the car was no longer dark-coloured, but definitively black – and a hatchback.

Any thoughts? a text prompted.

I did not reply immediately. There was enough time before I left for an early afternoon client visit in Surrey to find an anonymous local shop and buy an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone. I knew better now than to trust that any phone supplied by Mike came free of invisible weaponry to be used against me. I’d ditch it in the flat later.

I texted him in the car on the way to the client. In a week heavy with external meetings, a new intern had been charged with chauffeuring me, less convenient than it might have been had he not also shadowed me to the meetings themselves, forcing me to reach for a level of professionalism I was fairly sure I would never produce again in my lifetime. (What did it matter if a hospital or clinic repeated its order of cervical collars? Doubled it or cancelled it? I was going down here.)