by Lucy Dawson
My hands are shaking as I fumble with the door handle on my side, and we all simultaneously climb out.
I look around me anxiously as they begin rummaging in their bags for money, but there is nothing but row after row of neatly parked cars.
No movement at all.
He is nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We’re seated at our table and the others are listening to a waiter trying to remember the specials while I attempt to calm down. He’s not here. It was him, but he’s not here now. I have to steady myself…
There is a delighted ‘Hel-lo!’ behind me, making me jump wildly, as we all turn to see Lou standing there, a huge smile over her face. ‘The birthday girl in person – what a treat!’ As I get to my feet automatically, she gives me an enormous hug.
‘What are you doing here?’ I gasp, giving Alice a brief, horrified glance over Lou’s shoulder, but she is staring studiously at the table, unable to meet my eye.
‘We arrived a bit too early for our hotel check-in, so we thought we’d come back out for a cheeky lunch first. Got to make the most of the in-laws having the girls for the night!’ She turns to my sisters and Mum. ‘This is our first weekend away together in I don’t like to tell you how long!’
I can practically hear Alice thinking: ‘Three years?’
‘I was just paying while Rich is in the loo, when I looked up and saw you all! Such a lovely surprise! Can I get you all a bottle of something to get you started?’ She turns to the waiter. ‘Some champagne for the ladies, please.’ He nods and scuttles off.
Rich is going to appear any moment now. This can’t be happening. My request that he keep Lou away from the wedding is obviously not panning out.
‘No, it’s absolutely my treat!’ Lou holds her hand up firmly at Mum’s polite insistence that she will get it. ‘Sophie’s the first of our gang to hit the big four-oh! Flying the flag for the rest of us, eh, Soph? So what have you got planned for this afternoon?’ Lou gets out her purse as the waiter returns with a bottle and five glasses. ‘Lots of lovely girly fun, I hope. I haven’t told Rich, but I actually still have to get something to wear. It’s so shameful, but I realized everything I’ve got, this one’ – she nods at me, smiling – ‘has seen. And I’ve been so manic recently, I literally haven’t had five seconds to get to the shops.’ I watch Mum’s eyes narrow, and she sits back in her chair. ‘So I’m hoping it won’t be the old adage, “You can never find something when you’re looking for it.” No, not for me, thank you.’ She stops the waiter, who is about to fill the fifth glass. ‘Oh, all right, just a taster, then. Well, here’s to the birthday girl!’ She takes the glass and gives me a knowing smile. ‘May this be a day you remember for ever…’
I ignore her heavy-with-intent meaning and go to take a mouthful of the champagne, remembering at the last moment that I probably ought not to, what with my potential head injury, and needing to keep a crystal-clear head. As Lou’s not looking – busily knocking hers back – I surreptitiously place the glass down untouched.
Imogen blinks. ‘Why aren’t you drinking?’
‘She’s hung over, that’s all,’ Alice says quickly.
‘It’s never stopped her before,’ Imogen says suspiciously. Her eyes widen suddenly. ‘Oh my God! You’re not… pregnant? Is THAT why you’ve been so pukey all morning?’
Lou’s mouth falls open.
‘No!’ I say immediately. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Alice is right, I had a bit too much last night.’
Lou looks stunned. ‘Wow!’ she exclaims, after a moment’s pause. ‘How incredibly exciting!’
Great. Now she’s going to be hurt and pissed off that I haven’t told her about this mythical pregnancy…
‘Look at me,’ I begin. ‘I am not—’ But further denials die on my lips as I see Rich appear at the back of the room, casually casting around for Lou. He glances over, does a double take, and just for a spilt second I see the horror on his face as he clocks the situation, before he manages to smile, wave and make his way between the tables towards us.
‘Hi, Sophie.’ He takes his place alongside Lou and gives me an odd little wave. ‘Happy birthday! Hello, I’m Richard, Lou’s husband.’ He turns politely to my sisters and mother. ‘I see the celebrations have started. Quite right, too!’ He gives a jolly, over-loud laugh.
‘Yes, sorry, we really ought to leave you to it,’ Lou says, gathering herself. ‘Standing here cluttering up the place like we haven’t got better things to do. Good news, darling–’ she turns briefly to Richard – ‘we’re going dress shopping now.’
‘Oh, excellent,’ he says heartily.
‘I knew you’d be pleased.’ Lou turns back to the rest of us. ‘I’ll be coming out of a changing room in a bit, and regardless of whether I’m wearing a bin bag or not, he’ll tell me it looks wonderful. I never know if that’s a good thing or not.’
There’s a heartbeat’s uncomfortable pause, then Rich says quickly, ‘You always look great to me.’
I can’t look at him. How can it be that the last time we saw each other he was leaving my bed?
‘You’re too kind, my love. Right!’ Lou gets out her credit card. ‘I’ll settle up for this at the front, so don’t let them charge you as well!’ Reaching out, she hugs me again, then blows kisses to Mum and the girls.
Rich is forced by convention to lean over and kiss me briefly too. While I’m glad he does – because he always has and it would look very odd if he didn’t – it’s intensely uncomfortable for both of us. We don’t make eye contact and he hurries after his wife without a backward glance, choosing to wait in the street while she pays.
‘She’s so nice!’ Imogen takes another delicate kitten sip, waving cheerily at Lou as she disappears through the door.
‘She’s a little madam,’ Mum says archly. ‘You’re forty, I’m not. I haven’t had time to buy a new dress because I’ve had more important things to do…’
‘You are a shit judge of character, Gen, to be fair,’ says Alice. ‘Look at your husband, for starters.’
‘Hey!’ says Imogen, annoyed.
‘Do you think that, Mum?’ Alice turns to her.
‘He’s slightly weak-chinned, but he loves Imogen very much, and that’s all that matters.’
‘Not Ed!’ Alice says. ‘Lou.’
‘She won’t age well.’ Mum shrugs, and reaches for her champagne.
I sigh. ‘She didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just the way she comes across sometimes.’
Mum raises an unconvinced eyebrow.
‘She’s a full-time mum with two small kids and a part-time job. Most of the time she’s just knackered, and it can make her seem a bit short.’
‘Is it possible she knows?’ Alice interjects.
‘Alice!’ I hiss, glaring at her furiously. She’s no better than Mum, she really isn’t.
‘Knows what?’ Mum says instantly.
‘Soph borrowed something belonging to Lou, which she accidentally broke. She didn’t tell Lou at the time, though, and now Lou might have found out for herself.’
‘Shut. Up,’ I say, livid. ‘And as for you’ – I turn to Imogen – ‘what the hell was all that “Are you pregnant?” crap? While I’m obviously delighted to hear how nice and slim I must look at the moment, I’m not having a baby. I felt rubbish in the car, that’s all. Now we’re here and I’m going to eat, I actually feel a lot better. Maybe it’s psychosomatic, I don’t know, but anyway – I’m totally fine. Now, can we please just talk about something else?’ I reach for my glass of champagne and knock it back in one. ‘See? Not pregnant.’
Alice watches me. ‘You’re psycho-something, I’ll tell you that much.’
‘I mean it, Alice. Be quiet.’ I rest my head in my hands, elbows on the table as I massage my temples, eyes shut.
She’s wrong. Lou has no idea, I’m certain of that, but I can’t believe we just bumped into each other like this…
I lift my head up and stare into space for a moment
. No, that’s lunacy. So now my friends are following me too, are they? There just aren’t that many nice restaurants in our home town, that’s all. Lou only had a choice between about three. I snort in disgust at myself. Alice is right – I’m starting to lose it. I’m slipping into total paranoia, and I can’t afford to go to pieces.
I sit back in my chair. ‘I’m sorry,’ I announce, after a moment’s pause. ‘I’m feeling a little shaken up. This morning has been a lot to… absorb.’
‘Bird on the line.’ Alice reaches for her very loudly ringing mobile, ignoring the irritated stares from nearby tables. ‘Hello! Yes, of course you can. She’s right here… It’s Marc.’ She passes the phone to me.
‘Hey!’ I say, trying to sound warm and carefree. Imogen and Mum smile indulgently, before picking up their glasses and turning to each other to chat. Only Alice continues to watch me. ‘Everything all right?’ I ask him, trying to ignore her.
‘I’m fine.’ He sounds really concerned, almost agitated. ‘Are you, though? Why aren’t you answering your phone?’ For a moment I feel like I’m in a parallel universe. I did tell him I lost it, didn’t I? I’m sure we had a whole conversation about it this morning! ‘I got your text and tried to ring you,’ he continues, ‘but there was no answer.’
All of the noise in the restaurant, the chatter around me, the scrape of knives and forks on plates, the hiss of a coffee machine, fade away like someone turning down a volume dial. I am only concentrating on him. ‘What text?’ I say slowly.
‘The one that says you don’t want to have to hurt me.’
My mouth falls open. ‘Read it back to me,’ I whisper.
‘That’s it, Soph, that’s all it says. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.” Umm’ – he laughs uncertainly – ‘what’s all that about then? I thought you’d lost your phone?’
A message for me – from my own mobile?
‘I…’ I start to scrabble around for an explanation. ‘I found it. And that’s a message I sent to Alice earlier – she was winding me up about something. At least I thought I did. How on earth did I get you by mistake?’ I swallow and clear my throat. ‘That must have been surprising!’
‘Just a bit,’ he says, sounding very relieved.
How the hell is Claudine doing this? She’s got my phone now?
‘You know, the handset’s been really playing up,’ I say. ‘I might just switch it off. If you need me, ring Alice again instead, OK?’
‘OK.’ He sounds puzzled, but doesn’t question it. ‘I probably won’t now though, because I’m going into another meeting soon, and then later I’ll be on the plane…’
‘OK, OK, that’s fine,’ I say quickly, desperate to get off the phone and call my mobile company to find out why, and how, my phone has been reconnected when I barred it myself last night. ‘Safe trip.’
I hang up without telling him I love him and turn to Alice quickly. ‘Can I use your mobile again?’ I don’t wait for the answer, just dial 150, as I did some eight hours earlier, back at her flat.
‘Didn’t the old handset I gave you work then?’
‘Not really,’ I say, distracted, trying to navigate the automated options. ‘Kind of. The SIM wasn’t registered or something. I’m going to try and sort it out now. Oh, hi?’ I get up from the table, the chair scraping behind me, and walk towards the front of the restaurant. ‘I phoned last night to bar all activity on my phone because I lost it, but somehow it’s been reconnected again – my fiancé just had a text from me, which is really odd, given I haven’t actually found it yet, or requested that it be unlocked.’
‘OK,’ says the woman pleasantly. ‘Well, let’s take you through security and I’ll see what I can do to help you. What’s your full name?’
‘Sophie Gardener.’
‘And are you the account holder?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘And is this the phone number for the account you are calling about?’
‘No, this is my sister’s phone. I give her my phone number. ‘I can’t call you from my phone because, as I’ve said, I lost it.’
‘Can I have the first and second characters of your password, please?’
‘K and E.’
‘Thank you. Is it OK to call you Sophie?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Sophie, I’m happy to pass you through security. So you say that you lost your phone?’
‘I reported it at about 4 a.m. last night and asked for it to be barred,’ I repeat. ‘But, like I said, my fiancé called about five minutes ago and said he’d had a text from me. I don’t know how that’s happened, because I haven’t found my phone.’
She pauses. ‘I’m reading back through the notes on your account and they say you contacted us today at 8.30 a.m. to request that the blacklist be lifted on your phone. You correctly supplied the IMEI number, and so—’
‘Wait, I didn’t ring you,’ I say. ‘And I don’t even know what an IMEI number is.’
‘It’s a number unique to each handset – it’s on your phone. We ask for it in conjunction with your security details to verify the handset every time a blacklist is lifted.’
‘So whoever rang you must have physically been holding my phone at the time?’
‘Not necessarily. They could have been given the IMEI by someone else who has the phone.’
I turn cold. ‘If a man contacted you, supposedly on my behalf,’ I ask quickly, ‘could he have requested that be done?’
‘No. We have to speak to the account holder.’
So it must have been a woman who called them, pretending to be me. I start to exhale slowly. ‘Does it say what number the call came from? Was it in France?’
‘I don’t have that information, I’m afraid.’
So for the last few hours, Claudine – possibly via that man – has been getting all of my texts, will have had access to my emails, my Facebook phone app… I freeze. I deleted Rich’s message, I’m sure I did… Though I think it’s about more than that, anyway. She wants me to see how powerless I am – how far her reach is.
This is about control.
‘Please will you blacklist my phone again, and not reinstate it until further notice? And I don’t really understand how someone could have got access to my account in the first place, without having to give my password?’ I add pointedly.
‘There aren’t any notes to say that unsuccessful password attempts were made. Perhaps you’d like to change your password to something more obscure?’ she says politely. ‘It’s not a good idea to use information like your mother’s maiden name, or a configuration of a date of birth – people can get hold of that information very easily if they know where to look.’
‘OK,’ I say, chastened. ‘Let’s change it to…’ My grandparents’ song pops into my head. ‘Kingcole. All one word.’ It doesn’t come much more obscure than that.
‘OK, Sophie, I’ve done that. Now, if you think someone might have found and stolen your lost phone, you need to report this to the police and obtain a crime reference number. Can I help you with anything else?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Well, thank you for calling, and I hope you have a good rest of the day.’
I hang up, but as I turn to walk back to the table, Alice’s iPhone vibrates in my hand. A new text message has arrived and I look down to see who it’s from.
Me.
All you have to do is open the envelope tonight, as per instructions.
My skin prickles with fear. How the hell is she doing this when I’ve literally just blacklisted it again!
Although I suppose that message might have been sent just before the bar came into effect. And it’s not as if she knows I’m holding Alice’s phone…
My stomach contracts. Does she? Can she – or he – see me right now?
I whirl around, wildly scanning the faces of animated, happily talking diners. I may have only ever seen pictures of Claudine, but I’m sure I would recognize her, and as for him… I knew it was him in that
van. I’m never going to forget his impassive features staring blankly at me in my bedroom.
I inspect each and every table, aware that Alice is still watching me and is starting to look concerned. They’re not here.
As Alice gets to her feet, I turn my back to her, walk to the front of the restaurant, open the door and hasten out into the street to look up and down it; but there is no figure suddenly darting away, or just slipping around the corner out of view.
I stare at Alice’s phone again, the text from ‘me’ still sitting on the screen. I have to know that the blacklisting has now kicked in, that they won’t be able to send any more messages. I need proof.
Holding my breath and calling my own number, I almost expect the sound of a distant phone to start ringing somewhere, but, to my huge relief, it goes straight to an automated message: ‘I’m sorry, but the person you are calling is unavailable. Please try again later.’
If only that were true. I’ve never felt more exposed in my entire life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘How is your head feeling now, Soph?’ Imogen asks me kindly as we sit in reception at the hairdressers.
Like it’s going to explode. She actually threatened me from my own phone. Claudine is not just pushing beyond all reasonable limits; she’s annihilating them.
‘You look a bit pale,’ Imogen continues, concerned.
‘I’m fine, honestly.’ I force a smile as my hands reach to check, yet again, that the letter is still with me. I feel the edges of the envelope, and then rest the bag back on my feet.
‘Good. I am so looking forward to a decent wash and blow-dry.’ Imogen is palpably excited. All four of us apparently have an appointment at my mother’s upmarket salon. She walked in proudly, us following her, as if she were the Queen Mother, and had clearly gone to great pains to organize it: everyone was shooting covert glances at each other and me – the whole staff seemed to be in on the secret. It was unnerving, despite knowing what they were all grinning about.
‘Ladies! Hello! Hello! Now, someone has a significant birthday today, I hear?’ My mother’s hairdresser appears dramatically from somewhere at the back like a pantomime dame ready for the audience participation element of the performance. A large man called Carl, he’s dressed in a white, slightly straining shirt and indigo jeans. His hair is excessively bouncy and curly, like a lamb’s, razor-trimmed around his rather pink neck and offset by very pointy sideburns that protrude quite a distance onto his face. Somehow they accentuate his very heavy, square-framed glasses, behind which sit two beady little eyes. ‘Hello, Maura, my darling.’ He kisses my mother. ‘I refuse to believe you can be the mother of a forty-year-old. It isn’t possible.’ As Mum blushes happily, he turns to me. ‘And you must be the birthday girl! I gather we are going full-out glamour this evening – diamonds and tiaras, ahoy!’ He winks at me. ‘So you’ll be wanting an up-do, won’t you?’ It’s a pre-order, rather than a question, and he whisks me off to be seated at the mirror, the other three trotting obediently sheep-like behind us.