by Dani Atkins
The phone rang in the palm of my hand, so unexpectedly that I almost dropped it. I checked the number before answering, giving myself a moment or two to smile, because he was a master at hearing even the tiniest nuance of distress in my voice.
‘Hi, Dad. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, sweetheart. I thought I’d give you a call while I had a free moment. Your mum’s just having a quick nap.’
I swallowed the tiny lump in my throat, because he’d hear it otherwise, he always did. Watching Mum, while pretending that he wasn’t watching her at all, was an all-consuming pastime. It was practically all he did. And the fact that he only felt able to relax enough to make a telephone call while she slept told me the answer to my next question, but I asked it anyway.
‘How is she?’
‘Doing much better, I think.’ I bit my lip and studied a blue-grey pigeon, which was scratching hopefully by my feet at someone’s dropped sandwich crumbs. Dip, peck, swallow. The pigeon’s movements were mesmerising and exhausting, as though he neither knew nor cared how long it would take to fill his stomach on crumbs. He just kept on pecking. Much like my father was doing; taking small sharp jabs at the truth, because the whole of it was simply too enormous to stomach.
‘That new medication is going to make all the difference. I feel it in my bones,’ he declared with confidence.
‘I hope so, Dad,’ I said quietly. They were making astonishing advances with early-onset dementia all the time, although my father’s continued positivity was often as exhausting to watch as the pigeon.
‘So, how are the wedding preparations going? Are you nearly there yet?’
‘Almost,’ I said with a smile, thinking of the remaining items on my list, which I really ought to be tackling, instead of sitting in the sun scoffing ice cream.
‘If there’s anything you want me or your mum to do, you just let us know, okay, Maddie?’
I nodded and cleared my throat, although my eyes were still a little blurred by tears. Mum and I had always loved watching those reality wedding shows on TV. We’d dissect them afterwards, as though critiquing an art-house film. We would ponder on the questionable bridal gowns, the unflattering bridesmaids’ outfits, and argue about how many tiers it took to make a wedding cake look tacky. We used to tell ourselves that when it came to my wedding, we’d know every potential pitfall to avoid. We’d had years of valuable research, courtesy of those TV shows. Except when the time came to make all those decisions about my big day, Mum wasn’t up to doing it any more. A little bit of absentmindedness – the kind of forgetfulness you initially laugh at and make jokes about, grew to the type of condition that suddenly wasn’t funny at all. Certainly not after a doctor has put a label on it.
‘The only thing you both have to do is check in to the hotel and relax. Then on the day, Mum can sit there and have a good cry while you walk your wobbly-legged daughter up the aisle,’ I said.
‘You won’t have wobbly legs,’ my dad said confidently. ‘I’ve never known you more certain about anything than you are about Ryan.’
I smiled, remembering all the scathing comments some of my earlier boyfriends had earned in the past. I’d done my fair share of frog-kissing over the years, before finally finding a prince smiling at me across a crowded room. That my parents loved Ryan almost as much as I did was just the icing on the cake. A three-tiered cake, the perfect number, which Mum would approve of – or at least she would have done.
Dad’s call had left me in a reflective mood, which I tried to outpace as I got up from my bench and resumed walking down the street. Today was not about brooding on the things in my life I wished I could change. It was about celebrating the life I was about to live . . . as Mrs Ryan Turner. And even the wait of four days seemed like an annoying and unnecessary delay. I was more than ready for the rest of my life to begin right now.
In an effort to recoup some lost time, I quickened my pace when I heard a familiar rumbling sound down the road behind me. At the bus stop up ahead, I could see people picking up bags, reaching for purses and passes, and shuffling impatiently from foot to foot. I ran the last few metres to the stop, to the accompaniment of the hiss of air brakes. I dropped into a vacant seat by a window, my mind on nothing other than the printer’s where I was heading next to collect the table place settings. As the bus progressed in stop-start staccato bursts along its route, I wondered if I’d chosen wisely. For so early in the afternoon there did seem to be an awful lot of traffic on the road. Everywhere I looked were red buses, black cabs, and intrepid cyclists weaving dangerously between them. I winced as one cut in front of a taxi, hearing the squeal of hastily applied brakes. I saw an angrily waved arm protrude from the cab’s window and the muted rumble of obscenities, which was answered by a single-digit response from the cyclist. No harm, but plenty of foul.
I was still watching the traffic when I glanced up and noticed we were once again by the underground station. There was a young ginger-haired man standing beside a newspaper stand, thrusting copies of a freebie paper into commuters’ hands, and a small market stall with overpriced apples on a bed of biliously green artificial grass. And beside them, in the shadows, was an indistinct shape. He was standing to one side, careful not to block the entrance, and over one tattooed arm was slung his black leather jacket.
I felt my throat tighten, and swallowing was suddenly something that I had to consciously instruct my muscles to do. He was waiting for me. Even as the thought came into my head, I was already dismissing it. Of course he wasn’t. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me. It was just one of those weird freaky one-in-a-million coincidences that happen every now and then. So what if we’d both travelled to the same station? That meant nothing. Do you know how many people must use this station every day? The sane part of my brain asked the other half; the half that was doing a very poor job at not overreacting. Hundreds, that’s how many. Possibly thousands. And yes, it stood to reason if he alighted at that station earlier, then he was going to return to it whenever he was finished doing whatever it was he had to do.
The traffic was still crawling agonisingly slowly. And before I could turn away from the window or switch seats, the bus ground to a temporary halt, directly opposite the station entrance. The man was studying his phone, but at the hiss of the brakes he looked up, and as though he knew exactly in which window to find me, his eyes went to mine. This time, I fancied there was a glimmer of recognition in his. He levered himself away from the tiled station wall, and my eyes widened in alarm, as though he’d drawn out a weapon. Frantically I glanced up ahead at the congested traffic as the man began to walk away from the station, and head towards a bus stop, a few hundred metres along the road. There was no one waiting beside it, and I could see that it was a request stop. If none of the passengers wanted to get off, we’d sail straight past it, leaving the menacing man with the leather jacket far behind. But if he got there first, he’d put out his arm and flag us down.
I sat tensely in my seat, too irrationally panicked to look back down the street to see if the bald man was still walking this way. Keep driving, keep going, keep going, I silently urged the bus. Then a young woman with a child’s buggy got to her feet and made her way unsteadily towards the exit. I saw the driver look up and notice her in his mirror. The woman seemed anxious and unsure, and when I heard her speak in a heavily accented voice, I realised she was foreign. She asked something of an elderly man, who shrugged. She turned to a teenage boy, with trailing white headphones plugged into his ears, who either didn’t hear, or couldn’t be bothered to answer her.
I saw the driver check his rear-view mirror and flick on his indicator, making preparations to pull over. I glanced over my shoulder. A small crowd of people had just emerged from a pub, choking the stream of pedestrians. Was the man among them, pushing his way past to reach the bus stop?
‘Eez this hospital stop?’ asked the young foreign woman, addressing the bus in general. The driver was slowing down now. We were going to stop; the
doors were going to open; and the man who’d been lurking in the shadows waiting for me was going to get on the bus.
‘St Margaret’s?’ queried the driver.
The woman nodded thankfully.
‘No love, that’s the next stop. Sit back down and I’ll tell you when we get there.’
The driver spun the overlarge steering wheel and we moved back into the flow of traffic, which miraculously had suddenly parted, like a biblical sea. We lurched forward, travelling at a speed that was far more coursing hare than sluggish tortoise and when the bus stop approached, we whistled right past it. Only then did I feel confident enough to look back. The man was running, but he’d left it too late. His face looked thunderous as he realised he wasn’t going to be able to reach the stop in time. He had missed the bus. He had missed me.
I thought twice before sending the text. It sounded so stupid that I actually deleted it to begin with, only to pull my phone back out several moments later and compose something far less sensational.
Are you still in your meetings?
I knew his phone would be on silent, and that it might take a while before he was able to discreetly check his messages. But only a minute or so passed before my phone vibrated in my sweat-slick hand.
’Fraid so. God, I’m bored. How’s your day going? Is it too late to suggest eloping?
I smiled at that one, marvelling at his ability to calm me, even long-distance. This was all down to those pregnancy hormones, it had to be. I wasn’t usually a fanciful person. I was used to London; I’d lived here for years. I travelled alone at night and never thought twice about it. I was not nervous or given to exaggeration. So this – admittedly stupid – overreaction had to be down to a combination of pregnancy hormones and pre-wedding jitters. A dangerous alchemy, that was turning a normal, sane, twenty-eight-year-old into a crazy person.
I knew ‘lunatic me’ was still at the helm, as my fingers flew over my phone’s keypad, sending the message the sane part of me had just deleted.
I’m being followed.
There was an agonising pause of two minutes and forty-nine seconds. I timed them. Then his reply flashed up on my screen.
I know, by one thousand, seven hundred and seventy-five people, I believe, at the last count.
I hit several wrong keys as my fingers pounded out my reply.
Not on Twitter. I mean for real. In real life. There’s a man who is following me.
Again there was an uncomfortably long wait. Did he think I was joking? Was this something that sounded even remotely funny? I was teetering on the edge of getting angry when my phone didn’t blink with a message, it rang.
‘Who’s following you?’ He didn’t bother with hello. From his voice I could tell there was no way he wasn’t taking this seriously. Strangely, hearing him sound so worried defused some of my anxiety.
‘Are you in your meeting?’ I had a sudden vision of a roomful of people – many of whom were going to be at our wedding on Saturday – listening in while Ryan’s fiancée slowly lost a few of her marbles.
‘No, I stepped out. Where exactly are you?’
‘On a number 73 bus. We’ve just turned down Lincoln Street.’
‘Is the man on the bus? Has he approached you in any way? What’s he done exactly?’
What had he done exactly, I thought, already feeling ‘crazy me’ curling up in a little ball, as though she wanted to hide. This is how you feel when you smash the button on the fire alarm, and then realise nothing was burning after all.
‘He’s just been in town, that’s all,’ I began, hearing how lame my answer sounded. I was good with words, but trying to explain a vague and irrational feeling was a lot harder to convey than concrete facts. And what had the man actually done anyway? He’d photo-bombed my hairdresser selfie – probably without realising it. He’d been on the same underground train as me, got out at my stop, and then hung around for something or someone (not necessarily me) at the station. There was no way of knowing he was the man who’d collided with me as I ran back to the coffee shop, or had been among the Japanese tourists. In my head the threat had seemed very real, but coming out of my mouth it was all starting to sound ridiculous.
‘So he didn’t do or say anything to you at all?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Didn’t threaten you, or do anything intimidating?’
I felt about as stupid as it was possible to feel, without curling up and dying of embarrassment. ‘No, he did nothing. I’m sorry, hon, I’m just being daft. Ignore me and go back to your meeting,’ I said into the phone, aware that our conversation was being listened to by several of my fellow passengers. ‘Where are you heading to next?’
‘To the printer’s, but—’
‘I’ll meet you there.’
‘No, Ryan. It’s okay. I was being silly. There’s no need to walk out of work. You said these meetings were important.’
‘You’re important,’ he corrected, and I knew from his voice that there was no way I would be able to talk him out of this. And just like that, I fell in love with him all over again.
‘Go straight to the printer’s and wait for me there,’ he said, breaking the connection before I could say thank you, or more importantly ‘I love you’. But I was pretty sure he knew that anyway.
Despite knowing that Ryan was on his way, I kept fidgeting anxiously in my seat as the bus meandered through the early-afternoon traffic. I twisted around frequently, trying to catch a glimpse of the road behind us, but my view was blocked by a bus travelling so closely behind ours, the bumpers must have practically been touching. It was right behind us; travelling the same route.
All at once the fear came back as I saw that it too was a number 73, which meant that if the man was following me, he could be just metres behind us. I squinted into the shadowy depths of the second bus, but it was impossible to see anything in the darkened interior. Fresh concern was painted all over my features like tribal markings as I swivelled back to face the front. The man had missed this bus, but there was no doubt in my mind that he’d caught the one that had followed only moments later. The bald man with the leather jacket was still right behind me, and when I got off the bus in ten minutes’ time, he would too. I just knew he would.
I was up and waiting by the doors long before the bus had slowed down. I wasn’t exactly sure how far the printer’s was from the bus stop, as I’d only been there once before. But, if I moved quickly, I could get a head start before the second bus had even come to a stop. I hopped down onto the pavement, and began to weave purposefully through the oncoming crowds. I lost count of how many ‘Excuse me’s I muttered as I slalomed between slow-moving pedestrians like a dog on an agility course. I glanced back only once and saw that the second bus had now reached the stop and had spilled out its passengers onto the pavement. My heart began thudding uncomfortably in my chest and I increased my pace. The printer’s was only a few shopfronts away, and no marathon runner could have felt more jubilant crossing the finishing line as I did running up to the two plate-glass doors.
I didn’t see the note fixed onto the inside of the glass by four fat blobs of Blu-Tack, and wasted valuable seconds repeatedly trying to open a door that was obviously locked. Eventually I looked up and read the scrawled words written in thick black marker pen on a piece of A4 paper: Back in 5 minutes.
I pivoted on my heel and saw the man who’d been haunting me all day working his way through the crowds towards me. My hand went to my throat and the speed of my racing pulse beneath my palm concerned me. I’d never had a panic attack in my entire life, but I had a feeling that situation could well be about to change in the next few minutes. I shrank back against the locked double doors. The entrance was flanked on either side by tall conifers in deep terracotta pots. There was a small possibility that the man hadn’t seen me yet. Was it better to stay where I was and hope he wouldn’t spot me, or should I keep moving?
My decision – the worst decision of my entire life – was ill-thought-ou
t and hurried, which is weird because, when I remember what happened, it all seemed to be playing in slow motion. I elected to keep going. On the opposite side of the road was a restaurant with huge picture windows. I would wait in there until Ryan arrived at the printer’s to meet me, I decided.
It wasn’t until I stepped back onto the pavement that I realised how badly I had misjudged how fast the man following me was moving. He was now no more than five metres away. I gasped, knowing too late that I had played this all wrong.
‘Hey you!’ he called out. It was the first time I had heard him speak, and his voice was surprisingly mellifluous and deep. ‘Wait,’ he added.
Yeah, like that’s going to happen, I thought, turning and starting to run.
‘Hey!’ he called again, but I didn’t turn back around. I thought I could hear the sound of footsteps, heavy booted footsteps, on the pavement behind me, but that might just have been my imagination.
I looked across the four lanes of traffic at the restaurant on the other side of the road and blinked for a moment, as though witnessing a mirage in the desert. A black cab had just pulled up at the kerb, and Ryan was emerging from within it. He was busy pulling notes from his wallet to pay the driver, and hadn’t yet seen me. The traffic was busy and constant, and I doubt he would have been able to hear me over the width of the road, but I called out his name anyway.
A gust of wind whipped a crumpled ten-pound note from Ryan’s outstretched hand and it fluttered down to the gutter at his feet, costing further precious seconds as he bent to retrieve it. Out of the corner of my eye I could see an approaching black shape getting ever closer. I was about to get mugged on a busy London street, right in front of the man I loved, and there wasn’t a single thing he’d be able to do to save me.