by Elise Noble
And how would they have stolen it? I mean, I had the… I patted my jacket pocket. The key was missing. Dread washed over me, and the coffee cup slipped out of my hand. Warm cappuccino splattered all over my shoes and the homeless person sitting next to me.
“Hey, lady. Watch it!”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Hold on. Where had I heard those words before? The girl who slammed into me in the produce section had apologised profusely, and at the time, I’d thought nothing of it. People got clumsy. Had my key fallen out of my pocket in the store? Was it still lurking among the vegetables? Or worse, had somebody else picked it up?
The homeless man clambered to his feet, or rather, to his foot. Too late, I noticed the crutches next to him and realised he only had one leg, but he was still much taller than me and kind of intimidating. A grubby tartan blanket slipped off his shoulders and landed in a heap on the ground, and I took a step back. Usually, the store staff moved beggars on, but clearly they’d missed one. Slackers.
“These clothes were clean on today.”
I sincerely doubted that, judging by the state of him, but I forced myself to be polite. Politeness doesn’t cost anything, my mother always said, even if she didn’t often practise what she preached.
“I’ll pay for them to be dry-cleaned. Uh, I don’t suppose you recall somebody driving away in a small red car? A Ford Fiesta?”
“Aye, about ten minutes ago. A young blonde lass. Your daughter?”
Not likely. After years of trying, I’d come to the conclusion that a baby wasn’t on the cards for me. The doctor had referred us for tests, but Piers didn’t relish the idea of “jerking off into a cup,” as he put it, and he’d cancelled three appointments before telling me he’d changed his mind about having a child anyway. His mother blamed me for my failure to conceive—she didn’t say as much, but I knew she did—and every time we’d gone for dinner, his father muttered something about needing an heir. By that point, Piers had started spending more time away, and the rest… I didn’t want to think about it.
“No, not my daughter. Was she wearing ripped jeans and a hooded sweatshirt?”
“That’s her, aye.”
Chaucer’s treats slid out of my hands and landed in the puddle of coffee as my knees threatened to buckle. That rotten delinquent had stolen my car. And Hugo’s painting. A ten-thousand-dollar freaking painting. I clutched at a nearby signpost to stay upright, and only then did the small print on the sign itself register. Tesco Stores accepts no responsibility for valuables left in cars.
Shit, shit, shit.
The disclaimer wasn’t a surprise, but it hammered home the fact that I only had third-party insurance. A comprehensive policy had been too expensive after I had a tiny prang in my last Mercedes. Okay, it was a little more than a prang—I drove it into Piers’s Porsche after I caught him screwing Andromeda Bartrop in our marital bed—but the insurance company hadn’t looked too kindly on my claim of mitigating circumstances. And I was normally such a careful driver, or so I thought… Oh, what was the point? I couldn’t turn the clock back, which meant I’d lose my job for sure, and I wouldn’t be able to keep Chaucer without grovelling to my parents, and now I was bloody crying.
The homeless man handed me a surprisingly clean tissue.
“Are you okay, love?”
“Does it look like I’m okay?”
“Shouldn’t that girl have taken your car? She had a key.”
“She stole the key! And then she stole the car.”
“Reckon you should report that to the police. Give ’em summat to do besides botherin’ innocent citizens.”
The police. Of course, the police! I rummaged through my handbag in search of my phone, but I couldn’t find it. Had the blonde girl taken that too? I screwed my eyes shut, trying to remember if I’d picked it up. Or if I’d even had it in the store at all. The last time I’d seen it, it had been sitting in that little dip in the Fiesta’s centre console, readily to hand if I needed to check my messages at a traffic light.
And it was most likely still in the exact same spot.
“My phone’s in the car,” I said hollowly. “I’ll probably never see it again.”
On the bright side, that meant I could put off speaking to Hugo for a while longer. Confessing that I’d lost his friend’s birthday gift promised to be one of the most excruciating conversations of my life, second only to asking my father to bail me out of jail when I was eighteen. With hindsight, I should have stayed there. Daddy had agreed to fix the problem on one condition—that I split up with my then-boyfriend, and doing so had broken my heart. Rowan had been the sweetest man, an artist, but my parents said he had no class and no prospects. Faced with the threat of a prison sentence for breaking into an animal testing facility, I’d panicked and sent him a Dear John letter. He’d served three months for releasing a dozen rabbits and never spoken to me again.
I figured Piers was karma’s way of kicking me in the butt.
“Here.” The homeless man reached into the pocket of his tattered jacket and drew out an old-fashioned flip phone. “Borrow this. Sorry it’s not one of them fancy things.”
“Th-th-thank you.”
Gah, I’d turned into a blubbering fool, which only lent credence to Piers’s claim that I was “too emotional.” Even my own mother had told me I was overreacting about his affair. Every man had his little indiscretions, she told me. It was just part of married life.
I’d tried looking the other way. For two months, I’d climbed into a cold bed in the spare room and waited for Piers to come home, listening for the click of the front door, wondering where he’d been and who he’d been with. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it any longer.
Cue the ostracism.
People judged me from afar, condemned me for my poor life choices without even knowing me. I heard the whispers behind my back, saw the way former friends avoided me at gatherings. At my little sister’s engagement party, I’d hidden in a bathroom while she and two of her friends discussed how ridiculous I was being right outside the door. Fancy giving up my lifestyle to be poor—absolutely unthinkable.
But then it struck me as I dialled the police with shaking fingers—hadn’t I judged the man in front of me? Yes, his clothes weren’t very clean, but he was kind, and I was fast coming to learn that kindness was more important than laundry soap or a phone with all the apps.
Oh my gosh. Apps!
Didn’t iPhones come with an app to locate them? I’d never used it, but I was fairly sure I’d set it up one lonely evening soon after I left Piers. My previous phone had come to a nasty end when I threw it at him.
“Should I call someone for you, love?”
“I need somebody with a smartphone. There’s a tracking app on mine.”
I racked my brain for someone, anyone, who might be able to help, but with only a handful of friends left, I had precious few options. Hugo was out, obviously, as was Gemma. Gemma had been weirdly cagey about her phone lately. She never used to be that way, but a month ago, I’d seen a message pop up from her new boyfriend, asking her to cancel plans to spend the evening with him instead. Still raw from Piers’s betrayal, I’d opened my big mouth to tell her that no man was worth giving up her independence for, and since then, she’d acted off with me, changing the subject whenever I asked if she had any plans for the weekend. And last week, when I’d noticed a bruise on her arm and asked if she was okay, she’d told me to mind my own business and then locked herself in the bathroom for fifteen minutes. When she came out, her eyes were red, and she’d avoided me for the rest of the day. In truth, I was worried about her, but right now, I was more concerned about my car. Who else had a phone I could borrow? Henrietta would only take joy in the fact I’d screwed up. Pinkey from the stables was too far away, and Sarah, my neighbour’s housekeeper, had gone to Portugal for the week.
Another tear rolled down my cheek, and I cursed both myself and the mess my life had become.
“You shoul
d call the police,” the homeless man advised. “They can track your phone.”
“They can, but will they? My friend Madeleine—my ex-friend now—her Maserati got stolen from right outside her house and she had one of those fancy tracker systems, and by the time the police followed up on the report, the car was in Bulgaria.”
Madeleine, who had more money than sense because her husband was chief of something or other at an investment bank, had been bloody-minded enough to hire a Bulgarian PI, but when he got there, all that was left of her SUV was the badge and the steering wheel. I had visions of my Fiesta being hacked into little pieces, and what would happen to the painting?
Mind you, the blonde girl hadn’t looked like a hardened criminal, more an opportunist thief, a skinny waif who shied away from an honest day’s work. If I confronted her and informed her of the error of her ways…
My new friend nodded. “Know what you mean about the old bill. They spend most of their time moving me on instead of catching crooks.” He plucked his phone out of my hand, pressed a few buttons, and held it to his ear. “Rafiq, you busy? No? Do me a favour and meet me at the big Tesco store?”
“Who’s Rafiq?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
“A mate of mine. He drives a taxi, and he’s got a smartphone.”
“He’ll drive me to my car?”
“Aye, he will if you pay him.”
“Uh, does he take credit cards?”
“That he does.” The gentleman shook his head. “Pretend money, I call it. Back in my day, the only money worth having folded.”
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it wouldn’t shift. And the pesky tears kept coming too.
“Thank you. I don’t even know your name.”
“Mungo. My name’s Mungo.”
“And I’m Bethany.”
I never carried much cash, but I rummaged around in my wallet and gave the forty pounds in there to Mungo. He deserved it and more.
“Will that cover your laundry?”
Mungo grinned, and his teeth were better than I expected. Dammit, Beth, you have to stop judging people.
“Plenty enough. Do you have a spare car key?”
“At home. Why?”
“Because if you have another key, you can wait until the girl looks away, then steal the car back again.”
What a great idea! Teenager or not, avoiding confrontation seemed like a good plan. I’d always shied away from arguments. Until the night I walked in on Piers and Andromeda, I’d barely raised my voice, and we’d been married for ten years at that point. With hindsight, that was about nine years too long.
“I guess it wouldn’t take long to stop off and pick it up.”
Mungo nodded, then tipped an imaginary hat. “Good to meet you, Bethany. Best of luck with your car.”
CHAPTER 7 - SKY
TRAFFIC ON THE M4 came to a standstill before Heathrow, and I crawled the last few miles while praying that Lenny hadn’t a) wandered off or b) found something else to smoke, both of which had happened when he’d pulled similar stunts in the past.
Over the last couple of years, he’d spent more time high than lucid, and although he tried working every so often, those jobs never lasted long and he drank most of his wages. He’d given up. I saw it in his eyes. Lenny only got that spark back with a little pharmaceutical help, and I couldn’t blame him. Once, after we’d shared a cheap bottle of cider and a couple of cigarettes, he’d confessed what had happened to him in that group home, and I wished with all my heart that I could have turned back the clock and kept my experiences with the pervert secret. I’d have coped, but something inside Lenny broke after we got moved, and I wasn’t sure I could ever fix it. I only knew that I had to try.
Satnav told me to exit at junction seven, then sent me through several villages and a small forest on my quest to find my wayward foster brother. At times, I thought it would be nice to live in the country. Get a hut in the woods and hide away so nobody could bother me. Live off the land and all that. I choked out a laugh—I couldn’t help it, seeing as the only experience I had with plants was minding a cannabis farm for a few quid when I was fourteen. Humid as fuck, and the place had stunk. And speaking of stink, I must’ve sneezed a hundred times on the journey, even though I’d opened every window. I’d be smelling Shimmer in my sleep. But at least the rain had come to nothing.
White Horse Farm showed up on my left, and I groaned at the sight of the “For Sale” board at the end of the driveway. Lenny, what have you done?
I kept my fingers crossed that they’d just broken a window and then hung out with a few drinks, but as soon as I saw the front door hanging off its hinges, I knew I was out of luck. Idiots. They’d have left fingerprints everywhere, and when the owners found out… Lenny had already been arrested twice, mainly for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so it wouldn’t take much effort to work out who’d been involved. The only saving grace was that he didn’t have a fixed address, so the police wouldn’t be able to find him straight away.
I rooted through my pockets for the thin leather gloves I kept in there, well worn from years of use. No way would I be making the same mistake.
The distinctive smell of pot wafted out at me as I pushed open what was left of the front door, and I groaned when I saw the mess in the hallway. The house was stuck in a time warp, with flowery wallpaper and scratched linoleum on the floor, but someone had taken the time to draw an oversized cock on the mottled mirror hanging on the opposite wall. Lipstick, by the look of things, which meant they’d brought girls out here too.
A cough from my right made me turn towards the kitchen, also outdated but dominated by a scarred table that some designer in Chelsea would label as “rustic” and slap a four-figure price tag on. A person was slumped over it, one cheek resting in a pool of vomit, but the shock of blond hair told me it wasn’t Lenny. I backed out and tried the next door. One, two, three, four bodies lay jumbled around, two on the floor, two on an old sofa. High as a giraffe’s nuts. A ginger guy glanced up as I walked in, mumbled something unintelligible, then closed his eyes again. I spotted Lenny’s pasty body in front of the window, attired in only a pair of Bart Simpson boxer shorts. He hadn’t been kidding about that part.
“Lenny, we have to get out of here.”
He grinned through his drunken stupor. “Sky! You came…best…cigarette?”
“Forget cigarettes. Where’s your sweatshirt?”
He shrugged one shoulder and tried to look around, but his eyes wouldn’t focus.
“Stay there. I’ll go and look.”
Stay there? He couldn’t have moved if he tried.
I paused by each body to check they were all breathing as I hunted for something, anything, to cover Lenny up. If a cop saw a half-naked man riding around in my passenger seat, it would result in raised eyebrows, a stop, and a night in the cells once they realised I’d pinched the car. No, I needed to find Lenny a T-shirt at least, and preferably something to put on his feet.
The rest of the house was trashed, and the upstairs bathroom made me gag when I peered around the door. No toilet paper meant some animal had used the curtains as a substitute. Living in a squat, I was well used to substandard hygiene, but this took it to a far deeper level.
A prickle of uneasiness ran through me as I checked each bedroom, but all I found was a skinny brunette passed out on a dusty bed, minus most of her clothes. Tell me Lenny hadn’t tapped that? I spotted a familiar sweater in a crumpled heap by the bed, and I didn’t know whether to be disgusted or impressed that he’d managed to get it up in the state he was in. At least the used condom on the floor suggested he hadn’t been entirely stupid.
And now we could leave. I stooped to pick up the garment, breathing a sigh of relief when I found his trousers and trainers underneath. No vomit, thank goodness. Still, I held the lot at arm’s length as I headed for the door.
I needed to get Lenny dressed, haul him to the car, drag him home, then handcuff him to some
thing solid so he couldn’t cause me any more damn problems.
Five minutes. Five minutes and we’d be—
Oof!
I didn’t see the person approach, only felt the arm snake around my chest, pulling me backwards and squeezing the breath out of me. Panic set in, but only for a second. I’d practised for this with Reuben from my parkour group. Practised over and over and over and over. I’d met Reuben on the worst night of my life, and I never ever wanted another experience like that one. Neither did he, and when I’d refused to go to the police about what happened, he’d, well, taken me under his wing, I guess. Dragged me out every Monday evening and Saturday morning when all I’d wanted to do was curl up in my sleeping bag and cry. We’d run, we’d jumped, we’d climbed, and after my arms and legs had turned into silly string, he’d drilled me through self-defence 101 until I could barely walk.
And his persistence paid off.
Instinct took over, and I threw my weight backwards, jerking my head so my attacker got the full force of my skull in his face.
A harsh, “Fuck!” came from behind me.
Wait a second—his face? That curse had sounded decidedly feminine. The arm around my chest loosened slightly, and I clawed at it, registering the slim wrist and bright red fingernails. A woman. It was definitely a woman.
But why?
And who?
Not one of the drugged-out losers Lenny hung around with, of that I was certain. Had the owner of the farmhouse come home? The TAG Heuer the woman was wearing on her wrist looked as out of place here as Lenny did, so I guessed not. But I had no time to dwell on the puzzle because when her grip eased, I ran.
CHAPTER 8 - SKY
I RAN, BUT I ran the wrong damn way.
Instead of bolting down the stairs, I ended up at a dead end, a hallway with three closed doors leading off it. A hard tug opened the first one, and I swore under my breath at my bad luck. An airing cupboard. A fucking airing cupboard.
Door number two led to a bedroom filled with more dusty furniture like downstairs. A bed, a chest of drawers, a chair with one leg missing. No key for the door lock, and the bitch was already coming after me. I heard her muffled footsteps running as I wedged the chair under the handle and contemplated my next move.