Getting the keys in the ignition is my next mental challenge I fail at, as Daniel shouts at me through the window.
“She’s a liar!”
Keys in.
“And a fraud!”
The engine fires and I pull away too fast, tyres gritting on fallen leaves.
It’s only when I’m a street clear, do I let the breath go.
Okay, what just happened?
Chapter 42
DANIEL
Daniel watches the taillights shrink into the distance and feels the heat behind his eyes that used to be easier to disguise as irritation. It’s not the walk-off that stings so much as the performance of it — Tom’s little moral grandstanding.
He stands on the pavement and lets the city breathe around him. A slow, precise anger fills him up, the kind that cools and hardens into something dangerous when you don’t let it out.
Tom’s become stubborn, dismissive, disrespectful of what they once had. He was trying to help, to warn him. And what does he get: a slammed door and the smell of burnt rubber.
How does he know Emma?
Emma Christianson had been a surprise he hadn’t expected. His heart took a taxi to his mouth when she’d walked away from Tom’s house as Daniel had been watching from the shadow of the poplar.
But, as ever, he smelt an opportunity. He thought this would be his way back in. He thought this could be the connection he was looking for, the ignition to bring them back together.
Emmawastrouble. She was a fraud, a liar.
Dangerous.
His time in her presence back then was enough to recognise that. And now she’s here, sniffing around Tom.
What’s her game? Is this about him? Daniel cannot think of a viable situation where they would become friends.
But here we are.
He thought he could use Tom’s relationship with Emma to get back inside, but that ship has sailed.
And now he’s out of time.
No more time to reignite a relationship with Tom.
No more searching through Tom’s house.
Daniel jumps into his car and speeds off home. When he reaches his street, something feels off immediately.
It’s subtle. A wrongness more than a detail. The usual quiet hum of the road is there, the orange glow of streetlights, the familiar outline of his building — but his front door is ajar.
Just an inch.
Enough to notice.
His body reacts before his brain catches up. He stops. Listens. The air feels thick, stale, as if the house itself is holding its breath.
He doesn’t move straight in. Instead, he steps to one side, scans the windows. No lights on. No movement. His heartbeat thuds hard and steady, each beat a reminder of how much he has to lose.
