Tonight is his final chance to get what he needs.
And he will get it by any means.
Chapter 43
TOM
I drive home with my heart doing that anxious tap-dance it does when the world has given me too much plot for one afternoon. By the time I pull up outside, I’m sweaty in the wrong places and rehearsing conversations I’m absolutely not ready to have.
How did Daniel know that I was even speaking to Emma? I’ve only met her twice, shared a few messages on Facebook, nothing more. We met in the street when she was tailing me, then we went back to mine. Then went for that coffee. Not many opportunities to “accidentally” see us together.
I knew he was watching me. Seeing him around so often over the last few weeks was no longer a coincidence. After I told him to leave me alone the other day, there was a small part of me which thought that maybe I was just imagining it.
But now. No way.
Daniel is following me, watching me. God knows how often.
How does he even know about Emma?
He said her full name like a charge sheet—liar, fraud—like he was reading out ingredients on the back of a toxic cereal box.
But howdoeshe know her? They move in totally different circles. Emma is expensively feral, a hurricane in decent boots. Daniel is… Daniel. Polished, precise, the human equivalent of a cease-and-desist. The Venn diagram of those two should be two lonely circles drinking alone at opposite ends of a bar.
How they even know each other aside, what was Daniel playing at? Was he genuinely trying to warn me, look out for me?
No, of course not. This is a game, a tactic he’s using to get to me, get under my skin, control me.
Classic Daniel.
Whatever he thinks he knows or doesn’t about Emma, he’s just using this as an opportunity to get to me.
And I won’t let him do that.
I lock the car, unlock the house, lock the house again because paranoia is cardio, and Buster materialises in the hallway like I owe him rent.
“Big day,” I tell him.
He blinks the ancestral blink of a creature who has never once paid a bill and pads away to a sun patch.
In the kitchen, I put the kettle on out of deeply British instinct, then realise my hands are shaking. I sit at the table and let my brain melt for a full thirty seconds.
Daniel and Emma are one question.
Phil and James are the other.
How dotheyknow each other?
I can’t get the image out of my head. The two of them on the edge of the Downs, the suspension bridge floating behind like a postcard, and them… arguing. Not a friendly “what shall we have for tea” bicker; the rigid kind, the kind you hold in your shoulders the next day.
Why are they meeting? Does Craig know? Surely, he’d have said something. But they share everything, open about everything, right? That’s what Craig said. They have no secrets.
But Craig isn’t stupid; he’s a detective. He’d never let that go un-catalogued.
How do I even bring this up? “Hi Craig, speaking of domestic abuse, I saw your husband having a secret row with a man you told me to avoid.” Yes. Great. Super. I can absolutely drop that into dinner conversation between lasagne and moral panic.
And just as my brain is trying to process this too, another nugget of drama pops into my head.
The memory stick. Still stuffed in my pocket, following my light spot of illegal tourism this morning.
