‘Shall we get started, then?’ That’s Jonny again. I push myself off the wall, as silently as possible.
‘All right.’ There’s Em. ‘But we’ll have to be fast.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s on the stairs right now, eavesdropping on us.’
A moment’s pause, and then the three of them burst out laughing.
I’m so deep in the quicksand of terror that it takes me a few seconds to compute this. Eventually I haul my way out and manage to think a little more clearly. Then, as they keep laughing, I stand and head downstairs. Em looks up, still giggling.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I really am. But it was worth it to see your face. Go and look at the door frame of your room.’
I climb back up the stairs and scan the door. Just at shin level is a little dark circle that looks like a badly repaired hole for a screw. I lean down, pluck it off and inspect it with the light on my phone.
Serves me right for not following Rule 22:Check for cameras twice – once by day, then again by night. At night, even a well-hidden one will show up if you aim your phone’s torch directly at it – the light will reflect off the lens.I didn’t think I’d have to re-check once I was actually in a house, though. I head back down.
‘That wasn’t funny.’
‘I voted against,’ says Elle.
Em – clearly the instigator – shakes her head. ‘Sorry, Al, but it was. Just wanted to show you how good Jonny’s kit is. Probably could have thought of a kinder way of doing it than that.’
Jonny pipes up. ‘Really it’s a lesson in trusting people.’
Elle adds: ‘Exactly. Now that we’ve got you once, you’ll know that we’re almost certainly not planning to sell your eyeballs to a shaman in darkest Peru.’
‘OK. Very funny, everyone, you got me. Let’s not make a big thing out of it.’ I’m trying to smile along, but I don’t think anyone looking at my face would buy it. So I turn, now with less than zero dignity, and return to my room, pausing only to wedge a small, pointless bookcase under the door handle.
Back in bed, I resolve to give serious thought to whetherit’s a good idea to go along with these people. They seem to have a knack of making me feel stupid, right from the moment Em first answered the door. But I’m drifting now, and I can’t quite say where I am, and I panic that I can feel myself swaying, because I’ve been distributed across six separate shipping crates and we’re all heading down the Suez Canal, but by that point it’s too late and …
4
… and I wake, late, to the smell of breakfast. I wash, dress, and head down to the kitchen, where Elle is home-making a dish of granola. I didn’t even know people made their own granola. In the middle of the kitchen island there’s a breakfast so lavish – juice, muffins, scrambled eggs, toast – we could be in an American sitcom.
Jonny is on the ancient armchair in the corner – it’s one of those kitchens, the ones so cavernous they need ancillary furniture just to fill up the floor space. He’s wearing the clothes he was in last night, and is still on his laptop. I haven’t seen him more than a few feet away from that laptop yet.
‘Morning.’
‘Morning, Al!’ I get the sense, faintly, just the overwhelmingly obvious sense, you understand, that Elle might be amorning person. She’s not actually wearing a gingham apron, but she’d suit one.
‘Where did you get that kit? They don’t have any kitchen stuff here.’
‘This is all mine,’ she says. ‘Just because we’re in someone else’s home doesn’t mean we have to live like animals.’
The last time I stayed here, I lived on grubby takeaways, which I ordered to be delivered to – Rule 30 – the corner of the street, always paying in cash. The time before that, I was temporarily on those meal supplement milkshakes, and got through about four buckets of grim grey sludge a day because I was convinced they were a superior means of leaving no trace. I lost half a stone, all joy in mealtimes, and the will to live.
‘There’s nothing wrong with pre-prepared food,’ I say. ‘A lot of it is very healthy these days. Actually better for you than home-made stuff.’
Elle smiles and gives my torso the tiniest glance before going back to her pan. I can’t help noticing that a lot of the food in the fridge is from Waitrose.
‘How do you afford this stuff?’
‘We all have jobs as corporate lawyers,’ says Elle.
‘Really?’
‘No.’
