I’m no longer alone in the house.
38
I’ve still got my hi-vis on, and my clipboard, and my mask. For a moment I consider trying to style it out in character as an idiot bailiff, but then I think again. This place feelsofficial.
The window at the back of the room I’m in is … of course it is. Bolted and barred, with no key in sight. I’m going to have to get back to the street.
One rule I’ve never written down, a rule I didn’t think I’d ever have to observe or number, is simple: no physical violence. I have a horrible worry I’m about to break that rule now.
There are footsteps approaching up the stairs. These ones aren’t like old Mr Rivers’ in his Nevis office. Nor are they like those of Mr Lethbridge, crunching crossly across his gravel drive. I feel like I’ve become a real connoisseur of slowlyapproaching footsteps in the last fortnight. These, I would say, are the footsteps of a fit and healthy young person.
The door opens.
By the time it does, I’ve slid myself under the bottom of the bunk bed, facing the door. I look to my left, and see something that’s either a baton or a very aggressive sex toy. Just terrific.
The feet I can see are clad in rough old trainers, the laces already undone.
The owner of the feet isn’t moving suspiciously, at least. They potter back and forth to a small wardrobe in the corner of the room. I think they’re undressing – the shoes are eased off, socks shoved into them. Small feet. A few more rustles of cloth. Then I feel a terriblesqueezefrom above, along the length of my torso. My new friend has got into the bottom bunk, and from the feel of it, they’ve landed right on top of me.
It doesn’t matter how petite someone is, if they put their full weight on your torso, you’ll know about it. Right now, I can hardly breathe. My vision is going haywire. Is this how I die?
After thirty seconds of this, the body above me shuffles, and the pressure relents. They’ve shifted, thank God. I guess lying on me isn’t comfortable either. I reach up to my face, and silently claw my mask down so I can breathe better.
A few more minutes pass, and the body above me shifts once or twice more, then is completely still.
The breathing from up there sounds regular. They’re not moving. I should have waited behind the door, and charged out of the room as soon as it opened. Easier still not to havecome here in the first place. The easiest thing, really, would have been to stay in Nevis, settle down with Em, and start a new life as a conch farmer.
I’m just going to have to go for it.
You may not remember, but earlier on, I said that there are two ways of moving surreptitiously – the first is to proceed more or less as normal, the second is to go at semi-snail pace, take an age, don’t disturb a single floorboard. And I recall confidently asserting that the first method is by far the most simple and natural. I wish I’d practised the second a bit more now.
Here goes nothing. With agonising slowness, I reach out and transfer the trainers out of the way. Then, for about three minutes, I eeeeeease myself sideways. It’s bloody working. The breathing stays regular. No further shifting. I’m almost out … little bit more … I’ve made it. I’m beside the bed on all fours, my arms trembling from the exertion. All I have to do is get up and leave.
And then, from the crumpled trousers that have been tossed on the floor, a phonedings.
I look sideways. Staring into my face, maybe eighteen inches away, is a rather bleary-eyed young Chinese woman.
We both react at the same time. My move was going to be to slowly raise my finger to my lips, to reassert some control over the situation, then walk out of the house and sprint back to the station.
Her move, on the other hand, is a bit more direct, which is to open her mouth and scream blue murder. I run.
As I go, another door opens further up the house, and Ihear footsteps descending towards me. I take the stairs four at a time, nearly breaking my neck, heave the door open, vault the low garden wall, ignore the rising swell of shouts behind me, and I’m gone.
‘This is not good.’
‘Stop saying that, Jonny. None of this is good.’
We’re back at our new home in Balfour Villas. We keep discovering more rooms: this one is a home gym with a huge screen and plush red seats at one end, which we have dubbed the ‘gymema’. We’re in the front row. It got late somehow, and it must be close to midnight. Outside, the weather’s kicking up a fuss, and occasionally a loose branch taps the window, reliably terrifying me.
I ran the ten-minute walk back to the station in – I would estimate – about fifteen seconds. By that time I couldn’t see anyone chasing me. There had been nobody outside guarding the house, which would have created further complication. I didn’t look back for the first half of the route, but I’m pretty sure I had given them the slip. At the station, I phoned Em, told her I was getting on the train without explaining further, and was on the first southbound Tube before they could catch up with me.
On the train, I did the usual things – changed carriage three times, switched lines, took my jacket off when I was confident I was out of the cameras’ field of view, masked up, changed masks so they’d have a harder time identifying me, all of that.
Thanks to my mucking about underground, the othersreached Balfour Villas about half an hour before me. I explained what I could about the weird server house, then fell asleep for a few hours until Em came in and woke me up because she was sick of waiting to talk more.
The only thing I salvaged from the house was the photos I took of the top few sheets of paper on the desk. Jonny took the photos from my phone, then put them up online to be translated, using some dodgy Chinese expat intermediary on one of his illegal websites. And he’s now telling us things are ‘not good’. No shit.
‘No, I mean, this is really a disastrous development.’ Things must be bad if Jonny isn’t even usingNineteen Eighty-Fourreferences.
