I glance sideways. Em’s hand is inching towards her pocket. She doesn’t need to type a message – if she can just dial Elle’s number, Elle will hear conversation, and … I have no idea. Act appropriately. Even the police would be fine. I’d rather be in a cell than under three feet of this guy’s back garden.
‘I’m serious,’ I say. ‘We are squatters, quite specialised ones, and we picked your house because it looked nice and we thought you were in Dubai. We don’t want any trouble and it looks like you don’t either. So we can just—’
‘What thefuckare you doing?’ This is to Em, whose hand freezes halfway into her pocket. ‘Give me that. Slowly.’
She hands her phone over. For a second it looks like he’s considering shooting it, but then realises how insane that would look and settles for dropping it on the desk, hoisting a brass paperweight in his free hand, and hammering it until the screen smashes. ‘No fucking calls. You’re staying in this room until I’ve worked out what to do with you.’
He’s clearly appreciating the difficulty of his situation. If all three of us acted at once, we could probably overpower him, but there’s no way for us to coordinate when we should go for it. On top of that, we’re sitting and he’s standing. If we all ran, he’d definitely shoot at least one of us, maybe two. One of us might get away, but there’s no telling which one.
Oh, God, am I going to have todosomething?
Jonny is clearly thinking the same thing. He’s the tallest ofus, even taller than our new friend, and squashed next to him on the sofa I can tell his entire body is tense. Oh, boy. I don’t want Jonny to get himself shot, but Ireallydon’t want to do anything myself. Why can’t I think of the words that will persuade this guy to let us go?
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
He scowls at me. ‘Piss off. Either your story is true, in which case I’m not telling you, or it’s not, in which case you already know.’
Jonny is about to move. I can feel it. He’s inching his body into a better position. I have to stop him. How? If I move, the man will shoot me. If I don’t, he’ll shoot Jonny. And even though I hardly know Em and Jonny, I don’t want either of them shot. For one thing, the man might miss and hit me.
I speak, aiming my words half at Jonny. I try to sound a bit more RP, too. This character of mine is one I’ve nicknamed Baffled Man Honestly Wronged. ‘I think we should all stay calm. I’msurethere’s some way we can prove to you that we are who we say, and we can let you go back to your—’
Just then, there’s a loud knock at the front door of the house.
Sausage Fingers hears the knock, and it’s his turn to freeze. ‘Christ. How many of you are there?’
‘That’s our friend. My sister,’ Em says. ‘She left her coat at the pub, we told her to come along when she’d got it. She’s one of us, she’s just another squatter. You’ll see, she looks like me.’
Sausage Fingers edges towards the door of the study, still covering us, and opens it. The knock comes again.
As he looks around, two thoughts occur to me.
The first is:Hang on, Em told Elle to phone when she got here.
The second is:Elle wouldn’t knock like that.That was an authoritative knock, as if whoever’s outside knows the place well. Elle seems more the sort to call – or ideally text – from the doorstep.
Unfortunately, because I have both of these thoughts at the same time, I’m only halfway through each of them when the man makes up his mind. He goes to the closed curtains, nudges one aside to make sure the window is locked, and looks at us again.
‘You might be telling the truth. You might not. You’re in the shit either way, I assure you. Don’t. Fucking. Move.’
He leaves the study.
We hear his footsteps cross the hall, we hear the door to the outer hall open, we hear a key turn in a deadlock, and we hear a click as the main door to the house opens.
Then we hear a thunderous, booming report, which – I’m no expert – can only have been made by a gun going off at close range.
6
A lot happens in the next few seconds, so I’m going to have to calm down and try to get it in exactly the right order.
Em screams – someone screams, at least, I couldn’t swear it wasn’t me – and jumps to her feet.
I realise she’s about to run into the hall and try to accost a drunk, erratic, armed man, who’s just shot someone else by the sound of it and won’t have much compunction about firing again. Better stop her. Jonny’s between us, but he’s had the same thought. Em shakes off his arm, and runs to the door, shouting, ‘Elle! Elle!’
She stops shouting a second after she gets through the door, though. Even as I’m scrambling past Jonny, I feel relieved that she’s come to her senses, then realise the man might just be pointing the gun right at her.
Then, as I’m running, I realise I might accidentally be running into a situation where I might getmyselfshot – who are these people to me anyway? – and I’m so appalled at my own momentary burst of selflessness that my foot swerves sideways of its own accord, meaning I wobble into a reproduction bust of Julius Caesar by the door, sitting on a fake column. Then the rest of me realises that Jonny’s about to cannon into me from the other side, and I push off it into the hall. The pillar and bust start heading to the floor.
All this happens in the eight feet and two seconds between the sofa and the study door. I know, I know, it seems like a lot. I don’t know how I fit it all in.
