‘I’m really sorry, Malcolm.’ I hurriedly start to dress, hopping on one leg as I stuff the other into my jeans and throw my arms into an old, thick sweatshirt. It’ll be cold in London. He watches me with a puzzled expression as I struggle with the zip on my jeans, like I really might be crazy.
‘Erin… what’s happened? Why do you need to leave all of a sudden? And… hang on, are you… are youcrying?’
‘No!’ I say, too loudly and sharply, causing him to widen his eyes a touch. ‘No,’ I lower my tone, wipe my face with the back ofmy sleeve. ‘It’s nothing, Malcolm, a touch of hay fever probably. And I just remembered that I have to be somewhere, that’s all. I have to meet Molly.’
‘Hay fever? In February?’
I throw his joggers and socks at him.
‘You need to get dressed and go.’
He blinks at me.
‘… O… OK… If that’s what you want.’
I go to the broom cupboard, pull out my small holdall and start throwing items from my wardrobe haphazardly into it. I can feel Malcolm’s eyes on me as he silently dresses.
‘You taking a trip away somewhere?’
‘I’m taking some clothes to Molly’s to be washed. My machine’s broken and they can’t deliver a new one until next week.’ It’s the best excuse I can come up with in the moment.
‘Oh!’ he says, as though it could be a legitimate reason. ‘Well, I have a perfectly good washing machine over at mine, you could always…’
‘Thanks, Malcolm,’ – I cut him off – ‘but I said I’d take it over to Molly’s. Can you close the door on your way out?’
He looks crestfallen as he stands, hovering by the sofa for a few moments before finally shuffling towards the front door.
‘Right… Well, I’ll be off then.’ He turns, smiles, a little awkwardly, and it doesn’t quite reach his sparkly eyes this time.
‘OK, well, thanks for the um… the wine, Malcolm,’ I say without looking up.
‘I thought you were going to say something else then!’ His cheeky chuckle quickly fades to nothing as he opens the door.
‘Well, bye then, Erin.’
‘Yeah, goodbye, Malcolm, take care of yourself.’
He’s still loitering by the front door as I stuff a pair of old pumps into the holdall, like he has something to say but is undecided.
‘Will… will I ever see you again, Erin?’
I zip up my bag and look over at him. He seems a little sad about this prospect and it throws me off a touch.
‘Don’t be silly, Malcolm, we live opposite each other.’ I manage a small smile for him. I don’t want to create even more suspicion in him than I know I have already. He probably thinks I’m a total Fruit Loop. When the police come, I wonder what he will say to them. ‘Of course you’ll see me again.’
I just hope it won’t be from behind bars.
FOURTEEN
The first thing I do once I alight at King’s Cross station is find a newsagent’s and buy a couple of those burner phones that drug dealers use, and a king-size Snickers bar.
The 18.15 from Leeds to London was rammed to the rafters. The last time I took a train was back in 2021 and things appear to have changed during those lost years in ways I couldn’t quite have predicted. The carriage was so full of commuters that you couldn’t get a cigarette paper between them, and as I glanced around, I noted thateveryonewas glued, head down, to their smartphones. Scrolling has now officially replaced the art of spontaneous conversation, it seems, though this works for me. The less you talk to people, the less they can get to know you. Knowledge is power after all, and you must never give your power away.
Eventually, I managed to find a spare seat next to a hulk of a man who clearly had no concept of the term ‘personal hygiene’. He grunted, grumbling as I shuffled and squeezed in next to him, unfazed by his offensive odour.
For a time at Larksmere, I’d shared a 10 x 8 ‘room’ with a morbidly obese, double-murdering paranoid schizophrenic called Candice who claimed to have received ‘messages’ from theTV telling her to kill both her parents. She believed that washing yourself in anything other than holy water was a sin, often choosing instead to smear herself in her own urine and faeces. Even once she’d been forcibly sedated and cleaned up by a team of nurses, the stench would linger for days.
Once I was seated, I opened my laptop and punched the name DCI Dan Riley into the search engine and settled down to some reading…
