My heartbeat quickens. Carlos might spend most of his time waltzing on the planet Doolally, but where I'm terrible with names and worse with faces, he has the memory of an elephant.
And, apparently, the eyesight of a kestrel.
I lean forward and narrow my eyes to peer at the library. I can make out everything but the details. I know it's only over the street, and I should be able to do better, but my long sight is only marginally better than my short sight, and it's very hard to get progressive contact lenses.
"How old are you, Carlos?"
"That, my girl, is a state secret."
"Somewhere around eighty, then."
"I shall neither confirm nor deny."
"I know my eyesight's bad, but I thought it might be a little better than a possible eighty-ish-year-old."
Carlos looks at me with slightly milky, rheumy eyes.
"And one with cataracts."
I look at the list again. Then compare it to mine.
10:16 Henry the Horse enters
10:21 Jane Fonda enters
10:42 Empress Viridiana Quasar of the Far United Galaxies enters
10:46 Empress Viridiana Quasar of the Far United Galaxies exits
10:47 Sherlock Holmes exits
"Carlos? Is this some kind of cipher or are you just making up names for people you can't actually see the faces of coming and going from the library?"
"I saw you playing your game and thought I'd join in." He leans over the table and whispers, "The watchmen" – by which he means MI5 – “probably think I'm on eyeball duty, having been a cleaner" – which, being Carlos, could mean 'professional assassin' or it could equally mean 'someone with a trolley full of bleach and tennis elbow from scrubbing out toilets'. "This should throw them off nicely."
Brilliant.
Unhelpful as this exercise has been, it is progress of sorts. Opening my notebook to my list of unlikely suspects, I run a line through Carlos' name. One down, more than fifty to go.
Chapter twenty-one
Ed
Itakeadeepbreath,remind myself Bess doesn’t know I wrote the letter and pull up my big boy panties.
"This really has to stop." I ease myself into the sun lounger beside her.
I've pulled my panties just high enough so that I don't run away from sharing space and words with her, but not high enough that I'm going to actually admit to writing the letter.
That requires a whole other level of bravery.
"What has to stop?"
I pull out my phone, open the TikTok app, and play the latest video on 'Romance is Dead's channel. I hope she doesn't notice the trembling of my hand.
Two women sit at one of the library tables. One of them is a patron I don't recognise. The other is Bess.
Bess reads from a romance novel calledMeet Me in This Lifeby Dianna Fitch.
