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I almost jump off the bench when my phone buzzes with a text. It’s Harry, telling me he’s slept most of the day. He’s attached a selfie of him with the bandage stretched diagonally across his head. ‘What do you think of my war wound?’ he asks, along with a smiley face and thumbs-up emoji. I think about replying but do nothing for the time being. I’ve already led him on with the kiss and don’t want to make it worse.

Another firework bursts from the beyond the trees and then, as if from nowhere, someone in a hoody is barely steps away. The person’s head is down, hands in pockets. Billy hasn’t moved and I yelp in alarm. This stops the hoody on the spot. I have to wriggle my feet out from underneath Billy’s body so I can stand.

‘Have you got the money?’ the hoody asks. If anything, he sounds even younger in person. His voice trembles as his breath spirals into the air.

‘Have you got the photos?’

He reaches into his top and pulls out an envelope. ‘Money first,’ he says – and I’m as sure as I can be that he’s seen this in a film at some point.

I take three twenties and a ten from my pocket – more of the money that isn’t mine – and hold it towards him. He stretches for the cash with one hand while slowly offering the envelope with his other. It’s laughable, really. As if it’s a cartoon Cold War and we’re completing some sort of illicit handover. I suppose we are in a park after dark.

He takes the money and I end up with the envelope – but, when that’s done, neither of us quite knows what to do next. It’s more shy than spy.

The hoody bobs on the spot and puts his hands in his pockets. ‘Right, see ya then,’ he says. The stuttering nerves have gone now he has the money and he’s talking as if we’re mates who’ll catch up again in a few hours.

‘Bye,’ I reply, and then he turns and dashes off towards the gates.

I unstick the envelope and pull out a stack of paper, though it’s too dark to make out anything more than vague shapes on the pages. I tell Billy it’s time to go and then we follow after the hoody. By the time we’re through the gates and onto the pavement, the road is clear. It’s a short walk back to Hamilton House and then, when we get into the flat, Billy saunters off to his bed, while I sit on the sofa.

The contents of the envelope are seemingly as promised. Images from a bus security camera have been printed on regular paper. They’re grainy and monochrome and, initially, I’m sure they’re from the wrong bus. I can’t find myself in any of the first dozen pictures – but then I realise it’s because I’m hidden by Mr Stinky. Once I identify him with his raised arm and phone in the other hand, I see myself slotted in behind. It’s like a Where’s Wally? puzzle.

The bus is even more packed than I’d realised at the time. The me from the past is looking down in every image, a complete irrelevance. When I was in the middle of it, the crowd felt hostile and overbearing. From the images, there’s more of a friendliness. Many people are talking and smiling. Of everyone featured, it feels like it’s only me who is disengaged.

Each image is time-stamped in roughly thirty-second intervals. I can see the moment after the bus had stopped and everyone moved around. The woman who was bleating about foreigners appears and, in the next shot, Mr Stinky has his arm down.

There’s a claustrophobia that’s hard to avoid even by looking at the pictures. One after another, there are limbs wrapped around limbs. People packed far too tightly for it to ever be safe.

I keep working through the stack until I reach the one in which I’m moving towards the front, trying to get off. I’m there in one; gone in the next. By that point, the envelope of money was already in my bag.

Unsure of what I’m looking for, I go back to the beginning. It’s like a badly made flickbook of jumping images. People’s heads jerk wildly, limbs flap uncontrollably… and then I see it. A face I recognise belonging to a person standing directly behind me. A face that, surely, shouldn’t be there.

I’m looking at the floor, oblivious to who and what is around me – while, at the same time, there is a person so close I could’ve touched him.

Harry.

Chapter Thirty

Thursday

One of the most common pieces of advice people give, or get, is to ‘sleep on it’. It’s often followed up with something like, ‘It’ll seem different in the morning’, or ‘It’ll feel better in daylight’. None of that makes it clear what to do if sleep proves near impossible because of the situation, or if things seem exactly the same by sunrise.

I sleep in short bursts but constantly jump awake, thinking Harry is standing at the side of the bed. It’s as if his presence edges across me and then I’m alert.

At the time the CCTV still was taken, we had been messaging back and forth on the dating app for a couple of weeks. We had swapped photos but didn’t meet for real until we were in The Garden Café a little more than twenty-four hours later. I can’t quite get my head around the images. Harry is in seven consecutive photos, but I can’t work out if he’s already on the bus and works his way forward through the mass, or if he gets on at one of the stops. There are only two pictures in which it’s clearly him. One with a sideways profile; the other where he’s glancing up towards the camera and it’s a full front-on image. In the other five, he’s either looking down or turning away. There’s an umbrella in his hand, but he’s wearing jeans and jacket, like the other times I’ve seen him. In all of the seven images, I don’t look up once. I’m paying no attention to anyone around me.

When Harry and I first saw one another at The Garden Café, I remember seeing something in his eyes that I thought was a hint of recognition. I didn’t know him, but I considered if he knew me.

I wonder if, perhaps, Harry takes the same bus as me regularly and, for whatever reason, I’ve never noticed him. It could be possible.

I scan through the faces of everyone else in the images and recognise perhaps one person – even though I took the same bus at the same time every day I was at work. That could be it, of course. I had a routine that was easy to follow if somebody wanted.

But why?

What reason would Harry – or anyone else – have for leaving the envelope of money in my bag? Could he be some sort of secret millionaire-type who’s playing a strange game? It does seem like the type of thing Channel 4 would show.

I fold my bed away and check on Billy. He’s awake but lethargic and I hide the next dose of his medicine in his food. He eats it without too much complaint and then I take him outside for a short walk.

Back upstairs and there’s an email waiting for me. Whoever put up the posters replied a little after three in the morning. I’d said I wasn’t going to contact him or her any more if the person didn’t tell me what was misplaced on the bus. I half expected to receive nothing, but the message is straightforward enough:

I lost an envelope. I think you know that. Can we meet?

It’s hard not to wonder now whether this is Harry playing games. If it is, then what is the trick? He is asking to meet. Is he gambling that I won’t show up? Or is this going to be the big reveal that it was a joke, or an experiment, all along? I can’t work out what I think is real, so decide to be assertive.

I can meet today. 11 a.m. at Chappie’s café.

It puts the onus back on the sender – whether or not it’s Harry: Meet me or don’t meet me. It takes less than a minute for the reply to come.

See you at 11.

There’s something unerringly uneasy about the confidence of the reply. I thought the time of day might put the person off – or the public location – but it is seemingly fine. He or she is unfazed by daylight and isn’t at work. I could not turn up, of course, but there’s a big part of me that wants to figure out the mystery. I also realise that, in all our communication, I’ve given this person no way of knowing who I am. I won’t recognise him or her either, and so, unless the café is empty, there’s still some anonymity.