I check Harry’s last text – the one in which he sent a selfie while wearing the bandage. ‘What do you think of my war wound?’ it says underneath. It’s a little flirty. I didn’t reply last night and don’t now.
As has been happening so often, I find myself counting the cash in the envelope. After everything else, plus the vet bill and bribe for the bus company employee, there is a little under £2,400 left. I’ve spent more than £1,200 in less than a week. I pack the cash into the same envelope in which it arrived and slip it into my bag, then I say goodbye to Billy.
Chappie’s is one of the trendy new breed of café-bars that open before I get up for work and close long past my bedtime. The days of greasy spoons and the smell of chip fat in the morning is largely a goner. Now, it is all inoffensive background lift music and lattes made with any kind of milk, as long as it comes from a nut. By the evening it is imported beer from Portugal or Croatia – nowhere too obvious – plus craft ales from up and down the country that are called things like ‘Bloated Emperor Penguin’ or ‘Flighty Orange Fox’.
I order the cheapest coffee on the menu and it still comes to more than two pounds. I sit cradling it on one of the tables towards the back, far away from the windows. It gives me a good view of anyone entering the café.
The reason for choosing this place is that, despite the prices, it is comfortably the most popular café in the area. There are people all around. Witnesses all around. Admittedly, many are either hammering away on their MacBooks or sitting cross-kneed in suits and talking about things like ‘this month’s portfolio’ and how Veena from accounting ‘can’t operate the photocopier, let alone an entire payroll’. It still seems like the worst thing that can happen here is that someone’s poached egg is a little overcooked.
It’s ten minutes to eleven as I sit and wait, listening into other people’s conversations and meticulously watching the door for even a hint of movement. A waitress shuffles by and asks if everything’s all right. It’s hard to get a coffee wrong, so I tell her it’s fine and she moves on.
Five minutes later and the only people who’ve entered are a pair of mums whose infants immediately begin crying. One child seemingly eggs the other on and, before anyone knows, everyone else in the café is shooting sideways death stares towards the women. The men in suits have seen enough. One leaves a twenty-pound note on the table and then they disappear. Meanwhile, the mothers have ordered a pair of pumpkin-spiced sugar-filled monstrosities that masquerade as drinks. Yet more pumpkinisation of the country. I wonder where it’ll all end. Pumpkin Coca-Cola? Pumpkin tap water? Pumpkin Steak Bakes at Gregg’s? There’ll be riots.
Eleven o’clock comes and goes and, if someone is coming to confront me about the money, then he or she is not here. Or, they were here before me – and they’re looking out for me in the way I’m looking out for them.
I eye the other singles around the café – and there’s a bloke in shorts. There’s always one. I’d bet that whenever there’s an Arctic expedition, some fella rolls up in shorts and then shrugs something about not feeling the cold. He’s busy beating a MacBook to death so is perhaps writing a novel or something. Either that, or cranking out one of those massive Facebook posts that only maniacs come up with and are definitely not a cry for attention.
There’s a woman reading a paperback – but, if she is the person wanting to find out where her missing money has gone, she’s doing a fantastic job of never looking up.
Other than that, it’s all couples and groups.
I check emails on my phone, but there’s no reply since the ominous sounding, ‘See you at 11’. It’s gone 11 and I’m not seeing anyone.
At five-past, a man in double denim walks in. He has a blow-dried mullet and looks a bit like Kevin Bacon in Footloose – if the Hollywood actor had been run over by a bus and then spent the following three or four years doing nothing except eating.
There’s a fleeting second in which he glances towards the back of the café, settling on me. I figure this is it – he’s going to come and ask what I’ve done with his money – but then he slinks over to an armchair next to a bookcase and waves across to the waitress. Two minutes later and his wife or girlfriend strides in and takes a seat across from him.
By ten-past, the waitress comes over and asks if I want another coffee. It will be two more pounds that I don’t want to spend. I tell her I’m all right for now and she slips a bill onto the table while clearing everything else away. There are still no more emails. Quarter-past comes and the only newcomers are a pensioner couple.
My phone rings, but it’s the job agency. The same enthusiastic woman from the other day asks if I can get to an interview on Saturday. I try not to sound surprised, but the ‘oh’ is already out before I can stop it. I ask her where and it’s an office close to Crosstown Supermarket. I’ve walked past it day after day for years and barely paid any attention. She tells me it’s mainly answering phones, along with a bit of secretarial work. I’ll have Sundays and Mondays off and work eight til four every other day. It sounds perfect. The money’s not great, but it’s no worse than Crosstown. It’ll mean the same number 24 bus… my life won’t change that much.
‘Do I need to take anything?’ I ask.
‘Just yourself. They have your CV and questionnaire. They’re looking forward to seeing you.’
That last bit does sound suspiciously made up, but it gives me a swell of anticipation. Perhaps they are looking forward to seeing me?
I almost forget to ask the time, but the woman at the agency is on the ball anyway. She also tells me that I should be there fifteen minutes before to fill in ‘some form or another’. There are always more forms…
By the time I’ve finished talking to her, the waitress has done three separate passes of the table to see if I’ve left any money. She gives a small ‘in your own time’ wave that really means, ‘I’m calling the police to evict you in ten minutes’ – and so I check my emails one final time. It is 11:23 and I’ve not had anything since the last message.
I still can’t get my head around the CCTV images of Harry from the bus. I wasn’t sure if I expected him to be here, but, either way, I’ve been stood up.
After leaving some coins on the table – my money, not what came from the envelope – I get up and leave. The mothers are focusing on their kids; deformed Kevin Bacon is chatting to his other half and the waitress is clearing my table. None of them are paying me any attention – but, as I step out of the door, it’s hard to escape the tingling sense of unease that, somewhere near, someone has been watching me this entire time.
Chapter Thirty-One
When I get home, I go full internet nutjob by googling ‘Harry Smith’. It’s way too common a name, of course. There are news anchors, wrestlers, bakers and many, many others all called the same thing. Back when we were chatting via the dating app, I’d looked up Harry when he first told me his name and encountered the same problem. This should probably be the first lesson with online dating: never, ever choose someone with a normal name. Dave Brown? Do one, mate. Salamander Higglebottom The Third? Here’s my number.
Next, I try searching for Harry’s name alongside ‘internet security’, which is the field in which he told me he works. Results are still muddled, but I stumble across a LinkedIn page for a British Harry Smith who lists himself as a ‘White Hat Hacker’, working for ‘Bright White Enterprises’.