“Hello, Andrew.”
“Hello.”
There was a pause.
“Well?” Andrew said.
“Well what?”
“I’m returning your call, Carl. What do you want?”
Andrew heard Carl swallow. A disgusting protein shake no doubt.
“I met one of your colleagues last week,” Carl said. “Meredith.”
Andrew’s head swam violently, and he crumpled slowly to his knees.
“She came to a yoga class of mine. Business has been slow, so it was only her and a few others. We’ve not been able to afford proper advertising, of course.”
“Right,” Andrew said, clinging on to the slimmest hope that Carl wasn’t going where he thought he was with this.
“We got to chatting after the class,” Carl said. “It was a bit awkward, really. She suddenly started going on about some miserable affair she’s having. I don’t know why she thought I’d be interested. I was desperate to get rid of her and then suddenly, out of the blue, she mentioned where she worked. And, lo and behold, it was with you. Small world, isn’t it?”
Andrew considered hanging up. He could take the SIM from his phone and flush it away and never have to speak to Carl again.
“Andrew, are you still there?”
“Yes,” Andrew said, through gritted teeth.
“Good,” Carl said. “I thought someone might be distracting you. Diane, perhaps. Or maybe the kids.”
Andrew balled his free hand into a fist and bit down on it hard until he could taste blood.
“It’s funny how our memories distort,” Carl said. Andrew could tell he was trying to keep his voice level. “Because I could have sworn that you lived on your own in a bedsit just off the Old Kent Road, that you hadn’t been in a relationship since . . . well . . . But according to this Meredith person you’re a happily married father of two living in a fancy town house.” Carl’s voice was vibrating with repressed anger. “And there are only two explanations there. Either Meredith has got things spectacularly wrong, or it means you’ve been lying to her and god knows who else about having a wife and children, and Christ I hope it’s the first one, because if it’s the second then I think that might be the most pathetic, awful thing I’ve ever heard. And I can only imagine what your boss would think of that, were he to find out. You’re working with vulnerable people a lot of the time, and for the council too. I can’t imagine such a revelation would go down particularly well, do you?”
Andrew brought his hand away from his mouth and saw the cartoonish bite mark on his skin. A memory swam into his mind of Sally throwing a half-finished apple over a hedge and protesting to their mother when she told her off.
“What do you want?” he said quietly. At first there was no reply. Just the sound of their breathing. Then Carl spoke.
“You ruined everything. Sally could have gotten better, I know she could, if only you’d made things right. But now she’s gone. And guess what? I spoke to her lawyer today, and she tells me that the money—Sally’s life savings, just to remind you, Andrew—will be paid to you any day now. Christ, if only she’d known the sort of person you really are. Do you honestly think she’d have done the same thing?”
“I don’t . . . That’s not . . .”
“Shut up and listen,” Carl said. “Given the fact I now know just how much of a liar you are, let me make it very clear what’s going to happen if you decide to go back on your promise to give me what’s mine. I’m going to text you my bank details, right now. And if you don’t transfer the money to me the moment you get it, then all it takes is one phone call to Meredith, and everything’s over for you. Everything. Got that? Good.”
With that, he hung up.
Andrew took the phone away from his ear and gradually his brain tuned back in to Ella’s voice: It wouldn’t be make-believe, if you believed in me. He immediately logged in to his online banking on his phone. When the screen showed his account, it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at: the money was already there. His phone vibrated—Carl’s bank details. Andrew started a new transfer, entering Carl’s details, his heart racing. One more click, and the money would be gone, and this would be over. But, despite every instinct, something stopped him. For all of Carl’s words about what Sally would make of his lies, would she really take a better view of what Carl was doing right now? This money was the last thing that connected him and Sally. It had been his sister’s last gift to him. The last emblem of their bond.
Before he could stop himself, he’d hit “cancel,” dropping the phone onto the carpet and putting his head into his hands, taking long, calming breaths.
He’d been sitting on the floor, thoughts flitting between weary defeat and desperate panic, when his phone rang again. He was half expecting it to be Carl—that somehow he’d worked out Andrew had the money already—but it was Peggy.
“Hello?” he said. The background noise was chaotic, people shouting over each other, clamoring to have their voice heard.
“Hello?” he said again.
“Is that Andrew?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“It’s Maisie. Hang on. Mum? Mum? I’ve got him.”
Andrew heard a collective “Whoa!” and the sound of blaring horns, then everything went muffled with the sound of fingers scrabbling at the phone.
“Andrew?”
“Peggy? Are you okay? Did Keith—”
“You were right about Steve. Got back and he was shouting at the girls, drunk out of his skull and on god knows what else. I can’t do it anymore, I just can’t. Grabbed as much stuff as I could and shoved the girls into the car. Steve was too busy smashing the place up to stop me leaving but he jumped on his motorbike and came after me.”
“Shit, are you all right?”
Another horn blared.
“Yes, well no, not really. I’m so sorry, Andrew, I should have believed you earlier.”
“It doesn’t matter, I don’t care—I just want to know you’re safe.”
“Yeah, we are. I think I’ve lost him. But the thing is, look, I know it’s late and everything but I’ve tried everyone else and . . . I wouldn’t normally ask but . . . could we come to yours, just for an hour or something, till I figure out what to do?”
“Yes, of course,” Andrew said.
“You’re a lifesaver. We won’t be a hassle, I promise. Okay, what’s your address? Maisie, grab that pen, darling, I need you to write Andrew’s address down for me.”
Andrew felt his stomach somersault as he realized what he’d just agreed to.
“Andrew?”
“Yes, I’m here, I’m here.”
“Thank god. What’s your address?”
What could he do? He had no choice but to tell her. And almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth the line went dead.
“It’s fine,” he said out loud, the words swallowed by the yawning indifference of his flat, the four walls that comprised living room, kitchen and bedroom seeming to have encroached.
Okay, let’s look at this logically, he thought. Maybe this could be a second house? A little place he had all to himself for a bit of . . . what was that dreadful phrase Meredith had said the other day? “Me time,” that was it. He turned slowly on the spot and took the place in, trying to imagine it was the first time he’d seen it. It was no good. It felt too lived-in to be anywhere other than his home.
I’m going to tell her everything.