‘I don’t like driving it, you know I don’t, it’s too big for me.’
He held her again in his arms and tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away. ‘Please, tonight, take it. I’ll bring the Golf.’
‘Why?’
‘Because . . .’ He hesitated, not wanting to tell her what he had heard on the radio. ‘You can get all the stuff in there more easily.’
She shrugged. ‘OK.’
‘I’ll give you a hand loading it.’
‘No, get on with your packing. Jade’ll help me. OK?’
‘OK,’ he said, reluctantly.
He lugged her suitcase down into the hall and placed it by the front door with the other cases. As he turned round he saw his daughter coming towards him holding the two cat baskets.
‘OK, my lovely?’
‘Are we coming back soon, Dad?’
‘Soon.’ He kissed her, then climbed back up the stairs. He stopped on the landing to get his breath back, feeling giddy and as if he was about to throw up. He took several deep breaths, then carried on up the tower stairs and into his office.
He walked over to his desk and sat down in his swivel chair in front of his computer, completely exhausted and half-expecting to see another message on the screen.
But there was nothing.
He closed his eyes. It felt like a steel band was tightening round his chest. He sat there for several minutes, dozing fitfully.
A ping from his phone startled him.
Down below, he heard the crunch of tyres on gravel, and the sound of a car receding.
He dozed again for a few moments. There was second ping.
Only half aware, he reached forward for his iPhone, picked it up and looked at the display. There was a message from Caro.
Range Rover has a flat battery. Have taken Golf. Call RAC and then join us as soon as you can. Love you. X
‘Noooooooooooooo!’ he yelled, jumping up from his chair with his phone in his hand, and throwing himself down the stairs, along the landing, down into the hall and to the front door. He raced out on to the driveway. ‘Caro!’ he shouted. ‘Caro!’
The Range Rover sat there, dark and silent. Red tail lights were moving away from him, disappearing down the drive, over the brow of the hill.
‘Caro!’ he screamed. ‘Caro!’ He ran after her, breaking into a sprint, the tail lights receding further and further into the distance.
The police would stop her at the bottom, he thought. The accident. The road would still be closed. They wouldn’t let her pass. Oh God, please don’t!
As he ran on down past the field of alpacas he lost sight of the lights. Still he kept going, his chest tight, the steel grip tightening, tightening, tightening. The pain was excruciating.
It worsened.
Worsened.
Like daggers pushing into his chest and then twisting. He could not breathe.
Then, all at once, he felt unseen hands pulling him backwards.
‘Noooo! Lemmego!’
It felt as if he was running against an ever-tightening elastic band. Running, fighting for breath.
‘Lemmego!’
The faster he ran, the more the band hardened, tightened. The more the daggers twisted.
And suddenly he was treading air as if he was treading water.
The pain stopped.
He was being dragged backwards.
‘Nooooooooo!’
He was pedalling air. Floating. Rising skywards.
‘Noooooooo! Caro! Caro! Caro!’
Something was pulling him back towards the house. Faster and faster. Accelerating. Accelerating.
He saw the silent Range Rover right below him. He was going to be smashed to pulp against the front of the house.
Then, suddenly, he was in the kitchen. Everything was calm. All the pain around his chest was gone. Caro and Jade were seated at the table looking at him, and smiling. They were bathed in shimmering green light, as if a powerful lamp was shining behind each of them.
‘Darling!’ Caro said.
‘Dad, epic!’ Jade greeted him.
‘Welcome home!’ Caro said.
Jade nodded, enthusiastically.
The television on the wall was switched on. There was an aerial shot of emergency vehicles. A lorry at a skewed angle on a country road he recognized as being on the way to Caro’s parents. The remnants of a Volkswagen Golf lay on its side a short distance away.
‘See!’ Caro said, happily. ‘That’s us! The dead have no more fears! We’re in a good place now, aren’t we, Ols?’
‘We can stay here forever now, can’t we, Dad?’ Jade said.
As he looked at them both, they began to fade, the light behind each of them dimming.
‘Come back! Come back!’ he cried out.
His own voice was becoming weaker.
Then a stranger, a smartly dressed man in his late thirties, with slicked-back fair hair, wearing a grey suit with loud socks and buckled loafers, came into the kitchen, holding a clipboard with a notepad on it, a digital measurer and a camera.
He took several photographs from different angles.
‘Excuse me, who are you?’ Ollie asked.
The man ignored him, as if he had not seen him. He began to ping a laser off the walls, measuring the width and length of the room, jotting them down on his pad.
‘Hello?’ Ollie said. ‘Excuse me, hello?’
The man moved on, without responding, through into the scullery.
59
Wednesday, 21 September 2016
‘Are we nearly there yet?’
Connor, sitting on the rear seat next to his sister in the Porsche Cayenne hybrid that was loaded to the gunwales with their possessions, had been driving both his parents nuts all the way down from London.
‘Just a few minutes now.’
Why the hell couldn’t his son be quiet, like his sister, Seb wondered? Leonora was sitting next to Connor with her headphones on, absorbed in the movie playing on the screen set into the rear headrests.
Nicola glanced at the satnav and turned to Connor. ‘Five minutes, darling!’
They passed a sign saying Cold Hill – please drive slowly, then moments later the car, gliding fast and silently on electrical power, almost took off over a humpback bridge.
‘Whoops!’ Seb said.
‘Slow down, darling,’ Nicola cautioned him.
‘Dad!’ Leonora chided.
‘Can we do that again, Dad?’ Connor asked, excitedly. ‘Can we, can we?’
It was a fine, late summer day. The roads from London had been clear all the way and they’d made good time. Seb was excited. He’d been a townie all his life, as had Nicola, but moving to the country had always been his dream. Now the takeover, by an American bank, of the wealth management company he’d been employed by for the past ten years had given him a massive windfall on his share options, enabling them to afford this country pile a few miles north of Brighton.
He shot a glance in the mirror and saw his son’s excited face. ‘This is where we’re going to be living, Connor. We’ll have tons of opportunities to do that bridge again!’
‘Yeahhh! Coolio!’
‘Coolio!’ Seb replied.
He had never felt so happy in all his life. They were now minutes away from their new life.
It was going to be incredible!
Cold Hill House.
They’d already had the headed notepaper printed. Cold Hill House.
Not bad for a state-school-educated chap, whose dad had been a London postman. Not a bad achievement for a man who had not yet reached his fortieth birthday. Not bad at all, he thought, the grin on his face growing wider by the second.
They drove past a Norman church on their right, with an ornate wooden lychgate, a row of terraced Victorian artisan cottages, then the poshed-up gastropub, Bistrot Tarquin, where, just two months ago, he and Nicola had lunched on Oysters Rockefeller followed by grilled lobster, washed down with a rather fine Pouilly-Fuissé, and made the decision to offer on the house.