‘Excuse me.’
The barman doesn’t acknowledge me.
‘Excuse me!’ My voice echoes around the empty room.
‘Whoever you’re looking for, I haven’t seen them. Don’t know them.’ He meets my eyes with a stare that chills me.
‘Sorry? I don’t know…’ This isn’t going as I planned. How does he know I’m looking for someone? Does he know who I’m looking for?
‘Copper, ain’t you?’
‘No.’
‘You look like one.’
I should have kept my jeans on.
‘I’m not. I’m…’ I think quickly. If I ask if he knows that man, Simon – for the first time in a long time I allow his name to pop into my mind, a testament to how strong I feel right now – then he might text him. Warn him I am here and there’s nothing like the element of surprise.
Let me go. Let Marie go.
There are a row of brass pumps tagged with beers named after wildlife. I order a pint of Badger’s Black Brew, registering the barman’s surprise. He raises his eyebrows again as I count out coins with gloved hands before I drop the money into his open palm, avoiding contact. I choose a rickety chair near the window so I can see anyone approaching. My knee jigs frantically up and down.
Calm yourself.
Three things.
A Who Wants to Be a Millionaire quiz machine.
The green baize covering the pool table.
Stainless steel stools with black leather seat pads guarding the bar.
Calm.
I wait.
The traffic whizzes by. A number of pedestrians. None of them are him. Rather than bringing me down, I find this thought cheery. Last time Fregoli led me to believe that he was everywhere. Now I can count on one hand the number of times I have caught sight of him. It has to be real, doesn’t it?
The football has finished. The pub now half-full. The jukebox plays ‘Bat Out of Hell’. I make a deal with fate. If you play Steps next I know I’m in the right place.
‘Crazy Nights’ plays instead.
I glance at my watch. Archie will be in bed by now. I feel wretched that I haven’t kissed him goodnight. I wonder what I’m doing here. Whether I should go home.
But then I see him.
He’s heading towards the pub, drawing on a cigarette, smoke pluming from his nostrils.
It’s him.
The age doesn’t fit. He looks older. Greyer. But it’s definitely him.
My senses are in overdrive. Conversations roar around me. The smell of hops is nauseating. Adrenaline floods my body. I’m torn between fight and flight. I want to run. I want to run and never look back. I screw up my eyes, the image of Archie is painted on the inside of my eyelids, his arms around the bear.
Be brave, Leah.
I open my eyes, the street is empty. I turn my head. He is standing next to the table, looking at me with an odd expression on his face.
Without thinking what I am going to do, I leap to my feet. He turns and runs. The hunter has become the hunter.
‘Stop!’ I cry. Not knowing what I will do if he does.
The doors crash open as he thunders outside. He is pelting down the street but he’s not as fast as me. Not as fit. All the hours spent running after Archie are paying off. He throws a glance over his shoulder, expression turning to panic when he sees how quickly I am gaining on him.
‘Stop!’ I shout again, stretching out my arm. My fingers brush against his back.
It’s the blast of horn that alerts us both to the car that is hurtling towards him.
Honestly, I cannot say whether I grabbed him to pull him back or to push him forward but somehow he is sprawled on the road in line with the oncoming traffic.
My thoughts skip from horror to fear to a morbid relief that now it really will all be over.
Chapter Thirty-Six
George
Now
George sits at the kitchen table, moonlight pooling through the window as he nurses a nightcap. He can’t believe that tonight an innocent man could have died. Not quite so innocent. He was a drug dealer and thought Leah was a copper chasing him. He was lucky the car didn’t kill him. At least a broken pelvis will keep him off the streets for a while. But still. After the police brought Leah home and told George that she was in shock, he knew he should look after her but he couldn’t help asking what she was thinking.
She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t tell him why she was in the pub when she said she would be with Tash.
She’s lying.
He’s lying.
The thought that the man could have been killed chills George again. He sips his whisky to warm him. Perhaps he should rethink his plan but it’s all in place.
Tomorrow.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Carly
Then
Carly prised open her eyes, squinting as a brilliant white light poured through her.
Was she dead?
Chatter.
Laughter.
Music.
She blinked, once, twice, three times until the blur veiling her sight slipped away. Everything fell into sharp focus.
To her astonishment she was in the ballroom, but not as it had appeared when they’d hidden there earlier, with the soot and the ashes and scattered broken glass, but how it was in Mr Webster’s photos. The vibrant red and cream carpet lying smooth over the floor. The three chandeliers suspended from the ceiling, their light creating rainbows through droplets of crystal, long before they were wrenched down and stamped on until they smashed.
‘We’ll meet again…’ Vera Lynn promised. All around Carly couples danced. Around her, through her. She didn’t know if they were the ghosts or if she was. The handsome men in their high-waisted trousers and frock coats, pinned medals glinting as they spun around women in pencil skirts and hats, beautiful in their matching uniforms and matching smiles.
Happy. Everyone was happy.
‘Carly.’ Someone was calling her and she wondered whether it was the boy ladling punch with the cropped blond hair and the brilliant blue eyes. He couldn’t have been much older than her. Perhaps he wanted to dance with her. She felt a hand slip inside hers but the boy hadn’t moved. Carly was confused.
‘Wake up.’
But Carly didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to stay here where everyone was hopeful.
She wanted to feel hopeful.
Carly felt tears slide onto her cheeks. She wondered why she was crying.
If ghosts could even cry.
‘Is she dead?’ she heard.
She wanted to tell the boy she wasn’t dead, she was here and whole and she wanted to dance with him, but tears dripped again and Carly knew it wasn’t the boy who was whispering. It wasn’t her own tears she could feel.
‘I’m okay,’ Carly reassured her sisters but as she tried to sit up, feelings returned hard and fast. Pain in her head, her foot. The tang of blood in her mouth. She wanted to spit it out but didn’t want it to land on Leah or Marie so she swallowed it down. Felt it travelling down her throat, swishing around her empty stomach. She retched.
After taking a couple of deep breaths, she asked, ‘Are either of you hurt?’
‘I think I’ve twisted my ankle,’ Leah said.
Marie began to cry. ‘This isn’t a game, is it?’
‘If it is, we’re going to win.’ Fuelled by the courage Carly had witnessed in the ballroom, she forced herself to sit and then to kneel. The soldiers had faced far worse than she had. Where would the country be today if they had given up? ‘We’re getting out of here.’ Acid rose in her throat as waves of pain battered her skull each time she moved. ‘We need to look for a way out. We don’t have much time.’