“Jacob?” I answer, my voice heavy with concern.
There’s a frantic intake of breath at the other end as if he’d resigned himself to me not picking up. “She knows,” he blurts out. “She knows where I am.”
“What?” I ask, though why, I don’t know. I understand exactly what he’s saying and it chills me to the bone. “How? How can she?”
“I … I don’t know,” he stutters. “She just does … she’s called me and…” His voice tails off.
“Jacob?” I ask frantically. “Jacob, are you still there?”
“Y-yeah, but how the hell…? I mean, I’ve been so careful. There’s no way she could have … if she knows, then … I don’t know … she’ll … I don’t know what she’ll do.” He’s rambling and becoming more incoherent with every syllable.
“OK, try to stay calm and tell me what’s happened,” I say, in an effort to get him to take a breath.
The sudden intake of air sounds like it’s disguising a sob.
“Jacob, it’s going to be OK,” I say gently. “Just tell me what’s happened.”
“Sh-she called me,” he says. “About ten minutes ago, and said that she knew where I was and was going to come for me.”
“OK, where are you now?” I ask, praying that he has had the wherewithal to get away from the apartment.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m just walking around. I don’t know what to do.”
“Listen to me,” I say, going into the hall and picking up my purse and keys from the console table. “Can you get a taxi to the Royal Garden hotel in Canterbury?”
“Y-yes,” he says, hesitantly. “I can get an Uber.”
“No!” I snap, more abruptly than I mean to. “If she has access to your Uber account, she’ll be able to see where you are and where you’re going.” I grab my leather jacket from the newel post of the banister and shrug it on. “Call a cab and I’ll meet you there.”
A dampness has formed under my arms by the time I’ve parked the car and am striding along the high street. I briefly wonder about calling the police, but then almost as quickly, I ask myself what they’d be able to do in this situation. Jacob’s wife hasn’t done anything. Yet.
I’m waiting outside the hotel entrance when a white Vauxhall pulls up and Jacob almost falls out of it. It’s as if his wife is in there, quite literally kicking him to the curb. His face is ashen, and as I take his arm and guide him through the revolving doors and into the lobby, I can feel his whole body trembling.
I tense up as I look around the bustling reception, wondering if I’ll see Andy, my old boss, or any of my other former colleagues from when I used to work here as a receptionist. I can’t help but wonder if I’m not also keeping half an eye out for a woman I won’t be able to recognize.
There’s an attractive blonde talking to the concierge and I manage to convince myself that it might be Jacob’s wife. That she’s somehow beaten us here. It’s ridiculous, I know, but still I quicken my step and manhandle Jacob toward the bar, where I know a whiskey will settle his nerves.
“So, what else did she say?” I ask, as I head for the far end of the bar, out of view of the doorway. “Did she say anything specific about your whereabouts? Did she threaten you in any way?”
He forces a laugh. “She doesn’t need to say much for me to know what she actually means.”
“But perhaps she was calling your bluff,” I offer. “She might not know where you live. She might have just said it to intimidate you.”
He looks at me as if I’m a child who hasn’t grasped something they’ve already been told a million times. “She has my phone number,” he says bluntly. “If she’s been able to get hold of that, then she would have been able to find out where I live.”
“Yes, but…” I start before trailing off, at a loss for words for once.
His eyes flit around the room like a cornered wild animal, assessing the risks and trusting no one. “And besides, Vanessa isn’t in the habit of bluffing,” he says eventually. “She tends to follow through.”
It’s the first time that he’s mentioned his wife by name—only ever having previously referred to “her” or “she”—and, now that she has a name, I can picture her more easily.
I imagine how they would have looked when they were a couple; a supposedly happy couple. Jacob with his dark hair flopping down over his blue eyes, and a dimpled school-boy grin that spreads wide across his face. Vanessa, elegant, serene, with highlighted hair piled on top of her head; a thin-lipped, contained smile, giving her a distinguished air that she clearly doesn’t deserve.
Despite my better judgment, I order a whiskey for each of us and the first swig burns the back of my throat, but the potent liquid instantly desensitizes my jangling nerve endings. Or maybe I’ve just watched too many movies and am imagining it.
“So, what am I going to do?” asks Jacob, grimacing, after downing his in one hit.
“Well, you obviously can’t go back to the apartment,” I say. “You’re going to have to stay here, at least for tonight, until we work out a way around this.”
He surreptitiously signals to the barman for another and raises his eyebrows at me in question.
“No, thanks,” I say. “Not for me.”
“Something else then?” asks Jacob.
I look at my watch, though I don’t know why. I have nowhere to go and nowhere to be, but being here doesn’t sit easy either. Not that I’m doing anything wrong—I’m just having a drink with a friend in need, but I already know I won’t be able to tell Leon about this, so perhaps I am?
“I’ll have a gin and tonic,” I say, without meaning to. Clearly my brain’s not telling my mouth the right thing to say.
“How the hell could she have found out where I live?” he muses, as we both watch the barman slice a sliver of cucumber into a fishbowl glass. “I couldn’t have been any more careful.”
I shudder as I remember the open door of my office this morning and Jacob’s missing file. I honestly can’t remember what information might be in there—would I have mentioned the apartment? Noted the moving date? Jotted down his new telephone number? Could I have handed such sensitive information to his estranged wife on a plate?
“Is there any way she could have known you were seeing me?” I ask, while keeping everything crossed that he shoots even the mere suggestion down in flames.
“Absolutely not,” he says, before sinking another whiskey. “I quite literally went out of my way whenever I came to see you. And still checked behind me at every step.”
“And there’s no way she could have found out from your old school where your new job was and followed you home from there?”
He shakes his head vehemently. “I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I’ve treated this whole thing like a military operation because I was so terrified I was going to leave myself open … to this.” He looks at me and I feel unnerved, troubled that he’s gone to such lengths, only for me and my security lapse to undo all his efforts.
“I left home and my job on the same day,” he goes on. “She wouldn’t have known it was coming, so wouldn’t have had a chance to track me.”
“What about if someone from your new school recognizes you? It would only take an old colleague or friend from the past to have called her.”
He gives me a look that suggests I’m grasping at straws. He’s not wrong.
“Can I get another?” he says, signaling to the bartender.
“I guess the issue is less about how she found you than what you’re going to do about it,” I say, still nursing my gin and tonic.
He rubs at his eyes and slams a clenched fist down on the bar in frustration. The woman on the stool next to him turns with a look of concern etched on her face. I offer a smile to assure her that all is well.