“I’m actually not looking for him. I’m his—” I swallowed. I was someone who lied professionally, for God’s sake, so why was it so hard doing it now, when it mattered most? “I’m his n-niece, Ella. I’m stuck and he said maybe if I asked around, someone would give me a lift south?”
“Where are you looking to get to?” The guy had opened the door and now he slid easily to the ground. He was a lot younger than Bill, nearer my age, and powerfully built. He looked like when he wasn’t driving he probably spent every hour in the gym.
“London, ideally.”
“No bother. I’m doing a drop in Greenwich. I can’t get you much closer cos of the Low Emission Zone, but if I left you round there, would that help?”
“Are you kidding?” Greenwich was only a few miles from Cole’s flat. I could walk the rest if I had to. “That would be amazing. Is there any chance…” I glanced over my shoulder, trying not to look too obviously at the police cars idling by the main entrance, radios crackling over the still night air. “I mean, I’d be incredibly grateful either way, but I don’t suppose you’re leaving soonish, are you?”
He glanced at his watch, then nodded.
“Yeah, just about done my break time.” He tapped something into a log on his phone, then said, “Hop in, Ella.”
For a moment I had no clue who he was talking to, then I realized and a smile spread across my face. Ella Watts. For the next couple of hours, that was me.
“Thanks. And you are…?”
“Mike. Michael Rake to the DVLA. Or Micky Take to my mates.” He held open the door for me, and I climbed up into the cab.
* * *
AS WE SPED SOUTH ON the motorway, the flashing blue lights receding behind us, Mike kept up a steady stream of chat, asking me questions about myself, my work, my supposed uncle Bill… I answered at random, trying to keep up the pretense of being related to Bill while mixing in “facts” I could plausibly pull off without research. I told him I lived in London, worked in a call center, wasn’t married. Saying those last words gave me a stab of pain that was nothing to do with the wound in my side, and I couldn’t stop myself glancing down at my bruised and empty finger. I remembered Gabe’s face as he had held the ring out to me, the light in his clear brown eyes. He must have known I would say yes—but even still, he’d looked nervous, had stammered over the words, “Jack, will you m-marry me?”
I saw again the slanting light, smelled the ocean, felt the sand between my toes as I’d crouched in the dunes, saying Yes, yes, yes…
Oh God, I thought, I love him. And for once, I didn’t have to painfully correct myself over the tense, because it didn’t matter that Gabe was dead. I still loved him. I would always love him. What was I going to do when all this was over, when I had no reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other?
“Ella?” I heard, dimly, over the roar of my thoughts, and I looked up to find Mike watching me curiously.
“Sorry… sorry, I was…” I swallowed. He could clearly see something was wrong. He was looking at me with a mix of concern and that alarm men show when they think a woman is about to cry. “Actually, to be completely honest, your—your question hit a nerve. I lost someone. M-my partner. He—well, he died. Not long ago. Saying it aloud just made me feel—”
I stopped. The words were stuck in my throat. I took a long, shuddering breath, and for the first time I was grateful for the pain in my side, distracting me from everything I was trying hard not to feel.
“Ah, right,” Mike said. There was something else in his face, though, not just sympathy but a kind of relief. “To be honest that’s a bit of a— Nah, sorry. Ignore me. Me and my big mouth.”
“No, go on,” I said, a little curious now. He was looking both relieved and profoundly uncomfortable, and anything was better than trying to keep up with my own lies and fibs about Bill. “You can say it.”
“Well, to be honest, I could see I’d put my foot in it and I was a bit worried… I thought maybe he was beating you up. I can see—” He waved a hand at me, taking it all in: my hunched stance, my bruised knuckles, my good arm curled over my bad side, unsuccessfully masking the fact that I was clearly in pain. “You look like you been in the wars. I thought maybe it was him did it.”
His words hit me like a slap. The fact that I looked ill, I could admit that. I wasn’t delusional. Even the fact that I was more and more often being mistaken for someone homeless, I was getting used to it, though not to the guilt of accepting sympathy under false pretenses. But the thought that I looked like a battered wife… the idea brought the lump back to my throat, as though I’d betrayed Gabe in some way, though I knew that wasn’t true.
“No,” I said, huskily now. “No, he was… he was amazing. None of this was his fault. I was in—” I swallowed hard, trying to think of a story that would explain the state of me without prompting Mike to drive me to hospital. “We were in an accident. He died. I’m still… I’m still recovering.”
It was a lie, of course it was. Nothing about Gabe’s death had been an accident. And I knew in my heart I would never recover from this. Maybe I didn’t want to. Because the more I thought about what lay ahead when all this was over, the less I wanted to face it. I just wanted to lie down, close my eyes, and wait for Gabe.
“I’m really sorry, pet,” Mike said, his voice a touch gruff. He cleared his throat, staring fixedly ahead at the road as though he didn’t want to look at me and set himself off. “Really sorry. That’s—that’s rough. Really unfair.”
“Yeah,” I said. My throat hurt so much I could hardly get the words out. “Yeah. It is. It’s really unfair.”
We drove in silence after that, the lights of the motorway lulling me, until at last the lorry swung around a mini roundabout, jolting my head against the windowpane, and I felt Mike touch my shoulder.
“Ella. Ella, wake up, love.”
I blinked, my tired brain taking longer than it should have to figure out who he was talking to. Ella. Ella was me. Fuck. Had I been asleep?
“Are we there?” My voice was croaky, and my mouth felt dry, with a strange taste. My head was throbbing. I wiped the thread of drool coming from the side of my lips and blinked again. The streetlights swam in and out of focus.
“We’re just coming up to Canary Wharf,” Mike was saying, “but I wasn’t sure which side of the river you wanted.”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to put the pieces together. The lorry was idling in a layby just off the North Circular and I could see the O2 behind us and the Blackwall Tunnel signs not far ahead. We must be pretty close to the Thames. I could get the DLR from Greenwich… but what time did that close?
“What time—” I croaked out inaudibly, and then cleared my throat and tried again. “Sorry, what time is it?”
“Coming up to midnight. You gonna be all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I—my friend lives in Wapping.” Another lie. Cole wasn’t my friend. And if I managed to do this, he wouldn’t be living in Wapping much longer. Wormwood Scrubs Prison, hopefully.
“I reckon you’ll be better off here, then. I’ll drop you in Canary Wharf,” Mike said, and in spite of my protestations, he swung the wheel and pulled off the North Circular towards the cluster of towers.
Ten minutes later I was climbing out of the cab into the cold night air, thanking Mike profusely and trying to ignore the concern in his expression as he watched me navigate the steps down from the cab with a lot more care than someone my age should have needed.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he said again, and I nodded, trying to put as much conviction as I possibly could into my face.
“I’m completely sure. Honestly, thank you so much, Mike, you—” But I didn’t know how to put it into words, what he’d done for me, what he’d saved me from. “You’re a lifesaver.” Maybe literally, if that exploit was being used for the kinds of things I suspected.
He watched me go, doubt still written all over his face, and I tried to keep my body as straight as possible, not give way to the pulsing pain that the climb down from the cab had jolted awake. I could feel his eyes on me as I walked across the deserted street and ducked between two buildings, and then at last I heard the big HGV engine rev and his rig pull away into the night.
Slowly, when I was certain he had gone, I let myself collapse in a doorway, panting with the effort that looking normal had cost. I couldn’t be more than a couple of miles from Cole’s flat, but I was no longer sure I’d make it there.
As I knelt, shivering, on the cold pavement, I heard a church bell tolling the hour. One, two, three… all the way up to midnight.
The final chime faded away, and I straightened and forced myself to my feet. Only one more hurdle to go. And then I could rest.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12 ZERO DAYS