Читать книгу Three Steps Behind You - Amy Bird - Страница 24

Chapter 12

In the morning, there is a text from the car rental place inviting me in for an investigatory meeting later that day.

Adam grills me while he cooks the breakfast bacon in the oven. It saves discussing the previous evening.

‘Don’t go,’ he says. ‘Tell them you want to see their evidence. Ask for their HR procedure. Say you need to speak with your lawyer.’

They do things differently in the City.

‘I smacked a co-worker in the face, Adam. I’d say they have their evidence.’

‘You’ve been a good employee, though, and it’s not like you to be violent, is it?’

‘No,’ I say.

‘Right,’ Adam says. ‘And I’ll bet you were provoked?’

‘Yes,’ I acknowledge.

‘Good. Then raise a grievance against the guy who provoked you. That’ll throw them. Trust me – I know how HR work.’

Adam goes through to the living room and returns with the rose. He chops the long stalk and puts it in a vase on the tray.

‘Too much?’ he asks.

‘Go for it,’ I say. ‘Tell her I hope she slept well. No interruptions.’

He nods his assent. When I go upstairs to shower after breakfast, I see the tray emptied outside Nicole’s room. The rose is there still, but all its petals are shredded.

Adam gives me a lift to the car rental shop, over in Hendon. We listen to the Today Programme while John Humphreys castrates his latest victim. I wonder why anyone would go on the show.

‘Exposure,’ says Adam. ‘To position stories before they break another way.’

‘But they get destroyed!’

‘Rather that than stay silent. Besides, they get to manage their own downfall. Makes them feel they aren’t completely impotent.’

I think about book three and wonder if he is right. I look at him now, driving along confidently, tolerating me so close by his side. No. About this one thing, Adam is wrong. Difficult to imagine how I would do damage limitation.

When we get to the shop, I suggest he leaves the car with us and gets the train into Farringdon. He elects to drop me off on the corner and use the station car park.

‘Wouldn’t want them to expect my business.’ Which is true – he was a good customer before. A regular one, anyway. Always discreet. ‘And my car will show your ones up!’ He’s joking, but it’s true. The black BMW 4x4 is a bit of a contrast to the red Skodas on the forecourt.

I watch the back of his car as he pulls away. What would it take, I wonder, to be permanently in that car with him? Permanently in the passenger seat, with him at my side? There’d have to be a space first, I suppose.

Perhaps it will just take time. Time, and book four. Because I still remember the message he gave me, the message I wrote in book three. About playing the long game.

For now, I trudge towards the shop, where my colleagues are waiting to mete out judgement. Perhaps I will vanish from the garage too, like Jimmy did. Although that was of his own volition. He, too, wouldn’t have wanted to show the forecourt up. When he landed that Maserati. A lucky win. Some might say too lucky.