road — a different one — with signposts to Epsom, the similar car was still somewhere on my tail, glimpsed tucked in behind a van.
If he had only a minimal sense of direction, I thought, he would realise what I had done and guess I now knew he was following. On the other hand, the back roads between Sandown Park and Epsom were a maze, like most Surrey roads, and he might possibly not have noticed, or thought I was lost, or …
Catching at straws, I thought. Face facts. I knew he was there and he knew I knew and what should I do next?
We were already on the outskirts of Epsom and almost automatically I threaded my way round corners, going towards my flat. I had no reason not to, I thought. I wasn’t leading my follower to Malcolm, if that was what he had in mind. I also wanted to find out who he was, and thought I might outsmart him through knowing some ingenious short cuts round about where I lived.
Many of the houses in that area, having been built in the thirties without garages, had cars parked permanently on both sides of the streets. Only purpose-built places, like my block of flats, had adequate parking, except for two or three larger houses converted to flats which had cars where once there had been lawns.
I drove on past my home down the narrow roadway and twirled fast into the driveway of one of the large houses opposite. That particular house had a narrow exit drive also into the next tree-lined avenue: I drove straight through fast, turned quickly, raced round two more corners and returned to my own road to come up behind the car which had been following me.
He was there, stopped, awkwardly half-parked in too small a space with his nose to the kerb, rear sticking out, brake lights still shining: indecision showing all over the place. I drew to a halt right behind him, blocking his retreat, put on my brakes, climbed out, took three or four swift strides and opened the door on the driver’s side.
There was a stark moment of silence.
Then I said, ‘Well, well, well,’ and after that I nodded up towards my flat and said, ‘Come on in,’ and after that I said, ‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.’
Debs giggled. Ferdinand, who had been driving, looked sheepish. Serena, unrepentant, said, ‘Is Daddy here?’
They came up to my flat where they could see pretty clearly that no, Daddy wasn’t. Ferdinand looked down from the sitting-room window to where his car was now parked beside mine in neat privacy, and then up at the backs of houses opposite over a nearby fence.
‘Not much of a view,’ he said disparagingly.
I’m not here much.’
‘You knew I was following you, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Like a drink?’
‘Well… scotch?’
I nodded and poured him some from a bottle in the cupboard.
‘No ice,’ he said, taking the glass. ‘After that drive, I’ll take it neat.’
‘I didn’t go fast,’ I said, surprised.
‘Your idea of fast and mine round those goddam twisty roads are about ten miles an hour different.’
The two girls were poking about in the kitchen and bedrooms and I could hear someone, Serena no doubt, opening doors and drawers in a search for residues of Malcolm.
Ferdinand shrugged, seeing my unconcern. ‘He hasn’t been here at all, has he?’ he said.
‘Not for three years.’
‘Where is he?’
I didn’t answer.
‘We’ll have to torture you into telling,’ said Ferdinand. It was a frivolous threat we’d used often in our childhood for anything from ‘Where are the cornflakes’ to ‘What is the time’ and Ferdinand himself looked surprised that it had surfaced.
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘As in the tool shed?’
‘Shit,’ Ferdinand said. ‘I didn’t mean …’
‘I should absolutely hope not.’
We both remembered, though, the rainy afternoon when Gervase had put the threat into operation, trying to make me tell him where I’d hidden my new cricket bat which he coveted. I hadn’t told him, out of cussedness. Ferdinand had been there, too frightened of Gervase to protest, and also Serena, barely four, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.
‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ Ferdinand said. ‘You’ve never mentioned it.’
‘Boys will be bullies.’
‘Gervase still is.’
Which of us, I thought, was not as we had been in the green garden? Donald, Lucy, Thomas, Gervase, Ferdinand, Serena — all playing there long ago, children’s voices calling through the bushes, the adults we would become already forming in the gangling limbs, smooth faces, groping minds. None of