Donovan led me into the hallway, stopping behind the front door, taking out his phone.
‘Another neat thing about the District Line. They have a phone signal or Wi-Fi at all the stations.’
He prodded a button, dialling on speaker.
A few short purrs of near silence were followed by a faint hissing and then a recorded, standardized message in a computerized male voice: ‘The number you are dialling is currently unavailable. Please leave a message and—’
He hung up, studying me.
‘Average time a train spends at a District Line station is fifty-eight seconds. So here’s what’s going to happen. When this call connects, we’re going outside together. And then we’re going to get inside your house as fast as possible. You have thirty seconds to make it to your front door or Sam never gets off that train.’
He dialled again, jabbing at his phone.
I heard the same things as before.
The same short purrs of near silence, followed by the same faint hissing and the same standardized message: ‘The number you are dialling is currently—’
‘Once we’re on the other side of this door, you don’t speak, you don’t scream, you don’t even think about trying to get away. Understood?’
I just looked at him, feeling trapped and constrained. A new form of claustrophobia.
‘Understood?’ he repeated.
‘Yes,’ I whispered.
He dialled a third time.
As before, I heard the same short purrs of near silence and the same faint hissing but this time they were followed by a longer, more somnolent droning, some static clicks, and then another recorded, standardized message, only this message was different. Female. Polite. Laced with a tannoy quality.
‘ . . . next station is Sloane Square.’
‘We’re moving outside,’ Donovan said, into his phone. He was talking in a hurry, sounding focused and tensed. ‘Wait on confirmation from me. If you don’t get it before you leave that station, move in.’
He snatched open the front door, grabbed my hand and led me outside, quickly locking the door behind him, removing John’s keys and then tossing them sideways into a darkened corner of the yard.
I could hear a raucous commotion coming through the speaker of Donovan’s phone.
The thunder of moving air.
An iron screeching.
The lurch and shuffle of who knew how many bodies packed tightly together.
‘This is Sloane Square. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.’
‘Thirty seconds,’ Donovan reminded me.
He strode forwards, tugging me alongside him.
My entire focus was on the buzz and crackle coming from his phone speaker followed by the hiss of compressed air as the train doors parted.
But it was punctured by something else.
Clipped footsteps coming from my left.
I swung my head and saw two women striding our way as Donovan pulled me to a halt.
The women were deep in conversation, dressed in denim jackets and scarves, their heels striking the pavement in a rapid percussion.
A hot and nervous trembling worked its way up my legs.
I could hear the scuffed background noises coming from Donovan’s phone. The sound of passengers shuffling and moving and trading positions.
Nothing was said by whomever was watching Sam, but I didn’t doubt they were listening as closely as I was.
The women hurried nearer.
Donovan clenched my hand. A signal and a warning.
They passed the end of the pathway and one of them glanced my way – a brief, neutral look – too fast for me to begin to think how to react or signal to her.
My stomach twisted.
The phone speaker crackled.
The women continued without looking back at us.
‘Move,’ Donovan said under his breath, pulling me forwards again.
My legs were rubber. I stumbled and looked after the women. They weren’t looking back. They hadn’t sensed anything wrong or amiss. They were totally preoccupied with their conversation.
‘I want to talk to Sam,’ I said.
‘You’ll talk to him when he gets here.’
‘Before that. I have to know he’s safe.’
‘He isn’t.’
He steered me ahead of him through John’s gate, swinging me left and left again, stiff-arming his way through our gate and on towards the light spill shining out from our home.
‘This is a District Line train to Wimbledon. The next station is South Kensington.’
‘Faster,’ Donovan urged.
Fear tangled in my chest. My feet scuffed the ground.
He hadn’t backed me into a bathtub. He hadn’t locked a door behind him, snatched me by the hair, seized me by the throat.
But still I felt choked.
The pathway to our front door was just a narrow ribbon of tarmac, maybe three or four metres long, with a square of gravel to the right and a band of more gravel to the left.
I’d walked along it countless times in the past without thinking very much about it.
Not now.
I was rushing onwards, barely breathing, but at the same time I seemed to be moving infinitely slowly, infinitely painfully.
The ‘For Sale’ sign to my left slid by as if in slow motion. I could remember how the guy from the estate agency had turned up to install the sign, how he’d cable-tied it to the railings after ramming it through the gravel with a mallet.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
In the moment, in the horror, it was as if I could feel the blows vibrating through the ground beneath me.
‘Please mind the doors.’
Donovan hurried me on, digging his fist into his coat pocket for Sam’s keys.
I could see the pinpricks of light glimmering around and through the shutter blinds behind the bay window to my right, but I couldn’t see inside.
And nobody else can, either.
On the phone, there was another pneumatic hiss of the train doors closing.
A tinny squeal.
A low, shuffling commotion.
Donovan withdrew Sam’s keys and stabbed them at the lock. They slipped inside and a fraction of a second later the phone line went dead, snapping away to nothing.
Stasis.
Donovan looked at me.
I looked at him.
My brain seemed to be processing a million thoughts all at once.
Then I leaned to one side, staring after the two women moving along the pavement, and I sucked in a lungful of air to scream.