The thing about spending hour after hour trapped in a metal box with six other people, one of them a baby, was that it made you acutely aware of all the times in your life when you’d been doing literally anything else. Like, for example, not not-quite-arguing with the man you’d somehow managed to stay in love with for the last two years. And who, miraculously, had somehow managed to stay in love with you.
Suddenly it didn’t seem that all important anymore whose turn it was to text.
I miss you, I sent.
I didn’t get anything back, which I knew rationally meant Oliver was in court, but which I felt emotionally meant I’d destroyed my relationship by being insufficiently committed to Pretty Woman.
“This is hopeless,” said Bridge for the ninth time.
“There’s no such thing as hopeless,” said James Royce-Royce, also for the ninth time.
Bridge pressed her nose tragically against the window as she scanned a gaggle of passing Harrovians. “There is such a thing as hopeless. It is this thing. By which I mean what we’re doing right now. And also me. Because I’m doom— Oh my God, it’s him.”
“What?” I jerked alert. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Bridge was already unbuckling her seat belt. “He went into that Tesco Express. The bastard.”
Priya obligingly stopped dead—and absolutely not suspiciously —in front of the Tesco Express, and Bridge dove out of the passenger-side door. I dove after her, and Mel dove after me. Liz stayed behind with James Royce-Royce because they were all sitting together and diving over a finally sleeping Baby J seemed like an exceptionally bad idea.
We approached the doors of the unsuspecting late-night, reduced-offering supermarketette like we were a crack squad of secret agents. Okay, possibly more like we were a crap squad of secret agents, with Bridge yelling at us to cover the doors and Mel pressing herself against the wall and I swear coming this close to holding her hands like a gun, while I—in a fit of either enthusiasm or paranoia—tried to conceal myself behind a sign advertising massive savings on frozen pizzas.
As inconspicuously as, well, as three people who didn’t know much about being sneaky trying to sneak into a public building with massive windows, we dashed inside. Bridge grabbed a copy of one of those magazines with stories like My Husband Murdered My Dog…But Then He Left Me for My Sister from an end display and held it over her face.
“What are you doing?” I asked in the quietest voice I could manage while still making myself heard past the couple buying Diet Coke next to me.
She peered around the corner of the magazine. “Well, I don’t want to be recognised.”
“You’re Tom’s fiancée, Bridge. I’m pretty sure he knows what you look like.”
“Watch out.” Mel ducked behind a precariously balanced pile of four-quid tubs of Cadbury Roses. “Somebody’s coming.”
The somebody turned out to be a man buying one bottle of milk, three teenagers buying nothing, and somebody whose evening plans I didn’t want to speculate about, who was carrying a basket of scouring pads, cling film, and chocolate.
“There.” Bridge pointed. And she was, in her defence, completely right. It was Tom, looking extremely calm and inconspicuous, swiping a few essential items through the self-checkout.
The three of us moved into flanking positions, but since he was a professional spy and we weren’t, by the time we’d got into our flanking positions, he’d already vanished again.
We pursued him into the street where Bridge spotted him again, walking up College Road past the Costa Coffee. We almost managed to kid ourselves he hadn’t seen us on account of our amazingly effective spying techniques, but then he turned sharply into Harrow-on-the-Hill station with the air of someone who knew exactly how to find a crowd when he had to.
“He’s escaping,” cried Bridge. “My fiancé’s escaping.”
She broke into a run, shedding a shoe as she went. I retrieved her shoe and followed. Melanie followed me. And then, annihilating the last remnants of our subtlety, Priya’s truck pulled over and began kerb-crawling along beside us.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, only mildly hysterically, as Priya rolled down the window.
“What do you mean what am I doing? We’re following Tom.”
“Yeah, but”—I was rapidly running out of breath—“discreetly.”
“Mate, Bridge is pelting through London with one shoe on, and I’m driving a giant black truck. Discreet was never an option.”