The telephone answering machine did have a faculty for listening to messages from afar, but it had never worked well, and I'd been too lazy to replace the remote controller which, no doubt, needed new batteries anyway.
With equally random thoughts I drove in attentively onwards, and it wasn't until I'd gone a fair distance that I realised that every time I glanced in the rear-view mirror I could see the same car two or three cars back. Some cars passed me: it never did, nor closed a gap to catch up.
I sat up, figuratively and literally, and thought, "What do you know?" and felt my heart beat as at the starting gate.
What I didn't know was whose car it was. It looked much like the hired one I was driving, a middle-rank four-door in under washed cream; ordinary, inconspicuous, no threat to Formula One.
Perhaps, I thought sensibly, the driver was merely going to Epsom, at my own pace, so at the next traffic lights I turned left into unknown residential territory, and kept on turning left at each crossroads thereafter, reasoning that in the end I would complete the circle and end up facing where I wanted to go. I didn't hurry nor continually look in the rear-view mirror, but when I was back again on a 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 corn flakes 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 cussed ness 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 those children… none of us… I thought protestingly, could have killed.
Serena came into the sitting-room carrying a white lace negligee and looking oddly shocked. "You've had a woman here!" she said.
"There's no law against it."
Debs, following her, showed a more normal reaction. "Size ten, good perfume, expensive tastes, classy lady," she said. "How am I doing?"
"Not bad."
"Her face cream's in the bathroom," Serena said. "You didn't tell us you had a… a…"
"Girl-friend," I said. "And do you have… a boy-friend?"
She made an involuntary face of distaste and shook her head. Debs put a sisterly arm round Serena's shoulders and said, "I keep telling her to go to a sex therapist or she'll end up a dry old stick, but she won't listen, will you love?"
Serena wriggled free of Debs' arm and strode off with the negligee towards the bedrooms.
"Has anyone ever assaulted her?" I asked Ferdinand. "She has that look."
"Not that I know of." He raised his eyebrows. "She's never said so."
"She's just scared of sex," Debs said blithely. "You wouldn't think anyone would be, these days. Ferdinand's not, are you, bunny?"
Ferdinand didn't react, but said, "We've finished here, I think." He drained his scotch, put down his glass and gave me a cold stare as if to announce that any semi-thaw I might have perceived during the afternoon's exchanges was now at an end. The ice-curtain had come down again with a clang. "if you cut us out with Malcolm," he said, "you'll live to regret it."
Hurt, despite myself, and with a touch of acid, I asked, "Is that again what Alicia says?"
"Damn you, Ian," he said angrily, and made for the door, calling, "Serena, we're going," giving her no choice but to follow.
Debs gave me a mock gruesome look as she went in their wake. "You're Alicia's number one villain, too bad, lovey. You keep your hooks off Malcolm's money or you won't know what hit you." There was a fierce last-minute threat in her final words, and I saw, as the jokey manner slipped, that it was merely a facade which hid the same fears and furies of all the others, and her eyes, as she went, were just as unfriendly.
With regret, I watched from the window as the three of them climbed into Ferdinand's car and drove away. It was an illusion to think one could go back to the uncorrupted emotions of childhood, and I would have to stop wishing for it. I turned away, rinsed out Ferdinand's glass, and went into my bedroom to see how Serena had left it.