Hot Pursuit

‘Yes – I thought I’d better hide. I wasn’t sure who you were. I won’t be a minute –’

Maggie watched him turn and hurry upstairs still clutching one of her best fluffy white towels around his midriff. He wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sure who was who.

Ben, still carrying the cordless phone, looked at her from the kitchen doorway. ‘Do you still want me to ring the police, Mum?’

Maggie shook her head, feeling vaguely ridiculous standing in the hall brandishing a baseball bat, all wound up and ready to go.

‘No, love – just go into the kitchen and make us some tea, will you?’

‘Oh, go on, Mum, let me, please,’ Ben whined. ‘I know the number and everything.’

‘No,’ Maggie snapped.

Standing beside Ben, Joe pulled a face. ‘You told Mrs Eliot that you were going to go round hers for tea. You promised and she’s got chocolate biscuits.’

Maggie sighed. ‘I did, didn’t I? Just nip across the garden and tell her the gasman is still here and I’ll try and get round later if I can. And then come straight back.’

It didn’t take the honorary gasman more than ten minutes to reappear, dressed in faded jeans and a sun-bleached blue cotton shirt. Maggie couldn’t help but notice that his shirt had four odd buttons. One wasn’t sewn on in quite the right place, revealing an interesting glimpse of tanned, hairy chest. His feet were bare, his dark hair slick and damp. He was still rolling up his sleeves as he loped into the kitchen.

‘Now,’ she said, across the kitchen table, still holding the baseball bat as she handed him a mug. ‘How about we take this from the beginning? Is tea all right?’ she asked, thawing slightly.

The man looked uncomfortable but pulled out a chair. ‘Tea’s fine. I don’t know what to say really.’ He bit his lip thoughtfully. ‘As far as I’m concerned this was – my new start,’ he said. ‘I belong here. I don’t understand what’s happened. This is my place –’

Maggie tucked the bat under her arm and opened the biscuit tin. There was a two-week-old Jammy Dodger and a half-eaten Wagon Wheel inside.

‘No,’ she said firmly, closing the lid and looking up to meet his gaze. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. You don’t belong here. If you belonged here I’m quite certain I would have remembered. Tell you what, let’s start with something simple, shall we? How about you tell me your name?’

He pulled another face and then said, ‘Hang on a minute,’ extricated a wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and opened it. ‘Oh yes,’ he said brightly, taking out a driving licence and handing it to her. ‘There we are, I’m Bernie Fielding.’

Maggie suddenly felt dizzy, as if somehow she had managed to wander into a waking dream – or perhaps a nightmare.

‘No,’ she said again, but more firmly this time. ‘That isn’t true either. You see, I was married to Bernie Fielding for eight years and believe me, unless he’s had a personality transplant and a lot of plastic surgery you are most definitely not him.’

The man glanced back into the hall, where Ben was watching him with all the concentration of a trained sniper. ‘Bloody hell – the boys, your boys, I mean, are they my boys, too?’

Maggie took a long pull on her tea. ‘No, that’s something else I’m sure I would have remembered, and no, before you ask, they’re not Bernie’s either. I married Bernie when I was eighteen, which seems like a very long time ago now. I’ve been married again since then.’

‘Oh my God, this is a total bloody disaster,’ said the man uneasily, clambering to his feet, his colour draining rapidly. ‘Where is he? Is he parking the car, walking the dog? On his way home from work? Oh my God. Bloody hell, this is such a mess.’

Maggie waved the bat in his direction, encouraging him back to his seat. ‘Relax, I’ve got the most terrible taste in men. I asked him to leave a couple of years ago and, surprise, surprise, he did.’

The man ran his fingers back through his dark wavy, still damp-hair. ‘Thank God for that.’

Maggie sniffed. ‘I know. I don’t understand what I ever saw in him,’ she said, and then, smiling, continued briskly, ‘Right, I’m going to get the kids some crisps and fruit out of the car. Then I’m going to park them in front of the TV, and while I’m away –’ she glanced at her watch ‘– that gives you about five minutes. I’d like you to come up with a persuasive and, if possible, plausible argument for exactly what you’re doing in my house and why I shouldn’t call the law and have you dragged out of here.’

Maggie picked up her car keys. ‘Oh, and it had better be good, Ben’s still got the mobile phone with him. One squeak from me and the Old Bill will be round here before you can pack your shower gel.’

‘Actually, I think I’ve probably been using yours. I thought it was really odd that the house had so many personal things in it. I was going to get some boxes, pack it all away – the policeman said I should just chuck out what I didn’t want.’

Maggie shivered, wondering what might have happened to her possessions if she had been gone another week.

Meanwhile, in a small sub-post office in an Oxfordshire village, the real Bernie Fielding was busy pushing a large pile of envelopes across the counter.

The woman smiled up at him. ‘Wedding?’

Bernie, dragged away from an entirely different train of thought, peered at her.

‘Sorry? What? Whose wedding?’ he said.

The envelopes contained a bevy of application forms for all the documents he’d need for his new identity, everything from a birth certificate through to a duplicate driving licence and American Express card. Numbers and account details all courtesy of Stiltskin. Courtesy of Stiltskin, James Cook also had a very healthy bank balance. Bernie had already been to the bank in Banbury to pick up his temporary cheque book and some cash.

‘Yours?’ she asked, nodding down at the thick bundle over the top of her horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘Or are you throwing a party?’

Bernie sighed. God save him from women with tongues.

‘Change of address actually. Can I have a dozen, er…’ he peered at the handful of change he had in his hand. ‘Second class, please.’

The woman opened the stamp book and counted them out.

‘Not local, are you?’

Bernie puffed thoughtfully and looked at his inquisitor. She had a great tumble of teased blonde hair, while behind the horn-rims, rather attractive fiery conker-brown eyes watched him with barely concealed curiosity. What the hell, he had nothing to hide, at least not now he didn’t.

Bernie warmed up his smile a degree or two. ‘No, actually I’ve just moved onto the caravan site at the back of the Old Dairy.’ He saw the fleeting glint of disapproval in her eyes as he plummeted earthwards in her estimation.

‘Although,’ he added hastily, clawing himself back from the brink of social-security oblivion, ‘it’s only temporary, obviously, just until I can find myself a decent house to buy. I was pipped at the post for the last one – I’ve already sold mine and needed somewhere to stay fast, you know how it is. I’ve been to see several others but…’ Bernie hesitated, tangled up in the strings of his own lie. He backtracked, wondering if he was finally losing his touch. He really needed to concentrate more.

Over the counter the woman was watching him wriggle like a cat watches a baby bird that’s fallen from the nest.

‘To be perfectly honest I haven’t seen anything else that’s quite me yet. You need to like the feel of a place – feel like it could be home – you know what I’m saying? One man’s inglenook is another man’s naff old fireplace.’ The lie dropped down a gear and accelerated away so fast that Bernie could barely keep up with it.

‘And besides, I’m looking for something a little bit special, double garage for the BMW and my four-by-four, obviously. Stables would be nice; livery is so expensive. But there’s just nothing on the market at the moment that really takes my fancy. Trouble is I have to move around a lot with my job and I’ve always hated hotels. I was going to rent a house, but all the fuss –’ Bernie lifted his hands to imply some enormous complex puzzle that he hadn’t the time to unravel. ‘Whereas I could just walk into a caravan, no problem, pay the deposit pick up the key and wham bam, thank you, ma’am – there we are, in like Flynn. And they’re fun, aren’t they – caravans?’

Bernie knew he was waffling but he didn’t seem able to stem the flow. ‘My new contract starts next week, so it all fell into place. Hadn’t got time to hang about. Nice secure little number, three years…bloody good salary.’ Lungs empty, right down to the red line Bernie hastily drew in a long, calming breath.

Thoughtfully, Conker-eyes tipped her head on one side and looked him up and down.

‘Sounds interesting,’ she said in a low voice. ‘My name’s Stella; Stella Ramsey.’ She left a little breathy pause at the end of the introduction, a pause that invited a wild variety of possibilities.

Bernie coughed. ‘I’m new to this area, I was really hoping to find someone to show me all the sights.’

Stella smiled lazily. ‘There’s not a lot to see in Renham, to be honest.’

He grinned. ‘Well, how about we go out for a little drink instead, then?’

She lifted her eyebrows. ‘The local pub is a right dump.’

He leant on the counter, enjoying the show of token resistance. ‘Well, in that case, perhaps you’d like to show me another one, somewhere…’ he hesitated, ‘somewhere nice, tasteful, and expensive. I’ve always had very expensive tastes.’