The door buzzer sounds. Leo ignores it. It’ll be another package for the people in the flat upstairs, who go away for weeks at a time, then act as though it’s a terrible inconvenience when Leo schlepps up with whatever they’ve had delivered in their absence.
He opens Yasmin’s statement.
The woman was white, with blond hair in a ponytail. She was around five foot six and wore black jeans, a brown leather jacket, and a baseball cap with writing on the front. She was very threatening and the whole experience left me shaken and terrified.
Did Lloyd’s London stalker follow him to The Shore to kill him? Or had she hoped for some kind of reconciliation and instead ended up in a confrontation that led to Lloyd’s death?
The buzzer rings again, more insistently this time. Reluctantly, Leo crosses the room and presses the intercom. “Hello?”
“We need to talk.”
Leo used to find it endearing, the way Allie skipped conversational preambles and got straight to the main event.I was thinking about next summer, she’d announce when she met him for dinner before launching into an idea for a holiday. Her enthusiasm had been infectious.
But then, so is smallpox, Leo thinks as he presses the door-release button. He glances around, trying to see the flat through his ex-wife’s eyes. The narrow hallway has a bathroom immediately opposite the front door and two doorways on either side. On the right are the lounge and kitchen, on the left his own room and what he had naïvely imagined would be Harris’s but which has instead become a dumping ground for boxes, Leo’s weights, and anything else that doesn’t fit in the tiny hallway cupboard. The walls are cream, the carpet a beige fleck that hides the dirt. It’s the sort of flat that manages to be perfectly inoffensive yet completely awful all at the same time.
“Allie?” The stairwell is quiet. Grabbing his keys, Leo runs down the stairs. He needs to leave for the postmortem soon. He doesn’t have time for another of her dramas.
His ex-wife is pacing the path, her breath clouding in the cold air.
“Why didn’t you come up?”
Allie points to the car, parked in the disabled bay adjacent to the block of flats. “Unlikesome people, I take responsibility for my son.”
“You could have brought him up.” Leo takes a step toward the car, a grin spreading across his face as Harris smooshes his own smile across the window.
Allie puts out a hand, firm against Leo’s chest. “I don’t want him hearing this.”
Leo sighs. “What have I done this time?” He isn’t sure how much more of this he can take. A few months ago, he’d nipped to Tesco for a sandwich, only to be served three days later with a notice drafted by Allie’s solicitor friend, threatening legal action if Leo “continues to harass our client or her partner.” Leo hadn’t evenseenDominic in the supermarket, let alone given him the “threatening look” referred to in the letter, but Allie always did take a liberal approach to the facts.
Before she can answer, the car door opens, and Harris barrels out. “Daddy!”
Leo crouches as Harris flies into his arms, then stands and spins around, Harris’s arms tight around his neck. “Hey, little man! How’s it hanging?”
“I told you to stay in the car,” Allie snaps.
Leo’s chest is tight. He got to be a dad for a single year. One year of bedtimes and bath times, of getting Harris dressed and deciding what to do with their weekends. Now he’s doled out dad time in the same practical, unemotional manner he’s allocated shifts at work. It feels like a bereavement.
“Can I have a snack?”
“Back in the car, Harris. I need to talk to your dad.” Allie pulls him from Leo, who has to resist the urge to pull back. Parenting isn’t a tug of war.
“Go on, chief.” Leo kisses his son fiercely on the forehead and lets Allie strap him back into his seat.
“We’re moving,” she says when she returns.
“Where to?”
“Australia.”
Leo blinks. A car drove past, just as Allie spoke, and for a second, he thought she said…
“We’re sick of England.” Allie fiddles with her car keys. “Brexit, house prices, the bloody rain… Dominic’s got a job offer, great prospects, and we’ve found a house with an annex. Mum and Dad are going to spend half the year with us, half back home.”
“You can’t.”
It’s as simple as that, surely? Legally, Leo has joint parental responsibility. Allie can’t take their son to another country.
“It’s an incredible opportunity for Harris to experience a completely different lifestyle.”