The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [145]
I even hold my breath. Silence. Faintly, in the distance, a dog is barking.
‘There’s n—’
‘Sssh.’
The barking goes on, louder. Something else too: an engine, way off. Ed disentangles a hand from my T-shirt and slides carefully off the bench seat onto the floor. He puts a finger to his lips. The engine is coming closer. ‘Bingo,’ he whispers.
‘Wh–’
‘Alan’s dog. Best doorbell a bloke can have.’
Oh. That was how he knew I was coming.
The caravan door is still open. Through it, the trees look much darker than when I arrived. I glance at my watch. Nearly ten o’clock. Ed shuffles carefully across the floor on his stomach, and comes to rest a few inches short of the half-open door so he can peer out. The sound of the engine is much louder. He leans as far forward as he can, then grabs the corner of the door to pull it closed.
‘Thing is,’ he says, propping himself against the side of the sink unit, ‘I really wouldn’t have liked us to be interrupted by my wife.’
‘Your–Shit! That’s your wife?’
‘No, no. Keep your voice down–they’ll go away in a minute, I hope. It’s probably someone who’s lost, but in case they’re looking for me…’
‘You’re sure it’s not your wife?’
‘Definitely She drives one of those bite-sized hairdressers’ 4×4s. Wouldn’t be caught dead in a white Transit van. Don’t think it’s likely to be creditors either, but you never know. Sometimes these things can get heavy.’ He levers himself carefully to his feet, and leans over me to look out of the window. There’s the scent of woodsmoke on his skin, and a clean tarry smell that makes me want to grab him and push my face into the fuzz of black hair revealed by his open shirt. ‘Yes, they’ve stopped. Looks like they’re studying the map. Let’s not attract their attention, anyway’
‘You haven’t really got debt collectors after you, have you?’
‘There was a bit of fuss after a card game…’
‘Ed!’
‘Only joking. But it’s late for a drive in the country. Might be someone looking for me, I suppose, and to be honest, I’d rather spend the evening with you.’
‘Oh, God,’ I say, in a whisper.
‘What is it?’
‘I said I wasn’t going to do this. You’re married, Ed. I mean, I fancy the arse off you, you make me laugh, you smell right to me, even when you haven’t washed–’
‘I have, this time.’
‘–but I don’t do married men. It’s pointless. I don’t mean I want to marry you or anything, God forbid–sorry, I’m making a terrible mess of this. But someone always ends up hurt with a married man. You, me, her, doesn’t matter who, one or both or probably all of us are going to regret it. This is the second time.’
‘Hold on. I’m not married. She threw me out.’
‘You called her your wife!
‘Technically, she still is. Shut up a minute, though.’ He’s staring out of the window again. I start to scramble upright, but he makes a flapping motion with his hand. ‘Keep down. They’re still there.’
‘The van? What are they doing?’
‘Sitting. Bugger. Maybe they’ve come to nick something. I might have to leap into action.’
‘You can’t tell me they’re going to load a helicopter into the back of a Transit.’ Pulling my T-shirt down to look more respectable, I wriggle under his arm until my eyes are above the bottom of the window.
The mud-splashed white van is parked by the gates to the yard, near the notice on the chainlink fence warning of Bingo the would-be Alsatian. Its lights are off. A cigarette glows behind the half-open window on the driver’s side.
‘They’re not doing anything,’ I whisper. The whole thing seems less a joke, now, more sinister.
‘There is another explanation,’ says Ed. ‘They might be here to do what we were doing until about five minutes ago.’
The glowing end of the cigarette flies out of the window in an elegant arc. The driver’s door opens. A man gets out, dressed in army-style camouflage combats and a khaki jacket. On the other side a door slams, and another man, dressed all in black, eyes invisible under a broad-brimmed hat, comes into view round the snub-nosed bonnet of the van.
‘Oh, shite,’ says Ed. ‘They’ve either come