style="font-size:15px;"> Dom looked back. The BMW was so close that he expected an impact at any minute. He wasn’t sure what model it was, didn’t know enough about cars to know whether his Focus could outrun it, or at least stay ahead.
‘Dom, hundred metres before the house? More? Less?’
‘Bit more,’ he said.
‘Right. Bend’s coming up in a minute. When I say, goad the hell out of him.’
‘This is crazy,’ Dom said.
‘It’s happening,’ Andy said.
The engines roared. The BMW pressed in closer, surging forward. Andy drifted the Focus to the right, blocking the road.
‘Okay,’ Andy said.
Dom froze for a moment, feeling the unreality of things pressing in close. Then he gave Roadrunner the finger.
Andy swerved them around the bend, wheel juddering in his hand. Dom turned forward again and pressed back into his seat, holding onto the seatbelt.
‘There, see it?’
Andy didn’t reply. He was concentrating. He slammed on the brakes, and the BMW hit their rear end, shoving them forward. Tyres screamed. The BMW fell back a little, and Andy flipped the steering wheel to the right.
The Focus’s nose drifted perfectly into the narrow lane’s mouth, and Andy immediately dropped two gears and floored it. Unable to make the turn, the BMW slammed into the raised bank behind them, missing them by inches. As they powered away, Dom saw steam burst from the silver car’s front end, its wing crumpled, windscreen hazed.
They soon rounded a bend and the pursuing car was lost from sight.
Andy let out a held breath, gasping a few times. ‘Result,’ he whispered. ‘You okay?’
Dom could not speak. He turned away, watching the hedgerows passing by. With a sick feeling in his stomach he realised that he’d have to go straight to Monmouth now, to work, chatting with Davey and talking about how best to get these wires here, those there, lifting floorboards and drinking tea and eating biscuits.
‘My car’s bumped,’ he said.
‘We’ll sort that. Leave it to me. You okay, Dom?’
‘Yeah. No. Who were they?’
‘Looney Tunes.’ Andy laughed. Dom joined in, high and hysterical and sounding like someone he didn’t know.
For a moment everything was as it should have been.
Dom surfaced from dreams and dragged some of them with him, balancing them momentarily with reality. Awareness started to build – who he was, where he lived, everything that made him Dominic. The dreams withered and receded. He groaned and stretched, eyes still closed, joints clicking to remind him of his age.
Then he remembered the day before and wished he could fall back asleep. He groaned again, this one more like a deep sigh. What have I done?
Daisy screamed.
Dom sprang upright, sitting in bed swaying and dizzied.
‘It wakes!’ Emma said beside him.
‘Daisy!’ He threw the duvet off and sat on the edge of the bed. Everything felt wrong. Music pulsed from Daisy’s room, when he rubbed sleep from his eyes he saw Roadrunner with a human body, and downstairs their dog, Jazz, was whining.
‘Ease up, action man. She’s only singing.’
He glanced back at Emma. She was sitting back against her propped pillows, phone in hand, hair sleep-tousled, corner of her mouth raised in amusement. Daisy’s voice rose again, and Dom slumped back into his pillow.
‘You call that singing?’
‘She’s got Muse’s new album. Trying to match that singer’s warble.’
‘He does not warble,’ Dom said, feigning hurt. It was a conversation they’d had many times before. He welcomed its familiarity.
‘Like a dog with its bollocks trapped in a gate.’ She muttered this, swiping something on her phone and attention already elsewhere.
‘He’s a rock god,’ Dom said. ‘Classically trained. Not my fault you have no taste in music, and your daughter has.’
From Daisy’s room the track ended and she fell silent. Jazz continued whining from the kitchen below them, eager to see them all. They were familiar morning sounds that made Dom feel almost comfortable.
Sunlight cast across him through a chink in the curtains, and when he relaxed back onto the bed and closed his eyes he saw that white van and silver BMW, cartoon characters hefting guns.
‘Feeling better this morning?’ Emma asked.
‘Yeah, think so.’ He answered without opening his eyes, scared that she’d see straight through him. She usually did. He’d told her he had a bad headache the previous evening, needing something to cover up the way he was acting. Weird, twitchy, unsettled. He’d even cancelled his usual Monday evening squash match with Andy, much to his friend’s disapproval. We need to be normal! Andy had said to him down the phone. I just feel a bit rough, he’d replied, unable to say more because Emma had been sitting on the other end of the sofa.
They’d stuck to their plan. After driving back from Upper Mill to Usk they headed into the hills just before the small town, parking off a barely used lane. Dom had left a shovel there the day before on his way home from work. Distant sirens, source unseen, had been the only sign of police.
The old pillbox was almost subsumed by ivy and brambles, hidden in a small woodland that had likely not even been there during the war. They pushed their way inside, careful to disturb as little of the undergrowth as possible. The shadowy interior stank musty and old, as if the war years had hung around. A pile of rusted drinks cans in one corner, the body of a mattress almost completely rotted into the ground, a black bag burst and spilling decayed cloth insides, all paid testament to its last occupant from some time ago. There were no signs of recent use.
Andy had used his phone as a torch while Dom dug. Then they swapped over. It only took half an hour. As Andy dumped the heavy post bag into the hole, Dom realised that they hadn’t even checked how much was there. They shoved the soil back over and patted it down, kicking the remaining turned soil into the corners. Dom used the shovel to drag the black bag across the floor. It came apart and spilled shreds of old clothing, and the stink as he dumped it on the covered hole made him gag. Things crawled away in the darkness, rustling dried leaves. He wanted to get out of there.
He’d dropped Andy at a bus stop and then headed to Monmouth. He was only an hour late for work, and he told Davey
