Gemma Fox - Hot Pursuit

Joe thundered halfway down the stairs two at a time and then froze when he spotted their unexpected guest. Maggie shooed him towards the kitchen. ‘Keep back, Joe. It’s all right – don’t worry. He’s just leaving.’

The man groaned. There was a look of total disbelief on his face. ‘Look, I’m not going to hurt anyone. There has to have been some sort of mix-up somewhere –’

Maggie balanced herself on the balls of her feet. She was ready for him if he made a move. ‘So what are you doing in my house?’

‘As far as I was – am – concerned, this is my house. The lady next door gave me the key –’ He waved towards Mrs Eliot’s house.

Maggie suddenly understood. ‘That’s because she thought you were the gasman.’

The man looked hurt. ‘She said that she was expecting me.’

Maggie swung the head of the bat back and forth speculatively. ‘She was – at least she was expecting someone from the gas board. It’s taken them six weeks to get around to repairing my boiler, although actually – unless you are the gasman, they still haven’t made it.’ The bat was getting heavy. ‘Now, can you explain what’s going on?’

‘They’ve never been the same since they were privatised,’ he said.

‘That wasn’t what I meant and you know it,’ Maggie hissed. She was having trouble sustaining her sense of outrage.

The man looked down at his damp belly. ‘Would you mind very much if I just nipped back upstairs and got dressed? I was getting out of the shower when the car pulled up and as I wasn’t expecting anyone I came down to see who it was.’

‘And then I opened the door?’

‘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.