‘I didn’t think you were coming,’ I say. ‘You probably shouldn’t have bothered. I’ve not given you anything to chaperone – he’s not turned up. I don’t think he’s coming.’
‘Really? Dick.’
‘Rob! No need for that. The guy solved the treasure hunt, he deserves a bit more respect.’
‘If he went to all that trouble, then why isn’t he here?’
I don’t know the answer. But I know that Paul’s absence is the final nail in the Five Parks coffin.
Rob joins me for a minute’s silence in staring at the kids playing tennis, but we both look right through them, turning them into noisy ghosts. The quiet hangs between the two of us for longer than I want, through no fault of Rob’s; I just want to be by myself. He isn’t coming and I have accepted it. I want to end Five Parks as I started it; all alone.
‘It’s okay, you know, Rob, you don’t have to hang around. I’m probably going to go grab a coffee then head home. I have to think of a way to somehow write this all up.’
‘Not the ending you were hoping for, eh?’
‘Not exactly. Thanks for all your help though with the treasure hunt … with everything. I couldn’t have done it without you. Not your fault if Date #5 is a dick.’
I arch back into the bench then roll forward to get to my feet, but Rob’s words interrupt the movement.
‘Have you tried calling him? On the number he texted you from at the end of the treasure hunt?’
‘No chance,’ I say, easing back down on to the wooden panels. ‘I’m not chasing him. If he’s running late, he should be calling me.’
‘Just seems a sad end to Five Parks, Suze, that’s all. Maybe you should call him. You never know; he could be on his way, or he might already be here working up the courage to come over. He could be nervous, unsure how to approach you.’
‘Why, cos I’m such a man-eater?’
I try to make it sound like a joke, but it comes out bitter. I don’t correct myself.
‘Maybe, Rob, but maybe he’s just being a dick.’
‘Suze, call him.’
Rob is firm, the first time he’s ever been firm with me. I laugh it off.
‘No! I’m not going to do it. He doesn’t deserve it. That isn’t what this blog is about. The men are supposed to run after me.’
‘Suze. Just call him.’
I didn’t imagine the hardening of his tone. There is something in his voice I don’t recognise, and it’s making me uneasy.
He turns back into Rob for a second to reassure me.
‘Trust me, Suze. Call him.’
Our bench feels smaller than it did when he sat down. In the last few seconds, while I was getting flustered, Rob has shuffled closer. He is being weird. He never asks me to do anything. It’s always been the other way round, me asking him for help, ever since we met and he switched my browsers. He helped me start Five Parks, and now, as my bodyguard, he’s helping me finish it. I’ve always been the receiver, never the giver.
All this runs through my head as he gazes at me with his big brown eyes. I oblige him. I do what he says for once.
I take my dummy pay-as-you-go phone that I’ve used on all my dates from my small shoulder bag, find Paul’s text message from yesterday (‘Cyprus’) and select the option to call the number.
The dial tone sparkles in my ear. I turn my head around, away from the tennis courts and towards the rest of Gladstone Park, sucking in its bundle of green hills that drain off into one final low slope down to the train tracks. I hear a phone ringing somewhere – Rob is right; Paul is in the park – but where is he hiding?
In plain sight. Confused at first because of the shrieking noise, I place the ringtone inside my own head. But I am not hearing things. The sound is coming from the bench. My mouth opens in disbelief and I look at Rob while rifling through my bag – how did Paul get his phone on to my person?
‘What the … fuck?’
The phone isn’t in there. It keeps ringing as I look on either side of the bench and on the grass underneath, until the noise becomes even louder. The kids on the tennis court turn their heads in our direction at the interruption. The reason the volume has increased is because Rob has removed the phone from his pocket. He holds it out to me like I’m some sort of deity being offered a sacrifice. I bring my own phone down from my ear and stare at Rob open-mouthed, letting a rare breeze slide in between my teeth. His phone keeps ringing.
‘I think you can hang up now, Suze,’ he says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. It should be the most normal thing in the world; a guy meeting a girl in a park for a date.
I’m stunned into inaction. He pushes a button on his phone and the ringing stops in the park, yet keeps turning over in my head.
‘I, uh, changed the sim card yesterday. Swapped in a new number.’
He puts the phone down on the bench between us, and I can see his hand is shaking. Join the fucking club. I am unable to speak. I just keep staring at his phone, like it’s some alien thing my mind cannot comprehend. Rob tries to help me by placing two more objects next to it. Once the jigsaw has these additional pieces, it all makes sense, yet no sense at all. One is a white card with black lettering. Rob has turned it so I can read it, but there’s no need – I know the words because I ordered them: ‘Gladstone Park. Tomorrow. 4pm.’
The other object is more frivolous but no less disconcerting. It is Bob the Builder. He is trapped inside a round badge, the kind you find on a child’s birthday card. In fact, that’s exactly where I found it earlier this week in Paper Chase. Bob is giving me the thumbs up. He bears me one message: ‘I AM 5’.
I lift the badge and stare at it, transfixed at the pretty orange patterns it creates with the fading sunlight.
‘Can we fix it?’
For a dazed moment I believe that Bob the Builder is speaking to me, but the words are from further along the bench. Rob is waiting for an answer. Maybe he wants me to say, ‘Yes we can’, but I can’t speak. Rob is ‘5’ – Date #5 – and Rob is Paul. And I am dumbfounded.
‘I was here at 4pm,’ he says, pointing at the card. ‘It just took me a long time to pluck up the courage to come over.’
I know the role I’m supposed to play. I’m meant to be charmed, flattered that Rob went to all that effort yesterday to win the treasure hunt, to win a date with me. But I just feel uncomfortable. I was always glad Michael came along before Rob. I might have fancied him the first time I saw him, but he is supposed to be my friend. He should be watching me from a different corner of Gladstone Park, looking out for me, protecting me – but here he is in my face, trying to woo me. He won’t stop talking.
‘Date #5 wasn’t the first one I applied for. I offered to help you out when you couldn’t find someone for Date #1 – you know that – but you don’t know that I actually filled in your questionnaire, I just didn’t have the guts to send it to you.’
I try to stop him from continuing, but nothing comes out.
‘And I applied for Date #2. I wrote one of the three shortlisted poems – the funny one, written by “Ryan Toler”. I thought I was being really blatant, but you didn’t get it. When you take the letters in “Ryan Toler” out of “Robert Naylor”, you end up with just “R. O. B.” I thought that was so obvious!’
I really want him to stop, but he is frantic now, keen to let out weeks of suppressed emotion.
‘I thought my Date #3 application was even more obvious! I helped you out with your Trading Places video, but I don’t know how you didn’t recognise me in The Big Lebowski clip – I was sure you’d see through my disguises.’
The video flashes across my eyelids, a back-and-forth between two Lebowskis over a mattress or a rug or something – Rob played both roles. I hadn’t noticed him in either.
‘You sort of screwed me over on Date #4, though, Suze – the Ex Test – because, in all honesty, I’ve never really had a girlfriend for long enough to call her an ex. I couldn’t apply. So that just left the treasure hunt.
’
Rob was the Green Man. He was supposed to be the Green Man. Why couldn’t he have just played the Green Man and gone home?
‘The treasure hunt was my big chance … my last chance. But I had an advantage that those two hundred guys gathered in Regent’s Park didn’t – I had that first clue before they did. You gave it to me the night before, Suze, and I lay in bed swirling it around my head, trying to figure it out.’
I remember the clue.
‘I am tall and green. If you want to find me today, you must follow me across Europe by train.’
Rob had figured it out before any of my real suitors, because he had a whole night’s head start.
‘I dressed up in the green suit and made the announcement just as you asked, but when I had finished, I asked one of the guys filming it in the crowd to send me the footage. I knew it would come in handy if I won the treasure hunt as Paul and had to send you my recap of the day for your blog.
‘That first part of my recap as Paul wasn’t true – I went straight to Holland Park after my job at the bench was done – but the rest of my blog post was accurate. I had to solve the clues at the stations just like everyone else. Just like them, I didn’t have the number for your pay-as-you-go phone.’
He can tell I’m gobsmacked, because he slides his hand on top of mine.
‘I’m sorry this is the way you find out, Suze, but I’ve fancied you for years. I used to come up with any excuse to go downstairs when you worked in the office, just to get a glimpse of you. But I never had the guts to do anything, and after I found out you had a boyfriend, I thought I’d missed my chance. But when you asked for help with Five Parks, I knew I’d been given another opportunity, and this time I wasn’t going to waste it. So here I am. Now … what do you want to do for our date?’
I pull my hand away from his grasp. I am not handling this well. I should have jumped in and stopped him from blurting all that out, I wish he hadn’t told me. I just want off this bench and out of this park. I don’t want to see another London park for a long time. I wish I could let him down easy, but the shock of his reveal has knocked the subtlety out of me.
‘I’m sorry, Rob, I really am. I appreciate you doing all this. But I just don’t feel that way about you. I’m sorry, but there isn’t going to be a date today. I’m going to go home.’
His face falls, then fills again with misplaced hope.
‘But what about this?’ he asks, pointing at the Bob the Builder badge, which is somehow still clasped inside my hand. I hadn’t noticed.
‘Bob and Rob? I thought you were trying to tell me something. I thought you knew it was me who had gone after you on the treasure hunt. You gave me the first clue the night before for a reason, right? Rob the Builder, that’s me! I built Five Parks for you!’
The purchase of the Bob the Builder card was a complete coincidence. I selected it because it was the only birthday card badge that had ‘I AM 5’. I don’t tell Rob that. There’s no point.
‘I’m sorry, Rob … no. It’s not going to happen. Let’s just go home.’
‘You keep saying that!’
He snaps, raising his voice to a level that draws glances from the tennis courts. He doesn’t care. He knocks the badge out of my hand and steps on it. I bend down and pick it up just to avoid eye contact and to buy a second or two to plan my escape – he is scaring me. The catch at the back of the badge is broken, jabbing at my skin until I slide it into the back pocket of my jeans. His eyes are waiting for me when I’ve finished.
‘Suze, please, I won. I’m Date #5. I am five. I earned this. I helped you do all this. A date with you is the least I deserve.’
Now I am angry too.
‘You don’t deserve anything. This is my blog and I decide what happens, and if I’m uncomfortable with going on a date with someone I won’t do it. Do you understand? Rob, you’re frightening me, just calm down.’
‘Is this about the letter? Is that why you won’t go on a date with me?’
The letter? What letter? Oh. Oh no.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you, Suze, I promise. And even though you didn’t tell me why you wanted out of your flat for a few days, I could see how shaken up you were, so I guessed it was because of the letter. After you stayed over at my place, I promised myself I wouldn’t do another one. I fucked up.’
Rob has fucked up. He is Paul. He is Date #5. And he is also my stalker. He sneaked into my bedroom and put the ransom note under my pillow.
‘I AM WATCHING YOU. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WATCHING YOU. I WANT TO PROTECT YOU. I WANT TO EAT YOU UP!’
I try to leave the bench.
‘You bastard.’
He grabs my arm.
‘What? No! I didn’t mean to scare you, Suze. I was trying to be funny. “I want to eat you up”? You didn’t notice, did you? The letters in the note were all cut out from chocolate bar wrappers. I was trying to be clever. When I saw how rattled you were, I realised I’d made a mistake. I’m sorry. Let’s forget it – we can still have our date.’
Chocolate bars! It’s all so ridiculous, ludicrous enough to be true. But even if it is true, I just want to go.
‘Let go of me, Rob. Get the fuck away from me.’
My anger reignites his own. He lets go of me, picks up the white card I left for him at Cyprus DLR Station and flings it into the bushes behind us, then he goes for his phone.
Gripping it tight, he says: ‘I earned this. I deserve this. And all you care about is yourself. You’re a selfish bitch, Suzanne – Sylvie was right. No wonder she left. You use everyone around you. Well, I won’t let you use me.’
He slams the phone into the ground with a similar force that he applied to the badge, but the mobile is heavier, and when it hits its target we are splashed by a million pieces of metal and plastic. The phone explodes all over us, and the noise brings more than glances from the adjacent tennis courts.
‘What da fuck, man?!’ shouts one of the skins.
Rob gets up from the bench and stands over me, pointing his finger in my face. He is lost.
‘Why won’t you give me what I deserve? It’s not fair.’
‘Rob, please! Stop. That’s enough. Let me past, I mean it.’
He is blocking my exit from the bench, with his back to the courts, so he doesn’t see the tennis ball land on the grass a few metres to his left. The kids have hit it out of the park again.
‘Hey, Mrs! Ball please!’
Their shout distracts Rob, and when he turns round I make a break for it, pretending to go for the ball when what I really want to do is escape. I pick up the ball out of fear, throw it back over the wire – this time at the first attempt – and then I run. Along a steep swathe of grass leading to a footpath that will wind all the way to the highest point of the park, where visitors linger around a coffee shop and a flower garden. But I don’t make it to the footpath.
I don’t know what I trip on – a stone maybe – but it knocks me off my feet and sends me rolling across the grass. I crash my cheek into what must be another stone half-buried in the topsoil and there is a crack from my elbow. Faraway, in a different world, I can hear the shirts and the skins laughing like hyenas presented with an easy kill.
‘That bird is fucking wasted, man,’ I hear one of them say, but it’s the shout of someone who has other more important things on his mind, like smacking tennis balls on a care-free summer evening.
Reeds surround me and prickle my bruised skin as I roll to the bottom of the hill. I open my eyes in a daze and wonder if it’s night already, as the sun seems to have disappeared. My head hurts. But the sun isn’t gone, it’s blocked by a thick black shadow. Rob stands over me, threatening me with his eyes, poised to strike, and repeats his mantra, but not before my lights go out and everything goes black.
‘I deserve this.’
*
Date: 01/01/16
Battery: 2%
Time Remaining: 0hr 03min
He blocked out the sun in Gladstone Park and he’s kept
me in here in the dark ever since. It is Rob. Rob is my captor. He has done this to me. It all makes sense. Controlling a computer remotely, just like he did when we worked together. I spurned him back then, and as I learned in Gladstone Park, I spurned him the whole way through Five Parks, even though I didn’t realise it. He was my stalker and he is my captor. It’s all out in the open now. He tried to be Date #1, #2 and #3, and when I refused him on Date #5, he let out all his rage and kidnapped me. He has the tech know-how and the motive to pull this whole thing off. He had the access to Five Parks to make this happen.
The room is about to go dark, but this time I must not fall asleep. I will wait for him to make his move. Rob has been making all the moves up to this point. Surely he has one more in him. The bastard. He took me. He left me in here to rot. He has to do something now. He can either publish what I’ve just written for the world to read, or he can keep it to himself – only he and I will know his secret. Whatever he decides, I have done all I can. The ball is in his court.
39
Date: 01/01/16
Battery: 11%
Time Remaining: 0hr 26min
The shouting pings through the dark. At first I think it’s coming from inside my room and I startle into life and clench my fists, but the noise is muffled, otherworldly yet tantalising. It is the first sound I have heard in here in a while. Something is happening.
The heat and the lack of light tried to overwhelm me once again, but I battled to keep my eyes open. I sat on the floor and crossed my legs. I didn’t fall asleep. I don’t know how long I waited.
The shouting is growing louder, and in between each burst, there is the racket of objects flying into walls. It’s not in here, but it’s just outside – I can taste it. I’ve heard chimes and other shouting in my prison, but this is different. A frenzied, uncontrollable crescendo, this is the loudest thing I have heard since I was taken. Someone has found me. My outing of Rob has worked.
I join in the noise, screaming with what little energy I have left.
Five Parks Page 24
