The Warning

by Sophie Hannah

  “What about your parents?” I ask him. I want to hear more details about his one and only serious relationship with a woman called Maddy, but he didn’t have much to say about her, and moved on quite quickly once he’d told me they’d been together for four years, but split up when she’d moved to Australia for work. I’d feel intrusive if I revisited the subject.

  I could ask about his parents instead. He hasn’t mentioned them yet, and since we’ve just been discussing my mother . . . “You said you grew up in Manchester. Are your folks still there?”

  “Did I say that?” He frowns. “When?”

  “The first time we met. You mentioned the Palace Theater, where you saw Joseph Dreamcoat.”

  “There’s going to be nothing left of that title by the time you finish with it, is there?” Tom chuckles. “Remind me if I ever need to fake my own death and invent a new ID, Joseph Dreamcoat’s my name-­in-­waiting. You’re quite right: I grew up in Manchester—­and what an impressive memory you have! My brother Julian’s still there. He has a dentistry practice there, in Fallowfield. My parents decamped to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, five years ago, in true retired-­person style. I was sunbathing by their complex’s shared swimming pool a few months ago and saw what I thought was the most enormous upright lizard—­turned out to be an armadillo! I nearly freaked out, but managed to keep my cool for long enough to take a photo, which is now my Twitter avatar. Work weren’t happy, but since I tweet purely in a personal capacity . . . and I did point out that the armadillo is far more handsome than I could ever hope to be. Okay, now I’m going to leave a gaping void in my chitchat so that you can say, ‘Not at all, Tom—­you are the sexiest man I’ve ever clapped eyes on.’ ”

  I smile. I might have said something—­nothing nearly so extreme as his suggestion, but something in that direction—­had he not made it so awkward for me to do so.

  Our main courses arrive—­fishcakes for me and steak for Tom—­and we carry on chatting. By the end of the meal I know that he is not interested in politics but plans to vote for Nick Clegg in the next election because “even though I have no clue what his policies are, he’s been so savaged by the mob, I feel sorry for him.” I learn, also, that Tom is fond of dogs (especially English bull terriers—­as a child he had two, Butch and Sundance), a keen chess player and a cinema addict. His favorite old movie is Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, the Joan Crawford and Bette Davis classic, and his favorite new one is Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. I’ve seen the first but not the second.

  I don’t have a favorite film, and say so when asked. “Then you’ll need to get one, before the next time we meet,” Tom says. “And please make sure it’s not Bridesmaids or Pretty Woman or something hideous like that. Speaking of the next time we meet . . . I’d very much like to see you again. Are you free for dinner later in the week?”

  “Who’s Nadine Caspian?” I ask him. Shit. Why did I say that? Why? I can’t tell Tom what she said—­he’d be shocked and hurt, and I’d be a bitch for passing on bad gossip that’s probably has no justification whatsoever.

  “Nadine?” He sounds and looks puzzled. “She’s a receptionist at my firm.”

  “I know. I meant . . . is there anything between you and her?”

  Tom’s laugh suggests astonishment more than amusement. “Anything between me and Nadine? No. Not unless you mean the reception desk. I’ve said fewer than twenty words to her in my life.”

  “I’m sorry—­it’s none of my business. Forget I asked.”

  “Er, no. Why did you? Come on, what’s going on? Why would ask me if there was anything between me and a receptionist I barely notice from one day to the next?”

  “I think I must have imagined it: when I gave her the present and asked her to make sure you got it, she looked sort of . . . odd. I just wondered if she might be a secret admirer, if not a girlfriend or ex.”

  “Hm. I suppose it’s possible she’s a very secret admirer. She’s never shown the remotest bit of interest in me. Now I come to think of it, she once showed no interest in getting a parcel I entrusted to her to its destination on time.”

  I feel a surge of excitement. This could be the explanation I’m looking for.

  “Did you reprimand her for not sending the parcel?” A bollocking at work might be enough to make Nadine hate him.

  Tom looks embarrassed. “Actually, funny you should ask that. No, I didn’t. I hate socially awkward situations—­I’m a real smoother-­over by nature, hate conflict of any kind—­so I pretended Nadine had done exactly the right thing by not sending the parcel. I made out I’d changed my mind and didn’t want it to go out so soon after all, and silly old me for telling her it was urgent and needed to go straightaway.”

  “Oh.” There goes my theory.

  “So what about dinner later in the week? I mean, tomorrow’s probably too soon, is it? Especially for your mum, newly stocked up on fiber-­optic broadband as she is. Also—­if I were you, I wouldn’t want to see me again tomorrow. I’d be thoroughly sick of me by now. And, actually, I have to go to London first thing tomorrow, so maybe I’ll need longer than a day to . . .” He breaks off and smiles enigmatically. “Sorry,” he says. “Almost gave something away there. Oops—­Tom the moron nearly strikes again.”

  “I’m not sick of you,” I tell him.

  Don’t agree to tomorrow. Make him wait at least a few days.

  Why? What’s the point?

  What did he nearly give away? The sooner I see him again, the sooner I’ll find out.

  “Tomorrow’s fine for me if it works for you,” I say.

  Chapter 8

  “I NEED TO speak to Nadine Caspian,” I say to Rukia Yunis, the receptionist who conveyed my “Ash Grove” tiepin safely to Tom. Because she did this, I think of her as trustworthy. Perhaps that’s crazy.

  It’s nine o’clock in the morning, the day after my dinner with Tom, also the day of my next dinner with Tom. I persuaded my mum to stay overnight. When she asked why I needed her to take Freya to school today, I mumbled something about an early garage appointment, then set off in my Volvo—­the old, knackered one that Tom Rigbey missed his chance to steal—­to CamEgo’s offices.

  Tom said he had to go to London first thing today, so it’s the perfect opportunity. Now or never, I decided. I plumped for now. If Tom turns up at La Mimosa this evening with a beautiful diamond engagement ring and a marriage proposal—­which of course he won’t, but it’s technically possible—­I will need not to have a head full of doubts and fears planted by Nadine Caspian. I’d like to sort this out once and for all, so that I can stop thinking about it.

  “Nadine?” says Rukia Yunis doubtfully.

  “Yes. She’s a receptionist here. You were sitting next to—­”

  “I know who she is. She . . . she doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “What?’

  “I’m as surprised as you are,” Rukia says. “I’ve just this second opened the email announcement.”

  “What does it say? Did she resign? Wouldn’t she give some notice?”

  Rukia’s eyes are fixed on the screen in front of her. She raises her eyebrows a little—­not enough for me to be sure I’m not imagining it. Maybe her face hasn’t moved at all. “I’m sorry, I can’t share the contents of the email. But Nadine won’t be in today, I’m afraid. Or . . .”

  “Or ever?” I suggest.

  “Right.” Rukia nods. “Sorry. Is it anything I can help you with?”

  I can’t speak. Can’t think of anything but Nadine’s words: I can’t talk to you. If you’re under his spell, you’ll tell him anything I say. Tomorrow morning I’ll find myself out of a job.

  Tom and I parted company at ten thirty last night. Would he have had enough time to get Nadine fired between then and this morning? I didn’t tell him what she said about him, but did I say enough to make him see her as a po
tential threat?

  “Can I ask you something?” I say to Rukia. “If Nadine’s gone, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t tell me: did you like her?”

  “Like her?”

  “Yes. Nadine. Did you trust her? Were the two of you friends?”

  “Can’t say I knew her particularly well. We got on okay, yeah. I trusted her as a colleague. I didn’t confide in her or anything, but . . . I certainly had no reason not to trust her.”

  I ought to stop now. Leave.

  “What about Tom Rigbey? Do you like and trust him?”

  “Um . . .” Rukia laughs. “He’s our CSO. It’s not for the likes of me to have opinions about him.”

  “Don’t be silly. There’s no class system for opinions. Please be honest with me. I really need to know. Is Tom an okay guy, or is there something shady about him?”

  “Shady?” Now she’s giggling. “Tom Rigbey, shady? No, not at all. He can be a bit of a buffoon, but he’s very sweet.”

  “A buffoon?”

  “Yeah—­certainly compared to most of the stuffed suits around here. He’s also more interesting and entertaining than them. Tom’s a character. Sometimes he walks along the corridor singing. He often forgets to take off his bicycle clips. Once he went into an important meeting with a smear of bike oil on his cheek. But everyone here likes him.” Rukia leans toward me and lowers her voice. “Don’t get me wrong: it helps that he’s oh-­my-­God gorgeous and a science genius.”

  I exhale slowly. It’s a relief to hear this. “Do you know why Nadine didn’t like him?” I ask.

  “I didn’t know she didn’t.” Rukia looks surprised. “She never said anything to me.”

  No, because she didn’t need to. Rukia wasn’t in danger, as Nadine saw it.

  “Please just tell me one thing: was Nadine fired?”

  Rukia hesitates, then nods. “I don’t know what for. Email doesn’t say.”

  What could Nadine know about Tom that Rukia doesn’t?

  I don’t believe he’s dangerous. I don’t. Even though Nadine was afraid she’d be fired and now she has been. It’s just . . . if she wanted to put me off Tom because she was jealous, wouldn’t she have said something more ordinary-­sounding—­“He’ll use you for sex and then drop you”—­something like that? Her choice of words makes it so much harder for me to disregard what she said. Avoid him like the plague because that’s what he is . . . Give him nothing, tell him nothing. . .

  That goes beyond any definition of normal bitchiness, surely.

  Did Nadine give something to Tom Rigbey and suffer as a result? Did she tell him a secret and regret it?

  My phone buzzes in my pocket twice. That means a text or email, not a phone call. It’s not Lorna, then. Lorna would ring. I’m not answering her calls today, I’ve decided. She’s too much of a mood wrecker.

  I thank Rukia and leave. Outside on Hills Road, I pull out my phone. My heartbeat starts to gallop when I see it’s a message from Tom. “Selfie outside New Bond Street Jeweler’s Shop,” it says. He’s signed it “T xx.” The attached photo is of Tom standing in front of a window display of diamond rings, smiling his heart-­stopping smile.

  Oh, God. He’s going to propose to me tonight. What else can this mean?

  A sneery voice in my head—­Lorna’s? Nadine Caspian’s?—­says This is the decisive moment, or it will be tonight at La Mimosa. You can’t say you haven’t been warned. Run, Chloe, run. Remember, you have to think of Freya’s well-­being too.

  I’m going to have to ring Lorna, even though the prospect of a grilling from her makes my throat close up. I can’t think what else to do.

  Chapter 9

  “THIS IS SUCH a compelling case study,” Lorna announces after a long silence. We’re having lunch at the Green Man, in Trumpington. Well, she is. I’m staring at a tuna steak I have no desire to eat. “Can I say what strikes me immediately? You want to hear my analysis?”

  I nod, though want is not quite the right word.

  “Tom Rigbey is not keen on you in the normal sense of the word. He’s not smitten in a good way—­wanting to see you night after night, talking about diamond rings within milliseconds of making your acquaintance. Wait!” Lorna holds up a hand to stop me interrupting. “You can argue later. For now, just listen. Tom Rigbey is a stalker—­a creepy latcher-­on to strangers. Most women would run a mile from anyone who came on so scarily strong so quickly, but you didn’t. Until I said stalker, you didn’t think of him as one, did you?”

  “No.” I blink away tears. Maybe I’m naïve. Maybe falling for a charming, handsome, thoughtful science genius who is nicer to me than anyone else I’ve ever met is the height of stupidity. I’d be a better person, no doubt, if I accused strangers of being creepy, like Lorna does. “Tom isn’t a stalker,” I say.

  “Yes, he totally is. You don’t see it for a very simple reason: you’re one too.” Lorna smiles triumphantly. “Like I said: the two of you make for a compelling case study. I’m almost tempted to contact a psychology professor. Most victims of stalkers hate it and recognize the stalking for what it is. But imagine if a stalker happened to fixate on someone who’s never had enough love or attention—­maybe someone whose mother was a serial doormat for one husband after another, and who was always expected to take second place and fit in. This woman with the man-­pleasing mother doesn’t have such a great romantic history, by the way.”

  “I’d never have guessed,” I murmur.

  “She follows her mother’s bad example and falls for the wrong guy: a chancer with avoidant personality disorder—­undiagnosed—­and before she knows what’s hit her, he’s scarpered, leaving her with a baby and a broken heart.”

  “Lorna?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going to be any less offended because you’re saying ‘she’ instead of ‘you.’ You don’t need to talk about me in the third person.”

  “Offended? Don’t be offended.”

  “Oh, okay then!”

  “And don’t be sarcastic either. You came to me because you wanted to understand what’s going on here, and you couldn’t. I’ve worked it out. I’m helping you. Tom Rigbey, quite by chance, chose as his latest stalking victim someone so emotionally needy, she’s incapable of recognizing stalking as stalking. You!” Lorna stares at me in obvious delight, as if I’m a rabbit she’s just pulled out of a hat. “Wait! I know what you’re going to say: you don’t see yourself as emotionally needy because you’re not clingy, pushy, harrassy in the way that most needy ­people are. On the contrary, you never ask for anything.”

  Lorna takes a break in her assassination of my character to sip her ginger beer shandy. She slurps in her eagerness to get going again, and spills a bit out of the side of her mouth.

  “I’ve never thought about this before, but I reckon there are two types of needy,” she goes on, wiping her chin. “Active and passive. Active is . . . Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction. She’s the perfect example. Passive—­or maybe covert’s a better word, or humble—­is you. All other things being equal, no one would ever know you were needy, least of all yourself, because you ask for nothing and expect nothing. You go through life accepting that you’ll never be special, never be anyone’s favorite person. Why should you be, right? Little old insignificant you? You neither hope nor expect to get your needs met, so, like a dutiful parent, you feed all your energy into caring for Freya. But then, boom! Out of the blue, Tom Rigbey comes along like a bolt of lightning . . . He’s massively needy too, by the way, though he uses his wit and charm to conceal the void at his core. His good looks too—­no one suspects how desperate he is because, come on, who wouldn’t be supremely confident if they looked like that?”

  Desperate. The word lodges at the center of my mind, in the bull’s-­eye spot.

  Lorna’s right. Who would think about marriage so early in a relationship unles
s they were desperate? Not even a relationship, come to think of it. An acquaintance. Why would a man of Tom Rigbey’s caliber waste his time with me unless . . .

  Unless he’s so insecure that he’d fear abandonment if he went for a woman in the same league as him.

  “Tom Rigbey, your knight in shining armor,” Lorna warms to her theme. “He saves the day, gets Freya’s music to the Joseph auditions in time to avoid disaster, lavishes flattery on both you and her, mentions diamonds and marriage terrifyingly quickly. At this point, any regular woman would think, ‘Yikes, a stalker!’ but not you—­because, unknown to you, you’ve secretly always craved that kind of attention. To you he doesn’t seem frighteningly single-­minded and obsessive—­he seems pleasingly attentive! Gratifyingly keen. I notice you’re not denying it.”

  That’s because I’ve temporarily lost the power of speech.

  “You respond to his stalking by stalking him back.” Lorna couldn’t be more delighted by her own cleverness. “You make him a tiepin with musical notes inside it from a song that’s supposed to have some significance to the two of you—­way over the top, as thank-­you gifts go. You stay up half the night Googling him—­”

  “As did you,” I point out.

  “Only because I knew you were, and I suspected you’d make a hash of it. Then you take the present to his office when you could easily have posted it. Why didn’t you? You were hoping to bump into him, that’s why. And then you let him take you out for dinner, and another dinner the next night, despite being warned about him—­”

  “By a stranger!” I snap. “Would you take the word of a stranger—­one who wasn’t even prepared to be direct in her accusations—­and avoid someone you liked, who had only ever been nice to you?”

  Lorna pulls her face out of her pint glass and sighs. “Not nice, Chloe. Stalkerish. Please see sense. Look, think of it like this: imagine you meet a man who has this weird habit of constantly edging forward with his feet when he speaks to you. You’d find it annoying, wouldn’t you? You’re trying to talk to him but you can’t concentrate because all the time he’s shuffling closer and closer. Soon his face will be touching yours—­eww! Unless . . . can you guess where I’m going with this?”