Free What Remains by Tim Weaver

Mal?’
    ‘I’m sure she did, honey.’
    He hung up his own coat, took the dog off its leash and let it escape through to the living room. Then he followed Abigail into their tiny box kitchen, where Gail was frying some pieces of chicken. April was sitting on the window ledge to her right, back pressed against the glass, the London skyline ashen and hazy in the distance behind her. He leaned in and kissed Gail on the cheek.
    ‘The girls told me they don’t want fajitas tonight, Mummy,’ he said, winking. ‘They’d much rather have a big plate of vegetables.’
    ‘We didn’t say that!’ April shouted.
    He broke out into a laugh. ‘Oh, I must have misheard you.’
    ‘Did you remember the sour cream?’ Abigail asked.
    ‘Of course I did,’ Gail replied, pointing to the fridge. ‘You only reminded me about seven thousand times, Abs.’ One hand swishing the chicken around the pan, Gail reached out to Abigail with the other and pulled her in. ‘Why don’t you and your sister go and watch TV for ten minutes? Mal will set the table and call you when it’s ready – and then we can all tuck in.’
    After the girls were gone, he took April’s place at the window and he and Gail started talking about their days. Gail worked three mornings a week at a library just down the road from them and was studying for an Open University degree in the evenings. He worked five days a week as a delivery driver but always finished early on a Friday, so he’d come home and take the girls out with the dog, and Gail would cook something special. Fridays were treat night in their flat, and this week the girls had chosen fajitas.
    ‘I’m going to get changed,’ he said.
    ‘Be quick. I’m almost done here.’
    He kissed her on the cheek again, then headed across the hallway to their bedroom. Like every other room in the flat, it was small and slightly shabby, but they’d been good enough to accept him here, and he was used to this place now: living on top of one another, the smell of damp in the kitchen, the lack of natural light in the rooms. It was all they could afford for now, and until either he or Gail landed better jobs, or maybe won the lottery, he knew they’d make the best of it.
    As he was taking off his trousers, his mobile started buzzing in the pocket. He pulled it out, dumped his trousers on the bed and looked at the display. An unknown number. Pressing Answer, he wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder, and began looking through the wardrobe for his tracksuit trousers.
    ‘Hello?’
    Silence on the line.
    ‘Hello?’ he said again.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    He stopped, pausing in front of the open wardrobe.
    ‘Uh, who is this, please?’
    ‘What are you doing?’ the voice said for a second time: same flat tone, exactly the same pronunciation, like a recording on a loop. There was a slight buzz on the line; an echo, as if the call had come a great distance. ‘What are you doing with that family?’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘What are you doing with that family?’
    A coolness slithered down his spine. ‘Who is this?’
    ‘This must be stopped.’
    ‘What? Who is this?’
    ‘This must be stopped now.’
    ‘Who the hell is this?’
    The line glitched, buzzed.
    ‘Everything you love must be taken away.’

12
    I didn’t get home until almost six-thirty, the sky a vast, markless sweep of mauve, the sun too low to be seen beyond the roofs of the city. I pulled into my driveway and got out, and as I removed my laptop and some files from the boot, I glimpsed my neighbours, both of them on their knees and tending to the same flower bed.
    They were a couple in their thirties, Andrew and Nicola, and six months after they’d first moved in, we’d barely spoken. In their first week, I’d introduced myself, found out he worked for an Aston Martin dealership on Park Lane, while she had some kind of marketing job in the City. And that was it. In half a year, that was all I’d managed to get out of them.