Free The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson

engine. Leo was going to crush him against the barrier.
    Xeno threw himself forward, hit the top of the barrier and vaulted over. As he dropped heavily and painfully down the other side, Leo rammed it. Xeno heard the clunk of the reverse gear as he lay on the floor, the cold metal against his back. Then Leo hit the barrier again. And again.
    Xeno was on his feet. He could feel damp air on his face. He must be nearly out. Yes. There was the yellow barrier. He ran out onto the street. He still had his phone.
    “Cameron? I need my bags from the house. Especially I need the briefcase—red leather, on the desk—and the laptop. I’ll be at Pauline’s.”
    Cameron was in his pyjamas. “What’s the problem, Xeno?”
    “Leo is trying to kill me.”
    —
    Cameron dressed quickly and drove from his flat in Ladbroke Grove back to the house in Little Venice. Why had he put the webcam in MiMi’s bedroom? Why had he not refused to do it?
    He entered his code, drove through the gate and saw the light on in MiMi’s bedroom. The rest of the house was dark.
    Cameron pulled his car out of view of the road and walked down the side of the house to the little guest annexe where Xeno always stayed. The luggage was already packed. Cameron threw the last of the things into a holdall, took the briefcase and laptop, and went back towards his car. Sound of tyres/streaks of light under the heavy metal entrance gates alerted him to Leo’s Jeep pulling up outside.
    Cameron took out his iPhone and disabled the entry code.
    He switched to screen mode and watched Leo through the camera on the gate. He was jabbing the buttons. If he tried the housekeeper or MiMi they wouldn’t be able to open the gates either. But then Cameron’s phone rang.
    “Leo?”
    The fucking fuckers fucked.
    It crossed Cameron’s mind that this was a perfectly good sentence—adjective, noun, verb. Not Shakespeare certainly, but adequate.
    After a moment’s negotiation Leo agreed to drive round to Cameron’s flat to get the override key. Cameron watched the headlights fade and disappear, then he opened the gates and left, carefully resetting the entry code.
    Cameron drove north to Pauline’s house in Belsize Park. The lights were on downstairs and Pauline opened the door in her Marks and Spencer dressing gown. She liked Marks and Spencer.
    “What the hell is going on?” said Pauline. “I’m having a Scotch and I don’t even drink.”
    Cameron’s phone rang.
Leo
, he mouthed to Pauline.
    There was a long, shouting rant at the other end of the phone that ended in Cameron telling Leo he had misunderstood. Cameron had been to the house and reset the codes. Yes, Leo could go home.
    The phone went dead.
    Xeno came downstairs in another of Pauline’s fleecy dressing gowns. He had had a shower. His legs were bruised and he had a cut on his face where the windscreen had shattered. He opened his bags to find clean clothes.
    “You should go to the hospital,” said Pauline.
    “No hospital, no police,” said Xeno, “but, Cameron, you have to get what’s left of MiMi’s Fiat out of the car park. She doesn’t need this.”
    “Why was Leo chasing you round the car park?” asked Cameron, though his heart was heavy because he knew why.
    “Murder.”
    Pauline shook her head. “That’s melodramatic.”
    “Do you want to come and see what’s left of the melodramatic car?”
    “We can tow it out with the Range Rover,” said Cameron.
    —
    Leo was back at his house. He liked his house. An 1840s white stucco villa with gardens back and front. Private and secure. He had bought it when he had married MiMi in 2003. He had just finished paying for it when he had lost his job. For a year things had been difficult financially—in fact, they hadn’t been difficult because MiMi had paid all their living costs. Leo hated that. It made him feel worse than being in debt. He was proud of his wife. Proud that she earned real money. But in his head it had to be all him. If he