Free Scar Tissue by Judith Cutler Page A

great with his kids’ scraped knees and first hangovers. Hang on: he’d never mentioned kids. Perhaps I was their substitute child, just as they were my replacement parents. Only I’d be nicer to them than their real child would ever have been.
    ‘I hope and pray it doesn’t get that far.’ He returned to the main room, leaning his head against the dormer window and looking down at what would one day no doubt become a wonderful garden.
    I swallowed hard. I had to say it, after all – couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. ‘You don’t have to do this, you and Jan. You could pop me in your car and just drop me off somewhere where there’s a big floating population, like Brighton, and I could disappear.’
    He turned to look me straight in the eye; the trouble was, because the light streaming in was so bright I couldn’t see his face at all. ‘How would you survive?’ His voice told me how anxious he was.
    What I wanted to do was yell, ‘I couldn’t! Don’t let me even try!’ What I actually said, quite quietly, was, ‘I could find some casual work. Waitressing, that sort of thing.’ I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before. I lie. I had thought of it before. And with it the thought had flitted through what passes for my brain that I could even earn a few bob on the game. I suppose I’d been so anxious to suppress that idea that I’d closed down the other little brain cells too.
    I’d have bet a pound that Todd had read my mind, at least some of it. ‘The other Pots want to keep an eye on you. Jan and I want to keep an eye on you. As part of our refurbishmenthere we’re having all sorts of surveillance equipment installed – they start putting it in tomorrow. You’ve already done the hard bit – leaving your home as if you were on the run. And doing a very convincing imitation of being on the run. If whoever …’ He tailed off.
    ‘Sent me the bomb,’ I supplied, keeping my voice as matter -of-fact as I could.
    ‘Quite. He’ll hear on the radio or TV that he got the wrong person, so he’ll come looking for you – we’ve all worked that out. If he asks questions, he’ll learn you’ve gone to London. But you’ve got other hard bits to do too.’
    ‘Like not communicating with anyone except through me,’ Jan said, stepping into the room. ‘Even the police don’t know where you’ve gone, remember.’
    ‘And a bloody good job that is too!’ I explained.
    They wore twin masks of disbelief. ‘But this is England,’ Todd said stupidly.
    My eyebrow went up of its own accord, telling them how innocent they were. A short account of my encounters with Sergeant Marsh had them literally tearing their hair.
    ‘But this is England!’ Todd repeated when I’d finished. ‘We must do something. We must contact the media – get someone to do an exposé!’
    ‘More realistically,’ Jan overrode him, ‘we get my old law firm to provide a representative to accompany Caffy when she makes a formal complaint at another police station.’
    ‘Of course!’ Todd was already digging in his pocket for his mobile.
    ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘That means revealing my whereabouts. Being seen, at the very least. Corrupt officers know somepretty nasty criminals – it wouldn’t surprise me if Granville was on Marsh’s Christmas card list.’
    ‘No! Honestly, you’d get police protection and –’
    ‘For the time being I’m happier here with your protection,’ I said firmly. ‘I know I’ve got to do something but I need a bit of time to think things through.’
    They exchanged glances. Could I trust them? I didn’t for one moment think they’d deliberately harm me – I had plenty of evidence that they really cared for me – but sometimes people think they know best. And in my experience they don’t. Not when they’re dabbling with criminals, who don’t play by the rules that
Guardian
readers observe. If I dabbled with criminals, I’d make damn sure I was playing by their rules,