Page 45 of The One Plus One
‘Mr Nicholls doesn’t know that, does he?’
‘Look. He’s just some bloke. He probably got caught up in the drama last night. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to do it. We’ll – we’ll just let Tanzie down gently.’
Tanzie. Ed watched her running around the back garden, her hair flying out behind her. He watched the dog shambling back towards the door, half dog, half yak, leaving an intermittent snail trail of drool behind him.
‘I’m wearing him out so that he’ll sleep most of the journey.’ She appeared in front of him, panting.
‘Right.’
‘I’m really good at maths. We’re going to an Olympiad so I can win money to go to a school where I can do A-level maths. Do you know what my name is, converted to binary code?’
He looked at her. ‘Is Tanzie your full name?’
‘No. But it’s the one I use.’
He blew out his cheeks. ‘Um. Okay. 01010100 01100001 01101110 01111010 01101001 01100101.’
‘Did you say 0101 at the end? Or 1010?’
‘0101. Duh.’ He used to play this game with Ronan.
‘Wow. You actually spelt it right.’ She walked past him and pushed the door. ‘I’ve never been to Scotland. Nicky keeps trying to tell me there are herds of wild haggis. But that’s a lie, right?’
‘To the best of my knowledge they’re all farmed these days,’ he said.
Tanzie stared at him. Then she beamed, and sort of growled at the same time.
And Ed Nicholls realized he was headed for Scotland.
The two women fell silent as he pushed the door open. Their eyes dropped to the bags that he picked up in each hand.
‘I need to get some stuff before we go,’ he said, as he let the door swing behind him. ‘And you missed out Gary Ridgway. The Green River Killer. But you’re fine. They were all short-sighted. And my glasses are long.’
It took three-quarters of an hour to leave town. The lights were out on the top of the hill and that, combined with Easter-holidays traffic, slowed the queue of cars to a bad-tempered crawl. Jess sat in the car beside him, silent and oddly awkward, her hands pressed together between her knees. He guessed she knew that he’d overheard the whole conversation. She had barely said a single word since they’d left her house.
The boy – Nicky – sat on the other side of the dog to his sister. He had the air-con on, but it couldn’t disguise the smell of the dog, so he turned it off and they sat with all four windows open instead. And into this odd silence, Tanzie kept up a constant stream of chatter.
‘Have you been to Scotland before?’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Do you have a house there?’
‘Why are you staying here then?’
He had some work to sort out, he said. It was easier than ‘I’m awaiting possible prosecution and a jail term of up to seven years.’
‘Do you have a wife?’
‘Not any more.’
‘Were you unfaithful?’
‘Tanzie,’ said Jess.
He blinked. Glanced into the rear-view mirror. ‘Nope.’
‘OnJeremy Kyleone person is usually unfaithful. Sometimes they have another baby and they have to do a DNA test and usually when it’s right the woman looks like she wants to hit someone. But mostly they just start crying.’
