Pictures of You

Chapter 4

4

Four days later

This is my chance. While everyone’s weaving their way to communion at the funeral Mass, I make my break. Peeling off down the side aisle, I gather speed as I hurry between the pillars, hoping that if anyone notices me, they’ll assume a sudden need for the bathroom—perfectly understandable, in the circumstances—before I burst out the back doors into the brilliant sunshine and face a horde of cameras. It’s reminiscent of that scene in Notting Hill when Julia Roberts is unexpectedly exposed to the British tabloid media.

But it’s just me: Evie Hudson. Fish out of water in a dimension where I’ve signed up for everything in life that I categorically oppose and totally lost track of my own narrative. Hot tears sting my eyes and there’s not enough oxygen, no matter how much air I try to gorge into lungs that won’t expand nearly enough, breaths coming fast and shallow.

The Uber driver, leaning against a big black car, arms crossed defensively, seems to brace against my approach as I push through the cameras and storm toward him. He looks like one of those humorless undercover cops in a gritty British crime show, all brooding hotness, three-day stubble, and dark, troubled eyes. At first sight, I decide he’s the kind of guy you warn your best friend about, but she goes and casts herself as the heroine in his redemption arc anyway, locking you into months of pointless debriefing while she tries to work out what’s wrong with her.

Bree would love him, if she were here. It’s just not like her to fail to show up to one of my crises, or vice versa, and I’d hoped the well-publicized funeral might smoke her out of whichever hole she’s been hiding in. Surely the death of a husband qualifies as a full-scale emotional emergency?

“Hey, can we get out of here fast?” I ask the driver as I brush past him. His arms fall to his sides.

I throw open the back door and tumble in, pushing aside an expensive-looking leather bag and tripod. He’s still standing there in his crisp white T-shirt and faded brown leather jacket, raking a hand through dark hair now as he stares at the church, and then at his car, giving me a view through the side window of his denim-clad rear. I’m more into Darcy and Knightley, myself, and while this getup is not breeches and a ruffled shirt, it’s also somehow not entirely disappointing. Though, as a newly minted widow literally fleeing my husband’s funeral, I am in no place to notice. What is disappointing is that the man is demonstrating a complete lack of urgency.

I pound on the glass. “Come on!” I shout. “Drive!”

It’s only the movement of the media pack toward his car that motivates him, at last, to climb in, glare at me in the rearview mirror, and shift gears. Of course I’ve ended up with the rebel of Uberville and not some patient retiree who’d assure me everything is all right and my life hasn’t, in fact, been catastrophically derailed.

“Hello to you too,” the driver says, occupied with not hitting the camera crews that are swarming around the car, firing flashes through the windows. He performs some precision driving and we exit the driveway, pull into Victoria Street, and head for Centennial Park.

“Sorry! I’m not thinking straight.” Where are my manners?

“Where are we going?” he asks, frowning at me in the mirror before he overtakes an enormous caravan.

“Airport?” I hear myself confirm. It was the first destination in the saved addresses. I didn’t have time to construct a fancy itinerary in the church.

I pull out my phone and search for plane tickets. The nurse had advised me to stick to a normal routine in the hope it will stimulate my memory. According to the very enlightening funeral slideshow I’ve just witnessed, my normal routine involved a lot of jet-setting. Maybe being in the air will spark something. Medically, I’m sure it’s fine. I might have lost a few chapters of my memory, but it’s not like I’ll be flying the plane.

I let my phone automatically fill out the fields to book a flight home to Newcastle, progress to the payment gateway, and watch the wheel spin until it times out. Payment failed.

I try again. Failed.

“Everything okay?” the driver asks, after I swear under my breath.

His hands clench over the steering wheel before I catch his eye again in the mirror and shoot him a look that says, I just absconded from my own husband’s funeral. How okay can everything be?

He returns his focus to the traffic. How am I going to pay him without a credit card? The nurse had said Uber was like a taxi service. I’ve been in a cab only a couple of times and Bree and I paid with cash. Is this the same? And how is my card not working when I can apparently afford this outfit?

I log into my banking app. The phone has my password saved and a hospital social worker had sat patiently beside me and talked me through the authentication. But there’s minus $167 in my account! I scroll through the list of recent transactions, revealing a regular pattern of hefty deposits—monthly—from the account of O. E. Roche. Some sort of allowance? And now it’s stopped. He must have done these transfers manually.

“Er, could you pull over somewhere, please? My card isn’t working,” I admit. He doesn’t need to know I’m completely broke. “I can’t book a flight.”

Is he going to assume I also can’t pay him and slam on the brakes in the middle of Southern Cross Drive? Lines crease on his forehead in the mirror, and the muscles in his jaw and neck tighten.

Frantically, I go to the Uber app. Maybe it’s linked to another credit card or something? I click on the booking and … oh, God . There’s a photo of the driver. Gray hair. Blue eyes. A balding man in his sixties, driving a red Toyota Camry.

I’m seated in a late-model matte-black Range Rover. My driver is in his early thirties at best. Brown eyes. Dark hair. Not even a hint of a bald patch.

My stomach drops. Am I being kidnapped?

No, I masterminded this whole thing. My eyes drop to the gear lying beside me on the back seat. Tripod. Camera bag. The glass of an enormous lens glistening in the sun through the open zippered pocket. I feel sick.

“You’re not an Uber driver, are you?”

He looks genuinely surprised at my question. “Photo-journalist,” he responds, his tone strained.

I’ve delivered myself straight into the hands of the enemy.