Chapter 36
TOM
I pick the table by the window because it looks like the kind of spot where revelations happen. You know — natural light, a plant that’s just credible enough to be real, a wall of reclaimed wood shouting “authenticity” in typewriter font.
If I’m about to become an amateur detective, I’d like it to be bathed in a flattering glow.
Emma arrives like a weather front in expensive boots. She doesn’t so much sit as orbit: coat half-off, sunglasses pushed into hair, phone, tote, keys, another phone, all of it landing across the table like she’s laying out evidence in some café-based murder mystery.
“Flat white. Actually, no, make it an oat latte. No, scratch that, flat white. I can’t drink oat, it makes me cry.
Long story,” she says to no one in particular, then to me, “How are you? Terrible question. Don’t answer.
Tell me everything. Actually—wait—have you seen the traffic on Whiteladies? Criminal. Speaking of criminal—James.”
A waitress appears, takes her order, mine, and leaves looking faintly winded.
“I’m… good?” I try. “And by good, I mean brittle. Like a posh cracker.”
“Perfect,” she says. “We love brittle. Brittle keeps you sharp.”
Emma’s energy is… a lot. Imagine someone pressed fast-forward on a person but forgot to tell their limbs.
She’s not rude, exactly — she’s attentive in sprints — but her thoughts play hopscotch.
Still, there’s something oddly comforting about it.
I’m a chronic overthinker; she’s an over-sayer.
Between us we almost make one functional adult.
“Well, thanks for meeting me again,” she starts.
“Oh of course,” I say. We hadn’t swapped numbers after our first encounter, but she messaged me later on Facebook Messenger. I was surprised to hear from her so soon, but I felt it was important for us to keep talking.
Emma leans in, eyes bright with an intensity that could scorch paint. “It’s nice that I didn’t have to tail you around Clifton again before you agreed to it this time.”
I nod. “Yeah, well I spent 3 hours stalking Pete outside his house last night, so in no position to judge.”
“So, you saw Pete?”
“Well, yes—”
“Is he safe?” she cuts in immediately.
“Define safe,” I say, and she deflates a millimetre. “He… talked. More than before. He told me about what it’s like with James. The years of abuse. It sounds terrifying.”
“I thought as much,” Emma says, grabbing the menu in front of her.
“I need to speak with my friend, Craig. He’s working today, I can’t get hold of him, but he’s in the Police—”
“Police?” Emma cuts in. “What kind of police?”
“Um, well, the…normal police,” I respond.
Emma frowns. “How can he help?”
“He mentioned support systems that could help Pete—”
Emma scoffs. “That won’t help! Not with someone like James around. Did Pete mention Chris?”
“Um, kind of. He said he doesn’t know what happened to Chris, just he got a text and then he disappeared.”
Emma makes a face like she’s chewed a lemon she found in a handbag.
“That’s what he says. And I like Pete, I really do, but that man could hide a cathedral under that smile.
And trust me, I know smiles. I once dated a magician.
He could smile while stealing your watch and your car keys. And my flat. But that’s another story.”
I blink a lot.
“Anyway,” she continues. “I’ve always had the feeling he knows more than he lets on. Especially when James’ name comes up.”
The coffees arrive. Emma immediately sugar-bombs hers with three sachets. “Don’t look at me like that. I once lived for six weeks on Haribo and full fat Coke. Perfectly fine, hallucinations aside.”
I nod and feel the need to re-calibrate the conversation. “So, you and Pete keep in touch?” I ask.
“Of course.” She stirs, clinks, stirs again. “I check in every few weeks. I ask very nice, open-ended questions; he gives me very nice, closed answers. But there are moments… tiny slips. Fear, Tom. It lives in his eyes like a tenant who won’t leave.”
“Yeah,” I say softly, thinking of bruises, the flinch that wasn’t a flinch, the way the house held its breath. “I’ve seen it.”
She studies me, radar pinging. “I think Pete knows exactly what happened to Chris. And if James were out of the picture — even temporarily — Pete would tell us what really happened.”
“‘Us’?” I repeat, which comes out like a high-pitched squeak.
She waves a hand. “Yes, you and me, Scooby and Daphne — but with better hair and trauma. Listen, in the weeks before Chris vanished, his messages got… strange. He’d text me nonsense at two in the morning — half-thoughts, like he was typing with someone breathing down his neck.
He’d talk about videos, videos in the house that tell the truth. ”
A chill slides under my collar. I swallow. “Like cameras?”
“Maybe, I never really knew what he was talking about.” She takes an unladylike slurp.
I breathe out slowly. “Pete showed me their CCTV.”
Emma’s eyes widen like I just admitted to owning a dragon. “He what?”
“There’s cameras around the house,” I rush. “I don’t know where exactly, but he said he had to delete them after I left yesterday, just in case James reviews them.”
Emma sits back, triumph sparking. “Then it exists. Proof exists.”
“Proof of what?”
“Abuse. Coercion. Something ugly.” She looks around the café — the prams, the laptops, the plants performing sanity — and lowers her voice.
“If there’s footage of James hurting Pete — if we could get it — police have to take it seriously.
It wouldn’t fix everything, but it would get a door open.
Keep them apart. Long enough to make Pete breathe and talk. ”
“Surely James would delete anything incriminating?”
“Maybe, but also why put it up in the first place? Clearly, he has some voyeuristic fetish for being filmed. Maybe he saves them to watch them back while he rubs baby oil over his misters.”
This is not an image I was hoping for today, so I just nod.
While I’m not sure this is exactly the route I wanted to go down to help Pete, the tired, irrational, overly emotional side of me that feels he could double as Ethan Hunt to save the day is switched on.
Could I find some video evidence of James that could be used to convince Pete to leave?
“How would we get it?” I ask, hearing how treacherous my voice sounds and deciding not to fix it.
Emma’s smile is sharp. “Well. This is where we leverage your… excellent rapport.”
“I knew you were going to say leverage,” I sigh.
“I mean it kindly,” she insists. “You’re… nice.”
“That’s my fatal flaw.”
“One of them,” she says cheerfully. “Tom, listen. Pete trusts you. He invited you back, didn’t he?”
“Sort of. I may have… shown up,” I mumble. “I’m aware of the hypocrisy.”
She pats my hand. “We’ve all stalked someone for good reasons. You should see my search history.”
For a brief moment we breathe—two ridiculous people in a Bristol coffee shop discussing how to ethically obtain illegal evidence.
“I can’t go through him,” I say. “If Pete’s terrified, he won’t risk it. And if James catches a whiff…”
“Then we don’t go through Pete,” Emma says. “We go around him. You said the footage is stored somewhere in the house?”
“Almost certainly,” I say. “There’s an office. Mac on the desk.”
Emma’s attention scatters to the window—two men walk past in matching coats—then zips back. “Do you think you could get to it?”
“Do I think I can commit a crime with panache? No. Do I think I can bumble a crime with high anxiety and snacks? Possibly.”
“Snacks are crucial,” she deadpans. “I once tried breaking into my ex’s place with nothing but Pringles and optimism. It didn’t work.”
We sip; I overthink. My internal monologue starts a chorus: You cannot do this / You absolutely will do this / Please stop doing this. I imagine myself on the six o’clock news as “local man with excellent posture arrested beside ornamental shrub.”
“This is a really terrible idea,” I say, surprising myself with a sensible sentence.
“It is,” she says simply. “But I’ve been in this for two years. Two years of terrible ideas. And I’m prepared to try them over and over again until I find the truth.”
“You know,” I say, “you’re very weirdly inspirational.”
“Yes,” she says. “It’s my brand. My other brand is unpaid parking fines and men who ghost me. But inspirational sounds better.”
We go quiet long enough to notice the café’s playlist has slid into melancholy acoustic covers of songs that don’t deserve it.
This really is a terrible idea.
But in a world of regret and desperation, an idea I have to try.