Chapter 6
Six
ROMAN
Roman doesn’t go straight home after the showdown. He pretends he’s checking something on his phone, but really he’s just lingering at the end of Orchard Lane, waiting for his pulse to stop thumping in his ears.
He can’t go back yet, anyway. What the hell is he going to tell his mum about her package now? All the hours she’s spent making that cake topper, and now it was flattened. The couple getting married will leave a terrible Etsy review when it failed to arrive.
He watched the Walker-Dents cross the road to the Coach House, taking something on a plate and a bottle of wine.
They didn’t stay long, and now they’re leaving.
They shake hands with Oliver and Emily on the doorstep—all smiles and charm.
Lara’s laugh is loud enough to carry across the lane, bright and sugary, like something she’s practised until it stops sounding human.
The moment the Sharpes’ front door closes, her face changes. She swipes a hand through her hair and snaps something at Tim. He murmurs back, too low for Roman to catch, but Tim’s shoulders hunch the way his dad’s sometimes do when his mum starts on at him about overdue bills.
When they’ve crossed the road, Roman sidles up behind the hedge that separates their house from his own. He’s not hiding; he prefers to think of it as repositioning.
‘You didn’t have to go on like that. Making us look desperate.’
Tim exhales hard. ‘I was just being polite.’
‘Polite?’ Lara scoffs. ‘You were fawning. Practically licking their boots. “Oh, Oliver, gorgeous house! Oliver, that vaulted ceiling!” God.’
Lara glances back over her shoulder and Roman ducks down behind the hedge. If they don’t want people hearing their conversation, they shouldn’t be having it out on the street.
‘They seem nice,’ Tim says. ‘I think you and Emily will get on really well.’
‘You mean like I used to get on with the other neighbours?’
‘Can we not do this now, Lara?’ he says, glancing up and down the lane. ‘Please.’
‘Don’t you make out this is my problem.’ Lara’s voice cuts through the air like a blade. ‘Just don’t.’
Roman grins. Sounds like Tim is in for some serious grief—good! His dad can’t stand the Walker-Dents, for some reason. Roman has never found out why. And he stays well away from his parents’ private lives. God only knows what he might find if he poked around in their messages and photographs. Yuk.
He creeps forward a few steps, making sure he’s not visible above the hedge. This is taking his mind off Oliver’s smug face and the way he humiliated him.
‘She stood there like butter wouldn’t melt in her floaty dress. I could see you, panting like a dog.’
‘Lara, please.’
‘Don’t Lara me. I’ll never fall for your bullshit again. I told you that.’
Roman hears her push the key into the front door of their titchy house—the smallest one on the lane. She’s wearing a fancy long skirt that swishes around her ankles and high heels, but her mood doesn’t match. It’s like watching a Disney princess kick off outside B now flat as a pizza outside the Coach House with bits of glittering table glass mashed into it like confetti.
The image of Oliver Sharpe is still vivid in his mind, as are those awful moments outside the house in front of the lads from school who he thinks filmed it all; the name-calling and the way Sharpe had been disrespectful about Roman’s dad.
‘Tosser,’ he hisses under his breath.
He takes the underpass with its graffiti-marked walls and wrinkles his nose against the smell of piss before emerging out into the side street.
The houses start to knit tighter together from here.
Semi-detached residences become medium-sized terraces.
Front gardens shrink and then vanish altogether, replaced by wheelie bins left against the frontages like big, fat skittles.
Then there are the flats, blocks of Brutalist concrete towering over everything in the distance.
Even the litter has changed. On Orchard Lane, it might be the odd crumpled receipt someone will pick up because it’s outside their front gate. Here it’s scrunched cans in the gutter, a burst bin liner, a lonely trainer with no lace.
Two youths on scooters weave around a pothole and Roman steps aside for them. ‘Watch it,’ the taller one says, shooting him a mean look.
He carries on walking, keeping his strides quick and even.
The rhythm helps a bit but doesn’t stop the thoughts churning through his head.
He did drift too close to the removals guy, he’d admit that, but he reckoned the man’s grip must have been slipping before Roman even got to him to have dropped it like that.
He’d caught the spark of unease in his eyes when he’d first picked it up. He was always going to drop it.
Oliver Sharpe wasn’t interested in listening to excuses, or in giving Roman the benefit of the doubt. He was the sort of guy who needed a villain when anything went wrong in his life and Roman was right there, ready-made.
A thick twerp, an idiot snowflake.
Roman can still hear his pompous voice, and his cheeks burn at the thought of it.
His phone buzzes in his hoodie pocket and he slows his pace and pulls it out. It’s a missed call from his mum. She’d be wondering where he’s got to, wanting to know if he got a receipt from the post office to ensure Special Delivery by Monday.
He falters, debates what to do for a few moments.
Her face if he turns around and goes home now; he knows exactly how it will go.
His mum wouldn’t shout. Not at first. She’d get all small and tight around the mouth and say, ‘Oh, Roman,’ like it’s just another thing proving what a disappointment he is.
And then, when his dad gets home from work later, he’ll have a go, because his dad has been like a monkey on his back lately. Like Roman is a one-man problem that he is determined to put right with a policy of inflicting pure misery on him until he caves in.
Nah, he can’t be arsed with any of that right now. He shoves the phone back in his pocket and picks up the pace again.