Chapter 3
Three
ROMAN
From his bedroom window, Roman sets his laptop aside and watches the new couple moving in on the other side of the lane.
Perched here on the wide windowsill, he can see all the way down Orchard Lane and even a little way past the bend in the road. He’s got a good view of the Coach House, sitting big and boxy on its manicured front lawn. Recently, he’s overheard his parents discussing who the new neighbours might be.
‘Nobody seems to know anything about them on the lane’s group,’ his mum said, pouring a glass of wine before dinner. ‘Oliver and Emily Sharpe.’
The guy, Oliver, looks like one of those corporate types who insists his sales team do assault courses in the rain on their team away-day.
From here, he looks all perfect teeth and Moncler joggers; someone Roman’s dad might refer to as ‘a class-A knobhead’.
Not that his dad is exactly a moral compass—he’s always wheeling and dealing when he needs building supplies.
Plus, there was his little hiccup a couple of years ago that nobody is allowed to mention.
But his parents have done a good job burying that not-so-small detail.
Earlier, Roman saw the woman—Emily—and she is not what he expected.
She’s proper pretty, not like the girls in his year who pile on cheap make-up to try and cover up their bad skin.
Emily’s razor-sharp blonde bob flashed in the sun when she bent to pick up a stray leaflet outside.
She laughed at something her husband said, a soft, calming sound as she tipped back her head like she was in one of those fancy shampoo adverts.
He wonders what she’d think if she knew he was watching.
Roman pictures himself, for a moment, with a real-life MILF. He cringes at himself even as the term crosses his mind. He’s aware he is all late-night internet and no real-life experience.
Emily will probably be bored out of her mind, though, stuck in that fancy show-home.
The daydream fizzes through him, sharp and electric. She looks like the kind of woman who’d listen properly if you spoke to her. Someone who would actually be interested and remember what you said.
Roman shakes the thoughts out of his head. He knows it’s pathetic, the kind of thing lonely teens in their bedrooms dream up, but part of him can’t quite let it go.
A removals lorry is blocking half the road as burly men in navy cargo pants and hi-vis orange waistcoats wrestle with large pieces of furniture and stack boxes on to wheeled trolleys. A couple of dog walkers stand around watching, pretending to let their dogs sniff around a nearby lamppost.
That’s the thing about Orchard Lane—people never move in quietly. There’s always an audience, comments on the residents’ WhatsApp group. It’s a performance, and the street is the stage.
Roman takes his eyes off the window for a few moments and adjusts the angle of his laptop.
A keylogger tool runs on there, blinking silent commands from the corner of the monitor.
It’s recording every single stroke made on a keyboard in a building about three miles away from here.
A week ago, one careless click gave him a foothold.
He taps in a few more lines of code and checks a status bar.
The process is nearly done now. He’s cloning a merchant’s login page for a local spa that double-booked his mum and her friends a month ago.
They didn’t offer her a discount to help make up for it, either.
This is Roman’s way of offsetting the inconvenience and disappointment they’ve caused her.
Once he’s directed all the bookings to the clone page, the place will be in chaos with hundreds of angry customers double-booked.
He scratches the back of his neck. He hasn’t brushed his hair today and he hadn’t slept well.
His parents were rowing again last night.
His dad woke him up, shouting about Mum hammering the credit card again, and his mum had flung one of her designer shoes, and it had bounced off the Aga with a sound as loud as a gunshot when you’re half asleep.
It’s always the same order now: raised voices, a crash and a bang, apologies and finally, silence. He could write the pattern up in code.
Roman had put in his AirPods, turned his music up and gone back to sleep. When he got up this morning, the shoe with the fancy metal heel was still on the kitchen floor.
Fortunately, Roman can easily get lost in coding. He can carve himself out a whole other world where he’s top dog and other people—adults—are at his mercy. It feels good, too. A bit wrong, maybe. But mostly good.
Out there, the world seems bigger, louder, with fists and hidden agendas. In here, it’s just him and his screens and whatever secrets he feels like uncovering.
His eyes scan over the big white stucco houses across the street that look so much like his own. All of them are detached with five or six bedrooms and large gardens.
But Roman hates living here, hates the pretence of it all. The neighbours are all so boring and predictable. Well, that’s not strictly true. Some of the people who live here are not so boring. At least, their secrets aren’t.
Roman smirks and leans a little closer to the glass to look out over the neighbourhood.
Tim Walker-Dent at Orchard Cottage has placed another bet this morning—Cheltenham this time.
A big one, paid for from the account he has set up in his own name, separate from the joint account he holds with his wife.
Roman saw the email confirmation before the site’s multifactor authentication had even fully loaded.
The people further down the lane . . . they’re in real trouble.
Their overdue-payment warning from the mortgage lender came through at 8.
22 this morning. That’s two months they’re behind now, thanks to their electrical business going tits up.
Soon, the men in suits will come knocking.
Roman has bookmarked the link, just in case.
People are always nicer when they’re scared.
And Mr Windsor, who retired from the bank a year ago . . . well. Roman’s smile turns sly as he thinks about what he’s hiding.
He wouldn’t want that printed on the church volunteers’ rota. Sometimes, he wonders what would happen if he didn’t stop himself. He imagines the faces at church if they saw those screenshots.
Not that he’d ever send them.
Probably not, anyway.