Chapter Two

The woman reached the landing. Christian ducked behind the bed, but as he had expected, she carried on up the short flight of stairs. Christian started to breathe again, and checked the wardrobe. There were about a dozen items in there, mostly T-shirts, but thankfully they were in adult sizes, in fact they would fit a chap even bigger than he was. One of the T-shirts bore a slogan that made Christian laugh: 'My Friend Went to San Francisco and All He Got Me Was This Lousy T-shirt'. Another one read 'It's Pronounced "Cwej"'. Christian pulled out the smart grey suit and cotton shirt that hung at the other end of the rail.

The ceiling above him creaked as the woman moved about upstairs.

Christian ran his finger very slowly down the seam of his coveralls. The Velcro parted silently, but it seemed to take an age.

The woman was coming back downstairs as Christian stepped out of his prison uniform. He crouched behind the bed, pulling the suit trousers down to him, but she walked past the door. He waited a couple of seconds, but the woman didn't go back downstairs. Instead he heard pipes rattling, and a shower splutter then burst into life.

Christian pulled the trousers on, and half-buttoned up his shirt. He took the provisions he had taken from the kitchen and distributed them around the pockets of the jacket. He slipped the jacket on and tested that the weight of the items was evenly spread-out and that nothing rattled when he moved.

He moved back over to the windowsill. Out across the rolling country, the straight line of the A2 was visible, sunlight glinting off the windscreens of a string of cars. There was also a good view of the woodland from here: the crash-site had been surrounded by emergency vehicles. Shouts and engine noises drifted across the fields from time to time. Their efforts seemed concentrated towards the crash itself, no-one was looking for him yet. It was only a matter of time. He plucked fifty pence in change from the ashtray. The coins were odd, and at first he thought they were foreign. The five and ten pennies were smaller, there was a twenty pence piece that was a peculiar shape.