Page 56 of A Face in the Crowd
Five minutes later and the only people who’ve entered are a pair of mums whose infants immediately begin crying. One child seemingly eggs the other on and, before anyone knows, everyone else in the café is shooting sideways death stares towards the women. The men in suits have seen enough. One leaves a twenty-pound note on the table and then they disappear. Meanwhile, the mothers have ordered a pair of pumpkin-spiced sugar-filled monstrosities that masquerade as drinks. Yet more pumpkinisation of the country. I wonder where it’ll all end. Pumpkin Coca-Cola? Pumpkin tap water? Pumpkin Steak Bakes at Gregg’s? There’ll be riots.
Eleven o’clock comes and goes and, if someone is coming to confront me about the money, then he or she is not here. Or, they were here before me – and they’re looking out for me in the way I’m looking out for them.
I eye the other singles around the café – and there’s a bloke in shorts. There’s always one. I’d bet that whenever there’s an Arctic expedition, some fella rolls up in shorts and then shrugs something about not feeling the cold. He’s busy beating a MacBook to death so is perhaps writing a novel or something. Either that, or cranking out one of those massive Facebook posts that only maniacs come up with and are definitely not a cry for attention.
There’s a woman reading a paperback – but, if she is the person wanting to find out where her missing money has gone, she’s doing a fantastic job of never looking up.
Other than that, it’s all couples and groups.
I check emails on my phone, but there’s no reply since the ominous sounding, ‘See you at 11’. It’s gone 11 and I’m not seeing anyone.
At five-past, a man in double denim walks in. He has a blow-dried mullet and looks a bit like Kevin Bacon inFootloose– if the Hollywood actor had been run over by a bus and then spent the following three or four years doing nothing except eating.
There’s a fleeting second in which he glances towards the back of the café, settling on me. I figure this is it – he’s going to come and ask what I’ve done with his money – but then he slinks over to an armchair next to a bookcase and waves across to the waitress. Two minutes later and his wife or girlfriend strides in and takes a seat across from him.
By ten-past, the waitress comes over and asks if I want another coffee. It will be two more pounds that I don’t want to spend. I tell her I’m all right for now and she slips a bill onto the table while clearing everything else away. There are still no more emails. Quarter-past comes and the only newcomers are a pensioner couple.
My phone rings, but it’s the job agency. The same enthusiastic woman from the other day asks if I can get to an interview on Saturday. I try not to sound surprised, but the ‘oh’ is already out before I can stop it. I ask her where and it’s an office close to Crosstown Supermarket. I’ve walked past it day after day for years and barely paid any attention. She tells me it’s mainly answering phones, along with a bit of secretarial work. I’ll have Sundays and Mondays off and work eight til four every other day. It sounds perfect. The money’s not great, but it’s no worse than Crosstown. It’ll mean the same number 24 bus… my life won’t change that much.
‘Do I need to take anything?’ I ask.
‘Just yourself. They have your CV and questionnaire. They’re looking forward to seeing you.’
That last bit does sound suspiciously made up, but it gives me a swell of anticipation. Perhaps they are looking forward to seeing me?
I almost forget to ask the time, but the woman at the agency is on the ball anyway. She also tells me that I should be there fifteen minutes before to fill in ‘some form or another’. There are always more forms…
By the time I’ve finished talking to her, the waitress has done three separate passes of the table to see if I’ve left any money. She gives a small ‘in your own time’ wave that really means, ‘I’m calling the police to evict you in ten minutes’ – and so I check my emails one final time. It is 11:23 and I’ve not had anything since the last message.
I still can’t get my head around the CCTV images of Harry from the bus. I wasn’t sure if I expected him to be here, but, either way, I’ve been stood up.
After leaving some coins on the table –mymoney, not what came from the envelope – I get up and leave. The mothers are focusing on their kids; deformed Kevin Bacon is chatting to his other half and the waitress is clearing my table. None of them are paying me any attention – but, as I step out of the door, it’s hard to escape the tingling sense of unease that, somewhere near, someone has been watching me this entire time.
Chapter Thirty-One
When I get home, I go full internet nutjob by googling ‘Harry Smith’. It’s way too common a name, of course. There are news anchors, wrestlers, bakers and many, many others all called the same thing. Back when we were chatting via the dating app, I’d looked up Harry when he first told me his name and encountered the same problem. This should probably be the first lesson with online dating: never, ever choose someone with a normal name. Dave Brown? Do one, mate. Salamander Higglebottom The Third? Here’s my number.
Next, I try searching for Harry’s name alongside ‘internet security’, which is the field in which he told me he works. Results are still muddled, but I stumble across a LinkedIn page for a British Harry Smith who lists himself as a ‘White Hat Hacker’, working for ‘Bright White Enterprises’.
The name makes it all sounds a bit supremacist, but it doesn’t take much to discover that it’s actually an industry in which ‘good’ hackers find flaws in the website or security systems of companies. They are either hired directly by companies to find holes or they do it off their own back in order to claim bounties. Some bloke made millions by finding an iPhone exploit and telling Apple about it. As well as making money, these types of people help protect the public from having their details stolen. It makes sense, but is the first I’ve known of this kind of job. I’ve always heard ‘computer hacking’ and thought it was a bad thing.
I can’t find out for certain whether the LinkedIn Harry Smith is the same as my Harry Smith. The only real clue is that Bright White Enterprises has an office based on an industrial estate a few miles away. Either there are two Harry Smiths who both work locally in internet security, or it’s the same person.
I take a few minutes to check on Billy and he’s almost back to his old self. He has finished one bowl of water, so I lay him down another. When he paws at the door, I take him down to the green at the back of the building and wait until he’s done his business. All the while, a thought is beginning to seed that’s so clear it’s hard to dismiss: could Harry have hacked into my computer?
He sent the first contact via our dating app – but part of the appeal was that we seemingly had so much in common. But what if he was able to make it appear that way because he had access to my emails, my social media and everything else? Heknewwhat I liked and so turned himself into the ideal person for me?
There are a few issues around this. Not least an inflated sense of my own ego.Why? I live in a flat with one room. Two, if the shower is counted separately. I have no savings and barely anything to my name. I offer little except myself – and do I really believe I’m so dazzling a companion that a stranger would go to such lengths?
Secondly, if it was Harry who dropped the money into my bag on the bus, what does he get from it?
I finally reply to Harry’s previous text, the one with a selfie in which he asked what I thought of his war wound?
How are the injuries now?
I’ve barely sent it when a single-word reply pings back:
Recovering!
