At the car park, he glances to the left, where the camera is still staring up the road from its pole. It will have tracked the journalists arriving at his house and be waiting for him to appear on the doorstep to make a tearful statement. What other local security cameras have been hacked to feed the live coverage? The house on the far side of Lynda’s, one of the biggest on the road, is bristling with CCTV.

  It’s too risky to board the train with his bike – the platform has cameras, as do the trains – so he pulls on the snood to cover as much of his face as possible, and puts on his sunglasses and helmet. Cutting back up past the station, he takes care not to be seen as he turns down onto Trafalgar Road. ANPR cameras, speed cameras and junction cameras track his progress across London, but he does what he can to keep his face down. With a bit of luck, Louis still thinks Adam’s holed up in his house in Maze Hill, being hounded by the press. Lynda will be making them all mugs of tea by now, checking that they have the right spelling of her name (‘it’s Lynda with a “y”’). He almost feels sorry for the journalists. Almost.

  It takes him an hour to reach Paddington station. Since the arrival of Freddie and Tilly, he’s hardly got out on the bike and is not as fit as he once was. If he were, he would consider cycling the ninety miles on to Tania’s parents in Wiltshire, but he knows his limits. And the bike is single speed, no gears. Instead, he will take his chances, board the next train to Newbury, and cycle the fifteen final miles from there. First, though, he needs to speak to Tania.

  56

  Adam tucks himself into a doorway on a side street that runs down next to Paddington station. There are no cameras around, as far as he can see. The next train to Newbury leaves in twenty minutes and he needs to be with his family, to protect them from Clio. What might she do next? He also needs to shield them from the breaking story. Tania can’t deal with the press on her own if they turn up at her parents’ front door, firing questions through the letterbox. Is your husband a paedophile?

  He called the journalist back from a payphone outside Paddington, withholding the number, and left a message on his voicemail. He denied all the allegations, told the journalist he wouldn’t be available for further comment, said that his phone had clearly been the subject of a malicious spoofing attack, and explained that there were no texts in his phone history to any patient and that he never texts patients anyway, on principle. He hopes he said enough to give the newspaper pause for thought.

  He looks up and down the street and pulls out his burner phone. After five rings, Tania answers.

  ‘Sorry, just talking to Mum.’

  ‘Are you outside?’ He doesn’t want to risk their conversation being overheard.

  ‘I am now. Tilly’s actually asleep for the first time in her life. A miracle. Have you seen Ji? How was it? What did he say?’

  Adam bites his lip. Tania sounds like her old self. Full of life, optimistic. And now he’s about to bring her crashing back down to earth.

  ‘The press has got hold of the story… about the alleged texts,’ he says.

  Silence.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘I’m here.’ All the energy has gone, her voice sounds deflated, as if she’s been punctured. ‘What do we do now?’ she asks.

  At least it’s a ‘we’. ‘I’ve left a voicemail,’ Adam says. ‘Told the journalist my phone must have been hacked. They were at the house – four of them, talking to Lynda. I’m at Paddington.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you consult a lawyer?’ she asks.

  He knows she’s right.

  ‘There’s something else…’ He pauses, loath to scare Tania any more than he has done already. ‘I’ve got the Scalextric Ferrari. It was dropped off at the house this morning, when I wasn’t there.’

  ‘The car? Who dropped it off?’

  ‘Clio. She left it with Lynda.’

  ‘Clio?’ Adam can hear the anger erupting in Tania’s voice. ‘So it was her. She’s been here at the house. That’s it, I’m calling the police. I’m sorry, Adam, but this has gone too far. And I don’t care about some weird deal you struck more than twenty years ago at university. That woman has broken into my parents’ property, walked around half naked in our house, tried to take Freddie from the park.’

  Or did she find him? Adam closes his eyes, remembers the sight of Clio walking down the hill towards him, Freddie in her arms. In that moment, she looked like a regular mum with her son in the park, natural, at ease. I never, ever want to be a mother.

  ‘Going to the police won’t help,’ he says, trying to keep his voice calm, measured. ‘What can they do? There’s no proof that Clio’s done anything wrong, or threatening or illegal.’

  ‘But Freddie’s car was in a locked-up garage! She broke in and stole it.’

  ‘And your dad’s security camera would have been switched off first, before Clio went inside.’

  ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ Tania says. ‘Freddie? Freddie!’

  Adam listens as she calls out to their precious son, wants him nearby. She’s understandably scared, protective. Adam is too.

  ‘Where are your parents?’ he asks.

  ‘Freddie was cutting radishes in the vegetable patch with Granny, weren’t you Freddie?’ Tania says. Adam can picture him by his mother’s side, nodding his head like a donkey. ‘It’s Daddy on the phone. You can talk to him in a second.’

  ‘Tell your parents that a story’s about to run,’ Adam says, wishing he was with them now. ‘But don’t go into details – I’ll do that. It’s not for you to break that sort of news. Just say it’s an article about the hospital and that the tabloids are targeting senior consultants.’

  ‘You need to get down here now,’ she says. ‘And don’t be surprised if the police are here too.’

  Underneath her anger, he can hear the fear too. He needs to be there.

  ‘I’m coming.’

  57

  May 1998

  I was happy to be back at the Treliske again today, after being given the previous two days off. Stuck at home, I did try to study my lecture notes on the functional architecture of the body, but it was difficult to concentrate. Ditto with my textbooks on histology and homeostasis. I nearly went out for a sail in Dad’s old National 12 dinghy, which we still keep at the sailing club in Marazion, but Mum was hovering like a nagging conscience downstairs, so I stayed at my desk. I couldn’t shake off the image of Louis in his blue-lit hospital room, the sight of his body arcing with electricity. What happened to him on the cliffs beneath the Minack? Did he really try to take his own life? It seems so unlike Louis. His brother Gabe is meant to be the one with depression.

  At least the hospital now knew who he was. And I consider my identification of him as a test of sorts, likewise when he went into cardiac arrest again and I called for help. It was a chance for me to reset my moral compass after the Lecter affair. Some days my conscience is clear. On others, I visualise myself pushing Lecter out of the open window, terror in his eyes.

  I arrived early for my shift at the hospital this morning – Doctor Pender had arranged for me to spend some time in Paediatrics – so I decided to head up to the Trelawny Wing on the second floor, to see if Louis had regained consciousness. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but I wanted to have a moment with him when the tables were turned. To remind him that we are all occasionally vulnerable, our lives resting in the hands of others, as had been the case the other night.

  It was the same young woman on duty, the one who was expecting a baby.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ I asked. ‘That patient with hypothermia who was brought in the other night?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said.

  ‘Gone? But—’

  ‘Don’t ask. It’s all been kicking off around here. We’ve had security and everyone involved. He just got up first thing and walked out.’

  ‘But that’s impossible. He was so unwell.’

  For a second, I imagined Louis walking down the corridor, trailing tubes and electrodes behind him like flailing entrails.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ the nurse said. ‘We tried to stop him, but he discharged himself – against medical advice, of course. At least he signed the forms. He was beginning to get on my tits. Tried to light up in his room.’

  ‘Can I see it?’ I asked. ‘His room?’

  She gave me a curious look. ‘I think it’s still being cleaned,’ she said. ‘But sure.’

  I walked down the corridor and popped my head into the room. I don’t know why. Maybe I just needed to see the empty bed to believe that Louis had really gone. It seemed so unlikely. Sure enough, the room was deserted, a bucket and mop propped up in one corner. I went over to the bed, looked at the bedside cupboard, and pulled on a half-open drawer. Inside was a copy of the Bible, face down.

  ‘Was he like this at uni, then?’ the nurse asked from the doorway.

  I snapped the drawer shut and turned around. ‘I didn’t really know him,’ I replied.

  ‘He creeped me out, to be honest,’ she said.

  Downstairs in the Paediatrics Ward I was greeted by Doctor Pender, who promptly informed me that Mum had just called and wanted me to ring her back. ‘You can use the office phone,’ he said.

  ‘Everything alright?’ I asked when Mum picked up after one ring. She must have been waiting by the phone.

  ‘Your tutor called,’ Mum said. ‘A Professor Beale.’ I knew from her upbeat tone of voice that it was good news. ‘I’m afraid I was a bit nosy,’ she continued. ‘He sounded like such a nice man. They want you to return to college and resume your studies immediately.’

  58

  Adam pulls up on his bike and looks down on Tania’s parents’ house. The fast train got him as far as Newbury, from where he’s completed the journey by road, taking quiet back lanes via Inkpen and Shalbourne. The scene below him now is one of bucolic tranquillity. Colourful narrowboats animate the landscape. A column of poplars march across the water meadow, their silver leaves shimmering in the evening sunshine. Children’s laughter carries up through the folds of the valley from the village playground. And above it all, a clear sky, cross-hatched with fading contrails. For a few moments, Adam enjoys the scene, inhaling its simple beauty. The dark web feels a million miles away from this peaceful corner of England, Ji’s theories of red rooms and bitcoin bids seemingly more fanciful by the second.

  A pheasant, startled by something, rises up into the evening sky, breaking Adam’s reverie. He texts Tania on her burner phone, asks her to walk away from the house and head into the back garden. It takes a few minutes and then he sees her tiny figure on the lawn. She’s out of sight of the cameras at the front of the property, and the ones inside.

  ‘You OK?’ he asks when Tania picks up.

  ‘Where are you?’ She looks around her. ‘You sound weirdly close.’

  ‘I am,’ he says, checking the sky for drones. ‘Up on the hill behind you. To the left. I’m about to come down. I could meet you in the back garden – away from the cameras?’

  She glances up in his direction and he steps out from under the trees, waves at her. She waves back. He steps back into the shadows again.

  ‘That might not be such a good idea. Dad’s furious,’ Tania says. ‘I tried ringing you.’

  ‘Furious? With me? You didn’t tell him?’ Adam was preparing himself on the train to tell his father-in-law about the sexting allegations. Crispin is steeped in the medical world, fourth generation. He will take the sex allegations badly, see them as a stain on the family profession, par for the course for a son-in-law who attended the sort of parties at university where students took drugs and died.

  ‘One of his old colleagues beat me to it,’ Tania says. ‘He’d heard on the grapevine that the papers were running a story about you tomorrow and rang Dad. To warn him.’

  And no doubt confirm what Crispin has always suspected about his first-gen medic son-in-law. Adam shakes his head in despair. Relations with Crispin are better than they used to be, but there’s always been an underlying tension. Crispin might be retired, but he’s still well connected, lunches with other retired surgeons, sits on boards, keeps his stethoscope to the ground. The medical establishment will close ranks and spit him out.

  ‘Let me talk to him,’ Adam says. ‘This is my problem, not yours. I’ll come down now. He should have heard it from me first anyway.’

  ‘It’s really best if you don’t see him, Adam. Not at the moment. Trust me. I’ve tried talking to him, told him you’re innocent, that your phone was hacked, but he’s not listening. Freddie’s in tears.’ She sniffs. ‘And this is our problem.’

  Adam closes his eyes, grateful for her support. It can’t be easy having a father who disapproves of her choice of husband, but she’s always been loyal to Adam. Tania’s relationship with her mother is much closer. Adam gets on well with her as well.

  ‘The police have been here too,’ Tania says.

  ‘You rang them?’

  ‘I had to, Adam.’

  ‘What did they say? What did you tell them?’

  ‘What I told Mum and Dad. That a woman broke into their house and stole Freddie’s Ferrari.’

  ‘And what did the police say?’

  ‘That if it had been a real Ferrari, they might be more interested.’

  Adam shakes his head. She shouldn’t have called them. ‘Did you tell them who Clio is?’

  ‘I explained that she’d also tried to take our son from the park. And that she’s an old flame of yours from university.’

  Oh God. That would have made them see Tania’s concerns as jealousy, as her suspecting that her husband was having a fling with an old flame. ‘Did you mention the photo she sent?’

  ‘It was humiliating enough as it was, Adam. They were as good as laughing at me, said I was wasting police time.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ At least she didn’t mention his pact with Louis. They wouldn’t have believed her anyway.

  ‘And it just confirmed Dad’s worst fears about you,’ Tania adds.

  ‘Thanks for that.’ In truth, Crispin couldn’t think much less of him.

  ‘Where will you go now?’ she asks.

  Adam scans the surrounding woodland, tears welling. Crispin has a sulphurous temper on him. Poor Freddie. He hates it when he hears people shouting. Adam has no desire to give Louis the satisfaction of watching their family fall apart, fracture along ancient fault lines of class and petty snobbism.

  ‘I’ll stay up here, in the woods. I brought a sleeping bag, just in case.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Adam. Why not go to a pub or something? Until Dad’s cooled down.’

  ‘I’d rather be close to you and the kids.’ He doesn’t say that he needs to keep an eye on the house, in case Clio returns.

  Adam looks again at the fields, the trees, the sky. A pair of red kites swoop and soar, adjusting their tails like ailerons as they cry out to each other. In the far distance a military helicopter. At least there are no drones.

  ‘Maybe you could come up here?’ he says. ‘It’s a beautiful evening. Bring Freddie and Tilly? It would be good to see them. To see you.’

  ‘Have you got Freddie’s Ferrari?’ she asks, ignoring his question.

  ‘In my bag.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘He’s still upset?’

  ‘Beside himself.’ She sighs. ‘I can’t bring him, Adam. The questions will never stop. He’ll want to know why his father has turned into Bear Grylls and now lives in the woods.’

  59

  Adam stands in the gloaming, watching the sun slip below the Wiltshire skyline as he hugs himself for warmth. How has his life come to this? He should have been at the hospital today, helping south London’s children and teenagers. And he should be with his family now, enjoying dinner with his own children, playing Scalextric with Freddie, reading him a story, rocking Tilly to sleep (some chance), making love to Tania (more of a chance: sleeping in her old bedroom always seems to do it for them, a reminder of their corridor-creeping days). But it hasn’t worked out like that. Instead, he’s preparing to spend a cold May night on a hillside. And he’s about to be shamed in the tabloid press for inappropriate sexual behaviour at work. He’s not sure if it could get much worse.

  He turns on his burner phone to check for messages. Tania’s been unable to get away from the house and come up to see him. Tilly has given her hell all evening. And Freddie’s still inconsolable about the car, which is upsetting, given it’s in Adam’s rucksack. He’ll try to drop it down later, after dark, give it to Tania. There’s one message: a voicemail from Ji. Adam stares at his phone, paralysed by a sudden sense of foreboding. For some reason, he knows it’s going to be bad, a point of no return. What would happen if he just deletes the message? Might this nightmare end and everything go back to normal? Glancing around, he presses play and listens.

  ‘Call me as soon as you get this message,’ Ji says. ‘It’s urgent.’

  Adam stares at the phone. He doesn’t like the tone of Ji’s voice. Taking a deep breath, he rings back his old friend.

  ‘It’s me,’ he says.

  ‘Where are you?’ Ji asks, his voice almost unrecognisable with worry.

  ‘Is it safe to talk?’

  ‘This is your burner phone, right? We should be OK for a while.’

  ‘I’m out of sight on a hillside overlooking Tania’s parents’ house in Wiltshire. Have you found anything?’

  ‘You need to be very careful, Adam. Stay away from everyone, all cameras, any devices that can be hacked. I mean it.’

  Adam’s mouth dries. ‘You’re scaring me, Ji. Please, just tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘My team… we’ve found a site on the dark web that appears to be live-streaming your life. I’m sorry.’