The Choice. Alex Lake
all gone too.’ He shook his head. ‘Load of fuss about nothing, if you ask me.’
‘You never know,’ Matt said. ‘There’s quarantine in parts of Italy.’
‘Won’t happen here, mate. But I’ll sell people whatever they want to buy.’
The man punched in the prices, one by one. Easy to fiddle the take. Perhaps this place was a front for a gang, a place to quietly wash clean their ill-gotten gains.
‘Twenty-seven fifty,’ he said.
Matt hesitated and looked at the basket. Seven quid for the wine. A fiver for the coffee. He’d looked at the price of those. Which left fifteen-fifty for the bread, milk, baguette and pasta. How much was bread? Three pounds? Milk and pasta? The same probably. Which meant the baguette was outrageously expensive.
Or they all were.
The man looked at him, his expression questioning. For a moment Matt thought about asking for the prices of the bread, coffee, milk and pasta, but then the man interrupted.
‘Everything OK, mate?’
He nodded, and handed over two twenties. If this was a front for a gang they didn’t need to use it to launder any money. They were robbing people in plain sight.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and picked up his change and his shopping. It was definitely the supermarket next time.
2
As he left, Matt noticed the local newspaper had a story on the front page about a new signing for the rugby league team. It was the photo that caught his eye, a picture of a famous Australian playing for the Australian national team.
That would be quite the coup.
He was about to pick up a copy and go back to the counter – even this shop couldn’t charge more than the cover price for a newspaper – when he glanced out of the window. A quick check on the kids, that was all; make sure they were still safely in the car.
He blinked, then looked left and right.
There must be some mistake.
The car was gone.
That was impossible. He had left it there only a minute ago.
But there was no car there. As if to make the point, a blue Mercedes pulled up and parked right where his car had been.
He must have parked it further up the street. It was strange; he would have sworn he’d left it almost exactly outside the shop. Maybe he had, and it was the angle from which he was looking out of the window that meant he couldn’t see it.
Still. There was a church on the other side of the road, the main gate directly opposite the door.
And when he had got out of the car he had looked at that gate. He remembered it distinctly: his sister had got married there and a memory had come to him of her wedding day. It had been pouring with rain – a real deluge – and when Tessa and Andy came out all the guests had been holding umbrellas over the path to make a tunnel. They had walked through them to the main road and into the vintage silver Rolls-Royce that had taken them to the reception.
He had looked at the gate and remembered that day.
And when he had done so he had been standing more or less opposite it.
Which meant the car had moved.
His palms prickled with sweat. The kids must have taken off the handbrake, or somehow started the car and driven it off. He patted the pocket of his jeans. The keys were in there, so at least that was off the table.
He forgot the newspaper and jogged to the door. He needed to sort this out, right away. The man behind the counter coughed.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes. Just – I can’t remember where I left my car.’
‘Happens all the time, mate. People forget where they park.’
‘It’s not exactly that—’ He stopped talking. There was no point explaining. He opened the door and looked up and down the street.
The car was nowhere to be seen.
He took a deep breath. His mind was starting to swim and he needed to concentrate. He couldn’t afford to panic. He had to be methodical, but it was almost impossible to fight back the desire to scream and set off at a sprint in some – any – direction.
He looked left, to the village centre, and then right, to the swing bridge over the ship canal. In both directions the street was more or less straight, so he would have seen his car if it was there.
It wasn’t.
‘Where’s the fucking car?’ he murmured. It couldn’t just be gone.
But it was. His car was gone, with his kids inside. He began to lose the battle against the fear and panic, because either they had moved it, or it had moved itself, or someone else had moved it. None of them were happy thoughts. As the thought sunk in, he clenched his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. He had to think.
It couldn’t have been driven away, because he had the keys – there was no way the kids had jump-started it – which meant it had rolled away – hard to imagine on a flat road, and even harder to imagine it had rolled out of sight – or it had been pushed away.
His kids couldn’t have done that, so someone else would have had to do it.
And how far could you push a car in a few minutes? Maybe around a corner, but not much further than that.
A wave of relief broke over him. This was a prank. One of his friends, or more likely a few of them, after a beer or two – had seen the kids in the car and moved it to give him a scare. He pictured them, laughing as they released the handbrake and pushed the car down the street. There was a side street about thirty yards away, on the right. That’s where they would have taken it.
That’s where he would find them, standing by the car, laughing.
He would not be laughing with them. This was not funny at all.
He jogged towards the side street. Banner Road. He’d never noticed the name before; he’d remember it now. He slowed at the corner and turned.
There was a skip on the right and a white van parked on the left, but other than that the side street was empty.
The fear roared back and rose into a full-on panic. Where the fuck was his car? Where could it be?
He sprinted out onto the main road and looked up and down, once, twice, a third time.
Still nothing.
He ran back to the shop – to the last place the car had been – and stood outside the window, breathing heavily. His car was gone. His children were gone.
The shop door opened.
‘You OK, mate?’
He turned around. The man from the shop – the owner, maybe – was standing on the threshold, arms folded, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
‘It’s my car. It’s gone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I left it here, but it’s nowhere to be seen.’
‘You sure it was here?’
‘Yes.’ He paused. Was it possible he had parked somewhere further away and walked to the shop? Had he misremembered looking at the church? No – he also remembered thinking he was only using the shop because it was more convenient than a detour to the supermarket, which would hardly have been the case if he had parked a walk away. Besides, he had checked on the kids when he got out.
‘Yes. It was here.’
‘What is it?’
‘Discovery. Land Rover.’
The