The House Guest by Mark Edwards(6)

I hesitated. I really didn’t want to stick a pin in her mood. ‘It was great. He liked it.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t sound so shocked.’

‘I’m not! I know it’s a great play. So . . . what’s going to happen next?’

I tried to keep my voice light. ‘Oh, I’m not sure. He wants me to work on some revisions.’

‘But he sounded keen? Like something might happen?’ She sounded almost as desperate as I felt.

‘Yeah. Definitely.’

I couldn’t look her in the eye.

‘Oh, that’s brilliant.’ She sat back. ‘I can’t believe it. It’s actually happening for us, isn’t it?’ She raised her beer bottle. ‘To success.’

I clinked my bottle against hers, forcing myself to smile. ‘To success.’



We left the Tavern and walked towards the edge of the park. I was dreading the subway ride home. It was rush hour and I didn’t know if I’d be able to bear the crush of bodies. The sweat.

Ruth must have been thinking the same thing. ‘Let’s get an Uber,’ she said.

‘That’s a bit extravagant, isn’t it?’

‘It’s fine. We’ll both have money soon.’ She had barely earned anything from the movie and was being paid a weekly wage for Dare, though her agent had yet to pass on any of the money. ‘Anyway, I’ll pay. My treat.’

She took her phone out of her bag and opened the Uber app. At the exact same moment, somebody shot past us on a bicycle, almost colliding with Ruth.

She stared at her empty hand. ‘My phone!’

I broke into a run, shouting out something ineffectual like, ‘Hey, stop!’ Ahead of us on the path, a man looked over his shoulder and saw me running towards him, just as the bike passed him. He must have figured out what was going on, as he gave chase too. But it was no good. The cyclist was way too fast, and was out of sight within seconds.

It had all happened so quickly, in a blur of movement and colour, that I hadn’t got a proper look at the mugger. I recalled something red on his head, a baseball cap or similar. All around us, people stared.

The man who had chased the cyclist came up to us. He was out of breath. He took off his sunglasses for a second and wiped his brow. ‘Sorry, I tried.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ruth. She looked close to tears.

‘What did he get?’ asked the man. ‘Your purse?’

‘My phone.’ I saw her make an effort to get hold of herself. ‘It’s just the shock.’

‘And the inconvenience, right? Hey, there’s a cop over there. You should go report it. Anyway, sorry I couldn’t catch him. I’m not as young as I used to be.’ He smiled sympathetically and walked away.

‘He’s right,’ I said.

Ruth stared towards the police officer. He was standing near the edge of the park. ‘What’s the point?’

‘You’ll need a crime number for the insurance.’

‘It’s not insured.’

‘But—’

‘My insurance only covers medical and legal costs, not gadgets. I went for the cheap option. Anyway, it’s not the phone itself I’m worried about.’

‘What is it then?’

She had gone pale. She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘There are pictures on the phone. You know. The ones I sent you. If they get out . . .’

‘It wouldn’t be a disaster.’

‘It might not damage my career but it would be embarrassing.’

‘Try not to worry. They won’t be able to unlock it without—’

‘Adam, I was using it. It was already unlocked.’

‘Shit. Okay, in that case, we can remotely delete the contents.’ I took my own phone out and opened the Find My iPhone app. ‘Just give me the login to your iCloud account and I can do it now.’

We sat down together on a bench and Ruth typed her login details into the app. Her hand was shaking and she kept mistyping them. Gently, I took the phone from her and she told me the password.

‘There,’ I said, a minute later. ‘It’s done. Should take five minutes or so to erase everything.’

What I didn’t mention was that if the thief had done the sensible thing and switched the phone into offline mode, this remote erase wouldn’t work. I quickly checked Find My iPhone and discovered this was exactly what they had done.

I didn’t tell Ruth. I didn’t want to worry her.

‘Let’s go home,’ I said.





Chapter 4

Back at the house, I thought Eden had gone out. But heading through to the kitchen to get a glass of water, I saw her through the back window, in the garden.

It was one of the amazing things about this place. When we told New Yorkers we were staying in a house in the centre of Williamsburg, right next to the L train, and that we had a decent-sized garden, their jaws dropped open. This house must have been worth a fortune. Okay, it was shabby and needed modernising. The paint was peeling from the walls, the plumbing and electrics both needed attention, the A/C was constantly on the blink and there were damp patches in the basement. But this was a townhouse with three bedrooms in one of the most desirable neighbourhoods in not just New York but the whole country. When we first came here I had, out of interest, checked the local real estate listings. There was a similar property a few streets away that was on the market for an eye-watering $3 million.