After Suffering From 33 Accidents Planned by My Fiancee, I Finally Left novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Locks

Clement drives her home, her key no longer works, Daphne answers the door in her dressing gown, and Honoria's press release announces a wedding in nine days.

Clement had the passenger door open before I reached the bottom of the steps.

He didn't ask what had happened or why I was in a hospital gown and socks in the rain.

He took off his dark wool coat and put it around my shoulders.

"Get in," he said. "Heater's on."

I got in.

The car was a grey estate that smelled of coffee and wet wool.

He reached into the back seat, found a pair of men's grey socks still in their wrapping, and handed them over without looking at me.

"They're clean," he said. "I keep spares."

I pulled them over my wet hospital socks.

In the footwell behind my seat sat a red first-aid bag, open at the top, with a roll of bandage ready on the very top.

It had been there at every accident I could remember.

I had never asked why a driver needed one.

"Back up whatever's on that phone," Clement said, pulling out. "Now. Before anything else."

"Why do you think there's anything on it?"

"You rang me, not a taxi. And you're holding it with both hands."

His eyes stayed on the road.

I sent the recording to my own email, and then to a second address I had kept from work, and I watched both bars fill and finish.

"Don't hand your phone to anyone," he said. "Not Crispin, not his mother, not Miss Orme."

"You work for Crispin."

"I do."

That was all he said, and I didn't know what to do with it.

For six years he had been the man in the front seat who said nothing.

He was Crispin's shadow with a broken nose, paid to stand behind us at dinners and open doors.

I looked at his hands on the wheel and wondered how much of this he would repeat to Crispin.

"Where do you want to go, Miss Marchbanks?" he asked.

"Holland Park. I need my passport and my grandmother's tools."

He didn't say it was a bad idea.

He turned left.

The Ladbrook house in Holland Park was white and tall, with a black door and a brass lion's head for a knocker.

I had lived on its top floor for six years, because Honoria thought it was proper for a fiancée to live under the family's eye.

My key slid into the lock and wouldn't turn.

I tried it again.

Clement stood at the bottom of the steps with the umbrella up and didn't offer to try.

The door opened inward on its own, and the housekeeper stood there with her hands folded.

She wouldn't meet my eye.

Behind her in the hall, lined up on the black and white tiles, were my two suitcases.

My books were stacked beside them, tied with twine.

My grandmother's bone folders and knives lay in an open shoe box on top.

"Mrs Ladbrook rang from the hospital," the housekeeper said. "She said these were yours, miss, and that you wouldn't be needing the rest."

"That was fast," I said.

"Yes, miss."

She looked ashamed, and I felt sorry for her, and I wanted to scream.

A taxi pulled up behind us, and Daphne got out of it.

She had her cream coat held over her head against the rain, and she was already crying.

"Thea. Thea, darling, thank God, you shouldn't be out in this."

She came up the steps and put both arms around me, coat and all.

She smelled like the jasmine perfume I had given her last Christmas.

"You're not well," she said into my hair. "You don't know what you're saying. Nobody's angry, I promise, we only want you back in bed."

"Let go, Daphne."

"Give me the phone, sweetheart. Whatever's on it, you'll only upset yourself. Let me keep it somewhere safe."

I stepped back out of her arms.

"No."

Her face did something very fast.

It was there and gone, and then she was all soft eyes again.

"Of course," she said. "Of course, whatever you need."

She turned to Clement.

"You'll bring her to Crispin, won't you? You'll make her see sense."

"No," Clement said.

He said it politely and flatly, and Daphne looked at him for a second too long.

I picked up the shoe box with my grandmother's knives.

Clement lifted both suitcases without being asked.

We were back in the car, and I had my passport still in a zipped pocket of the coat he'd lent me, when my phone buzzed.

It was a message from Honoria Ladbrook, and it was long.

She wrote that the press office had already released the news that I was recovering beautifully.

She wrote that the wedding had been rescheduled for Saturday week at the church in Chelsea, with every guest already told.

And at the bottom, in a line by itself:

"If you are not at the altar, my dear, your father's hotels go on Monday."

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