Warhol's Prophecy

71

SHE REPLACED THE mobile phone and sat staring at it for a moment.

Hailey rubbed her eyes. She’d felt tired all day. A combination of precious little sleep the night before and a steadily growing feeling of something akin to depression.

Time for a wallow in self-pity?

She felt as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders – a weight that was growing by the day. Hailey hadn’t felt this down since she’d first discovered Rob’s affair.

Rob’s affair?

Pressures of work?

Fear?

Was that the newest burden she carried?

Did fear feel like a crushing weight on your mind and soul?

She had received no phone calls from Adam Walker for more than a week now. But the knowledge that he was responsible for slashing the tyres of Rob’s car, for the dog excrement . . .

The knowledge that he’d broken into their house.

It was an assumption, nothing more. There was no proof that was Walker.

She started the car.

The trip to his house the previous day had done little to allay her

(fear. It seemed to be the most apt description)

concerns about the man.

Why had he lied to her about his family?

If the sister and brother were inventions, then how much more of what he’d told her was fantasy?

The abuse?

Thoughts whirled around inside her head as shedrove.

It should take less than fifteen minutes to reach Becky’s school. She had phoned Caroline Hacket earlier in the day and told her she’d do the run herself.

Caroline?

As long as she was involved with Walker, it kept him in the picture.

Kept him around.

Hailey exhaled wearily.

And now Rob’s phone call . . .

There were problems at work that he had to sort out immediately. One of their biggest customers hadn’t received a delivery he needed, blah, blah, blah.

He wouldn’t be home until late tonight.

When he’d told her this, for fleeting seconds she’d almost asked if that was the real reason he would be late.

A totally unwanted image of Rob with Sandy Bennett slipped into her mind, and she pushed it aside with difficulty.

But she hadn’t asked him that. She would keep her fears to herself this time.

So many things to think about.

She switched on a cassette, hoping the music would divert her attention from the thoughts and worries that closed around her so tightly.

When she finally pulled up outside the school, there were already several cars parked there. Some of the women she recognized, and she waved greetings to a number of them. Hailey slid out from behind the steering wheel, leant against the Astra and lit a cigarette, drawing deeply on it.

She heard the school bell sound, and looked across to the main entrance, awaiting the tide of excited children that would stream forth at any moment.

She took a couple more drags on the Silk Cut and then ground it out beneath her foot.

The Ford Scorpio cruised slowly past the main gates.

Hailey was sure she recognized this car, and she took a couple of steps forward.

She did recognize it.

She could see Adam Walker quite clearly behind the wheel.

The Scorpio headed for the end of the road and disappeared around a corner.

Hailey watched it go.

A moment later it returned.

Moving at that same deliberately slow speed. And now she could see that Walker was looking over towards the school.

What the hell was he doing here?

She hurried to the roadside, watching as the Scorpio vanished once again, this time into a side street.

Hailey crossed to the school gates, eyes fixed on the turning in the road that had swallowed up the Scorpio.

She heard voices around her as the first of the children began to flood out. But her attention was still fixed on the end of the road.

The Scorpio was heading back the way it had come.

Walker gazing over at the school.

He looked straight into her face, his expression blank.

But this time he speeded up.

He must have seen her. So why didn’t he stop?

‘Adam,’ she called after the car, oblivious to the bemused stares she was getting from the other mothers waiting to pick up their kids.

The Scorpio was gone.