Page 43 of Corrupt

I’d shoved the front window all the way open because the third floor of the Egyptian House turned into a furnace the second the sun even looked at it and today had been another scorcher. But the breeze kept ruffling the mounds of files around me, them occasionally trying to fly off towards the scent of Lara making a full Sunday roast downstairs. In this heat? Madness.

Me? I had a poke bowl balanced on my knee and enough paperwork scattered to qualify as structural instability. And somewhere under the mess my phone buzzed.

Six days a week as a pupil barrister wasn’t an exaggeration. They should carve it into a warning label and stick it on every pupillage application. It’d be seven if I hadn’t attended my sister’s garden party yesterday, then crawled home to Barons Court and died halfway through a bottle of Rioja. The other half sat open on the coffee table, breathing its last alongside my Japanese takeaway.

I pushed aside a stack of bundles comprising charging schedules for one of Imogen’s robbery matters, draft submissions for a sentencing hearing, interview notes from a youth possession case I was shadowing this week and finally unearthed the phone.

One new message.

From a number I didn’t know.

I unlocked the screen.

So where’s this window of yours at now?

My stomach hit the floor.

Everything went completely still. Music, heat, paperwork, even the rice I was about to shovel into my mouth.

Razor.

It had to be him.

Only he could send a five-word message capable of hooking fingers behind my ribs and pulling, while my stomach flipped so hard it felt like the raw tuna in my bowl had sprouted fins and made a break for it.

The window.

Our window.

The stupid, creaking, paint-chipped sash window he used to climb through in my old student house that didn’t have a lock. The window he went back to recently. Looking for me. Not finding me.

I stared at the message, pulse tapping hard against my chest as if my body had given its own opinion on the matter. Then I set the poke bowl aside, wiped my palm on my bare legs, and tried to think about what I should do next.

That lasted all of three seconds.

I moved my thumbs across the keypad before rational thought intervened.

Palliser Road, W14. But I don’t recommend the scaling route to the balcony, it faces the street, and the neighbours are quick to judge this far west.

I hit send.

Exhaled.

Then I threw the phone onto the sofa as if distance might soften the consequences. I reached for the wine bottle and poured a glass far too full, bringing it straight to my lips. Halfway through the swallow, the phone buzzed again.

I didn’t breathe while I picked it up.

Razor’s reply lit the screen:

ETA 40 mins.

Then another:

Better open the door then.

I closed my eyes on instinct, heat flooding my chest. Then I knocked back the rest of the wine, feeling the burn all the way down, and tried desperately to will my heart into behaving as if it belonged to a grown adult with a grip on his life.

It thudded anyway.