looked at her again. She was still smiling despite a sense of growing frustration. Casually dressed in a grey tee shirt and jeans, thick dark hair pushed back behind her ears, baseball bat within easy reach, Maggie almost looked as if she was enjoying herself.
‘You’re funny – I can’t imagine my ex-,’ Nick began and then stopped, an instant before he coughed his ex-wife’s name out onto the kitchen table. It stuck in his throat, a cold, grief-stricken, misery-laden lump. The pain caught him unaware, like cramp.
Maggie pushed her fringe back off her face and took a tomato out of one of the carrier bags on the work surface. ‘So,’ she said casually, ‘you were married, then?’
Nick reddened furiously. ‘Yes – but I’m divorced now – about a year.’
Maggie nodded. ‘Right. And so how does that relate to my finding you naked in my hall, exactly?’
‘It doesn’t. What I was going to say was are you always this unflappable? I can’t imagine my ex being – being so – so –.’ He couldn’t think of a word to end the sentence but fortunately for him Maggie could.
‘Accommodating? Calm under fire? My mother calls it robust good humour but trust me, it only lasts for so long and then poof –’ she gestured an explosion, ‘– it goes, just like that, to be replaced by raging fury.’
Nick sighed. ‘Look, Maggie, I am sorry about this – can’t you just pretend that I’m Bernie Fielding?’ he said miserably. ‘It would make life so much simpler.’
Maggie grimaced, plunging the knife deep into the heart of an innocent-looking red pepper. ‘No, I’m afraid that’s one of the things I most definitely can’t do. I’ve spent God knows how many years trying to persuade myself that all men aren’t Bernie Fielding. Why don’t you just give in gracefully and tell me what the hell’s going on here and then we can call you a cab. How hard can it be? How about we start with your real name –’
Nick groaned. ‘I can’t tell you – the thing is, if I could tell you that then I could tell you everything else. It’s just not possible. You have to believe me, there is a very good explanation for all this. I just can’t tell you about it.’ It sounded lame even to him.
‘Nice try,’ Maggie said. Instead of concentrating on de-seeding the pepper she was watching his face as he spoke.
‘Careful,’ said Nick anxiously. ‘You’ll cut yourself. Look, I’m good with food, would you like me to do that for you?’ he asked.
Maggie looked down thoughtfully at the long thin knife-blade and then slowly back at him. ‘Very kind but I think I can manage, thank you. Besides, you still haven’t answered my question.’
Nick sighed. There had to have been some kind of mistake. Surely Bernie Fielding wasn’t supposed to be a real person? Unless of course he was dead. ‘Is Bernie still alive?’ he asked hopefully.
Maggie lifted her eyebrows. ‘As far as I know, although after a night up the pub it was sometimes extremely difficult to tell. Except for the snoring and the scratching, obviously.’
‘Okay, okay – so what does he do?’
‘Bernie?’ Maggie wiped her hand across the chopping board guiding the great heap of mangled vegetables into a big saucepan and then looked skyward as if trying to frame a thought. ‘Gynaecology,’ she said, slamming the pan down onto the stove and lighting the gas. ‘He was always very good with his hands was Bernie.’
Nick felt his colour draining away. ‘Oh my God, are you saying that Bernie Fielding is a doctor?’
Maggie shook her head. ‘No, unfortunately not – just a keen amateur, which was a shame because we could have done with the money.’
Nick stared at her and then reddened as comprehension dawned. ‘God, I’m so sorry – I thought – sorry –’ he stammered.
Maggie waved the remark away. ‘What? It’s not your fault, is it? I’m assuming you’ve just got his name and not his moral outlook? What is it you know about food?’
‘Food? Oh, right, well I used to run a restaurant, before –’ said Nick, struggling to regain his composure. ‘Before all this happened.’
‘There, see, now we’re getting somewhere. It wasn’t all that painful, was it? And how about now?’
‘Now? Now I’m – I’m on holiday,’ he stalled.
Maggie snorted. ‘Don’t be silly. You can’t be on the run and be on holiday.’
‘I’m not exactly on the run, I’m…’ Nick squirmed. He couldn’t see how the hell he could go on with this and so he raised his arms in surrender. ‘Okay – the things I’m about to tell you are secret but under the circumstances I don’t see what else I can do. My real name is Nick Lucas and I’m in a witness protection and relocation programme. Bernie Fielding is, was, supposed to be my new name, my new assumed identity. The thing is there has to have been some sort of mix up, because I’m certain that I’m supposed to have a ficticious identity, not take over the tail end of somebody else’s life. The only problem is I’m not sure what I can do to sort out any of this at the moment. I genuinely haven’t got anywhere else to go – at least not straight away. I thought I’d ring the number they gave me –’
Maggie grinned, slapping the lid on the pan with a flourish.
‘You don’t hold up very well under pressure, do you?’ she said, pouring them both a glass of wine.
There had to have been some kind of mistake, except of course that that was impossible. Stiltskin didn’t make mistakes. In the neat, well-ordered, air-conditioned government offices deep in the bowels of Colmore Road the clerk tapped at the keyboard of the computer keeping one eye on the door.
‘RUN STILTSKIN…?’ flashed up on the screen again. She had already run it twice and something strange had happened. Very strange. It was her responsibility to do the back-up files on those people her department took under its protective wing. Normally it only took a few minutes, but she had been working on this one for the best part of half an hour.
First of all she’d needed to check up on the client’s new name and address. Except when she’d fed his name in, the computer kept coming up with two new names. Two sets of fictitious details scrolling merrily down the screen, side by side. Now, having repeated the process, the same unlikely combination of information rolled out again and again, like digital schizophrenia.
According to the notes that went with the case, Nick Lucas should have become James Cook. That was what was supposed to have happened, that was what she had expected to have happened, except that somewhere in the wiry underbelly of the computer on Colmore Road a third name had entered the equation: Bernie Fielding. It was all very odd. She had never come across anything like it before, even on the trouble-shooting training course she’d been on at Cheltenham.
Somehow, Bernie Fielding had become James Cook, and Nick Lucas had become Bernie Fielding.
The girl sniffed and glanced up at the office door, licked her lips and then stared at the screen. She’d only come in as a favour because the girl who usually worked on Stiltskin had shingles and no one else had the right security clearance.
Who would ever know? Surely one imaginary new life was much the same as any other? The girl looked over her shoulder to see if anyone else was looking. If her boss found out he’d make them stay behind to unravel what had happened and she’d booked up for ballroom-dancing lessons after work. An intensive five-night course, ‘Learn to Rhumba with Marj Cuthbertson’, accompanied by Barry Telling on his electric organ. She’d been looking forward to it for weeks.
One keystroke, that was all it would take. The girl took another look through