I went willingly, with the policeman who’d been chasing me for the better part of my adult life. The cuffs went on, the van doors opened, and the sirens seared their red-and-blue into my eyes.
It was over. My life as I knew it, carefree, footloose, joyfully hopping around the globe on a whim… it was over. It was all over.
But that wasn’t what I was going to miss, I realised. No, what I was going to miss – was already missing – were the flames licking at my boot heels. The constant pursuit by my intellectual equal. The policeman who knew the property market better than anybody else and had used it to at last ensnare his greatest collar.
Would he visit? I wondered to myself, as I felt the engines rumble to life, underneath the reinforced flooring of the van. Would he think about me at all?
Of course he wouldn’t, I chided myself. He was probably already tracking down the best buyer’s advocate for finding a home in Kew, getting them to flip on his latest assignment.
I suppose that’s all I’d been, in the end. An assignment. What had he called me?
‘A number and a name, nothing more.’
His cruelty had cut me like a knife.
A strange thought crossed my brain, and I caught it with a frown, clung to it until it formed itself, found shape in my mind.
He had been cruel.
What did that mean? Why would he be so eager to torment me, even as I was leaving his life forever? And what is buyer’s advocacy? Melbourne can’t be that difficult of a housing market.
It was all a lie, I realised with a start! His final chess move, sliding his piece across the board and daring me to lay down my king.
He almost got me to, as well!
I began to laugh, softly, then out of control.
‘Oh, this isn’t over,’ I whispered underneath the noise of my prison van. ‘We’re only just getting started.’