The Driver

The leather wheel is slick under my palms. Sweat prickles my wrists even with the air-con blasting. I’ve got the Audi A8 nose-in behind the rhododendron hedge in the east car park, just out of the blind spot. Old money believes it’s untouchable. They slap cameras on the main entrance and the bar veranda, leave back here dark. Where people like me wait.

The Hurlingham Club is fifteen decades old, three storeys of Georgian stone. Membership’s “by invitation.” Enough said. If you need proof, just glance around. No Toyotas. No Vauxhalls. Just German engineering, Italian curves, and the occasional Rolls. British, sure, but only if it costs more than a life. Other drivers are idling behind their wheels, eyes forward, but none of them look my way. Good.

Five grand sits in the boot inside a Waitrose bag, banded tight with rubber. Every note I’ve got after rent, after Davey’s cloned plates, the burner phone. It’s not a fund. It’s a last scrape. The dregs of a dry barrel.

My knuckles go white against the wheel. I force them to breathe. Scar tissue pulls across the left one. Barlinnie. That taste of concrete dust and antiseptic still coats my tongue. Not now.

Livia Reuben’s voice creeps in, sharp as bile. You’re paid to drive, not think.

Eaton Square. Her perfume was everywhere—chemical, aggressive. She knew I’d clocked the Estonian attaché at the Chelsea flat, noticed her hair wrong that night, sliding into the back seat without a word. I drove. Kept my mouth shut. Until I became a loose end.

Jeremy Reubens, her husband, billionaire. He never learned my name. Five years of opening doors in the rain, hauling his golf clubs, standing patiently while he finished a cigar and barked an address. The driver. Not Jason. Not Jay. Just a function. His world was built on people like me. Disposable.

Prison was the same machine. Captain Ellis, that strutting prick, trading good men for Helmand arrogance. I stepped in for a scared Glasgow kid, took the fall, and the Army thanked me with a dishonourable discharge and a cell. They discard you when you're done. The Reubens? Same works, just chrome-plated.

It’s not the five grand in the boot. It’s the taking. I want to watch their pristine world crack open, just to feel the ground shift under their feet.

The memory hits without warning. Saz. Coppery hair pulled back. Freckles scattered like flicked paint. Orange juice on the ivory carpet—Laszlo Karoysan wool, eleven grand—and her eyes locking with mine in the side mirror, wide with panic. Mummy. She's going to be so cross. I told her it was nothing. I’d clean it. She smiled, giddy, like we’d shared a secret. We had. The chocolate. Galaxy, mostly, though she loved Fruit & Nut. I’d leave it in the seat pocket, she’d find it, and her pale green eyes would blow wide. "Our secret," she’d say.

The thought shatters my focus. I shove it down. Hard.

Get Saz. Get north. Don't look back. That’s it.

Dashboard clock: 15:47. She’ll be out any second. Tennis wraps at 15:30. Change time. Two-minute walk.

The window’s razor-thin.

I check the mirrors. The Bentley by the fountain still idles—some lord waiting for his wife. Barnes nods off at the gate. East wing’s clear.

Then the main doors swing open. Two figures backlit against the stone. One tall, turning away. The other—Saz. She half-skips down the steps, copper hair unspooling from a loosening blue ribbon. That white tennis sweater swallows her frame. She turns back to her friend, laughing. The sound doesn’t carry, but I know it. Light. Weightless.

Her friend flicks a hand, turns for the Bentley. Saz pauses at the bottom of the steps, scanning the gravel for the new driver—Harrison? Harmon? The public-school boy who replaced me. I don’t open my door. She has to come to me. That’s the point.

I drop the passenger window five inches. Enough.

She spots the Audi. Her head tilts—confusion, then a spark of recognition. She breaks into a run, half-trotting across the gravel, gym bag thumping her hip. Awkward gait, but underneath it, speed. Hunger.

She reaches the car, bends, hands braced on thighs, peering through the gap. Pale green eyes. Freckles.

"Jay?" The voice is higher than I remember. "Is that... is it really you? What are you... I mean, are you here for... for me?"

I keep my face still. Professional. But my pulse hammers in my throat

"I am." My voice comes out gravel.

"Oh-my-god," she breathes, rushing it. "This is so... I didn't know you were... Mummy said you were gone? That you quit?"

I hold her eyes through the glass. I sell the lie smooth, but let it sound improvised.

"Change of plan. Your mum and dad... they need a bit of space. Sent me to collect you. Bit of an adventure."

The word hangs.

"An adventure?" Her face lights up. "Really? Like, a real one? Where are we going? Is it the country house? I love it there! I didn't pack though... just my tennis stuff..."

"Sorted," I say. It tastes like ash.

She pulls up straight. For a second, I think she’ll grab her phone, call her mother, do what they teach rich girls—verify, tether, ask permission. Instead, she looks at the rear door. The front seat. Back at me.

"Can I...?" She gestures forward. "It's weird in the back. Like I'm a package. This feels more... like friends? Since it's just you and me? And we're not going home?"

It hits me like a shove. Three years I drove her, she sat behind the seat, following the rules that keep staff from family. The back seat was a wall. Up front, she’s in my space. My breath.

"Front's fine," I mutter.

She beams. Genuinely. Yanks the rear door open, shoves the tennis bag inside, then darts round the bonnet. All knees and elbows. She climbs in. Vanilla shampoo, clean sweat. She settles into the leather, turns to face me, knees angled my way, completely present. Completely open.

"This is so much better," she says. "Better than Pierre. He's so strict. And he smells of garlic."

She buckles up. The click snaps in the cabin. I check the mirrors. Bentley’s gone. Barnes scrolls his phone. East wing still blind. I turn the key. The Audi vibrates to life. I keep my eyes forward, but I can feel her beside me—close enough to touch, close enough to catch that strawberry lip gloss scent she’s worn since she was fifteen.

"So where?" she asks, bristling with it.

"North," I say. "You'll see."

"North," she repeats. "Okay. North is good. North is... an adventure."

"The phone, Saz." I keep it casual, rutted into habit. "Mum's instructions. She asked me to hold it. Security."

She blinks. Thinks it over. Then shrugs—small, resigned, just another order from authority. Her hand dips into her skirt pocket, returns with the iPhone in the pink case, gold initials glinting. She hands it over without a second thought. Used to handing things over.

"Okay."

I take it. Warm from her pocket. I press the side button, wait for the screen to die, then pry the back open. Dig out the battery. Heavy. The tracker. I drop it in my pocket, shove the dead phone in the glove compartment.

"Why are you doing that?" she asks, mildly curious.

"Security. So no one can bother you. Part of the adventure."

She nods. "That's good. I don't like being bothered. And Mummy always checks it anyway. Reads my texts."

The words fall out quiet, careless. I scan the exit, but ice lances down my spine. Of course Livia checks. Of course she invades the gaps. The battery in my pocket isn't just a tool anymore. It’s a gift. The only one I can give—a few hours of silence before the walls close in.

"Let's go then," I say, slide it into drive.

She settles back, anchored by trust. The girl who thinks she’s on an adventure. The man who knows it’s a kidnapping.

I ease the Audi out from behind the hedge, gravel singing under the tires. We roll past the courts, past Barnes—he glances up, sees a girl in the front seat, returns to his paper.

Seamless. No screams. No struggle. She came willingly, climbed into a stolen car, buckled herself in beside her kidnapper with a smile.

The west drive stretches ahead, leading away from London, toward the M1, toward Scotland, toward whatever comes next.

My hands don't shake. Not yet.