I only heard the phone because the back door was open. I was outside breaking up a fight between my two kids who were arguing over who's turn it was to have a good on the bike. To my dying day, I will always wonder what would happen if the door had been left closed.
It had just turned three o'clock on a cloudy Saturday afternoon in late May, and my whole world was about to collapse.
I ran back inside the house, into the living room, where the football was just kicking off on the TV, and picked up on about the fourth ring, wondering whether it was that douche bag of a boss of mine Wesley O'Shea phoning to discuss a minor detail on a client proposal. He liked to do that at weekends, usually when there was a football match on. It gave him a perverse sense of power.
I looked at my watch, it was one minute past three.
"Hello?" was my first word when I picked up the phone.
"Tom, it's me, Jack." The voice sounded breathless
I was momentarily confused. "Jack who?" I asked.
"Jack... Jack Calley." said the voice on the other end of the phone.
This was a voice from the past. My best friend when we were at school. The best man at my wedding nine years earlier. But also someone who I hadn't spoke to in close for four years. There was something wrong too, He sounded in pain, struggling to get the words out.
"Long time no speak, Jack" I said happily. "How are you?" I asked.
"You've got to help me" exclaimed Jack.
It sounded like he was running, or walking extremely quickly. There was background noise, but I couldn't quite tell what it was. He was definitely outside.
"What do you mean?" I asked. At this point, I was now getting extremely worried, worried about what was happening to my old best friend.
"Help me. You've got to..." he gasped suddenly. "Oh Jesus, no. They're coming"
"WHO'S COMING?" I screamd down the phone.
"Oh God no" Jack said in a voice that sounded like that he was absolutely terrified.
He shouted these last words, and I had to hold the phone away from my ear momentarily. On the TV, the crowd roared as one of the players scored a goal.
"Jack! What the hell's happening? Where are you?"
He was panting rapidly now, his breaths coming in tortured wailing gasps. I could hear the sound of him running.
"What's going on? TELL ME!" I screamed at the top of my voice.
Jack cried out in abject terror, and I thought I heard the sound of some sort of scuffle. "PLEASE, NO" he yelled, his voice slightly cracking. The scuffle continued for several seconds, and seemed to move away from the phone. Then he was speaking again, but no longer to me, to someone else. His voice was faint, barely hearable, but I could just about make it out easily enough.
He said six words. Six simple words that made my heart lurch and my whole world totter. They were the first two lines of my address.
Jack then let out a short, desperate scream, and it sounded like that he was being pulled away from the phone. There followed a succession of gasping coughs, and instinctively even I, who'd lived my life a long a long way from the indignities of death, could tell that my old friend was being brutally murded by a gang of thugs.
And then everything fell eerily silent.
The silence might have lasted about ten seconds, but was probably nearer two.
As I stood frozen to the spot in my front room, mouth open, too shocked to know what to say or do, I heard the line suddenly go dead at the other end.
The first two lines of my address. The place where I lived an ordinary suburdan life with my two kids and my wife for nine years, the place where I felt most safe.
For a moment, just one moment, I thought it must have been some sort of practical joke, a cruel ruse to get a reaction. But the thing was, I hadn't spoken to Jack Calley in four long years, and the last time we spoke was when we bumped into each other (not literally) on the street, and even that was just a quick five - minute conversation while the kids were much younger then. Max just a baby - shouted and fidgeted in his little pushchair, I hadn't had a proper conversation with him - you know, the kind friends have in like what... five, six, maybe seven years. We'd gone our seperate ways a long time ago.
But no, this was without a shadow of a doubt nothing but serious. You don't put fear like that into your voice deliberately, it's a natural thing, something that's got to come from within. And this most definitely had. Jack had been terrifed, and with very good reason. If I wasn't mistaken, I'd just heard him breathe his dying breaths. And his last words were the two lines of my address.
But who wanted to know where I lived? And why?
Let me tell you this: I am just an ordinary man with an ordinary desk job in a big open-plan office, leading a team of four IT software salesmen. It wasn't the funnest of jobs, but it helped paid the bills and buy enough food for myself and my family to help us see through life.
I was scared. I was confused. I was worried.
And it dawned upon me that I could be the next person...
And by that, I mean, I could be the next person to... DIE.
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