Negative Equity

Karen had been hunting The Man for weeks. From her balcony she'd catch glimpses of him through unfinished buildings. When she got to ground level he was always gone.

The exclusive residential development was empty apart from her. She'd moved in three weeks before the banks collapsed. She knew something was wrong when they stopped lighting the half-finished towers, the cranes disappearing like extinct creatures. No one joined her. She grew used to the flapping of polythene in the dark, distant motorways like water moving. The nearest shop was seven miles away.

It was like being trapped underwater.

She first saw him during her third month alone. He was driving a car, different from the driving school cars that used the empty roads most days.

Over months she left notes on his windscreen, rang the buzzers of empty completed blocks, threw stones at windows.

Nothing.

A fantasy grew that he was a investor dragged to the bottom by the weight of the collapse. She wrote insults on unfinished walls in chalk, laid out scaffolding poles to spell messages.

Seeing him emerge from one of the blocks Karen thought 'Finally, I'm going to make sure we're both in this together.'