I went to sleep early, wiped out by emotions, and when I woke, soft grey light was showing through the thin curtains. For a moment, I wondered where I was and then I remembered. I turned over and saw Aidan, deeply asleep beside me. He looked young and peaceful. I reached across him for my phone, to look at the time. It was not yet half past five.
Aidan shifted, put a forearm across his eyes. He had thin wrists. A memory – or a memory’s fragment – reached into my mind like a long finger. Something about telling the time, something that belonged to the past. A barbecue. Aidan in a denim shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, looking at his wrist and telling me when the food would be ready.
The way he always took his watch off before he got into bed, laying it on top of his folded clothes. Such a neat man. A man of habit.
I lay still. Very, very still, like an effigy. I didn’t breathe. Hook in my throat. A jam of fear, and my heart stuttering and my skin crawling.
I told myself I was going mad, I had gone mad, would always be mad now.
It wasn’t true. Of course it wasn’t true. I feared it only because if it was true, then every last thing I trusted would be reduced to ash. I had turned myself into a creature of paranoia, an echo chamber of my own fantastic dark imaginings, and every dread was chaotic, free-floating, attaching itself to whatever object lay at hand.
Aidan had been at a conference when Skye had died. His missing watch was just a missing watch.
But I held the thought in my mind and around it, things gradually clicked into place. Skye had stalked the man she thought had rescued her, followed him, found out about the ‘complications’ in his life. And Skye had come to the restaurant where we were having a meal, had stood in front of us, and what if all the time she hadn’t been speaking to me but to him?
Skye had died after I had shown him the mutilated rag doll. I remembered his expression as he stared at it.
He had come to see me on the evening of the day that Peggy had been killed, because he knew, or thought he knew, that he was in the clear now.
He had stood by the fridge, pouring elderflower juice out for everyone that day, right next to the photo of Poppy in the cap.
And Poppy – my chest ached – Poppy didn’t like him. I realised in a rush how every time he had come to our home, she had refused to be with him, had clung to me.
I looked again at Aidan. He was almost smiling, as if his dreams were pleasing ones. He shifted slightly and his breathing deepened.
Slowly, I slid from the bed. My mouth was open in a silent yell. My legs felt hollow, a string puppet’s legs, disarticulated. I picked up the clothes and tiptoed from the room. If I turned round, he would be sitting up in bed and watching me creep away, as if I could ever escape from the horror that grew inside me.
I had brought out Aidan’s clothes, not mine. Edging into the bathroom, I took a large towel from the hook on the door and wrapped it round me. I sat on the edge of the bath and tried to take long deep breaths, but they hurt my throat and my lungs. I was having a panic attack, I told myself. That was all. It will pass. Breathe in and breathe out; only think about your breathing.
I screwed up my eyes and tried to picture the watch that had been among the things Skye had been wearing when she fell. Nothing was clear to me anymore; nothing made sense.
I stood up and stubbed my toe against the base of the sink, almost cried out, stuffed a hand to my mouth to stop sound escaping. The towel loosened and fell to the floor and I bent to pick it up. My breath was coming in little whooshes and I was aware of moving jerkily. The ends of my fingertips were tingling, as if I had pins and needles.
I went into the living room and stared around. I needed to find Aidan’s watch, even while at the same time I knew there probably wasn’t a watch to find and I was stumbling frailly around in the dim light like a fool.
His desk had lots of small drawers. I pulled one open. It was full of stationery: a stapler, paper clips, post-it notes, highlighters, a bundle of thin-nibbed pens held together by a rubber band, a book of first-class stamps.
I shut it, pulled open another. Receipts. Bank statements. Everything orderly, methodical.
Next drawer down. Passport. Paper driving licence. Membership cards to various art galleries and theatres.
The bottom one. A few photos. I pulled them out. Stop now. I shuffled through them. One of me in a raincoat, smiling. What did I think I was doing?
I laid the photos on the little table and turned to the cupboard beside the television. A few DVDs, a coil of chargers and connectors, a pile of instruction manuals.
On the bookshelves just books. What did I expect? Technical ones about solar power and wind turbines; a few novels; some biographies; a couple of unexpected volumes of poetry. If Aidan hadn’t killed Skye and Peggy, I’d never be able to prove it. I couldn’t prove his innocence by not finding a clue to his guilt.
A sound and I froze, my hand against my bumping, jolting heart.
A car door banged shut.
It was getting lighter. I didn’t know what time it was because my phone was still in the bedroom, on the table next to Aidan.
In the kitchen cupboard were just kitchen things: pots and pans, plates and bowls, a hand-held whisk, a colander. Higher up, a cupboard with glass doors: glasses, tumblers, a nice earthenware jug. Drawers of cutlery, of tin foil and cling film and baking parchment. Shelves of flour and sugar and pasta and rice. Spices and herbs in alphabetical order. Honey, marmalade, jam. A bottle of whisky and another of gin. A bread bin in which I found the remains of a wholemeal loaf. I stared at the knives, gleaming sharp in the block.
The most likely place to hide a watch – if there was a watch to hide – was in the bedroom, among the shirts and jerseys, in the pocket of a jacket or at the back of the wardrobe, under the bed. I imagined slithering along the floor like a snake with arms outstretched, or ferreting about among his clothes, while he watched me through half-closed eyes.
I went into the little hall. It was nearly full light now. I tried to work out what time it was, but couldn’t tell if minutes or hours had passed since I’d crept from the bedroom. I didn’t even know if Aidan was a light or heavy sleeper: we’d barely spent a night together, because I had always insisted he leave. There were beads of sweat on my forehead as I put my hand on the doorknob.
Then I saw the coats and jackets hanging from the hooks by the front door to the flat. I put my hands in each pocket. On the last hook was a small, soft leather duffle bag. I reached in and touched something soft, like a cloth, and then something cold and smooth. I took it out.
A watch, with a worn strap, a large face and Roman numerals. Classy.
I stared at it as it lay in the palm of my hand and the minute hand quivered forward. Eighteen minutes past six.
Not a watch: the watch. The one I had last seen in the bag of Skye’s possessions, and then not seen at Peggy’s house, the day she had been killed.
Dead sightless eyes, brave purple hair.
The minute hand quivered forward again.
Clutching the watch in the same hand that held the towel, I opened the bedroom door and slid into the room. I needed to push it deep into my backpack, retrieve my clothes and phone, then get out. I tripped over a pair of shoes, gathered up my trousers, crawled on all fours towards my backpack, towel unravelling as I went.
‘You’re up early.’
I stopped dead, feeling the watch press against my collarbone where I clutched the towel.
‘Morning,’ I managed to say. I lifted my head: Aidan was half-sitting on the bed, regarding me with tender amusement.
‘What time is it?’
‘I’m not sure.’ The watch ticked against my skin.
‘What are you doing down there? Have you lost something?’
‘I was looking for my knickers. Ah, there they are.’
I fumbled my clothes into a pile and pushed the watch inside it, held it against me like a baby.
‘I’ll just get dressed.’
‘Come back to bed. It’s so early.’
‘I couldn’t sleep. I need to get back. Turn myself around before I get Poppy.’
He swung out of bed and crouched beside me, put his arms around me. I breathed in his particular smell – fennel, I thought, or aniseed. He kissed my neck, his lips cool.
‘Coffee?’
He stroked my hair, still tangled up in its unravelling braid, and I crouched there like a sweaty animal with nowhere to hide.
‘OK. I’ll put my clothes on then have a quick cup.’
Clutching backpack, shoes and clothes, with the towel still around me, I backed out of the room and into the bathroom. I locked the door, put the watch at the bottom of my backpack, hurriedly pulled my clothes on, then was hit by the sudden realisation that I’d left the pile of photos on the living-room table.
I got there at the same time as he came into the room, knotting his towelling robe around him.
‘I could make us breakfast,’ he said.
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said and sat down on the table, feeling the slide of photos beneath me.
He ran his fingers down my cheek. I bared my teeth in what was meant to be a smile.
‘Just coffee then,’ he said.
‘You know me. It takes me time to get going in the morning.’
I was trying to remember how a normal person behaves, but it felt sketchy and transparent. I swept the photos into my backpack when his back was turned. I wrapped my hands around the cup and heard Aidan talking about a friend of his who was a family lawyer: would I like him to ask his advice, in confidence of course, about Jason’s threats?
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But wait a bit first to see what happens.’
I need to be careful, I said to him. One step at a time. The stakes are so high. Perhaps it will all just blow over.
He knows everything, I thought. I told him every last thing.
And then, finally, I was at his door. He held my face in both hands and stared into my eyes and I tried to gaze at him, not to look away, but I thought I wouldn’t manage it. I wanted to scream and howl and strike out with all the strength in my body.
He kissed me again. I let him kiss me. I kissed him back. Bile rose up in me, a physical recoil that it took all my will not to give in to. When I got home, I would scrub my teeth until my gums bled and shower until my skin was raw.
I smiled at him and left.
And when I was out of sight of his windows, I ran and ran.
It had been in my house all the time. It had never been outside. It had been inside. It had been me: I had brought the danger home.
Poppy, I thought as I ran, my breath tearing like strips of adhesive tape being ripped from my lungs. Poppy Poppy Poppy.