Shadows stretched in the low yellow light; the shade of the door handle reached for the floor, the chairs’ silhouettes grew long-limbed and thin, Sabina’s fingers made spider’s legs on the table. The soup looked warm and soothing, but Blue hadn’t the stomach to eat. She saw the girl’s yellow teeth again and the dried lips, smelt the rank stench of her, and she thought of the taxidermy tents at the mystic fairs she’d gone to as a child, the dead ferrets with their wide black eyes, the reptiles with opaque hides.
‘Have some cocoa and then head to bed.’ Mrs Park poured the dark liquid into Sabina’s cup. Milton’s warning played in Blue’s ear. She caught Sabina’s gaze and gave an imperceptible shake of her head.
‘It’ll be easier to work in the daylight,’ Mrs Park said. ‘All this torch- and candlelight is bad for your eyes.’
‘Your eyes, too,’ said Sabina.
‘I see well enough. Drink up.’
‘I’m full from the lovely soup, I couldn’t take a single sip.’ Sabina spoke with charm, but there was a slur to her voice. She patted her flat belly with her palm, but her movement was clumsy. ‘I’ll get myself to bed, I’m practically falling asleep already.’
Blue sensed that Sabina had the same idea as her: forget the supplies, just get upstairs, lock the doors, wait for morning, and get the hell out. Even if she was tortured all night by Jessica Pike, even if she got no sleep and was weak with hunger, the simple prospect of leaving was enough to galvanise her to stand from the table and say goodnight.
‘Everything will be settled by dawn,’ Mrs Park said. ‘No, Blue, you stay here and eat your soup. I’ll see Sabina to bed.’
Sabina hid her panic well and Blue tried, tried hard to show she wasn’t unnerved and that the sway in her friend’s stance wasn’t frightening, that the grip Mrs Park had on Sabina’s arm was quite normal. Blue said, ‘It’s all right, I’m too tired after all, I’ll come too.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Mrs Park said. ‘I insist. I can’t let you sleep on an empty stomach; finish your soup.’
Sabina looked at the green varnished door: the entrance to the Parks’ apartment, the living room with the photograph of Eleanor – the single proof Blue had of her existence. Sabina looked at it again and said, ‘It’s OK, Molly can help me up to bed. You stay, eat something.’
Mrs Park let Sabina’s arm go. She didn’t look at the door, or at Blue, or the uneaten soup, the rejected cocoa. Instead she scanned Sabina’s face, her lips bowed in a tight smile. ‘I’m fussing again, aren’t I? Silly me. If Joshua were here he’d tell me off for mollycoddling you both.’ She spoke as though the house had not flooded, the art session had been a success and that, at any moment, she would open the doors to a therapy room and business would resume as normal. She talked to them both as though her husband was not invalided next door, and Sabina and Blue were favourite, longed-for guests.
Mrs Park moved back from Sabina and blocked the apartment door.
‘You both go on to bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you soon. I best go check on my husband.’
They followed the torchlight back through the hall and into the main house. The sofa they hadn’t been able to shift showed a tideline of soaked-up damp on its back. They shuffled through the water.
‘We need to get the hell out of here as soon as we can,’ Sabina whispered.
‘You believe me?’
‘I believe she’s mentally unstable.’ Sabina stumbled; Blue caught her, steadied her and Sabina said, ‘I didn’t drink her damn cocoa, so why do I feel like this?’
The carpet on the stairs had soaked up the flood, and the first four steps were boggy.
‘It was the soup; we need to get you some water to flush it out of your system.’
‘It’s not too bad, I’m just a bit groggy. I’ll cope,’ Sabina said. They neared the top of the stairs.
They heard the creak before they saw the door open. Sabina, startled, grabbed Blue by the arm. ‘Jesus!’
‘It’s the wind.’ Blue reassured herself as much as Sabina.
‘What wind?’ Sabina said and swung her torch along the hallway to their rooms. Her bedroom door stood open but not still. It moved gently back and forth. Sabina buckled, righted herself and pushed her free hand across her shorn hair.
‘Over here.’ They turned and saw Milton at the other end of the corridor.
‘We need to get our stuff,’ Blue said.
‘It’s just stuff,’ said the man.
It was just stuff, just clothes and shoes and underwear. It was roughly half of all Blue owned.
‘We can get it in the morning.’ Sabina rubbed her eyes, squeezed her temples, her movements sluggish.
‘Let’s try and get some sleep,’ said Blue, ‘tomorrow’s going to be a long day.’
‘You need to tell me what the hell’s going on first,’ Sabina said as they walked towards Milton and the door he had propped open with his walking frame. ‘She saw me signal to the apartment door, she didn’t want to leave you alone with the possibility you could go through it. Do you think that’s because she’s worried about Joshua or the photograph?’
‘Both,’ Blue said.
The room was as clean and white as the rest. The bed was made, the side table cluttered with ornaments rescued from the living room, a bottle of fresh water on the floor. Sabina stumbled as she stepped over the threshold. Blue caught her, and her body was dead weight.
‘Blue, I don’t—’ Sabina began, an ethereal softness to her voice.
‘Get her to the bed,’ Milton said. ‘I bet she drank the damn cocoa; I told her not to, I told you both!’
‘It was in the soup,’ Blue defended. ‘Jesus, imagine if she’d had the cocoa too.’ She hushed Sabina, ignored the panic in her chest, helped her over to the bed, pulled back the covers and had her lie down. As she held her, Sabina’s confusion washed through Blue, her desire to sleep, sleep forever, to close her eyes and disappear, the jet-black want to never wake up unless she could wake up with the man she had loved, but he had died on the pavement beside Sabina’s tree-wrecked car.
Dozens of TV shows reeled through Blue’s head: medical dramas, A&E documentaries, old reruns of 999. What should she do?
Sabina’s head lolled, but her eyes betrayed fear. Blue urged Sabina to stay upright, stay awake. She tried to get her to sip the bottled water, to help flush out her system, but Sabina was falling asleep.
‘What do I do?’ Blue said.
Sabina slouched, and again Blue righted her, only for her to slip to horizontal.
‘Get her in the recovery position,’ Milton said and talked through what Blue had to do. She pulled Sabina down so she was flat on the bed, rolled her on to her side, propped her with pillows, and moved her arms, leg, and head. A lump protruded from the pocket of her cardigan, something soft wrapped in kitchen paper: the bread roll she had saved for them. Blue’s throat felt tight.
She didn’t know whether to cover Sabina to keep her warm or leave her uncovered, and in the end Blue pulled the flat sheet clear from the duvet and draped it over her body.
Blue checked Sabina’s phone for a signal, wanted to call an ambulance, have them send a helicopter to lift her to hospital, but her phone was dead, and Milton’s was too.
In the funereal light, Sabina looked like a shrouded corpse. Blue had to fight the urge to rip the sheet off her again.
Why had Mrs Park drugged Sabina when Blue was the cause of their trouble? Blue had tried to kill Joshua Park, held his head below the water, and mistook his body’s limpness for death. Sabina was a mere bystander, a witness.
Is that it? Had Molly Park simply ensured that Sabina didn’t see or hear anything else tonight?
‘You said there’s a photo of Jess?’ Milton said. He sat on the upholstered cream chair in the corner and contemplated Blue through his pale, weathered eyes. The navy hat was on his head, the one piece of colour among the browns and beiges of his clothes, and he looked old, very old.
Blue nodded. ‘It’s in their living room.’
‘I’ve never made it into their rooms. I knew something would be hidden in there.’
‘The police will find it,’ said Blue but she knew that wasn’t true.
Milton sighed, shook his head. ‘She’ll have destroyed it by then.’ His voice sounded strong. Milton pressed himself up from the chair and his limbs shook with fervour not exhaustion. ‘Stay with Sabina,’ he said.
‘Milton, you’re not going anywhere,’ Blue said, half laughing because it was ridiculous to think he would risk his own safety for a photograph, and because she knew that he wanted to, so badly.
‘I’ve been trying to find proof for years and that’s it. I can’t leave without it.’
‘It’s not worth the risk,’ Blue said.
‘And who are you to tell me what’s worth the risk? You, who ran into the bloody woods, who came back when you could have escaped? You don’t know about any of this, you don’t know about Jess or Marcus or Marie, or—’ He stopped and held on to the dressing table and coughed and coughed and pressed his right hand to his chest. Blue stroked his back, hushed him and tried to soothe him as Devlin had so often soothed her. He was all at once the woman who had killed her old father, he was the victim of domestic abuse, he was the man who mourned his dead son; he was every soul who had passed through Blue’s life and felt something she had never felt.
‘I will do this,’ he said when the coughing had stopped. Tears wet his cheeks and gathered in the creases at his mouth.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘it’s all right.’
He shook his head, grabbed both her hands in his and she felt she was holding him up, that if she moved he would fall, and she felt all of him, all of him, all of him.
‘It’s my fault,’ he said, ‘all this is my fault.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ said Blue.