This might have been a huge mistake, but knowledge is power. It had been hours since I’d talked to Alex, and I knew I needed to learn whatever I could if I wanted to gain control of the situation. I’d waited until everyone was busy before slipping out of Metford. I spent a couple hours in a remote coffee shop before heading here. I glanced over my shoulder, but no one seemed to be paying me any attention. I paused, backing up against a building and pretended to check my phone, thus giving a chance for everyone who’d exited the Tube station at the same time to disperse.
A slight Indian man stopped to stare into the darkened bookshop window across the street and I focused in on him. Was he following me? I guessed him to be midthirties, but he walked as if he were a hundred and ten. He had three large reusable blue plastic carrier bags with him. One of them was bursting at the seams with a box of diapers. He seemed more likely to be a sleep-deprived new dad.
The Indian man trudged down the street without even glancing over. If he was following me, he was doing a pretty lousy job. I checked the map on my phone even though I had it committed to memory. I slipped down Baker Street toward Regent’s Park.
The pedestrian gates were closed for the night. The thick trees surrounding the sidewalk made the park look eerie, as if I went inside, there would be a candy house staffed by a witch just waiting for innocent people to stumble past. I followed the path along the park until I saw the side street I was looking for.
For a second I contemplated turning around and going back, but I had come this far. I had to check it out. I crossed the street and examined the house numbers out of the side of my eye, doing my best to appear as though I knew where I was going.
There it was. Assuming Google Maps wasn’t wrong, I was looking at the address Nicki had given me. The house next to it was for sale the way she had described, so that confirmed it. They were linked together—a row of town homes, most with a single green box hedge in a planter on the stoop and black wrought-iron gates across the front. You couldn’t tell them apart except for the house numbers and the different colors people had used to paint the front doors.
The downstairs was dark, but there was a light on upstairs, filtered through the curtains in a big bay window that arched out over the front of the house. I could just make out the gate that would lead to the garden in the back. I couldn’t tell if the light was out back there like Nicki had promised, but I was willing to guess it was.
It was a nice night to commit a crime. Maybe that was why Nicki wanted me to kill her mom tonight. The moon was almost nonexistent, just a tiny sliver of a crescent, like a water ring on a wooden table. The cloud cover kept any stars hidden. I’d worn the fleece Nicki had suggested, the hood pulled down low, hiding my face.
Someone moved in front of the window. It had to be Nicki’s mom, but she hadn’t passed out as Nicki had said she would. In fact, she looked pretty damn sprightly for an alcoholic who had been drinking all day, not at all like someone who wouldn’t even notice an intruder sneaking into her bedroom with pills or a pillow.
Not that I had any intention of going inside. I just wanted to see the place. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but it was just a house, like every other house on the street. I walked to the end of the block and then turned to retrace my steps. The next day must have been garbage pickup, because everyone had bins out. I bent down, pretending to tie my shoes, and peered into the recycling box in front of Nicki’s place. Inside there was one empty bottle of Chardonnay along with stacks of papers and empty cans.
Nicki said the house had been her grandparents’. She and her mom had moved in with them after the divorce. When her grandparents had still been alive, her mom had held it together. Once they died, Nicki’s mom no longer bothered and slid from drinking too much to being a flat-out drunk.
At least that’s what Nicki said.
I had no way of knowing if she was lying. If anyone knew that the truth was sometimes elastic, it was me. She’d fed me a story of an alcoholic mom who wouldn’t let her have her own life, but that might not have been the truth.
I saw a woman across the street walking her tiny corgi dog in my direction. I couldn’t let the opportunity go by. “Hi,” I called out, and then crossed over to her. I plastered a smile onto my face and hoped she couldn’t tell how nervous I was. “Do you live in the area?”
“Yes . . .” She pulled her pink sweater tighter around her.
“My parents are looking at maybe buying that house.” I waved to the FOR SALE sign over my shoulder. “They’re out at the pub tonight trying to get a feel for the area.”
“At the Hound and Whistle? A block over?” The woman’s dog snuffled my feet. “That’s the best one, or there’s the wine bar, Sour Grapes, down the lane just a bit, but it gets more tourists.”
“I was just curious what you thought of this neighborhood. It seems pretty quiet.”
She looked at me. “Yes, and we like it that way. No wild parties around here—most people are a bit older.”
I nodded seriously. “Do you know much about the people who live in the house next door?” I motioned to Nicki’s place.
The woman shifted and then fished a dog treat out of her sweater pocket and fed it to the corgi. “There you go, Winston.” She wiped her fingers on her pants. “The owner’s all right. She’s had her share of trouble, keeps to herself, mostly.”
“The thing is, another person I talked to said she was a bit of a drinker,” I said. I couldn’t believe how easily the lies were slipping out of my mouth. “My parents don’t want a neighbor who’s loud or trouble.”
She arched an eyebrow that had been tweezed almost to nonexistence and then drawn back in with a reddish-brown crayon. “Who told you that? This is that stupid neighborhood scandal again, as if it’s anyone’s business. What with her no-good husband gone off to Canada, who’s to fault her for having a glass or two in her own garden? Was it those nosy people on the corner?” Her dog lay down and seemed to fall asleep.
“I think so,” I hedged. “What about her daughter? Do you know anything about her?”
She yanked on the dog’s leash, pulling him up. “I’m not saying a word about that girl.”
Her reaction startled me. She seemed angry. What had Nicki done that made her neighbor so leery to talk?
“I’m so sorry. I just wondered—”
The woman jammed her sleeves back as if ready to wade into a fistfight. “How dare you ask questions about that wee girl? What business is that of yours?”
I took a step back. “I guess I just wondered if she and I might be friends,” I said.
“What are you playing at?” Her nose wrinkled up. “What did you say your name was?”
I started walking away. “I need to get going. I’m supposed to meet my parents.”
“Now, wait a minute—” She took a step toward me, but her dog held her in place like a fat furry anchor.
I walked quickly back to the Tube stop, my feet feeling light for the first time in days. The trip had been worth it. I’d learned a few things. As I suspected, this was an expensive neighborhood. I’d also learned that for a supposedly sloppy drunk, Nicki’s mom didn’t have a lot of bottles in her recycling box. Maybe she was ashamed and threw them away someplace else, but people who went to that kind of trouble usually weren’t yet to the full-blown alcoholic stage that Nicki had described. But the neighbor had made it sound as though there were problems of some sort. Nicki’s issue with her mother might not be that she was a drinker.
Her issue could be that her mom was alive. In Nicki’s way. Without her mom, Nicki would inherit the house and any money left over. It would be a pretty nice setup. And it struck me that that might have been Nicki’s plan for a long time. Long enough that she’d been on the lookout for someone like me. Someone she thought she could manipulate. She’d lucked out when she bumped into me at the airport.
But she was going to learn that it wasn’t that easy.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
My foot froze a few inches above the step. Shit.
Metford House had a curfew, but no one paid any attention to it. There was only the one ancient security guard, who could be counted on to never leave his office near the front desk. He would sit with his feet propped up on an open drawer, his head back, snoring.
Except for this time.
I turned around slowly. “Oh, hey,” I said. I pressed my mouth into a smile as if I were thrilled to see him.
The guard tapped his foot on the floor. The rubber soles made a dull thwak, thwak, thwak sound. “Go on, what were you up to?”
“I was just outside . . .” I motioned behind me with my thumb as if maybe he was confused about where I had come from. Telling him I had been casing a house for a possible murder wasn’t going to reassure him. I scrambled to come up with an excuse for being out past curfew. My ability to lie on demand seemed to be drying up. The last thing I needed was to be in more trouble. I had the feeling he wasn’t going to buy the story that I was volunteering with the homeless.
“Did you find my lighter?” Alex came down the stairs in a thundering rush as if he were half walking and half falling.
I stared at him with my mouth open. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
Alex turned to the guard. “I went out for a smoke and must have dropped it out there.” Then he smiled at me. “So, did you? Find it?”
I glanced behind me as if I half expected to see a lighter lying in the foyer. I held up my empty hands. “Um. Nope.”
Alex sighed. “Can we borrow your flashlight?” He pointed to the giant utility belt around the guard’s waist. “I want to check one more time.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed and his giant bushy eyebrows came together over his nose like mating caterpillars.
“It’s my lucky lighter,” Alex added with a wide innocent smile on his face.
I had to hand it to him. He lied brilliantly. He had the face for it: lots of freckles. Anyone with freckles automatically looks sincere. I believed him and I knew for a fact he didn’t smoke. His asthma was bad if it was even a slightly smoggy day.
The guard unclipped his flashlight and handed it over. “Don’t you kids be out there too long. And get that torch back to me.” He hitched his pants up over his thin hips, under his swaying gut.
Alex pushed me toward the back door, practically saluting. “No sir. I’ll bring this right back.”
We stepped onto the back patio. Alex swept the light beam across the ground in case the guard was watching us from a window. Discarded cigarette butts were sprinkled around. An empty gin and tonic can slid across the pavement with a screech. I followed it with my eyes—I’d never seen a cocktail in a can until I’d been on the trains here. Thumping sounds from the dryers came through the narrow casement window to the laundry room in the basement. I shivered, wondering if Nicki could be in there now, waiting for me.
We stood silently for a beat. “Thanks,” I said at last. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Alex plopped down onto a rickety bench. “I like to do things for you. Did you have an okay night?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I just didn’t feel like hanging around here.”
“I get that. You didn’t miss much. A few of us went out for Indian food and a movie.”
“Seriously, I really appreciate you covering for me with Deputy Grumpy in there. For a minute, I thought he might handcuff me and do some waterboarding.”
He laughed. “It’s okay. I considered saying I was going out for a ‘fag,’ since that’s what they call cigarettes here, but I couldn’t do it. My friend Jordan’s gay, so it just feels gross to use that word, but honestly, I swear the British have the best slang. You heard of bollocks?”
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“I mean, could there be a better term for balls? Gormless is another one of my favorites. I’m totally using that in casual conversation when I get back home—it’s about a million times better than calling someone clueless. Anyway, I’m making a list.” He swept the flashlight around for emphasis.
I felt the corners of my mouth pulling up into a smile. “You going to write some kind of paper?”
“You know we homeschooled kids can’t get enough independent learning,” Alex said. “You laugh now, but this may turn into a thesis someday. I could be, like, a professor of Briticisms.”
“You going to take up an English accent, too?”
“Hell yeah, if I could pull one off. Who knew you could learn another language all while still speaking English?” Alex started talking with a thick British accent, although it sounded like a bit of a mash-up with some Irish and Australian, too. “I say, good sir, tallyho, what-what.”
I couldn’t stop giggling. I sat down, leaned back on the bench, and stared up at the sky. There were so many lights in London that it was hard to make out any stars. It was as if night never fully arrived. But it seemed bizarre to be sitting there, joking with Alex as if everything were normal, while both of us tried to ignore the awkwardness between us.
Nicki was out in the city somewhere, waiting for me to kill her mom. Making sure her alibi was airtight, toasting pint glasses with friends or splitting an order of chicken tikka masala, making sure a security camera caught her on film. I wondered if she felt even the slightest regret, or if she’d already determined that her mom wasn’t worthy enough to occupy space on the planet. It must have been nice for her to be so certain of herself and her place in the world. I wished for the one millionth time that I could call Emily. She wouldn’t know what to do either, but I still wanted her advice.
“You’re a natural,” I said to Alex. “With that accent, I would have thought you walked right out of Buckingham Palace.”
“Tell me about it. Lots of people say I am a dead ringer, voice wise, for Prince William.”
I was suddenly exhausted. I pushed off from the bench. “We should go in before he starts looking for us or wants to share a cigarette with you.” I held out my hand to help pull Alex to his feet. I shuffled behind him as he returned the flashlight to the guard and asked courteously to be told if anyone turned in a silver lighter. We paused on the worn carpeted steps. I could see the individual threads breaking free, like tiny whiskers.
“Tomorrow should be good,” Alex said, his foot kicking aimlessly at the balustrade.
“I forget what’s on the schedule,” I admitted.
“The war rooms museum thingy. The underground one.”
“Oh yeah.” The idea of rummaging around in a World War II bunker didn’t set me on fire, but everyone’s got his own thing. “Should be fun. See you tomorrow,” I said, trying to sound plucky and upbeat.
“Sounds good.”
Neither of us moved. My hand rested on the waxed wooden banister. “If you want, we could grab a cup of coffee or something after,” I finally suggested. “We didn’t really get to go out today.” I held my breath, waiting for his response. I hated that my lies had made things between us strained.
“I might have plans,” Alex said, not looking up from his shoes.
My gut ached as if he’d punched me.
He poked me in the ribs. “I’m joking.”
“Not funny,” I said.
He shrugged. “Social skills aren’t my strongest asset.”
“I suppose your accent is what you’ve got going for you.”
“That and my good looks and charm.” He smirked, then leaned over to kiss me softly. “I’d love to go out with you. Sleep well.”
“You too.”