I had expected it – I had planned for it – but when I heard a key scraping in the lock downstairs my immediate reaction was blind panic. I drew myself together, making myself as small as I could in my hiding place. It wasn’t a good hiding place, but it was the best I could achieve. If he thought I had somehow managed to leave, he might go too, and this time he might forget to lock the door. That was it: that was the plan I’d worked out over the previous hour or so, as the sun slipped lower in the sky and the world carried on, oblivious to me and my terror. Sirens split the air but not near the flat; they were speeding to the rescue for other people. I was on my own, and I’d accepted that I couldn’t fight Seth off, even to save my life. I only had one working arm, my balance was off, my depth perception was shot since one eye was still sealed shut and my reaction times were pitiful.
So, I hid.
The flat wasn’t overburdened with places to hide, admittedly, and I wasn’t at my most inventive. The bed was too low to the ground for me to be able to slide under it, but the bedroom had a chimney breast with a recess on either side. One contained a wardrobe and the other, by the window, was filled with a chest of drawers that was narrower than the space it filled. I had shifted it to one side and forward, then eased myself in beside the chest of drawers and fluffed the curtains out to disguise the gap as best I could.
It felt very much as if I’d made the wrong decision as he came up the stairs with a measured, wary tread, not hurrying. He stopped at the top of the stairs and I pressed my hand against my mouth so I wouldn’t make a sound. I imagined him listening, stilling himself so he could hear the tiniest noise. At last, he moved, his pace slow and deliberate, as if he was placing his feet carefully. A floorboard creaked and I knew he was standing in the doorway of the living room, looking at the place where I had been when he last saw me. Bloodied carpet, a room in disarray, walls marked with scrapes from the phone and smudges I’d left behind: a classic crime scene that had once been my home.
He didn’t go into the living room. Instead, he came to the bedroom door and looked into the room for what felt like forever. I listened to his breathing and tried to muffle mine. I was shaking and couldn’t stop; the trembling came from deep within me.
Another creak and I shut my eyes: I couldn’t tell if he was coming towards me or moving away. Then a drawer in the kitchen rumbled open, which reassured me very slightly – at least he wasn’t in the bedroom any more. I didn’t know what he was looking for. I’d discovered all the knives were gone from the knife block and the cutlery drawer. He’d taken everything bladed, even scissors. He had thought of everything.
In my mind I moved with him to the bathroom. I tried to imagine what he was seeing there: my dress, of course, abandoned where I’d stepped out of it, crumpled like a flower that was past its best. I had recovered, I willed him to think. I had cleaned myself up, got changed, and somehow found a way out of the flat. I must have hidden spare keys somewhere, and he’d missed them. There was nothing here for him. I was long gone.
Wishful thinking.
The footsteps moved through the hall again, and did not pause at the kitchen or the top of the stairs. They came closer, to the threshold of the bedroom, and then inside it. He crossed the room without hesitating, as if I had called out to him. I dropped my head on to my knees, bit the inside of my bottom lip and prayed, though what I was asking for I didn’t really know. A miracle, perhaps.
He tore the blind away from the window sill with a muttered curse and my head came up slowly. I could see a narrow strip of the room, and his hand as he pulled the blind cord, drawing it up. Late evening sun turned the room red, and I’d got my miracle after all.
‘Josh.’
I will give Derwent this: he didn’t so much as flinch. I would have jumped out of my skin, but he just pulled the curtain out of the way, so he could see me in my hiding place. He gave me a searching, assessing look that was three parts detective to one part ragged relief.
‘There you are.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, my voice rusty from not using it.
‘Can you come out?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, clearing my throat and trying to match his matter-of-fact tone. ‘If you move the chest of drawers, probably.’
It took very little effort for him to move it, or so it seemed to me. He left it standing sideways in the space, and squatted so we were on the same level.
‘What about now?’
I uncurled a few inches, then stopped because I had stiffened up while I was hiding and everything suddenly hurt twice as much. The pain must have been written all over my face because Derwent touched my knee gently to stop me.
‘Stay put.’ He straightened up and took out his phone to make a terse, competent phone call to the emergency control room requesting an ambulance as soon as possible. I shut my eyes while he talked to them, drifting a bit now from sheer relief and exhaustion and the pain. He seemed to be having a very calm argument with someone about how long it would take and how urgent it was. I missed him leaving the room and when I returned to what currently passed for full alertness he was holding a glass of water.
‘Drink?’
‘Yes, please.’ I was proud of holding the glass myself as I sipped, my teeth chattering against the rim.
‘The ambulance is going to be about ninety minutes. They’re getting slammed, according to the control room. I did my best, but—’
‘It’s fine.’ I put the glass down on the floor beside me. ‘I can wait.’
‘You’re in pain. It’s not fine.’
‘It’s fine if I don’t move, I mean.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ he snapped.
‘Don’t be cross with me.’ The words seemed to have more significance than I’d intended, once I’d said them. Don’t be cross with me for not realising the danger I was in. Don’t be cross with me for letting you down when you deserved to know about your son. Don’t be cross with me for making the best of this horrible situation.
His expression softened. ‘I’m not cross with you.’
‘Come and sit down. Stop looming over me.’
He lowered himself to the floor and slid over so he was beside me, on the opposite side from the broken collarbone. He leaned against the wall, a solid figure, sane and steadfast, not touching me. I let myself rest against him and shut my eyes.
‘Wake up.’
‘I’m not asleep.’
‘Has he done this to you before?’
‘No.’ I shifted, trying to find a comfortable position and failing. ‘Not exactly.’
‘He did something or he wouldn’t have sent you the roses.’
‘You don’t miss much, do you?’
‘It’s my job,’ Derwent said simply.
‘What happened before was nothing like this. It was an argument that got a bit out of hand.’ I looked down at myself. ‘I should have known, though.’
‘But you didn’t. That’s all there is to it.’ In other words, I shouldn’t blame myself. ‘What happened?’
A policeman’s question; he’d waited long enough to ask it and I gathered myself to answer it.
‘I annoyed him. It was stupid. He thought I was cheating on him and he wouldn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t.’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘No phones. No radio. He took them with him.’
‘Did he indeed?’ Derwent said softly.
‘That wasn’t all.’ I listed all the things that he had taken out of the flat, and Derwent listened to me intently. From where I sat I could only see the side of his face and the corner of his mouth. I knew his expression was grim.
We sat in silence for a while after I’d finished. I was fading again, struggling to keep my eyes open. Then a sound made me snap to attention, trembling again. ‘What was that?’
‘What?’
‘I heard something from downstairs. A noise.’
‘I didn’t hear anything.’ He dropped a hand onto my knee and held on to it, and I felt very slightly reassured. ‘It’s all right.’
‘I don’t want him to come back,’ I said, as I let my head fall onto his shoulder again.
‘Me neither.’
I was caught up in my own fears and couldn’t quite follow what he meant. ‘But you’re not scared of him. Are you?’
I felt rather than heard him laugh. ‘No. I’m not scared.’
‘Then why?’
‘He needs to be prosecuted for this, so he needs to be arrested and cautioned and interviewed properly. There’s no margin for error. It needs to be by the book.’
‘And if he turned up now, it wouldn’t be?’
‘I don’t think so, no.’
‘Because you would hit him.’
‘I might.’ He made a fist of his other hand and looked at it absent-mindedly. ‘I might kill him.’
‘You must be furious with him.’ I yawned. The urge to close my eyes was overwhelming. ‘He’s wrecked your flat. All the blinds … and there’s the carpet in the living room—’
‘I don’t care about that. Not at all.’
We stayed there, sitting on the floor side by side, until the paramedics rapped on the door downstairs.