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“WHAT THE HELL WERE you playing at last night?”
Liv sat up in bed, her head foggy from sleep, wondering what was going on. Tammy stood over her bed, her face puce with anger, glaring down at her.
Her mind whirred, trying to put the pieces together of the last twenty-four hours and figure out what she’d done to make her flatmate so mad. She’d grabbed something to eat on her way home, and then had managed to sneak in without Tammy noticing she was home, and taken herself to bed. At no point had she done anything to upset Tamsin.
She sat up and pushed her hand through her mass of red curls to get it out of her face. “What are you talking about?”
Tammy’s glares didn’t subside. “You left the front door wide open.”
Liv frowned in confusion and shook her head. “No, I didn’t. It was locked when I went to sleep.”
Her flatmate jammed her hands on her hips. “You went out again. I heard you.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“And am I imagining the door being wide open when I got up this morning? Jesus, Olivia, it’s not as though we live in the safest of neighbourhoods. We’re two women alone. What if someone had come in and raped and murdered us both?”
Liv scrubbed her hand over her face. She felt just as tired as when she’d gone to bed. “No one raped and murdered us. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if they had.”
“That’s hardly the point!” Tammy declared.
“It’s exactly the point. No harm’s been done, and I don’t even think it was me. I went to bed, and it was fine. Maybe the latch is faulty or something.”
“What? And the wind blew it right open?” It was impossible to miss the sarcasm in her tone. The door to their flat led out onto a hallway with no outside doors or windows.
“I don’t know what happened. Maybe you left the door open. You can’t say for sure it was me.”
“There was no one else moving around the flat last night.”
She almost said, you don’t know that, perhaps you heard whoever left the door open, but managed to keep her mouth shut. It would only freak Tammy out more.
“Look,” she said with a sigh, “we’ll both have to be more careful in future, okay? Double check it when we come in and go out, to make sure it’s properly locked. I can’t say any more than that.”
This seemed to placate her flatmate—for the moment, anyway. “Fine. I’ve got to go to work.” And she turned and stormed from the room.
Liv resisted yelling, make sure you shut the door on the way out. Tamsin could be such a headache at times.
How strange for the door to be left open, though. She didn’t think she’d done it, but maybe she hadn’t shut it properly when she’d come in from work. She had been tired.
She reached down to the side of her bed for her phone. Ellen hadn’t tried to call her, so she hoped that meant she’d made things up with Ryan. Michael hadn’t called or texted either, but then she hadn’t expected him to.
Olivia hauled herself out of bed and completed her usual routine of shower, dress, and breakfast, and was soon on the Tube with thousands of strangers, all squashed together to do the commute to work.
Ellen wasn’t in yet, but Tony was. He’d been out of the office all of the previous day, and she couldn’t help feeling like he was avoiding her. She didn’t blame him. She’d have avoided him, too, if she’d had any choice about the matter, but she’d had to come to work.
She’d barely sat down at her desk and fired up her computer when movement came beside her. Her stomach lurched as she looked to find her boss standing there, hovering.
“Everything okay, Tony?” she asked tentatively.
“Ellen won’t be in today,” Tony told her, not quite meeting her eye, “so I’m going to need you to pick up on some of the work she’s got lined up.”
“Oh, of course. Sure. Is she sick?”
“Stomach bug. Most likely got the same thing you had.”
Her cheeks heated. “Of course. Poor thing.”
No mention was made of him coming to her flat, and she wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. Out of nowhere, a flash of Tammy shouting at her about leaving the front door open jumped into her head. There was no chance someone else might have got access to the keys and let themselves in while she was sleeping, was there? Someone who was around her stuff all day, and who had already shown up at her place unannounced.
No, she had no reason to think Tony would do something like that. He’d only ever been kind to her, even if the others in the office thought he was a bit creepy. She didn’t think he was creepy, just a bit socially anxious, though she had to admit him showing up like that on Sunday evening had been weird.
Still, the squirming worm of anxiety was wriggling away at her guts now, and she was struggling to shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
Back at her desk, she fired off a text to Ellen.
You okay? Let me know if I can do anything. X.
No reply came back, so she started on her work, going through emails and working through the pile of paperwork. She was struggling to concentrate, however, her mind jumping back to the open door.
Liv ate lunch at her desk to try to catch up, only using ten minutes while she wolfed down a sandwich to scroll through the apps on her phone, checking out social media. As she scrolled, a post caught her eye. It had been shared by several people she knew as acquaintances.
Local missing woman, London area. Has anyone seen Holly Newie? Didn’t return home on Monday night. Police are increasingly concerned for her safety. Please share.
Olivia stared at the post, her heart in her throat. Was it her? The same blonde she’d seen Michael arguing with last Saturday? It was hard to tell. After all, she’d only managed to catch a glimpse of the other woman. Plenty of women had their hair dyed that same ash blonde at the moment, and for all she knew, it might even be different from the photograph posted here. But if she could convince herself of that, then why did her stomach churn so sickeningly, and her mouth run dry? Her hand was shaking as she held the phone, and she blew up the picture, trying to get a better look. The girl smiled out at a million strangers, completely unaware of what her future held.
Just because she was missing didn’t mean anything bad had happened to her, and it certainly didn’t mean Michael had anything to do with it. He had said he’d bought something from her at one of the stalls, and she’d short-changed him. That was no reason to harm someone.
Unless he’d been lying.
With a fresh sense of urgency, she read through the post again and tried to see any mention of a job. There was none, so she took to Google, trying to find out more about the girl. It didn’t take long to track her down. It seemed Holly Newie was a twenty-three year old post-graduate student. Maybe she did have a job working the stalls at the weekend as a way of paying for her degree, and so what Michael had said was the truth, or maybe this wasn’t the same girl she’d seen Michael arguing with at all, and she was just being paranoid.
She hesitated with her phone, wondering if she should come right out with it and ask him. She could say it in a ‘hey, this is weird’ kind of way, and hope he would dismiss her worries outright. But what if he didn’t? What if he took offence and thought she was accusing him of something, which she wasn’t, was she?
“You okay?”
Callie’s voice made her jump.
“Yeah, sorry, miles away,” she said, quickly tucking away her phone.
“You’ve gone pale.” She frowned suspiciously. “You’re not going to get sick on us again?”
“No, nothing like that. I was just reading about a girl going missing in London, and thinking how frightening that must be. We have to be careful, don’t we? It’s easy to get complacent when you’ve lived here for ages, but it can be a dangerous city.”
Callie was looking at her curiously, and again the thought of how their front door had been left open all night jumped into her head. Tammy had been mad about it. Considering a young woman was missing, she guessed her flatmate had a point for once.
“Well, I hope she shows up.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Liv agreed, wishing that more than anything. At least then she could let go of the annoying niggling feeling in her gut that was telling her something wasn’t quite right.