The following Saturday morning I woke up early feeling edgy and out of sorts. Too much time sitting around worrying, I diagnosed, plus nerves about whether I was ready for the trial I was starting on Monday. I prescribed myself a long swim followed by brunch with Adele. Later I might fit in a trip to Borough Market to buy something strange and exotic to cook for dinner. Normal, normal, normal, except that the edges of my day were shadowy with fear. I was trying to hide from it – and from Webster – without admitting to myself that it was a factor in my decision-making. But the pool was near my flat, and there would be safety in numbers at brunch, and I could get home before dark if I was cooking for myself. What I wanted to do just happened to correspond with what I had to do, I told myself, and knew it for a lie.
It was a beautiful day, clear and bright, and I jogged down the steps from my flat. A voice greeted me warmly.
‘Going to the gym?’ My new neighbour was planting herbs in hand-painted pots, and had paused, trowel in hand, to talk to me.
‘How did you guess?’
‘Which gym do you go to?’
‘Why do you ask? Are you thinking of joining one?’
Helen shrugged. She was comfortably built rather than athletic, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a gym bunny. ‘I need to do a bit more exercise. This area is quite busy. I used to run, but I’m not sure I want to start again with all the traffic.’
‘I’m not sure I can recommend mine.’ Not least because I don’t want to see my over-friendly new neighbour when I’m there, I thought. But I knew it wasn’t kind, and the hurt in Helen’s eyes, quickly hidden, made me feel awful. ‘Look, I’ll pick up a leaflet for you when I’m there.’
She clasped her hands under her chin. ‘Thank you! That would be wonderful.’
It’s just a leaflet, not the Koh-I-Noor.
‘Bye, Helen.’ I closed the gate behind me and went on my way, shaking my head.
I spent a happy hour in the swimming pool, taking pleasure in being faster than the splashy men who hogged the lanes. In the water, with my cap and goggles, I was anonymous and unobserved. I cut through the water like a fish, pushing myself harder and harder as my limbs tired, losing myself in pure physical exertion. After I got out of the pool and changed, I set off down the street, and had gone quite some distance before I remembered the leaflet. Because I was being nice I doubled back to get it, but I did it with very bad grace.
Brunch involved bottomless mimosas, Adele and two other friends I hadn’t seen for ages. Adele had fully intended to spend her time holding forth about her ex and their break-up, which I had already heard more than once, so I was relieved that Ciara and Eve were there. Then it transpired that Eve had just got engaged to her boyfriend of five months and Ciara had bought a flat since I’d last seen her. I spent a lot of brunch trying to catch the waiter’s eye for a refill of our drinks as Adele and I were out-adulted at every conversational turn.
‘And what about you, Ingrid?’ Ciara, having finally run out of things to say about bathroom fittings, turned her attention to me. ‘What’s going on with you?’
‘Nothing much.’ Except for the person who is maybe trying to kill me, as usual. I pushed Webster back out of my mind. ‘Work is fine. I’m doing a robbery next week.’
‘That always sounds so funny,’ Eve said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Like you’re actually planning to commit a robbery.’
I smiled politely. If she thought that was weird, she should hear barristers talking about their cases, since the convention was that you spoke as if you and the client were one. I’ve admitted stealing a hundred grand from my employer … You’re on CCTV punching him in the face … My story is that she provoked me …
‘Are you seeing anyone?’ Ciara asked.
I shook my head. ‘No one.’
‘Come on, Ingrid. You really need to start dating again. Forget about Mark.’
His name made me freeze in the middle of picking up my glass. Ciara looked embarrassed.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. But … maybe it’s time to move on.’
‘Easy for you to say.’ I said it with a smile to hide that I really meant it: of course they’d had romantic ups and downs but they’d never moved from happiness through fear to total desolation the way I had.
‘You need to meet someone.’ Eve tilted her head to one side, deeply sympathetic. ‘You deserve someone nice in your life.’
‘I think so too,’ I said flippantly.
‘I thought Paul was nice, but then he turned out to be a wanker.’
As Adele finally took control of the conversation and began enumerating Paul’s many shortcomings, I drained my glass.
Inevitably, brunch modulated into a shopping trip that took up most of the rest of the day, ending up with sickly-sweet cocktails in a hotel on Park Lane. I postponed Borough Market, with regret, and settled for picking up some shopping on the way home. Day-drinking had left me listless and headache-y, and I found myself craving comfort food. Brunch had been a long time and many shops ago. I loaded my basket with the ingredients for lamb ragú with pappardelle: solid, peasant cooking full of flavour and life.
When I reached the gate I put in the code warily, checking that Helen was nowhere to be seen before I committed myself to the courtyard. I was carrying a huge bunch of blush-coloured roses and eucalyptus leaves that Adele had insisted on buying for me, my handbag and an overloaded bag-for-life from the supermarket that was failing to live up to its name. I hurried up to my door and juggled bags and flowers while I tried to fit the key into the lock. As I stepped inside, my phone started to ring. A frantic pat-down told me it wasn’t in my jeans or my coat. I dumped everything on to the table and the grocery bag split along one seam, shedding its contents. A tin of chopped tomatoes rolled off the edge of the table and I caught the mince as it tried to follow suit.
‘Piss off,’ I said to everything, and got to my phone in time for it to stop ringing. No number displayed. No message.
‘And you too.’ I threw my phone onto the sofa in disgust, and stopped, unsure of myself.
Something was wrong. Something had changed.
I turned my head slowly, cautiously, trying to make sense of the feeling I had. It was the same fear I’d had in the Temple; it made no sense to be scared, but I was. The air was still and there wasn’t a sound except for the familiar scratches and thumps from the pigeons that roosted on the roof tiles.
How had I left the place? Neat. Tidy. I had shed a lot of possessions over the past few years, some of it the natural attrition that comes from moving frequently, some of it lost from my old life, thanks to John Webster. I had come to like living with enough of everything rather than a surplus, the minimum instead of clutter. I looked around at the table, the chairs neatly tucked underneath it, the sofa. There wasn’t a cushion out of place or a wrinkle in the rug. The bathroom door stood open, the shower curtain hanging in folds that matched my memory of how I’d drawn it out of my way, my hairbrush balanced precariously on the edge of the sink where I’d left it. The kitchen then: breakfast things on the draining board stacked the way I stacked them, chopping boards leaning against the wall.
What had made me edgy? A smell? A sound?
Slowly, reluctantly, I climbed up the ladder to look at the bed.
It looked untouched, the covers smooth, the pillows as plump as I liked. But it wasn’t quite right, somehow. I reached out for a handful of the duvet and drew it off the bed.
Up near the pillows – just about where my heart would be when I lay down to sleep – there was a smear of something reddish brown.
Blood.
I dropped the duvet and took a few steps back, my eyes fixed on it, my heart hammering as if the mark were the threat, and not whoever had put it on my bed.