Chapter Six

Nate stood in the kitchen back at Two Wells Farm. What was Newbold playing at? He wished he’d asked Ruby to show him the package now, but if she had, he wouldn’t have been able to resist opening it. That would have been the action of a PI, and broken every rule in the house-sitting book. He took a deep breath. No use chucking in the game if you were going to get drawn back in at every second turn.

The game … That was exactly what it seemed like. Newbold hadn’t sounded perturbed or surprised when Nate had told him what had been going on. He’d sounded amused.

I did throw the phone away after I’d read the text. Half of me felt I should keep it, in case it was ever something I wanted to show someone, but the other half knew I could never admit to Nate that I’d gone ahead and looked at it, against instructions. I noted the sender of the text’s number before I ditched it, all the same. I wasn’t sure what I was planning, but it seemed sensible not to burn my bridges.

Suddenly the house felt claustrophobic, as though there was something uneasy trapped in there with me. Outside the deep thud of music from the main stage still filled the air. I decided to walk up and down along the pathway, well within range of the house as per Damien’s instructions, and get some space. I locked up and set the alarm.

The day had become overcast, and I was glad of the jumper I’d pulled on over my jeans. Strawberry Fair mid-evening is scuffed around the edges, losing its colour. The face-painted children, clutching their Pegasus helium balloons, had long since gone home in tears. Earlier, through the window, I’d seen a hairy-legged man dressed up as a fairy on top of a pair of stilts, but there was no sign of him either. Audiences for the music had thinned out, with most people huddled round the bars and food stalls, or lolling on the ground. A man dressed all in white was talking earnestly to himself as I went past.

At the first stage I came to, a woman with long black hair, save for one pronounced streak of grey, was dancing alone. She nodded to the music, dipping her knees in time to the beat. As I watched, one of the bangles she was wearing slipped from her wrist onto the ground, but she didn’t seem to notice.

I needed to eat, and staying out here to get something seemed preferable to going back inside and brooding over everything that had happened that day. I went to join the queue for crêpes, peering round at River House as I stepped over a guy rope holding up one of the tents. I was keeping it in sight, complying with the letter of Damien Newbold’s instructions. The bottom half of the house was masked by a caravan, a tent and a bouncy castle, deserted now in the gathering dusk. Even so, there were still a number of people around, and it didn’t seem likely that anyone would do anything worse than having a pee in the front garden. The queues for the Portaloos were still long. All that beer had to go somewhere.

At last I reached the front of the crêpes queue and watched as the lady running the stall poured the batter over a large, round hotplate, swishing the mixture neatly into shape with her spatula. Hot fat hissed and steamed into the cooling air. She filled my crêpe with cheese and mushrooms and, as soon as I’d handed over my money, I turned to face towards the house again. I could move just a little closer, then eat and watch the world go by at the same time.

I sat down on the grass, hard up against a tent in my own little space, away from a group who were lying on their backs, looking up at the sky, passing a cigarette between them. The smell of canvas, crêpe and tobacco filled my nostrils.

Suddenly my attention was caught by a couple holding hands. The female half was the girl with curly blonde hair from next door. She leant her head against her boyfriend’s shoulder like someone who’d had too much of a good thing. I glanced around, but I couldn’t see the sad housemate with the long, dark hair. My mind flicked to Mr Herringbone Suit. Perhaps she was holed up with him, somewhere in that big house of theirs. I pictured her – rather fascinated by his seriousness and maturity – and him … Well, I knew what he would be fascinated by.

The noise of someone throwing up jolted me out of my reverie; the sound was uncomfortably close to where I was sitting. I glanced round and shifted further way. Thank God I’d already finished my crêpe.

In spite of everything going on around me, the text message kept creeping back into my mind. I should never have looked. It was as though I’d walked into Damien Newbold’s life – stepped into his shoes almost – and I wasn’t enjoying it. Should I dial the message sender when I got back? Not using my mobile, certainly; that wasn’t a direct link I wanted to set up. I could use the house phone. But then whoever had sent the package would assume that Damien was there, and had got the message. If they answered, I could tell them what was going on, and where to stuff it, but if they just let it ring they’d be thinking they’d won, and he’d taken their bait.

And then maybe they’d make their next move …

Always assuming the message had been meant for him. At the back of my mind something nagged. Could someone have known I was coming? Someone who sent the package knowing that Damien Newbold was never going to be the one receiving the parcel, getting woken by the alarm?

It was time to go back to the house really, but I put it off, and went to get myself a hot chocolate from one of the vans. The woman at the hatch yawned as she took my money, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand before chucking the coins into a tin. The wind was high now, making me shiver, and I cupped my hands around the drink, grateful for its warmth.

I was being paranoid. It was unlikely that Damien had bothered to tell any of his contacts I was at River House, and Steph was the only person I’d told. Other than that it was just Nate who knew.

But still I wondered. Made you look. It was the wording that did it. Damien Newbold would have been bound to look. There would have been no triumph for the sender in achieving that end. What else was he going to do? If he’d opened the thing at all he’d quickly have seen all there was to see.

But in my case it was different. The package hadn’t even been addressed to me and, as a result, the alarm had worked a treat. And then I’d been unable to resist opening it up at last; reading the message, allowing myself to get intimidated. Now that was a reason for the sender to crow.

Made you look.

And suddenly I thought of Luke. It was his fault I was stuck here, the stupid, shallow, selfish little shit. So on top of everything else, for whatever reason, I was now starting to feel scared. My eyes stung, and I blinked away the beginnings of tears as I finished my drink. My watch said quarter to ten. It really was time to be getting back.

Moments later I was standing at the top of the steps to the door of River House, fumbling with the lock. Inside, my hand hovered over the keypad for the alarm, my brain trying to make sense of something that jarred.

It took me a second to get it. The alarm wasn’t sounding its warning beep, the one that tells you you need to key in the number to deactivate the system.

I paused there in the doorway, my brain trying to make sense of the situation. I couldn’t have set it when I went out. Except I was sure that I had.

I looked around the hallway in the gloom. Everything was still. Perhaps the alarm had malfunctioned. Well, that would be just typical. I smiled inwardly. That must be it, because I was damn sure I had set it.

I closed the door behind me and switched on the hall light, taking off my boots and tucking them under the side table.

It was as I put my jacket back on the coat stand that I heard the noise. The tiniest sound: the faint creak of a floorboard. I stood motionless. Someone was in the house.

I was still within a few feet of the front door. I could make a dash for it. Get outside and use my mobile to call the police. I was turning on the ball of one foot, trying not to make a sound, when the study door started to open, slowly, silent on its hinges.

A woman stood looking at me: long, wild dark hair, her eyes flashing with amusement and malice. She held a cigarette in one hand, and a torn scrap of paper in the other. ‘So I know who you are now,’ she said, waving her cigarette in the direction of my file of information from Nate Bastable, which sat on the hall table.

And I knew who she was too. Woman number four. The woman not to be messed with. This was the woman in the portrait at the head of Damien Newbold’s bed.