Emilia watches the house on the corner, her eyes narrowing as the front door swings open.
Is this finally it? Is she finally going to catch him leaving?
She has been staked outside this house in Hampstead for three days, waiting, assured by the man paying her that if his wife is having an affair, it’s happening during the day, while he’s at work. But she’s yet to see the man he’s concerned about. Every day she has seen her, the wife, leaving the house, closing the pale rose-coloured front door behind her, and descending the three white stone steps to the pavement with such grace it’s as if she’s floating. Her chic bob is always styled to perfection, her clothes classic and streamlined, large sunglasses placed just so on the end of her nose. And Emilia has followed, taking photographs of her going for coffee with friends, going to yoga. Having lunch. But no affair. Not one that is visible, anyway. Her life seems perfect, she seems perfect. But her husband tells a different story. The story of a manipulator, a woman who will smile to your face and then stab you in the back. Maybe it’s all in his head. Maybe his judgement of her is blinding him, convincing him that she must be doing something wrong, that her change in behaviour must be because of another man and couldn’t possibly be because of him. It wouldn’t be the first time.
She leans forward, her camera poised, her vision focused down the lens, ready to capture the secrets that are hiding behind the flawless facade of this Hampstead address. The door slams and—
Emilia slumps back in her seat.
It’s their son, Harry. Eleven years old, rucksack almost the size of him strapped to his back, on his way to rugby.
Emilia lowers her camera, setting it down on the passenger seat. This job has been more challenging than most, the boredom more prevalent as her mind is consumed with thoughts of the Confession Room.
She has continued checking every day, but there have been no more posts. The morning after the confession, as she staked out this house for the second day, she checked it on her mobile, but became quickly frustrated as it glitched and buffered. She had only ever looked at it on her computer before as part of her nightly routine. But the temptation is so high. And no matter what she has done to distract herself since, it has been there, the words like an echo in her ears.
Murder. London. Hayley James, Luca Franco.
What if it is real? What if it has actually happened and their bodies are lying somewhere? What if their families, their partners or children, woke up this morning with worry in their stomach, with a creeping unease that they haven’t spoken to Luca in a while, or Hayley hasn’t called like she normally would? What if it wasn’t a joke?
A car door slams and Emilia lifts her chin. She reaches again for her camera, lifting it quickly and then snapping several photographs in succession.
A man is walking up to the house, throwing his arm behind him casually to lock his matt-black Mercedes. He trots up the steps to the house. But he doesn’t knock. He simply stands there. Within seconds, the door opens narrowly and he slips inside.
He was waiting for the son to leave. That Mercedes has been parked there for close to half an hour. He’s been biding his time until he could go inside. How didn’t she notice him before? She’s too distracted.
Emilia rolls her eyes and sighs. She had so wished that this was a case of a paranoid, controlling husband. She had so wished that this time her client was wrong. But in her time as a private investigator she has come to realize that there is usually truth in suspicion. Smoke. Fire.
She notes down the registration plate – now is her favourite part, the part she truly excels at: finding out who he is. Turning a stranger into a fully formed person. Without the confines of the police, there is so much you can find out about a person. And she’s good at it.
Emilia can find anyone.
‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything else, love?’
Emilia’s mum sets down a large mug of tea on the table in front of her, a bony hand squeezing her shoulder.
‘No, Mum, thank you.’ She reaches for the mug, relishing the heat burning through the porcelain. ‘This is perfect.’
‘I can get you some food together – if I’d known you were coming I –’
‘No, don’t be silly. I just wanted to pop in to see you.’
Her dad reaches out, placing a gentle hand on her forearm which rests on the table. ‘Quiet day today?’
‘I found what I was looking for sooner than I thought.’
‘Another affair?’ her mum whispers with a raised brow.
‘Yes,’ Emilia nods. ‘Another affair …’
‘Will you take a little break now?’
‘No, Mum.’
‘You could teach – what about that training job that your old Inspector mentioned?’
‘Teaching was Sophie’s thing, Mum,’ Emilia says, trying to prevent the words from biting. ‘That was her – she wanted to help people –’
‘And so do you –’
‘Yes, but in a different way.’
Her parents share a glance across the table: so subtle that they think she won’t catch it. But she does.
‘I spoke to Ciaran a couple of days ago,’ she whispers.
The brief glimmer of tension in the air instantly evaporates. Her dad restrains his reaction, responding with a gentle tilt of his head. But her mum’s face is brightening by the second, a grin slowly stretching across her face. She had loved Ciaran. So had her dad. But it was her mum who was devastated when Emilia told them that she had ended their relationship. Three years over – just like that. She just hadn’t been able to comprehend it. But her dad seemed to understand in his own way. He could see that anyone being too close was just too painful for Emilia. That the sudden absence of Sophie in her world had created a gaping vacuum – a black hole which was ready to destroy everything.
‘How is he?’ her mum asks, blinking rapidly. ‘What’s he been up to? Is he with –’
‘Marie, for God’s sake, let her speak.’
Emilia lifts her mug to her mouth and sips, peering at her parents over the rim, enjoying the warmth of their back-and-forth, even when they are poking at each other, her mum insisting that it’s just an innocent question, her dad responding with the fact that no question she asks is ever innocent.
‘Oi, you two, stop it. It’s not a big deal … I just reached out to him because … because of this thing I saw online. And we had a chat and that was it.’
‘Is he still in your old team?’ her dad asks.
‘Yes … he’s a sergeant now.’
‘Good for him.’
Her mum wrinkles her nose, glancing uneasily at her dad. ‘How long has it been, love?’
‘Since what?’
‘Since you last spoke to him?’
Emilia blinks down at her lap. ‘Nine months, I think,’ she whispers. ‘We split a week or two after I left the police and we haven’t talked since. He … he tried at first and I just ignored him …’ She shrugs, forcing the casual gesture as her eyes sting with tears. ‘If he never spoke to me again, I’d have deserved it.’
‘Don’t say that, Emilia,’ her dad says, his voice stern. ‘You were going through so much. It was such a huge loss and in such a violent way –’
‘It was a loss for him too. He loved Sophie. And he was there when –’
The words falter. Her head collapses into her hands, her shoulders shaking. She shouldn’t talk about it – not that day, the day it happened. Not the way she was found.
They had been on the way to an arrest when Sophie tried to ring her. Her personal phone had vibrated, but Emilia had glanced at it and pressed the side button, sending her sister to voicemail. It wasn’t until an hour or so later, when she and Ciaran returned to the car, that she saw that there were six missed calls. One after the other. But still, she thought nothing of it. She and Sophie spoke all the time, calling each other about the most banal events that made up their day. And they had plans for that evening – a friend’s hen night. She was probably just calling over some emergency with a costume. Sophie had always been that way, forgetting the details and looking to Emilia for the answers.
But then the call came over the radio. A break-in. A lone female. The phone call to the emergency services ending abruptly.
And then the address came through in a muffled blur. Their address.
Her sister. It was her sister.
And she had tried to call Emilia.
Ciaran raced them to the house, weaving through traffic, the tyres screeching, Emilia screaming at him to go faster – but they were too late.
The front door was ajar.
They had pushed into the home she and Sophie had shared. The floor lamp in the living room had fallen on to its side, into the hallway. The pile of washing that Emilia had placed on the bottom step this morning, was now scattered. They had darted around the downstairs rooms before Ciaran had tried to stop her from bolting upstairs, but she threw herself past him, launching herself up them two at a time.
And there she was. At the threshold of her room, her feet sticking out on to the landing. A pool of blood beneath her, soaking into the carpet. It was too late. She was gone.
Ciaran had dropped to his knees with Emilia, catching her before she hit the floor. He cradled her to his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders, rocking her as the wails burst out of her, the sound of sirens tingeing the distant air.
And every so often, her strangled cries: ‘I could have saved her … I could have saved her.’
The music starts and Emilia presses the button on the side of her phone, blaring the volume until it is echoing around the bathroom, bouncing off the dark green tiles. She steps into the shower and turns it on, rotating the valve until the water is so hot it turns her skin pink, her cheeks flushing – anything to burn away the guilt that the memory of Sophie has brought to the surface.
She shakes her head, then forces herself to sing along to the music and scrub herself with her favourite body wash – the expensive one her best friend Jenny bought her. It smells like lilies. Look after yourself, Jenny said. Self-care, and all that bollocks. It’s important.
I really need to call her, Emilia thinks. It’s been too long again.
She pauses as the music from her phone suddenly fades away, a low vibration humming from the basin.
Someone is calling her.
She tilts her chin up towards the water and lets it spray on to her face for a few seconds, her eyes closed, breathing in the scent of lilies. The buzzing ends and the music begins again.
Opening the shower door, she pulls her towel around her, walking towards the mirror as steam swirls around her. She wipes the glass with her arm and picks up her phone, tapping the screen with her wet fingers.
Three missed calls: Ciaran.
She catches herself in the mirror – there’s a faint smile with a hint of something she hasn’t seen in a while. He said he would call. And he has.
She dresses quickly, wondering what Ciaran might have to say.
She stops the music, her flat falling quiet except for the serious voice of the news reporter on the six o’clock news floating in from the other room. She inhales deeply through pursed lips, holding her breath as she navigates to his name. But her fingers still as the newsreader’s voice catches her ear with two familiar names.
‘… Hayley James and Luca Franco.’