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Stacy could smell it as soon as she pushed the door open. Inside, everything was dimmed into shadows after the bright afternoon outside. The words on her tongue died unsaid. She struggled for new ones, squinting, forcing her eyes to adjust. The others jostled behind her.
‘Stacy? Thank god you’re here. You have to get help.’
It was Darryl – just where the hell had he been? They’d looked all over – and he was crouched over something at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Darryl?’ she asked, shock stupefying her brain. ‘What’s going on? What is it?’ The others pushed in behind her, spread out.
‘For god’s sakes, call for an ambulance!’ Darryl crouched lower over the shape on the floor, and Stacy knew what the smell was. Blood. She thought she heard the beating of wings overhead.
‘Marcia?’ she asked. ‘Marcia’s okay?’
Darryl was sobbing. ‘No, she’s bloody well not, someone call a fucking ambulance.’
That shocked her into action. Her sneakers skidded over the parquet floor and she fell to her knees over Marcia. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
His voice was strangled. ‘She fell.’
‘She’s bleeding.’ Stacy’s hands fluttered over her friend, patting, prodding, trying to find the broken places. Marcia stirred, opened wide, shocked eyes, stared up at her.
‘My baby,’ she said, and her eyes slid closed again.
‘I’ve called for the ambulance,’ someone said, stepping closer, and Stacy recognised Deirdre’s sandals, then she was kneeling by her side. ‘Don’t move her, okay? She might have broken something – back or neck – in the fall. Where’s the blood coming from?’
It was odd hearing Deirdre’s voice so strong, competent. ‘I don’t know,’ Stacy said. ‘There’s no wound.’ None that she could find, anyway.
‘She said something about a baby?’
Stacy nodded, and there was a gasp from behind her. ‘Marcia was pregnant?’ It was Martin’s voice.
‘I think that’s what the blood is,’ Deirdre said. ‘I think she’s losing it. Someone get me a blanket or something to put over her. She’ll be going into shock. We have to keep her warm.’
Darryl stumbled away, and Stacy thought he was going to fetch something, but it was James who thrust a rug into Deirdre’s waiting hands.
‘How long’s the ambulance going to be?’ Stacy asked as Deirdre smoothed the blanket over Marcia’s unmoving body.
‘Not long,’ Deirdre soothed, and put a hand on Stacy’s. She grasped it and held on, tears blurring her vision.
‘She wanted to leave,’ Stacy said. ‘She was packing to go home.’ Deirdre’s fingers squeezed hers. Stacy returned the pressure, then got to her feet. ‘Where’s Darryl?’ she asked the others, who were still huddled in an uncertain knot by the front door.
‘He went in there,’ Martin said, indicating the dining room with all their computers and gear in it.
Stacy nodded and pushed past into the room. Fury was welling up inside, a red tide that matched the spreading pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. She saw Darryl slumped into a chair and planted her hands on her hips so she wouldn’t thump the man.
‘Just what the fuck happened, Darryl?’ she asked. ‘Where have you been for the past hour? And how long has Marcia been lying at the bottom of the stairs?’
Darryl raised a pale face and blinked at her. ‘You think I had something to do with this? It was an accident! She was like that when I came in.’ He waved a hand towards the door then covered his face with it. ‘She was lying there, like a broken doll. Then you got here.’
Her heart ratcheting around behind her ribs, Stacy stared at her boss. She hadn’t meant to accuse him of anything. Why was he acting like she was? She ran a hand through her hair.
‘Jesus Christ, this is a mess,’ she said. Darryl just sat there looking at her, eyes bruised.
‘I can hear the ambulance,’ Martin said at last, and Stacy turned around, nodded at him, and went back to where Marcia lay still and unmoving at the bottom of the stairs. She crouched down next to Deirdre, feeling the warmth from her arm against hers.
‘Is she going to be all right?’ she asked.
‘I hope so,’ Deirdre whispered. ‘But she’s going to lose the baby, I think.’
Leaning forward, Stacy stroked the hair out of her friend’s face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry about all of this.’
‘All of what?’ Deirdre asked. ‘What’s going on here, Stacy?’
The ambulance howled outside the front door, and a moment later, there were running footsteps, and Stacy was being pushed aside as the EMT’s bent over Marcia’s broken body.
Everything blurred and Deirdre led her to stand out of the way, watching as the two men lifted Marcia gently onto a back board, and then the gurney. She answered their questions but as soon as they were uttered, she forgot her answers.
‘Is she going to be okay?’ she asked.
Darryl stumbled out of the dining room. ‘I’m going with her,’ he said. ‘I’m her partner.’ He didn’t mention the baby.
Five minutes more, and the ambulance was gone, Darryl bundled into the back of it with Marcia, and Stacy was left looking down at the red pool staining the floor. Deirdre touched her arm, and she jumped.
‘Come into the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea or something. You’re in shock a bit too, I think.’
Stacy blinked at her girlfriend. Deirdre was almost a different person in a crisis. Strong, caring, competent. What happened to her flightiness? Was that just an act? She allowed Deirdre to tow her away from the seeping bloodstain and into the kitchen, where she was sat down at the big pine table. Deirdre had been a wonder while she was going through the whole breast cancer fight. Always at her side, helping the nurses at the hospital, holding her hair back when she was sick – until it fell out, that was, and then she’d taken the razor gently from Stacy’s fingers and shaved the rest of it off.
‘Tea or coffee?’ Deirdre asked.
‘Why can’t you be like this all the time?’ Stacy blurted.
‘Tea, then,’ Deirdre said. She looked around the room, set a teapot on the bench, and left the room. Stacy heard her asking the others if they wanted a cup of tea. A moment later, she was back and stood there, staring at Stacy.
‘What is it?’ Stacy asked.
‘Jeremy found something,’ Deirdre said. ‘You better go look.’ She covered her mouth as though she was going to be sick.
A second later, Stacy was pushing past, going into the other room, looking questioningly at Jeremy. He was seated in front of his three computer screens, his tan looking like it was about to slide off his face.
‘Deirdre said you found something?’
He nodded, gestured at the computer screen in front of him. Stacy sidled around to stand beside him, the professor moving to make way for her. Deirdre went and stood behind Martin, hand still pressed against mouth.
‘What is it?’ Stacy asked, though she already had a fair idea. More a question of who. ‘Darryl?’ she asked. He was the only one there. The rest of them, they’d been together outside.
But Jeremy was shaking his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘You can see Darryl, but he’s not the problem.’
Stacy had been sure he was going to say Darryl was on camera pushing Marcia down the stairs, and she stared at him, simultaneously wondering why she’d been in such a hurry to think her boss capable of any such thing, and why she was so sure it hadn’t been an accident. After all, people fell down stairs all the time.
‘Watch,’ Jeremy commanded, and clicked the mouse to rerun the recording. The screen split in two, one showing the view from the landing down the stairs, the other looking down the foyer from the front door. In that one the stairs were in the distance, but not so far away that Stacy couldn’t see Marcia appear on the landing, coming down from the first floor. She saw her pause there, and her mouth opened into a cry of surprise. She was looking back up the stairs the way she’d come. One hand groped for the bannister.
What happened next was so fast, Stacy found herself leaning closer to the screen. ‘Play that again,’ she said. Jeremy obliged. She watched the replay in silence.
‘I can slow it down,’ Jeremy said, and in a moment, the video was running again, the image a slow stutter.
‘What is it?’ Stacy asked, and looked around at the others, her eyes settling first on Martin, then on Deirdre. ‘It can’t be,’ she said, wanting to see the same refusal in their eyes.
‘Of course it can’t be!’ Deirdre said. ‘I was outside with you lot. You know that. I was with you the whole time.’ She backed up a couple of steps, hit the wall, wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I’m cold,’ she said, inconsequently.
‘Of course it’s not Deirdre,’ Martin said. ‘You know what it is.’
Stacy looked back at the screen. Jeremy had frozen it and she stared into the blurred face of her girlfriend, hovering over Marcia’s shoulder, caught for a brief moment face-on. She shook her head.
‘It can’t be,’ she said at last. ‘There has to be something else happening. A rational explanation.’
‘There is no rational explanation,’ Martin said and pointed at the screen. ‘The proof is right there. I told you she looked like Deirdre.’
‘It’s not me,’ Deirdre repeated.
And it wasn’t, of course. This girl had feathers.