There was something in his voice. Something I didn’t like.
I spun towards him, a sucking contraction in my chest. ‘You can’t hurt him.’
‘Me? You involved him in this. You’re the one who said he wouldn’t go away.’
‘You’ve seen him,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘You can tell what he’s like.’
‘And he’s seen me inside your house. That doesn’t change.’
I whipped my head around, checking on John.
Time seemed to lag.
John blinked back at me, his lips and brow twisted, his jaw slack, his pupils dulled and mired in his own tragic mental loop.
I ached for him.
This wasn’t the first time he’d turned up like this. Sometimes he was worse. He could be agitated or angry or frightened. Sometimes I was the one who helped him home, but usually it was Sam.
Sam was just naturally good with John. He was patient and understanding. He was never patronizing. His academic expertise wasn’t in dementia but he’d read up on it following John’s diagnosis and he’d learned enough to help.
You have to sense that something’s wrong, I thought, staring imploringly at John now. You have to get that Sam isn’t here and somebody else is. Can’t you see the state I’m in?
But if he did sense it, he didn’t show it. Or more likely he was locked in his own bewildered angst.
‘Outside,’ Donovan said, pushing me forwards onto the damp concrete. ‘Stay close.’
The world seemed eerily hushed. Full darkness had almost fallen and the temperature with it.
A loud clatter made me jump and I looked to my right to see that one of the builders had tossed a tool bag into the back of his van, slamming the cargo doors closed. They would be nearing the end of their working day and leaving soon.
‘Guess I’d better lock up,’ Donovan said. ‘You can’t be too careful these days.’
He fished in his coat pocket for Sam’s keys and fitted them into the lock on the front door.
The tumblers tumbled. The snap lock engaged.
—click.
The sound seemed to snap something inside me and I didn’t speak as Donovan spun away from the door, pocketed Sam’s keys and showed me his phone again. The call remained live. It had already lasted for more than four minutes.
Somebody is definitely listening in.
They’re paying close attention.
‘Same rules as before,’ he told me. ‘No shouting. No running. No bullshit. No tricks.’
I prodded at the cut on my lip with my tongue. My sweat had dried across my forehead, cooling on my skin.
‘Break the rules and you’ll get other people hurt.’
Leaning sideways, he made a show of looking past me at John, then he raised his phone towards his chin and cupped it in his palm under his mouth.
‘We’re outside,’ he said, to whoever was on the other end. ‘Do not let him out of your sight.’
I tried – and failed – to hide the shudder that passed through me.
Then I started.
The doors on the cab of the builder’s van had slapped shut with a sound like gunshots. A few seconds later there was the throaty rasp and blurt of a diesel engine before the van swung out from the kerb and pulled away.
I tried not to let it bother me. Tried not to feel abandoned and alone.
Other people would be coming home soon, I told myself. But secretly I knew that wasn’t true. Many of the people who lived here had demanding jobs in the City that often required them to work late into the evening.
‘Do you know where my house is?’ John asked me.
‘It’s next door, John,’ I said. ‘I’m Lucy. Your neighbour. I live with Sam, remember?’
He stared at me blankly.
‘It’s just next door,’ I said again. ‘I’ll show you.’
I reached out stiffly and guided him by his shoulders towards the gate at the end of our path. His bones felt brittle under my hands. His steps were palsied. His plastic shopping bag banged repeatedly against his shuffling legs.
Even though I couldn’t run away or shout for help, I was aware that every step I took was being recorded by the doorbell camera. As Donovan followed me along the path, I wondered if he knew that, too.
Somehow, the metal gate seemed to burn my hand as I pushed it aside and then we were out on the pavement together.
‘Wait.’
Donovan signalled for me to stay put as he carried out a quick sweep of the street.
While he did so, I glanced down at the pavement to my side.
And stopped.
‘No cracks,’ I heard myself say.
He peered at me as if I wasn’t making any sense.
‘No cracks.’ I pointed. ‘And no uneven flagstones. No tree roots poking through.’
‘What are you talking about?’
But I didn’t reply.
I was thinking. Remembering. Reinterpreting what I’d seen earlier with what I now knew.
I thought of how the schoolgirl who’d fallen off her scooter had been crying when I’d come outside and found her with Donovan kneeling next to her. How her breath had hitched and her eyes had brimmed with tears when she’d pulled her wrist free of his grasp. I’d thought he was helping her, but—
‘She was afraid of you,’ I said, seeing it clearly for the first time. ‘The girl on the scooter. I thought she was crying because she’d fallen and hurt herself, but that wasn’t it, was it?’
Because I hadn’t actually seen it for myself, had I? I’d seen the before and after.
There had been the footage of her scooting along on our doorbell camera with her mother following after her with her attention on her phone. And then when I’d come outside I’d seen Donovan tending to the girl.
But I’d only heard her shriek. I hadn’t seen her fall.
‘You pushed her,’ I said.
‘Did I?’
‘Why would you—?’
But I stopped myself because I knew the answer to that question.
When I’d come outside, I’d seen exactly what he’d wanted me to see. I’d seen him caring for a helpless schoolgirl.
I’d immediately thought he was kind and considerate. I’d half convinced myself he was a doctor. Someone who wouldn’t present any threat if I invited him in.
He’d played it very carefully, very skilfully.
When I’d told him that Bethany was running late, he’d allowed me to believe that he was prepared to wait for her. But then he’d implied he had to be somewhere else and that he didn’t have long before he needed to go.
Which was obviously a lie.
So much of it was a lie.
I felt as if someone had kicked my legs from under me.
‘What if I’d seen you?’
‘Seen me?’ He pouted and glanced back at the doorbell for a moment. ‘Funny thing about cameras. Once you know they’re there, they’ll only see what you want them to see. Word of advice: you and Sam should really be a lot more careful with your passwords.’
As I watched, he toggled his phone from the ongoing call to his contact to an app showing the live feed from our doorbell camera. It was the same app I had on my phone. I could see real-time footage of myself, Donovan and John at the end of our path. He must have logged into our system using our username and password.
‘Amazing how simple they make it to delete recordings,’ Donovan mused, meanwhile thumbing a menu option and opting to delete all footage from the previous two hours. ‘Probably best if I switch it off for now, wouldn’t you say?’
I shuddered, trying to ride out the hit he’d landed.
‘She saw you,’ I said. ‘The schoolgirl. And her mum. They’ll remember you. They can describe you.’
‘Maybe I don’t care if they do. Seems to me we were still out here on the street when they left, weren’t we?’
‘There’s Bethany, too.’
He hummed. ‘For now.’
And then he strode on along the pavement, leaving me staring back towards the outside of our home.
I felt numb, powerless.
The indoor lights were glowing from behind the shutter blinds and through the fanlight window above our front door. Oblongs of warm yellow shone out from the French doors of Sam’s attic study, throwing the topiary on the balcony into sharp relief.
To an outsider, it probably looked like a perfectly pleasant, perfectly blameless house.
‘Lucy?’ He swung open the gate leading towards John’s property. ‘Shall we?’