I grabbed the railings before my chin struck the painted barbs.
An arm swooped around me from the side, pulling me upright.
Sam.
He stared into my face, his eyes flickering rapidly with shock and concern.
‘Oh, thank God!’ I said, throwing myself at him, hugging him, inhaling his scent.
It was such an enormous relief to see him. I felt myself sag.
Then I stiffened and pushed him away, bracing myself against his arms as I rose up on my toes and scanned the street in both directions.
‘Lucy? What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘Is someone with you? Have you spotted someone following you?’
My eyes scoured the darkness and the pools of street lighting, searching for a lone figure watching from the shadows, behind a tree or a car.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Someone’s been watching you. Following you home. Have you seen anyone?’
‘What?’
‘They were in your support group.’
He looked at me as if I was making no sense.
His dark hair was gelled and spiked, as always. His face was placid, unshaved. He was wearing his worn corduroy jacket over a dark plaid shirt. His backpack was slung over one shoulder.
I needed him to understand how urgent this was.
‘They took your house keys!’
Sam stared at me, perplexed. Then he lowered his backpack from his shoulder, unzipped the front pouch and delved a hand inside.
‘But my keys are right here.’
I stared down as he opened his palm and I felt something inside me loosen and shift.
The Lego Luke Skywalker key fob. The four keys.
A roaring static in my head.
A plunge of confusion.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, that can’t be right.’
I stared back at the house, at the open front door and the light shining out and the stillness and silence emanating from within.
A sense of unreality gripped me.
But Donovan had shown me Sam’s keys. I’d seen them with my own eyes. I’d held them in my fist.
Donovan could have had Sam’s keys copied, I told myself. He could have had a new set cut. He could have matched Sam’s Lego key fob.
That must have been what happened.
The pain in my head was getting worse. A torrent of synapses firing and shorting.
I looked along the street again. It seemed inert. Empty.
Either the person following Sam was hiding or – was this possible? – there had never been anyone following him in the first place.
Could Donovan have lied?
I thought about it as Sam zipped his keys into his backpack again.
Donovan could have deceived me, I supposed. I’d only ever heard the voice on the end of the phone once. And the voice I’d heard had been digitized. Faked?
What about the Tube announcements?
Again, I supposed it was possible Donovan could have pre-recorded them, played them back to me, used them to help create the impression that Sam was in danger and thereby keep me under his control.
It would have required some planning but not too much. He’d already hacked into our doorbell, so he obviously had some tech know-how. And this entire mess was clearly something Donovan had been building up to for some time.
Was any of it genuine?
‘What happened to your head?’ Sam asked me. ‘Lucy, are you bleeding? And your hands!’ He took hold of my wrists, angling them in the streetlight, staring in wonder at the blood on my fingers, black and sticky as tar. ‘What happened to you?’
‘There’s a man in the house,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘A man called Donovan. In the living room. He came for the viewing. It was just me and him because Bethany was running late and he said he’d been looking for me, searching for me.’
‘Why? I don’t—’
‘I don’t know, Sam!’ I bounced on my feet, checking the street again. ‘He keeps talking about a roof. It doesn’t make any sense. Can you call the police?’
‘Shouldn’t I just—?’
‘He drugged Bethany! He’s shut her in the attic cupboard.’
His face fell. He looked horrified.
‘Sam, please. Just call them.’
I wrestled with his jacket. Wrenched out his phone. I pressed it into his hand and watched as he studied me in grave silence, swallowing visibly, then nodding fast and unlocking the screen.
He tapped in 999, made the call.
‘Ask for an ambulance, too,’ I said, as he raised his phone to his ear. ‘I stabbed him before I got out. It’s bad. I think he could be dying.’