Sam stepped away to make the phone call and I doubled over by our front wall, gripping hold of the iron railings, breathless, shaken, the backs of my fingers brushing against the thick foliage of the box hedge.
I felt hollowed out. Unravelled. My skin shimmered in the cold as a biting sense of fright and disbelief took hold of me.
Glancing sideways, I looked towards John’s house and experienced a tiny pulse of relief. I’d kept John safe, at least. Perhaps that was something I could cling to in the days and weeks to come.
‘They’re on their way,’ Sam told me, ending his call.
I nodded woodenly. My mouth was swamped by a chemical taint.
I looked up towards the top of our house at the attic windows opening onto Sam’s study, picturing Bethany again. I only had Donovan’s word for it that whatever he’d given her would wear off after a few hours. But what if he’d lied about that, too? What if he’d done something truly terrible to her?
It was only as I looked down again that I saw Sam venturing towards the front door.
‘Sam?’
He didn’t answer me.
‘Sam, what are you doing?’
‘It’s OK, Lucy.’
‘Come back here.’
‘I’m just going to take a quick look.’
‘What? No. You can’t.’
He raised a hand to me without looking back over his shoulder.
‘Sam.’
‘You said you stabbed someone, Lucy.’
‘He’s dangerous.’
‘If you’ve stabbed someone, we need to check if they’re OK.’
‘There’s an ambulance on its way.’
‘Yes.’ He glanced back, a twinge crossing his face. ‘And the police. They’re going to want to know what happened here. You could be in trouble.’
‘Trouble?’ I pushed away from the railings, tramping after him. ‘It was self-defence. Sam, please!’
‘I’ll just stick my head inside. If we can help him, we should.’
Help him.
Sam always wanted to help people. It was in his nature. Fixing people who were broken. But monsters like Donovan didn’t deserve his help.
‘Sam, you’re not getting it.’
A bedroom light came on behind a window in the house two along on our right. A woman appeared behind the glass, looking down at me.
‘Sam.’
He set one foot inside the front vestibule where he paused and carefully lowered his backpack to the ground outside on his right.
‘Sam.’
He took a cautious step forwards, moving in a slight squat with his arms out at his sides, as if his muscles were tensed and primed to react to anything he might encounter.
I bit the inside of my cheek and peered off along the street again in both directions.
Then I glanced up worriedly towards the neighbour who was watching from behind her window. She frowned back at me for a nonplussed second before raising both arms and drawing her curtains closed.
I stepped up behind Sam, bumping into his back as he wrapped his fingers around the glazed internal door frame on either side of him.
He leaned forwards and looked in.
‘I don’t see anything,’ he said.
‘He’s behind the sofa,’ I whispered.
He took another step and I stuck close to him, knotting my fist in the material of his jacket.
The house wasn’t eerily silent. It seemed to buzz and hum. The fridge-freezer, maybe. Or the drone of electricity running through the wires in the walls.
‘Hello?’ Sam called.
Nothing.
He’s dead, I told myself, and the words clacked and settled like stones in my mind. You’ve killed someone.
I tugged Sam back but he took another step forwards, pulling me after him. By craning my neck, I could just see over the back of the sofa to the coffee table, itself shunted sideways towards the fireplace from when Donovan had kicked it as he’d fallen.
‘Careful,’ I whispered, and I stepped sideways on rubber legs, pulling Sam with me, steering us around the end of the sofa towards our left so that the kitchen was behind us, the living room ahead, the open door to the street on our right.
I peered over his shoulder as our view fanned out in a slow and steady arc, like a door swinging open.
The fireplace and the slanted coffee table and the shattered fragments of the vase and the flowers and the water and the blood.
Sam stiffened and cocked his head to one side.
A trapdoor swung open beneath my feet.
‘There’s nobody here,’ he said.