I got up off my stool.
I didn’t know why.
Maybe I sensed the situation was even more volatile now that it was personal to Donovan.
Or perhaps I instinctively understood that I needed to alter the dynamic. Pull his focus elsewhere.
Which I did by accidentally toppling my stool as I climbed off it.
I slumped and nearly fell, but Sam grabbed me and caught the stool at the same time.
‘Sit down,’ Donovan told me.
I didn’t say no but I didn’t do as he asked.
I pulled clear of Sam and reached for the countertop, moving along to my right, away from the end of the island unit where Donovan was watching me from.
My head felt too heavy on my shoulders. My temples were pulsing. I felt sickly and hot.
The apartment.
The party.
The scratch on my arm.
It all made a strange sense until it didn’t.
I tried to concentrate. Tried to push past the blockage in my mind and remember what had happened to me more clearly.
But I couldn’t.
The blockage remained stubbornly in place.
In my mind’s eye, it was a white elastic film. Opaque, with a hint of shadows moving on the other side, but the details remaining too shady and vague for me to decipher.
I could push on the film, poke at it, but it always stretched and held. I couldn’t pierce it to see what was on the other side.
One day that film may just snap.
Sam had told me that. What he hadn’t told me was if I would snap with it when it did.
It felt like there was a crazed whirring in my brain. A febrile energy. A humming like the drum of a tumble dryer spinning out of control.
Oliver. Oliver Downing.
I repeated the name in my head but it made no difference.
It meant nothing to me.
I moved further along the countertop, hand over hand, shimmying backwards to pass the next stool along.
I was getting nearer to the end of the island unit. Closer to the Crittall doors behind me and the garden beyond that.
But when I snatched a look at the doors I saw something that chilled the blood in my veins.
The key that had been there earlier was missing. He must have taken it, too.
I couldn’t bolt out into the back garden and scream for help.
And even if I got out there, I couldn’t escape to raise the alarm. The fence panels we’d installed on top of the walls were too high.
‘You know,’ Donovan said, switching his attention to Sam, ‘my brother was a student at LSE. Economics, not psychology. You ever meet?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I just wondered. Because he had some issues, like I said. And that got me thinking: where might Oli have gone for help? And then I found out about your support groups. I actually sent an email about it. Maybe you saw it?’
‘We’re not able to discuss the support groups. University policy. There are privacy rules.’
‘That’s pretty much what the reply I got told me. The reply came from an administrator in your department. I tried talking to her on the phone, explaining the situation, even met her in person. She told me anyone who joined your support groups had to sign a consent form but she wouldn’t let me see them.’
Sam swallowed. He really didn’t seem to get where Donovan was going with this.
‘But I’m the persistent type and I waited until one of your support groups finished up. I thought about talking to you directly but not right away. I watched you instead, followed you home. No real reason except habit. I’m used to gathering intelligence. Usually a lot of it is wasted. First thing I noticed was your house was for sale. Second thing I noticed was it wasn’t just you living here.’
He reached into the hip pocket of his trousers and removed what looked like a crumpled piece of paper. It was light blue with a glossy finish. Folded until it was about the size of a credit card.
He flung it towards me.
It twirled through the air, over the sink, hit the countertop and bounced and skidded my way.
‘What is this?’
‘Take a look.’
I exchanged a lingering glance with Sam.
He was still holding on to the stool, a little absently, almost as if he’d forgotten he had caught it. I saw a deep line form in the middle of his eyebrows. A flicker of disquiet at the corners of his mouth.
I reached for the piece of paper and carefully unfolded it with shaking hands.
‘That was in Oliver’s bedroom,’ Donovan told me. ‘His things got boxed up after he died. I was the first one to pay attention to it.’
It was a flyer for a business.
The stock was high quality. The font was simple but elegant.
It had been folded over so many times there were multiple creases. The edges were scruffy and furred.
Louise Patton Home & Interior Design
There was a photograph of . . . me on the front.
A headshot.
Only I looked quite different. My hair was long and tied up in a ponytail. I appeared to be wearing a businesslike blouse and blazer, a broad and confident smile.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What is it?’ Sam asked.
I held it up between my fingers and thumbs and showed him. There was also a website address and a telephone number on the front.
The reverse was blank.
After looking at it for a few seconds, Sam gave Donovan the same confused look that had formed on my face.
‘Did you do this?’ I asked him.
Donovan simply watched me. His lips had thinned. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was concentrating on something or if he was suppressing another dose of pain.
‘Is this supposed to convince me of something?’ I continued. ‘Because it doesn’t.’
‘The URL for that website is dead,’ Donovan told me. ‘The mobile number is disconnected.’
Sam shifted a little to Donovan’s right and Donovan immediately lifted the knife and pointed it at him, twisting the blade sideways in the air.
‘How about you put down the stool, Sam?’
Sam looked at it, nonplussed, then slowly put down the stool and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Donovan returned his focus to me, drawing small circles in the air with the point of the knife.
‘I did some digging into Louise Patton. I spoke to some of her former clients. One of them was pleased but a little frustrated to hear from me. They said she’d just been starting on a job for them when she stopped responding to their messages. Eventually they gave up and hired someone else.’
‘This isn’t mine,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where you got this. I’ve never seen it before.’
‘The client also told me they’d gone so far as to look for Louise at her day job. They said she worked part-time at a furniture shop on Tottenham Court Road.’
I didn’t say anything to that.
It didn’t make any sense.
‘I took that flyer to the same shop,’ he continued. ‘Showed it to the manager. She confirmed you’d worked there. But she said you quit. By text message. She said she’d tried contacting you. Left a voicemail. Never got an answer. She’s had staff who have treated her that way before. People can be funny about quitting.’
I shook my head.
I had left my job when I’d moved in with Sam but I’d spoken with Corrine, my manager. She’d wished me well and told me I was always welcome back in the future if things didn’t work out for me.
‘Ask me when the text message was sent,’ Donovan said.
I glanced at Sam again.
There was something else in his face now.
Not just worry but a puzzled look of distress and disquiet.
‘No?’ Donovan said. ‘Then I’ll tell you. It was sent the day after my brother was pushed off that roof.’