vague, purposeless. I’d just ended up as a teacher in Hackney. But one day I’d leave, do something else. One day I’d have children of my own.
Louise phoned out for a pizza to be delivered. I borrowed her bright red dressing gown, and we sat on the sofa and ate dripping slices of pizza and drank cheap red wine and watched
A couple of times, her phone rang and she answered it and spoke in a low voice, hand over the receiver, glancing at me occasionally. Once, it was for me: Detective Sergeant Aldham. For a stupid moment, I thought perhaps he was going to say that they had caught him. Desperate hope. He was just checking up on me. He reiterated that I shouldn’t go back to the flat unaccompanied, that I shouldn’t be on my own with any man I didn’t know well, and he told me that they would want to talk to me again on Monday, with Dr. Schilling. Extensive interviews, he said.
“Be alert, Miss Haratounian,” he said, and the fact that he’d managed to get my name right scared me almost as much as his earnest and respectful tone. I’d wanted them to take me seriously. Now they were serious.
Louise insisted on giving me her bed, while she rolled herself up in a sheet on the sofa. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, and it is true that I lay for a while with thoughts whirring like bats that had lost their radar in my head. The night was hot and heavy and I couldn’t find a cool patch on the pillow. Louise’s flat was on a quiet street. There was a cat fight, a dustbin lid clanged, a solitary man went down the street singing “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.” But I must have gone to sleep quite soon, and the next thing I remember is the smell of burned toast, and day flooding in through the striped blue curtains, dust motes shimmying in the rays of light. The phone rang in the living room and then Louise poked her head round the bedroom door.
“Tea or coffee?”
“Coffee, please.”
“Toast or toast?”
“Nothing.”
“Toast then.”
She disappeared and I struggled out of bed. I didn’t feel too bad. I didn’t have anything to wear except for the clothes I’d taken off last night, so I pulled them on, feeling a bit grubby.
After I’d eaten toast and drunk coffee, I phoned Guy to find out if anything was happening with the flat. He sounded self-conscious and warily solicitous, not a bit like his usual chirpily ingratiating self.
“I hear you’ve been having a bad time,” he said. Of course, the police would have interviewed him by now.
“Not brilliant. Any news on the sale?”
“Mr. Shale wants to see the house again. Definitely serious. I think we’ve got him sniffing our hook. It’s just a matter of landing him.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked wearily.
“I think he’s ready to make an offer,” Guy said. “The point is, he wonders if today, midday, would be at all convenient.”
“Couldn’t you just show him round yourself?”
The irritating laugh again.
“I could, but there are some questions. I’ll be there as well.”
“Yes. No more strange men.”
So we arranged to meet at the real estate agent’s office at midday, Guy and me and Nick Shale. Safety in numbers. Then the three of us could walk up the road to my flat, whiz round it, and be gone in minutes. Louise insisted on calling a cab to take me there, and we sat for half an hour in traffic, cursing the heat, and arrived late. Both men were waiting for me, Guy in a thin blue suit and Nick in a white T-shirt and jeans. We shook hands formally.
When we reached the flat, Guy opened the door with his set of keys and went in first. Nick stood back to let me enter. There was a funny smell. Sweet but with just a touch of something unwholesome underneath it. Nick wrinkled up his nose and looked at me questioningly.
“I must have left something out,” I said. “I haven’t been here for a bit.”
It was coming from the kitchen. I pushed open the door. The smell was stronger but still nothing I could identify. I looked on the surfaces. Nothing. I looked in the bin but it was empty. I opened the fridge.
“Oh, God,” I said.
The light didn’t come on. It was warm. But it wasn’t too bad. The milk was sour but there wasn’t much else the matter. But I knew where the bad bit would be. I opened the small freezer on top of the fridge. All I could do was groan. It looked as if everything had got mixed with everything else. A tub of coffee ice cream lying on its side had spewed its contents out over an opened packet of prawns. The smell and sight of day-old prawns and melted ice cream in my hot kitchen almost made me gag.
“Fucking hell,” I said.
“Zoe.” Guy put his hand lightly on my shoulder and I jumped back from him. “It was just a stupid accident, Zoe.”
“Wait,” I said. “I’ve got to call the police.”
“What?” he asked, his expression puzzled, almost embarrassed.
I turned on him.
“Shut the fuck up. Just shut up. Don’t come near me, keep off.”
“Zoe-”
“Shut up.”
I was practically screaming at him now. He started to speak and then put up his hands in surrender.
“All right, all right.”
He glanced across at Nick with the apprehensive expression of a man watching a sale ooze away between the floorboards. It didn’t matter. All I cared about now was staying alive. I knew the number by heart. I dialed and asked for Carthy, and this time he came to the phone. No more messing about. He said he would be over right away. And he was there in less than ten minutes, with Aldham and another man who was carrying a large leather bag, and started pulling on thin gloves as soon as he got through the door. They stared at the mess, muttered things to each other in the corner. Carthy was asking me questions, but I couldn’t seem to understand them. He said something about police protection. The other two were in the kitchen. Guy said that they ought to leave and Carthy said no, could they wait out on the stairs.
“He’s been here again. I can’t bear it.”
Aldham came back into the room and looked over at me with concern.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked.
Aldham walked over to Carthy and muttered something in his ear. He looked a little shaken. Then he walked over to me, and when he spoke it was very calmly and quietly.
“Zoe,” he said. “There was no note, was there?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see one, but I didn’t look.”
“We’ve looked. We haven’t found one.”
“So?”
“We checked the fridge. It had been unplugged and the kettle had been plugged into the socket.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I think it was a mistake. It’s easy to do.”
“But I wouldn’t-” And then I stopped myself and remembered Louise making me tea, pulling out a cord to plug in the kettle. Oh fuck. I felt my face going red.
There was a silence. Aldham looked at the carpet, Carthy looked at me. I stared back.
“You told me to be alert,” I said eventually.
“Of course,” Aldham said gently.
“It’s easy for you,” I said. “I keep thinking I’m going to die.”
“I know,” said Aldham, his voice almost a whisper now. He put his hand tentatively on my shoulder.
I shook myself free.
“You… you…”
But I couldn’t think of anything rude enough. I turned and ran out, weirdly conscious as I did so that I was
