parents took a keen interest in everything their three children did and worried themselves into small frenzies if one of them wasn't immediately available on the phone. Kayleigh went to the police in Ladbroke Grove and filled in a missing person form, saying nothing about the conversation she had had with Danila's stepfather.
Lunch with her agent was Nerissa's reason for going to the restaurant in St. James's, and the request from a glossy magazine of international prestige to feature her on their frontcover and run a four-page article about her, the reason for thelunch. She parked the Jaguar on a meter in St. James's Square and changed her trainers for the stilt-heeled white sandals. The lunch would have to be a short one or she'd get clamped. As she locked the car that man arrived, the one who had spokent o her on Thursday outside the old lady's house. This was the third time she had encountered him and she knew with as lightly sick feeling that he was following her.
He wasn't the first stalker in her life. There had been several, notably one who persistently called at her parents' house when she was very young and still lived at home, but her father, who was very large and very black, a formidable threat in the caller's eyes, had finally intimidated him. Darling Dad made a wonderful bodyguard. The other stalker had been rather like the present one, waiting outside her house and following her. It had been the police who had warned him off. The funny thing was, Nerissa thought, as she walked through into St.James's Street, that they all looked very much alike. All were of middle height, in their early thirties, fair-haired with characterless faces and staring eyes. This one was following her along King Street now, probably fifty yards behind. She was a little early for her lunch and she wondered if she could make some move to shake him off.
The shops in St. James's Street are not the sort a woman can go into and browse about, if necessary concealing herself behind racks of clothes or disappearing into the ladies' powderroom. There was nowhere to hide. If she stopped to look into the hat shop window or crossed the street to linger outside the rather grand wine merchant's, would he make this as a reason to speak to her? The thing she mustn't do was look back. The strap above the high heel of her sandal had slipped down and the shoe flapped. She bent down to adjust it, felt the presenceof someone standing close by her, unwillingly looked up-andinto the face of Darel Jones.
She couldn't have been more delighted if it had been herfather and said, almost involuntarily, 'Oh, I'm so pleased to see you!'
He seemed surprised. 'Are you?'
'There's a man stalking me. Look. No, he's gone. That's your doing, I'm sure. He saw you, thought you were a friend of mine, and-and disappeared. How marvelous.'
If he minded being taken for a friend of hers he didn't show it. 'This stalker-that's very serious. You'll have to tell the police.'
'I can't keep telling them. He's not the first one, you see. Perhaps he'll give up now. I always hope they will. But what are you doing here?'
'I might say the same for you. I'm a banker.' He pointed to a Georgian edifice with a brass plate that said
'Do you?' Nerissa had a very narrow idea of what a banker did. 'D'you mean that if I went in there and asked them to cash a check you'd be behind a glass thing and you'd give me a bunch of notes?'
He laughed. 'It's not quite like that. I've come out for my lunch. I don't suppose you-?'
'I'm lunching with my agent,' she said. 'I've absolutely got to.' She looked at him with yearning love, thinking of Madam Shoshana's prediction. 'I wish I didn't but I
'I'll say good-bye then.' Perhaps it was her imagination butshe had never seen him look quite like that before, interestedin her, curious about her. 'You know,' he said, 'you're quite different from the-the-er, misconception I had of you,' andhe was gone.
She went into the restaurant where she could already seeher agent waiting at a table. What did he mean by 'misconception'? That he'd thought she was awful and had found out she wasn't? Or, more likely, in spite of that look that might have been mere sympathy, that he'd thought she was nice but now he knew she was horrid? Still, he'd been on the point of asking her out to lunch…
The urgent message summoned Mix to the head office. His departmental manager, Mr. Fleisch, had a few things to say tohim. A call had come from Mrs. Plymdale, no longer soft ande asy-going, to complain that the new belt he had installed on her treadmill had come adrift and though he had promised to repair it at eleven, he hadn't turned up. She had to use her treadmill every day or she would get out of the rhythm. She really needed to exercise. Both her parents had died of heart disease and she was frantic with worry. Not only that but Mr.Fleisch had heard from Ed West that Mix had failed to maketwo essential calls on his behalf that Ed was prevented frommaking by illness.
'I've been going through a bad patch,' Mix said without further explanation.
'What kind of a bad patch?'
'I've not been well. I've been depressed.'
'I see. I'll make a booking for you with the company's doctor.'
Mix would have liked to refuse this offer but he didn't know how. Matters would only be made worse by his failure to see the doctor, a dour elderly man, unpopular with the staff. Mix went home. It had been a bad day. All the time he was following Nerissa he had been planning what he would say to herwhen, having gained on her according to plan, she turnedaround and saw him. Remind her of last Thursday would be the first thing, then maybe put in a word about how sorry hewas if he'd offended her mother. Would she show him therewere no hard feelings by coming and having a coffee with him? She had been so sweet and gracious that previous time that hethought she would, she couldn't really refuse in the circumstances.And then that man had appeared, a young goodlooking man who appeared to be a friend of hers. Just his luck.
But he wouldn't let it put him off.
A message on his mobile summoned him to call on Colette Gilbert- Bamber the minute he finished work. It wouldn't be for something wrong with the equipment but what Mix called 'a bit of the other.' He'd still get forty pounds for the call-out… If he was so attractive to Colette, surely he should be to Nerissa? But he wouldn't go. It had been a bad day and he didn't fancy it.
It was oppressively hot again and the house would be hot and stuffy. How it could be so dark when the sun was shining brilliantly he didn't really know. Didn't she ever draw the curtains back? Did she never open a window? He stood for a moment where Nerissa had stood last week and spoken to him so sweetly-and her mother so nastily. But he wouldn't think of that. And he wouldn't hold his arms folded like that across his body so that he could feel the roll of flesh round his waist that sagged over the belt of his trousers. Walk, he said to himself, get into a walking routine tomorrow and do it every day.
The place might have been uninhabited for years, he thought, as he started up the stairs. Would it do any good if he complained to old Chawcer about the lighting system, the way the low wattage lamps went out before he reached the next switch? Probably not. People like her thrived on darkness. It was ridiculous, anyway, having to put lights on in summer in the afternoon.
No cat's eyes glowed from the tiled staircase and, thank God, there was no sign of Reggie. It was all in my mind, he thought, I was right about going through a bad patch, I must have begun to see things that weren't there. Whatever Shoshana said, ghosts were always hallucinations, the result of stress or pressure. The Isabella lights, dull red and green and purple, lay as still as if they were painted on the floor, but bright golden sunshine streamed out of his hallway when he opened the doorto his flat.
Perhaps, before he went in, he ought to go next door to the room where Danila was. He really ought to check on her everyday until-well, until what? He got used to her being there? He'd moved her out and on to somewhere else? Leaving his own door wide open for the sake of the cheerful glow of light, he opened the bedroom door next to it.
The same sunshine was in here, or would have been if the window had ever been cleaned. But he didn't think about that once he had smelled the smell. It forced him to take a step backward. And now he knew what it was. For weeks th eweather had been almost unnaturally hot, yesterday had been unbelievably warm, and this smell was the result. He couldn't understand it; the body was wrapped and nailed down underfloorboards. He braced himself to go in, closed the door behind him, no longer thinking of ghosts. This was real; that had been all in his mind. He had never smelled anything like it and, standing there, taking in a long inhalation, he shuddered. Why had he come in here this afternoon when he already felt so bad?
Would it go away? Eventually, perhaps. He found he had no idea whether decay continued for weeks, months,
