She sank into a chair, the flat too silent and still around her. On the coffee table in front of her was a photo she’d had framed when they’d first moved in together, and she picked it up now. It was of the two of them on Hampstead Heath three summers before, heads squashed together as they grinned into the camera, a scorching day in June. That first summer, the days seemed to roll out before them hot and limitless, London theirs for the taking. She had fallen in love almost instantly, as effortlessly as breathing, certain she had never met anyone like him before, this handsome, exuberant man so full of energy and sweetness and easy charm, who (inexplicably, it seemed to her) appeared to find her just as irresistible. As she gazed down at the photo now, their happiness trapped and unreachable behind glass, she traced his face with her finger. “Where are you?” she whispered. “Where the bloody hell are you, Luke?”
At that moment she heard the front door slam two floors below and her heart lurched. She listened, her breath held, as the footsteps on the stairs grew louder. When they paused outside her door, she sprang to her feet and rushed to open it, but with a jolt of surprise found it was her upstairs neighbor, and not Luke, staring back at her.
She didn’t know the name of the woman who’d lived above them for the past six months. She could, Clara thought, be anything between mid-twenties and mid-thirties; it was impossible to tell. She was very thin with long, lank brown hair, behind which could occasionally be glimpsed a small, finely featured face covered in a thick, masklike layer of makeup. In all the time Clara and Luke had lived there, she’d never once replied to their greetings, merely shuffling past with downcast eyes whenever they met on the stairs. Every time either of them had gone up to ask her to turn her music down, which she played loudly night and day, she refused to answer the door, merely turning the volume up higher until they went away.
“Can I help y—,” Clara began, but the woman had already begun heading toward the stairs. Clara watched her go for a moment before her worry and stress got the better of her. “Excuse me!” she said loudly, and her neighbor froze, one foot poised on the first step, eyes averted. “It’s about the music. Could you give it a rest, do you think? It’s all night long, and sometimes most of the day too—can’t you turn it down once in a while?”
The woman didn’t reply at first, then finally, slowly turned her face toward Clara. Her eyes, rimmed thickly in black kohl, landed on her own for a moment before flitting away again, as she asked softly and with the faintest ghost of a smile, “Where’s Luke, Clara?”
Clara could only stare back at her, too surprised to respond. “I’m sorry?”
“Where’s Luke?”
She’d had no idea the woman even knew their names. Perhaps she’d seen them written on their post, but it was the way she said it—so familiar, so knowing, and with such a strange smile on her lips. “What do you mean?” Clara asked, but the woman only turned and carried on up the stairs. “Excuse me! Why are you asking about Luke?” But there was still no reply. Clara stood staring after her. It was as if the world were conspiring in some surreal joke against her. The door to the upstairs flat opened and then closed again and at last Clara went back to her own flat. She stood in her narrow hallway, listening, until a few seconds later the familiar thud of bass began to thump against her ceiling once more.
—
It was past two. She should go back to work; her colleagues would be worried by now. But Clara didn’t move. Should she start phoning around hospitals? Perhaps she should Google their numbers—at least that way she would be doing something. She went to the small box room they used as an office and at a touch of the track pad, Luke’s laptop flickered to life, the browser opening immediately to Google Mail—and Luke’s personal e-mail account.
For a second she stared at the screen, her finger hovering, knowing that she shouldn’t pry. But then her gaze fell upon his list of folders. Below the usual “Inbox,” “Drafts,” and “Trash” was one labeled, simply, “Bitch.” She stared at it in shock before clicking on it. And then her jaw dropped—there were at least five hundred messages, sent from several different accounts over the past year, sometimes as often as five times a day. She opened and read them one by one.
Did you see me today Luke? I saw you. Keep your eyes peeled.
And
I know you Luke, I know what you are, what you’ve done. You might have most people fooled, but you don’t fool me. Men like you never fool me.
How are your parents, Luke? How are Oliver and Rose? Do they know the truth about you—your family, your friends, your colleagues? How about that little girlfriend of yours, or is she too stupid to see? She looks really fucking stupid, but she’ll find out soon enough.
And
Women are nothing to you, are we Luke? We’re just here for your convenience, to fuck, to step over, to use, or to bully. We’re disposable. You think you’re untouchable, you think you’ve got away with it. Think again, Luke.
Then,
What will they say about you at your funeral, Luke? Say your goodbyes, it’s going to be soon.
The very last one had been sent only
