The Apartment - K. L. Slater Page 0,82

out into the garden.

I don’t know. I’m not thinking straight, suspecting everyone because my trust has been broken in so many ways.

The one thing I know for sure is that I just need to find my daughter. Nothing else matters.

I take off downstairs again, slipping and sliding down part of the flight. I bang on apartment five on the second floor and then on Lily’s door again as I pass.

‘Someone help me!’ I yell out at the top of my voice into the silent building. ‘Help!’

Downstairs in the foyer, I lurch at the door, aiming to pull it open like I did before. Except this time it doesn’t open. I twist the latch and pull, but it’s somehow locked fast and solid. It won’t budge.

I howl like a trapped animal.

‘Skye!’ I scream to emptiness. ‘Someone, call the police!’

You need to get out.

Linda’s words reverberate around my skull. Oh God, now I wish with all my heart I’d listened to her and left immediately with Skye.

Everything that’s happened . . . the noises, the unexplained movement of furniture and toys, the strange behaviour of the residents here, the CCTV camera inside the apartment to name but a few.

What the hell was I thinking of? Putting my daughter in danger, overlooking the freakiest of things just so we can live here at this address for a cheap rent.

Is it pride that’s made me overlook the obvious?

I pick up the chair in the foyer and hurl it at the stained-glass panel on the right side of the door. It bounces back.

I sink to the floor, sobbing. I’m a prisoner. I can’t escape this place . . . What the hell can I do to get my daughter back?

‘Freya?’ Audrey stands at the bottom of the stairs, speaking my name in her horrible, creepy low voice.

I stand up, ball my fists.

‘You!’ I bare my teeth and take a step forward, my distress suddenly gone. Instead I’m filled with a seething mass of fury that’s telling me she knows exactly where my daughter is. ‘Where is Skye?’

She holds her palms up to ward me off. ‘You have to calm down, Freya.’

‘Tell me where she is!’ I screech and leap towards her. In the red mist I see a flash of skin, and two strong hands grab my forearms.

‘Freya, Freya! It’s me, Dr Marsden!’ He sounds hoarse and panicked but is trying to keep his voice down.

‘Get. Off. Me!’ I struggle but he’s stronger than I expected and he holds me fast.

‘Do you want to see your daughter again?’ he hisses, and that cuts through the red mist. I feel myself deflate in his arms.

Audrey steps closer, her perfume overpowering at such a short distance. This is it. This is where I become their next Sophie.

And yet . . . Do you want to see your daughter again? That means there’s hope, doesn’t it? If I play along and do as they ask, I can fool them into thinking I’m under their control.

I breathe again. It feels true to me. It feels like I can do it.

‘That’s better,’ Audrey says in a sickeningly soothing way like I’m a child. It’s all I can do not to slap her away when she strokes my arm and sets my clammy skin crawling.

Marsden lets go of me and flexes his fingers like they’ve seized up.

He looks at me, his face drawn and pale. In the dim light without the hall lamp, shadows play around his features, reducing his eyes to dark pools of nothingness.

‘If you can stay calm, we can go upstairs,’ Audrey whispers. ‘We can see Skye.’

‘She’s not up there,’ I hiss, trying, for the sake of my plan, to appear calm. ‘Mark and Lily have gone, too. What have you done with them all?’

Audrey stares at me, then turns soundlessly and beckons me to follow her upstairs. I start to climb, looking back to see Dr Marsden standing there watching us.

At the first floor, all is quiet. Both apartment doors are closed and still, nobody is peering out. There are no signs of life. After all my screaming and banging!

What the hell is this place?

When we pass Lily’s apartment on the second floor, I notice for the first time that there’s a dent towards the bottom of the door, like someone had a go at kicking it open.

Is that how the Marsdens forcibly took Skye away from Lily earlier in the evening when I was out with Mark . . . by kicking the door in? I