The Apartment - K. L. Slater Page 0,86

real people – experiments that would never be allowed legally for ethical reasons. But they weren’t serious, didn’t hurt anyone, and we were just observing.’ He sees my shocked expression. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but she was far less ambitious about what she wanted to achieve then and her monitoring was fairly harmless.’

In his opinion! I’d like to speak to some of her victims.

‘That’s why you expressly brought me and Skye here? To be experimented on?’ Emotion floods up through me like a tidal wave. ‘You lied through your teeth, targeted me in the coffee shop. I confided in you and you knew we’d had a hard time of it since my husband’s death. I trusted you! ’

‘I swear I didn’t know what Lily had in mind. I didn’t know about this.’ He hangs his head. ‘She promised . . . after Sophie died . . . it would never happen again. But I saw what she was doing to you and we tried, we really did try to help but—’

Audrey appears behind him. ‘We realised she was getting seriously out of control. She was ill and we’d planned to get her medical help. But in the meantime, that’s why we wanted to put the CCTV camera in your hall, to try and protect you from her, so we could see what she was up to.’

‘We’re so sorry, Freya. You were always kind to me,’ Susan Woodings calls up. ‘We never knew she was watching you to this extent.’

But they all knew something was amiss! They all knew Lily was disturbed but they put up with it to live in their comfortable bubble.

‘What was Lily doing exactly . . . and why?’

‘Infecting you with fear,’ Audrey replies. ‘She was recreating the Little Albert experiment all over again in a modern setting. It was particularly apt, she said, due to your family tree. In Lilian’s disturbed mind, you and Skye were the perfect subjects.’

‘How did she know all this stuff about me . . . stuff I didn’t even know about myself?’

‘We have a great-niece, a DNA expert who can track down the most distant ancestral connections. She alerted us to your genealogy as a matter of pure interest, she hadn’t a clue how Lily would use the information.’

I feel so low and helpless. I reach out to him.

‘If you’re truly not part of what she did, I beg you to tell me . . . where is Skye?’

Without speaking, Dr Marsden walks past me and unlocks the door to the apartment next to mine. He opens it only slightly.

‘This is where she observed you and spent her time.’ He sweeps his arm to guide me inside. ‘After you.’

I look at him warily. Can I trust him? But I have to know what’s inside.

I walk through the entrance hallway of the apartment next door and let out a scream.

Skye is asleep on a single mattress near the window and Mark is lying on the floor with a head wound.

I rush over to my daughter, press my cheek next to her mouth. She’s breathing. She looks pale, but she’s breathing.

‘She’ll just be sedated,’ Audrey says from the door.

I cradle Skye’s head in my lap and let the tears of relief splash on to her face.

Then I lay her head back down gently on the mattress and rush over to Mark. He groans, barely conscious. There’s blood down his face and spotted on the floor, but at least it looks like the wound is no longer bleeding.

‘Looks like she was waiting behind the door when he broke into the room,’ Dr Marsden explains. ‘The ambulance is on its way.’

I look around me into a space that was once designed to be a lounge, where Sophie and Melissa lived. But Lily took it over to essentially turn it into a secret monitoring hub for Adder House.

On the wall adjoining mine, there are cameras showing every angle of my home.

Mark obviously missed some cameras in his search as there’s a clear view of the lounge on one of the screens . . . and, oh my God . . . even the bathroom!

I turn and rush out, Dr Marsden running after me.

‘Please, Freya, wait!’

I rush downstairs, past all the faces, some of whom I’ve barely spoken to, down to the ground floor. I run past Lilian Brockley’s twisted, bloody body and barely give it a look. The front door is locked. I twist the lock, tug and pull at the handle, but nothing happens.

‘I’m