to go to university, not to go on holiday in the Lake District, not to go to London, and definitely not to travel to Boston. Bad things happen to me.
Bad people happen to me.
Kate poured wine into a water glass. She carried it from room to room in the apartment, checking window locks and looking into closets. Her hands shook with adrenaline, and her heart tripped along in her chest, but she was okay. One more night in this cavernous apartment filled with shadows, and she could head home—back to her parents’ house—never to leave again. She checked the front door lock and looked out into the quiet hallway. A murderer had stood outside Audrey Marshall’s door with the intention to kill her. And then he’d gone inside and done it. Killed her with his knife. Mutilated her.
She looked for a long time out into the hall, contorted by the peephole into a tunnel with curved walls. She expected someone to turn the corner and make an appearance at any moment. Sanders the cat. George Daniels back from the dead. Corbin Dell back from England. Alan stalking her from the front door instead of from the back. But nothing happened. The well-lit, carpeted hall remained empty.
She went online and looked at airfares for returning to London. She began an e-mail to her parents telling them she was coming home, but didn’t finish it. She could do it tomorrow, after she booked something, when it was all finalized.
She looked at the Rachael Chess articles again online. That must have been who Alan was talking about when he mentioned the other woman who had been killed. So Jack had been doing his research as well.
She went back to the kitchen to get more wine, but the bottle was empty, and she poured herself a glass of milk instead. She brought it to the den and turned on the television. The old movie channel was playing a film that she knew pretty well, because it was one of her father’s favorites. I Know Where I’m Going! starring Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey. She curled up on the couch, rested her head on two oversized pillows, and attempted to let the black-and-white images soothe her. She kept thinking of Alan, though, behind the door in the kitchen. Seeing him, visibly drunk, standing there, Kate thought she was about to die. It was George Daniels all over again—another man come to kill her. Although George, for all his rage and craziness, had never been a drinker. In fact, whenever Kate had more than a couple of glasses of wine, he’d start to get mad at her, asking her repeatedly why she needed to drink so much.
In the film, the woman played by Wendy Hiller was desperately trying to get to the Scottish island where her fiancé was, but a storm had trapped her on the coast, where she’d fallen in love with another man. She was trying anyway, in a small boat, and a whirlpool was pulling her to her death. Kate pulled the comforter on top of her. The movie ended, and another immediately started up. Pygmalion. Another Wendy Hiller. She thought of her father, who would love this movie channel that only showed old films. She started watching the film, but she had to pee, and her jeans were uncomfortably tight. She forced herself to get up and walk through the living room and past the kitchen to the bedroom, where she changed into pajamas, peed in the en suite bathroom, and brushed her teeth. She passed back through the bedroom, where the strong moonlight through the window cast strange shadows in the twisted sheets of the bed. This apartment is haunted, she thought, and walked briskly back toward the den, lit in flickering black and white from the massive television.
Leslie Howard was standing in the rain, secretly listening to Wendy Hiller’s cockney accent as she was selling flowers.
Kate didn’t remember falling asleep. It felt as though one minute she was watching the television, wondering if any of the actors were still alive, and then her eyes must have shut, and she was suddenly in the world of the film, the voices part of her dream. The couch was swallowing her, and she was on the brink of sliding into the true blackness of sleep when the dream shifted, and there was a hand pressed against her face, and she felt herself rising back up from the depths, jerking awake, but the hand