need to ask you about the death button. ‘In the picture of . . .’
Start again.
‘Something about this staircase is different.’ That’s better – keep it vague. Don’t tell her; let her tell you. ‘It hasn’t always looked like this, has it?’ I pat the flat top of the wooden cube.
She looks confused. ‘Yes. It’s always looked exactly like that. What do you mean?’
‘At one time it had a decorative bit on top that was white. Sort of round, like . . . like a thick disc. Attached to the top here, but not as wide.’ I pat the flat surface again.
‘No.’ She’s shaking her head.
Yes. I saw it.
I try again. ‘Like a big button. In the middle, here. White, or cream, maybe.’
‘A button?’ I watch as she makes a connection. She knows what I’m talking about. For a fraction of a second, when she opens her mouth, I imagine she will smile and say, ‘Welcome to the Death Button Centre’. My heart stumbles, its rhythm changing with every beat – drawing out, then slamming in. I might run, if I knew who or what I was running from. What I told Alice once to make her feel sorry for me is true now, even if it wasn’t then: I envy all those who know what threatens them, and can name it even if they can’t escape it. Fear with nothing concrete to attach itself to is a hundred times worse than fear with a solid cause.
‘Why are you asking about my staircase?’ The flare of hostility in Selina Gane’s voice is unmistakeable. It reminds me that she isn’t obliged to tell me anything, and has every reason not to trust me.
‘I’m sorry. I should have explained,’ I say. ‘The last thing either of us needs is more unanswered questions.’
‘I won’t argue with that,’ she says.
‘I saw it in the photograph, the same one that had the dead woman in it. On the virtual tour, when the lounge started to rotate . . .’
‘Rotate?’
‘The pictures on the virtual tour aren’t stills,’ I tell her. ‘For each room, someone must have done a 360-degree turn with a camera in their hand, filming.’
Whoever filmed the lounge must have stood on the edge of the blood, just past where it stopped. He or she must have walked around it, holding the camera, careful not to tread in the wet redness . . .
I push the thought out of my mind.
‘When the picture turned, the hall and the bottom of the stairs were visible through the open lounge door. This was visible.’ I grip the newel post’s curved cube head with both hands. ‘It had a white section on the top – round and flat, not spherical. I definitely saw it. I didn’t remember it at first, but I knew there was something missing, something else I’d seen apart from the woman and the blood. And then yesterday, I . . . I was talking to someone, and I said the word “button”, and suddenly the image was absolutely clear in my mind.’
‘That staircase has always looked the way it looks now,’ Selina Gane insists.
She’s lying.
‘When I woke Kit up and he looked at the tour, the woman’s body had disappeared and so had the white thing from here,’ I say, still clinging on to the post, as if by touching it I can somehow enlist its physicality on my side of the argument. ‘I spent the rest of the night opening the virtual tour, watching it again, closing it, opening it again. I must have done it two hundred times – open, look at the lounge, close – but I didn’t see the woman’s body or the blood again.’ Feeling light-headed, I order myself to slow down, breathe. At first the air resists my effort and won’t go into my lungs. I stop trying and exhale instead, to the pit of my stomach. Empty. Then I inhale slowly, steadily, and feel the oxygen rushing in – an emergency service to the rescue.
‘I didn’t see the white disc thing again either,’ I say. ‘It was in the picture of the dead woman, but not the other photo – not the one I’ve seen every time I’ve looked since that first time.’
Another memory rushes back to me: Mum, Fran, Benji and me at Bella Italia in Silsford. We went there for lunch last year, to celebrate the arrival of Benji’s first grown-up tooth. The waitress gave Benji the activity pack they must give to all