turn it. See that it works. That’s all I want out of this: the relief of proving to myself, finally that I’m not mad or paranoid. I can’t think beyond that.
Every traffic light is on red. I ignore a few of them and drive straight through. Others I obey. There’s no system behind my actions; my driving’s worse than it’s ever been, all my decisions entirely random. Lots of disconnected thoughts flash in my mind: the blue and pink hourglass dress Kit bought me, Mum’s tapestry of Melrose Cottage on my bedroom wall at home, Alison Laskey’s worm-lipped smile, 11 Bentley Grove’s floorplan, Nulli’s certificate of incorporation in its smashed glass frame, iron railings, Pardoner Lane, the Beth Dutton Centre, the rotting cabbage Mum found in the cupboard under the stairs, the yellow key fob in my pocket, red feathers on the mug in Selina Gane’s kitchen, her map of Cambridgeshire with the empty crest. Empty Crest Syndrome, I think, and laugh out loud.
I pull up outside the house and look at the clock on the dashboard. The journey from the multi-storey car park to here took ten minutes. It felt more like ten hours.
The key works because I don’t waste time wondering if it will or won’t. Of course it works. That’s the part I forgot to mention to Alison Laskey: how absolutely certain I am that I’m right.
I push open the front door and walk in. The smell makes me gag: human waste. And something even worse underneath it, like an undertone. Death. I’ve never smelled it before, but I recognise it instantly.
This is real.
Something inside me is screaming that I should run, get out, as far away as I can. I see several things at once: the white button stuck to the top of the newel post, a telephone on a table in the hall, by the stairs, lots of blood-dotted papers scattered on the floor beneath the table, a pink denim jacket lying just inside the front door. I reach to pick it up, feel the pockets. One is empty. The other has two keys in it – one on a Lancing Damisz key-ring, the other with a paper tag attached to it, the sort you might stick on a gift. On the tag, someone has written ‘Selina, no. 11’.
My mind reels as I struggle to make sense of this. Then I see that there’s no mystery; it’s pitifully simple: you give someone your spare key, they give you theirs. If you lock yourself out, you’re covered.
Ring the police. Pick up the phone and ring 999.
Focusing on every move my body makes, I put one foot in front of the other and start to walk across the hall, keeping my eyes fixed on the end point. Twelve steps to that phone, no more. I stop when I reach an open door, aware of something in my peripheral vision, something large and red. My head is too heavy to turn and my neck too stiff. Slowly, I realign my whole body so that I’m facing the lounge.
I’m looking at my sea of blood. Mine and Jackie Napier’s, I suppose I should say, since she and I were the only ones who saw it. It’s darker now, dry, like crusty paint. In the centre, there’s a woman lying on her front with her head to one side, facing away from me. The position of her head isn’t the only thing that’s different. Her hair is neater than in the photograph I saw on Roundthehouses. Almost too neat, as if someone has brushed it while she’s been lying there. And she isn’t wearing the green and lilac hourglass dress, she’s wearing a sleeveless pink top, a skirt with a white and pink print, pink lace-up pumps. The pink jacket in the hall must be hers too. Lying by her side, as if it dropped from her shoulder before she fell, is a colourful flower-print canvas handbag.
No wedding ring on her left hand.
Terror jolts through me. I don’t know what to do. Ring the police? Check to see if she’s still alive?
Get out of the house.
But I can’t. I can’t just leave her here.
I don’t know how long I stand there – it could be half a second, ten seconds, ten minutes. Eventually, I force myself to walk into the room. If I walk around the edge of the blood, over to the window, I’ll be able to see her face. If I walk around the edge of the blood.