I blurt out.
He stops on the landing. Turns. ‘No? I thought you wanted me to look at your computer.’ I’ve made him angry. Anything that interrupts his sleep makes him angry.
I can’t let him go in there until I’ve explained, or tried to. ‘I did a virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove,’ I say.
‘What? For fuck’s sake, Connie.’
‘Listen to me. Just listen, okay? It’s for sale, 11 Bentley Grove is for sale.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I . . . I just know, all right?’ I wipe my face. If I’m under attack, I can’t cry. I have to concentrate on defending myself.
‘This is just . . . Connie, this is so fucked up, I don’t know where to . . .’ Kit pushes past me, tries to get back into bed.
I grab his arm to stop him. ‘Be angry later, but first listen to me. Okay? That’s all I’m asking.’
He shakes me off him. I hate the way he’s staring at me.
What do you expect him to do?
‘I’m listening,’ he says quietly. ‘I’ve been listening to you talk about 11 Bentley Grove for six months. When’s it going to stop?’
‘It’s for sale,’ I say, as calmly as I can. ‘I looked it up on Roundthehouses, a property website.’
‘When?’
‘Now, just . . . before.’
‘You waited until I was asleep?’ Kit shakes his head in disgust.
‘There was a virtual tour, and I . . . I thought I’d . . .’ It’s better if I don’t tell him what I was thinking. Not that he couldn’t guess. ‘There was a woman, in the lounge, face down on the floor, blood all around her, a huge pool . . .’ Describing it makes me feel as if I might throw up.
Kit takes a step back, looks at me as if he’s never seen me before. ‘Let’s get this straight: you went onto Roundthehouses, took a virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove, which you happen to know is for sale, and saw a dead woman in one of the rooms?’
‘In the lounge.’
He laughs. ‘This is inventive, even for you,’ he says.
‘It’s still up on the screen,’ I tell him. ‘Go and look if you don’t believe me.’ I’m shaking, freezing cold suddenly.
He’s going to refuse. He’s going to ignore what I’ve told him and go back to sleep, to punish me, and because it can’t possibly be true. There can’t be a dead woman lying in a sea of blood on the Roundthehouses website.
Kit sighs. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll go and look. Evidently I’m as big an idiot as you think I am.’
‘I’m not making it up!’ I shout after him. I want to go with him, but my body won’t move. Any second now he’ll see what I saw. I can’t bear the waiting, knowing it’s going to happen.
‘Great,’ I hear Kit say to himself. Or maybe he’s talking to me. ‘I’ve always wanted to look at a stranger’s dishwasher in the middle of the night.’
Dishwasher. The tour must be on a loop. In my absence, it’s started again at the beginning. ‘The obligatory kitchen island,’ Kit mutters. ‘Why do people do it?’
‘The lounge is after the kitchen,’ I tell him. I force myself onto the landing; that’s as close as I’m willing to go. I can’t breathe. I hate the thought that Kit’s about to see what I saw – no one should have to see it. It’s too horrible. At the same time, I need him to . . .
To what? Confirm that it was real, that you didn’t imagine it?
I don’t imagine things that aren’t there. I don’t. I sometimes worry about things that maybe don’t need to be worried about, but that’s not the same thing. I know what’s true and what isn’t. My name is Catriona Louise Bowskill. True. I’m thirty-four years old. True. I live at Melrose Cottage in Little Holling, Silsford, with my husband Christian, but he’s always been known as Kit, just as I’ve always been known as Connie. We have our own business – it’s called Nulli Secundus. We’re data management consultants, or rather, Kit is. My official title is Business and Financial Director. Kit works for Nulli full-time. I’m part-time: three days a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I work for my mum and dad’s business, Monk & Sons Fine Furnishings, where I have a more old-fashioned job title: book-keeper. My mum and dad are Val and Geoff Monk. They live down the road. I have a sister, Fran, who’s thirty-two. She also