happening. It’s as though I told you a story, something I made up.’
‘Do you think you made it up?’
She shakes her head. ‘I know it’s true,’ she says. ‘Come with me.’
She gets to her feet and leads him out of the room. Back on the ground floor, she pulls open the door to the under-stairs cupboard, the twin of the one she keeps padlocked in the basement, and stands back to let him see inside. He sees the pillow and the duvet. And a small pink teddy bear, shiny with age.
‘Sometimes I wake in the night and I’m terrified,’ she says to him. ‘For no reason I can think of. When that happens, I come in here. I have to. It’s the only way I can keep from going mad.’
54
Felicity
Felicity sleeps late. When she wakes, she feels like a premature chick, pulled too soon from its shell. The morning light seems to burn her skin as she makes coffee. The grazes on her hands have already scabbed over. In a few days, they’ll be gone, she has always healed quickly. The wounds in her head, though? They are another matter entirely. Her head feels like a country she has never visited.
She knows, beyond any doubt, that everything she told Joe last night was true. Something dreadful happened to her once, to her and to her mother. For what feels like the first time, she wonders what really happened to her parents, and why she has no memories of them. Why her grandmother told her no stories, gave her no photographs.
And the warning voices in her head have been proven right after all. Her fears of a stalker, again revealed by Joe’s hypnotherapy skills, are entirely justified. Freddie is not only real – she knew that of course, she knew it the second she saw the wedding photograph – is not only real but here, in Cambridge. He could knock on her door at any moment.
One problem at a time. She drinks coffee and orange juice and then goes down to her basement. She will have to call a glazier today to get the window fixed. First though, she can make it more secure. She has two strips of wood that she fastens across the empty frame, hammering them corner to corner with carpet tacks.
Window sorted, she empties the white dress and underwear from her washing machine. The stain on the front of her dress has faded to a dull brown but will never come out. She finds a plastic carrier bag and puts all three damp items in it.
When she is dressed, she arranges for a garage to collect her car from the pound. She tells them she wants to sell it and asks them to call her later with an offer. She will use cabs for the rest of her time in Cambridge.
She finds a glazier and then sets off on foot and picks up a bus in town. She gets off a stop early and throws the bag containing her dress and underwear into a bin before walking the rest of the way to her office. She has only a few days left at work and must start clearing out her personal possessions. Fortunately, there aren’t many.
Her desk is as tidy as usual. She never leaves it without putting everything away and locking her cabinet. This morning, though, there is a yellow Post-it note facing her chair. It is dated the previous afternoon.
Man came by asking for you at 17.15. Wouldn’t give his name. Lucy says he’s been in before. Asked if you still live by the common. Thought you should know. Tall, blonde, nice looking.
Suddenly, her legs lose all strength and she is forced to pull out her chair and sit down. Freddie knows where she lives.
55
Joe
Joe knows, before he puts the phone down, that he has made a mistake. He can hear the voices of his mother and his supervisor, loud in his ear, telling him to call Felicity back right now, tell her he can’t meet her that evening after all, that he is more than happy to see her again as a patient, if she makes an appointment in the usual way, but that dinner is inappropriate.
He goes into his bedroom to decide what to wear.
When he arrives at the restaurant by the river – her choice – she is already there and again her appearance surprises him. The cropped jeans she is wearing are spray tight and her vest top clings to her