Not because I’m discounting him – I’m learning not to do that anymore about anyone, not since the people I trusted the most turned out to be the ones hiding the biggest secrets – but because something else is niggling at me, something Nunes said. I can’t quite pinpoint it, I can just feel it, like when you forget something on your shopping list and you try to remember what, but it’s swimming just out of reach. My mental fog is dense and a lot of things are getting lost in it.
I stare out the window of the car, my brain dully noticing the sights. We’re passing the big castle on the hill. Kate and I were meant to do a tour of it as part of the e-bike trip. I try to avoid looking right, towards the glittering blue water.
That’s it! The thing I’ve been trying to grasp at emerges from the fog. Paris. Nunes mentioned Paris. He knew Kate and I had been there. But how? I never told him or Reza about that trip. I rack my memory to double-check but I’m certain that I didn’t. There’s no way the police could know about it. The trip was years ago, almost twenty years ago in fact, before even Facebook was around to document it on. Nunes was probably still in nappies.
But I do remember talking about it to Kate when we were lying on the bed in the apartment, before we went out for dinner. We listed off all the places we’d been together. She had that look on her face – a sad look as if she’d been crying. She probably had. I’ll never know for sure what about, but perhaps she was thinking of Rob, or perhaps she was thinking ahead to the escorts she’d booked and having a moment of introspective guilt at what she was about to do to our friendship. She must have known that causing a rupture in my marriage and then moving in on my husband would definitively destroy our friendship. Did she care at all? Was she pretending to be friends with me all this time, just to stay close to Rob?
But I’m getting distracted. The point is how did Nunes know about Paris? Is it the same way I think they found out about the affair? Through Sebastian’s spying and informing? But no, Sebastian lives downstairs from the apartment I stayed in with Kate. How would he have heard the conversation? We were in the bedroom. The only way Sebastian could have overheard that conversation was if he had been in the room with us. My skin prickles with goose bumps, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.
I think about how he’s always lurking, skulking around in the background, eager to hoover up gossip. I think about that room he always locks himself into and am overcome with queasiness.
I scroll on my phone to the Airbnb app on my phone and quickly tap in the details of the apartment and Sebastian’s name. His profile comes up and I click on it. The apartment is listed underneath, along with the other four he mentioned to me. The bedroom in his own apartment isn’t listed though. He told me he rented it out, so that’s weird. Why would he lie, unless he doesn’t usually rent it but he wanted me to stay close by? It would explain the lack of lock on the bedroom and bathroom doors, but why would he want me to stay with him? Unless of course he wanted to keep an eye on me, and the investigation.
I click on the listing for the apartment Kate and I stayed in, and scroll down to read the reviews. There are almost eight hundred and they’re all five stars for cleanliness, location and amenities, but I notice a couple of people have given him one-star ratings. They’re both women and they both comment on feeling uncomfortable. One mentions the ‘creepy owner with his annoying rules’ and the other ‘a lack of privacy and an anal owner spying on my every move.’
Spying.
The chill intensifies and I lean forward and ask the Uber driver to turn the air conditioning down as I’ve started to shiver uncontrollably. What if he’s done more than just spy?
A minute later we pull up outside the apartment and I get out the car, glancing up at the building with its whitewashed walls. Is Sebastian up there now, looking down on me?