The house hunt, p.12
The House Hunt, page 12
‘I’m really sorry,’ the Librarian said, shamefaced. ‘I don’t know what came over me before.’
He squinted at them, toed the floor, glanced towards Sam for reassurance. Sam nodded his understanding, clenching the Librarian’s upper arm.
Several long seconds passed before the Boxer grunted an acknowledgement, not giving much away.
The Lost Girl tapped a nail against the can of Diet Coke she was holding.
The Artist looked up at the Athlete, who was holding the door open behind her with his big arm extended above her head.
‘Actually, I think we all understand a bit of what you’re going through,’ the Athlete said. ‘Here.’
And he paced across the room to offer the Librarian a bottle of chilled water, clapping him on his other arm when he took it, the Librarian gazing up at him with an expression of gratitude and relief.
‘The way I see it, we all came here today for help, right?’ the Athlete said, looking around the group. ‘We all have our bad moments. So . . .’ He shrugged at Sam. ‘What’s next? Do you want us to all sit back down?’
50
I felt as if Donovan had shoved me backwards into an iced bath. I was stunned.
‘There’s somebody with Sam?’
‘There are five people with Sam, last I heard.’ He patted the coat pocket I’d seen him put his phone in earlier. ‘It pays to stay updated.’
‘They’re in touch with you?’
‘Well now, it wouldn’t be much of a threat if they weren’t, would it?’
A threat.
To Sam.
‘Who are they? What will they do?’
‘Trust me, that really shouldn’t be your focus right now.’
‘Does Sam know?’
‘That’s hard for me to say. They’re sharing their phobias with him. What do you think? It’s their first session. Will he be able to tell one of them is faking?’
I probed my lip with my tongue, the bloodied cut stinging like a tiny voltage.
Cortisol flushed through me.
I had a sudden urge to leap up at him, shove him out of the way, try to get out and contact Sam, but at the same time I knew I had to concentrate.
If it was a lie, it was a horribly plausible one. And if he wasn’t lying . . .
‘Are they going to hurt Sam?’
‘He’s not in any more danger than you are right now.’
Not a good answer.
And not a reassuring one, either.
I glanced at the cupboard door again, appalled that Bethany was behind it, crushed by what he’d done.
Then I flashed on an image of Sam in a room with five total strangers. He’d have no reason to suspect that one of them was there under false pretences or that they could be a danger to him.
And Donovan wasn’t wrong. I knew that Sam ran an open group. That was the whole point of it. Anybody could walk in and participate.
Sam had shared some concerning stories with me in the past. I knew he sometimes interacted with people who were deeply troubled, not just in his support groups, but for a lot of his private research projects, too. He liked to pass it off as academically interesting, telling me he got jazzed by interacting with people with unusual hang-ups or personality disorders, striving to understand them, but I got that really he didn’t want me to worry.
I also knew that he was driven to help people and try to solve their problems, especially if their problems were complex and deep-rooted.
Like mine.
I loved that about him but, right now, it made him vulnerable. Because Sam wouldn’t be anticipating any kind of threat and, if a threat came, he wouldn’t be skilled at defending himself.
He was tall and gangly, six foot one. Lean, not muscular. Healthy, but not fit. He didn’t go to the gym or lift weights. He’d never been in a fight in his life as far as I knew.
He was bookish. Caring. Decent.
He’d been so incredibly patient with me. So understanding. I’d relied on him so much.
And now, just the thought of him being taken from me . . .
I felt my heart rate accelerate. My throat constrict.
‘I want to talk to Sam. I have to know he’s OK.’
‘That’s what I’m counting on.’
‘You can’t hurt him.’
‘Then don’t make me.’
I felt light-headed. My mouth tasted bitter.
But even as my worries massed in my chest, the thought occurred to me that perhaps the danger to Sam wasn’t as immediate as Donovan was making out. I doubted whoever was watching Sam would risk threatening him while four other strangers were in a room with him, would they?
I stared at Sam’s keys in my hand, trying to understand the implications of what Donovan was telling me and not telling me.
I was having difficulty with it. There was nothing about my life, or Sam’s life, that should have drawn a man like Donovan into our orbit. We weren’t the kind of people something like this happened to.
Or are you?
Bad things have happened to you before.
My gaze traced the scar on the inside of my arm until it stopped at the puncture wound close to my elbow.
I couldn’t quite fathom what it meant.
Donovan had told me he hadn’t drugged me. I had no reason to trust him, but it must have been twenty minutes now since the needle had gone in and I remained conscious and increasingly lucid.
The back of my skull was still tender where I’d banged it. My head hurt with a slow, dull ache. But my vision and my balance were normal again and my nausea had mostly faded.
And the other physical sensations I’d experienced – my shortness of breath, accelerated heart rate, flushes of heat and perspiration – could all be explained by the surplus of adrenaline, panic and fear I’d been subjected to.
But still.
That puncture mark.
I raised the crook of my arm closer to my face, probing my skin. It didn’t hurt very much. There was a slight purplish bruising radiating outwards. A reddish halo around the tiny dot of blood in the middle.
Wait . . .
A dangling sensation – as if I was suspended from a thread that was about to snap.
‘My toothbrush,’ I heard myself say.
‘Excuse me?’
I closed my eyes for a second, concentrating. ‘I could tell something was wrong when I went into the en suite looking for Bethany. It was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but that’s what it was. My toothbrush was missing.’ I opened my eyes and looked at him. ‘Why did you take my toothbrush?’
Judders through my chest, radiating outwards, a sudden flush of pins and needles that augured something worse was to come.
And then another thought, cascading onwards.
Logical, but bewildering.
It made a kind of sense, but not the kind of sense I wanted to confront.
‘You didn’t inject me.’
‘I already told you that.’
‘But I felt the needle. I felt it sink in.’
This time he said nothing, and I knew I was right.
‘Because you weren’t injecting me,’ I said. ‘You were extracting something. You took my blood.’
51
There was a warped soundscape in my ears. My own emergency siren.
My mouth was dry, my pulse tachy and erratic.
I didn’t want to ask Donovan the next question but somehow I did. ‘Why did you take my blood?’
‘Oh, please. We both know the answer to that.’
But I didn’t. Truly, I didn’t.
Or was that a lie I was telling myself? Was the actual truth that I just didn’t want to face up to something horrendous?
I gazed at the cupboard door again and the swirling in my head became louder, more shrill.
Had he taken blood from Bethany, too, I wondered? Were my blood and my toothbrush – what? Trophies to him?
My fear cranked up by several notches.
I clenched my fist around the keys in my hand, feeling the metal teeth dig deep into my flesh, a vibrant red flashing at the corners of my vision in tandem with my auditory alarm.
Donovan spread his arms at his sides in a mock-placatory gesture. ‘I don’t have them any more, if that helps.’
‘I don’t—? What did—?’
But again I stopped. Because again it hit me.
‘The courier,’ I said. ‘You gave them to the courier.’
Because the courier was the only person who’d called at the house since Donovan had been here. He’d given Donovan Sam’s keys. And Donovan had taken my blood and toothbrush not long before the courier had arrived.
Did that mean Donovan had summoned the courier, or had it all been prearranged, pre-planned?
I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
‘You gave my blood and my toothbrush to the courier,’ I said, staring into the middle distance, as if the answer to what was happening to me was hidden somewhere in this room. ‘That’s why you were down there so long.’
Donovan watched me struggling to order my thoughts, then he seemed to grow impatient and he twisted at the waist and spun on his heels, flinging out his arms and arching his eyebrows as if he was appraising the space we were in.
‘You want a lot of money for this place, am I right?’
‘What?’
‘I’m saying, you’re asking a lot of money for this place.’
‘Is that what this is about? The house?’
‘No, you’re not listening to me. I’m making an analogy. I’m painting you a picture.’ He reached out and spread his fingers on the sloping ceiling above him. ‘You told me you’ve done most of the renovation work yourself, yes?’
‘We did,’ I said quietly, confused.
‘Right. And let’s say I wanted to buy this place. Let’s imagine for just a moment that’s really why I came here today. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I have to tell you. A house in London. This borough. Wow, that’s a major investment. So even if I liked it and made an offer that you and Sam could accept – and, cards on the table, I really do like what you and Sam have done here – I’d still want to do some checks before my lawyers were ready to exchange and complete. You understand?’
‘No.’
‘I’m talking about a survey. A thorough one. I’d want my surveyor to check the foundations of this place, search for subsidence, damp, dry rot.’ He stamped on the floor as if to demonstrate. ‘I’d want them to tell me about anything I should be concerned by. And suppose my surveyor gives me the thumbs-up, well then I’d want my lawyer to do some additional digging. I’d want them to check the title deeds. I’d want to be certain I was really buying what I thought I was buying.’
He shrugged and looked at me again, as if I really should be getting it by now.
‘Buyer beware,’ he said. ‘It’s only prudent, right? And you wouldn’t have a problem with that. You’re the seller. It’s what you would expect.
‘Well, it’s the same with me. I don’t want any mistakes, either. I want to be absolutely certain I’m getting exactly what I came here for today. I want my survey to ring all the bells. Hence your toothbrush. Hence your blood. I’m getting an exact DNA match.’
52
Sam
The group all took the same seats as they’d occupied before. They sat and waited without speaking.
But even though nobody said anything, Sam could tell that something had changed.
Had he lost their confidence?
Maybe.
Perhaps the incident with the scissors had shaken them too badly.
Perhaps he should never have broken the continuity, sent them out of the room, given them an opportunity to bond without him.
And yet, as disturbing and bewildering as it was to admit, he felt oddly shaken as he looked at each of them in turn.
The Librarian.
The Athlete.
The Artist.
The Boxer.
The Lost Girl.
What was it?
What felt so . . . off?
It wasn’t as if any of them were looking at him strangely or suspiciously.
They were all sitting there expectantly, even the Librarian, who was rubbing his palms up and down his trouser legs, seeming somehow cleansed and relieved now that the worst had passed.
So Sam couldn’t necessarily explain it. There was nothing tangible he could point towards in order to rationalize why his mouth was suddenly tacky, his underarms damp, a clot of invisible phlegm rising up and lodging in his throat.
But it was there.
A negative vibe.
A latent threat.
Almost as if one of the five people sitting around him – or perhaps more than one of them – shouldn’t have been here at all.
53
‘This is insane,’ I said. ‘None of what you’re saying makes any sense.’
‘I’m confident your DNA will prove otherwise.’
I grabbed hold of the bed frame, hoisting myself up.
‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘But I am, and meanwhile you’re not listening to me. We both know this isn’t a mistake.’
I cradled my forehead as a crushing weight seemed to press down against me. It was something other than the bang to my head or my fear. I’d begun to sense the hopelessness of our interaction. The futility of trying to talk to him.
Because whatever this was, whatever miscalculation or mix-up he’d made, there was no doubt in my mind that he believed it absolutely.
As I considered that, a new and much more disturbing thought occurred to me.
We both know this isn’t a mistake.
But I didn’t. I had no clue.
But if he believed it . . .
‘Do you know Sam? Have you worked with him?’
He scoffed and studied me with disdain. ‘Oh, that’s good.’ He wagged a finger. ‘That’s really insulting, actually.’
‘Have you?’ I pressed.
He leaned back and assessed me from a new angle, then rasped air from his lips, as if whatever patience he’d been holding on to was being stretched dangerously thin. ‘And by work with him, you mean at LSE? As what, a colleague? A fellow lecturer?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Or are you suggesting I’m one of his research subjects? Is that what you’re driving at? One of his . . . “special projects”?’ He made air quotes with his fingers. ‘Because I know what Sam does, Lucy. I’ve read up on his work. His papers. His areas of expertise. It’s all very impressive, if disturbing. There are the support groups, obviously, but that’s just the vanilla stuff. I get that he has access to some pretty messed-up people. That he likes to study them one-on-one. So now what you’re suggesting is that you think I’m one of those people, is that it?’
He flapped his hands around suddenly, as if he was having a wild seizure, his eyes bulging and then darkening with a burst of anger as he stepped closer and jutted his head towards me.
‘And what about Bethany?’ He pointed at the cupboard. ‘Do you think I did that because I forgot to take my meds? Come on. I know exactly what I’m doing here.’ He paused. When he spoke again, I could detect a slight modulation in his voice as if he was struggling to maintain his cool. ‘Enough, OK? You want me to spell it out to you? Fine, here it is: I found you. I looked for you and I found you, simple as that.’
‘I’m not lost.’
‘No,’ he said, in a tone that was so subdued he sounded even more dangerous than before, ‘but you’ve been hiding. You’ve been hiding for a really long time.’
I reached out behind me for the bed frame. Felt my brow tangle.
Before I could say anything more, he plunged a gloved hand inside his coat and removed his phone.
‘I texted this earlier.’
He tapped and swiped at the screen aggressively, then rotated his wrist and extended his phone towards me.
‘The person with Sam? They recognize you.’
Something inside me lurched.
He was showing me the photograph he’d taken of our main bedroom. I could see myself in the middle of the frame.
Not much of the bedroom was visible around me. The image had been zoomed in tight onto my face and upper body. Or perhaps he’d edited it after taking it. Cropped it.
The focus was exact. My features were clear.
I realized then that he hadn’t been interested in taking photographs of our house at all. It had all been about this one picture.
‘But that’s not going to be enough, is it? Not after two years.’
A sudden threat leaped into his eyes. A predatory hunger.
Two years.
I felt myself teeter.
‘That’s right, the party, Lucy. We have time. Why don’t you tell me what happened? Make me understand.’
54
The party.
Somewhere in my head I could hear the music again. The rapid thrash-thrash-thrash. People laughing and shouting. Drinks being poured. Lights pulsing and whirling.
And then the lock on the bathroom door.
—click.
The violent shove and the shower curtain that had tangled around me as I’d fallen backwards into the bathtub and the blurred figure who’d cornered me, pressed me down, held me under the water rushing out of the tap.
It had happened so fast. Been so unprovoked.
But staring at Donovan, it was as if the water was filling my throat again, spilling out of my mouth.
I squinted at him until his face became smeared and indistinct.
Oh God.
I almost doubled up and retched.
I knew how quickly he’d overpowered Bethany.
‘No.’
I tried stepping back but I had nowhere to go. The bottom of the daybed was pressing against my legs and lower back. I was in danger of tipping backwards over it.
‘No, you don’t want to talk about it?’ he asked me. ‘Or no, you won’t?’
I raised a hand to cover my throat, my other hand tightening into a fist behind me.
In my head, a part of me was under the bath tap again, snared in the shower curtain, the water pummelling down, strong hands on my shoulders, pinning me there.
