Light pours into the sparse, wood-floored room from the two large windows, the linen blinds fluttering.
We scan the space: a double bed, covered in pastel-hued sheets and pillowcases. The room is pale, with floor-to-ceiling shelves on either side of the bed housing artful terra-cotta and ceramic pots.
Only one side of the bed seems to be in use, with one bedside table with books, a clock, a neat charger tray, Tylenol, and a quarter-full glass of water. The other nightstand holds only a lamp.
One wardrobe. One functioning nightstand. No baby. And a man eager to meet for coffee.
But we do not stop to investigate further. In two bounds, we are up on the shelves and then the windowsill, dipping under the blind, and breaking out onto the sun-soaked roof ledge that connects all of the houses on our street.
There is no crib in Matt’s house.
Matt must live alone.
My rational mind says that they must be divorced, separated, the mother and child living elsewhere, but I can’t help but think there is something slightly off here.
I force myself to stop. Matt’s wife and baby are not locked away somewhere in this house, as he sits outside eating scrambled eggs. My thought spiral is now getting ridiculous.
We glide along the ledge, the drop beside us a twenty-five-foot fall straight onto wrought-iron fencing, tarmac, or the parked cars beneath.
Up here, windows flash past—other lives stored away inside.
A gull passes low over the void beside us, drawing our eye, and the London skyline bursts into view through the simmering summer-heat haze.
Chapter 19
Cat Camera
Blue wanders along the rooftops.I scrub on: walls, trellis, trees, bushes, the backs of brick buildings…
Suddenly I stop. A man is kneeling in his large back garden at an upturned bike, tools spread on a blanket. He is in his mid-sixties, pale-faced, and slack-cheeked, wearing a cap and a windbreaker. He’s in good shape for his age, with an athletic physique and a full head of thick gray hair, but from the look of the back of his house, his barbecue set, and tidily arranged plastic patio furniture, I can tell he doesn’t own a Bentley. And while not unattractive, exactly, there is a distinctly disappointed, tightly wound quality to this man, as if he might live several days in the space of one morning.
I find myself wondering how far down our road he lives, and how far we have come to get here.
The man’s face is hard-set, a frown of concentration firmly in place. After a moment, he leans back from his work on the bike chain, gingerly spins the back wheel, and watches intently as it circles.
He reels back from it, apoplectic with rage, his face contorted as he lashes the bike frame to the ground, rises over it, and gives it a hefty kick. He turns from it and paces away from it, attempting, it seems, to calm himself, wandering now in wide circles, his hands rubbing over his irritated face.
Becalmed, and clearly regretful, he heads back to the fallen bike and rights it.
We shift along the wall warily, our gaze staying firmly on the man.
His hands have come to rest on his hips now, and he sighs deeply as he takes in the bike, shakes his head, says what looks like: “For fuck’s sake.”
The man’s head whips fast to the back door of the house, a woman in a bath towel, hair wet, having poked her head out to ask him something. He heads toward her; we cannot see his response.
The woman smiles warmly, satisfied, before slipping back into the house. The man turns back to the broken bike and then suddenly looks directly up at us.
He looks surprised to see us, then his face softens, and he squats and snaps his fingers, beckoning us over.
I feel the muscles inside me tighten now, too.
I brace for the full extent of what Blue may have recorded.
After a moment of consideration, we leap down, the green of the lawn rising fast to meet us as we land softly and look at him. He is smiling, pleased to see us.
We head toward him, the man extending his hand to bridge the distance. He scratches the chin above us, the footage shuddering with the vibration of Blue’s purr. He does not seem to notice the lens trained on him.
He stands and beckons us into his house, holding open the back door.
