I should sleep first, rewatch the video in the morning, check that I am not going completely mad, and go first thing tomorrow, in the cold light of day. They can’t turn me away then.
Day Five
Chapter 21
Pics, or It Didn’t Happen
All the footage is gonethe next morning.
I bolt up sharply in bed, dislodging the computer from my lap, just managing to catch it before it hits the floor.
The footage of the woman in the basement is gone. Not just her footage, but all that preceded it: Matt, the bike man and his wife…gone.
Blue stretches and yawns beside me, his breath warm and sweet.
“It’s all gone, Blue,” I tell him. His warm golden eyes take me in impassively, before he lets out a hungry meow.
Anxiety mounting, thoughts of the trapped woman pulsing through my mind, I search the app for an answer as to where the hell my evidence has gone. And finally I find the answer in all its infuriatingly bureaucratic simplicity: my three-day trial storage period lapsed at 4 a.m. this morning. I hadn’t signed up for the basic package so my footage was removed.
Stricken with immediate panic I sweep out of bed, grab my wallet, pull out my card to desperately sign up for the £3.99 monthly basic package, my card shaking in my fingers.
Subscription complete, I search the features to work out how to bring back the lost footage. Then finally, after prompting and re-prompting the app chatbot for several minutes, it informs me that unfortunately the footage was not permanently stored due to the lack of subscription plan and is no longer retrievable.
It’s gone-gone. I collapse back onto the pillows, defeated.
—
Downstairs, Blue eats breakfast on the counter, while I sit at the table holding a coffee, staring into space, trying not to think about what an idiot I’ve been.
There’s a grogginess even to my negative self-talk though, which makes me realize that perhaps my new tablets are stronger than I expected.
If I want to be able to function in the mornings after taking them, I will probably need to stick to a half or single sleeping tablet instead of the recommended max of two that I took last night.
But what smarts the most in all of this is that I have no idea if what I think I saw last night is even real. Not having it to check back this morning means I have no way of knowing.
There’s a chance I drifted off to sleep momentarily while watching the footage last night and imagined the face, the room, the whole thing. I did feel my attention drift as I scrubbed the last video on. There could be no woman at all. It might be nothing more than my sleep deprivation and Ben’s true crime documentaries drifting into my half-sleeping mind.
Moving here, starting again: this was supposed to be the bit where it all got better.
I push my coffee away and stand abruptly.
Blue looks over, sensing the shift. I pluck his camera collar from the charger and gently reattach it to him, as he sits patiently, chest puffed, letting me.
“Just one more trip out, Blue,” I say, kissing his soft forehead. “Just so I know I’m not losing my marbles.”
The black iris of the camera stares back at me, an all-seeing void. Recording. I open the back door and let him out, staying long enough to watch him disappear into the tall flower beds.
—
Ten minutes later, I’m at the chic local deli, standing in line for the raspberry pastel de nata Matt had recommended, in front of me cool twentysomethings, with their ecru trench coats, baseball caps, and Salomon sneakers, their laptops grasped in cases or slung in canvas totes. A sprinkling of thirty- and forty-year-olds, too, with clear-framed glasses and cashmere jumpers slung over shoulders, workingremotely or chatting in small clusters at the few available tables; the women among them tap their cards at the register for takeaway coffee orders, their expensive bracelet stacks clattering.
When I finally get to the front of the line, I order my pastry and a coffee, then take both to have on the outside seating, my nerves jittering as the sun warms my face. Around me, London seems to come alive for the first time since I moved back. I realize, unnervingly, that I feel safer here than on my own in my house.
Voices mingle and shift; I sip my coffee, warm and pleasantly bitter. I am part of the crowd now, invisible but not alone. This is how animals must feel in the wild. Protection in numbers.
I take a breath; everything is going to be OK.
And then my sun is blocked.
