The knocking rouses me, bleary-eyedand dry-mouthed, from sleep. Sunlight pours in through my open curtains, the glare blinding.
Memories of the police station, and DI Cobham, flood back. I feel a tumbling kind of hysteria growing inside me.
The knocking begins afresh. I scramble up, straighten my crumpled clothing from the night before, flatten my bed hair into something vaguely presentable, and head to the stairs.
The knocking is crowned with one soulful chime of the doorbell.
I peer down the banister to the hallway, the silhouette of a woman visible beyond the frosted glass. For a second, I wonder if it might be the female police officer checking up on me but as soon as I swing open the door and see who it actually is, I wish it were the police.
Marina is staring back at me, her eyes playing over my bed-mussed hair and creased shirt, before she remembers to pull a tight smile.
“Morning,” she says crisply. It’s actually 12:17. “Sorry to bother you. I’m Marina, from across the road.” While she doesn’t look friendly, she does look good, her weekend getup effortlessly perfect: shorts, gladiator sandals, broderie-anglaise cami, and beads, her hair glossy and loose.
“Number Fifteen,” she adds.
“Oh, yes, hi,” I say.
Is she here to tell me off for harassing her friend last night?
Marina holds my gaze expectantly, an uncomfortable silenceforming. She seems to be waiting for something, for me todosomething.
“Do you want to come in?” I ask, unsure what else to do.
She frowns slightly, looks back at her house, then to me, and nods awkwardly.
“Okay, I guess,” she mutters, before squeezing past me as I hold open the door.
She looks into my living room as we pass it heading toward the kitchen.
“You work from home, don’t you?” she asks, and I don’t know why, but I don’t like the way she says it.
“I do.” It’s a lie I’ve said so often this week that I’m starting to believe it myself.
“I’m so sorry for the inconvenience,” she rambles on, “bursting in on you like this on the weekend. What a pain. I can totally understand how that would be an annoyance—people assuming you’re always in and available,” she says.
“Not at all,” I reassure her. “Can I get you a tea, coffee, water?” I am still unclear why she is here.
She looks surprised at the question, before course-correcting. Her eyes scan my kitchen, my furniture, my appliances, my finishes, coolly appraising it all.
“Oh. Okay. Sure,” she answers. “Coffee. If you’re making it.” She keeps her tone bright, noncommittal. “I just mean you must get a lot of packages, being in all the time, working from home.”
The coffee machine thunders, then splutters to a stop.
“What do you do?” she asks, her tone upbeat but awkward.
“Luxury branding,” I answer, popping oat milk in her coffee—I know she drinks oat milk because I saw it in her transparent recycling bags.
“I’m fixed-income macro trading, for my sins,” she says, without being asked. She flashes me a row of perfect white teeth.
“Wow, interesting.”
“Yep.” She takes the coffee I hand her, stares down into it, that appraising gaze again. Perhaps the oat milk was Chris’s or Eric’s, not hers.
“Do you want to sit down?” I ask.
She looks mildly horrified.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s so kind but I really only came over to collect my package. Sorry. Our package. I mean, thanks for the…coffee and everything but…” She stops and shrugs helplessly, then gently sets her coffee cup down on the table.
