Aoife stares at Matt, then looks past him into the house, her view blocked by the partition door.
“Seriously, come in and check if you like,” Matt repeats, patience wearing thin, as he opens the door wider for Aoife to enter.
Aoife steps back. “No fecking way—I’m not coming in your house.”
She looks past him again, then lets out a deafeningly shrill “FRANKIE?!”
They both listen back into the house. No response.
“You’re seeing her, Matt, and you didn’t think to tell her about the house?”
A wash of self-doubt surges up inside him at the accusation, but he’s certain in his reasoning.
“Seriously? You would want to know that happened in your house, would you? She’s in there alone. All these are Georgian…and Victorian houses, statistically someone’s died in all of them—think about it. It’s hardly something we all remind each other of, though, is it?”
Aoife straightens, emboldened. “That’s different. Anyway, I told her. She knows now.”
“What? Why?Whywould you tell a recently divorced single woman that she’s living in a murder house? Are you crazy? How is she supposed to sleep in that place now?”
“Ah, fuck you, Matt. I’d want to know,” Aoife mutters, a sliver of self-doubt creeping into her words.
“Well, I wouldn’t.”
Aoife shakes her head dismissively and turns away, descending his steps carefully, then striding off, her phone going to her ear.
Matt watches her go, a quiet dread pitching inside him at the idea Frankie might think he cared more about his house price than her peace of mind.
Matt closes the door and heads back inside, slipping his phone from his pocket and dialing Frankie’s number. It goes straight to voicemail.
In the kitchen, he notices his back door is ajar. He considers how strange it is that Frankie left that way rather than walk out of his front door. She must have actually scrambled over the garden wall to get away from him. He rings her number again but it goes straight to voicemail.
“Great. Well, that’s embarrassing,” Matt concedes, and closes the back door.
Chapter 45
Simon
Simon looks down at herprone body on the steps, her tumbled auburn hair half fallen across her face, across her closed eyes. She is more beautiful than he remembers even, something delicate about her, rare and untouchable, like an animal in the wild.
He thought she knew the day she came into the surgery. He’d added her to his patient list as soon as he’d seen her address. He’d been interested to see who might end up in a house like that one. Someone who wasn’t bothered by the acts that had happened there or who was oblivious to them.
But she didn’t know who he was when she met him, obviously. Or if she recognized him from the neighborhood she was a very, very good liar.
She perched there, on the plastic patient chair beside his desk, and she’d let him touch her: her wrist, her arm, the skin warm and soft, her scent of jasmine and something warmer. She’d let him listen to her heart, strong and healthy in her chest, the sound of her lungs filling and emptying. Then she’d told him her problem, inches from him, her body so close; she’d talked about her sleepwalking, her move, the divorce, her need for medication. She’d been embarrassed, vulnerable, as tender as bruised fruit.
He knew she was lonely and pretending not to be. He’d been a doctor for fifteen years and a liar himself for twenty.
She needed the meds, that was clear. A recent divorce, a move, the changes involved in overhauling a life—medicine wasn’t rocket science.
So, he’d prescribed some nice heavy meds, something she’d really feel. Something that might prove useful one day.
He couldn’t believe how close he’d got to her, in those twenty minutes, without her even knowing.
—
Simon had first seen the cat, with the camera collar, five days ago, as it looked in through the kitchen doors at him while he was on his laptop. He’d seen the lens instantly, and after a moment’s confusion understood that it was trained on him.
He’d smiled for the camera and gone to let the cat in to check for an ID disc. But the cat had fled and he had to work out who the owner was another way.
