Page 90 of The House Swap

She dropped her bag onto the kitchen counter and stood there for a moment, realising she was now counting down the hours until she could be back in England.

Running mentally through her plan for the rest of the afternoon and evening, she realised she didn’t have one. A shower was first on her list, scrub that sea grime from her skin, then she would pour a glass of wine and go outside to watch the sunset, before putting together a dinner of sorts.

She felt better after showering. The hot water had washed away the salt and the tension in her muscles, and after dressing and towel-drying her hair, she headed back through to the living area. The sun was already starting to set and, determined not to miss it, aware it was one of the few bright spots in her day, she opened a bottle of red, taking her glass outside to her usual sun lounger.

Cretan sunsets really were spectacular and watching the kaleidoscope of colours blaze up the sky as she sipped at her wine, her only companion a lone grasshopper chirping in the distance, was the one thing she was really going to miss when she headed home.

She stayed outside until the sun had sunk out of sight, darkness now creeping in, then headed back into the villa, careful to lock the patio doors behind her.

As before, the silence lingered. It was always worse when night-time came and she turned on the television for company before moving into the kitchen, opening the fridge and scanning the contents. There wasn’t much that appealed, but she had peppers, onions and tomatoes that needed using up, and she had seen there was a packet of fusilli in the cupboard. It would be a quick and easy dish. The kind of thing she sometimes made back home.

She filled a pan with water and set it on the hob, then as she waited for it to boil, she chopped her ingredients, part distracted by the episode of Friends that was playing. It was one she had seen countless times before, with Joey giving Ross advice on how to get his leather trousers back on.

Absently, she put pasta in the pan, grinning as Ross added cream to the talcum powder on his legs, making a paste. Why hadn’t she turned to the TV on other evenings? It was drowning out the awful silence she had been tolerating for too long.

Truthfully, it had felt a bit of a cop-out when she was supposed to be on holiday. But really it wasn’t. It was helping to make her feel less lonely.

The episode ended with Rachel overhearing Monica and Chandler flirting on the phone. Invested, Poppy moved over to the sofa, taking a seat and completely losing track of time.

It was the smell that reached her first – a sharp, unpleasant tang of burning – followed by hissing.

‘Crap!’

Frowning, she rushed over to the hob. The water had boiled away, the scorching pasta sticking to the bottom of the pan. Conscious the smoke alarm was going to kick in at any second, she quickly pulled it from the heat. Smoke curled up into the air, and she tried to wave it away with her hand, coughing as the smell thickened.

Her first thought after dumping the pan and ruined pasta in the sink, the metal fizzing as she ran it under water, was that she’d had a lucky escape, beating the smoke alarm.

But even as she looked at it, the logical part of her brain told her it should have gone off. The burning smell had certainly been strong enough.

Was it not working? There was a solid red light on.

Grabbing a tea towel, she waved it upwards, deliberately trying to waft smoke towards the detector.

Nothing happened.

Was it broken?

She thought of the ones in her flat back home. The light wasn’t on all the time. Instead, it flashed intermittently.

Perhaps it was losing power.

Remembering she had seen some batteries in one of the kitchen drawers, she decided to take a closer look. She could change it for Tom so it was something he didn’t have to worry about when he returned home.

Dragging over one of the dining chairs, she climbed up, twisting the device. It came away easier than expected, but as she stared at it in her hand, she realised it didn’t look like any smoke detector she had ever seen before.

For starters, it felt too light. The ones she had in her flat were solid and she usually needed a coin to pry open the battery cover.

She turned it over, frowning. This one didn’t even have a compartment for the battery, that she could see. And there was no test button either. It was just smooth white plastic.

As she twisted it in her hands, unease tightened in her chest.

Was it even a smoke alarm?

That was when she saw it. A tiny glass circle in the plastic that caught the light. So small that she would never have noticed it if she wasn’t holding it close. And as realisation started to dawn, dizziness took hold, her legs suddenly unsteady on the chair.

Even as she clambered down, the device still in her hand, she understood.

It was a camera lens.