I spun around in sudden panic, which was stupid because, of course, she was long gone.
But she could be anywhere out there. Watching me. Waiting for her chance. A quick shove as I waited to cross the road. A little something added to an unattended cup of tea. A bullet literally out of the blue as I walked in the afternoon sunshine. I would never be safe again.
My mind skidded this way and that. I actually wondered, if I ran now, how far could I get, when, thankfully, my eyes fell on the real victim in all this. I reached up and pulled the knife out of his eye, crumpled the note and threw it away. I laid him gently on the pillow. Then I crawled painfully all over the room, groping under the bed, pulling the furniture around until I had every last piece of him collected. I put it all very carefully in the cardboard box and went to see Mrs Enderby, still pale, but very much recovered. She was sitting quietly in one of the window seats in Wardrobe with a cup of tea beside her.
‘Max.’ She seemed genuinely pleased to see me.
We asked each other how we were and then I passed her the box. She peered inside.
‘Can you do anything, Mrs Enderby?’
She took out poor Bear and laid him in her lap. She smoothed him out, assembled his little leather paws, checked the stuffing in the box, and said, ‘Yes, I think so. Come back in a few days.’
I said, ‘Thank you,’ and for no reason at all, the tears started to fall.
‘What a dreadful girl she was,’ she said, mildly, tactfully ignoring my struggles. I had to laugh. So much for throwing the note away. She’d guessed immediately who would do something like this. ‘You’re not going to let this upset you, are you?’
‘Not at all,’ I said firmly.
‘Very wise,’ she said. ‘Come back for him on Wednesday.’
That was when I made the decision. Mrs Enderby was right. Yes, Barclay was out there somewhere and I would see her again one day, no doubt of that. When that happened, I’d deal with it. But, until that moment, if I did anything other than live my life normally then she’d won without even lifting a finger, and there was no way I’d ever let that happen. I’d fought too long and too hard to give up now. Because, finally, I had a future. I had a future and I had Leon.
Speaking of whom …
Chapter Eighteen
I snagged a clipboard and some paper from Admin and waited in Leon’s room. It was very quiet up here and I was able to work away without interruption.
He appeared about half an hour later, closing the door behind him. I thought again how tired he looked. He was certainly in some need of some R & R.
I smiled. ‘There you are. I thought you’d got lost without me around to keep an eye on you.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Sitting on your bed.’
‘I mean, what’s all this paper? Are you writing a book?’
‘Of course I’m not. When does anything exciting ever happen to me?’
‘So, what is all this, then?’
‘Nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about. Just a few simple questions. Now then,’ I cleared my throat and raised my pen. ‘Do you have any pre-existing medical conditions?’
‘What?’
‘Any lower back pain?’
‘What?’
‘Any favourite sexual positions?’
‘All of them. What is this about?’
‘Foreplay.’
He sighed. ‘I worry about you, sometimes.’
‘Look.’ I said, quite patiently, I thought. ‘This is us. Any minute now, some shady organisation will attack. Or Clive Ronan will kick the door down and kidnap you. Or Professor Rapson will unleash some toxic substance that will kill us all where we stand. Or Markham will reappear and the wrath of Nurse Hunter will bring down the rest of the building. Therefore, I thought I’d save us some time, because any minute now I’m going to be in your trousers like a frenzied ferret. I’m just getting the preliminaries out of the way. Now, do you have or have you ever had …?’
He seized my clipboard and threw it out of the window.
‘Well, that was a little unnecessary.’
‘Stop talking.’
‘There’s a whole section on sexually transmitted diseases to work through yet.’
‘Let’s move things on a little, shall we? Because I’ve spent months not allowing myself to think of you in any way and I warn you – I am so wound up I can barely function. If I can’t touch you within the next few seconds, I will burst into flames. I am almost blind with desire for you. So, please, stop talking.’
I pulled my T-shirt over my head.
‘Does that help?’
‘Not … noticeably.’
‘How about if I remove your T-shirt?’
He stepped back. ‘If you touch me I will explode.’
I threw my bra across the room.