She pressed her forehead against the glass and waited for the pounding in her chest to subside. The anorexics were to her left, half-lost in darkness. Would anyone really break in to steal them, though? An opportunist hoping for some decent electronics seemed more likely.
Anyway, no one was in the garden. It had been the wind or she’d imagined it in her jittery, half-drunk state. And no one had been hanging round the house the night Marianne died, she knew that for certain now.
As she closed the window at the back of the house, she glanced over at the flats in Benson Place and her heart thumped again. On the top floor, almost on a level with her, a man was standing in the window, silhouetted by the light. He was looking her way. For a moment she was transfixed but then, nerves frayed, she thought ‘What the hell?’ and gave him a jaunty wave. Why shouldn’t he look out of his window? She was looking out of hers.
Nine
‘I get them online,’ he said. ‘From Square Mile. They only sell whole beans, you have to grind them yourself, but you want to anyway, don’t you, for the freshness? This one’s Brazilian, Capao. Wait ’til you taste it.’ Turk took a Brita jug out of the fridge, filled the bottom of the espresso-maker then smoothed the grounds in the filter. ‘They’re the best in London, Square Mile. All the top coffee places use them.’
Rowan watched as he adjusted the gas so the flames didn’t lick up the sides of the pot. He’d known she was coming so skinny black silk trousers with a paisley pattern were obviously what he thought the occasion demanded. He’d answered the door barefoot but, coming into the kitchen, he’d scuffed on a pair of beaded Indian slippers. He looked like a wrestler playing Aladdin in panto.
The kitchen was clean and ordered but beyond the back door, chaos reigned. Even now, at the end of January, a billowing mass of green engulfed the small paved area, and the sprawling laurel bush reached as high as the first-floor windows of the house behind. Dead nettles filled the narrow alley that ran alongside the kitchen.
‘You’re not tempted to do an extension?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Extend into the side return, like that.’ She pointed to the house next door, whose outer wall now ran right up against the boundary of the property, making room for what – over Turk’s mouldering fence – looked like a huge and very stylish kitchen.
‘Oh, yeah. One day. It’s just so disruptive, isn’t it, building work?’
He filled the espresso cups and brought them over to the table. Rowan sat on a bench made from an old railway sleeper and he rummaged in a basket on the worktop. ‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘I went to Borough Market this morning. I get these biscotti from an Italian guy there – he makes them with lemon oil that his grandmother sends over from Sicily.’ He glanced at the coffee, disappointed. ‘I can never get a crema on top.’
‘It’s delicious, Peter. Probably the best coffee I’ve ever had.’
Gratified, he shook some biscuits on to a plate and came to sit down. ‘So,’ he took a tooth-endangering bite, ‘nothing for years and then suddenly, twice in a week, here you are. You want to talk about Mazz, obviously.’
She’d decided just to say it. ‘I can’t believe she slipped.’
When Turk looked at her, she saw his face properly for the first time. Grey channels were scored out from the inner corners of his eyes, which were pink and visibly under-slept. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘No, that’s not true. She must have, if that’s what the police think. If there was any doubt, they’d be investigating, there’d be an inquest, all that. This isn’t bad TV – they’re not idiots.’
Rowan thought of Theo and suppressed a shudder of disgust. ‘I know.’
‘But yes, it’s weird – it doesn’t make much sense to me, either.’
‘You said she definitely still had vertigo.’
‘The last time we were up there, it was the same as ever – she wouldn’t get off that little wall. Got panicky every time I even walked about a bit.’
‘When was that?’
‘A month ago? Six weeks?’
‘Was she all right? Not – down? Depressed.’
‘No. She was knackered – she’d been working like a navvy for her new show, I hadn’t even spoken to her for a couple of weeks – but she was high as a kite. You remember what it was like when she was doing good work – that excitement, like she was bubbling?’
Rowan nodded. Marianne had tried to explain it once. She’d said that when her work was going well, it felt like the world had organised itself specifically to help her: everything was poignant, relevant, brighter than usual. ‘“A brilliant kind of mania.”’
‘That’s what she said?’
‘Once. Do you think it was?’
‘What, mania literally?’ Turk ran a fingertip round the lip of his tiny cup. ‘No. No, I don’t. But she was definitely high, wasn’t she? It was definitely an altered state.’
‘But not drugs?’