“Oh, now you’ve gone and done it,” she sniffled.
“But since you’re so worried about what the neighbours might think,” he grinned and held open the box. “I thought I’d better have this ready just in case your Da came after me with a shotgun.”
She giggled. Nearly forty-four years on planet Earth and she giggled like a girl.
It felt wonderful.
CHAPTER 11
“Is anybody there?”
Alice’s voice was lost inside the deserted hallway. Lamps fizzed and dipped ominously as the storm gathered momentum outside, flickering their weak light at regular intervals as she crept along the corridor, listening intently for sounds of life.
“Hello?”
She pushed open the doors as she made her way down the hallway but found each room empty. Eventually, she stopped and turned around a complete circle. There had been a clattering noise, she was sure of it.
Perhaps she was hearing things.
She was about to turn away when the noise came again.
Alice took a couple of steps further down the corridor and almost jumped out of her skin when a figure stepped through one of the panelled doorways.
“Oh! You gave me such a fright!”
She let out a bright, nervous laugh.
“I thought I heard someone,” she prattled on, failing to notice the look of profound shock on the other person’s face.
“I thought everyone had gone home,” they whispered, glancing in both directions down the hallway.
“I haven’t seen anyone else,” Alice said, helpfully.
She adjusted the strap on her bag, which was overfull and weighed heavily against her shoulder. She happened to glance down and noticed they were clutching a bag tightly, angled away from her direct line of sight. It was a white and blue plastic affair bearing the name of a large supermarket chain and appeared to be full of odds and ends.
“You’re as bad as me,” she observed, cheerfully. “I seem to hoard junk. Be careful, it looks like the handle is about to—”
And she was right.
The plastic buckled, spilling its contents onto the carpeted floor at their feet.
“Damn!”
The sharp expletive surprised Alice and she bent down to help tidy the clutter back inside its miserable plastic carrier.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you clear it up.”
“No. Don’t.”
“Would you like another one?” Alice continued, failing to hear the stark warning. “I’m sure I have a spare bag in here, somewhere,” she began to search for one inside her own voluminous leather bag.
“I think you should go home.”
“Honestly, it’s no trouble,” she parried.
With an exclamation of triumph, she tugged out a foldaway carrier bag and held it out.
“Here,” she smiled.
They looked at each other for a long moment.
“Go ahead, it won’t bite!”
The smile froze on Alice’s face as she focused more closely at the contents of the spillage, seeing them properly for the first time. She recognised an expensive silver cartridge pen bearing the monogram ‘VS’ and frowned, not immediately understanding its significance.
Then, she noticed their hands.
Why wear gloves inside the house?
Realisation came crashing down like a tonne of bricks. Alice’s eyes flew to the person who watched her closely with a tinge of regret. Slowly, she retracted her hand, staring into the eyes of someone she thought she had known.
“I—I should be getting home.”
“Alice.”
Her legs seemed to have turned to jelly. She needed to move, to get up and run, but she could only manage to edge away like a startled deer. She drew herself up and clung to the strap of her bag for support, praying all the while that somebody—anybody—would interrupt them.
But they were completely alone.
“It’s getting late,” her voice wobbled and she began to step backward. Her mouth opened and then shut again, unable to voice the scream that welled inside her belly.
“Is there something you want to ask me, Alice?”
She shook her head wildly.
“No. I’m not thinking anything. I just want to go home. I am going home,” she gabbled. “It’s been a long day and I—I need to go home now.”
The figure shoved the contents of Victor’s locker back into the broken carrier bag, grasped the ends in a firm grip and then stood up.
“Why don’t you stay awhile and tell me how the portrait is coming along?”
She heard the words but the eyes held a different message as they watched her like a predator. Alice read the intent as clearly as if it had been spoken and her stomach did a slow flip.
They stood facing one another for one humming second before she whirled around and ran for the door.
*
Thirty miles away, Jack Lowerson let himself into the two-bedroom flat he had recently bought in Newcastle and was in the slow process of renovating. He couldn’t quite stretch to one of the swanky new apartments on the Quayside or a Georgian terrace in Jesmond but he was working up to it. For now, he’d taken the little garden flat in Heaton and was polishing it until it gleamed. He enjoyed the sense of achievement it gave him each time he looked at the kitchen he’d helped to install, or at the floorboards he’d sanded, stained and varnished himself. But, God, it was lonely to come home to a microwave dinner and Marbles, his cat.
The feline in question skipped into the hallway as he entered and wound her way through his legs, purring loudly when he bent down to give her a scratch between the ears.
“There’s my girl,” he crooned. “Did you miss me, hmm?”
Uncaring of the mess it would make of his suit, he scooped her up and headed into the open-plan kitchen diner. The purring grew louder as she identified the direction he was headed and she leapt down to stand beside the cupboard where he kept the cat treats.
Lowerson laughed and shook his head.
“Always on the make,” he grumbled but dutifully fed her a packet of meaty biscuits.
He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms across his chest, looked around the immaculate empty kitchen and wondered what Ryan or Phillips would be doing around now. Probably relaxing with their partners in life, chatting over the events of the day or breaking open a bottle of wine.
They certainly wouldn’t be talking to mute animals.
He sighed and flung open the fridge to reach for a microwaveable lasagne.
*
Alice flew down the hallway toward the front door. The wind shook the walls of the house until they seemed to cry out, whining against the force of the summer storm and drowning out the sound of thundering footsteps following her down the corridor.
She reached the front door and yanked it open, the air catching in her throat as she turned and caught sight of the person who followed. For a moment in time, their eyes locked and she saw only grim determination.
No remorse, no madness.