Pip couldn’t see. She couldn’t see from here if he was drinking the water.
But she could hear it. That obnoxious sucking sound from the spout, filling the silent house, cutting right through her.
Pip pushed up on to her feet, quietly, quietly, her bag snagging on the top of the Hoover. She unhooked it and straightened up, looking through the slats again. Now she could see him, from this height. One hand on the frozen peas over his eye, the other clutched around his bottle. At least four large sips before he put it back down. That wasn’t enough. He had to drink all of it, most of it.
She pulled out the burner phone from the front pocket of her hoodie. It was 8:57 p.m. Fuck, almost nine already. Pip thought they could buy at least three hours with Jason’s body. Which meant she only had half an hour until the time-of-death window might open. She was supposed to start establishing her alibi in forty-five minutes.
And yet, there was nothing she could do now. All she could do was wait. Watch Max from her hiding place. Try to play god, using that dark place in her mind to make him sit forward and drink more.
Max didn’t listen. He leaned forward, but only to place his phone on the coffee table. Then he picked up his controller and unpaused his game. Gunshots. A lot, but Pip heard only six, striking her through the chest, Stanley’s blood creeping over her hands in the dark cupboard. Stanley’s, not Jason’s. She could tell the difference somehow.
Max took another sip at 9 p.m. on the dot.
Two more at 9:03 p.m.
Went to the downstairs toilet at 9:05 p.m. It was right next to Pip’s cupboard, and she could hear everything. He didn’t flush, and she didn’t breathe.
Another sip at 9:06 p.m. as he returned to the sofa, a sucking, rattling sound from the spout. He put down the water bottle, and then picked it back up again, getting to his feet. What was he doing? Where was he taking it? Pip couldn’t see, shifting her head to peer through the slats.
He wandered through the archway into the kitchen. Pip heard the sound of a running tap. Max appeared again, the blue bottle in his hand. Twisting his wrist as he screwed the top back on. He’d just refilled the bottle. He must have drunk it all, or at least he’d got close enough to the bottom to need to fill up.
The drugs were gone. Inside him now.
Max stumbled, tripping over his own bare foot. He stood there for a moment, blinking down at his feet, like he was confused, a deepening red mark under one eye.
The pills must have already started to take effect. Some had been in his system for over ten minutes now. How long would it be until he passed out?
Max took a tentative step, swaying slightly, and then another quick one, hurrying over to the sofa. He lowered himself down, took another sip of water. He was feeling dizzy, Pip could tell. She’d had that same feeling, almost a year ago, sitting across from Becca in the Bells’ kitchen, though she’d been given more than two and a half milligrams. The exhaustion, like her body was starting to separate from her mind. Soon his legs wouldn’t be able to hold him up.
Pip wondered what he was thinking right now, as he unpaused the game and started shooting again, taking cover behind a dilapidated wall. Maybe he was thinking his light-headedness had come from the blow to his head, from Nat’s fist. Maybe he was feeling tired, and as he felt sleep dragging him in, closer and closer, he’d tell himself he just needed to sleep it off. He’d never know, never suspect, that as soon as he fell asleep, he would be out of the house, killing a man.
Max’s head lowered against the arm of the sofa, resting on the frozen peas. Pip couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see his eyes. But they must have still been open, because he was still shooting.
But his on-screen character was moving sluggishly too, the violent world spinning around him in dizzying circles as Max started to lose control of his thumbs.
Pip watched, eyes flicking between the two.
Waiting. Waiting.
She glanced down at the time, the minutes running away from her.
And when she looked back up, neither of them were moving. Not Max, stretched out on the sofa, head up on the arm. And not his character on-screen, standing still in the middle of a battlefield, life bar draining as he took hit after hit.
You’re dead, the game told him, fading to a loading screen.
And Max didn’t react, didn’t move at all.
He must have passed out, right? He must be unconscious. It was 9:17 p.m. now, twenty minutes after he’d first started drinking the spiked water.
Pip didn’t know. And she didn’t know how she could know for certain, trapped back here in the understairs cupboard. If she left her hiding place and he wasn’t asleep, the plan was finished, and so was she.