I had a gut feeling that day with Mum, too. She was acting weirdly that morning. Wistful. Not herself. Her smile dreamy, like she was already somewhere else. Something told me I shouldn’t go to school. Fake a sick note, like I had before. But she wasn’t sad or frightened. Just a little checked out. And it was sports day and once upon a time I was good at sports and it was summer and I didn’t want to be around Mum when she was like that. So I went to school and completely forgot Mum even existed for a few hours, that anything existed except my friends and the three-legged race and the sack race and all that stupid stuff.
When I got home at ten to four I knew. Before I even got to the bedroom. Before I even unpicked that lock and opened that door. I think maybe she’d changed her mind, remembered she had kids who needed her more than she needed to leave. Because she wasn’t lying peacefully on the bed. She was lying like a snapshot of someone doing a front crawl, frozen in the act of swimming toward the door.
I’ll never ignore a gut feeling again.
If they’ve done something to Ben, I know I’ve got the best chance of finding it out. Not the police in their pay. No one but me. I’ve got nothing to lose, really. If anything, I feel a kind of pull toward this place now. To crawl, as Theo put it, back into the belly of the beast. I’d thought it sounded melodramatic when he said it but, when I stand at the gate and look up at it, it feels right. Like this place, this building, is some huge creature ready to swallow me whole.
There’s no sign of anyone about when I enter the apartment building, not even the concierge. All the lights are off in the apartments up above. It seems as deathly quiet as it did the night I arrived. It’s late, I suppose. I tell myself it must just be my imagination that lends the silence a heavy quality, like the building has been waiting for me.
I move toward the stairwell. Strange. Something draws my eye in the dim light. A large, untidy pile of clothes at the bottom of the stairs, strewn across the carpet. What on earth is that doing there?
I reach for the light switch. The lights stutter on.
I look back at the pile of old clothes. My stomach clenches. I still can’t see what it is but in an instant I know, I just know. Whatever is there at the bottom of the stairs is something bad. Something I don’t want to see. I move toward it as though I’m pushing through water, resisting, and yet knowing I have to go and look. As I get closer I can make it out more clearly. There’s a solid shape visible inside the softness of the material.
Oh my God. I’m not sure if I whisper this out loud or if it’s only in my head. I can see now with horrible clarity that the shape is a person. Lying face down, spread-eagled on the flagstones. Not moving. Definitely not moving.
Not again. I’ve been here before. The body in front of me, so horribly still. Oh my God oh my God. I can see little spots dancing in front of my eyes. Breathe, Jess. Just breathe. Every part of me wants to scream, to run in the opposite direction. I force myself to crouch down. There’s a chance she could still be alive . . . I bend down, put out a hand—touch the shoulder.
I can feel bile rising in my throat, gagging me. I swallow, hard. I roll the concierge over. Her body moves as though it really is just a loose collection of old clothes, too fluid, too senseless. A couple of hours ago she was warning me to be careful. She was frightened. Now she’s—
I put a couple of fingers to her neck, sure there’ll be nothing . . .
But I think I feel something. Is that?—yes, beneath my fingertips: a stuttering, a pulse. Faint, but definite. She is still alive, but only just.
I look up at the dark stairwell, toward the apartments. I know this wasn’t an accident. I know one of them did this.
Jess
“Can you hear me?” Christ, I realize I don’t even know the woman’s name. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”
It seems so pointless. I’m sure she can’t hear me. But as I watch her lips begin to part, as though she’s trying to say something.
I reach into my pocket for my phone.
But there’s nothing there. My jacket pocket is empty. What the hell—
I scrabble in my jeans pockets. Not in there either. Back up to my jacket. But it’s definitely not here. No phone.
And then I remember. I handed it over to that doorman in the club, because he wouldn’t let us in otherwise. We got thrown out before I had a chance to collect it—and I’m certain he wouldn’t have handed it over anyway.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath. OK, Jess: think. Think. It’s fine. It’s fine. You don’t need your phone. You can just go onto the street and ask someone else to call an ambulance.