Eventually I found myself in a small living room, low ceilinged and crammed with bookshelves. Books burst untidily out of these, stacked up in rows two deep in places, every available nook and cranny full of them – non-fiction, literary novels, a smattering of crime and thrillers with their titles in large block capitals. There was lots of twentieth-century literary biography – De Beauvoir, Sartre, Miller, Hemingway – clearly Martin had a thing for Left Bank writers.
There was also a record collection comprised of real records near the wide-screen television – vinyl, stacked in their own cabinet and with the names on the spines. As I hobbled nearer I could make out the Sex Pistols, the Stranglers and the Clash, which made me smile. So Martin spent his leisure hours mourning the fact he was too young for the punk rock revolution, did he? How adorable.
Stop that, Margot, I told myself sternly.
Everything looked slightly amazed, a little jumbled, as though this was the condensation of the contents of a much larger home.
I had never heard Martin talk of a Mrs Forrester, but to me this looked like the pad of a divorcee rather than a bachelor, with its sense of belongings decanted into a smaller space than they were used to.
A pair of glass doors led to the little garden, and in the middle of the room stood a low coffee table surrounded by a sofa and chairs. A remote for the expensive stereo and a glass bowl full of coins and keys lay on top of it, but despite the genial messiness, there was no sign of any dust – I suspected he got someone in to clean as he didn’t strike me as a neat freak.
There was also no sign of my phone, though.
I sighed.
‘What are you doing downstairs?’ Martin asked suddenly from behind me.
I started, shocked. He had emerged from the hallway, and behind him I could see a door standing open, displaying a vast, very expensive iMac, and an ergonomic desk chair with a mesh back. It must be his office.
I blushed hotly, aware of myself as nosy and furtive.
‘Um, where am I?’
He furrowed his brows, as though in disbelief. ‘You… well, this is my house. In Little Wilbraham. Why aren’t you in bed?’
‘Oh.’ I bit my lip. ‘I have to make a phone call,’ I mumbled, feeling very vulnerable standing there, sticky and dishevelled and sheet white.
He raised a finger, as though I had a point, and vanished back into his office before reappearing a second later with my iPhone, fully charged. ‘Here you go.’
I accepted it without looking at him. I was embarrassed, very embarrassed, for a variety of reasons. The circumstances of my presence here created a peculiar kind of intimacy with him, one I hadn’t thought I wanted but did not resent.
‘Martin,’ I began awkwardly.
‘Yeah?’
‘Um… thanks, you know. For everything. I’m sorry about…’ I twitched my shoulders vaguely and the hurt one twanged. ‘Well, you know…’
‘You thanked me already.’ He put his hands on his hips and looked down at the floor. ‘So don’t worry about it.’ His head snapped up suddenly, as though he’d had a burst of inspiration. ‘Are you hungry yet?’
Before I tackled Martin about what I had realized in my dream, I wanted to talk to Lily, to whom I owed an apology. I might have been right about the fact that strange men were after me, but I had still behaved disgracefully, and unlike Ara, I thought with a little stab of shame, Lily did not deserve to be spoken to in that way.
She didn’t answer – and when I thought about it, I realized she might be in class. In fact, I ought to be in class, I remembered with a gut-lurching spasm of guilt.
‘What?’ asked Martin. He had stopped by my shoulder while I sat on the sofa, in order to put a fresh cup of hot coffee in front of me. Bless him, he’d remembered I take it black. The smell of it immediately made everything seem fractionally more manageable.
‘I need to call work. What time is it?’
‘Don’t worry about that. The police took care of it.’ He flicked a tea towel back over his shoulder and vanished into the kitchen. ‘Toast? It’s all I’ve got, I’m afraid.’
I paused, frowning at the coffee, then at the door he had gone through.
‘The police called my work?’ I could hear the suspicious note in my voice. ‘Very obliging of them.’
‘I told them you weren’t in a fit state to bother yourself.’ I could hear bread being sliced in the next room. I was starving, I realized. ‘You weren’t, at the time.’
‘I’m surprised they let me leave with you.’
He chuckled drily, then stopped dead.
‘What?’ I asked, craning my head round towards the kitchen.
Silence.
I stood up, hobbled towards the open door to be met by him.
‘What?’ I repeated. ‘What’s so funny?’
He glanced down, embarrassed again. ‘I was the only person you would leave with. You wouldn’t give them the names of anyone to call.’
I met his eyes as they came up. They were very green. ‘Tell me.’
He licked his lips. ‘You were on their system, and since you were obviously distressed they wanted to send you to Narrowbourne, and then I said, you know, you could stay with me in Little Wilbraham overnight, and you liked that plan, and after some very fast talking, and getting O’Neill out of bed and running it past him, they reluctantly agreed. So, here you are.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would they send me back to Narrowbourne?’ A cold dread and fury was starting to hammer against my breastbone. ‘Good God, I was the one that lunatic attacked, why would-’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘I mean he broke into my home and tried to kill me,’ I continued, feeling the ignition turn in the engines of my rage. ‘I didn’t imagine that, did I? Or did I?’
‘Margot, stop. Stop-’
‘I mean, maybe I did, maybe this is-’
He raised a quelling hand. ‘Stop!’
I paused, waiting, as my chest rose and fell.
‘It’s exactly what you think it is,’ he eyed me keenly. ‘Whoever kidnapped Bethan Avery saw your picture in the paper, or you on TV, found out where you worked, followed you home and attacked you there.’
My mouth snapped shut. I was so unused to people agreeing with me lately that I think I was astounded.
He offered a little bounce of a shrug. ‘That’s exactly how it went down. And it’s something that should have been anticipated, given everything we know.’
I considered this and sighed. My anger was draining away. ‘Well…’ I took a deep breath, tried to force some calm back into my lungs. ‘Why should it have been anticipated? Why should these people come after me? If I knew where Bethan Avery was, we wouldn’t need to pay drama students and film crews and get underfoot at hospitals making movies about her, would we?’
Something queer came into his expression then, something both sympathetic and yet speculative.
And increasingly, nothing about this whole incident and its fallout made any sense. If, as I had suspected before the attack, I was being hunted because Bethan’s kidnapper thought I knew where she was, why had he not tried to question me about her whereabouts? And what about the other man, the one from the car park? Was there really a gang after all? And why had the police wanted to send me to Narrowbourne? I couldn’t go home, obviously. I probably had come over as a little hysterical (and who could blame me) but why not keep me in hospital overnight? I mean, I know the NHS is under pressure, but still…
I felt sick. I couldn’t remember much at all about the previous night. The hospital had been a blur. When I don’t remember things, it’s never a good sign. I don’t remember drinking, so there wasn’t even that for an excuse.
Oh Jesus, maybe I am really crazy.