Sophie's expression shifted gear. She was looking past me again, but this time into the empty room.
Or perhaps it wasn't so empty after all.
'He's here, isn't he?' I whispered.
'I can't hear you above this frigging music.'
I shouted as loudly as I could, 'There's a dead man behind me.' Now I understood. She'd been keeping me talking, giving Robert Jamieson a chance to sneak up while my attention was distracted. They'd been plotting it from the beginning. They were in it together.
Sophie's gaze hardly wavered. She was good, I had to give her that. 'There's nobody behind you, Clare,' she said, looking past me all the time. 'The only dead men are on the dance floor downstairs.'
'I'm not going to fall for it,' I said.
'You're really cracked,' said Sophie. 'First the sleepwalking, and now this. You should see a doctor.'
'It's you who should see the doctor,' I said.
'Oh, cut it out,' said Sophie. 'Get a life.'
I said, 'That's exactly what I intend to do.'
Which was when I felt myself moving. It was as if someone had positioned a giant magnet just outside the windows and I was being drawn towards it, inch by inch, my heels making squeaking sounds as I dug them in and they dragged against the floor. I tried to pull back, but it was no good — it was a tug of war, and I was on the losing side. My feet were on the point of losing contact with the ground altogether when I lashed out in a panic, trying to grab something — anything — that would put the brakes on my involuntary progress.
I'd drawn level with Sophie. 'What are you doing' she squeaked, as I grabbed a fistful of her voluminous skirt. She tried to brush my fingers away, but I'd fastened on to the material with a grip like rigor mortis.
'You don't want to bother with me,' I said.
'You can say that again,' said Sophie.
'Sophie's got more talent in her little finger than I've got in my entire body.'
'I'm glad we've sorted that one out,' said Sophie.
'I'm fat and ugly and my fashion sense is even worse than Marsha Carter-Brown's.'
'Hear hear,' said Sophie.
And, miraculously, I felt the pressure ease off. I was able to step back from the windows and relax my grip on Sophie's skirt. She immediately stooped to examine it, as though my fingers might have left a slimy deposit.
Why do women have legs?
He was no longer behind me.
Now it was my turn to look over Sophie's shoulder. Tit for tat, she would have called it. He was hovering behind her, little more than a shadow emerging from the background, but this time I didn't need a mirror to see him.
Sophie glanced up from her skirt, and she must have noticed something in my face because she said, 'What?'
He looked straight at me, cocking an eyebrow, and I nodded as violently as I could. It hurt for me to have to say it, but I didn't have a lot of choice.
'It's her you want,' I said. 'Not me.'
And he must have agreed, because he smiled and went for Sophie instead, and she was too startled to resist. He enfolded her in his arms and lifted her bodily off the ground — just as he would have lifted me, had I not been a stone and a half heavier. Then, like a spoilt brat smashing an unwanted birthday present, he hurled her back against the rickety iron balustrade. The railings uprooted from their concrete base as easily as palings being pulled out of soft earth. Sophie felt them give way, and scrabbled with both hands for a grip on the window frame, and for a moment or two it looked as though she'd checked her fall, but all she'd managed to get hold of was a fatigued scrap of velvet which crumbled to dust in her fingers, and she didn't get another grab at it because by then she'd lost all contact with the material world.
She was there.
And then she was gone.
Maybe I should have tried to help, but it all happened so fast. All I could do was stand and stare, and say the first thing which came into my head. Which was, 'Oops.'
Robert Jamieson turned round and smiled and gave a sort of mocking salute. I stared back at him, unable to move a muscle until he suddenly lunged for me with his hands hooked into vulture claws. I shrieked and covered my face, and when I looked up again there was no one in the room but me.
I forced myself to look out of the windows, being careful not to lean out too far. Down below it was like a stage set for the last act of a play. Sophie was sprawled in a circle of unnaturally bright light. She might have been leaning against the railings, maybe waiting for someone to come out of the basement, except that her head was twisted at an unnatural angle, and protruding from where her left eye should have been was the tip of an iron spear. Only her fingers moved; they were flexing, opening and closing on the night air.
Something dark and wet was pooling on the pavement.
Against my back, the music pounded.
Ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk
But at least my headache was gone.
As I slowly backed away from the window, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye a pinprick of red light that blinked on and off. I floated instinctively towards it, like a plant seeking the sun.
I wasn't alone after all. Walter Cheeseman, in his skeleton suit, was standing a few feet away, camcorder up against his face. After a decent interval, when he was sure he'd got everything there was to get, he lowered the camera and gave me a barefaced grin.
'Gotcha!' he said.
There was a silence which felt as though it might last for ever, and then Daisy said, 'Well, thank you, Clare, for sharing that with us.'
'I've never heard anything like it in my life,' said Luke. 'What a morbid imagination.'
'And not what you'd call a feelgood ending,' said Daisy.
'I warned you,' said Clare. She seemed on the verge of leaping up and storming out, but Miles placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.
'I shouldn't have let you do it,' he said. 'I thought it would be therapeutic, but now you're all upset.'
'I'm not upset!' snapped Clare. This time, he didn't try to stop her as she jumped up and stomped off towards the bathroom. Susie followed to make sure she was all right, and reported back that she'd heard muffled sobbing behind the locked door.
Suddenly everyone was talking all at once.
'So was Sophie pushed, or wasn't she?'
'What was on Walter Cheeseman's videotape?'
Miles had the grace to be embarrassed. 'The official verdict was accidental death.'
'But you don't think it was accidental,' I said.
Very quietly, almost inaudibly, Miles said no.
'So it was murder,' said Daisy. 'Clare pushed her.'
'I didn't say that,' said Miles. 'Look, she went through a really bad patch afterwards. Well, we all did, but Clare seemed to feel responsible. She spent some time in a… I guess you could call it a hospital, this Sunnyfields place, but even then she insisted he was writing to her.'
'By he, you mean…'
'Robert Jamieson,' said Miles.
'You're kidding,' said Daisy.
'But I bet Walter Cheeseman had some explaining to do,' said Susie.
Miles shrugged. 'Walter Cheeseman turned out to be a very on-the-level kind of guy. He just happened to be filming the party. I mean, he's a film director, so that was his job. And it just so happened he was pointing his camera at the right place at the right time. It was the video that let Clare off the hook, but for God's sake don't remind her of it. The only time we managed to watch it all the way through, she ended up having to be sedated.'
'But what was on it?'
'Incontrovertible proof that Sophie didn't fall — she was pushed.'
'But who did the pushing?' asked Daisy.
'You couldn't see his face,' said Miles. 'The guy was in fancy dress, for Heaven's sake. All in black, like an undertaker.'