The room he locked me in is included in the tour. It’s where he takes me after he’s forced me to be more admiring of the narrow beige dining room than it deserves by repeatedly saying, ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? You don’t seem to like it,’ tapping the gun against his leg.
He tells me the room with the stripy carpet used to be a garage. ‘There’s still a garage,’ he adds quickly, as if he imagines the lack of one might concern me. ‘A double, detached from the house. But there used to be an integral one as well. We didn’t need two, so we decided to turn this one into a playroom.’ He sees my shock and sighs. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m unwilling to confide in you,’ he says. ‘I know it must seem as if there’s a lot you don’t know about me, and I will tell you, I promise, but the important thing is you, Sally. You’re the only person I’m interested in now, for the time being at least. You won’t get upset if I mention the past, will you?’
‘No,’ I hear myself say. I wish I could go back in time, into my own past, and scream at myself to stay away from him. How could I have been so stupid? If he’s insane now he must have been insane last year, when I first met him. Why didn’t I spot it? What’s wrong with me? Is this my punishment? I didn’t even fancy him that much. Was I so desperate to have an adventure, to make the most of my one week of freedom, that I missed all the obvious warning signs? I could lose Nick, my children, my whole life, because I chose to have a fling with this man of all men.
My resolve hardens. I have to get out of here, whatever it takes.
‘Show me the rest of the house,’ I say.
He doesn’t need any encouragement. As he marches me from room to room, still holding me by the arm, I look for something I can grab and use to knock him out. There’s a wrought-iron letter-stand on a table in the hall with a small lamp beside it. Either of these might do, if only he would take his eyes off me for a second.
The lounge is the biggest room I’ve seen so far, full of bulky chairs and sofas upholstered in distressed brown leather, with a beige velvet-effect carpet. The walls that aren’t covered with bookshelves are white. After we leave the room, I realise I didn’t take in the title of a single book, and there were dozens. There was something on the wall too-a framed, brightly coloured poster with writing on it-something about El Salvador.
I must pay more attention. If I get out of here, I’ll have to describe this house to the police.
Halfway up the stairs he stops and says, ‘You’ll have noticed there was no television in the lounge. Television in the lounge kills conversation, but I can get you one for your room if you’d like.’
It’s not my room, I want to scream at him. Nothing here is mine.
Upstairs there are six rooms, five with their doors standing open. He walks me into each one, then out again almost straight away. One contains gym equipment-weights, a cross-trainer, a treadmill, an exercise bike-as well as a stereo, a club-style swivel chair in burgundy leather and two speakers, the biggest I have ever seen. The second is a bedroom, with pale blue walls, a blue carpet, navy curtains with a white trim and a double bed with blue bedding. Two blue towels lie neatly folded on the bed. ‘This is the guest room,’ he says, ‘but we call it the Blue Room.’
In the next bedroom we come to, everything is pink and floral. A little girl’s room. I feel as if I might faint. There is a single bed against one wall. Beside it are two toy cots and a plastic toy bath. I am allowed only a fleeting glimpse of the master bedroom before he pulls me into the smallest of the upstairs rooms, a boxroom. It has an aubergine-coloured carpet that is flecked with white, yellow walls, a skylight, a desk and more shelves full of books. My eyes are drawn to a novel I read while I was at university: The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. I hated it. And there are other books by Conrad too-eight or nine, titles I’ve never heard of: Almayer something. My eyes flit to the shelf above, too impatient to read the whole title.
What’s wrong with this room?
A circle of pain around my arm and I’m dragged out on to the landing. Did I see something? What was it my eye landed on that didn’t look right?
The man steers me towards the sixth door on the landing, the only one that’s closed. He tries the handle. ‘Locked, see? The plumbing’s not working and I don’t want a flood.’ I stare at the shiny lock. It looks new. How recently did he have it put on? ‘I’ll show you the bathroom you can use.’ He uses the gun to usher me downstairs; I can feel it against my back.
Halfway down I lose my footing and fall, hitting my side on the steps. ‘Careful!’ he says. I hear panic in his voice. Does he imagine he cares about me? Is that what he tells himself, his justification?
I stand up, winded but determined not to let him see I’m in pain. He is eager to show me what he calls my ‘private bathroom’. In the hall, under the stairs and opposite the entrance to the kitchen, there’s a door with a sloping top that follows the line of the stairs. I didn’t notice it before. He opens it. Inside, there’s a lavatory, shower and basin, all within a few centimetres of each other. I’m not sure there would be room for a person to stand in front of the basin if the door were closed.
‘Bijou I think is the word,’ he says. ‘This used to be the cupboard under the stairs. I never wanted to turn it into a bathroom; this house hasn’t got much in the way of storage space, and the master bedroom’s got an en-suite…’ He frowns, as if an unwelcome memory has forced itself upon him. ‘I suppose it’s lucky I lost the argument.’
‘Argument with who?’ I ask, but he isn’t paying attention. He mumbles something that sounds like ‘satisfied diffusion’.
‘Pardon?’ I say.
‘Stratified diffusion.’
‘What’s that?’ Mark Bretherick is a scientist. Could this man be one too? Is that how they know each other?
‘En-suite bathrooms. Foreign holidays, too. It doesn’t matter.’ He waves his gun to dismiss the topic, nearly hitting me in the face. Mark Bretherick told me that Geraldine and Lucy’s bodies were found in the two bathrooms at Corn Mill House. The door of one bathroom in this man’s house is locked. Does it mean anything?
‘I don’t understand.’ I look into his eyes, searching for a person I can reach somehow. How can I persuade him to let me leave?
‘Do you want to phone Nick now?’ he says.
‘Yes.’ I try not to sound as if I’m pleading.
He hands me my phone. ‘Don’t speak for too long. And don’t say anything disloyal. About me. If you even try, I’ll know.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Say you’re busy and you don’t know when you’ll be back.’ He holds the gun to the side of my head.
Nick answers after the third ring. ‘It’s me,’ I say.
‘Sal? I thought you’d forgotten we exist, me and the kids. Why didn’t you ring last night? I told them you would-they were really disappointed.’
‘I’m sorry. Nick-’
‘When are you back? We need to talk about your work situation, sort something out. Save Venice can’t expect you to drop everything and go running whenever it suits them.’
‘Nick-’
‘It’s ridiculous, Sal! You didn’t even have time to ring me? I’m not surprised your employers forget you’ve got two young children-you act like you’ve forgotten too, most of the time!’
I burst into tears. That’s so unfair. Nick gets angry so rarely. ‘I can’t discuss this now,’ I tell him. ‘The freezer’s full of stuff Zoe and Jake can have for their tea.’
‘When are you back?’
Hearing this question, answering it, is as painful as I imagined it would be. ‘I don’t know. Soon, I hope.’
A pause.
‘Are you crying?’ Nick asks. ‘Look, sorry for moaning. It’s a nightmare having to do it all myself, that’s all. And… well, sometimes I worry your work’s going to take over your whole life. A lot of women scale down their careers when they have kids; maybe you ought to think about it.’