I curl in on myself to dodge Kamal’s compliments, ones he has no right showering on me when I have been doing the opposite of what he thinks.
‘Promise me something?’ he says. ‘Promise me you’ll stay away from Otis Clarke, at least until the police confirm if he’s a suspect or not. Please?’
Lifting my head, I look into the eyes of the man I love, now pooled with worry. I have seen that emotion in him so many times. I have been the cause of it for so long now. I hate myself for doing it to him, to us.
‘I promise,’ I nod, but even when I say the words, I know it’s likely to be a promise I won’t keep.
CHAPTER 21Alexa
Three days gone
The patter of raindrops didn’t bring Alexa Clarke the same comfort it usually did. As a child, whenever it rained, she would grab a blanket and lie under her bedroom window, listening to the droplets land. The ritual was almost meditative. But silenced, starved and bloodied in the white room, the sound of rain was anything but soothing. Every drop hitting the windowpane landed like a hammer cracking Alexa’s skull.
She opened her eyes, and the dim room came back into focus. How long Alexa had been in here, she couldn’t guess, but the increasingly pungent stench of stale urine and the mounting weakness in her body warned her it was too long.
Alexa knew that if something didn’t change soon, her story would not have a happy ending. It couldn’t. Her head was an open wound. She was laid on a bloodstained pillow, no doubt inviting infection to take hold. And she was so, so tired.
Opening her mouth, Alexa went to shout for help, but what was the point? Her voice was gone, lost to the pain of her situation.Worse still, every dry-mouthed swallow was comparable to digesting a packet of razor blades.
The closest thing Alexa could compare it to was the final day of a music festival, when the series of late nights screaming along to her favourite songs announced their impact. Alexa had experienced that gruff vocal legacy many times in her twenties. Somewhere in her home was a box of wristbands from each one, kept for when she needed reminding that sometimes life was simply dancing in a field with your best friends.
There were other things in the box, too. Polaroids from dinner parties and boarding passes from trips abroad with her husband. So many memories. It was laughable that she tried to condense them all into one box.
But the things in there were only tokens of happy times. Alexa knew the reality of her marriage was far more complicated than a strip of black-and-white stills from a photo booth suggested.
Remembering her husband, Alexa opened her mouth to allow her useless voice to call for help once more. But, as she dragged her weary gaze to the door and saw the shadow underneath it, she froze.
Someone was there.
Someone was standing outside the room.
Alexa blinked three times to check her unreliable vision wasn’t playing a trick on her, but each time she opened her eyes, the shadow was present.
‘I know you’re there,’ she called, the barely audible words tearing her sandpaper throat. ‘I can see your shadow.’
When there was no response, panic fluttered in Alexa’s chest. Her fate was pinned on getting help. Leaving this room, righting her wrongs, surviving – none of that could happen unless someone set her free.
‘I can see you,’ she rasped. ‘Please, help me.’
Still, the shadow was motionless.
‘Please,’ she called out, the torn walls of her throat catching against each other. Forcing herself to stare at the shadow, Alexa waited until the awful truth hit her.
There was no one there.
There never had been. She had simply succumbed to delirium.
Pressing the back of her head into the pillow, Alexa cried out as the wound roared, but nothing hurt as much as the realisation that this was it. There would be no apologising. No happy ending, no turning things around.
This.
Was.
It.
But then, out of the corner of her eye, Alexa watched as the unthinkable happened. The door handle started to turn, slowly, until eventually it clicked open.
Alexa choked on a disbelieving laugh.They’re coming into the room, she cheered, but then the reality of that thought ploughed through her.