Also by Mark Edwards
The Magpies
A Murder of Magpies
Last of the Magpies
The Psychopath Next Door
Other Novels
What You Wish For
Because She Loves Me
Follow You Home
The Devil’s Work
The Lucky Ones
The Retreat
In Her Shadow
Here To Stay
The House Guest
The Hollows
No Place To Run
Keep Her Secret
The Darkest Water
With Louise Voss
Killing Cupid
Catch Your Death
All Fall Down
Forward Slash
From the Cradle
The Blissfully Dead
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It was the last Friday in July and I was trying hard not to panic about the deadline when Lily made the suggestion that would change everything.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ she said, in that measured tone of hers. ‘I want to devise a test that will tell us if someone is a psychopath.’
There were only three of us left in the library: Lily, Sophie and me. The others had gone outside to smoke or get some air while we carried on working, though at least we were cool in that dark-panelled room that the sun barely touched. The library was now a makeshift office. Antique tables and chairs with wobbly legs had been dragged in from other rooms, and cables snaked across the floorboards to connect the fruit-coloured iMacs that we’d been sitting in front of since first light.
We were spurred on by the date that was written on a whiteboard and propped on a shelf in the fiction section. The launch date, just four weeks away. The fiction section was apt because there was no way the site would be ready by then. But we kept hearing rumours that our rivals were going to beat us to the punch, that they would revolutionize online dating, not us. ‘No prize for second,’ Sebastian kept saying, and we could always tell when he’d been on the phone to his chief investor. He would march into the office, sweat gleaming on
his creased brow, and demand to know exactly what we had achieved that day.
‘This is our revolution,’ he said to us many times. ‘We can’t let them take it from us.’
I could hear the professor upstairs in his study now, pacing from one end of the room to the other. I looked up. One of the dogs, sitting by my feet, lifted his head too.
‘I want to help him,’ Lily said, following my gaze towards the ceiling. And that was when she came up with her suggestion. A test to identify psychopaths, a subject I had been obsessed with over the past couple of weeks, since we’d been up there, in Sebastian’s study, searching through his papers and scouring the psychology periodicals that he still subscribed to. ‘We could ensure it was reliable, trustworthy, something he could use in his other work. What do you think? Will? Sophie?’
A test. Hadn’t we done enough of those this summer? I’d been tested before I even met the professor and since coming here, to his house, I’d spent hours in front of the computer, completing questionnaires, trying to figure out how much I agreed or disagreed with statements like I feel comfortable around strangers.
‘How would you go about it, Lily?’
That was Sophie. She was seated across from me, leaning forward with her elbows on her desk, her wavy black hair tumbling around her face; a face I found it hard not to stare at.
Lily smiled. ‘I haven’t quite figured that out yet. I’ll have to make sure it’s not easy to fool.’ I could almost hear the crackle of that remarkable brain, the firing of synapses, as she grabbed a pad and pen and began making notes. Sophie and I got up from our desks and peered over Lily’s shoulder. She scribbled fast: a flow chart, arrows and question marks. Beyond the library I could hear chatter and laughter.
My colleagues. After a month at the professor’s, I was still unsure how many of them I could call friends.
‘What do you think?’ Lily asked, when she’d finished making notes.
I picked up her notepad and tried to make sense of it. I quickly put it down again. It was like being a work-experience kid on the Manhattan Project.
‘Will?’
I chose my words carefully. ‘It sounds . . . interesting. And I want to help the professor too. But aren’t we busy enough? Everything we’re here to do. Our stock options. All of it. We’re already running out of time.’
She had the smile of a benevolent dictator. ‘It will be fine. I have the capacity, Will. I’ll base it on the same algorithm we’re using for the site. It’s just another form of psychometric testing, really. And if I can’t pull it off, we won’t have lost anything.’ A pause. ‘So? Shall we do it?’
I caught Sophie’s eye, thinking about another test we’d taken and the results it had spat out, and I wondered if that would ever lead to anything or if work and pressure would get in our way. We still had so many problems that needed fixing. Words that had to be written and polished. Bugs squashed.
I was about to tell Lily we were too busy, that it would be too difficult. A test to catch a psychopath? I had faith in her genius, but did she really have time? And could she really create a test that a psychopath wouldn’t be able to fool?
But as I opened my mouth to put forward my argument, Sophie said, ‘I’m in. I think it’s a brilliant idea. Surely you do too, Will?’
They both turned to me and I swallowed my words. I simply couldn’t say no to them.
‘Let’s do it,’ I said, and both Sophie and Lily clapped their hands.
‘What’s all the excitement about?’
Georgina came into the room, followed by the others, smelling of cigarettes and sunshine, the spaniel rousing himself and running over to greet them, tail a happy blur. Once everyone was inside, Lily began to tell them about her idea, explaining that we would all need to take part, volunteer to be tested, just as we’d acted as guinea pigs for the dating site.
As they listened to her, the ceiling creaked again. Sebastian, still up there, pacing.
I looked over at my colleagues. Sebastian’s six hires and the other two, spending all our time together, sunrise to sunset and sunset to dawn.
No one had protested, not then anyway, although there were one or two frowns of doubt, signs of disquiet that would come out later. At that point, though, there were no arguments, and I knew that, at some point in the coming weeks, we would all risk exposing a darkness in ourselves. A difference.
I looked around again, as the conversation turned towards the evening, to plans, to beer and wine and a dip in the lake. The genius. The lothario. The salesman. The affluent couple, the joker and the local girl. Finally, me, the wordsmith, whose role was to write it all down.
If any of us were a psychopath, I already had a good idea who it would be.
Of course Georgina and Theo lived in an enormous house. Out of all of us, they were the ones who had always been the most likely to achieve success. As individuals, each would have made something of themself, I had no doubt of that. But as a couple? They were unstoppable.
Still, even after the invitation had landed on my doormat and I’d checked the address on Google Maps, I hadn’t expected the Howard residence to be quite so impressive. It was a Georgian townhouse, four storeys plus a basement, the last one on a row of imposing terraces in Notting Hill. The house to its left was covered with scaffolding that appeared to have been there some time, green netting flapping in the wind. Next door to the right, set just a little way apart from the row of terraces, was a grand detached house that seemed empty too, its windows dark, the wrought-iron gate secured with a chain and padlock. Between these two unwelcoming buildings the Howards’ home stood even prouder and taller, its front windows illuminated, the white paintwork immaculate, a family home that happened to belong to two people I had once known but hadn’t seen for over twenty years.
It had taken a death to bring us back together.
You are cordially invited to a dinner party to celebrate the life of Sebastian Marlowe
Hosted by Theo and Georgina Howard RSVP
The invitation was printed on thick ivory card, a little grubby at its edges now where I had examined it so many times. Beneath the RSVP was an email address and, on the back, in looping cursive handwriting, a personal message written in blue ink:
Dearest Will. Please come! All the old gang will be there and it will be lovely to remember the professor. Can’t wait to catch up. G xx
Catch up. Tell us what you’ve been up to for the past twenty-five years.
It would take twenty-five seconds.
And it was that thought, picturing Georgina’s attempts to suppress the pity she felt for me, that almost sent me back to the tube station, back to my little flat south of the river, where I would spend another evening in front of the TV, waiting for the Deliveroo driver, sharing my dinner with Bernard, my cat – my sole companion since Danielle had left. Bottle of supermarket wine and the optimistic opening of my laptop, the blinking cursor on the blank page.
Waiting for me to tell my story.
That blinking cursor was one of the main reasons I’d accepted the invitation.
‘Will?’
The voice, male, came out of the darkness. It was a voice I hadn’t heard in a long time but was instantly familiar.
Rohan stepped into the sodium light, brandishing a piece of card that matched mine.
‘Mate,’ he said. ‘I’m so happy to see you. I thought I might be the only one stupid enough to come.’
He grinned as I put out my hand.
‘A handshake? Come on, man. Bring it in.’ He pulled me into an embrace, patting my back before releasing me and saying, ‘You’re still as skinny as ever.’
‘You’re looking good,’ I said, though I wasn’t sure I meant it. It’s always a little depressing to meet up with people you haven’t seen in over twenty years; a reminder that youth is a speck in the rear-view mirror. There were dark smudges beneath his eyes, like he’d suffered through a few sleepless nights, and he’d filled out since I’d last seen him. But in other ways, Rohan looked distinguished: his black hair was streaked with silver and he was dressed well. I told him so: ‘Looking sharp, I should say.’
He held his overcoat open. ‘The suit? You like it?’ Beneath the streetlight I could see it was midnight blue, well made. ‘My brother-in-law’s a tailor.’
So he was married. I was going to ask the customary question about whether he had kids – a little later in the evening I would find out that he had two boys, aged nine and eleven, and that he’d been married to Anika for thirteen years – but before I could say anything he let out a whistle as he swivelled on his heels and took in the house.
‘Look at this place.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Know how much it’s worth?’
He told me. It was the kind of figure that’s hard to comprehend, mind-boggling even for London.
‘What do they do?’ I asked, somehow knowing he would have looked it up. ‘For a living, I mean?’
‘Theo is in investment banking. Do you remember James? Sebastian’s angel investor? Apparently, he gave Theo his first break.’ I did remember him. A flash bloke who drove a Porsche and couldn’t keep his eyes off Sophie. ‘I’m not sure about Georgina, but her family were loaded, weren’t they?
Probably inherited a fortune. Whatever – can you imagine? Being able to afford a place like this?’
‘How do you know I’m not loaded? I might have flown here in a gold helicopter.’
He laughed. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the bestseller lists, mate. Waiting to see your name. Hasn’t happened.’
‘Not yet.’
‘But when it does you’ll be able to afford a gaff like this, right? Maybe a decent suit.’
I tried not to look offended. I was wearing my nicest clothes: a shirt that Danielle had bought me the Christmasbefore-last and a smart pair of Levi’s. My coat, which had seen me through several wet English winters, was a little thin though, especially in this biting wind.
‘Do you know who else is coming?’ Rohan asked.
‘All the old gang, apparently.’ These words, quoted from the back of the invitation, sent a little shiver through my veins.
‘Nice. I saw Lily a few years ago at a conference. She’s married with kids too. I think she told me her wife is a lawyer.’
‘You sound surprised.’
A shrug. ‘I never pictured Lily getting married.’
I hadn’t either. For someone who had worked for a dating site, Lily had been remarkably uninterested in romance.
‘What about Sophie?’ I asked, trying to sound casual. ‘Do you know what she’s up to?’
‘Yeah, married to a firefighter. Eight kids.’
‘Oh. I never—’
He erupted with laughter. ‘Mate, your face. I haven’t got a clue what happened to her. She’s not on Facebook or anything.’
I already knew she wasn’t on social media, not in a way that was easy to trace, anyway. I’d looked for her several times, late at night when I’d had a couple of drinks and started thinking about the past.
‘Have you stalked all of us?’ I asked.
‘Of course. Actually, I sent you a friend request about ten years ago. Guess you never saw it. Or maybe you didn’t want to be friends with your old colleague.’ He thumped me playfully on the shoulder. ‘It’s all right, I don’t hold grudges.’ A wink. ‘Much.’
We went up the front steps, Rohan ahead of me. I tried to remember if I’d seen and ignored his friend request. I had no memory of—
A noise stopped me dead.
‘Did you hear that?’ I asked.
He had reached the top step. ‘Hear what?’
I held up a hand. ‘Wait.’
We both paused, listening. It had been faint. Muffled. But I was sure I hadn’t imagined it. It had sounded like someone crying out. Distressed. Possibly in pain.
‘What exactly did you hear?’ Rohan asked.
But I didn’t get a chance to answer, because the front door opened and there, before me, stood two more people I hadn’t seen since the summer of 1999. Theo stepped forward first, pumping Rohan’s hand, and then Georgina was there with air kisses, the scent of expensive perfume, her cheek warm against my cold face.
‘Just you two?’ she said.
‘So far.’
‘Come in, it’s freezing.’ Theo gestured for us to go inside.
The three of them went in – Rohan telling Georgina she hadn’t aged at all; her half-hearted protests – but I held back, waiting to see if the noise came again.
Cars rushing by on neighbouring streets. The metronome thump of music and a dog barking in the distance. The background hum of London. No cries. No shouts.
I let it go and followed them in.
Georgina took our coats while Theo closed the door behind us and pressed some buttons on a keypad to its right. The door, which was impressively solid, emitted several clunking sounds, locks sliding into place.
‘We have this ridiculous high-tech security system,’ Georgina said as she hung our coats on the rack. ‘Honestly, sometimes when the postman calls it takes me five minutes to remember how to open the bloody thing.’
‘She’s exaggerating,’ said Theo. ‘It’s not that complicated. It uses Swiss technology. Controls the doors and windows too. This place is impenetrable.’
‘Very cool. Is it biometric?’ Rohan asked, and Georgina rolled her eyes as Theo began to explain it to him.
Rohan had always been into gadgets – on his dating profile he’d listed his main interests as Manchester United and ‘bleeding-edge tech’ – and Theo seemed to be equally enthusiastic. Our host was still in good shape too. Theo had the physique of someone who spent a lot of time working out. I had thought – hoped? – the good life might have caught up with him. It was sickening, really. Rich, handsome and fit. He hadn’t even lost any of his hair.
‘It’s madness,’ Georgina said, leading me a few steps along the hallway. It had a gleaming parquet floor and the walls were painted a shade of blue which probably had a name like
‘existential light’. ‘It’s all controlled with an app. I don’t understand any of it. But Theo insisted.’
‘There have been a lot of burglaries around here,’ he said in response to his name. ‘The place next door is empty and we’re worried it might attract squatters.’
‘Which one?’ I asked, and Georgina gestured in the direction of the house on the right. The detached one.
‘Some Russian oligarch owns it but hasn’t been here for over a year.’ There was distaste in her tone.
Theo smiled at his wife. ‘Your favourite person, isn’t he, darling?’
A shudder. ‘Awful man. He told us he was going to extend downwards, build an enormous basement.’
‘It would have taken a year. Constant noise and disruption. It’s been bad enough having the builders on the other side, but he was planning major work. He and Georgina had some full-on rows about it.’
‘I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I stayed civil.’
He laughed. ‘Anyway, it all came to nothing. He buggered off back to Russia and we haven’t seen him since. Mixed blessing, really, because now we have to worry about squatters.’
I wondered if that was the cry I’d heard on the doorstep. Perhaps squatters were already in there.
‘So yes, the house on the other side is empty too,’ Georgina said before I could mention the noise. ‘The family have moved out while it’s being refurbished, but it’s only going to be a month, thankfully, so . . . Oh dear. Listen to me. It’s so lovely to see you.’
Georgina had always been posh, with an accent that firmly placed her in a certain strata of British society: the country set. Big, crumbling houses. Boarding schools. Shooting pheasants during the season. Theo, on the other hand, was a grammar-school boy from a modest background, the son of
two teachers. A couple of years older than the rest of us, he had been our manager, the guy with the unfortunate task of making sure the rest of us didn’t slack off.
Some London had crept into Georgina’s accent now. The odd dropped H, a couple of faint glottal stops. Street posh.
That was not the only change. Back then, Georgina had been the kind of young woman who was comfortable in a Barbour jacket and wellies; the sort of thing you might see a young royal wearing. Now, she had a more urban sheen. Her honey-blonde hair made me think she’d just come from a salon where someone had spent hours straightening it. She was wearing a black cashmere polo neck and bootcut trousers, sleek and immaculate. There were very few lines on her face and I immediately thought Botox. But there was no denying it, she looked good.
‘Something smells appetizing,’ Rohan said. ‘Which one of you is the chef?’
He looked from Georgina to Theo, who said, ‘His name’s Callum.’
There was a pause before Rohan laughed and said, ‘Oh, you’ve hired a caterer. Or do you have a live-in chef?’
‘Oh no,’ said Theo. ‘We do cook. Well, Georgina does, don’t you, darling? I can just about bake a potato. But there’s an agency we use for special occasions.’
‘Shall we wait for the others upstairs?’ Georgina said. ‘They shouldn’t be long.’
‘Let me fetch some vino for while we wait.’
Theo went through a door into what was clearly the kitchen. I could hear clattering from within, a male voice, and the smell of the food was wafting into the hallway.
‘This will do nicely,’ Theo said, re-emerging with a bottle. ‘Château Lafite Rothschild. You both okay with red?’
Georgina raised her eyebrows. Do you really want to waste that on these philistines?
‘Red’s great,’ I said.
‘Just water for me,’ Rohan told him. Of course he didn’t drink. He was the only one who’d stayed sober that whole summer, when we’d gone through so much booze the professor had been forced to arrange an extra recycling collection. I wasn’t a big drinker these days, but tonight my nerves needed soothing. It was so strange, being here with people I hadn’t seen, except in dreams, for twenty-five years. Unsettling. And the most important person, the one I’d dreamed about the most, hadn’t even arrived yet.
‘Follow me,’ Theo said.
We went up the stairs, the carpet plush underfoot, the walls lined with family photos. There was one of Theo at what must have been the London Marathon, holding up a medal like it was an Olympic Gold. Next along was a wedding photo, Theo and Georgina standing on the steps of a stately home, exactly as I remembered them: fresh-faced, happy. Halfway up the stairs, we passed a window that gave a view of the garden, a large, neatly mown lawn surrounded by trees that were still bare, and a quaint little summerhouse at the far end. The closest houses were a hundred metres to the rear, beyond their own substantial gardens.
I passed a family portrait: Georgina, Theo and two girls, aged about ten and six. They were at what looked like some kind of garden party. The younger girl and Georgina both wore serious expressions while Theo and the older daughter were grinning.
‘She’s the absolute spit of you,’ I said to Georgina, who was ahead of me on the stairs, pointing at the younger girl.
She turned back. ‘Hmm? Oh, Mia, yes. Everyone says that.’ She touched the frame of the picture. ‘She’s sixteen now, but don’t worry, she’s at a friend’s house tonight. A sleepover.’
‘I wasn’t worried at all. I’d like to meet your kids. Is your other daughter here?’
To my great surprise, Georgina turned away without answering. I was certain she’d heard me.
Strange.
We reached the top of the steps and found ourselves in another hallway, a landing, with more polished wood, partially covered with heavy rugs. The sitting room we went into was pristine. It had two high-backed sofas which looked like no one had ever sat on them. There was an ornate fireplace in which, I guessed, no wood had burned for a long time. Standing there, I had the strangest feeling of déjà vu.
‘We don’t use this room often,’ Theo said, pouring me a glass of wine. I took a sip. It was delicious. Rich and oaky, without being too heavy. ‘We save it for special occasions.’
‘It looks like Sebastian’s sitting room,’ I said, suddenly realizing why it was so familiar. ‘That is, if all the old, tatty furniture he used to have had been restored. Minus that TV you were always watching football on, Rohan.’
Theo grinned. ‘Well spotted. We gave the designer a photo. We wanted a souvenir of the place where we fell in love.’
Georgina rolled her eyes as he put his arm around her shoulders. He was twice as broad as her, but he was beaming like a little boy. Standing this close to him, in better light, I noticed the broken veins on his face, the slight ruddiness. Perhaps he wasn’t so well preserved, after all.
‘Theo is such a romantic,’ she said.
I was hardly listening. I had spotted something else. A painting that hung over the fireplace. I went over for a closer look.
‘It’s Thornwood,’ I said.
Sebastian’s house. There, hugging the frame, were the woods where we would seek shelter from the heat. Close to
the centre of the painting was the little lake with its rowing boat which we would take out in pairs. I had a flash of myself with oars in my hands, Sophie sitting opposite, half drunk on a bottle of cherry wine we’d found in a cupboard, lips stained red, sick from the sweetness but laughing at some joke I’d cracked.
‘Sebastian gave us that as a wedding gift,’ Theo said. I turned. ‘Did he still live there? When he died, I mean?’
‘He did. Just him and a nurse.’
‘I wish I’d known about it. I would have liked to have gone to the funeral.’
‘Me too.’ Rohan frowned. ‘We all have a habit of missing funerals, don’t we?’
The doorbell rang, saving us from having to pursue that painful line of conversation, although I had no doubt it would come up at some point tonight.
From her place at the front window, Georgina said, ‘It’s Sophie. Theo, go and let her in.’
Sophie. There was a mirror on the wall, no doubt created by some renowned designer and sourced by one of Georgina’s people. As soon as Theo left the room I went over to it.
‘You look gorgeous,’ Rohan said with a smirk.
‘Just checking I don’t have anything on my face.’
He laughed, and I saw that Georgina was smiling too. ‘Will, you look like a teenage boy waiting for his prom date to turn up.’
That made Rohan properly guffaw, and there were footsteps on the stairs. I took a deep breath and a last look at myself, turning away from the mirror as Theo reappeared.
Beside him was a woman. A fully grown forty-something woman, and she was smiling, her gaze going from Georgina, who approached her with air kisses, to Rohan, who gave her a big hug, and then they both stepped aside and it was my turn.
‘Sophie,’ I said. ‘Hi, Will.’
But before I could step forward to embrace her, something behind her caught my eye. There was someone else, lingering in the doorway. A man.
Sophie hadn’t arrived alone.
Why did I feel so nervous about seeing Sophie? The answer was simple. It was because of how it had ended: messily. I had been upset, confused. Angry, with her and myself. It had all come back to me recently, following the break-up with Danielle, when I was going through a load of old boxes that had lived for years inside our divan bed. In one Kickers box, I found relics from 1999. Floppy disks. A pamphlet from my graduation ceremony. Then the real treasure: a packet of photographs from the summer of that year. I sorted through them, one by one. Sebastian’s spaniels. The office with its colourful iMacs. Sebastian himself, shirtsleeves rolled up. Finally, us. His team, sitting together at one of the tables on the edge of the lawn, raising our glasses to the camera. There on the floor of my bedroom I had a revelation. Wasn’t it startlingly obvious that if I was ever going to write something worthwhile, I should do what I always advised my students to do and draw on my own life? Here, in this packet of Kodak moments, was the experience that shone brighter than everything else I’d ever done. And shining brightest at the centre of it all?
Sophie.
First, the revelation, then something like fate. Almost as soon as I’d made my mind up to pursue this idea, the invitation had arrived. I wasn’t in the habit of reading obituaries and hadn’t even known Sebastian had died.
This dinner party was exactly what I needed. A chance to reminisce. To see how everyone had turned out. My own memories would only get me so far. But almost as soon as I RSVP’d, I started to worry. After all these years, would Sophie be happy to see me?
Or would the shadow of that final night still hang over us?
‘Everyone,’ Theo said, beckoning the stranger into the sitting room, ‘I want you to meet Finn.’
My first thought was husband. Of course, she had to be married. I was a little dazed as he shook my hand. He was about ten years younger than the rest of us and very tall. Six foot two, and wearing a black off-the-peg suit. He had a boyish mop of scruffy hair with a ginger tinge and was wearing oldfashioned horn-rimmed glasses. Square jaw. Handsome. He was exactly the kind of person I could see Sophie ending up with. But then, just as I had convinced myself they were a couple, Sophie said, ‘We met. On the doorstep.’
‘Finn was Sebastian’s assistant for the last few years,’ Theo told us.
It’s ridiculous how relieved I was.
‘Georgina and Theo were kind enough to invite me,’ Finn said. ‘I hope you don’t mind. It’s just, I never really met anyone who knew Professor Marlowe when he was younger. I was saying that to Georgina at the funeral, and she very kindly asked me along.’
Even though I was relieved Finn wasn’t with Sophie, I was a little surprised to find it wasn’t only going to be the old gang here tonight. But I didn’t dwell on it, or on Finn himself. Because he was standing next to Sophie.
Unlike Georgina, Sophie had laughter lines and creases around her eyes, a natural face for a forty-seven-year-old. But it was her eyes that made her look young. They still had that
sparkle. Amused, intelligent, playful. The way she dressed made her seem youthful too. She was wearing black Converse and, above those, black tights, a navy-blue dress that was patterned with daisies, and a leather biker’s jacket. Her black hair had been cut short and she wore earrings that were shaped like daggers. She dressed almost exactly as she had when she was twenty-two.
Finn was looking from me to Sophie and back, clearly trying to figure out the dynamic between us. Then Theo appeared with a drink for Finn, and the two of them drifted away with Rohan. Finn towered over Rohan, who was almost a whole foot shorter. Temporarily, I had Sophie to myself, and I couldn’t think of a thing to say. It was as if the last twenty-five years hadn’t happened and she had just said her last words to me from that summer, spoken through the window of my taxi: ‘You need to get yourself a phone.’ I wanted to get my iPhone out of my pocket now, show her: Look. I’ve got one.
‘Lily not here?’ she said, putting me out of my tongue-tied misery.
‘Not yet.’
She took a sip of wine. ‘This is so weird.’
‘The wine? It cost about a million pounds.’
‘Oh, that explains it. I only drink cheap shit.’ A smile. ‘I meant, being here. Seeing you. All of you.’ She turned her head, taking in the room. ‘I have to admit half the reason I came was because I wanted to see inside this house. Did you see when they were featured in the Sunday Times magazine? What did Georgina say? “It’s a family home. It just happens to be a family with exquisite taste.”’
‘Sebastian’s taste, in this room at least.’
‘Oh yes. They talked about that in the piece. They didn’t mention what he did to—’ She caught herself. ‘Sorry. It’s sweet, and I’m just jealous.’
‘Why are you jealous?’
There was a whole story in the look she gave me in response. A story of disappointment. Of life not taking the path she’d plotted. But she wasn’t going to admit that, not right now, not to me.
‘Um . . . have you seen this place, Will? Don’t tell me – you live somewhere equally fabulous.’
As I racked my brain for a witty response she went on: ‘It’s so clean too. You should see my house. Mess everywhere. Piles of old books and records. If I ever appear in a newspaper it will be in an article about a woman who was killed when her collection of American Vogue fell and crushed her.’
‘Where is this hoarder’s paradise?’ I asked.
‘Oh, out in the sticks in Bedfordshire. A little cottage that used to belong to my gran. Tons of her old crap is still there too.’
‘All her stuffed animals?’
‘You remember!’
Sophie had told us that her gran, her mother’s mum, lived in a cottage that was stuffed full of taxidermized corvids and ‘witchy paraphernalia’, whatever that meant. Sophie had shown us photos of her, along with the rest of her family. Her mum, a white woman from deep in the Bedfordshire woods, had met her dad, a handsome Black man, in Trinidad and married him after a whirlwind romance. Sophie had spent the first few years of her life over there before moving to the British countryside. Her dad, whose photo she carried in her wallet, had already passed away when we met.
‘Of course I remember.’
‘I banged on about myself a lot, didn’t I?’
I laughed. ‘We all did.’
This was her cue to say something about how I’d boasted that I was going to be a famous author, but instead she said,
‘I’m probably doing the same now. I don’t see people very often so when I do it all comes bursting out in a terrible splurge.’
‘Do you work from home then?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I make jewellery and sell it on Etsy.’
‘Oh, that’s cool.’ So she was online.
‘I don’t make any money from it though. This is embarrassing, but my gran left me some money along with the cottage and I’ve been living off that, getting through it very, very slowly. You’d be amazed how little I spend. I have chickens and – Oh my God, I told you: let me loose among people and I just vomit words.’
To say I was relieved was an understatement. Firstly, her nervous energy was making me feel relaxed in comparison. Secondly, she didn’t appear to be harbouring any bad feelings towards me. Perhaps she had forgotten the angry exchange we’d had the last time I’d seen her. It had been a long time, after all.
‘So what about you?’ she said. ‘Can you summarize the last twenty-five years of your life in as many words?’
‘Twenty-five words? Let me see.’ I counted them on my fingers as I went. ‘Moved to London, bought a flat when they were cheap, became a lecturer and moved in with my girlfriend, but we broke up last year. Blimey, twenty-five words doesn’t get you very far, does it? Can I try again?’
‘Of course.’
‘Bought cheap flat, south London. Became a creativewriting lecturer. Co-habited. That’s one word, not two. Wrote novels no one wanted. Lost most of hair and all of girlfriend.’
‘I think you still have a word left.’
‘Okay. Wrote crap novels no one wanted.’
‘Ouch. Harsh on yourself, I’m sure. But you teach creative writing? That’s cool.’
Was it? I worried people would think I was a fraud, even
though I’d been doing it for twenty years now. I taught at a college of further education in south London, and they were always threatening to close the course, especially in recent years, when all the focus was on STEM subjects. It was hard work, with occasional moments that made it worthwhile. One of my students had gone on to publish a string of bestsellers, winning a prize for her comic novel Cassandra Gets the Ick. She had thanked me fulsomely in the acknowledgements.
‘It must be rewarding,’ Sophie said.
‘It can be. Especially the work I do in prisons.’
‘Oh?’
I explained that I ran writing workshops in several men’s prisons across London and Kent.
‘Some of the talent I’ve come across is staggering,’ I said. ‘They have so much to say and, for a lot of these blokes, nobody has ever encouraged them to share their stories and their opinions before.’
‘That’s amazing, Will.’ She paused. ‘Sorry, but I have to ask. Have you taught anyone who’s done anything really terrible?’ She leaned closer. ‘Any psychopaths?’
‘Not diagnosed, or they wouldn’t be in these prisons. They’d be in psychiatric units.’
‘A very earnest answer.’
‘Sorry. I realize I sounded just like Lily right then.’
Sophie smiled. ‘Did you read Sebastian’s book?’
‘They Live Among Us? I bought it but didn’t get around to it.’
It had been published in the early 2010s and marketed as the latest in a wave of ‘popular psychology’ books about psychopaths and sociopaths. The Guardian review, however, said it was too densely academic to appeal to the casual reader. When I had come across the review as I ate breakfast in the college refectory it had given me a shock of nostalgia that had left me feeling out of sorts all day. That was the first time I’d searched
for Sophie on Facebook. It had almost made me reach out to the others, but I had decided against it. I had, however, bought the book, flicking through it before deciding the Guardian was right. Much of the book was based on Sebastian’s studies of psychopaths in Boston, along with theories he had developed later. There was a painful account of what had happened to his wife, Barbara, and how that had influenced him. But much of what followed was too dry to maintain my interest – and, to be frank, I still hadn’t quite forgiven Sebastian for what he’d done to us all.
I looked across the room at the others. Georgina had returned with more wine and they were all standing by the bookcase, chatting. Finn had the air of a man who was trying hard to pay attention to whatever Rohan was saying to him, wanting to make a good impression. Perhaps he didn’t realize we hadn’t seen each other for a long time, that we hardly knew each other. He ought to relax. He was a stranger among strangers.
‘Did you talk to Finn outside?’ I asked, turning back to Sophie.
‘Hmm. A little. He seems pleasant enough. I was taking my headphones off when he arrived and we had a chat about music. He likes jazz, apparently.’
‘How . . . groovy.’
I wondered if he’d heard us, because he suddenly looked over and, in that instant, his smile disappeared, just for a second, before our eyes met. He raised his glass, but I didn’t return the gesture. Something about that smile, the way it had vanished, made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Sebastian had written about how the psychopaths he studied were good at social camouflage. A quote, half remembered, came back to me. Something about masks. What had he said? It’s in those moments when the subject believes himself to be unobserved that the mask slips and the true self can be glimpsed.
‘Are you still with us?’ Sophie asked. ‘You zoned out for a second.’
‘Huh? Oh. I was just thinking about psychopaths.’
‘A normal thing to do at a dinner party.’
‘It was because of Sebastian’s book and what you asked me about the prisoners.’
‘Of course.’
There was an awkward moment. I longed to talk to her about what had happened on that last night. Maybe, after dinner, I’d gather the courage to bring it up. I also wanted to tell her about the strange moment I’d just had observing Finn, but she might think I was mad.
I had to stop thinking about the past. I glanced over at Finn again. He was chatting happily to Rohan. Completely normal. I put my moment of unease behind me, telling myself he probably felt awkward, that was all. As did I.
There was nothing wrong here. Old friends. A dinner party. Okay, there was a stranger among us, but so what? I needed to chill out.
I went over to Theo, who refilled my glass, then found myself standing alone for a moment. Spotting Georgina at the front window, I joined her.
‘I’m wondering if Lily is going to turn up,’ she said, peering down at the street. ‘I texted her, but it hasn’t been read.’
‘She’s probably on the tube. Although—’ ‘What?’
I found myself voicing a concern I’d had since receiving the invitation. ‘I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t show. The way everything ended must have been hardest on her.’
She fixed me with a look that took me right back to that final night, the twenty-five years in which I thought I’d grown and matured vanishing instantly. ‘It wasn’t easy for any of us.’
‘You and Theo landed on your feet though.’
She folded her arms. ‘We were devastated by what happened, Will. Theo took it as badly as Lily. But you know what? It made him – made both of us – work harder than ever to get the life we deserved.’
She was about to say something else when Theo came over. ‘Rohan is asking for a tour of the house.’
‘I’d like one too,’ Sophie called over.
Georgina demurred until Theo said, ‘Come on, darling, I know you’re dying to show the place off. We don’t have to wait for Lily.’
‘Oh – twist my arm.’ Georgina stepped away from the
window, leaving me looking down at the street, hoping to see a diminutive figure hurrying along beneath the streetlights.
Sophie fell into step beside me as we left the room and went back into the hallway in pairs. Georgina and Theo, followed by Rohan and Finn, then Sophie and me.
Sophie winked at me, then reached up to tap Finn on the shoulder.
‘Do you live near here?’ she asked him.
‘Quite close. I mean, I was living down in East Sussex until quite recently, but now I’m back in London.’
‘Did you live at Thornwood?’
A pause. ‘I commuted there from Tunbridge Wells.’
I tried to catch Sophie’s eye, but she had already asked a follow-up question. ‘You were his research assistant?’
‘More of a general dogsbody. Doing admin. Looking after things.’
‘I guess he wasn’t well enough to work towards the end,’ I said. He was being frustratingly vague.
‘No. That’s right.’ Sophie and I waited. Eventually, he said, ‘He had a live-in nurse who saw him more than I did.’
We reached the landing and Georgina led us towards a door at the far end of the hallway. ‘This is where we’ll be eating.’
We took turns to poke our heads inside. The room was so large that even with the long oak table at its centre there was still plenty of floor space, and there were two huge windows, with long curtains, that gave a view of the empty house next door, the one that belonged to the oligarch. The table had been set for seven people, three chairs on one side, two on the other, and one at each end. It struck me that, with Finn as an addition, there should have been nine chairs, but one was gone, one was . . . well, I wasn’t sure what had happened to her. Perhaps someone here would know.
‘It won’t be long before appetizers are served,’ Georgina said.
Finn spoke. ‘Do you think Lily’s going to turn up in time? Have you heard from her?’
Why was this guy so concerned about Lily? I guessed Sebastian must have talked about her a lot so it was natural that Finn would be curious. Along with Theo, Lily had been the professor’s favourite.
As Georgina repeated to Finn what she’d said to me, something shot towards us from under the table. A blur of silver-and-black fur that vanished from the room before I got a good look. All I could see was that it had been a large cat.
‘Claude! I wondered where he’d got to,’ Theo said. ‘He usually stays in Mia’s room when she’s here but he’s roaming around looking for somewhere else to sleep.’
Next, Georgina showed us the study, which was beside the dining room, and the first of their three bathrooms, then we all went up a flight.
‘The master bedroom and Georgina’s dressing room are up there,’ Theo said, pointing to the fourth floor.
‘The best bathroom too,’ Georgina said. ‘We just got a new bath. Brushed copper. I could live in it.’
Sophie shook her head in wonder. ‘A dressing room too?’
‘It’s more of a walk-in wardrobe, really.’
‘She’s got more clothes than Selfridges,’ Theo said. ‘And how many pairs of shoes? And bags?’
‘You’re the one who keeps buying them for me.’
‘Things rich people bicker about,’ Sophie whispered to me.
It was carpeted up here, and more homely. Colourful striped wallpaper and some framed artwork that looked like it must have been by one of their daughters. The cat, Claude, was sitting outside one of the bedroom doors. A silver tabby with enormous ears, it was one of the biggest and cutest cats I’d ever seen. A cuddly monster.
‘That’s Mia’s room,’ said Theo, pushing the door open.
Claude, who I was sure was a Maine Coon, slunk through the gap, chirruping as he went, tail as thick as a fox’s. There was an iMac, the current model, on the desk on the far wall, its screen black. Theo closed the door behind the cat. ‘He’ll let us know when he wants to come back out.’
Georgina showed us the spare room, which had apparently been the nanny’s room when the children were little, and we all poked our heads into another bathroom, which was beautiful, with a sunken bathtub and a walk-in rainfall shower.
‘You’ll be interested in this, Will,’ Theo said. ‘This house used to belong to some famous crime novelist. A contemporary of Agatha Christie’s. Rupert Chadwick?’
‘Really?’ Golden-age crime wasn’t my thing, but I’d heard of Chadwick.
‘Apparently,’ Georgina said, ‘he had a secret passage built into the house, but we think that’s a load of rubbish, don’t we, Theo? We’ve never been able to find it.’
‘That’s so exciting though,’ Sophie said.
Theo scoffed. ‘I reckon it’s something old Rupert told people to make himself sound more interesting. Although he did marry five times, so he can’t have been that boring.’
‘Ooh.’ Sophie’s eyebrows went up. ‘Five wives. Did he murder any of them?’
‘Let’s go and take a look at the kitchen,’ Georgina said, making it clear she found this conversation distasteful.
‘What’s in this room?’ Rohan asked, nodding at the door he was closest to.
Neither Georgina nor Theo replied. Instead, Georgina said, ‘I’ll introduce you to the chef.’
Finn went with the Howards while Rohan, Sophie and I loitered on the landing.
‘Do you think she heard me?’ Rohan asked.
‘Definitely.’ I moved a little closer to the mysterious door.
‘I assume it belongs to the other daughter. The one they don’t mention.’
‘What do you mean?’
They were both looking at me, intrigued.
‘There’s a family photo downstairs. Theo, Georgina, Mia –whose room the cat just went into – and an older girl. I asked about her and they both ignored me.’
‘Oh God,’ Sophie said, checking to make sure Theo and Georgina were out of earshot. ‘Do you think she died or something and they can’t bring themselves to talk about her?’
Georgina’s voice came from below us. ‘Have you three got lost up there?’
‘Coming!’ Sophie called. She whispered, ‘Don’t say anything. If they want to tell us, they will. Okay?’
We went down the stairs, the mood darker than it had been coming up. As we reached the ground-floor hallway, Georgina furrowed her brow. ‘What were you whispering about?’
‘Just wondering what time we’re going to eat.’ Rohan patted his belly. ‘I’m starving.’
A tight smile. ‘We can ask the chef.’
We went into a kitchen which was bigger than my entire flat. There was a small dining area to the left – the breakfast nook – with a window that looked out on to the street, though tall hedgerows prevented passers-by from being able to see in. To the right, there was another small area with a retro American fridge and a wine rack that took up a whole section of wall. But I barely took in any of that. I was transfixed by something else. Someone else.
A woman stood by the marble-topped island with her back to us, chopping onions. She was wearing a white protective hat, but I could see red hair poking out at the nape of her neck, and the sight of her threw me back in time and space to the