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“He wrote letters to her, like the one he wrote to me, and then he killed her.”
“Yes.”
“But weren’t you guarding her?”
“We had been. There were complicating factors.”
“But he still got into the house and murdered her.”
“We weren’t exactly guarding her at that point.”
“Why not? Didn’t you take it seriously?”
“Not at all,” he replied, stung. “We took it very seriously, after all-” He stopped abruptly.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nadia, you should understand that we are taking every precaution to protect you.”
“What? After all, what? Tell me.”
“We knew how serious the letters to Mrs. Hintlesham were,” he muttered, so quietly I had to strain to hear him.
“Why?” He caught my eye and then I realized. The new knowledge flooded over me so I could scarcely breathe. I stared at him. My voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “She wasn’t the first, was she?”
Cameron shook his head.
“Who else?”
“A young woman called Zoe Haratounian. She lived over in Holloway.”
“When?”
“Five weeks ago.”
“How?”
Cameron shook his head again. “Please, Nadia. Don’t. We’re looking after you. Trust us.”
I couldn’t suppress an ugly laugh.
“I know how you must be feeling, Nadia.”
I sank my head into my hands.
“No, you don’t,” I said. “I don’t know what I feel. How do you know?”
“What are you going to do?”
I lifted up my head and glared at him. He meant: Was I going to tell on him? What a baby; a cruel, vain baby.
“I’m going to live,” I said.
“Of course you are.” His voice was placatory and saccharine. He sounded like a doctor talking to a dying patient.
“You think I’m going to die, don’t you?”
“Not at all,” he said. “No way.”
“A madman,” I said. Fear rose in my throat, like bile. Blood roared in my ears. “A killer.”
The doorbell rang. Blushing, smiling, lying Ly
“Fuck off. I’m thinking.”
ELEVEN
In a twisted way, I almost enjoyed my meeting with Ly
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said.
“What?” he said miserably.
“About arrangements,” I said.
He looked sharply at me, then gave a shrug and left. Almost with surprise, I found myself alone with Ly
“Want a drink?” I asked.
I’m not the sort of person who ever needs a drink, but God, I needed a drink.
“Tea would be great.”
So I bustled off and put the kettle on. I seemed to be always making tea for her, as if I was her grandmother. Just a mug and tea bag for her. In the back of a cupboard I found a bottle of whiskey that somebody had once bought in duty-free for me as a present. I splashed some into a tumbler and topped it up from the cold tap. We walked out into the garden. Although it was now the early evening, it was still fiercely hot.
“Cheers,” I said, clinking my whiskey against her mug and taking a sip of my drink, which stung the back of my throat and I could feel sizzling all the way down the inside of my body into my tummy. The garden was a disaster, of course, but just because it was so overgrown, it felt like a refuge from all that horrible stuff outside, which I could still hear: the traffic, music from a sound system in a flat along the road. We walked across to a corner where there was a plant that looked like a bush trying to become a tree. It was covered in cone-shaped clusters of purple flowers. White and brown butterflies were fluttering around it like tiny scraps of paper blown about by the wind.
“I love to stand out here in the evenings,” I said. Ly
“What for?”
“Yesterday I was asking you whether all this-I mean all the protection-wasn’t a bit much. I wondered why you were doing this. But in fact I knew.”
Ly
“You see, a fu
Ly
“Yes,” she said, so quietly I could hardly catch the words.
A thought-actually more a feeling than a thought-occurred to me. I remembered that strange sensation when I’d gone somewhere with Max and he would say something that would make me realize that he’d been there before with an earlier girlfriend. And, although I knew it was stupid, things would go a bit gray and sour.
“Did you do this with her? With Je
Ly
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It felt bad not telling you, but there were strict instructions. They thought it might be traumatic for you.”
“Did Je
“No.”
I felt that my mouth was flapping open. I was aghast. I just couldn’t think what to say.
“I… you lied to her as well” was all I finally managed.
“It wasn’t like that,” said Ly
“And to panic her. I mean Je
“That’s right.”
“So-let me get this straight in my mind-she didn’t know that the person sending her letters had already killed somebody.”
Ly
“And she couldn’t make decisions about how to protect herself.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Ly
“In what way wasn’t it like that?”
“This wasn’t my decision,” Ly
“Your strategy for protecting Je
She moved closer toward me.
“You’re not going to die.”
I recoiled. I didn’t want these people to touch me. I didn’t want their sensitivity.
“I don’t understand, Ly
Ly
“Do you think I’m being stupid?” I said. “It’s just that I have this problem with everybody knowing something about me and me not knowing it. What would you feel, if it was you?”