She turns to look at his profile. ‘I’ve thought about Alzheimer’s, or a tumour.’
He half smiles, but kindly. ‘You’ve leapt to two of the worst possible scenarios and also the most unlikely. Memory loss can be a result of problems with the thyroid gland, or an infection. It’s even possible, although unlikely, that you had a mild stroke.’
She finds she is comforted, a little, by the possibility of a physical cause to what is happening. Given the choice between cancer and insanity, who wouldn’t choose cancer?
‘The sudden onset of your symptoms suggests a physical cause,’ he says. ‘I can try and speed through the tests tomorrow.’
‘Thank you.’
He doesn’t need directions to her home and she is relieved to see her car in its usual place. He parks and switches off the engine.
‘I’d like to come inside and make sure you’re all right,’ he says. ‘May I?’
She doesn’t feel she can refuse him. It is as though the incident has drained her of confidence. She is not fit to be in control of her own life.
‘What’s the last thing you remember?’ he asks, when they are both in her kitchen.
‘Leaving work and heading into the city to see you,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if I arrived or not.’
‘You didn’t,’ he says. ‘You look cold. Why don’t you get changed? If you don’t mind me helping myself, I’ll put the kettle on and get you something to eat.’
He has taken over and she has no idea how to stop him. She leaves the room and while she is changing into tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt, she hears him moving around in the kitchen. He is whistling softly to himself.
Freddie won’t like this.
Felicity almost cries out. Someone is in the room with her. And yet no one is. She checks quickly in the wardrobe, beneath the bed. She is alone in the room and yet the sense of an invisible presence is so strong she feels she can almost reach out and touch the person who spoke to her.
‘You OK in there?’
This time it is Joe’s voice, and she heads back to the kitchen. He’s found bread and butter, cheese and olives. She grabs the breadknife and cuts a slice, then cheese. She eats like a savage.
‘Sorry,’ she says when the trembling in her limbs is slowing. ‘I was starving.’
‘Ready to talk?’ he asks.
29
Joe
‘Ready to talk?’ Joe asks.
‘Of course.’
‘I’d like to look round your house. Will you show me?’
‘There’s not much to see,’ she says. ‘There’s a basement downstairs, do you want to start there?’
‘Please.’
He follows her down the narrow staircase into a small, tiled room. He hears the gurgling of a central-heating boiler and registers the washing machine and tumble dryer, the ironing board tucked behind a tall cupboard. There is a small pile of ironing in a basket on the worktop. A sizable cupboard beneath the stairs is padlocked shut.
‘What do you keep in here?’
No answer. Joe turns to find Felicity is heading back up the stairs. When he follows her, she is waiting for him on the ground floor by a narrow hall table.
‘Nice polar bear,’ he says, spotting the smooth and stylised statue that she is looking at.
‘I usually keep it upstairs.’ She is frowning, not remembering, or choosing not to acknowledge, their previous conversation about polar bears. ‘But I think I moved it myself the other night. Yes, I did. That was definitely me.’
Brightening, she shows him into the bedroom. The room is simple and neat, with fitted wardrobes. The only furniture apart from the bed are two bedside cabinets. On one is an iPad and a box of tissues. The other is empty.
They climb another set of stairs. As they near the first floor, Joe spots the loft hatch directly above the head of the stairs. She shows him into the living room, striding ahead to rearrange cushions on one of the sofas. He watches as she looks around, as though trying to spot anything out of place, and her eyes rest on the TV set. A red light shines from the bottom right-hand corner. She walks towards it and presses the on/off switch.
‘I don’t like to leave it on standby,’ she says. ‘I don’t know why I did.’
‘Can we see what channel you were watching?’
She doesn’t reply. Her attention has been caught by something directly below the TV on its supporting glass table.
Joe says, ‘If you don’t normally leave it on standby, you could have been watching it when you went into your fugue state. We might be able to pinpoint a particular programme that triggered you.’
Felicity looks up, uncertain.
‘Can it do any harm?’ he says.
She switches the TV back on. They wait until the picture emerges of a back alley in an American city. A woman runs screaming towards the camera.
‘The horror channel,’ she says. ‘I’ve never watched that.’ She bends to pick something up from the glass table. A pair of spectacles in a brown case. ‘And these aren’t mine.’
Joe takes them from her as screaming fills the room. Felicity switches off the TV and the screaming stops. He opens the case and peers through the glasses. Distance vision.
‘I don’t wear glasses,’ she says. ‘I have perfect vision.’
‘Could a friend have left them?’
‘No. No one comes here.’
Joe says, ‘Are you sure no one else has keys?’
She shakes her head.
‘There’s something I want to do before I go. Will you indulge me?’
She looks wary.
‘I want to look in your loft.’
Her eyes open wide. ‘My loft? What on Earth for?’
He doesn’t want to answer that. To answer it would be to frighten her.
‘It will set my mind at rest. Please?’
She shrugs and he leaves the room. He is tall enough to reach the catch on the trapdoor. The loft ladder glides down soundlessly. The space revealed by the loft light is low, with barely enough headroom for Joe to stand upright. Along one edge is a neat line of packing cases and holdalls, standing opposite them a row of plastic storage boxes. He can see a pair of skis in a canvas carry bag and a tool kit. At the far end, pushed against one wall and barely visible in the shadows, is a large trunk-shaped object covered in old curtains. Felicity’s loft is as neat as her house and were the circumstances different, he would ask her, not entirely in jest, if she dusts up here.
‘Joe, why are you in my loft?’
‘Give me a minute.’ He begins to crawl along the plyboard floor, away from the curtain-wrapped trunk. A cold-water tank ahead of him is lagged to prevent freezing in winter and beyond that is the dividing wall between Felicity’s loft and that of the next house along. He has a suspicion, and until it is laid to rest, he won’t be easy. He has reached the wall. He uses his phone as a torch and sees that the wall is made of plywood. He pushes it gently and it falls away, landing with a clatter on the floor of the next loft.
‘Joe!’
He turns to see Felicity’s head appear in the hatch and waits until she has crawled to join him. Together they look to the loft space that stretches the entire length of the terrace. His torch isn’t strong enough to reach the end, but he remembers a row of half a dozen or so houses. If the other dividing wall is also plywood, then six sets of neighbours, and people with keys to their houses, can access Felicity’s home.