It’s a sound that Jake has heard before.
27
Kate
Kate stares at the phone screen, watching it power down to darkness. She can’t go on like this. Her paranoia is killing her. She’s fine when she’s just talking to Rob. It’s when she sees his face that this feeling kicks in, a sickening, gut-wrenching sense that it’s not him but someone who looks identical.
A moment later, Rob starts to call her on FaceTime on her laptop. She snaps it shut, looking around the kitchen. Shit. The landline in the hall. She rushes out and pulls the handset cable from the wall socket. There’s no other way for him to communicate with her now. The house is isolated. She feels better already.
Bex is still asleep. Kate walks down the corridor towards the guest room and stands outside the door. She can’t wake her again. Not after last night’s drama. Bex would never forgive her. Instead, she opens Rob’s office door, pleased that he’s still been unable to lock it remotely, and steps inside, followed by Stretch, who’s come to see what she’s doing.
She’s not sure herself. She just wants to get a better sense of the Rob she doesn’t know so well, the man he was before she met him. She walks over to his desk, picks up the Rossetti and stares at it again, the frightened faces. How They Met Themselves, as she now knows it’s called.
‘What’s this place?’
Kate spins round to see Bex in her pyjamas, standing bleary eyed in the doorway.
‘Rob’s office,’ she says.
‘His Cornish man-cave?’
‘Did you sleep well?’ Kate asks, ignoring the comment out of some strange sense of loyalty. She said something similar once to Rob and he didn’t find it funny.
‘Good, thanks. Apart from being woken up in the middle of the night by this crazy best friend of mine who doesn’t realise how bloody lucky she is.’ She bends down to pet Stretch, who is at her feet, tail wagging like a demented windscreen wiper.
Kate smiles at her. Where would she be without Bex? ‘Sorry about that.’ She pauses, her smile fading. ‘I’ve just spoken to Rob. Asked about him talking in fluent French on the TV.’
‘And?’ Bex asks, looking up at her.
‘He says they got him to practise it for the cameras.’
‘There we go,’ Bex says. Kate turns away, recalling Rob’s explanation. ‘There’s always a rational explanation for these things,’ Bex adds.
‘I guess so.’ Kate’s still not convinced.
‘What you doing in here anyway?’ Bex asks.
‘Looking at this.’ She gestures at the picture behind her.
‘Bloody hell, don’t tell me that’s an original Rossetti,’ Bex says, coming over to study it more closely.
‘There are four versions, apparently,’ Kate says. ‘It’s called How They Met Themselves. Those two people on the right are the doppelgängers.’
‘Complete with a Ready Brek glow around them.’
They both stare at the picture in silence.
‘You want some breakfast?’ Kate asks, leading her out of the office.
‘Wouldn’t mind a bit more of a nosey around first,’ Bex says, lingering at the door. ‘Any more hidden masterpieces?’
Bex loves her art. It’s one reason they’re such good friends.
‘He doesn’t really like people to come in here,’ Kate says, about to close the door behind them. And then a book catches her eye. She takes it off the shelf by the door and looks at the cover: Le Bouc émissaire. She reads the back, conscious that her hands are trembling.
‘What is it?’ Bex asks.
‘A French translation of The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier,’ Kate says, flicking through the well-thumbed pages. ‘About doubles.’
Kate replaces it on the shelf, trying not to dwell on the book, what its presence in Rob’s office might mean.
‘Tea?’ she asks, as they walk back down the corridor to the kitchen.
‘Could murder a coffee,’ Bex says, watching as Kate opens one of the cupboards. ‘It’s just a book, Kate. Might not even be his.’
‘It’s in French, Bex,’ Kate says, spooning some coffee powder into the espresso machine. ‘Why read Daphne du Maurier in bloody French?’
‘We’ve been through this,’ Bex says. ‘He’s trying to learn the language.’
Kate can’t hold it together any longer and turns away, her eyes stinging.
‘Oh, Katie,’ Bex says, coming over to comfort her.
‘I hung up on him,’ she says, steadying herself against the sideboard. She’s feeling dizzy. ‘When we were talking earlier.’
‘Why d’you do that?’
‘We were on the phone and then the signal improved and I saw his face and…’
Kate starts to cry, big hot tears, the last few days finally catching up with her.
‘It’s OK,’ Bex says quietly, still holding her.
After a few moments, Kate unpeels herself from Bex’s arms and fetches a glass jar of granola, placing it on the table. She feels better when she’s doing things. She takes out a pot of yoghurt from the fridge, which is now behaving itself.
‘His smile,’ Kate says. ‘It was as if he was mocking me.’
‘Don’t be daft. Rob would never do that.’
‘I know.’ Kate pauses. ‘That’s what’s worrying me.’
They catch each other’s eye. ‘Will he be angry with you?’ Bex asks, turning away. ‘For hanging up on him?’
‘He doesn’t do anger,’ Kate says, laying out some cutlery on the table.
‘Count yourself lucky. Nothing wrong with a bit of anger, mind. Shows passion.’ Bex raises her eyebrows suggestively as she sits down at the table, idly stacking away some magazines. She grabs the top one, a copy of Wired, and flicks through it.
‘Actually, he was angry with me once,’ Kate says, sitting down opposite Bex. ‘Early on, when he came to see me at Mum’s.’
‘Staying with in-laws can be very stressful.’
‘It wasn’t that.’
Kate tries hard to think back to the visit, soon after she’d left hospital. She was spending a few weeks with her mum before the move down to Cornwall. Rob used to visit at weekends. Did he ask her about her memory? She was still heavily medicated for her injuries and those early days remain a blur.
‘What was it, then?’ Bex asks.
‘I failed a recognition test of some kind. He showed me some images of faces.’
The details start to come back, but it’s like she’s seeing everything through a thick fog. Her mum had gone shopping and they were at the kitchen table in her house, photos laid out in front of her, as if they were playing pairs.
‘Do you recognise this man?’ Rob had asked, pointing at someone – a doctor, she thinks it was. White coat anyway. She’d shaken her head and his fist had slammed down onto the table. So hard her herbal tea had spilt. She remembers that. He suddenly became very kind to her, mopping up, apologising, saying he’d had a stressful time at work. And then he’d asked her to put on the headset. It was the first time and she was scared, although her fear was numbed by the medication.