The Shadow House(42)

An urgent stretch of fabric, the pop of a button, his hands on my hipbones.

And then …

Rough palms on my back. My face in the mattress. Pressure. Pain. The blue bloom of a bruise.

I jerked away and sat up.

Kit froze. So did I.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, hanging my head.

‘No, I’m sorry. Wow, I’m … I shouldn’t have—’

‘It’s fine.’

‘It’s not.’

‘No, it really is, I just … I don’t think I’m …’

‘I know.’

‘I’m not—’

‘I know. I understand.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course. Of course. Whatever you feel comfortable with, whenever you’re ready.’

I looked at my beer. ‘I should go.’ I put the bottle on the floor and stood up.

Kit stood with me. We looked at each other for a moment and my heart did a slow pirouette. Fuck it. Just kiss me. I dropped my gaze. ‘Can I use your bathroom?’

Kit laughed. ‘And there’s the bucket of cold water I needed.’

Heat rushed to my cheeks. ‘I think we both needed it.’

Stepping back, he pointed at a hallway to the left of the kitchen. ‘Third door on the right.’

‘Thanks.’

I walked away, my footsteps too loud in the silence.

The hall was, like the rest of the house, neat and clean. White walls. Full-height windows, minimal furniture. Stylish but bland. No photos or clues as to who Kit was deep down, or what his tastes might be. Was it always this pristine, I wondered? Or had he tidied up especially for me, knowing how the afternoon would play out? The music, the beer, the confession … had it all just been one big orchestration? I passed an open door and glimpsed a bed. The sight of his sheets made me breathless.

Finding the bathroom, I slipped inside and locked the door. Standing in front of the mirror, I stared at my mussed hair and the rising flush of stubble burn around my lips. What was I doing? I’d shared too much too quickly. Stupid, stupid. What had happened to keeping my guard up?

I pulled my phone from my pocket. After first checking there were no panicked messages from Layla – Kara’s fallen down a well; she’s choking, vomiting, I’ve called an ambulance – I googled Kit’s name, kicking myself for not having thought to stalk him earlier … but there was nothing to stalk. No social media accounts, no blog posts or interviews, nothing on LinkedIn or Wikipedia. He was on the Pine Ridge website, of course, and I found a handful of news articles referencing his work as an ecovillage founder, but there was absolutely nothing personal. No school history, no ex-girlfriends, very few images. It was as if, prior to the development of Pine Ridge, Kit Vestey hadn’t existed.

I looked back at my flushed reflection. Shit. Thanks to my traitor heart and motormouth, Kit now knew a hell of a lot about me – but I knew next to nothing about him.





ALEX





16


Over the next few days, my unease only seemed to grow.

I tried to think calmly, rationally. You’re just exhausted, I told myself again. It’s the night mind, like the girls said. Tickticktickticktick. I kept busy with meetings and party prep, volunteering for Games and Entertainment as well as Food Prep; I avoided being alone with Kit by taking Kara on baby play dates and helping out at the greenhouses. The distractions helped, but I was still plagued by black clouds of worry. I kept hearing odd noises, both outside and inside the house. I felt watched, somehow: a constant crawl just under my skin. And then one afternoon, when Kara and I were returning home from a walk, as I pushed open the front door of our unit and walked inside, the feeling intensified.

Once, many years ago, after dropping Ollie at day care I’d hurried out into the car park and accidentally got into a car belonging to another mum. I’d opened the door, sat down in the driver’s seat and tried to fit my key into the ignition before I realised that the car was not mine. It looked like mine, from the model and colour right down to the handbag on the passenger seat and the lip gloss in the cupholder – but the bag was a different style, the gloss a different brand. The disorientation had made me feel seasick, as though everything around me was suddenly liquid instead of solid. Walking into our unit that day was a lot like that, except my house was still my house; the room was the same, the furniture and belongings all definitely mine. And yet somehow they were not.

I looked around, trying to pinpoint the problem. I stared at the fridge. Was it just me, or were the magnets muddled, the photos out of place? The books on the shelf looked odd, too, like they’d been swapped around. The cushions on the sofa seemed to be arranged differently, and there was a 2-inch gap between the sofa and the wall. Didn’t it usually stand right up against it?

‘Ollie?’ I called, not expecting a reply; he’d gone to Violet’s and wasn’t likely to return before dinner. The unit was empty.

Shaking my head as if to physically shift the brain fog, I set about putting Kara down for her nap. But in my bedroom, I had the same sense that things weren’t quite how I’d left them. Nothing was obviously wrong, but nothing was quite right either. And then I realised that my photo frame, my sparkly paddle-pop treasure, was missing from my bedside table. Frowning, I had a look to check that it hadn’t fallen off but couldn’t see it on the floor.