The Girl Before(37)

With a shock I realize one of the group is still in the bedroom. He’s opened the cupboard, and although he has his back to me, I’m fairly sure he’s looking through my clothes.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demand.

He turns around. It’s one of the ones I’d taken for a tourist. His eyes, behind rimless spectacles, are pale and calm.

“I’m seeing how you fold your things.” His voice is slightly accented. Danish, perhaps, or Norwegian. About thirty years old, wearing a slightly military-looking anorak. Fair, receding hair.

“How dare you!” I explode. “Those are private.”

“No one who lives in this house should expect privacy. You signed that away, remember?”

“Who are you?” He sounds far too well informed for a tourist.

“I applied,” he says. “I applied to live here. Seven times. I would be perfect for it. But he chose you instead.” He turns back to the cupboard and starts to unfold and refold my T-shirts, as fast and neat as a shop assistant. “What does Edward see in you? Sex, I suppose. Women are his weakness.” I am breathless with anger, but the realization that this man standing in my bedroom is almost certainly deranged has paralyzed me. “He’s inspired by monasteries and religious communities but he forgets that women were excluded from those places for a reason.” He picks up a skirt and folds it in three deft movements. “Really, you should leave. It would be much better for Edward if you went. Like the others.”



“What others? What are you talking about?”

He gives me a smile of almost childish sweetness. “Oh, hasn’t he told you? The ones before. None of them last, you see. That’s the whole point.”

—

“He was crazy,” I say. “Terrifying. And the way he spoke—it was as if he knew you.”

Edward sighs. “I suppose he does, in a way. Or at least, he thinks he does. Because he knows the work.”

We’re sitting in the refectory area. Edward has brought wine, something exquisite and Italian. But I’m still a little shaky and in any case I haven’t really been drinking since I moved to One Folgate Street. “Who is he?”

“At the office they call him my stalker.” He smiles. “That’s a joke, of course. He’s actually quite harmless. Jorgen something. He dropped out of an architecture degree with mental health problems and became slightly obsessed with my buildings. It’s not that uncommon. Barragán, Corbusier, Foster—they’ve all had disturbed individuals fixated on them, believing they have some special connection.”

“Have you told the police?”

He shrugs. “What would be the point?”

“But Edward, don’t you see what this means? When Emma Matthews died, did anyone ever check to see if this Jorgen person was around?”

He gives me a wary look. “You’re not still on about that, are you?”

“It happened right here. Of course I think about it.”

“Have you been talking to the boyfriend again?” Something about the way he says it suggests he wouldn’t be pleased if I had.

I shake my head. “He hasn’t been back.”

“Good. And believe me, Jorgen wouldn’t hurt anyone.” He takes another mouthful of wine, then bends down to kiss me. His lips are sweet and bloody with grape.

“Edward…” I say, pulling away.



“Yes?”

“Were Emma and you lovers?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“No,” I say. Of course I mean yes.

“We had a brief affair,” he says at last. “It was over long before she died.”

“Was it…” I don’t know how to ask this. “Was it like this?”

He comes very close to me, holding my head in both hands, fixing me with his gaze. “Listen to me, Jane. Emma was a fascinating person,” he says gently. “But she’s in the past now. What’s happening right now, with us—this is perfect. We don’t need to talk about her again.”

—

Despite his words, there’s an itch of curiosity I can’t quite satisfy.

Because I know that when I know more about the women he’s loved, I’ll understand him better.

I will tunnel beneath the walls he’s erected around himself, the strange invisible labyrinth that keeps me at a distance.

Next morning, after he’s gone, I hunt out the card I found in Emma’s sleeping bag. CAROL YOUNSON. ACCREDITED PSYCHOTHERAPIST. There’s a website as well as a phone number. I’m about to look it up on my laptop when I recall what the man in my bedroom said. No one who lives in this house should expect privacy. You signed that away, remember?

I take my phone and walk to the extreme corner of the sitting room, where I pick up a faint trace of a neighbor’s unsecured Wi-Fi, just enough for me to connect to Carol Younson’s website. She has a diploma in something called integrative psychotherapy and her specialties are listed as post-traumatic stress, rape counseling, and bereavement.

I call the number.

“Hello,” I say when a woman answers. “I recently suffered a bereavement. I was wondering if I could come and see you about it.”





6. A person close to you confesses in confidence that they ran someone over while drunk. As a result they have given up drinking for good. Would you feel obliged to report it to the police?