The Therapist(12)

‘He wasn’t the type. He looked – I don’t know…’

‘There isn’t a type! Have you checked if anything is missing?’

‘No—’

‘Well, maybe you should make sure your jewellery and credit cards are still there.’

Worry starts to take hold. ‘I’m sure everything’s fine,’ I say, making an effort to sound upbeat to de-stress him. ‘He’s probably a friend of someone who lives here. Maybe he was staying with them or something.’

‘Wouldn’t he have said?’

‘I’ll ask around,’ I tell him, wanting to be off the phone.

‘Call me later. If you don’t find out who it was, we should probably tell the police.’

I hang up and run upstairs, propelled by the thought of the man being in the bedroom. Hurrying over to the dressing table, I check that my jewellery is there – it is – and that my credit cards are still in my bag, which has been on the shelf in the wardrobe since I put it there on Saturday evening; they are. Everything is exactly as it should be. But I can’t relax and I know I won’t be able to until I find out who the man is and why he gate-crashed our party.

It’s seven in the evening when I decide to go and see Eve and Will. Someone must know who the man was, if anything he would have needed a code to get into The Circle. But Eve’s car isn’t in the drive and when I knock on their door, there’s no answer, so I carry on walking around The Circle anti-clockwise, disrupting people’s dinners and television programmes. Some kindly invite me in but I stay on the doorstep and quickly explain about the man who turned up uninvited on Saturday, asking if anyone spoke to him. But nobody has.

‘Are you sure he wasn’t a figment of your imagination?’ Connor asks with a slow drawl when I get to number 11 and describe the tall, dark, good-looking stranger that I’m trying to trace. Tamsin, standing next to him, doesn’t exactly smirk but a half-smile plays on her lips and my cheeks heat with embarrassment.

The people at number 10 don’t remember seeing our gate-crasher, neither does Geoff at number 8, and I’m halfway up Lorna and Edward’s drive when I remember that they didn’t come on Saturday. But worried that they’ll have seen me from their window, I ring on their doorbell anyway.

‘I hope you don’t mind if I don’t invite you in,’ Edward says, when he opens the door. With his shock of white hair neatly parted to one side and blue eyes undimmed by age, he is still a handsome man. ‘We haven’t been well and we wouldn’t like you to catch anything.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I say, feeling bad for disturbing them. ‘Can I do anything to help?’

Edward shakes his head. ‘We’ll be right as rain in a couple of days. It’s just a touch of flu.’

‘We’re sorry we couldn’t make your party,’ Lorna says, appearing behind him, patting her neat bob – the same white as her husband’s – self-consciously into place. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Yes, very much, thank you.’ I pause and they both smile at me expectantly. ‘There was something strange though,’ I say. ‘I discovered earlier that one of the men who turned up shouldn’t have been there.’

‘Oh?’ Edward says.

‘I thought he was Tim from number 9,’ I explain. ‘But I saw Tim earlier and realised my mistake. So now I’m curious as to who he was… Leo is worried and wondering if we should call the police. But I’m sure there’s a simple explanation,’ I say hurriedly, because Lorna’s face has bleached almost as white as her hair.

She raises a hand and clutches at the string of pearls looped around her neck.

‘He said he was a friend of yours,’ she says. Her voice is strangely strangled, and I worry for a moment that she’s pulling too tightly on the pearls. ‘And that you weren’t answering the intercom. That’s why I let him in.’

The confusion on Edward’s face quickly turns to shock. He stares at his wife, as if he can’t quite believe what she did. Now Lorna’s face floods with colour. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise you’d only invited residents.’

‘It’s fine,’ I reassure her quickly. ‘It’s actually a relief to know how he got in. But could you tell me exactly what he said?’

‘He said he’d been invited for drinks at number 6 but that you probably couldn’t hear the intercom because of the noise.’

‘Did he mention us by name?’

She takes a moment to think about it. ‘No, he just said for drinks at number 6. I’ve never let anyone in before, not without checking first. I can’t imagine why I did this time.’ She looks guiltily at Edward and he nods, agreeing that it’s the first time she’s ever acted so imprudently.

‘I’m sure it’s all fine,’ I say again.

‘Let us know if you find out who he was,’ Edward says, already closing the door.

‘I will.’

But there’s only Eve and Will left to ask. I check their drive; Eve’s car is there, so I go straight round.





Seven


Eve stops chopping a bunch of leafy coriander and turns to me, the knife in her hand.

‘Nobody remembers him at all?’