Serena's POV
"Eat," says Odile.
"I'm not hungry."
"It's eggs. They're not a commitment."
"Odile."
"I've known you two years and four months, Serena, and I've never once seen you turn down eggs." She puts the plate on the arm of the sofa, beside my knee. "Fork. Napkin. Toast. Eat the toast, at least."
I look at it.
I'm curled in the corner of her horrible orange sofa in yesterday's clothes, with a crocheted blanket over my knees and my phone face-down on the cushion. The apartment is tiny and tidy and smells of coffee and old books. A radiator knocks. On the far wall, a cheap clock with a cat's face ticks its tail from side to side.
It's twenty to eight on a Sunday morning, and I have never been so tired.
I've told her.
Not all of it. Not the room, the log, the photographs. Just enough. He knew. She went very still, and then very quiet, and then got up and cracked six eggs into a pan.
I pick up the fork.
I put it down.
"There's a text," I say.
"From him?"
"No." I turn the phone over. "From someone else."
I hold it out.
She reads it, standing at the end of the sofa, her black hair swinging forward.
Good morning, Mrs Hale. We should talk.
I watch the colour leave her face.
"When?"
"Twenty minutes after I left the Tower."
"The number?"
"A burner. It'll be dead."
She sinks onto the footstool.
"They know," she says.
"Yes."
"How long?"
"I don't know. I don't know how. Dominic said..." My voice wobbles. "He didn't say anything. I left."
"Serena."
"I know."
"We have to move."
"I know."
"Now. Today."
"I know, Odile." I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. "Give me an hour. Give me one hour to sit on a sofa and not think. And then I'll do whatever you tell me."
She says nothing.
She gets up and goes to the window and looks down at the street.
"There's a man on the corner," she says. "Grey hoodie. Pretending to read a newspaper."
"Dominic's. He's been there since I arrived."
"You knew?"
"I'd know those shoulders anywhere. He's not the problem."
I put the phone face-down.
It buzzes. A long, soft pulse, three beats and a rest. It's the rhythm I set for him eight years ago, and never changed.
Dominic.
I stare at the ceiling.
I don't read it.
I can't.
***
The buzzer rings at ten past eight.
Odile looks at me.
"You expecting someone?"
"No."
"Stay here."
She goes to the intercom. I hear a thin crackle, a voice that doesn't sound like anyone I know. I sit up with the blanket round my shoulders.
Odile says, "Who?" Pauses. Says, "Hold on."
She turns.
"It's your sister."
My stomach drops.
"Tessa?"
"She's in a state."
"Let her up."
"Serena..."
"Let her up."
The door at the bottom of the building buzzes. I hear feet on the stairs, four flights, running. By the time they reach the landing they're not running any more but stumbling, and when Odile opens the door, Tessa half falls into the room.
She's in the same camel coat she wore yesterday. She hasn't slept. Her face is a mask of mascara and raw skin, and her hands are shaking so badly that her keys jingle.
"Rena."
"Tess. What's wrong?"
"I..." She looks at Odile. At me. At the little room with its cat clock and its radiators. "I did something."
"What?"
"I did something terrible, and I came to tell you before..."
"Tessa."
"He called. At four." It all comes out in a rush. "Edmund. He called me at four in the morning. He said, Tessa, dear, we need to talk. He sent a car. I thought it was about the Foundation. I thought... and when I got there he had a folder."
"A folder."
"My text. My text. From the yacht. Lower aft cabin until ten. He's had it all this time. Three years." She wipes her face with the back of her hand. "He had Caleb's, too. The one where he says bringing the champagne down now. He said, Do you understand what this looks like, Tessa? Two people, two messages, one dead woman."
My blood goes cold.
"He said he'd give them to the police. He said Caleb would go to prison for life. And that I'd go with him. He said, I wouldn't want to see you hurt." Her voice cracks. "He was so kind about it."
"What did he want?"
"To know where you were."
The radiator knocks.
I don't breathe.
"I said I didn't know."
"And?"
"He said, Of course you do, dear. You spent all of yesterday with her." She presses her fists to her mouth. "I said no. I said it three times. I swear, Rena, I swear on Dad..."
"And then?"
"Then he said, Caleb's cell will be very small."
Silence.
It's the sort of silence that has weight. It presses on the room like water.
"And you told him," I say.
"Yes."
"Where."
"Astoria." It's barely a breath. "Thirty-first Street. The green awning."
Odile makes a very small noise.
I look at my sister.
She is standing in the middle of the room with her arms hanging, her coat open, her eyes wide and wet and terrible. She looks about nine years old.
I should say it's all right.
I should hold her.
I've done it before. I did it on a pier, in the dark, with a storm over the bay.
But there's a high, clean, icy note in my head like a struck glass. It's the sound of a girl in a hospital bed, three years ago, with her face in bandages, and nobody left to call. It's the sound of a lie that came twice.
"You promised," I say.
"I know."
"You said, Me. Always. On the floor. Yesterday morning. You held my hand."
"I know."
"You said you'd be so useful."
"Rena..."
"It's been twenty-four hours."
Her face crumples.
"I know. I know. I'm so sorry. I came as fast as I could. I wanted to warn you. I thought if I got here before him..."
"Before who?"
"Before whoever he sent."
The fork slides off the arm of the sofa and hits the floor.
"He sent someone?" says Odile, sharply.
"I don't know." Tessa looks from one of us to the other. "He said he'd talk to you. He said he just wanted to talk. But he wouldn't have asked where you were if..."
"Tessa," I say.
She stops.
I stand up.
My legs are quite steady. I'm very calm. It's an odd, glassy calm, the calm of a woman at the bottom of a lake.
"Go home," I say.
"Rena, please..."
"Go home."
"I'll fix it."
"You can't."
"Let me..."
"You can't fix it, Tessa. You can't fix it, because I forgave you yesterday, and you did it again." My voice doesn't rise. That's the worst part. "I can't do it twice. I don't have it. I haven't got another one in me."
She stares at me.
Her mouth works.
Then she turns, and stumbles to the door, and lets herself out. I hear her feet on the stairs, one flight, two, then the long, hollow, running sound that means she's crying too hard to see.
The door at the bottom of the building bangs.
I stand quite still.
"Serena," says Odile quietly.
"Don't."
"She came to warn you."
"I know."
"She was blackmailed."
"I know."
"Then why..."
"Because it's easier," I say, "than being afraid."
The cat clock ticks.
I sit down slowly on the arm of the sofa, and put my head in my hands, and for the first time since I opened my eyes in Ruth Pelletier's guest room I let myself shake.
"Pack," I say, when I can. "Take the laptops. Take the box. We're leaving."
"Where?"
"Anywhere."
Odile goes into the bedroom. I hear drawers.
I go to the window.
Down on the street, the grey-hoodied man has gone.
I don't know when.
The corner is empty. The sidewalk is wet and shining. A pigeon pecks at a crust in the gutter.
I frown.
The door to the stairwell, behind me, is slightly open. Tessa must have left it. A cold thread of air is coming through.
It smells.
Faint. Sharp. Sweetish.
It's a smell I'd know in my sleep. I've smelled it on a boat, in a hatch, on the surface of the sea.
I turn.
"Odile," I say, very quietly. "Odile. Don't open the door."
"What?"
"Don't open it."
"Why?"
I look at the gap beneath it, where a silver thread of liquid is creeping slowly across the grey linoleum, one thin line, spreading.
"Because somebody has just poured gasoline in the stairwell."