When she was done, Sadie left the bathroom and walked down the stairs. ‘Velma?’ There was no response. She passed through the hall and headed for the room she had seen when she’d first entered the house. When she reached the open door, she gave a tiny jump. There was a man sitting on one of the sofas. He lifted his head and gave a thin smile. It was Nathan Stone.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Velma called me,’ he said.

‘Why would she do that?’

‘Because she’s a friend. Because she knows you’re up to your neck in it and you need some help.’

Sadie couldn’t dispute either of these things, but she still didn’t welcome his presence. ‘I see,’ she said tightly.

‘Are you coming in or are you just going to stand there all night?’

Sadie hesitated – did she really need this on top of everything else? – but with little other choice she finally ventured into the room. She perched on the end of the unoccupied sofa and glanced at him. ‘Where’s Velma?’

‘She’s gone to Oaklands to pick up some clothes for you. She’ll be back later.’

Sadie could see his gaze roaming over her, examining, probing, taking in the extent of the damage. Feeling self-conscious, she lifted a hand and pulled the top edges of her dressing gown together. ‘Why don’t you just come out and say it?’

‘What?’

‘That you’ve seen me looking better.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a touch insensitive?’

‘Since when did that stop you?’

Stone’s eyebrows shifted up, but he let the jibe pass. ‘Velma thinks you should see a doctor. I can get one if you want, someone discreet. He can come here, look you over.’

Sadie quickly shook her head. ‘I don’t need a doctor.’

‘He won’t go blabbing to the law, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘I don’t need one,’ she repeated, repelled by the thought of some stranger, doctor or not, examining her battered body.

‘So you want to tell me what’s been going on?’

Sadie gave a shrug, not sure where to start even if she wanted to. She looked around the room, studying the dark red walls and the chipped cream woodwork. A pair of heavy black drapes was drawn across the window. On the coffee table were neat piles of magazines – Mayfair, Playboy, Penthouse – and she stared at the covers for a while before shifting her gaze again. There was a potted palm in the corner, the tips of its slender green fronds turning brown. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘When was the last time you ate?’

‘I don’t know. Yesterday? The day before?’

Stone rose to his feet, went over to a door at the back of the room and opened it. ‘Okay, you talk while I make something to eat.’

Sadie hesitated but then stood up too and followed him through to a shabby-looking kitchen, smelling of stale cooking and dope. A layer of magnolia paint was peeling off the walls to reveal a pale bluey-green colour underneath. In the centre of the room was a table with four chairs. She pulled one out and sat down. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said.

‘Eat or talk?’

‘Both.’ Sadie pushed an overflowing ashtray to one side, placed her elbows on the table and cupped her chin with her hands. ‘Either.’

Stone took a loaf of bread from one of the cupboards and placed it on the counter. He opened the fridge and peered inside. ‘Then you’ll just have to force yourself.’ He pulled out a tub of margarine and a carton of eggs and put them beside the bread. ‘Poached or scrambled?’

Sadie didn’t have the strength to argue. ‘It doesn’t matter. Scrambled.’

Stone took three eggs from the carton and broke them into a small glass bowl. He whisked them up with a fork and added salt and pepper. He dropped two slices of bread into the toaster and then lit the gas ring on top of the cooker. He placed the pan on the stove and put a knob of margarine in it.

Sadie watched him while he worked. His movements were brisk, efficient and oddly comforting. He was wearing a pair of dark blue trousers and a navy sweater. His grey hair, swept back from his forehead, was slightly mussed as if he’d rolled out of bed and forgotten to comb it.

‘I’m listening,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Just start at the beginning.’

58

Sadie’s account was stumbling at first, full of pauses and reversals, until she finally got into her stride. Even as she was telling him about her first meeting with Mona Farrell, the words sounded odd and fantastical, more like a fairy story than a real-life event. By the time the scrambled egg was placed in front of her, she had reached the point where Mona had turned up at the flat in Haverlea. She stopped and stared down at the plate.

‘Eat!’ he ordered. ‘Or at least try.’

Sadie picked up the knife and fork. She took one mouthful and then another. She had thought herself beyond hunger, but her body had other ideas. In three minutes flat she had the plate cleared of everything but a sprinkling of crumbs.

While she was eating, Stone had been pottering round the kitchen. Now he brought two mugs of tea to the table and sat down opposite to her. ‘You take sugar?’

Sadie shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘If you like.’

‘Why didn’t you tell Joel about Mona Farrell?’

It was a question Sadie had asked herself a thousand times. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. I suppose it didn’t seem that important at the time, not after I first got back from London, and then Eddie was killed and… When the police asked me if I could think of anyone, anything, I just thought it sounded crazy, like a tale I’d invented so they wouldn’t suspect me.’ She rubbed at her eyes, momentarily forgetting the bruises and flinched at the pain. ‘It was only when Mona sent the book that I really began to wonder if she could have had something to do with it. And then it felt like it was too late to tell anyone, that it would look like I’d been deliberately hiding something.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Go on. Tell me the rest.’

While she continued with the story, he made only an occasional interruption to clarify this point or that before giving her a nod to carry on. She told him about the phone calls, about Emily Hunter’s party, Peter Royston, the gun left in her bedside drawer and all the letters Mona had sent with the details of how her father was to be murdered. Glossing over the events of the funeral – ‘You know all about that’ – she finished with Mona’s note pushed through the door asking for a meet at the fairground.

‘I take it she didn’t show up?’

‘No.’

‘But Peter Royston did.’

Sadie gave a low moan. ‘The police think I killed him. I was there, wasn’t I? I was at the goddamn fair. I went there and I waited and…’ She could hear her own voice rising in pitch, the upper notes edged with hysteria. ‘How am I ever going to prove I didn’t?’

Before she could completely lose the plot, Nathan Stone brought his palms down firmly on the table. ‘Hey, calm down. You don’t need to prove a thing. It’s all circumstantial. They’re the ones who have to prove it.’

Sadie took a few deep breaths before she spoke again. ‘But it doesn’t always work that way. You know it doesn’t. Innocent people go to jail.’ She gave him a penetrating look. ‘You of all people should know that. If they stitched you up, they could do it to me too.’

Stone sat back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Ah, I see someone’s been talking.’

‘It wasn’t Velma,’ she said too quickly, a red blush rising to her cheeks. ‘I just… just heard it somewhere.’

Stone lifted his shoulders in a shrug that was perhaps a little too careless. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s hardly a secret. Everyone knows round here.’

Sadie fell silent for a while. She sipped on her tea, watching him over the rim of the mug. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything but it was too late now. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured.