Chapter 41 Kier

41

Kier

Devon, July 2018

Sorry to chase, but you said you'd send through some initial ideas last week. Hope all good with you x P.S. We're so excited to see them!

My stomach pitches as I reread the message, a flush crawling up my cheeks.

I'm behind with work.

Ordinarily, it wouldn't bother me, I'm good at making up time, but this is a personal commission for friends, Ramon and Luis. They're getting married in Catalonia, at a beautiful fifteenth-century medieval castle estate. So much inspires me: the imposing courtyard and historic temple, a sprawling vineyard wrapping the bottom of the land.

I have time and space to work, as Zeph's taken Woody for a walk, but I'm finding it impossible to focus.

I feel restless, rattled, my mind spooling through everything: not just Zeph referring to Romy in the past tense, but the necklace, the social media post. His hissed words: You're just like her.

There's a strange sense of momentum building. Impending doom .

It's the same feeling I used to get when something bad was about to happen at home.

Back then, it always started in the same way. A thickening in the air, my father using his low, calm voice to ask my mother why she hadn't done one of the three hundred and forty-two things he'd deemed important that day. Why she hadn't gritted the driveway yet or why the clothes were still hanging on the radiator. Why the roast chicken was cooked all wrong.

It was the voice he used in court. Eminently reasonable and never wrong. A moral high road. A voice that never rose or revealed emotion.

I'd sit there, at the table, next to Penn, panic blocking my throat. Listening as he reasoned it out: Why hadn't she preheated the oven? Why hadn't she used the technique he'd shown her? Scored the skin? Rubbed salt into it?

As the minutes passed, he repeated himself. I found myself agreeing with him.

Why hadn't she just done it right the first time? Saved us all this? Daddy did work hard; it shouldn't be up to him to mop up her messes.

I'd sit there, conflicted, sure they could hear my heart thudding.

That's what it feels like now: physical and emotional alarm bells sounding. Adrenaline. Cortisol. Racing heart. Clammy hands.

Something's going on with Zeph, I can tell, something rippling beneath the surface.

I need to know what it is.

Leaning over the table, I grab Zeph's laptop, flip it open.

Search history first.

My eyes graze the screen. News sites. Food blogs. Social media. Food sites. Van life. His own, pretty much defunct, website. Travel: London. Madrid, Portugal. Sicily. Portugal again.

If he's looked Romy up, he either hasn't done it recently or he's deleted the searches.

Photos next.

I hover over the app, mulling over what I'd read online: Zeph apparently stood, lurking, on the corner, taking photographs as Romy left the building .

My pulse is racing as I lower my finger to the touch pad.

Do I really want to know?

I click. Thousands of images appear.

No time to search through them all. I need to narrow it down.

Hand shaking, I type New York and then Brooklyn into the search function.

The sort takes longer than I expect. Foot tapping the floor, I watch the empty screen with trepidation.

What if he's deleted his photos of her? It's what people do after a breakup. There might be nothing left.

But then, all at once, pictures fill the screen in rapid succession.

I stare, breath pushing out of me in one quick and painful exhalation.

It's like I've been punched in the chest.

Romy, Romy, Romy.

Either alone or the two of them together – selfies in her flat or ones he's taken, Romy smiling up into the camera.

What do people call it? The first flush of love? This is what this literally is, the two of them flushed, glowing with it.

But as I scroll, the images abruptly change.

My hand jumps back from the keypad, knocking my coffee flying. I scramble to right it but make no move to mop the pool of liquid already spreading across the table.

I can't tear my eyes away. The images of love and unity – they've become something altogether … darker.

Hundreds of photographs of Romy leaving the building. Walking down the steps. Stood on the pavement.

These aren't photographs that a boyfriend would take. These are taken from a distance. Paparazzi-style shots.

I don't want to look but I can't stop myself.

Click. Click. Click.

As the months roll by, there's a change in her expression and demeanour. She visibly shrinks. The free and easy confidence is gone.

One image in particular makes me shiver. It shows a sallow-skinned Romy looking directly at the camera. Her stare is hollow, her expression haunted. As if she knows someone's out there. Watching.

I keep scrolling, moving the laptop clear of the coffee now trickling in a steady stream down the table.

My eyes flicker from image to image, analysing the dates. They only confirm what I suspected. Zeph had been photographing Romy for months after they split.

Tears sting my eyes. I try to imagine how he might explain these away. He can't, surely? This is the behaviour of someone obsessed.

The woman living in Romy's block, who'd posted her theory about her disappearance, she was right. Zeph had been photographing Romy for months.

Turning, I grab my own laptop and click into her page. As I work my way through her feed, I'm looking for a chink in her armour, something in her profile that would give me an easy way out. Dismiss her as a loon, a superfan who has taken her conspiracy theories a little too far.

But I come up with nothing.

Janey Elton is in her late twenties at most, cerebral, bookish. Her feed is made up of smiling photographs of her with friends and family. Museums and theatres, cafés and bars.

Her apartment is the backdrop of some of the photographs. It fits with what I'd imagined. Huge windows overlooking the city. Elegant, spacious rooms. While I'm not an expert on New York, I know enough to understand that this would be prohibitively expensive.

It's plausible that it's the same kind of block Romy would be living in.

The concerned-neighbour narrative fits.

I hesitate, my stomach knotting. Do I really want to do this?

If I do, I'm crossing a line. If he finds out about this, whatever trust there is between us … it's gone.

I sit for a moment, thinking, and then click on the message icon next to her profile, start typing.