Chapter 5

5

Back out on the street the world seems spikier, as if the volume button is turned to high. Colors are savage, noises shriller. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the clarity of light pouring into the garden square opposite. The tree branches are paper cutouts spread across a buttermilk sky, the black railings that encircle them sharpened spears. Heading for the square, I register a dull ache behind my eyes along with a strange bitter taste in my mouth. I sit down on the nearest bench, take out my phone and tap away furiously into Notes.

Details swim before me as I replay the experience, how the interview I had taken so long to research and prepare for was ambushed by Nate. How it was me who wound up placed under the spotlight, not him. At least I hadn't given too much away, except apparently my pain tolerance.

Still, hadn't I won out with an invite to Algos House? I couldn't help smiling to myself. Who had been more persuasive in the end?

I get the rest of the facts down as I remember them, and then sketch in my initial impressions of him, how contradictory and clinical he can be. There's a lot I won't include, because I'm not sure I have the words quite yet for the intensity of those sensations in the lab, the peculiar intimacy of the whole experience, the way that it all made me feel.

I reach down to touch the back of my calf, still painful, perforated like a pin cushion and bruised. The inside of my arm all the way down to my wrist is blistering. I want to go home, replay and analyze this scene in my head many times over. But I promised to meet Amira for lunch. I drop my phone in my bag and walk briskly to the subway.

At Oxford Circus, I weave my way south toward Lexington Street where a sliver of Georgian Soho still lingers between the bubble tea bars and independent coffee shops. The sludge-green restaurant facade looks like it should sell antiques. The blackboard outside is chalked, Old Spot pork chop and mash . Downstairs in the gloom of the basement, the walls are lined with a print of Hogarth's Gin Lane and old Punch covers. While I wait to be seated, a man in a paisley silk waistcoat at a nearby table orders a second bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. And then I remember why I've always loved this place. Barely 1:00 p.m. and it already has the louche air of a lost afternoon on the run from the office.

I see my friend and editor, Amira, at a table in the alcove. She waves.

"Anna." She stands up to kiss me, her face clouding with concern. "Are you okay? You look...washed out."

"Honestly, I'm fine," I say, sitting down and studying the menu. I know Amira well enough but can still never quite work out if her inquisitiveness is born of sympathy or prurience, or most likely a combination of both. "I'm starving."

I look at the wine list, stalling for time while I work out what I'm going to tell her about the interview. I will need to break the news that I let it slip through my hands today, spin it to manage her expectations. Delayed but not lost. All to play for.

"Come on, tell me what happened."

I try to catch the waitress's eye, avoid the beam of Amira's interest, always shining a spotlight into corners one would prefer to remain in shadow. It's been something of a relief to me over the years that she's much better at asking questions than truly listening to the answers.

"He was interesting," I say, carefully. "The Rosen is such a weird old place. Like a time warp really. Miles of corridors and these dusty old laboratories. Except for Dr. Reid's, which is like a high-tech lair." I pause, registering a shade of panic in her eyes.

"So definitely interesting enough for next week's cover story, do you think?"

"That soon?" It's my turn to panic now.

"Jess is desperate, our lead interview has just fallen through."

"I guess I could turn it around but I'd need a few more quotes. I've pretty much been a lab rat for the last two hours; it wasn't exactly the interview I expected."

"Well, we may have to make it work as it is," she says as the waitress starts to hover at our table. "Let's get the drinks in first."

Amira and I studied at the same journalism course and since then we have slipped in and out of each other's lives, drifting apart until someone or something snaps us back together, remaining close through it all. She's Jess's deputy editor and commissions me to do most of their cover interviews. A year ago, I lived in her loft room while my apartment was being renovated and now I'm returning the favor. Amira recently finished with her boyfriend, so she's about to move in with me for a month or two.

The second bedroom was originally my older brother Tony's—we bought the apartment together ten years ago with our parents' inheritance, not a life-changing amount but enough to cover a decent deposit. He's a freelance photographer for travel magazines and websites, spending much of his time away. When he's back in the country, he stays at our apartment. I know how difficult it is freelancing in this business so any rental income we get from the extra room, I tend to give him. It's a mixed blessing really, owning a property and yet never being able to enjoy the freedoms it should bring.

"Nice bag," says Amira, as if reading my thoughts, eyeing a fake Celine that Tony bought me from Hong Kong.

"You know how he is." I wave it off. "Dropping in without warning, always with the gifts he really shouldn't be able to afford."

"Such a hardship." Amira eye rolls. "Balenciaga from Milan, an iPhone and AirPods from New York. He never bought me anything like that, fake or otherwise."

Amira had a disastrous fling a few years ago with Tony, which ended when he met someone else. She was devastated at first but eventually they became friends. Sometimes I suspect she still finds the idea of him intriguing.

Tony and I have always been close, so I avoided them as a couple as much as I could because I didn't want her to feel excluded. Amira often made comments about our relationship. She once told me that as an only child, rattling around a sprawling Edwardian house on the edge of Ealing, she had yearned for a younger brother or sister, all that volatility and emotion and bickering and love.

"He adores you, Anna," she would say. "He talks about you all the time."

"Does he?" I'd scoff. Love, yes, but also it was something else. After our parents died, Tony and I were all each other had. He always looked after me and protected me growing up. But I never wanted to dig back into that time of our lives. I preferred to look forward, unlike him. Secretly, I was relieved when Amira and Tony's fling came and went quickly.

"We're cursed," I remember her saying after the breakup. It was during one of our many wine-fueled lunchtimes and evenings here, counseling each other through various crises, from work to mortgages to men. "I choose the wrong type, and you don't choose any type at all. One serious relationship after college and then singledom ever since."

"Superficial dating never hurts anyone," I said defensively. Tinder was perfect. Fleeting, transient, under the radar. My love life had been much more manageable this way, skimming the surfaces and avoiding the depths. "Here's to never being hurt again," I had said, raising a glass.

The waitress disappears and returns with our wine. I dissect the menu, seized by indecision while Amira orders a pint of prawns, chips and a Caesar salad. The thought of anchovies makes my insides roil, so I just order some olives and pita.

Amira's mouth opens in bemusement. "So? Tell me more about Dr. Reid."

"They put me in the machine and did all these scans of my brain, which was kind of amazing, seeing different areas light up like a Christmas tree depending on what they did to me."

"You could start on all that. You in the chair, him like the mad scientist in his torture chamber. So was he playing ball?"

Her chin tilts up and she purses her lips, expectant for more. Thankfully her focus slips as the food arrives. She rips her prawns apart, squeezing out the soft pink flesh from their shell, sousing them in a bowl of aioli and popping them into her mouth. I reach across for the jug of water, my shirt sleeve slipping back to my elbow as I lift it up.

"God." Her hand reaches to touch my inner arm, tilting it toward her over the table lamp to get a better look. "That looks nasty."

I grimace. "It's not that bad. His researcher did a lot of it. I've got sensitive skin. Apparently, redheads feel more pain."

"That old cliché."

"No, really, he's doing a research project on it." She looks at my arm again and I pull my sleeve down.

"So was it worth it?" Her eyes glint.

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, I know you, Anna. Scheming away. I can't remember the last time you were so keen to pitch an idea to Jess. I saw that piece in The Bookseller too."

"What piece?"

"Dr. Reid's potential memoir? You're always saying you're bored of journalism. I get it. It's a good plan. So...are you in, do you think? Did you pass the test?"

I redden, but I know it's useless to pretend. Amira can read me too well, able to provoke me more than anyone.

"He didn't even mention it. We stuck very much to his obsession with pain."

"Bit creepy. What a bizarre job, spending your life doing that to people."

"Not that bizarre," I reason. "He's about to get a prize for his research. He's a world-class scientist trying to find a better cure for chronic pain, not just some sadistic freak doing it for pleasure."

Her face breaks into a grin.

"What?" I protest. "I'm only saying what you used to tell me. He's interesting ." I remind her about Nate's TV documentary a few years ago and how I would tease her about her crush on the enigmatic researcher popularizing neuroscience.

She shrugs. "After his wife died, it was all a bit of a turn-off. But clearly you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. You really believe that stuff about Eva? His version of events?"

"Well, the evidence is that he wasn't there at the time. The inquest said it was death by misadventure."

"Except there's a second inquest, isn't there? So clearly not everyone accepted the evidence."

"You mean Kath?" I nod, remembering the public statement she made about her sister soon after she died, how the media were too obsessed with the salacious details and indifferent to the real story. She accused the press of "postmortem misogyny," how they focused on her sister only as "the woman behind the King of Pain." She felt, justly or not, that no one was defending Eva's corner, least of all Nate, and she wanted him to be more accountable. "She's pushing for a second inquest," I confirm. "But until then, it's all rumor that he or anyone else was involved. I can sympathize with Kath, how you'd want someone, anyone, to blame. And as Eva's husband, Nate fits the bill."

"Except didn't reports say that Kath's daughter was there living with him? Why would she allow that if she really thinks he's responsible? Wouldn't she be worried?" She shrugs and barrels on ahead. "Anyway, you did ask him about those rumors that he had something to do with it, I hope?"

"Not exactly, no. But my feeling was that he'd have shut down the interview instantly. I had to play the long game. He was incredibly defensive."

"Ah, the long game," she muses. "That's the real point, isn't it? You can't afford to be too critical in case it jeopardizes your chances of being his ghostwriter."

"That's not true at all—"

"I wondered what happened to that insatiable curiosity of yours. I thought you'd maybe try to do a bit more digging, at least for the sake of the article."

"So we're a tabloid now, are we?"

"You're the one who's obsessed with the case, Anna."

"Of course I'm still skeptical. I'm not stupid. I just like to get all the facts. So far, I'd say he's genuine enough, maybe a little nerdy and strange, if you can call that a crime."

"So what else did he tell you about her ?" She shifts forward in her seat.

"Well, he didn't exactly..." I hesitate.

Amira looks at me and I see my own anxiety mirrored in her features. Her face falls, her mouth opens in disbelief. "Did you actually get a proper interview out of him?"

"I've got bits and pieces, but after the experiments we ran out of time."

She shakes her head in disbelief. "Anna, no. I've been working on this cover for weeks, ever since you first mentioned it to Jess last month. Now, somehow, I've got to explain it to her this afternoon that you let him weasel his way out of it."

"Amira, listen. It's not that bad. I'm trying to tell you there's good news too."

"Really, how?"

"Well, after the tests, he basically gave me the cold shoulder, asked me to follow up any other questions via email and, regardless of what you might think, I got snippy with him. I told him that he'd got it all his own way but now he had to play by my rules. Guess where he invited me?"

She shakes her head, unconvinced, but opens her mouth a little. "Go on."

"Algos House. This Friday. Only the first journalist to get into his home since Eva died there."

She squeals, claps her hands, her faith in me restored. "Brilliant. But will you have enough time to file?"

"I'm sure I can. He's promised me it's all on. I'll work on it over the weekend and file first thing Monday. He owes me—I've got the bruises to prove it."

"Just don't let him ply you with coke." She half smiles at me, retrieves her card to pay the bill. We both laugh, any tension between us dissolving. We chat about next Saturday morning, the logistics of her moving into Tony's box room, the small amount of possessions she'll be bringing. She looks at me, her expression clouding.

"It won't be too weird, will it?"

"In what way?"

"For Tony, I mean. The thought of me staying in his room—would it upset him?"

"He's not like that at all. He'll be pleased you've got somewhere to stay."

She looks relieved. "Thanks again for putting up with me. I'm sorry for being a bit stressed over this interview. Jess must be getting to me."

"Apartment rule number one. No talking about work at home." I smile at her as we both get up to leave, knowing if anything I'll be the first one to break it.

As we walk out there's a queue of people waiting to be seated. Diners lean in closer to hear each other above the rising clatter. The man in the paisley waistcoat is reclining in his seat, sipping cognac and digging in for the rest of the afternoon. No one except us is in any rush to leave.

"So promise to file Monday morning?"

I nod. "Of course. It'll all be fine."

"Don't give him an easy ride, Anna." She winds a pale pink cashmere scarf more tightly around her neck. "And take care," she adds, almost as an afterthought as we hug each other goodbye.

When I get home, I lie on my bed, a biblical weariness washing over me. I stare up at the rain streaking the attic windows and think back to the knife cut I had told Nate about, the memory of that day. The physical pain had been fine, eventually, once Tony drove me to A&E. Just a simple mistake. Reflex reactions beyond my control.

All this will pass, I tell myself, if I don't let it break the surface.

Falling asleep, it's her face I see. Eva's. She reaches out to me, brushing a blade across my skin, and I feel...nothing. It is exhilarating, euphoric even, watching it move across my flesh. Is this how she felt, how she wants me to feel too? I wonder as I drift in and out of consciousness. How easy it must have been for her in so many ways to be protected from pain.

The endless freedom to push yourself to the sharpest edge, never afraid of what may happen if you fall.