The sash window ground open with a resonant shear, and in answer she heard the footsteps shift and turn, Suki’s heavy, hard-heeled boots among them, a comforting clunk she’d heard so often in the shop without even realising its familiarity. Petra was glad Suki was here, at least.

And it was Suki, bless her, who pushed the door open, peering inside, taking one tentative step towards Petra by the window, before she was shoved aside by a pounding and incoherent yell, a heavy, grappling shape bursting the air behind her. Gasping, Suki pressed herself against the wall as it bundled past, like an underground trackwalker avoiding a hurtling train. The wrecking ball of noise and energy was Picton and Vincent wrestling and writhing their way from the stairs and chasing into the front room.

‘Petra!’ Vincent called. ‘Look out!’

Picton had got out of his grip, and he was weasel fast, already slamming through the door and grappling at Petra’s blue form as she worked the sash window up.

They sped towards her, the three of them – Picton, Vincent and Suki as they saw her perched on the sill, looking for a safe way to get down.

‘Stop!’

‘Don’t!’

‘Hey!’

But all their shouting and their muscling couldn’t change the fact of gravity as Petra flinched and lost her grip on the slick sill and plunged through the air out of the window like a shimmer of ghost lightning through the sodden sky.

Petra fell precisely where Vincent had fallen just forty days before, on the hard tar, but she fell less kindly.

DEATH IN THE STUDIO

SHOCKER! Medical magnate electrocuted to death by his OWN present at LAVISH birthday party

Sun & Star, 22 March

A POLICE PROBE has been launched after a sixty-year-old man was electrocuted to death and another guest died in an apparent fall at a plush birthday bash in Leamington Spa.

The incident took place around 10:45 p.m. at the upmarket celebration in the leafy Warwickshire locale, where townhouses sell for more than £1 million.

The male victim, the host of the party, whose identity is being withheld until next-of-kin have been notified, is a senior executive at a major medical insurance company. His guests at the party included members of the corporate elite from as far afield as Moscow and Manila.

According to eyewitness accounts, the victim was killed by a set of faulty headphones he received as a gift. Police have not confirmed whether they are treating the death as accidental or suspicious. No arrests have yet been made. The headphones in question retail at over £50,000.

One traumatised guest described the horrifying scene: ‘He looked like his brain was on fire for a second, then he just collapsed.’

Eyewitness reports suggest that the second casualty, a woman of around thirty years of age, attempted to flee the scene of the electrocution and deliberately jumped from the upstairs window, but died on the scene of her injuries.