The level in the tub was lifting, and I felt my pulse speed as I forced myself to drift back. It began slowly, but, little by little, I felt the past seeping in, until I was behind the house again, opening the back gate into the dank garden, weeds pulling at my feet; stalking like a ghost through the kitchen that she never used; climbing the stairs, sure that Nick was with her; hearing a man’s voice and her sharp laughter in reply. I felt every creak of the stairs, every step bringing me closer to her. Now my head was pounding, and the tide of the water was brushing the top of the bath. I gazed at it and heard a cold waterfall spill out and hit the floor, spreading across the tiles.

I fixed Lorelei’s image in my mind then: the beauty, the arrogance. My eye fell on the gilt-edged mirror and I could just make out a form reflected in it, dark and indistinct. It was coming closer to me. But, as I stared at the blurred movement, something changed, something was very different. And in a moment I realized: I knew that this was no memory of the day she died. The cold air that I felt clutching my skin and the dark reflected image filling my sight were both there in the present moment.

I spun around to see a face I knew well, choking at the sight of it. Then something slammed into my cheek and I was in the air, tumbling across the room, feeling only fear and an arc of movement.

A noise rang out as the back of my head hit something hard and metallic – the bath – and everything was confused and there was water. The whole world seemed to be spinning. The tunnel of my sight told me that I was on the floor, looking down at a seeping flood.

Grest bent down to me. I could smell his sweat, just as I had when he had pressed his chest against mine in the thin blue light of the NatSec van, just as I had in that locked interview room at 60 Great Queen Street. His flesh was so close I could see the wrinkles in his skin. His lips parted. ‘Give me the book or you end up like her,’ he said quietly.

24

Grest was all that I could see. He stood up, flexed his fingers and shook his hand – the knuckles were red where he had punched me. ‘It hurts me when I hurt you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do it again. There’s no need for it if you just give me the book.’

I lay there, unable to move. We imagine that at times of great fear our limbs will tear us away, but too often they lock us where we are. I could no more move than if I had been chained down.