She leaped to her feet. She was wasting time with a woman whose Friday-night drink was going flat, whose phone was buzzing with her own life.

Emma stirred, and jumped up too. “You don’t have to go!”

“I should be out there looking for her . . .” Steph glanced toward Emma’s undrawn curtains. The night seemed to glisten and swell, like black water. Usually she loved night skies, the more vast and starry the better, but now she couldn’t stand the thought of it, dark and depthless.

They were diverted by another ringing. Traditional this time, like a landline. Emma looked at the handset in the corner of the room, seeming surprised. Presumably her home phone rang as rarely as Steph’s did these days.

“Answer it,” Steph said. “Just in case?”

Emma hesitated, then walked over and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

There was a pause before she repeated: “Hello?”

A chill touched the back of Steph’s neck. She became conscious of that rumbling, hamster-wheel noise again, gathering momentum.

“Is anyone there?” Emma sounded perturbed now. “Hello?”

She replaced the receiver but kept frowning at it, rubbing her lips together with their traces of coral gloss. “Wrong number, I guess.”

Steph watched her for a beat longer. Emma’s face seemed to have paled. Her cheek was dappled by the moving shadow of a dream catcher that hung from the ceiling. Was there something she wasn’t letting on about the call? No, of course not. Why would there be? And even if there was, why would it be anything to do with Freya? It was already becoming impossible to distinguish between things that meant nothing and things she should seize on.

And then there were the things that made her brain power down when she thought about them.

Paul asking to speak to the police alone.

Paul flinging his water glass onto their kitchen floor rather than answer her questions.

“I have to go,” she told Emma again.

“Please, let me—”

“I really do.” Steph stumbled to the door. The hallway seemed to represent a fork: back upstairs, to do what, or back outside, to go where? She lurched toward the stairs, hoping she could collect her thoughts once she was in her own flat.

“If you need anything,” Emma was saying behind her, “I’m—I’m just downstairs.”

Steph stopped and twisted back. Emma seemed young again, framed in her doorway, her blue serrated fringe in her eyes.

“Just keep looking out of your window,” Steph blurted. “Look for . . . I don’t know. Anything. Anyone.” Tell me what Paul’s face looks like when he comes home, she wanted to add, before he’s prepared himself to come back upstairs.

Tell me what you think of this street, our neighbors, this place that was meant to be safe.

Tell me, do you ever get the sense our house is being watched?

9.

PAUL