Once she’d gone inside, I glanced round, furtively, before I pulled a small black woollen hat from my pocket and pushed it over my lanky locks. I then wound a bright tartan scarf round my neck. If she looked out from her upstairs window I wouldn’t be recognised.

I waited fifteen minutes under the small covered porch at the entrance to Amber’s flat before I crept back across the road and scurried down the side passage of number twenty-one. By the time I turned the key in the lock and let myself in, it was eleven o’clock.

In the dark half-light, I picked up my binoculars and peered across the road. Amber had already pulled her curtains shut; like she did every night.

4

Rebecca

Such was my obsession with Mitch that I occasionally allowed masochistic notions to invade my thoughts. Death had become an irrational fear. Not my own death, but that of my lover. A policeman would knock at the door and gently persuade me to take a seat. In subdued tones, he would tell me of a car crash or a robbery gone wrong. A fog would suffocate me while the world came to an end. Death was the only fear greater than being cast aside, no longer the vital lock for another’s key.

I think if my job had been more fulfilling I wouldn’t have spent so much time and energy consumed by my doomed relationship. I caught the tube to the gallery in Knightsbridge every day, and for the thirty-minute journey I melted into the hot sweaty pot of commuters. I used to be eager to reach my destination, excited and intrigued by the world of antiques and fine art, but my working relationship with my boss Roger Pennington’s only other employee had become uncomfortable. Oliver Moreton had once been Mitch’s so-called best friend.

Mitch was always going to be my first choice after Oliver introduced us. If Oliver had hoped to earmark me as his partner by right when he’d invited me along to the rugby club, he had both underestimated his best friend’s loyalty and my inherent attraction to more-silent bastards.

Mitch had stood aloof at the bar when we’d arrived. Oliver, large and proud, had circled my waist with generous fingers and propelled me towards my eventual fate. The two men shook hands and Mitch stared at me, sealing our future with a wink as the evening came to a close. When my escort went to bring the car round, chivalrous in the pelting rain, his best friend kissed me gently on the cheek and whispered goodbye.

‘For now.’

As he walked away, swaying his hips in measured style, butterflies fluttered in my stomach. He turned and mouthed silently, ‘See you soon.’