49

Monday 1 October

CHARLOTTE BENN IS LYING ON THE KING-SIZE BED OF the master bedroom. The wrong way round. Her feet, still in the shoes she was wearing when she answered the door, are on the pillow. Her husband’s pillow. He won’t like coming home and finding it dented. Charlotte had made the bed already, pulling the bottom sheet tight at the corners, smoothing out creases, plumping up the quilt and pillows, folding the throw, arranging the silk cushions carefully. She’s going to have to do it all again when this is over.

‘Can I sit up?’ she asks.

‘No,’ replies the voice.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she says.

No answer.

‘This throw won’t wash,’ Charlotte says. ‘I’ll have to dry-clean it.’

‘Nice room,’ says the voice. ‘Did you do it yourself?’

‘Yes,’ says Charlotte, although she hadn’t. She’d used a very expensive interior designer that one of her friends had recommended. ‘I chose everything,’ she continues. ‘I spent weeks on it.’

‘Nice use of neutrals,’ says the voice in her ear. ‘Are they your favourites? Neutral colours, I mean?’

‘There’s money in the house,’ says Charlotte. ‘In the safe downstairs. A couple of hundred pounds, I think. I can tell you the combination. It’s six, seven, three …’ She can hear a rustling noise directly behind her. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

‘I wanted to ask you about morality,’ the voice says. ‘Is it absolute, do you think? Or can it shift? Don’t move, or I’ll blow your head off.’

Charlotte forces herself to remain still. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she says. ‘I think you’re confusing me with someone else.’ She’s starting to cry and wonders if mascara will stain the throw.

‘If someone you loved committed a terrible crime,’ says the voice, ‘what would you do? Would you stand by them, no matter what the consequences to anyone else?’

‘I don’t know what you want with me.’ Tears are trickling down the side of her face, the first has reached her ear. She wants to brush it away but daren’t move.

‘This really is a nice room,’ says the voice. ‘Although I’m not fond of neutrals myself.’

As fingers wrap themselves around Charlotte’s hair, music starts to play, an old-fashioned tune that Charlotte thinks she knows but can’t quite place. In spite of the threat, she starts to pull herself up and then stops. Something is touching her throat. She glances to one side, sees the white-clad arm bent at the elbow.

‘I have to be somewhere in an hour,’ whimpers Charlotte, and the knife at her throat trembles against her skin.

‘Yes, so do I,’ says the voice. ‘And they say time flies when you’re having fun.’

The knife tip presses deeper. Charlotte is panting. Suddenly her body can’t suck in air fast enough.

‘Red’s always been my favourite colour,’ says the voice, as Julie Andrews starts to sing about raindrops. ‘I think what this room needs is a few accents of red.’