I Spy by Claire Kendal

Author:Claire Kendal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-05-23T17:00:00+00:00

Now An Assault

Two years and one month later

* * *

Bath, Saturday, 6 April 2019

The day after my visit to Eliza and near-collision with Zac, I begin my morning by climbing back into bed with coffee and my laptop, still wearing the oversized T-shirt I slept in. It is easy to find Eliza’s house on the Land Registry website, where I buy copies of the Title Register and Title Plan. The first tells me the property was registered in Eliza’s sole name in late February, which isn’t surprising given that Zac always avoided doing anything financial in joint names. The second tells me more about the property’s boundaries and surroundings. It might, I think, be possible to get in – or out – through the parkland that touches one side of their garden – I remember Eliza drawing my attention to it.

I take a long shower, then head to the hospital for a supposed catch-up on admin on my own time. Paediatric Outpatients is a ghost clinic, eerily quiet, with no one else there. Genuine admin is mostly what I do, in order to disguise the small part that is not genuine. My search history will show that I’ve been rooting around in places I don’t belong on a day I shouldn’t be in, though it’s unlikely anyone will have the time or inclination to look.

I dig deeper into Alice’s records. She was referred to our clinic by a paediatrician in London, but I can only trace her medical files back a year. Why is there nothing earlier? Is this evidence that there is something odd about the circumstances of her birth?

I close my eyes and shake my head until my neck hurts. Even so, I continue shaking my head like a madwoman, as if doing this will force enlightenment into my brain. It doesn’t work. For now, I must move on. In any case, I am in a position to know how dramatically hospitals in the UK vary in their progress with migrating to electronic records. Some are fully there, some are still using paper, and some are in the messy hinterlands in between.

I don’t leave the empty clinic immediately. Instead, I turn off the hospital computer and switch on my laptop, which I’ve brought with me. I find out that Eliza studied Art History at University College, London, which is where Zac went to medical school. The circumstances fit, as well as the minimal truth Zac told about it the night I glimpsed her with him in that London hotel. They graduated from UCL the same year. Her degree would have taken three years, whilst his was six preceded by a gap year for European travel, like an eighteenth-century gentleman’s grand tour.

Zac is forty-three now, and Eliza half a decade younger than he is. If she spent all that time with a crush on him, and then they finally got together, she may be all the more in his thrall – and under his control.

I learn also that she comes from an extremely rich family, with a financier father, and is an only child.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.