The Second Wife by Fleet Rebecca

Author:Fleet, Rebecca [Fleet, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Suspense
ISBN: 9781473555235
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 2020-03-04T13:00:00+00:00

Once again, it doesn’t prove anything. Natalie didn’t tell me Kas’s surname, but there’s a sudden tightness in my throat, a slipperiness of my palms, that tells me I’m on the right track. Returning to the search engine, I type in ‘Kaspar’s Camden’. There’s surprisingly little – a defunct website that now simply states the domain name is up for sale, a couple of old and inconsequential forum comments – but I find a short, cryptic article announcing the club’s closure in the year 2000 on behalf of the club’s owner, Kaspar Kashani.

KK. There’s no photograph, but it all fits. If what I’ve seen on the YouTube link is right, then Kas is in prison, and it sounds as if he’s been there for a long time. I have no idea if Natalie knows this, or if it’s linked in any way to her own past. I could ask, but something tells me that she might shut up like a clam, and I’m not sure I want to risk pushing her too fast.

Something brings me out of my reverie then, snaps my attention away from the lit-up screen to the darkness of the room around me. I’m on red alert. Listening. There are always noises in an old house: pipes whistling, floorboards expanding and contracting. The house talking to itself, we used to call it. But crouching here in the dark with the wreckage of a half-destroyed home around me, the cutesy turn of phrase doesn’t feel so appropriate anymore.

I listen harder, straining my ears. There’s a creaking, yes, but it doesn’t sound like the familiar, internal readjustments of the foundations. It’s slower, more deliberate. Like footsteps across the floor below, not seeking to advertise themselves, but not tiptoeing either. An unhurried patrol, back and forth and back again.

As silently as I can, I close the laptop, tuck it under my arm and stand up. I creep towards the bedroom doorway, still trying to determine exactly what it is I’m hearing. There’s a buzzing in my ears, the start-up of panic, and it makes it even harder to be sure. For a full ten seconds it seems there’s nothing. I start to relax, already chastising myself, and then it comes again: another beat of pressure, like a tap or a knock against floorboards, and then a slow scrape which could be the sound of something being dragged across a table or shelf. A few seconds later, a muffled clatter, as if some light object might have fallen to the floor.

Drawing in breath painfully, I’m acutely aware of just how stupid I’ve been – coming to an unsecured house after dark, a place that I already know has been under threat. It comes to me that if I died here tonight, my last coherent thought would be that I was a fucking fool. Peering down into the chasm of the hallway below, I try to think. If I stay here, then whoever is downstairs is likely to come up eventually, and then I’ll be trapped without an escape route.

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