The Elevator: A totally gripping psychological thriller with a mind-blowing twist by Claire Cooper

Author:Claire Cooper [Cooper, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781837907564
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2023-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-TWO

LONDON

Maeve, then

Maeve tried to focus on what Alistair was saying. He’d wired up a small camera to his computer, and displayed on the monitor was a photograph of a nondescript kitchen, plain white cupboards and a grey Formica worktop. Cheap but not ugly. Newish. Clean. Compared to the other places they’d seen, it was a palace.

‘There’s no washing machine,’ he was saying, ‘but there’s plumbing for one. I thought I could pick up something cheap. And anyway, there’s a launderette ten minutes’ walk away.’

Maeve murmured. She had to tell him, but her stomach was in knots. The image on the monitor changed to a cream wall with a window in the middle. Light fell onto a plain beige carpet. The arm of a dark brown sofa was just visible on one side. In the opposite corner, the date was printed in orange lozenges.

‘He said it can be furnished or unfurnished,’ Alistair said. ‘The landlord’s got loads of flats, apparently, so he just moves things between them.’

She nodded dumbly as he moved on to a photograph of a bedroom, then a shot of a toilet that was presumably as much of the bathroom as the tight space allowed to be captured on camera.

‘So what do you think?’ Alistair turned to her. He was trying not to give anything away, but she could see the excitement in the way his knee jiggled up and down. She should have told him before, before he’d ever gone to see the bloody flat.

He was waiting for her reaction; she couldn’t put it off any longer. ‘It’s great, Ali,’ she said. ‘I really like it.’ He beamed back at her and was about to reply when she cut him off. ‘The thing is, I can’t help with the rent anymore.’

She watched his face fall, and her throat tightened. ‘Paul and I…’ She found it hard to say his name, she realised. How long would that continue? She said it again, experimentally. ‘Paul and I have split up.’

His disappointment changed instantly to sympathy. ‘Oh, Maeve. What happened?’

She paused before answering, wanting to be sure of picking the right words. ‘We haven’t been getting on. It’s been hard for him, everything with Anna. He won’t talk about it. And we’ve just, sort of, drifted apart.’

He reached out and pulled her into a hug. He’d grown strong, she thought, as his arms closed tightly around her, as strong as their father. But unlike him, Alistair was gentle, kind. She was filled with a fierce love for her brother. He needed her. She had done the right thing.

She drew back from him, eyes dry. She wouldn’t let herself cry. ‘It’s okay, Ali,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine. But it means I need to keep my flat. I can’t afford to help with your rent just now. I’m so sorry.’

‘Of course not. I shouldn’t have agreed to it in the first place.’ He smiled at her. ‘I can’t have my big sister sorting everything out for me for the rest of my life.

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