Chapter 20
Twenty
Tuesday
ROMAN
Roman is halfway through rewiring the old monitor he’s cannibalized for parts when a movement outside catches his eye.
It’s not the interesting kind—like Emily at the kitchen window, or Oliver striding across the drive with that self-important, puffed-up look he gets when he’s pretending everything’s fine.
It’s someone coming out of Sunnyside at the far end of the lane.
He watches Rachel and Margaret Windsor leave the house with their bags-for-life and head towards the local shops, he assumes.
Margaret is talking—she is always talking, apart from when Ron talks for her—her hands moving.
She seems to be explaining something in detail.
Rachel keeps pace beside her, nodding at the right moments, but her attention drifts ahead.
She looks washed out. Tired, maybe. Like she didn’t sleep well.
His eyes flick back to the house and he waits. True to form, a few moments later Ron Windsor appears in the small upstairs bedroom and sits at his desk, the computer monitor facing the window and clearly visible.
Roman grins. It’s a classic schoolboy error that’s enabled him to see a lot of the stuff Ron has up on screen. Using his iPhone, he can easily zoom in enough to get a good shot of what Ron is doing up there, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Roman grimaces and files the pics in the Sunnyside folder.
Next door at Orchard Cottage, Tim Walker-Dent is on the driveway dressed in a suit, standing near his car with his phone pressed to his ear. He paces a little, then stops and listens, then paces again. He looks annoyed.
Roman watches until they’re all gone—Margaret and Rachel turning the corner, Tim climbing into his car and driving off—and the lane settles back down.
Nothing is wrong. Nothing that means anything on its own, anyway.
Everyone on the street has their own routine. Roman has clocked that already. He’s got a pretty good idea of who leaves when, who always forgets it’s bin day, who checks their phone the moment they step out of the door.
For a second he imagines the whole street lit up like a crime board. All the connections. All the secrets.
Roman’s lips curl despite himself. Orchard Lane attracts some odd people. People like Rachel, who seem to just hover at the edge of things. Still, he’s currently got other fish to fry.
He goes back to the monitor wires, twisting them together with a careful neatness. His fingers work fast, but his mind isn’t on the wires. It’s somewhere else.
Oliver Sharpe. That’s where he’s focusing his attention. Oliver, with his stupid, confident walk and his expensive watch and his big, showy smile. Like he thinks he’s superior, better than everyone else. Especially young people like Roman.
But Roman has had enough time watching Oliver to know he’s not nearly as solid as he pretends. There’s a crack somewhere under that shiny, showy surface. Roman just hasn’t found it yet.
He refocuses on the soldering iron, lowering the tip with smooth precision. The faint burn scent floats up from the connection point. He likes the smell. It means things are coming together exactly the way he wants.
A door slams somewhere outside. Roman glances up again, just in time to catch Emily crossing the road. He checks the cheap CCTV app his parents forget is even installed.
Emily would probably cross the road further up if she was visiting Lara, but . . . she’s directly opposite and heading this way. In fact . . . she looks as if she’s heading here. To his house.
He jumps up from his desk and freezes at the top of the stairs, his heart thumping. Through the textured glass, he watches as she reaches their front door and rings the bell.
His mum appears from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She opens the door.
‘Oh! Hello,’ she says, surprised but warm.
‘Hi,’ Emily replies, smiling in that careful, steady way she has. ‘I hope this isn’t a bad time. I just . . . I wanted to pop over to say hello properly. And to clear the air a bit. About the coffee-table thing with Oliver and Roman. No hard feelings, I hope.’
Roman winces.
Angela laughs softly. ‘Oh goodness, don’t you worry about that. Boys, eh?’
‘I’m so relieved,’ Emily says. ‘Oliver can be a bit hot-headed, so I wanted to apologize for that.’
‘You’d better come in then,’ Angela replies good-naturedly. ‘You can’t apologize on the doorstep.’
Roman slips silently back a step as Emily crosses the threshold.
He waits until they move into the lounge before creeping down a few more steps, careful to avoid the one that creaks.
He positions himself next to the slight crack in the living-room door.
He can’t hear every word, but he catches enough.
Angela gestures to the sofa. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please,’ Emily says. ‘That would be lovely.’
There’s an ease to her voice that unsettles him slightly. Not false exactly, just a bit practised.
After making the coffee, Angela returns from the kitchen with two mugs and sits opposite Emily. The late-afternoon light slants across the room, catching his mum’s finished work on the sideboard.
‘They’re beautiful,’ Emily says, nodding towards the collection of handmade wreaths and painted wooden plaques. ‘Did you make them? I was thinking of getting one for the front door.’
Angela beams, surprised. ‘Oh, yes, but I just potter. I run a little shop on Etsy for a bit of pocket money. Roman managed to crush one of my cake toppers along with damaging your table, unfortunately.’
Roman is watching Emily, who shifts in her seat.
‘I’m so sorry about that,’ Angela says.
‘It’s forgotten, honestly. It was an accident.’
Angela looks momentarily flustered. ‘Well, yes . . . but the table was probably very expensive.’
‘It’s fine. Just one of those things.’
Angela reaches for one of the wreaths and places it in Emily’s hands. ‘This one is my favourite.’
Emily turns it carefully, admiring the detail. ‘It’s gorgeous, Angela.’
‘This one is sold, but actually,’ Angela says, lowering her voice conspiratorially, ‘I’m running a little workshop next month.
How to make autumn wreaths. Nothing fancy, just a few of us from the area.
You’d be very welcome if you can make it, and there’d be no charge. Consider it a moving-in gift.’
Emily looks surprised, then delighted.
‘I’d love that,’ she says. ‘Really. I’ve been meaning to get to know more people properly, and this would be perfect.’
‘Well, that’s settled then,’ Angela says. ‘I’ll add you to the list.’
There’s a pause, then Emily smiles again.
‘We’re having a barbecue on Saturday,’ she says. ‘Nothing elaborate. Just trying to settle in and meet everyone. We’d love it if you and your husband came . . . and Roman, of course.’
Roman frowns. Emily had said his name like an afterthought.
‘Oh, that’s very kind, thank you,’ his mum says. ‘I’ll speak to Russ. I think we’re free.’
‘It would be nice,’ Emily adds gently, ‘to get to know each other as neighbours.’
From the hallway, Roman studies her face.
She looks sincere. Not calculating, just open.
He doesn’t like how difficult that makes things.
For a moment, the room feels almost normal. Two women chatting about dried flowers and weekend plans. The kind of ordinary scene Roman usually scrolls past in other people’s lives.
He steps away from the door, unsettled. After all his mum’s raging about Oliver Sharpe being nasty to him, Emily has won her over in a matter of minutes.
When the two women start talking about a local book club, Roman creeps back upstairs.
His phone buzzes on the desk, a notification to tell him his script has finished running. He clicks the window open and settles in his chair again, finally letting himself smile.
Onscreen is another scrape of Oliver’s deleted messages. Fragments of numbers, half-corrupted text strings. Nothing Roman can use yet . . . but enough to tell him Oliver is hiding something.
Enough to tell Roman that, even though his mum seems to have already fallen under Emily’s spell, he should still keep digging.