I nodded. Daniel was gripping his coffee mug so hard his knuckles were white.
‘I had the usual trolling on social media. Letters to the paper I worked for, comments on my blog. It was nothing unusual, never anything extreme enough to worry about.’
‘And then…?’
‘And then…’
And then I told her about the messages to my phone, the heart in the box, and the middle of the night phone messages, and with every word Daniel grew even more still.
‘And have you heard anything since?’
Oh boy.
‘Yes.’ My voice broke. I swallowed, taking a moment to breathe in some much-needed air before I continued. ‘I bought a new phone, but I’ve had a couple of messages to my old one.’
‘Can I see them?’
As I pulled my old phone out of my hoodie pocket and handed it to Brenda, to my enormous relief Daniel’s own phone rang. He glanced at it before pushing back his chair, swearing under his breath.
‘I have to take this.’
‘Of course, no problem.’ Brenda smiled. She waited for him to leave before looking me straight in the eye. ‘Now, are you going to tell me what’s really going on?’
So, with many more choked back tears, my head hung in shame, I told her precisely that.
An hour or so later, Brenda left, taking my old phone with her. She’d said that the obvious place to start was trying to locate the Alamis, but she would also look into the other restaurants that the stalker had messaged me about on the night I left London. She’d call Miles Greenbank at the newspaper, as well as seeing if she could get any more information from my parents. Another priority, of course, was to speak to Lucy. Although it seemed clear the animosity was aimed at me, and the chilling discovery about the missing H boys suggested their focus was now here, not in London, Lucy needed to know what was happening. She also had all the new passwords for Nora’s social media accounts, so we needed that information from her, too.
However, while Brenda reassured me that a crime had been committed, and she was proceeding accordingly, I couldn’t help thinking that surely underneath the calm professionalism Brenda and I shared the same opinion: I had brought this on myself. A box of bees and a lamb’s heart were insignificant compared to the upset and damage I had caused over the past few years, and I should feel ashamed at wasting valuable police resources.
I wouldn’t have involved the police at all, would have packed up my stuff and run away again if it was only me involved. But I wouldn’t even consider risking a grief-stricken maniac turning up at Daniel and Hope’s home.
So, I would stay, and cooperate as best I could, and follow Brenda’s advice about keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, keeping the doors and windows locked, and not going for any long rambles around the countryside alone.
I would hope, and pray, and do anything I could to make sure that I wasn’t responsible for ruining any more innocent lives.
* * *
I couldn’t call Lucy myself, as Brenda now had my old phone. I did, however, look her up on every online platform I could think of that didn’t require me to set up a profile, as well as reading through as many of the comments as I could stomach.
Nora Sharp was riding high. I had no idea what was happening with her venue or event reviews, but she had clearly been having fun reviewing her own life, and the seemingly endless free items that now accessorised it.
And while I would generally baulk at the idea of any human being degraded to the level of ‘accessory’, that was clearly how Nora viewed the man currently featuring in around half of her pictures. Nameless, consistently relegated to the back of the frame, or used as a prop to drape herself over, her new boyfriend clearly wasn’t choosy about which version of Nora Sharp he hung out with.
Marcus.
I was distracted from my stalker-search enough to scroll through the pictures until I found one that stopped me in my tracks. Nora was staring into the lens, lips pursed in defiance. She wore a tiny white crop-top, across which was written in red lettering, ‘FireStarter’.
FireStarter was the name Marcus had used for the woman he’d been seeing behind my back.
Lucy had ended up with my job, my pen name, the opportunities and the attention that came with them. Had she started with my boyfriend?
Had she planned the whole thing?
She certainly didn’t look like a woman being tormented by creepy and disgusting packages.
* * *
Daniel finished his call in time for lunch, not that either of us managed to eat more than a few token bites of a sandwich. My whole body felt seized up with tension as frenzied thoughts raced through all the potential ways he might react to the interview with Brenda. Pushing his plate away, he finally put me out of my misery.
