The Girl Before

“You’re sure you’re not getting Stockholm syndrome or whatever it’s called?” Mia looks around, at the pale empty spaces of One Folgate Street. “Living here…it must be a bit like being stuck inside his head. Maybe he’s brainwashed you.”

I laugh. “I think I’d have found Edward interesting even if I didn’t live in one of his buildings.”

“And you? What does he see in you, my love? Other than the unencumbered fuck or whatever he called it?”

“I don’t know.” I sigh. “In any case, I don’t suppose there’s much chance of finding out now.”

I tell her how Edward left my bed so abruptly, and she frowns. “It sounds like he’s got serious issues, J. Maybe avoid this one?”

“Everyone has issues,” I say lightly. “Even me.”

“Two damaged people don’t make a whole. What you need right now is someone nice and solid. Someone who’ll take care of you.”

“Sadly, I don’t think nice and solid is my type.”

Mia doesn’t comment on that. “And there’s been no contact since?”

I shake my head. “I haven’t called him.” I don’t mention the pointedly casual email I sent the next day, the one that didn’t get a response.

“Well, that is unencumbered.” She’s silent a moment. “And flower man? Any more from him?”

“No. But Edward said the death was an accident. The poor girl fell down the stairs, apparently. That is, the police did consider foul play, but they couldn’t make it stick.”

Mia stares at me. “These stairs?”

“Yes.”

“And foul play—what the hell’s that about? Doesn’t that freak you out? To know you’re living in a crime scene?”

“Not really,” I say. “I mean, it’s a tragedy, of course. But like I said, probably not a crime scene at all. And lots of houses have had someone die in them.”

“Not like that. And you living here all alone…”

“I don’t get scared. It’s a very calm house.” And I have held a dead baby in my arms, I think. The death of a total stranger, several years ago, is hardly going to bother me.

“What was her name?” Mia’s pulling out her iPad.

“Emma Matthews. Why?”

“Aren’t you curious?” She taps at the screen. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

Silently she shows me. On her screen is a picture of a woman in her mid-twenties. She’s rather pretty; slim and dark-haired. She seems familiar, somehow. “And?” I say.

“Can’t you see it?” Mia demands.

I scrutinize the picture again. “See what?”

“J, she looks just like you. Or rather, you look just like her.”

I suppose it’s true, in a way. The young woman and I both have the same unusual coloring—brown hair, blue eyes, and very pale skin. She’s thinner than me, younger, and if I’m honest better-looking, and she uses more makeup—two dramatic splashes of black mascara—but I can definitely see the resemblance.

“Not just your face,” Mia adds. “You see the way she’s standing? Good posture. You stand exactly like that.”

“Do I?”

“You know you do. Still think he doesn’t have issues?”

“It could be a coincidence,” I say at last. “After all, there’s no reason to think Edward was even in a relationship with this girl. How many millions of women in the world have brown hair and blue eyes?”

“Did he know what you looked like before you moved in?”

“Yes,” I admit. “There was the interview.” And even before that, the request for three photographs. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but why would a landlord need to see photographs of his tenants?

Mia’s eyes widen as something else occurs to her. “And the wife? What was her name?”

“Mia, no…” I say weakly. I’m pretty sure this has gone far enough. But she’s already tapping at her screen.

“Elizabeth Monkford, previously Elizabeth Mancari,” she says after a while. “Now let’s do an image search…” She scrolls rapidly through pictures. “That can’t be her…Wrong nationality…Gotcha.” She gives a low whistle of surprise.

“What is it?”

She turns the screen toward me. “Not so unencumbered after all,” she says quietly.

The image is of a dark-haired young woman sitting at some kind of architect’s easel, smiling up at the camera. It’s quite grainy, but even so I can tell that she bears a strong resemblance to Emma Matthews. And therefore also, I suppose, to me.

THEN: EMMA

Telling Simon and the police I was lying about not remembering the rape was bad enough, but telling Carol is almost worse. To my relief she’s very nice about it.

You’re not the guilty party in any of this, Emma, she says. Sometimes we’re simply not ready to face up to the truth.

To my surprise, though, it isn’t Deon Nelson and his horrible threats she homes in on during our session, but Simon. She wants to know how he’s taken the breakup, whether he’s been in contact since—which of course he has, constantly, though I’m not replying to his messages anymore—and what I’m going to do about it.

So where does this leave you, Emma? she says at last. What do you want to happen next?

I don’t know, I say with a shrug.