The Girl Before

I shiver. Was it a poor score on a psychometric test that sealed Emma’s fate?

I finish the questions, ticking whatever answers I think Housekeeper will score me highest on. When I’m done, my laptop reboots. The lights come back on.

I stand up, relieved to be finally heading for the shower. But as I’m going up the stairs, there’s a glitch. The lights flicker. My laptop freezes mid-reboot. Everything hangs for a moment. And then—

Looking downstairs, I see something appear on my screen. Like a movie, except this isn’t a movie.

Puzzled, I go back down for a closer look. It’s an image of me, a live image, here in this very room. As I get closer, the figure on the screen moves farther away.

The camera’s behind me.

Picking my laptop up, I turn around. Now the screen shows my face instead of the back of my head. I scan the wall in front of me until the screen tells me I’m staring straight at the lens.

Except there’s nothing there. Perhaps a tiny pinprick in the pale stone, no more.

I put the laptop down and click the window to close it. Behind it is another window. And another, and another. All showing different areas of One Folgate Street. I close each one, though not before I’ve registered where the cameras are. One shows the stone table from a different angle. Another is pointed at the front door. The next shows the bathroom—

The bathroom. Open plan, the shower completely exposed. If these are One Folgate Street’s sensors, who else has access to them?

I click again. The final camera is mounted directly above the bed.

I feel sick. All those times it felt as if I was being watched…it’s because I was.

And not just in bed, either. When Edward took me over the kitchen counter, we’d have been in full view of the cameras.

I shudder, revolted. And then, in a sudden sluicing cascade of hormones, my revulsion turns to rage.

Edward did this. He built these cameras into the very fabric of One Folgate Street. Why? Was it some voyeuristic hobby? Or just another way of owning every moment of my life? I’m pretty sure it’s not even legal—wasn’t someone sent to prison recently for something like this?

But then I realize Edward wouldn’t have left a detail like that to chance. I go through my old emails until I find one from Camilla with One Folgate Street’s terms and conditions attached. Buried deep in the small print, I locate the clause I’m looking for.

…including, but not limited to, photographic and moving images…

Something else strikes me. Edward built this house, but the person who designed the technology was his partner, David Thiel. And while I might have a hard time picturing Edward as a high-tech Peeping Tom, Thiel’s another matter.

I don’t give my anger a chance to dissipate. I go and get my coat.

NOW: JANE

I don’t bother with an appointment. I simply wait on the ground floor of The Hive until a group of Monkford Partnership employees clutching lattes and wraps gather around one of the lifts, and follow them in. At the fourteenth floor I follow them out again.

“Edward isn’t here,” the impeccable brunette on reception says when she gets over her surprise.

“It’s David Thiel I want to talk to.”

Now she looks even more surprised. “I’ll see if he’s free.” She has to look up his extension number on her iPad. I get the impression the technologist doesn’t get many visitors.

—

My rant at David Thiel is long, loud, and liberally laced with swear words. I barely draw breath, but he simply waits calmly for me to finish. I’m reminded of the way Edward listened to that client, the first time I came here, letting the man’s anger wash over him.

“This is ludicrous,” Thiel says when I’m finally done. “I think your condition must be causing you to overreact.”

He could hardly have said anything more calculated to set me off again. “First, I’m not ill, you cretin. And second, don’t you dare patronize me. I know what I saw. You’ve been spying on me and you can’t deny it. It’s even in the bloody terms and conditions.”

He shakes his head. “We ask you to sign a disclaimer. But that’s just to cover ourselves. No one accesses those camera feeds apart from the automatic face recognition software. It’s so the house can track your movements, that’s all.”

“And the shower?” I demand. “Going hot and cold, trying to freak me out? You’re not telling me that’s something to do with face recognition?”

He frowns. “I wasn’t aware of any problems with the shower.”

“And then there’s the really important thing. What were those cameras doing when Emma was killed? They must have recorded what happened.”

He hesitates. “The FR feeds were offline that day. A technical problem. It was unfortunate timing, that’s all.”

“You really can’t expect me—” I begin just as the door swings open, propelled with some force by Edward Monkford’s arm as he strides into the room.