Page 38 of Love Unlocked

‘I’m going to be honest with you, because you seem to have been honest with me. I bought a bag of frozen mice and scattered them downstairs. I was about to go upstairs when she came back. I escaped out the back, hopped over the wall, asked my neighbour if I could go through his house.’

She gasps but doesn’t judge. ‘Is that why you stopped at the pet shop?’

‘You really did follow me.’ He shudders dramatically.

‘Revenge acts. This would be great for the podcast. What else have you done to them?’

‘I cut holes in all of Walter’s boxer shorts. And this is not for your podcast.’

‘Brilliant. And I won’t name you.’

‘You won’t mention it at all because my ex listens to Prunella. I also cut the buttons off all of his shirts.’

‘Classic. Did you put the shrimp in the curtain pole?’

‘No, I considered fish but thought the mice would be better.’

‘They won’t suspect you. They’ll think they have an infestation.’

‘That was the idea.’

‘Do you think that when the mice defrost they’ll come back alive?’

‘I don’t think that’s how it works,’ he says amused, dimples forming. She likes making him smile.

‘They must know the other stuff was you.’

‘They do, at least Walter does, but he hasn’t said anything about it. He just comes into work looking worse and worse every day.’

She studies him. He doesn’t look proud, which she likes about him.

‘Wait, you work with him?’

‘I got him the job. He’s our ecologist. And now all he does is go on about saving rare freshwater pearl mussels every time we want to repair a bridge. So yeah, I have to see him at work every day.’

‘Who is he, single white female?’

He lifts his face to the sky, opening his mouth to catch the snowflakes, and laughs loudly. He has good teeth, no sign of fillings, not the old mercury ones anyway. Melody’s mother has more in her body than a tuna fish. Pedestrians flow around him like he’s a rock in the stream.

‘Have you seen the movie?’ she asks.

‘Every time I see a stiletto heel I think of it.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ she says enthusiastically. ‘Right in the eye.’ She makes a squelching sound and he studies her in a way that makes her stomach swirl and heart pound. Something’s happening.

They’re still walking and she has no idea where they are or where they’re going and she doesn’t care. She doesn’t want this conversation to end. She trusts him and she has all the time in the world. Time is flying by but it’s a very long way from five a.m. And all of a sudden she just says it easily, the thing she finds it hard to say.

‘I live in an apartment with a flatmate. She’s a barrister. Criminal law. She wears one of those black gowns and white wig things.’

‘Handy to know.’

‘Especially when your revenge act, breaking and entering case goes to trial. She’s away tonight. She’s staying with someone, somewhere, I assume a man. We don’t go into personal details but she tells me when she won’t be home so that I can make arrangements.’

‘What kind of arrangements?’ He gives her side-eye and she laughs.

‘I don’t like being home alone at night.’

As she says it aloud, a lump forms in her throat.