“Sorry to bother you again,” she said.
“It’s fine,” Sid lied.
She handed him a package. “This came while you were out this morning.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Appreciate it.” It was a book he’d ordered. He felt guilty for thinking that she was interrupting him for no reason.
As he was about to shut the door, something from their previous conversation snagged, a possible but not probable coincidence. Worth asking about, though.
“The woman who lived in our cottage, the one you said disappeared? Did you say she was from abroad?”
“Yes, from China.”
“What was her name?”
“Minnie. Min for short. Why do you ask?”
“Can I show you a photograph?”
He ran upstairs and grabbed his laptop, brought it down, and showed her the headshot of Minxu Peng that he’d found.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s her.”
Anya
I was furious as I paced the basement of the bookshop in Cecil Court. Diana seemed so smug, sitting there in front of me, telling me things that I didn’t know about my father, trying to get me to do what she and he wanted. Clearly, neither of them understood me at all.
“I won’t work with him,” I told Diana. “Not for any manuscript. I won’t betray my mum like that. Period. I quit.”
“You can’t,” she said.
“No, I can. I quit.”
“Really, you can’t.”
“I just did.”
I walked out, slamming the door behind me. I was so angry that the pain in my foot almost felt good. I walked in a random direction, hardly noticing or caring where I was going, just wanting to get away. The streets were swarming with tourists. I ducked into a side alley that ran behind a row of shops.
Partway down it I heard a car crawling behind me. I sped up to reach a recessed doorway where I could get out of its way and heard the car speed up, too. I glanced behind me, nervous. It was gaining ground and speed. The wing mirror clipped a garbage bin and knocked it over.
My gaze met the driver’s, but the car didn’t slow. My body understood what my mind was slow to process: it wasn’t going to stop. I turned and ran, slipping into the doorway just in time to feel a buffet of air as the car shot past, inches away. My heart had never thumped so hard.
I peered out. The car was still in the alley, parked about fifty yards up. The reverse lights came on and it began to move back, gathering speed again. It felt wet, sticky, and warm inside my shoe. My foot was actively bleeding again. I couldn’t possibly outrun the car. I tried to open the door I was hiding beside, but couldn’t. I slammed myself hard against it and fell through.
I found myself in a storeroom. Boxes of pasta, flour, canned tomatoes, and huge cans of olive oil lined the shelves, alongside wine and biscuits. A huge refrigerator hummed in one corner. I looked for a way out. Chunky plastic strips hung over an open doorway. I pushed through them and found myself in a fancy delicatessen.
“Hey!” a man called out. He and I were behind a counter whereprosciutto and salami hung and fresh pasta was stacked onto wooden trays. He was operating an industrial-scale meat slicer. I slipped around the counter to the door, and he shouted again. “Hey! What are you doing?”
I was too afraid to stop. I emerged onto a small street lined with genteel shops. It was free of crowds and I felt very visible, a moving target. Every step I took left bloody marks on the pavement. I scraped my foot against the curb, trying to wipe the sole of my shoe clean, and limped on.
There was a tube station down the street, at an intersection, and I headed toward it. About fifty yards away, I saw a black sedan car turn in, identical to the one that had menaced me.
A van pulled between us, blocking the view. I wasn’t sure if the driver had seen me or not. I crossed the street as quickly as I could and crashed into a shop whose window display of bolts of fabric and ribbons was as brash and colorful as fireworks.
A woman stood behind a cutting table covered in deep red silk, pattern pieces pinned to it. A tape measure hung around her neck; half-moon glasses sat halfway down her nose. She held an oversized pair of scissors. “Can I help you?”
“There’s a man.”
