She paid Fin’s desk a visit and found him with six printouts on his desk. She tapped him gently on the shoulder. ‘You’re trying to do the same as me.’
‘You gave me a puzzle, what do you expect? Have you cracked it yet?’ he asked.
‘No. Have you?’
‘I think it’s a six-digit code that is unique to Angelina. That’s what we have to find.’
Chapter 50
Melvin checked on his wife. But she wasn’t there.
He searched every room and ended up where he’d started, on the terrace.
‘Ursula,’ he called.
Acorn padded to his side and placed a paw on his trouser leg, then he remembered that Ursula was dead, and they were all alone.
He gazed at where Ursula’s hospital bed and the medical equipment used to be, then out of the window to the lake which he recalled she loved. That’s why they’d moved here. He wondered where all his things had gone. And when he went to look for her photos, he couldn’t find them. It was as if they’d all been taken away. Or never existed before.
It was then that he noticed his hands swelling. It looked like good old-fashioned water retention to him, and he racked his brain to see if he could recall eating or drinking anything that might have produced a histamine response. He was well hydrated, or at least he thought he was. He wasn’t hungry and he didn’t feel unwell, though it had been quite a hectic couple of days.
Perhaps he should tell the doctor.
But he didn’t like doctors.
His memory was worse, but he recalled today was a special day because it was the anniversary of something.
He went to the calendar and had to walk past where Ursula’s bed had been, and he placed his hand on the imaginary sheets and said good afternoon to her. He stroked the linen and watched his swollen hand glide up and down and for a moment he was back with her.
But then a crash jolted him back to his current reality and he realised that he’d knocked over a vase. It had been hers and it contained dead flowers and no water. They lay broken into a thousand pieces on the floor; the brown withered leaves like paper now covered the floor like confetti and it reminded him of their wedding day.
He looked around him wondering where the bed had gone and if it was ever there in the first place.
Where was she?
He glanced around the room and wondered where she was but then tutted as his memory flooded back.
The slipping in and around time was one of the scariest things he’d ever experienced. It was worse than a battlefield. It was more terrifying than combat. It was like being trapped inside some cruel game that he had no control over. There was no end. No victory. Just torture. He checked the calendar and saw that it was the fifth anniversary of her death.
It was all a blur now, but he vaguely recalled them discussing the plans for the sunroom and an extension out the back, edging down to the lake. But now, as he reached for a packet of soup from the cupboard and flicked the kettle on, he stared out of the window and looked at a single figure in a canoe, paddling right up to the shingle shore which was at the end of his garden.
A memory of Ursula walking towards the beach with something in her hand took him back to the night they’d moved in.
They’d been dropped off with their luggage and everything had gone to plan, except this wasn’t the house they’d chosen, and Ursula wasn’t his wife. They’d been introduced to each other as part of the experiment. He and Ursula were going to pretend to be husband and wife. The fiction was designed to keep them safe. Keep them legitimate. Ursula was an asset too.
They’d met through their shared desperation. And ended up falling in love. Or had they?
He didn’t know what was real and what was fantasy anymore.
He turned to the door when a sound interrupted his train of thought, but he was annoyed, because he very much wanted to imagine Ursula as his wife. He looked out of the window again but the figure in the lake had disappeared.
There were no photos of them together, and the smells he imagined that lingered on cushions, soft furnishings and chairs were no longer there when he pressed his nose against them.
It was as if she never existed.
The noise turned to a knock, and he turned to the front door.
Nobody came to visit. It was an extraordinary turn of events.
