Page 71 of The House Guest

Callum looked over at Krugman’s body, then nodded at the shovel that lay on the ground beside him. ‘You’re younger than me and I just saved your life. You can dig the hole. There’s probably a pair of gloves in his back pocket. You might want to use them.’

‘What are you going to do?’ I asked, discovering that there was indeed a pair of gloves there. Krugman had come prepared.

Callum had his own phone in his hand now. ‘I’m going to try to figure out who Gabriel is. And where we can find him.’

Chapter 31

‘I haven’t told you my name,’ he said when he returned. It was hard to keep track of time here but Ruth thought it had been more than a few hours. She had been on the verge of giving up waiting. ‘I’m Gabriel.’

He took a seat at the table and gestured for her to join him.

‘Gabriel. Like the angel? Sorry, you probably get that all the time.’

‘Every now and then. But we’re all angels here – of a kind, anyway. Guardian angels. Except, well, we watch over each other.’

There was a knock and Emilio came in, carrying a tray of sandwiches and coffee. Once again, Ruth was struck by how insanely beautiful he was, as if he’d been designed on a computer. It was difficult not to stare at him. The way he moved, the fluidity of the simplest gesture, like setting the tray down on the table, captivated her too. If anyone around here was an angel, it was Emilio.

Ruth’s eyes lingered on Emilio as he left. Gabriel noticed.

‘You like him, don’t you?’

‘I ...’

‘And he told me he likes you too.’ He poured artificial sweetener into his coffee. ‘You’re single now. You can do whatever you like.’

Her face must have shown surprise because Gabriel said, ‘Don’t tell me you’re planning to go back to that loser? Adam, is it?’

‘I need to talk to him.’

‘Even though he put the moves on Eden?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t heard his side of the story.’

Gabriel opened his mouth, then clearly thought better of what he was going to say; she could see the swerve. ‘I feel sympathy for him, actually. It’s not easy to cope when the people we love outshine us. Jealousy, envy, fear of abandonment. It’s all so human. And there’s this terrible tension, of having to pretend you want someone to succeed while secretly wishing they fail.’

She cast her mind back to the actor and his talk of rats scrambling to escape a fire, and she realised she had no idea what she was going to do about Adam. She loved him – but was she still in love with him? They didn’t have sex very often these days, which she blamed on being tired and distracted. Her heart had long since ceased skipping a beat when he walked into a room. But she cared about him. And, like Gabriel, she understood why he felt insecure; why he might want to hold her back. She had felt the same when other kids in the system had found families to adopt them. Earlier in her career, she had felt envious of her peers when they landed hot roles while she was rejected. As Gabriel said, it was human. Natural. And she didn’t really blame Adam for making a pass at Eden either. She found, in fact, that she cared far less than she thought she would. And that was a bad sign, wasn’t it? When your boyfriend tries to cheat on you and you don’t really care?

She realised Gabriel was talking. She tuned in to hear him say, ‘That’s one of the reasons I created this.’

‘This? I still don’t know what this is.’

He got up and went over to the window, pressing a button on the control pad to open the blind. Ruth was surprised to see that night had fallen. ‘Come,’ he said.

She wouldn’t usually respond to a one-word command, but she found herself getting up and joining him, gazing out at the city once again: all the lights of New York, the shining capital of her dreams.

‘Watch this,’ Gabriel said.

Gabriel pressed another button on the pad and, to her surprise, the window popped open, swinging slowly inwards. At the same time, on the exterior of the building, a balcony slid horizontally out from the wall.

‘Cool, huh?’ he said, sounding like a little kid who’d discovered a nifty secret feature on one of his toys. ‘I had this put in when this place was built. I like to be able to get out into the air, to properly see and smell and hear the city.’

‘Hang on. When this place was built? You own this building? The whole thing?’

‘Oh yes.’ He stepped out on to the balcony and held out a hand. ‘Join me?’

They must have been at least fifty storeys up. Just the sight of the open air before her put a knot in her stomach.

‘Come on,’ he said, and, determined not to seem afraid, she took his hand and stepped out. There was just a metal bar to protect them. For a second she had an intrusive thought: the urge to throw herself off. She pictured herself falling, spinning to her death like a rag doll dropped from a roof.

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