Page 61 of The Plot Twist

‘He’s … he’s … coming here?’ she spluttered.

‘Maybe.’ Martin shrugged. ‘As I said, he’s been away but he said he’d be back tonight, just not sure what time.’

‘Does he know you’re meetingmehere?’ Allie’s mouth had gone incredibly dry, which was an interesting and new side effect of utter panic.

‘Well he doesn’t know it’syou,’ Martin said, in slight bemusement at Allie’s line of questioning. ‘I mean, he knows I’m meeting a writer friend here, but I didn’t tell him your name. Should I have done?’ He raised a bushy eyebrow at Allie.

‘No! I mean, no, no, of course not. I mean, he wouldn’t even recognise my name, so what would be the point?! Ha ha! Completely stupid, of course!’ Which was a charge that Allie felt could be levelled at her right now. ‘So he’s coming here, when?’

‘I don’t know!’ Martin frowned at her. ‘Are you OK? You seem extremely bothered about the fact Liam might be coming here. I know we discussed not telling anyone about helping each other out. But it’s only Liam, I didn’t think it would matter.’

‘Matter? Oh no! Of course it doesn’t matter.’ Allie took a large gulp of her wine and tried to look at her watch to gauge the time, wondering if she could finish up her meeting with Martin and hot foot it out of there before Will showed up, and manage all of this without seeming like a total lunatic to Martin, who was already looking at her as if he might have suspicions about that.

‘So tell me how writing has been this week?’

‘Great! Fantastic,’ babbled Allie. ‘Almost done.’

‘You are? Well, that’s amazing, Allie, congratulations. Wish I could say the same for me.’

Allie grimaced – this wasn’t working. Even if she could persuade Martin that she had almost finished her manuscript (she hadn’t) then he was still going to want to talk about his, and that could take a while, in fact, it could take right up until the moment Will walked up the steps, out on to the rooftop bar and destroyed Allie’s happy ever after forever.

‘Yes, I’m really rather stuck on the third murder. What do you think about it happening on the trading floor of the bank? I was thinking about having a wall of those monitors collapse on top of Harry. Or do you think it would be better if there were balconies overlooking the trading floor and he plunged to his death, crashing into the bank of monitors as he went? I mean, I’d have to rewrite that description I have in chapter two, because I don’t mention any balconies, but I could easily put them in. But then I also have to think how Chastity planned all of this. I mean, if he’s to plunge to his death, then surely she has to push him, and do you think she could? She’s supposed to be quite petite so I’m not sure about the logistics of her pushing a six-foot man over a balcony. Maybe it’s better that she has rigged the monitors to collapse on top of him.’ Martin paused for breath mid-muse. ‘What do you think?’

What did Allie think? Allie had a lot of things on her mind at that precise moment, none of which involved the intricacies of how Martin might kill off his third victim. She was scanning the entrance of the bar for Will, trying to work out how long a train journey from York would take and the subsequent Tube journey to London Bridge. Would he go home first? That would give her a little longer to wrap things up with Martin and then get the hell out of there. And that was the main focus of all her thoughts. She knew that it ought to be how she should handle it when Will found out she knew Martin, but instead she was single-mindedly concentrating on how to make a speedy exit and prevent him from finding out this unwelcome fact tonight. Martin was aware of none of this, still pondering the logistics of a balcony plunge vs a monitor collapse. Either of which Allie would have been grateful for as a distraction right about now.

‘Allie?’ he asked again.

‘Hmm? Oh yes, right. No, I think that definitely works.’

He frowned. ‘But which one? The balcony shove or the monitor collapse?’

‘Definitely the balcony shove, I love what you did there,’ Allie said with far more conviction than she felt.

Martin’s frown intensified causing his eyebrows to completely meet in the middle and, not for the first time, Allie could see the family resemblance between him and Will. Not that she had seen much of Will frowning, but there was something that the intense frown did to the shape of Martin’s eyes that made him resemble his son, or presumably, the other way around.

‘You think it’s plausible Chastity would be able to push a six-foot man over a balcony? I was trying to work out momentum, where she would need to push him, how low the balcony would need to be so that a stumble and a shove could send him plummeting to his death. I presume these places have health and safety rules that require a minimum height for a balcony railing.’

Allie allowed herself a small smile at the wormhole Martin was evidently travelling down. It was something very familiar to her – not the murder and the balcony shove, but the logistics of making a plot plausible. And she thought of all the weird google searches she had done over the years to work out things like whether a five-foot-four woman would need to stand on tiptoes to kiss a nearly six-foot man. Just how long it takes the Eurostar to get through the tunnel on its way to Paris and whether that’s long enough for an entire relationship to unravel and come back full circle so that by the time the train shoots out into the French countryside the two romantic leads are kissing passionately in the luggage compartment.

‘I think it’s OK to allow a certain amount of suspension of disbelief in novels, don’t you?’

Martin didn’t look convinced so she tried a different tack. ‘OK, maybe you’re right, maybe it’s too much to expect her to be able to pull that off. How about you have her rig up the monitors to collapse forthismurder and save the balcony shove for later?’

Martin’s features visibly lightened. ‘Good idea, but you don’t think it’s too repetitive to have two murders happen on the trading floor?’

Allie contemplated this. ‘Well, how about Chastity commits the first murder, and then she manages to torment Archie—’ the VP at the bank and the worst offender of the lot ‘—enough that he is provoked into the final act, and it’s actuallyhimwho pushes the chairman to his death from the balcony, just as the police swoop in. So they see Archie commit the final murder and, as Chastity has planted enough incriminating evidence, they pinallthe murders on him?’

Martin gave a low whistle. ‘That’s good,’ he said admiringly. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to try your hand at writing crime? You could save this for your debut crime novel?’

Allie shrugged. ‘I appreciate the gesture, maybe at some point, but I did double check, and my contract is quite specific – my next novel for Brinkman’s needs to be a romance. And while I’m sure some editors would see the benefit of an author writing in two genres, I am sure Jake will use this as some way to further ruin my career.’

‘I despise him,’ Martin said bleakly and took a sip of his beer.

‘Yup. Me too. Sounds like most of publishing does.’

‘Got any further on your plan to ruin him?’

If Allie hadn’t been so nervous about the outcome of her recent meeting with Tessa she would have more deeply appreciated the way Martin so casually asked this; as if it was perfectly normal for the two of them to be discussing taking down their nemesis. And maybe it was for Martin because while Allie was usually trying to engineer meet-cutes, Martin was conspiring to commit murder. She wondered just how much to tell Martin that wouldn’t impinge on Tessa’s privacy.

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