The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

to Joanna. She had a cover story prepared. There would be a domestic crisis: a relative’s illness, which Joanna should know about. That was when Vera heard a sound that shocked the people on the other side of the glass from their self-indulgent conversation. A scream. It seemed hardly human and was without age or gender: loud and piercing and terrifying.

Chapter Three
    Vera couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from. Inside the house? If so, why did it seem so loud, even out here? The sound seemed to surround her, almost to swallow her up. Perhaps it was the pitch, but it was as if she was feeling it through her bones, rather than hearing it with her ears. There was no escape from it. She took a few steps back and looked up. At the top of the house, double glass doors, mirroring the ones here out onto the terrace, led onto a stone balcony. The woman from the kitchen was there, lit from behind, leaning over, emptying the noise from her lungs into the cold air. Vera was reminded of a drunk spewing. Suddenly the noise stopped.
    It seemed to take Vera hours to get into the house. The struggle to be heard, to get inside, reminded her of one of her recurring nightmares: she was a child, locked out of a house where her mother was dying, and she could never find a way in to save her. Now the adult Vera banged on the patio doors, where moments before the guests had been drinking tea. Nobody responded. They must all have rushed away to find the source of the screaming. She retraced her path round the house to the front door. Now the light had gone and she stumbled from the path, losing her way in the thick vegetation of the shrubbery. She pushed through the bushes, struggling to fight off the panic, and decided she must be walking in the wrong direction because there was still no path. The branches scratched her face and pulled at her clothes. She forced herself to stand still. She was no longer a child and she wasn’t lost.
    In the distance she heard the faint sound of waves on shingle. As she turned away from the sound, the solid shape of the building became clear against the sky above the shrubs. Vera climbed back to the path and walked round the house to the front door. There was no sound from inside. Checking her watch, she saw that she’d been wandering round in the garden for nearly twenty minutes. She ran her fingers through her hair and pulled a dead leaf from her jacket, then rang the brass bell by swinging the rope, which was attached to a heavy clapper. There was no response. There was a light in the cottage on the other side of the yard and she considered going over. Then the door of the main house opened and she saw the young chef, who had been working in the kitchen. He was still wearing his whites.
    ‘This way,’ he said. Then he added distractedly, ‘How did you get here so quickly?’
    Vera thought for a moment that she felt like a very fat Alice in a strange Wonderland. The chef darted away from her down a narrow corridor, leaving her to follow. He was thin and very dark. As he’d opened the door she’d seen black hairs on the backs of his hands and his lower arms. A wolf in chef’s clothing. She glimpsed the guests through a half-open door, but he was walking so quickly that she couldn’t make out individuals as she hurried to keep up. If Joanna was in there, Vera didn’t see her. The house was much bigger inside than she’d have guessed, a warren of passages and small rooms. He led her up a short flight of stairs. By now Vera was completely disorientated; she must have seen just the outside of the newer extension, and now there were no windows to help her make out which way they were going.
    ‘I was in the area anyway.’ Finally she got close enough to him to answer the question. The speed of their progress had left her a little breathless.
    ‘I phoned for an ambulance too. I don’t know where that is.’
    ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘They might take a while to get here. They’ll be coming from Alnwick, most likely.’
    ‘Actually . . .’ The young man paused. ‘I don’t think there’s much rush. They won’t be able to do anything, after all.’ He stopped at the end of a corridor and opened the door.
    It was not at all what she had been expecting. She’d thought she’d be stepping into a bedroom, a grand bedroom because of the balcony. But this was another Alice moment. Another contradiction. It was as if an outside space had been brought indoors. Everything was green and alive.