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“She murdered children? On my street?”
    “I thought you’d know…it made the national papers. A big story, a couple of years ago when they dug up her cellar and found all the bones.” She stopped. The silence that settled between us felt like a physical presence. If I turned and looked in its direction, I feared I might see it, squatting there, nestled at her shoulder.
    “I’m sorry,” said Carole, finally. “I really did think you knew.”
    “It’s okay. I’m a little out of touch these days. Well, not just these days. I can’t even remember the last time I read a newspaper, or watched the news. I get kind of…insular.” I stopped speaking, not knowing how to continue. I didn’t want to tell her about my depressive episodes, the drinking spells, the dark times when I’d stood punching a wall for several hours, until I shredded the skin of my knuckles, fractured a bone.
    “She’s dead,” said Carole, as if that cleared up everything, all the badness in the world. “That’s how they stopped her. Well, how she stopped, anyway. She died, so she didn’t get to kill any more kids. They say she was ill, she had cancer. So she killed herself.”
    “Well,” I said. “That’s okay, then.” But was it? Was it really, or was it simply another horror to be piled on top of the rest?
    I pulled up outside Carole’s block. She had the flat on the top floor, the one whose windows looked down at the street.
    “Thanks, Adam.” She placed her hand on my knee. I resisted the urge to flinch.
    “That’s okay. It’s stopped raining now. You won’t get wet getting out of the car.” Whatever I said felt so prosaic, as if I were trying to build a barrier of words between us, a linguistic wall that she couldn’t break down.
    “Hey, how about I come over some time? To your new place. I could cook you a nice meal, you supply the wine. It might be fun. Remember that? Fun? It’s what people used to have before we all grew up and got so fucking serious.” She smiled at me, and this time it was genuine.
    “Maybe that isn’t such a good idea.”
    She pursed her lips, drew them back from her teeth. “Is that why you never called? After the last time we saw each other? Because it wouldn’t be a good idea to start seeing me?”
    I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and then raised it again. When I opened my eyes, she was still smiling. She didn’t want to have a fight; all she needed was answers. I couldn’t blame her for that. “It isn’t you. Not just you, anyway. I just feel that it wouldn’t be the right time to start seeing anybody . I’m not in the right headspace, if that doesn’t sound too poncey.”
    She laughed; a small sound that soon grew to fill the car. “It sounds very poncey, mate.”
    Then I laughed, too. I couldn’t help myself. It had sounded so weak, like something somebody in a film might say. “Jesus, when did I get so lame?”
    “I hate to shatter your illusions, but you’ve been that way ever since I’ve known you.” She reached out and slapped me in the solar plexus, her hand staying there just a fraction too long. “So…dinner?”
    I nodded, smiling. “Yeah, dinner. That would be good, I think. How about tomorrow night, so I don’t have time to change my mind?”
    She nodded, slapped me again, this time on the shoulder, like an old pal, opened the door, and got out of the car. When she slammed the door, I was just about to call her back, to ask her to come home with me, to take her in my arms and ask her what the hell she saw in me anyway, but be grateful, oh so fucking grateful, for whatever her answer might be.
    Relieved that the moment had passed me by, I pulled away from the curb and headed for home.
    I didn’t give much further thought to the fact that a murderess had once lived on my street.

 
     
     
    FOUR
     
    The Watcher
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    I’m not sure what made me wake up in the early hours of the morning—some sound outside, or even inside the