The One You Fear (6 page)

Still no movement.

‘I’m dialling then,’ she said.

Dan picked up on the third ring. ‘Hi, Em.’

‘Dan, I’m in the staff toilets, on the right hand side of the theatre, can you get here, right now? It’s the unmarked blue door.’

‘Are you okay? You sound…’

‘Some guy is standing right outside my cubicle.’

A split second hesitation: then, ‘I’ll be there right away.’

The shoes disappeared and Emma heard the outer door open and close.

‘Thank God.’

Dan arrived just twenty or so seconds later. ‘Em, are you in there? It’s okay, it’s me.’

She opened the door and they hugged. She could feel her heart beating hard against Dan’s chest. ‘Did you see the person coming out of the toilets?’

‘No. I didn’t see anyone.’

***

They reported the incident at the office. The staff took it extremely seriously and even offered to call the police, but there seemed little point in getting them involved. What could they do? There was some CCTV on site, but none covering that area, so it would have been impossible to identify the person. And although it had been a scary, intimidating experience, no crime had been committed. The toilets had indeed been unisex, so the man, whoever he was, had every right to be there.

‘Are you okay?’ Dan said, as they fastened their seat belts and prepared to leave.

‘I’m fine.’

He looked across at her. ‘You still look shaken.’

‘It’s okay; it just really reminded me of all those bad things from the past – Stephen Myers, Peter Myers, you know, being stalked. I never want to go back to that – never.’

Dan nodded. ‘You won’t have to go back. I won’t let it happen.’

Emma reached for his hand. ‘I know you won’t. I just, well, I just don’t understand what happened there.’

Dan shrugged. ‘Just someone playing a sick joke maybe. Getting a kick out of scaring strangers.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You think something different?’

Now it was Emma’s turn to shrug. She thought back to the man in the audience. ‘You’re probably right. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘C’mon,’ said Dan, still looking at her. ‘Let’s go. Get back to the apartment, chill out for a while, and put this behind us. I’m really sorry this happened, Em, it was supposed to be such a good night.’

They reached the apartment block just before ten o’clock. Emma was still shaken, but on the journey back the memory had already begun to fade a little. She’d convinced herself that there couldn’t have been a connection between the man in the audience and the person in the toilets. She had been a random, rather than targeted, victim. It was the only explanation that seemed plausible.

They passed through the main entrance, climbed the stairs and turned left towards their apartment door. Outside on the mat was a large bouquet of assorted flowers – reds, blues, purples, yellows.

Emma smiled and turned to Dan.

But he didn’t smile back. ‘They’re not from me, sorry.’

Emma frowned and picked up the bouquet. Something was wrong with this. She found the note at the back of the flowers – a single, terrifying sentence.

I’m still your number one fan.

PART TWO

6

‘Morning,’ Dan said, as Emma entered the living area. He was sitting in front of the laptop they had brought with them, knowing that the apartment had free Wi-Fi. ‘I found out where the flower shop is.’

Emma joined him on the sofa. She still felt incredibly shaken after last night’s incidents, and hadn’t slept well, waking virtually every hour, thinking that she could hear something, or someone, outside. Sure, the door was locked, but the thought that someone knew where they were staying, and had arranged for those flowers to be delivered, with
that
message. It was just scary. And after what had happened at the theatre…

Dan pointed at the onscreen map. ‘It’s only just down the road. We could be there in a few minutes.’

Emma nodded. The shop was on the main road that snaked around the coast towards St. Ives, just before the big supermarket where they had stocked up with essential supplies on their arrival. It had been her idea to trace the shop’s location. The card had contained a company name on the back – Bella’s Bouquets – and as they hadn’t recognised the name, they’d assumed it was a local shop.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘It probably won’t be open for another hour, with it being Sunday.’

‘I thought so too,’ Dan replied, ‘but they’re open already. It says on their website.’

‘Okay, we’d better get ready then.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Definitely – if there’s a chance of finding out who sent those flowers, I want to know. I’m tired of running away from these kind of people.’

***

‘Can I help you?’

The lady behind the counter laid down a bunch of flowers that she was preparing, and took off her glasses.

Emma prayed that she’d be receptive to their request. ‘I received a bouquet of flowers last night, from your shop, and I wondered if you could tell me who sent them.’

The woman blinked at them for a second or two. ‘We don’t usually give out names. If the sender doesn’t request it to be on a card, then we assume they may want to remain anonymous.’

This hadn’t started well. Emma tried a different tactic. ‘The message on the card, it was threatening.’

The woman looked confused. ‘Threatening? We wouldn’t allow something threatening to be sent…’

‘It might not have seemed threatening to you. But it has a specific meaning for me.’

‘R-i-g-h-t,’ she said. She opened the large book on the counter and began to leaf through. ‘May I ask your name, please?’

‘Emma. Emma Holden.’

The woman popped her glasses back on and traced down the page with her finger. ‘Emma Holden. You’re staying at the Sunset View apartments. “I’m still your number one fan”?’

‘I was stalked once by someone who used to say he was my number one fan,’ Emma explained.

The lady looked troubled. ‘I see. And you think this is from him?’

‘No. He’s dead.’

‘Oh, right, well, how…’

‘It’s someone who knows about what happened, and is doing this to try and frighten me. I think they followed us last night, when we went to the Minack Theatre, and they had arranged for the flowers to be delivered for when we got back. That’s why we need to know who it is.’

Emma wasn’t totally convinced that the person who had sent the flowers was also the sinister individual from the theatre toilets, but it was certainly a possibility, and she thought it strengthened her case for being given the name.

The lady pursed her lips. ‘Don’t you need to speak to the police about this?’

‘We already did,’ Dan said. ‘Last night. They’re not interested.’

That wasn’t quite true. They had called the police in the minutes after receiving the note. The officer on the phone had been sympathetic, and offered some general advice about minimising risks in the event that this really was something sinister – making sure they stayed together whenever possible, keeping their outer door locked, reporting anything else to them straight away. But the reality was that nothing concrete had happened. And without the police really understanding the context of their concerns, it was natural for their reaction to be lukewarm. That’s when Emma had the idea of finding out where the flower shop was.

The lady looked at Dan, then at Emma, and back down at her book, tapping the page. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. As I said, we don’t normally disclose names, but I think on this occasion, I’ll make an exception.’

‘Thank you,’ Emma said. ‘It means a lot.’

The lady raised her eyes from the book. ‘Stephen Myers.’

Emma felt a blast of sickness slam into her. ‘The person said they were called Stephen Myers?’

‘Yes. It’s written down here.’

‘It’s okay.’ Dan placed a comforting arm around Emma’s back.

‘Are you all right?’ the lady asked. ‘Does that name mean anything to you?’

Emma nodded, fighting the nausea. ‘The person who ordered the flowers, did they do it by phone, or in person?’

‘In person. I know I didn’t serve them, but it says here that they paid by cash, so it couldn’t have been over the telephone. Hang on one moment.’ She turned towards an open door behind her. ‘Alice, can you come here for a second?’

A girl in her late teens appeared, wearing green gloves and a pretty flowery apron. She smiled at Dan and Emma.

‘Alice, did you serve this gentleman?’ The lady pointed to the book.

The girl nodded. ‘He came in yesterday, early morning.’

‘Can you describe him?’ Emma asked.

‘He was about your height,’ said Alice, nodding towards Dan, ‘but very thin. His face was thin too, you know, hollow-looking. His nose was quite, well, prominent, pointy. Sorry,’ she added, suddenly looking embarrassed, ‘is he a friend of yours?’

‘No.’ Emma’s heart was racing. This girl was describing Stephen Myers, or at least how Emma remembered him. ‘What colour hair did he have?’

‘It was dark. Dark brown, I think, not black.’

That was right too. But it couldn’t be. He was dead, buried six feet under the churchyard that Peter Myers had taken them to, and to think otherwise was ludicrous.

‘Eye colour?’

‘Sorry, I didn’t notice that.’

And then the question she felt was almost too crazy to ask. ‘Did you notice anything else about him, anything about his face?’

Would she mention the scar?

‘Yes. His cheek, his right cheek.’ Alice traced a finger down her own cheek and under the chin. ‘He had a scar, running down here.’

‘It can’t be,’ Emma said, closing her eyes, as the room seemed to start spinning around her. ‘It’s not possible.’

***

‘What do you want to do?’ Dan asked.

Emma looked out of the car window. ‘I don’t want to run away, and spoil our holiday.’

‘But it’s already been spoilt, hasn’t it?’

Emma nodded, putting a hand to her head. ‘You’ve spent so much money, on such a fantastic apartment.’

‘I know, but that’s not important, is it?’

Emma turned to look at him. ‘What’s going on, Dan?’

‘I don’t know – I really don’t.’

‘Someone is stalking me again, pretending to be Stephen Myers. Who the hell would do something like that? Peter Myers is in jail, so it can’t be him. I mean, the person who ordered those flowers, he even looked like Stephen Myers.’

‘I know,’ Dan acknowledged.

‘And whoever this person is, they knew we were on holiday. They
knew
we were in Cornwall, they
knew
exactly where we are staying – the apartment number, everything. Do you think they followed us from London?’

‘Maybe – or it might have been a chance sighting. They might live down here, and have read about what happened in the news, and decided to play a sick joke on you.’

‘I guess.’ Emma thought about that scenario. It was actually the most appealing option, which was presumably why Dan had suggested it. Anything was better than the possibility of someone driving hundreds of miles, following her in a much more calculating fashion. But then she thought back to what had happened en route to Cornwall, at the services – the imagined sighting of Stephen Myers. Maybe what she had seen hadn’t been the product of an overactive imagination after all. Maybe it had been that same person, trying to look like her one-time tormentor. And in the department store in London. Maybe that, too, had been real. ‘Do you think what happened at the theatre is connected? The person in the toilets, do you think it could be the same person who sent the flowers?’

‘Well, I’d like to think not.’

‘Me too, but it’s possible.’

Dan nodded. ‘It’s possible. But even if there isn’t a connection, the reality is someone around here sent those flowers to you, pretending to be Stephen Myers. And like you said, they know exactly where we’re staying. I think that we’d be mad to stick around here, don’t you think?’

‘You’re right.’

‘Then it’s settled, we’ll go back and pack. If we stayed around for another two days and something happened, I’d never forgive myself.’

7

Emma sensed that Lizzy and Will were holding something back. She was relaying the events of the previous two days to them, as the four of them, including Dan, faced each other across the kitchen table in their London apartment. A bottle of red wine was open in front of them, but no one had touched it as yet. The lasagne in the oven smelt delicious. It was five o’clock on Sunday evening, only a couple of hours since they had arrived back from Cornwall. Lizzy had suggested meeting up later that afternoon at their place – she would bring around some food and drink – as they would no doubt be hungry after the long car ride and wouldn’t feel like cooking from scratch. Emma had said there was no need to go to that effort, but Lizzy was undeterred and insisted on it, saying she’d invite Will around, too.