The Weekend Away

by Sarah Alderson

  I click on the one final camera image, recognising instantly my handbag on the bed and my suitcase by the door. He’s even been spying on me in his own apartment! What a sick pervert. I back away from the screen in disgust. Is that all he does, I wonder, watch and listen? Does he get off on it? Does he sit in here, masturbating as he watches?

  Thoroughly creeped out and more than a little horrified, I move to the door. I need to get out of here. I need to report this to the police. They need to bring Sebastian in and question him. He must know what happened to Kate on Friday night. He’s even a suspect himself.

  What if Kate found out about the cameras? What if she came down here to confront Sebastian and they got in a fight? It’s a theory, like all my other theories, backed up with zero evidence. But if Kate had discovered Sebastian’s fetish he’d be terrified she’d expose him. He could go to jail for this. Would he have been terrified enough to kill her, to stop her talking?

  The buzzer to the front door jolts me. It sounds like someone angrily leaning on it with all their weight. I hurry to pick up the intercom. ‘Yes?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s me. I left my keys.’

  Shit. It’s Sebastian. I hit the entry button, my heart pounding, then glance at the door to the locked room. It’s ajar. Shit. I run back and shut it, scrambling to find the right key to lock it with. As I hear the front door start to open I race to the kitchen and set the keys down on the counter.

  Sebastian enters the room, his eyes darting to the keys and to my hand, not inches away from them. Did he see? My disgust at him has altered, metamorphosed into unease and even fear. I want to get the hell out of here and fast.

  Sebastian snatches the keys up. He turns around – his eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘I swear I put them in my bag,’ he says.

  My smile is so fake he must see through it. ‘Weird,’ I manage to mumble. ‘Maybe they fell out.’

  Before he can press me any more I turn and walk away, hurrying back to my room. My spine stiffens as I think about the camera watching me from above. I sit on the bed, trying not to look around for the hidden lens and microphone. I’ll wait until he leaves again before I grab my things and flee.

  I can hear him moving around in the apartment. Shit. What if he’s guessed I’ve been in the recording room? Did I leave the screen on? I tiptoe to the door. What’s he doing? I thought he was leaving. Hearing silence, I step out into the hallway. I didn’t hear the door bang shut. Is he still in the apartment?

  ‘Forget something?’

  I spin around. Sebastian is right behind me, holding my phone. Oh God. The world skids to a jarring stop. I left it inside the room. My eyes fly to Sebastian’s face. He knows I know. For a split second I’m frozen in terror – and then I run.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sebastian chases me. I scream and sprint for the door as his hand grazes my shoulder, trying to tug me backwards. ‘Get off!’ I yell.

  My leg hits the corner of the table in the hallway and I trip. Sebastian is on me, pulling me away from the front door, darting in front of it to block my way.

  ‘Get out of my way!’ I scream at him.

  He stands with his arms outstretched across the door, as though he’s a zookeeper trying to herd an escaped animal.

  ‘What were you doing in my room?’ he asks. ‘You broke in. You were trespassing.’

  ‘Trespassing?!’ I yell, my blood boiling. ‘You’re spying on people without their knowledge! You’re a sick pervert!’

  Sebastian’s face scrunches up in rage. ‘I am not!’

  ‘Yes, you are! I’ve seen the evidence. You’re spying on people. You’ve got cameras everywhere, in all the apartments. You’re disgusting! I’m going to the police.’ I move to get past him. I’m not staying in this apartment a second longer. I’ll fight my way out if I have to. ‘Get away from the door!’ I shout as I push him out of the way.

  He pushes me back, his arms flailing as he fights me. I scream and we tussle for a bit as I try to barge past him and out the door and he tries to stop me. My elbow smashes him in the face. Blood spurts. The next thing I know he’s on the ground at my feet, hugging my ankles, looking up at me through tear-stained eyes and sobbing.

  ‘Please,’ he begs, his anger transmuted into pleading. ‘Don’t tell the police.’

  I stare down at him in horrified confusion. He’s no longer in any way frightening. He’s pathetic. I try to kick him away, to free myself from his limpet grip, but he won’t let go and I almost topple over. ‘Please,’ he sobs again. ‘I wasn’t spying.’

  ‘What are the cameras for then?!’ I shout.

  ‘I’m just ensuring that guests respect the property.’

  ‘What?’ I snort. ‘Get off me!’ Frustrated, I try to kick him off again but he’s attached to me like a slimy, suckered sea creature, tentacles winding around my legs.

  ‘Sometimes people were inviting extra guests and not telling me,’ he snivels, ‘or having parties and making lots of noise. And parties are against the rules. I’ve made it very clear. But people don’t care about the rules. And the neighbours complain. I’m running a business.’ He says all this in a long stream, tears rolling down his face, his arms still embracing my legs.

  ‘So you installed cameras to make sure they were behaving?’ I ask, sceptically.

  He nods.

  ‘In the bathrooms? Did you want to monitor in case they didn’t flush?’

  He looks down at the ground, and his shoulders heave.

  ‘You’re just a pervert,’ I hiss. ‘You like watching people have sex.’

  ‘No!’ he says, but he can’t look me in the face and I know I’m right.

  I finally wrestle my feet free from his grip and step away from him.

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ he sobs, looking up at me from the floor where he’s still collapsed. ‘Not the police. They’ll arrest me.’

  ‘Good,’ I say, stepping even further away from him. ‘You should go to jail for this! I hope they lock you up and throw away the key.’

  He looks at me in alarm, eyes wide as saucers, shaking his head. ‘I can’t go to jail!’

  His whining and pleading only fills me with even more disgust. He’s repulsive, lying on the ground trying to defend himself. How on earth was I afraid of him? He’s a pathetic worm. ‘You spied on me and Kate.’

  He falls silent.

  I step towards him. ‘You watched us, didn’t you?! You know what happened on Friday night.’

  I can see by the way he swallows and looks guiltily away that I’m right. I crouch down beside him, no longer wanting to put distance between us but wanting instead to shake him by the shoulders and make him talk. ‘What happened? Did you see what happened?’ I ask, the note of desperation now in my own voice.

  He glances up at me, cowering.

  ‘What did you see?!’ I say, shaking him by the collar. ‘Tell me what you saw!’

  I can see him weighing up whether or not to tell me so I twist his collar hard. He lets out a choking gasp. ‘Tell me what you know or I’ll rip your liver out of your body through your arsehole and make you eat it!’

  The words are out of my mouth before I even have time to think about what I’m saying. And my fist is raised, hovering an inch above his head. He shrinks from me in terror and I feel an answering thrill of satisfaction, a sudden understanding of what it is to have power over someone.

  ‘OK,’ he cries, holding his hands up to shield his face. ‘I’ll tell you. Don’t hit me!’

  Wowed and a little afraid of the power I’ve just wielded, I let him go. He scrambles back away from me in fear. ‘Please don’t tell the police,’ he begs again.

  ‘Did you kill her?’ I ask.

  He looks at me aghast, his eyes wide as saucers. ‘No! I swear. I didn’t do anything!’

  How many times have I heard that from how many men?

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘Why would I hurt her?’ he sobs.

  ‘I don’t know! But why
would you spy on people?’

  ‘I didn’t hurt her,’ he simpers. ‘I promise. But I did see something.’

  He’s completely crazy if he thinks I’m letting him get away with this but I’ve got the power here and hold all the cards. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s do a deal. Do you keep recordings?’ I ask.

  He nods. ‘For twenty-four hours. Then they get automatically erased.’

  My spirits sink. He won’t have the recording from Friday night then.

  ‘But I saved Friday’s,’ he adds, seeing my disappointment.

  ‘You did?’ I ask, unable to keep the excitement from my voice.

  He nods but there’s a calculating look in his eyes that makes me suspicious and puts me on edge.

  ‘I’ll show it to you, if you promise you won’t tell the police.’

  I narrow my eyes at him. The slimy little bastard. He’s trying to blackmail me. Of course he’d try to leverage something like this for his own benefit.

  He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and waves it in my face. ‘Swear it or I’ll delete the recording.’

  ‘Fine,’ I hiss. ‘I swear. Now show me the footage.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ‘I’m not a pervert,’ Sebastian simpers. ‘And I didn’t kill your friend.’

  I glance sideways at him. ‘We clearly have different definitions of the word,’ I tell him, my skin still crawling at the thought he’s seen me naked.

  We’re in his soundproofed room, the door propped open with a textbook, as I couldn’t stand the idea of being in too close confines with him. There’s still a chance he did something to Kate. I’m not taking his word for anything. He’s a liar as well as a pervert.

  Nervous, I glance at the door. He could lock me in here and no one would hear me scream, which is why I propped open the door and am standing closest to it.

  I watch him bend over the keyboard and tap away, and finally up pops the footage from Friday night into Saturday morning. He fast-forwards through it and then stops. The time stamp in the corner of the screen reads 2.12 a.m.

  It’s a feed from the living room in the apartment upstairs. There’s stillness for a few seconds, then movement blots the screen. It’s Kate. I inhale sharply, painfully, the sight of her unleashing a million arrows of anger, sorrow and grief, but also joy.

  For the last few days all I’ve seen whenever I think of her is her grey, bloated face and blue lips. And yet, here she is, as I wanted to remember her, animated and alive, bursting with energy as she strides through the shot. Emanuel follows her, sauntering into the apartment, looking around as he goes. He takes off his jacket and flings it onto one of the sofas in the living room as Kate dances into the kitchen. She’s like a firework, I think to myself, shining so brightly and with such effervescence. How did I not appreciate it while she was alive? No wonder Rob was in her thrall. I watch as she fills a glass with water from the tap.

  ‘This, you should see,’ Sebastian tells me, freezing the shot and then zooming in.

  ‘What?’ I ask, unsure what he’s showing me. It’s all blurry.

  He fast-forwards frame by frame and then hits play again. ‘Did you see that?’ he asks as Kate picks up the glass of water and turns away.

  I shake my head. ‘No, play it again.’

  Sebastian rewinds the footage and plays it one more time, on slow. I draw breath as I watch Kate pull the little pillbox from her pocket and dump the contents into the glass.

  ‘She put something in the water,’ Sebastian says, pointing at the screen.

  I had already surmised it was Kate who drugged me, but seeing her actually do it, drop the powder in the glass and swirl it around with a light motion of the wrist, makes me realise how hard I’ve been praying that it wasn’t her. It’s so hard to watch, one more betrayal on top of the affair she was having with my husband.

  I watch her carry the glass out into the living room. She must have drugged me in the bar too when she gave me the gin and tonic instead of water, perhaps trying to disguise the taste of whatever she was plying me with, which I’m guessing was ketamine. She must have been trying to make me pliant so I’d go along with her little plan to sleep with Joaquim. After I refused, she probably decided to take things further. If she drugged me with enough ketamine she knew I’d pass out and then she could move to plan B – framing me instead, so I’d wake up and not know the truth. The bitch. How could she think up a plan like that, let alone execute it? I’m her best friend. Was her best friend. Or was I? I don’t know and now I’ll never be able to ask her.

  ‘Show me the camera in the bedroom,’ I tell Sebastian, but he’s already switching camera feeds. Now we’re in my room. And there I am. It’s sudden and shocking and strange to watch myself on screen – almost like an out-of-body experience. It feels like I’m watching a stranger. Joaquim is helping me towards the bathroom, holding me up, his arm around my waist as I stumble blindly.

  Sebastian switches cameras again, this time to the one in the bathroom. The camera must be hidden in the light fitting over the mirror. I cringe at how awful I look, how drunk and out of it, my make-up smeared all over my face. I wince as I fall to the ground with a thunk and hurl into the toilet as Joaquim hovers behind me, looking disgusted and a little awkward. He does kneel behind me, however, and pull my hair out of the way as I flop against the toilet seat.

  Sebastian glances in my direction but I ignore him, my attention on the monitor.

  Kate appears then, holding the glass of water. She hands it to Joaquim who helps me sit up and props me against the loo. I sip from the glass at his urging. I don’t remember this part. I was already out of it, and yet Kate was still plying me with more drugs. She could have killed me with an overdose. Did she not stop to think about that?

  ‘You OK?’ Kate asks, bending down and patting me on the back. ‘Why don’t you get to bed?’

  Hearing her voice is like feeling a whip lash against broken skin. I flinch and want to cover my ears. She sounds like she’s in the room, right behind me.

  ‘Joaquim, put her to bed,’ she orders, her expression taking on a hardness as she turns to him.

  Joaquim has to pull me to my feet as I’m slumped on the ground, almost unconscious. As Kate waltzes out of the bathroom Joaquim picks me up and carries me out, back into the bedroom. Sebastian switches feeds and we watch as Joaquim lowers me into the bed.

  He takes off my shoes, slides the covers over me, then pauses, hovering over me for a few seconds. ‘Do you want me to take off your clothes?’ he asks.

  I hold my breath, watching my eyes close and my body sink into the mattress.

  Joaquim leaves the room, turning off the light and I let out the breath I was holding.

  Sebastian switches back to the living room camera, eager now to show me the rest of the night. Kate’s put on some music and it’s blaring loudly. I can’t hear what she’s saying over the top of it but I watch her dancing with Emanuel, flinging her arms around his neck, gyrating against him. His hands rove over her body. Joaquim pours himself a drink and sits down on the sofa. He pulls out his phone, ignoring them.

  ‘Fast-forward,’ I tell Sebastian. ‘Did you record them having sex?’

  He flushes guiltily. ‘Skip over it,’ I say. I don’t want to watch it. ‘Go to the part where they leave.’

  He does, fingers flying over the buttons. We must miss the hot tub and the sex. We jump all the way to 3.05 a.m. I watch Joaquim and Emanuel leave the apartment. They seem rushed as they head out the door, but they aren’t running, only hurrying as if the taxi is outside waiting, carrying their jackets and, of course, Kate’s bag.

  ‘When does Kate leave?’ I ask.

  ‘Wait,’ Sebastian says to me tersely.

  The seconds tick by on the counter and nothing happens. Forty-three seconds go by and then, just as I’m about to tell Sebastian to fast-forward … boom, Kate comes rushing past, heading towards the front door. She’s wearing a loose T-shirt dress and sandals. We hear the door slam.
>
  ‘Where’s she going?’ I murmur to myself.

  Sebastian leans over the keyboard and types something in. The image shifts to the camera in Kate’s room. He rewinds the footage about ten minutes. Emanuel’s pulling on his clothes. Kate’s lying face down, naked, sprawled on the bed. I pull a face, grateful not to have watched the five minutes previous. They’ve just had sex; that much is obvious. Kate rolls over and gets up and I try to ignore the fact I’m watching my naked best friend. She picks up the used condom from the bedside table and drops it in the trash. Then I see her pause. She leans over the bin and picks up the torn foil condom wrapper. I can practically see the idea forming in her brain as she does it.

  I watch her pull on the dress and then walk out the room, still holding the condom wrapper.

  ‘She puts it in your bed,’ Sebastian says, switching to the camera in my room. Kate and Emanuel enter. I’m fast asleep, head turned to the side, limbs splayed like a starfish. Kate stands over me for a second and I hear my pulse thrumming loudly in my ears as I watch her watching me.

  She slides the wrapper into the bed beneath the covers.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Emanuel asks her.

  ‘None of your business,’ she answers, laughing.

  How could she laugh? Who is this person? I never really knew her, I think to myself.

  ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she says, walking to the door, ‘be gone by the time I’m done.’

  Emanuel watches her go, shaking his head at her retreating back.

  Sebastian switches the camera back to Kate’s room. We watch her enter and cross into the bathroom, stripping as she goes.

  ‘I don’t want to see,’ I tell him.

  ‘You’ll want to see this,’ he answers. ‘Wait until you see what they did while she was in the shower.’

  ‘I know. They stole her bag,’ I tell him, furious that he was sitting on all this information when the police could have used it, while I was out there running around, desperately trying to find out what had happened to her.